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Wxnzxn

@ Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

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12
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146
Joined
5 yr. ago

  • コーヒー支配

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  • Oh, back then I totally also used.... some websites I found on google. And, uhm.... I think I remember printing out a torrented professional Japanese handbook, making a fancy folder to put it in and then.... never actually using it. :D

    As you can see, teenage/young adult me was very realistic and very committed!

  • コーヒー支配

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  • All us former or present weebs that once learned Hiragana, Katakana, maybe 5 words and phrases, and basically nothing else, understand. (And the people actually speaking Japanese, too)

  • What would the world look like if billionaires actually helped the people?

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  • It really isn't, but as long as those resources are distributed through a market, there are problems even if you add money. Say the billionaires truly are incorruptible angels and put all their money to providing food and shelter, the not-yet-billionaires in the market suddenly have incentives to raise prices, withhold food to the market while prices are rising as a speculative gambit, stuff like that.

    That's one of the mechanisms through which the system itself, that produces billionaires, makes it at least hard or - imo - even impossible to truly undo the damage it does to create such billionaires, even when you have those billions. Another example is corruption: As soon as you put a lot of money into an issue, it creates an incentive there to funnel money away in secret, to provide false solutions that don't solve anything, to scam, etc. A friend of mine worked on projects providing water infrastructure in countries in Africa from philanthropic and international aid funds, and he did get often frustrated telling how some projects simply vanish halfway through, because someone down the line had basically run off with the money (not that the projects were wholly useless, either, but they failed to fundamentally solve things by just throwing money at them). Someone like Bill Gates, as another example, has been unironically doing a lot of good as a philanthropist, but all his money still wasn't able to truly tackle the root causes of the problems in the countries where he supports healthcare and such things - and inevitably, some of the funds he provided were used on glamour projects or ineffectual, nice-sounding strategies, or ended up in outright corruption. And at the same time, the question remains, what the system that made him a billionaire caused in damages to begin with.

    That's why I still think you can't really tackle all these problems without doing away with a market structure, exchange value, capital accumulation, etc. - i.e., why I remain a dirty commie, instead of just arguing for redistribution (redistribution and more social-democratic, beneficial investment is still good, but you gotta always aim for the abolition of private property and capital accumulation as an end goal, imo).

    Oh, and I just realised my ramble kind of missed OP's point, which is also important: All the money caught up in the three-digit multi-billionaires net worth? It's not representative of true goods and labour, it is what Marx would have called "dead" capital. As soon as it is used for anything but as financial capital, it can drive inflation massively, which connects to part of my first point.

    EDIT: Another example that just came to my mind for how this can impact things - Mansa Musa and the stories surrounding his lavish spending during his Hajj, basically crashing the local economies. So, even pre-capitalist systems had to deal with these dynamics.

  • What would the world look like if billionaires actually helped the people?

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  • This is an interesting conundrum, actually. The big question at its core being:

    Can you ever do enough good through philanthropy, so that it offsets the damage you had to do, in order to become a billionaire? Can even all the billionaires in the world do enough good with their money, to offset the damage done by a system, that allowed for them to become billionaires?

    I, personally, don't think it is possible.

    To give an actual answer: I think, the world would definitely be better, but unless those billionaires collectively used all the power their money provides, to do away with money and the possibility of billionaires altogether, I don't think it would amount to all that much.

  • Happy three years to the Steam Deck - the Linux gaming machine that changed everything

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  • Oh, neat, I remember borrowing money from friends to buy one shortly after release, and spending many months repaying it. My main thought process, besides it being a cool PC, was "the higher the statistics, the better the outlook for Linux adoption". :D

    Can barely believe it's been three years already.

  • Videos @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml
    Technology Connections

    Algorithms are breaking how we think

  • YouTube won't let me watch a video unless I sign in...

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  • That's no lie, hence supplement, not replace. But the community can only grow, if people start using it more, even just a little bit in addition to YT where it works for them.

  • YouTube won't let me watch a video unless I sign in...

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  • At least from what I've seen, a lot more videos than in the past seem to have transcripts and captions, including automatically generated captions. I recently moved all my old YT videos (mostly German YoutubePoops from the early 2010s) over to peertube.wtf and they had automatic captions generated without input on my end, in English and German both.

  • YouTube won't let me watch a video unless I sign in...

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  • Have a look at peertube, it's gotten to a point where it can definitely supplement YT.

    [email protected]

  • How big is lemmy nowadays

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  • Oh, thanks for the info, that is great to know!

  • How big is lemmy nowadays

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  • As far as I know, from when this was discussed after the first Reddit exodus, only commenting and posting makes you an active user. So the number is somewhat deceivingly small, as the vast majority on platforms like this are lurkers who maybe post/comment every once in a while at most.

  • Videos @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml
    veritas et caritas

    How TIKHistory misleads you with sources

  • Do you browse the fediverse at work?

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  • This is the way, after all, Lemmy has lots of great mobile apps.

  • Videos @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml
    veritas et caritas

    When to distrust scholarly journals

  • An OpenAI whistleblower was found dead in his apartment. Now his mother wants answers

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  • Okay, that is fair enough - although one small thing I'd add is "psychological issues not greatly exacerbated by his former employer" - where I also don't think intentionality is important, as long as they callously don't consider the potential of that exacerbation.

    Thing is: psychological issues don't exist in a vacuum. For example - let's say he was robbed of all perspectives to ever work again in a field he was passionate about by his former employer de facto "blacklisting" him - they surely did not explicitly have this outcome in mind, but they accepted it as a possibility. Similar situation with the high suicide rates in countries like South Korea - they don't exist the way they are because of independently existing, isolated mental illness, but because of a material system that interacts with, and sets the conditions of, psychological development.

    So, you are right, it's true that it could be, that it ends up as the result of a completely unrelated mental illness. But I'd be wary to take reports like "he actually had a diagnosis of depressive disorder" as simply washing OpenAI clean of all responsibility.

  • An OpenAI whistleblower was found dead in his apartment. Now his mother wants answers

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  • This just as a reminder: Even if this is to turn out to really 100% be a suicide, that just means they were able to silence him by driving him into suicide - basically by all important metrics the same as a corporate assassination with extra steps.

  • How can Doge access critical government infrastructure and fire people if it isn't even a real department?

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  • So, it isn't the exact same situation, but just as a reminder: von Papen, the conservative guy who ultimately put Hitler into power, initially thought he'd be savvy and cede only "not that important" posts to Hitler and the NSDAP. After all, a silly, comically insane upstart like Hitler would be easily outmanoeuvred by knowing the law and how statecraft works, right?

    Well, the Nazis just used those posts in illegal ways, overstepped their official authority and refused to report to von Papen at all (whom they should at that point have been subservient to) - knowing full well no one was going to stop them anyway. Shortly thereafter, von Papen was out and Hitler was chancellor.

    Von Papen managed to live until 1969, and wrote an autobiography that was derided by historians for having a terribly naive lack of understanding politics, lack of principles and being full of vanity.

  • The Linux version of the "sonic.exe" creepypasta would just be called "sonic"

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  • For the games I ~did~ made, before I had to do a life restructuring and put that stuff on hiatus, I always went with something.x86_64 - I have no idea when and where I got that idea, but I know I copied that format from somewhere.

  • Videos @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    ZAUM The Inside Story: Part 1

  • Deleted

    The fact that this is a real image is infuriating

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  • Oh, so you meant, get out of the country, not, you know.... I interpreted "getting out of the timeline" differently. A lot darker, I guess.

    Now, if you can get out of the country, that might indeed be the best option with things as they are. But that won't be an option for everyone. So either way, organising and staying strong is still important.

  • Deleted

    The fact that this is a real image is infuriating

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  • this is the dark timeline folks…

    get out while you still can.

    To quote a fictional revolutionary poet: In the dark times, should the stars also go out?

  • Crab rule

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  • For a second I thought the silhouette was based on this:

  • Do rhymes make sense to deaf people?

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  • Treat my answer as what it is - hearsay - but the way I remember reading about it being explained, there is indeed sign-language poetry, and gestures having similar or complimentary movements were considered rhyming, which I guess also makes intuitive sense.

  • 196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    Based Kamarulea?

  • Videos @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml
    Fredda

    Capitalism in the Third Reich: Economics of WW2 Germany

  • 196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    Tag ruleself

  • 196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    Rulebreaking rule

  • 196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    4 year ruled Lemmy meme to put things into perspective

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world
    Wxnzxn @lemmy.ml

    Is funkwhale.audio down? I just wanted to check on the site out of curiosity for setting an instance up myself