Related Recs

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THE CULTURE WAR, ALGORITHM FODDER, GENERALIZATIONS

everything is politics. from vaccines to lgbt matters, politicians have leveraged the things conservative americans don’t understand to stoke fear and confusion. this isn’t anything new. what is new is the algorithms that reenforce those fears. comment sections we’re told to treat like real conversation just flooded with faceless accounts saying their most vile inside thoughts. it’s easy to want to interact and easier to just read it all and be mad. but every second spent engaging is another brain scrambling distraction. these sensationalized posts and comments do nothing for education, understanding, or empathy. even on the left, slacktivism actively hurts the cause. theres an idea that someone who holds ignorant beliefs is *bad* in all politicized fields. but let’s be real, just because uncle jeff is pissed about tuck underwear it doesn’t mean he’s a climate change denier. generalizing people is exactly what politicians want from us. social issues are important and politics aren’t going away from that any time soon. but social media is a slippery slope and i personally refuse to engage. when it bleeds into my real life (”parents just WANT their kids to be trans”) i try to engage in conversations that get to the root of the issue. where’s this info coming from, why do you believe that? these are the kind of questions strangers won’t ask them on the internet. misinformation is a sickness that we’re all plagued with. to find some truth and understanding we cannot be having these discussions on platforms like facebook or instagram or twitter. if we do, we’re just giving these tech ceos and politicians what they need: engagement and fear

@roogby

Jun 3, 2025

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In an imperfect world, don‘t try to be perfect. Just do your best.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A RANT Consumerism. All of us are consumers, so none of us are in the place to lecture people on their lifestyle choices, no matter what we do in life—suffering was probably involved or we have negatively impacted the planet in some way, we are just not consciously aware. Smart Phones To manufacture the smart phone/devices we all have, it requires 12,670L just to produce the single product. Now look at how normalised smart devices are, how common they are. Think of all the water it would have taken to produce the phones you have in your back pockets next time you are in a group of people. That is just water consumption during the production process, not the CO2 emissions. Data Centres Internet is one of THE LARGEST sources of water consumption. Did you know that in most data centres, 40% of the facility is dedicated to cooling systems? A standard large sized data centre consumes the same amount of energy that 50,000 homes consume in a single day. In order to cool that much, it requires around 19 MILLION LITRES of water DAILY. And did you know that not all data centres are ‘active’ data centres, there are data centres that sit there idly, waiting for the main data centre to fail so it can fulfil its job as the backup. There are data centres consuming that much power while not in active use, just waiting for a potential fail to keep companies like Amazon and Netflix running smoothly. Meta Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. Meta. In 2023, Meta’s data centres consumed ~14,975,435 MWh of electricity. Do you know how much water alone meta consumed in 2023 to cool its data centres? 3881 Megalitres. That is 3.88 BILLION LITRES. And the demand for social media is growing. (Your whole feed is curated using AI!) I say this because I am peeved. I am peeved when I am told off that my choice to wash the dishes in the sink is worse than putting my dishes in the dishwasher. I don’t like to be lectured about which facilities I use are bad for the environment. The bus or the car you take to work uses petrol, that petrol was likely taken from a middle eastern country that has not known peace due to it’s oil facilities, and they are constantly under siege from foreign countries. The cobalt used in your smart device’s lithium-ion batteries was probably mined using child labour. Same goes for the cocoa in your chocolate. The coffee beans in your morning beverage. I am not a saint, I partake in EVERYTHING I just listed. But for the love of God, I will not take someone judging me or others for a minor scale pleasure, because when you look at the big picture—we are all at collective fault. We are consumers, and unless we are all ready to lay down our swords, it is just going to keep growing. Technology it developing faster than the eye can see, and we cannot keep up. In this perfect world, I am not perfect. But I will keep trying my best. I eat a vegan diet because I want to minimise my carbon footprint, I don’t have active meta accounts, I grow my own veggies and water them with potable water—but I still buy from large supermarkets because I do not have time to be self-sufficient, I forage, I walk if I can or I carpool when I have the opportunity to. But that is still not perfect, as I type this I am consuming the exact thing I just complained about. There is no perfect in this imperfect world as long as there is a demand. And, oh boy, is there a demand. Just do your best, do what you believe will have an impact and keeps your conscience clean at night. You got this. It all accumulates, I guess. Just, before ANYONE criticises someone’s actions or choices unless it’s immediately causing harm to another, just reflect. I have left out so much detail, and I am not going into it because frankly, it’s too much and I don’t want to. (I have links to the cites I used for the figures if you want to do your own research)

@jilly

Jan 29, 2025

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user ownership: turn perfectly imperfect into a cooperative

The best internet platforms enshittify when they take on VC funding, either exiting to the market or a larger acquisition as a result of the pressures of venture capital. It’s all downhill from there: Investors and leadership will strip the company for parts, enforce mass layoffs, sabotage the user experience, all in the name of maximizing returns. What if Perfectly Imperfect took a different route, and exited to its community of users, paid subscribers, and workers? What if PI became a solidarity cooperative, or something similar? Let’s think about how to safeguard the legacy of this clearly beloved platform.

@newjersey

Nov 29, 2024

Top Recs from @thejk

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being a little late on cultural 'things'

Social media can encourage us to constantly seek out the novel and makes us feel like we're missing out if we don't. It's much better for peace of mind, in my opinion, if we let go of the immediate, and use impermanence as our filter for information. We don't all need to watch the latest streaming show, or hear the latest album. What needs to find us, and what we need to find, usually finds a way

@thejk

Mar 13, 2024

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"dancing in the dark" - Bruce springsteen

One of the greatest melodies created by human beings A song about sex that doesn't say sex. The music industry worst nightmare of being told by your artistic-interfering label that you need a hit single, but then the hit single you created was "Dancing In The Dark"

@thejk

Mar 18, 2024

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father john misty's cover of "the suburbs"

Arcade Fire has to relinquish their publishing to the man

@thejk

Feb 6, 2024