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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • That’s definitely a big part, but it’s both. Like white flight out of cities and insisting on a detached suburban home, the other part of the story is that cars represent “social worth” for many in North America.

    It’s why car people become so angrily defensive, and fight even modest changes. Cars aren’t just functional. They represent a cherished value system. Their worth as a person is tied up with their car.

    That said, just like diamond rings and smoking, even this weird cultural norm was bought by industry advertising. We’re social apes, who do things to feel important and valued, even when it otherwise makes no sense.









  • This is also how I read it. I actually really appreciate attacking the idea of “white as default”. It’s kind of like how some gamers think representing anything besides the “default” demographic is “political”.

    I think this is the more revealing excerpt:

    This is the defining irony of white film-making. The more oblivious your film is to matters of race, the whiter it plays. Because whiteness is often exactly that: the freedom not to see race, even when it’s right there in front of you.

    Basically, being aware of whiteness makes for less racist movies. There’s nothing wrong with white movies, but it’s wrong when white movies pretend they’re not white, but universal and default. The article concludes:

    Instead, our twofold expectation should be this: 1) The industry affords more film-makers of colour the same creative freedoms and commercial opportunities that are now afforded white film-makers, and 2) That the film culture – including the film-makers themselves – develop the confidence, insight and language to discuss and dethrone white cinema.

    This does not sound like racist dog-whistling or white supremacy to me.



  • I buy iPhones because they’ve been much cheaper. The purchase price of flagship iphones are similar to Android flagship prices, but they’re supported for years longer. My last iPhone was the 6s, released in 2015. It’s still receiving security updates today in 2024, more than 8 years later (last update Jan 22, 2024). When I stopped using it, it ran as well as the day I bought it. The resale price was also decent.

    Meanwhile, android phones from that era typically lost support within 1-2 years of release.







  • Thank you for the response. Alas, the monetization question is key to enshittification. I’m left unassuaged.

    Let’s take a concrete example. There are a bunch of neo-nazis inciting real violence on Blue Sky. People will die. Does anyone have the power to do anything about them? Or can the neo-nazis " mix and match services and switch quickly" to escape any consequences? It’s a dilemma either way. On one fork, BS has no control, which means bad actors run free. On the other fork, BS does have control, which suggests they’re not as enshittification resistant as it may seem.

    I know and am happy with how Activity Pub (Lemmy/Mastodon) deals with both forks, as imperfect as the system is. What about Blue Sky?


  • It’s more robust against enshittification than your average Mastodon server

    I’m very skeptical of that. What makes Mastodon so robust against enshittification is that it’s hard for a single or small set of players to have so much control that they can act as gatekeeper to extract money from the user base.

    Blue Sky is a for-profit corporation. How do they plan to make money? Who controls access to the network? These are genuine questions.


  • I don’t know if you’re willfully misreading me. I am saying that EV tires only wear slower when they do because they have to be specifically designed to withstand the extra friction. But EVs wear equivalent tires faster than non-EVs because EVs are heavier. If you don’t understand this, I’m not sure how to explain it to you.

    Imagine someone saying “Chairs for obese people last longer than those for normal weight people.” That may be, but only because they are designed that way. You can’t change the laws of physics. EVs are heavier. As the many experts across the actual journalistic sources I cited say, that means more friction and more wear.