honey_im_meat_grinding @ honey_im_meat_grinding @lemmy.blahaj.zone

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2 yr. ago

How many takes do you think each of them needed before they all managed to look at the camera while talking, read the script appropriately, and move their head and hands enthusiastically?

Looking at their Github, I mostly see Apache 2.0, which is a bad sign. But this whole thing seems like an advert for their product anyway, so it's likely a nothingburger and won't make a dent in the current Mastodon software's dominance.

Most people I see (in various forums) focus on the sexism part of this. It's bad, but I think it's worth highlighting the way Madison says they misled her and started controlling her digital side gigs outside of LTT, and just how bad working there was. Here are a few of the things she mentioned, but I recommend reading the full thread:

I had asked and been told during my interviews that I would be allowed to monetize my YouTube channel and be allowed to join Floatplane in exchange for shutting down my Patreon. ONCE I moved [from Arizona to to Vancouver] I was presented with an entirely new contract/handbook that I was not told existed.

Work from Home was a whole issue. If you took 3 minutes to answer a personal email, you could get in trouble. (happened to me) There is a system of micro-managing and a level of distrust because the amount of content they have to push out daily is so insane, no one gets a break.

I remember getting told off for taking my sick days, as in the days you're entitled to. This no days off, "grindset" culminated in the real moment I realized I had to leave.

They also forced me to have them as my representation if I wanted to take any sponsors for my Twitch or YouTube channels. Originally I had been told, just make sure you okay things by us for non-compete issues. Then that changed when I moved to take the job.

I honestly think the only way Linus can redeem himself at this point (for me personally), is if he made the company into some sort of multi-stakeholder worker cooperative where the workers have an actual chunk of democratic say over the direction of the company. This is how it's done across Europe already via works councils, e.g. in Norway 33% of the board (leadership) is represented by workers, while in other European countries it goes all the way up to 50%. It's been made very clear that the current leadership are incompetent and need to actually listen to their workers.

It really makes the argument that CEOs and managers couldn't be elected really weak. They'd probably be far more competent if they were chosen by workers once a year or so.

You can see who downvotes on kbin. Votes are public information in the Fediverse, Lemmy just chooses not to display it.

This means that the role of commercial banks is not canceled with the launch of the single digital currency, but they will still be an important part of the ecosystem.

[...] a ceiling on the liquidity that citizens will be able to maintain in digital euro, in the order of 2,000 or 3,000 euros per user. The goal is for the digital euro to be used purely as a means of exchange and not as a means of accumulating wealth.

The benefits of the digital euro include the immediacy and security of transactions – [...] instant payments [...] made in a few seconds

A very important advantage of the digital euro is also the zero cost of its use, putting an end to the – harsh in some cases – commissions that banks currently impose on direct payments

Maybe I'm talking from a privileged country, but none of this would benefit me at all in my country as the banking system already does all of this. It's a bit disappointing that they seem to be intentionally kneecapping the digital euro so that they can placate private banks. Although I wouldn't mind what they're doing if they also provided a government run bank that didn't shoo away customers if they didn't have the right risk profile, that competed with private banks (e.g. Norway's state-run consumer bank exists alongside private ones). For example, legal sex workers are often pushed out by private banks.

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Just a heads up - if you're in the EU or EEA, please donate to NOYB. They've been fighting hard and with actual success for our digital rights in response to companies wringing their hands at the idea of actually respecting the GDPR and our privacy.

What you're referring to is called a "mixed economy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

And you're right - there are scales with capitalism and socialism weighing against each other in basically every economy. Finland, Norway, France are examples where it's tipped a bit more in favour of the "socialism" side. But the US has plenty of elements of socialism, from housing coops in the Bronx, to utility coops in the midwest (that helped pave the way for the electrification of rural America), to credit unions, to welfare policies, to the Alaska social wealth fund, and I could keep going.

The author of that article is Megan McArdle. A quick look at her other articles:

• An article that attempts to shift blame away from media execs and onto consumers, in response to the writers/actors' protests
• "Higher minimum wages may increase homelessness" (literal article title)
• Says we shouldn't expect to keep taxing wealthy people
• Wants to reduce medicaid but conveniently doesn't mention the amount of death poor people will experience as a result of that, using the same austerity justifications we've heard in Europe already (that turned out to be bullshit)

I'm sure she has no right wing economics bias lol

My understanding is that rent control backfired pretty spectacularly in the long term.

There are critiques against rent control that have persisted for decades that are now seeing a growing body of counter-evidence that it maybe isn't that bad after all. Hence the resurgence of rent control being suggested as a policy tool. It makes sense that the myth that rent control is bad has persisted for so long - high earning economists (yes, they're very high earners) who are thus more likely to own rental units have an incentive to publish research showing that policies that harm their rental income are bad, and have less incentive to publish research that shows policies like these benefit the renter over the landlord.

Here's a great article by J. W. Mason, who has a PhD in economics, who goes over more recent research around rent control. He shows that it's far more nuanced and less clearly "bad" than right wing economists have been trying to push us to believe.

https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/

It gets worse since a lot of old people vote for heavy conservative parties

This is shifting in (at least) three countries - Norwegian, British, and American millennials aren't turning to vote for the right wing parties, instead are keeping their trend of voting left. Other countries like Italy have the opposite problem, where even younger voters are starting to vote for the right wing parties. It's kind of tangential but I think it's good to point out that we're seeing exceptions to this rule.

I get where you're coming from, but I don't think even more private property is the answer here. This is ultimately a question of economics - we don't like that a) we're being put out of jobs, and b) it's being done without our consent / anything in return. These are problems that we can address without throwing even more monopolosation power into the equation, which is what IP is all about - giving artists a monopoly over their own content, which mostly benefits large media corporations, not independent artists.

I'd much rather we tackled the problem of automation taking our jobs in a more heads on manner via something like UBI or negative income taxes, rather than a one-off solution like even more copyright that only really serves to slow this inevitability down. You can regulate AI in as many ways as you want, but that's adding a ton of meaningless friction to getting stuff done (e.g. you'd have to prove your art wasn't made by AI somehow) when the much easier and more effective solution is something like UBI.

The consent question is something that needs a bit more of a radical solution - like democratising work, something that Finland has done to their grocery stores, the biggest grocery chains are democratically owned and run by the members (consumer coops). We'll probably get to something like that on a large scale... eventually - but I think it's probably a bigger hurdle than UBI. Then you'd be able to vote on what ways an organisation operates, including if or how it builds AI data sets.

Great, another one to add to the list lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaza_Jato

I sympathize with artists who might lose their income if AI becomes big, as an artist it's something that worries me too, but I don't think applying copyright to data sets is a long term good thing. Think about it, if copyright applies to AI data sets all that does is one thing: kill open source AI image generation. It'll just be a small thorn in the sides of corporations that want to use AI before eventually turning them into monopolies over the largest, most useful AI data sets in the world while no one else can afford to replicate that. They'll just pay us artists peanuts if anything at all, and use large platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Artstation, and others who can change the terms of service to say any artist allows their uploaded art to be used for AI training - with an opt out hidden deep in the preferences if we're lucky. And if you want access to those data sources and licenses, you'll have to pay the platform something average people can't afford.

the fact that the complete lack of any basic check made it available to anyone who just asked for it, does not make it an universal welfare

it measurably does make it closer to universalism than the selectivism you seem to be championing here. They're not replacing it with a better system, they're removing something that was closer to universal welfare and leaving poor people to suffer even more. Austerity policies are not new and you can literally just google "austerity excess deaths" for various countries and see the impact of those policies

it was just a failed attempt to let people vote for their party

You have fallen for their rhetoric. This is exactly how they justify anti-welfare policies in many countries around the world - "it was just there to win votes"... yes, good things tend to win votes. Like welfare.

Universal welfare is objectively economically superior to bureaucratic means tested welfare. Calling it "abuse" is just how they get away with turning you into bigger wage slaves with less bargaining power

The findings of the report include: moving from universalism to selectivity increases social and economic inequality and diminishes rather than enhances the status of the poor; selectivity requires processes and procedures that separate benefit recipients from the rest of society, increasing stigmatisation and reducing take-up; universalism is incredibly efficient – the selective element of pension entitlement is more than 50 times more inefficient than the universal element measured in terms of fraud and error alone and without even taking into account the cost of administration; universalism creates positive economic stability by mitigating the swings in the business cycle and creating much more economic independence among the population; on virtually every possible measure of social and economic success, all league tables are topped by societies with strong universal welfare states; universalism creates a higher and more progressive tax base which also improves economic stability, reduces price bubbles and creates more efficient flatter income distributions; and universal benefits promote gender equality and do not suffer from the inherent bias built into a system designed within a framework of assuming a male breadwinner model of welfare.

Thanks for pointing out the difference in Germany with respect to copyright and author ownership/rights! That's really interesting, and the foundation could be used to extend rights for artists vs the power corporations have over their works - e.g. no license exclusivity as that seems to go against the spirit of the law.

The paper itself has lengthy discussion on the flaws of the research it's examining.

The studies reviewed examined the possible impact of SPPA on users or their partners using cross-sectional designs, with one study also using longitudinal research methods. Of course, retrospective cross-sectional designs cannot be used to draw causal conclusions 51 about any associations between SPPA and potential outcomes because they are measured simultaneously; it might be difficult to ascertain whether individuals perceived their pornography use to be problematic before or after they experi- enced negative outcomes. Moreover, the longitudinal study used a two-wave design and a much smaller subset (n ¼ 106) of the original sample (N ¼ 1,215), which substantially limits causality- related analyses, so findings are likely to be tentative at best.

Nine of the 10 studies reported evidence that SPPA had a detrimental impact on individuals or their partners. However, some important methodologic issues must be considered. First, SPPA and its impact were often assessed using a single-item measurement, which research suggests is an adequate measure- ment of complex constructs. 4,52 If an individual’s experience is multidimensional (ie, physiologic, behavioral, and cognitive), then it might be challenging for the individual to convey this using a single item, and assumptions can be made that omit potentially important information. Second, some studies used under-defined concepts and definitions; for example, Levin et al 19 used a single-item measurement to assess impaired functioning resulting from SPPA but did not provide a definition of functioning, so it is uncertain whether the researchers were measuring the same construct for all participants

Third, three studies18,20,21 suggested that individuals’ values and morals associated with their pornography use might have contributed to their perceived pornography addiction, and Prause et al20 further suggested that conflict with their held values might have led to their distress. Therefore, SPPA might actually result from a conflict in values rather than pornography use per se.

Research that examined the impact of SPPA on the partners of self-perceived pornography addicts found that they experienced several negative effects such as feelings of betrayal, shame, and isolation. These effects were attributed to the behavior of the self- perceived pornography addict. However, research investigating the effects of pornography use has shown that women who attribute their partners’ pornography use to an inadequacy about themselves experience a greater level of distress.53 None of the studies reviewed considered the characteristics of the partners of self-perceived pornography addicts, yet negative outcomes can be affected by factors such as thinking styles and attitudes (eg, how we perceive information), which can lead to these feelings of inadequacy.

There also were concerns regarding the measurements used to make conclusions about the impact of SPPA. Many relied on adapted and non-validated measurements that were not neces- sarily theoretically driven and were derived from a non-clinical sample; thus, the findings are difficult to generalize. For example, Twohig et al21 used a median cutoff (58%) from a non- clinical sample to determine an arbitrary level of problematic cognitive and behavioral outcomes of SPPA.

I could keep going, but I think that's enough for this post - read the "Correlates and Possible Outcomes of SPPA" and "Limitations" sections of the paper you linked.