frog 🐸 @ frog @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

Absolutely agree! Diversity is really complicated, which makes it difficult to properly capture using a few poll questions, but I think the most important thing is that Beehaw should be safe for everyone (except for the intolerant), and that's not really about how many people there are from each minority.

The thing is, most of the things that decisions need to be made about cannot be made on an individual basis. I have to agree with @abbadon420@lemm.ee's comments on that point. By the time you get more than a handful of people together, nothing gets done without someone taking the lead and providing strategy (I personally am watching a group project at university fall apart because nine people cannot work in tandem without an effective leader.) At this point most countries in the world consist of millions of people (and China and India each have more than a billion). It's simply not viable to expect millions or billions of people all to pull in the same direction without someone pointing which way to go.

But you do actually want communities to pull in the same direction rather than scatter randomly. For every decision where the pooling of resources is more efficient and effective than each individual doing whatever they want (healthcare, education, climate change, childcare, and many other areas), someone has to be responsible for collecting and then spending that pool of resources. You cannot have a society without that collective pooling of resources put towards the common good.

The way democracy is supposed to work is that a group of people gets to choose who has responsibility for resources everybody puts into the pot. This makes sense. If everyone puts resources into the pot for, say, healthcare, and then every person individually decides that they know best how to manage the pot, the pot will be empty before the end of the day, and most of it will have been spent ineffectively. Each person will have individually spent it on travelling to see a doctor in another community, because that's what they personally need right now, when the more effective use of the money was to pay for a doctor to move to that community and stay there long-term, available to everyone whenever they need. Or two people will individually decide to spend the money on paying a doctor to come to the community, but they chose different doctors, and now both doctors are pissed off because there's only enough money for one doctor, and both doctors leave because neither got what they were promised.

So there is an implied contract with democracy: "we choose YOU to manage the pot of money, and you're responsible for making sure that pot is spent in the right way so that when we need the service that pot is for, the service is there."

The breakdown we're seeing in this social contract is because the people who were chosen to manage the pot of money gave it all to their friends instead of spending it on dcotors and hospitals like they were supposed to. The people that "support" authoritarianism don't really believe that one person assuming control of the pot by force is actually better than the community choosing the most trustworthy person to be in control of the pot. They also don't really believe that the problem is the existence of the pot in the first place. They still want the pot to exist, and they still recognise the practical need for someone to be in charge of the pot so that it is used in the most efficient way that benefits the highest number of people.

I actually wonder if what they perceive to be the problem is that by choosing multiple people to manage the pot of money, it has led to the same problem you'd get if nobody was in charge of the pot: a free for all where no effective decisions get made at all. So they conclude: "why can't there just be ONE person in charge of the pot?" They do not want someone to take the pot by force and take it for themselves. They still want to choose who is in charge of the pot. They just want the pot to be used properly.

Support for authoritarianism, in most cases, is the result of a (likely) correct diagnosis, wrong prescription.

we expect a bigger than average amount of people to be from a minorised group.

I'm just going to note here that even asking for white vs non-white, you may not be capturing the full picture of minorised groups. Many European countries legally recognise the existence of a number of ethnic minority white groups, which have a racial/ethnic/cultural difference that has led to them being discriminated against within a larger white majority population. Those people will still consider themselves white, because they are, but they're still part of a minorised group - and prejudice against them is often considered socially acceptable "because they're white". (I consider myself to be a member of such a group.)

For the vast majority of people currently saying they support authoritarianism, particularly in western countries, it's not because of parent-child relationships or boss-worker relationships or the fact that we elect representatives to make decisions rather than have a referendum on every decision (which is unworkable in countries of millions of people). It's purely because the democratic system in their country isn't working for them.

There was some polling in the UK last year, where a bunch of people were asked about their preferred form of government, and the demographic that had the strongest support for "a strong leader that makes decisions without parliament or courts getting in the way" were the 18-30 age bracket. And it's not because this group inherently think that having some authority figure telling everyone what to do is a good thing, because they're of the age when they should be more independent, not less. But they know the democratic system isn't working, because there are decisions that need to be made on jobs, housing, childcare, healthcare, public transport, climate change, etc, and those decisions aren't being made. So when people answer a question about whether they want a "strong leader", they're not really saying they want authoritarianism (and everything that goes with it). They're saying "the decisions that need to be made aren't being made, so we need stronger leaders".

"Supporting authoritarianism" isn't really support for the horrors of authoritarianism for the majority. It's a symptom of economic inequality and politicians who have been captured by vested interests. I note that in the research you linked to, one of the individual comments from respondents was listed:

They need to listen to the working class and the poorer classes. They should not think about profit first and instead focus more on homeless people and the veterans. We should use the money we pay in taxes for the NHS and emergency services and do more for families – affordable resources for child care, more affordable housing...

An authoritarian leader isn't going to listen to the working class, or do any of the things that person said they wanted (which are all things a lot of people in the UK want). The relationships you described, boss-worker and some parent-child relationships, are not known for the authority figure listening to the subordinate one. The kind of people supporting authoritarianism right now aren't looking at their boss, who refuses to listen to them about the problems the workplace, employees, and customers are facing, and thinking "yeah, we need more of this". They're not looking back fondly at the childhood where their parents refused to listen to them, and just ordered them around.

The only thing they're thinking is that the economic system they live in is rigged against them, and politicians have stopped listening. They think (incorrectly, in my view) that if the leader of the country was strong enough, they could make the right decisions without being influenced by hedge fund managers and fossil fuel executives and all the other people with economic motivation to prevent those decisions being made. I think if the surveys used a followup question of "is a strong leader who doesn't listen to the working class, and just uses their power to benefit themselves and their friends, a good way to run a country?" (which is the reality of what authoritarianism is), support for authoritarianism would drop like a stone.

I mean, that's kind of the point. For the vast majority of games, there's no real reason why the protagonist has to be a straight white dude, yet 99% of the time, that's what they are. I like it when devs do something different.

The only time I've noticed issues like this on an Android phone was the device I had before my current one. This was a phone that was great when I got it, and I started to notice issues after about 4 years of use. The reality was it was a mid-range device when it was released, it was already a year or two old when I got it, and after a couple of years, the hardware was just not powerful enough for the stuff I was asking it to do.

So I'm inclined to agree with the others who've said it really depends on exactly what device you're using. If you're buying a budget phone that's not particularly powerful when it's brand new, then it's definitely going to be having issues 2-3 years later, because apps get more demanding as hardware improves, so if your hardware is subpar, you're going to have issues.

While the allure of getting the cheapest possible phone is strong, if you use your phone for a lot of things, you may have to consider spending a bit more money. One consideration is instead of getting a brand new budget phone, get a second-hand model with higher spec: the price will be similar, but you'll get better performance for longer. I'm actually trying to think now if I've ever had a brand new Android phone, and I can't remember any of them being new, but they have all served me well, with only one notably having performance issues by the time it was ~5 years old.

So I'm actually going to agree with this, with a caveat, having learned from personal experience - because sometimes we do have to keep talking to these people for work/education/family purposes. When they start arguing about their choice of phone being better, ignore them. But do continue to respond to them about things you need to talk to them about. Or, in short, grey rock the hell out of them.

Method successfully deployed against a guy at university who picked fights about everything, including what phones people had.

The fact that Android lets you use F-Droid, or just install apk's yourself, again means you're not tied to a specific phone manufacturer. You can switch to a different phone and redownload all your F-Droid apps and transfer the standalone apk's over. So even without autotransfer, it's not difficult to keep everything.

Definitely iPhones. With all the other smartphone brands, if you want to switch, all your apps and data can be transferred over. For example I have used four different brands of smartphone, and the process of transferring everything was straightforward. In contrast, Apple makes it hard to transfer to a non-Apple device without losing all your data and apps, essentially creating a barrier to people changing to a different type of phone that simply doesn't exist for people changing from, say, Samsung to HTC. Thus Apple effectively has a monopoly on customers that are trapped in its ecosystem.

Additionally, while users of Android-based devices can use apps from a variety of sources, and can heavily modify the OS (including using completely open source versions), Apple users are not only locked into Apple's ecosystem, but have no choice but to use the OS Apple have provided, in the form Apple dictates, and use only Apple's shop to buy Apple-approved apps. Once you get an Apple device, you're stuck with using it only in ways Apple approve of, and they'll do everything in their power to prevent you from modifying your Apple device or switching to a non-Apple device.

Slime Rancher's protagonist, Beatrix LeBeau, is definitely not white. It's not the most story-driven game out there, but I really appreciated how the main character is a PoC woman, with zero fuss about it. She's just a lady with a ranch on an alien planet, and why shouldn't she be a PoC woman rather than a white dude?

Their Kickstarter page says they're a husband and wife team (plus some help from freelancers and AI), so the latter outcome seems more likely than the former. They do intend to distribute the game for free, which... can work to avoid getting sued, but then there's all the money from the Kickstarter campaign.

I think it's a really cool project, and it's definitely the kind of thing I'd be interested in playing, but I would definitely hesitate to invest in the Kickstarer when a lawsuit seems pretty inevitable.

Just gonna add that archives like this are absolutely vital for students too. During a module on animation, which included an historical/contextual research component, I relied heavily on "piracy" to source pretty much everything I looked at from the 1930s onwards - basically everything that was too new to have entered the public domain, but too old/unpopular/obscure to be readily available in a "legal" manner. Most of my fellow students didn't go past 1928, and they lost marks in that assignment as a result. I did not volunteer information about my sources for these files, and the teachers wisely opted not to ask. 😅

Obviously I cannot speak to what the situation is in the US, or even necessarily the entirety of the UK. I can just say that in my specific geographic area, it is largely second homes, holiday homes, AirBNBs, etc that are the problem, because the number of houses lost to the residential market through this is pretty much exactly the same as the number of households currently legally classed as homeless (which often means not necessarily on the streets, but being "housed" in hotel rooms and the like). If every single house that is not currently being used to home a family was confiscated from the owners of second homes, holiday lets, AirBNBs, etc and repurposed into residential housing, there would not be a housing crisis here.

Private landlords have, obviously, been raising rents in the last few years, but a big part of that is a matter of supply and demand. If one house gets 50+ families applying to rent it, of course prices are going to rise. We don't tend to have multi-millionaires buying up huge swathes of houses here, with the average property "portfolio" being less than 5 houses. It's simply not possible to get thousands of individual landlords to collude on prices, so if the actual problem - a lack of houses available to live in - was fixed, competition would be sufficient to keep prices under control. If no one is applying to rent a house because they've already found somewhere else to live, prices will drop quickly.

The fear and insecurity is based on reality, in that it often stems from massive inequalities and injustices. The problem is that it's directed at the wrong people.

For example, around where I live, a lot of conservative beliefs are centred around a fear of immigrants, and it's along the lines of "there's not enough housing for the people already here, so we should stop letting other people in". The lack of housing in this area is genuinely at crisis point, and the fear and insecurity arising from that is very much based on something real.

Where the right and the left differ is on who they blame for this. Those with conservative beliefs blame their non-English neighbours. Those with more progressive beliefs blame government decisions that have resulted in too little house building and too many wealthy people buying houses not to live in, but to visit for two weeks a year or to let out on AirBNB.

It's definitely my dream to one day find a campaign where I can play a character like this.

Hmmmm, interesting question. I guess toads are half-brothers, since all other frogs would be my brothers.

Definitely a salamander, one of my glorious cousins! Thanks for sharing!

Well said! And just to add to your advice, for any UK-based people reading this, the place to check charity information, including the trustees' annual reports, financial statements, and audits (if applicable) is the gov.uk charity register.

Yeah, it's definitely more of a horror game if a lot of the setting fills you with primal dread! I'm definitely enjoying it, just... only in small doses.

Playing Subnautica this week. Having the slight problem that I find all the small fish so adorable that I feel bad about cooking and eating them. It's also worth noting that I have thalassophobia, which is impeding progress a little because underwater caves are scary, deep water is scary, not being able to see the bottom is scary, and not being able to see the surface is scary.