It's not about leisure time. It's about the meaning of work. In the past, effects of your work were very direct - carry shitload of stone from one place to another together with your cousin, build a house for you and your family. Nowadays it's all very abstract - have a useless Teams meeting with people you don't care about so that you can do press buttons that maybe change some metrics you don't even understand. What was the last time you felt "I'm happy I built this"?
I switched to Fedora KDE. It's still has many linuxisms along "bluetooth doesn't work" but if you have some basic IT knowledge, "we're already here". I wouldn't recommend it to a non-IT person though.
This is exactly why my dream is to save enough money so that I can retire and fuck off and just smoke weed and play vidya until I die. People speak of "hedonistic treadmill" but there's also "achievement treadmill" where you want to achieve more and more and more and it never ends. The biggest perk of my current job is that the company is completely dysfunctional, so it's normal for me to spend entire day doing nothing and I don't even need to be at the office. At first my body reacted with panic because I was used to being a slave, but I'm slowly adapting to think "wait, I'm actually winning"
I'm lucky to have a similar job where for an entire day I just watch YouTube then I say at scrum "it's in progress". Although it's not great, it's procrastinating then I have to do even more work in less time.
On a tangent - I've moved abroad to work in a multinational corporation, and I noticed that similar cultures cluster together. I spend most of my time with other Eastern Europeans.
Mass immigration has always happened over the millennia. Sometimes peoples are replaced, sometimes they end up mostly merged after a few generations.
I don't think it's something that can be prevented or encouraged, it's too many people trying to improve their lives to control it. Especially in a time when we're making most of the tropics uninhabitable with climate change.
Forcing people to move to another country en masse sounds like the failures wouldn't be caused by a culture clash so much as more fundamental issues around being forced to move to another country.
I believe part of the endgoal is to create a fairly homogenous global culture. If you listen to radio stations across the world, many play the same rotten manufactured pop songs... Hollywood and Google/Wikipedia complete the Coca Colonisation.
The more peaky the bell curve the more money you can make by targeting your product (or extractive tax policy) at the middle of that curve.
McDonalds, Hollywood, etc, etc. would love nothing more than to have nearly everyone consume one class of products and the bureaucrats and academics who know best would love nothing more than to have simple rules that can apply to nearly everyone.
More or less... I used to have the Radio Garden app where I could listen to stations across the world until bureaucracy intervened.
It was an eyeopener (earopener?) to hear most stations in South America, Asia and Australia playing the same crappy pop songs. Not even very good ones either. Some stations played local music as well which was of far more interest to me than hearing more or less the same pap.
Interesting -- that doesn't match my experience with South America at all! Everywhere you go, the venues mainly play local music, except maybe in Chile.
There is no person with enough agency to have that kind of thing as an end goal. It's effect of a lot of other things, mostly US dominance and globalisation.
There are plenty. Hollywood has massive dominance in the international film industry as does the American music industry. The USA has spent a lot of time and money promoting its culture. It is partly a consequence of the Cold War.
But the endgoal is to produce a homogenised world culture. You can see this being pushed by groups such as FIFA and Global Citizen (the name isn't even subtle) in the last few weeks with the lead up to the World Cup, and the repeated use of platitudes like "we are one" and "unite for our future".
"we are one" is not equal to "we are exactly the same"
Honestly can't believe I'm out here defending FIFA for god's sake, but it's obvious that they mean everyone should be good to eachother even though we are all different. It has nothing to do with cultural colonisation.
There's a lot wrong with FIFA, but trying to get people to hate eachother a little less isn't one of them
It seems that cultural domination is dwindling. At least in Russia. Hollywood studios left the country themselves in 2022. But also Hollywood movies are of such low quality nowadays that I stopped going to cinema long before that. Also, they're stuffed with current American narrative (like LGBT propaganda) to the top that doesn't look even a little bit attractive to us. Forty years ago we could look at "American dream" in the movies and feel that we're missing something. Nowadays when LGBT narrative is pushed down my throat forcefully from every scene in the movie and every page of their books (even Sci-Fi), I just stop reading or watching. And there's no more "American dream" that we can strive for or that Hollywood movies can advertise to us. Also their dwindling sales show that this narrative is not attractive even for their own population.
American music seems to lost a lot of popularity here as well. When I hear American music on the radio, it is usually 30-50 years old or more, not the current music which feels totally commercial and artificial.
LGBT propaganda... Funny how people who have been gobbling up propaganda about something, always think "the other side" is the one producing the actual propaganda
And yes, i see the irony of this statement
But some dudes kissing in a movie is not propaganda
Isn’t whether or not something is propaganda determined by the intent of those producing or distributing it?
If the intent of someone including two men kissing in a movie is to promote approval of homosexual relationships, OR is to promote the idea that men kissing doesn’t imply homosexuality, then that’s propoganda, but if the intent is just “the movie sells better if there’s a scene pandering to yaoi fangirls”, or “the screenwriter found something that happened with two guys they know to be compelling”, then it isn’t propaganda,
You don't need a person. It's just a result of the systems we've set up and how they incentives everyone with any agency to act when they do get to use that agency.
While you might have a few global super stars (Lady Gaga, Black Pink, ...) everywhere, the average pop radio station in the USA, Russia, China will be very different from each other.
> As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian. Now that this is no longer the case, the mindset of appeasing the leader is suddenly a problem.
The whole situation was preventable, but everyone was too high on ZIRP to notice. We could've used the good times to establish good cultural values, but we didn't. Freedom of speech and other foundations of democracy were already rotting long ago but nobody cared. We could've used the good times to allow better dialogue between different political fractions, but we didn't. At some point democrats honestly believed they would simply never lose power again, making it seem pointless to talk to republicans. Now that the money dried out, people suddenly start asking questions and talking about "muh big values".
> When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian.
It is a bit analogous to many of us worrying about Google and others getting so much power. The arguments were quickly dismissed with: "But these folks are responsible, don't be paranoid". The problem with this kind of thinking is, once the power balance changes, you find yourself in a situation you'd never put yourself now. You cannot make Google unlearn what they know about you. You cannot unsend the photos you privately shared on Messenger and force Meta to untrain their facial recognition models. Now all these things you considered a convenience given to you for free can be used against you, and the extend and direction of the abuse is correlated with who is in power.
I’m curious which specific problematic values do you think were being adhered to and preached in the past, that was comparable to what’s happening in CECOT, and wasn’t opposed?
It's not that it's comparable, but it's rather direct evolution of. US social contract has a huge grey area where you can get royally screwed even though you've done nothing illegal. For example, in most places in the US employees can be fired for expressing political opinions, and most people have their entire lifehoods tied to their employers. As in, saying "I think there are two genders"* was literally a fireable offense in many companies, and you'd be left without income, without medical insurance. So naturally there were a lot of topics that people simply chose not to talk about, effectively voiding freedom of speech unless you're so rich you don't need a job.
This issue was not addressed when democrats were in power. They could've passed laws that protect freedom of speech, but they chose not to, because it allowed them to get rid of problematic republicans.
Now that the machine has turned against democrats and you're not allowed to talk about certain topics important to democrats like climate change or CECOT, it's somehow a big fucking problem.
* I purposefully chose a statement that is highly controversial. It would be really cool if we could have social dialogue about controversial things in order to reach a widespread social consensus, instead of having extremist opinions boil in people.
If I'm understanding your example correctly, these types of firings are possible thanks to Right-to-work laws. Which political party introduced and continues to advocate for Right-to-work? Which has generally opposed Right-to-work and has supported workers unions, which would protect workers from arbitrary firings?
I think that companies providing certain basic services like email or messaging should eventually become branches of the government. This is the only way to provide these services with subsidies without enshittification.
> I think the internet would be a lot nicer place if people were held accountable for the things they say and do.
Agreed. Equal rights for all people regardless of race wouldn't have happened if individuals starting the first discussions were held accountable for their words.
1. I'm intelligent enough to raise questions about the point of life.
2. I've always been an outcast, having it extremely difficult to build meaningful relationships, which are number one predictor of quality of life.
3. I live in a dirty, noisy, overcrowded city full of people who don't share my culture and work for a company that has no morality.
There is nothing for me to look forward to, and no straightforward way to build anything. I'll never have a group of friends to do things with, I'll never feel loved, and I'll never be important in any sense of this word. I'm an autistic ant in an anthill.
Hot take but the more time I spend with poor people the less respect I have for them. I grew up in Eastern Europe where the economies were actively suppressed during communism, so the story "poor people just need more chances" hit home because that's exactly what I saw around me. But then I moved into a poor neighborhood of a rich country and... no matter how you organize the society, a certain percentage will always either be incapable of participating in it, or flat-out refuse to do so. You can give them all the chances they need, they will stubbornly keep making wrong decisions.
> Hot take but the more time I spend with poor people the less respect I have for them. I grew up in Eastern Europe where the economies were actively suppressed during communism, so the story "poor people just need more chances" hit home because that's exactly what I saw around me.
Well, what I saw around me in post-Soviet times was that as soon as people got any kind of wealth they would just spend it all on luxury cars, fur coats for their wife, expensive vacations and building a mansion-like dacha. Only the last asset on this list has any potential to appreciate.
> But then I moved into a poor neighborhood of a rich country and... no matter how you organize the society, a certain percentage will always either be incapable of participating in it, or flat-out refuse to do so. You can give them all the chances they need, they will stubbornly keep making wrong decisions.
Western left agrees with you, they just won't spell it out like you did. But their current policies are basically:
1. Just give money for free to the poor, both explicitly and implicitly (social housing, rent control, etc.).
2. All kinds of equality of outcomes policies, diversity quotas, etc.
Equality of opportunity got out of vogue because it didn't produce results the left was hoping for.
> Well, what I saw around me in post-Soviet times was that as soon as people got any kind of wealth they would just spend it all on luxury cars, fur coats for their wife, expensive vacations and building a mansion-like dacha. Only the last asset on this list has any potential to appreciate.
It seems likely that you're just seeing the highly visible purchases and assuming that that's all that they're buying. What's not so visible is the difference between always eating cheap, poor quality food and then being able to afford fresh vegetables etc.
> Equality of opportunity got out of vogue because it didn't produce results the left was hoping for.
That doesn't seem accurate outside of the U.S. - there's plenty of countries that are still attempting to redress the balance after rich white men skewed the odds so that only them and their families could get access to quality education/healthcare/financial services etc.
It always bugs me when people point out diversity quotas whilst ignoring the centuries of white-only quotas.
> It always bugs me when people point out diversity quotas whilst ignoring the centuries of white-only quotas.
The diversity discussion is always funny to me in the context of a country built by 99.9% white people. It's like... imagine arguing about the role of black americans in the history of Japan and why they deserve a piece of the pie.
That doesn't seem like a reasonable comparison and I'd dispute the "country built by 99.9% white people". Yes, lots of white people claimed to be "building" things and yet relied a lot on non-white slavery to achieve it. So, not only were the slaves' lives treated as mere possessions, but they also don't get any credit for the hard work they were forced to do.
It seems to me like a country built on theft of labour (as is the UK where I am).
I'm from Poland. Throughout most of its history, my country was being invaded - by the Germans, by the Austrians, by the Russians, by the Swedish. We had literally nothing to do with colonialism. When Napoleon sent Polish people to Haiti to fight off slave rebellion, Polish people joined the Haitian side.
My country lost its independence in 1795. It regained independence after WW1, but then Germans and Russians attacked us, starting WW2. After WW2 we became a puppet country of USSR, which lasted until 36 years ago.
The only nation that felt invaded by us were Lithuanians, long long time ago. We had nothing to do with colonialism, we did not import slaves from Africa. We never murdered local population. The past 300 years of my country's history was being invaded and then miraculously coming back to existence. Our capital city was completely destroyed by Hitler just to set an example.
> But you have the same amount of melatonin in your skin as the British, therefore you're guilty of everything that the British did
I hope you've replied to the wrong comment as I didn't write the bit that you "quoted" and accused of being "pure fucking racism".
However, I don't think your comment is at all in line with the guidelines on commenting on HackerNews so I shall not engage you in any further discussion if you cannot be civil.
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