That’s the problem I’m trying, likely failing, to communicate/point out though. All other things being equal those groups and types of people tend to be less receptive to my opinions and perspectives on things just because of what I am even when they have known me for a while. I have experienced on more than one occasion someone getting upset with me for pointing something out where when someone else who wasn’t a white dude said almost the exact same thing verbatim they accepted it without an issue.

People are people and dumb tribalism and prejudice is present in almost every space and I am also hardwired to detect it and call it out when I see it. Keeping quiet about it and just watching it happen makes me very agitated and takes a lot of mental energy to keep in check. So take that in combination with the above and well…

I’m tired boss. Not tired of fighting for others’ right to exist, I’ll do that every day. I’m just tired of fighting for my own.

It would just be nice if it ever felt like I wasn’t standing naked out in the middle of no mans land. I generally don’t have any community that provides protection even when I need it and this particular conversation thread is a good example of why. I can’t go into the spaces or communities where I most identify with others experiences without being treated for what I appear to be, and even if I wanted to capitalize on being being a white dude (I really don’t), it doesn’t take very long before I piss off the wrong person or make problems by pointing out how something isn’t OK.

If/when things really do go sideways I fully expect that I will be one of the first individuals to be put on the proverbial trains because I’m target. No one is going to show up in support of me.

That’s all I’m saying.

Well, as a white guy with autism that is just mild enough that it isn’t apparent when people first interact with me my entire existence is basically trying to figure out where all the invisible traps are. To an outside observer it would very much appear like I’m keeping my head down and being complicit, and yet I often find myself identifying most with people in marginalized groups because of their experiences, how they feel, and how they are treated. I have no qualms standing up for someone when I can, but it’s rare that anyone ever stands up for me because I’m just another white guy despite the fact that I’m usually confused and barely keeping my head above water on the inside.

Did you read the article? Blender isn’t doing AI stuff.

That’s my biggest issue with Fairphone and I’m typing this comment on one.

The way it feels to me is that Framework actually cares about the principles it espouses at its core which is reflected in their design decisions, whereas Fairphone merely decided to target an underserved niche within the context of capitalism.

Don’t get me wrong, Framework has their own issues, and I’m well aware of the problems that phone manufacturers face when it comes to hardware not being as interchangeable, but FP really hasn’t done anything on the hardware side to make uplifting a current phone viable.

Something like keeping the same battery form factor so a higher energy density chemistry for the newer generation could be used on an older generation for example.

I still live in my home country and I also feel a similar way. I’m too weird to be normal, but I’m too normal to be weird. I can fit in anywhere and adapt to just about anything, but no where does it feel like I belong. It’s an existence that feels and is very liminal.

It’s not anyone’s fault. I’m wired in a very peculiar way. There isn’t really anything I or anyone else can really do. All I can do is keep trying to meet people, do things I like, and trying new things I like and maybe some day something will click. Being about 1/3 of the way through my life though that’s not super likely. Could be worse. Could be better.

Slew mode activated

There is a reason I specifically said white collar jobs/workers. I have a hard time thinking of a barista as contributing to the shitty things that Starbucks is responsible for, though I admit that is likely more of a me thing. Whereas a person working as a programmer for Starbucks or in Finance or HR, their work seems like it is much more directly complicit in supporting the shitty things Starbucks does like its active campaign against workers rights and unions.

Your line of thinking though is more or less inline with mine in the grand scheme of things and the importance of being intellectually honest and using whatever influence one may accrue (whether that’s money, decision making abilities, leading by example, etc.) to try and balance the scales positively. As long as there is any suffering in the world that we as individuals aren’t using all of our free time and resources to address then we are all hypocrites to at least some degree, and that’s ok, on an individual level. It’s not ok in the broader sense as it is often a result of capitalism and greed, but it’s ok to simultaneously recognize that we are all flawed and that we could all be doing better (admittedly some more than others).

I have been thinking about something very similar for the last year or two now. Almost every white collar job I can think of has large portions of its workforce twisted into contributing to some fucked up aspect of the capitalist machine. The one that I think is really pernicious is the medical industry. I actually think it’s worse than defense in a way.

With defense there is kind of an upper limit to how much a company can probably charge for their product because how much more dead can the device make someone? On the medical side of things though, their products save or prolong people’s lives and the people in charge know that. They know that even if the improvement is only marginal, as long as there is one (and sometimes even if there isn’t one), they can probably extract as much money from people as they have.

I care.

Removed by mod

Viscerally.

Well, kinda a combination of all of it, but when people are being greedy, selfish, ass holes instead of kind and fair and just trying to make the world or community a better place for everyone in it rather than just themselves or those they know there is an unyielding rage that begins to stir wants to MAKE them be fair and kind.

This is something that has baffled me for a while when I see or hear people talking happily about their home value going up or talking about their house as an investment and get mad at the thought of a drop in home value. Even if these people never sold their house, if home prices keep increasing faster than wages, then at some point they won’t be able to afford the taxes on their home. I just don’t get it, smh.

For any strike or boycott to be truly effective it needs to be maintained until the other side comes to some kind of agreement. A single day or two isn’t going to do much, and most of the population can’t afford to miss anymore work than that AND they are not socially connected to each other enough to be able to rely on one another for support and services while they are effectively locked out of the support and services they would receive from being able to pay for things and buy things.

For a lot of people the two general avenue of choices are resist now and potentially lose everything now, or do nothing now and potentially lose everything later.

I’m not necessarily justifying their actions, but it’s understandable.

I’m more interested in what the rest of the world will do. I have no doubt Greenland will defend itself, but no one really seemed interested in sending troops to help Ukraine when Russia invaded, what would be different in this scenario? I realize technically it’s NATO, but it isn’t like any of those agreements are bound by laws of nature and most of the people in charge these days seem more interested in whatever is profitable than what is right.

A disaster

I fucking hate when people say they prefer an SUV or a truck because they feel safer or because of the “increased visibility”. It especially bugs me coming from people who generally hold more progressive views because one of the reasons driving is so dangerous is due to the proliferation of large vehicles, so what they are essentially saying is very analogous to “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun”.

I’ll +1 your gripe with my old man yelling at clouds thing. Windows XP gave you the option of creating arbitrary taskbars/toolbars to locations on the desktop that could be floating or docked. I have always kept my data on a separate drive or array from the one my OS lives on. In Windows XP I would create a toolbar that contained the root of my data drive, dock it to the right side of my monitor, and then set it to autohide the same way you can set the taskbar to auto hide.

That in conjunction with the way that Windows XP allowed you to remap “My Documents” to a different location made for the cleanest workflow I have ever had.

They removed the toolbar functionality after XP and changed the way remapping system folders works slightly since then. I haven’t really found an application that gives the exact same functionality as the arbitrary toolbar from XP, but even if I did I still spend over half my day at work on a computer that is locked down by corporate IT where I can’t install whatever I want, and I like to try and mirror workflows between home and work because of muscle memory.

I’m in my mid 30s, lol.

Girlfriend’s age?

Origami bouquet of flowers or arrangement of animals? Alternately origami Christmas ornaments?