Sway_Chameleon

joined 9 months ago
[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago (5 children)

"For those who don’t know, New Year’s in Russia is like Christmas in the west."

So you're saying Putin is the Grinch who stole New Years? That checks.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

When tech companies say they want to "democratize" they typically mean they are making a service more widely available to the consumer. The democracy bit is that the consumer "votes" with their wallet. A notable early adopter was Amazon, and I would hardly think that the public, today, see that organization as a paragon of virtue. So, in this sense of the word we're somewhat failing ourselves here.

In the context you present, the companies themselves become little democracies internally. This sounds nice but would ultimately lead to chaos and ruin for those companies. I think this would lead to highly unstable, unprofitable businesses that no investor would ever give money to, or at least not expect any returns from.

Furthermore, I don't necessarily think it would benefit the consumer in the end. Maybe the employees mostly vote to have a good solid ethical company, or maybe they vote in their own best interests to bring home higher wages and/or just keep their jobs safe. One could argue we just witnessed one such example of this with the recent OpenAI debacle with Sam Altman. Board fired him for potentially going against the stated charter of the company (one that has an ethical basis of essentially putting the security and well being of humanity above all else), at the risk of destroying an $87billion company, yet the employees staged a mutiny forcing the board to reinstate him.

But I digress. At the end of the day I think the most we can ever really expect from companies is that they will, inevitably, find new and creative ways to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us, until such time that we simply cease giving it to them.

Edit: spelling.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There was a Donner... but then there was a very unfortunate party.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

There is only but so much time that can be allocated to fun, sleep only serves to rob you of that precious time.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That's pretty much how my wife and I ended up together. I studied amphibians, she likes amphibians, Yada Yada Yada, married.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

First rule of metal spikey end club.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I had a VHS copy of the Empire Strikes Back that my uncle recorded for me when it played on one of our 3 local TV stations. For the holidays I had a recording of a bunch of the old holiday cartoons that would play in a marathon every Christmas, and one of Ghostbusters (for some reason it used to play every Christmas in the evening, so it became a Christmas movie for me).

Aside from that I'd mostly just rent the same VHS tapes from our local hole in the wall video rental place every weekend (Neverending Story and Inhumanoids) from the ages of 4-6. Then I think we got a real video store and my movie watching experience improved a bit. To be fair, the hole in the wall rental shop was probably only about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide inside, and the shelves of movies lined the walls, so there wasn't a lot to choose from.

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

We'll never know...

[–] Sway_Chameleon@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

A badge we weirdos wear with honour.

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