imagine thinking the foundation your beliefs are based on so fraglie that the mere exposure to something different is enough for your child to turn away from them

a good parent encourages questioning everything, including - especially - the beliefs and value system theyre trying to teach. labeling something else as wrong is one thing, but to then forbid your child from having any exposure to it whatsoever? that's called failing at being a parent, because that's not how the world works, and part of your job is to teach your kid how to critically consider things as force of habit before theyre a fully grown adult

so, parents who freak tf out about drag queens reading to kids, or reading books with LGBTQ+ characters - if you think it's proper to forbid your or anyone elses child from the mere exposure to things you have a problem with, all youre really doing is exposing that you know your personal feelings and opinions about it, religious or not, wouldn't hold up to a logical, rational discussion with your kid 🤷

my favorite thought exercise about advertising:

"without it, we would have to pay out of pocket for ad supported services!"

ok but when a company pays for advertising, where are they getting that money from? an added cost on the products we're buying! so we're paying for product A, we're paying extra for product A to pay for product B with advertising spending AND we're funding product A's marketing department to make the ads on top of that

remove the advertising and we would pay less for product A, we could then afford to pay for B directly AND we would all pay less overall because we take ad department employees and costs out of the equation. we're literally all paying more for everything overall by having some things "free with ads" than if we just paid for everything in the first place with no ads

yeah, because subsidized basic medical care enables people to forego working for a living and play video games all day... what youre trying to lock behind a workers-only paywall is things like eye exams, things like therapy, medication, and doctors visits for any number of conditions, disorders and injuries - things that without, it's pretty fucking difficult or often outright impossible to just "get to work"

what a spoiled asshat spewing utter fucking nonsense who should "get to work" doing the job theyre supposed to be doing: actually helping their fucking constituents, looking out for the worst off among us. instead theyre confidently looking down from their high horse, as if theyre better. Im sorry we all cant make a living being total fucking sellouts to the oligarchs like you, mike

go work a fucking day in the soul crushing job that is american social services, dude. go try to help poor people get a job in a state that said fuck giving some of the poorest among us basic healthcare; see how fucking hard it is for people who cant get and stay relatively healthy in this supposedly so "great" nation because they cant get the permanent, full time fucking job needed first. whats that? you dont actually know fuck all about the struggles of a poor person? youre just some fucking schmuck who gets off putting other people down?

maybe some folks play video games to deal with the feelings that go along with realizing some of our neighbors and family actually thought you are worthy of representing them. maybe the utter, crushing sadness and disappointment they feel seeing you so effortlessly embrace selfishness as a complete traitor to the oaths you swore becomes a little more tolerable after some distracting video games, you waste of clean air and water, you fucking embarassment of a human being

in some places, funds are used so people on food assistance can double their produce purchasing power at farmers markets, which increases the percentage of already allocated food subsidy spending towards fresh fruits and vegetables. Ive also seen low income subsidized community garden plots (where individual plot fees go towards the water bill, bulk fertilizer etc)

depending on your area, more and more transit organizations are publishing their routes using General Transit Feed Spec (GTFS). since the routes and schedules don't change often (a few times a year at most) you can grab the archive and do your route planning offline. Im not sure about any apps that do long distance multimodal planning, or airlines that publish those datasets, but my homeassistant instance shows me next scheduled times for nearby bus and metro stops completely offline using the dataset. there are tools for completely offline transit routing, too.

FYI as someone who has filled out that form many times as "exempt" I can say no one has ever asked any questions about it. If they did, I'd probably tell them it's none of their business- I'm the one committing the crime if what I'm signing isn't true, and at no point in submitting it are you asked to prove youre exempt (until you file your 1040 the next year, if you file one)

But it's also pretty hard to argue later you must have just "done the math wrong" ’cause there's a whole separate section for declaring youre exempt.

They also still take out social security and medicare.

I started paying for kagi after ddg and qwant and the rest just gave up on searching for what I asked it to search for. "Oh, you searched for more than one word? Well what if I just throw one of them completely away in the name of being able to show you some ads- I mean results"

FYI there is a message on the bboard about webmail login auth changes. (was looking yesterday for anything about the image upload issues)

Sometimes its the only option for a supermarket in a small community (see: Alaska). Smithers has 5300 people, I doubt there's anything but the Safeway.

Oh, it's not the same Safeway anymore. wikipedia says: Safeway (also referred to as Canada Safeway) is a Canadian supermarket chain that operates 135 full-service locations, mostly in the country's Western provinces. It was established in 1929 as a subsidiary of the American Safeway chain before being sold in 2013 to Sobeys, a division of the conglomerate Empire Company and Canada's second-largest supermarket chain.

ed: you asked and I answered before scrolling to see the other "safeway, the american grocery chain?" thread lol

jerboa app gives me a Request timeout has expired [url=https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image, request_timeout=20000 ms] popup attaching an image to this comment. Im jealous you get an actual error msg

You can get a line of credit from your local bank, tranfser the available funds into your checking account on demand, then use your Interac card. The amount and rates are variable, so you can start with a small amount with a high rate (like starter credit cards), and as you build a reputation, you can be loaned larger amounts at a better rate. No third party credit card company required.

TIL people still run eggdrop bots. I don't think Ive touched one since maybe 2003. was probably the last time I messed with tcl

FYI Spotify says their recommendations take into account how much money they make from you listening to a particular song, and if they make any at all. It may recommend songs based on your listening history, but that's not the only thing picking the songs and deciding what order to suggest them. Their playlists and recommendations are a pay to play system, like commercial radio stations.

had youtube open in a new private window on a vpn connection the other day after clicking a link to a video about the new raspberry pi compute module

was scrolling down thru one of the top comment threads and noticed, sandwiched between relevant tech videos on the right? some talking head, designed to enrage (as opposed to inform) fox news video about nothing related.

I think Im just done with youtube for the forseeable future. if your profit model requires inducing engagement like that, your product isnt good enough to stand on its own, and/or you're ok with being shitty to make more money. either way, I want nothing to do with you at that point.

there is shelter and food, plenty to go around- it's being locked behind an amoral paywall.

do the moral things at your job and get fired over it. make it clear when you apply elsewhere why you were fired.

if we're being forced to choose between doing the right thing and surviving, the system is broken AND those hoarding obscene amounts, living in luxury, making the decisions to further screw customers and employees in the name of investors and executives need to be addressed, one way or another.

...Im not saying any of this is easy, but the other option seems to be just try to be happy with the scraps they let us fight over? no thank you.

unfortunately we've entered an era where not wanting to condone/support/endorse/encourage shitty corporate behavior requires the sacrifice of not getting to enjoy most products and conveniences that are available. theyre often enjoyed by many other folks who just shrug and say "everyone else is doing it"

I find most companies that undercut their competitors' prices are cutting corners somewhere I don't want to be involved in. quality and customer service has a price. I try as hard as I can to pay that price, or just do without.

just try your best, pick your battles; it's all anyone can do without going insane and/or full modernity-hermit

(reminds me of the cattle "rancher" in 'king corn' who says theyd love to go back to selling grass fed, grass finished beef, but all anyone wants to buy is cheapass, corn sileage-stuffed feed lot crap, so it's either sell that, or go out of business. producers cant just choose their market; there has to be a demand for it.)

email. email is federated. literally everyone has an email address and understands they might be on a different service, but its all email, and you just use their account name and the service part with the @ in between.

it's not a complicated subject at all, and a good chunk of the humans on earth have no experience being alive without a federated service being a part of their daily life. (lets not mention telephones, or national postal services)

the issue isn't perceived complexity, it's that the negatives of using a centralized service are outweighed by the benefits. people don't see it as a personal liberty issue, or a free speech issue, or a propaganda issue, or a billionaire oligarchs ability to control the flow of information between citizens issue. they just want it to be easy to use. and the more people that do it, the less personal responsibility they feel about the choice.

learning from history is for suckers, I guess

great, lmk when that rage does literally anything productive

they already know youre mad at them. fun fact: it makes some of them even happier to vote the way they did. but, sure, be angry! oh those damn, foolish, selfish people! ....

ok, yes, welcome to the last 40 years. hi!

now what?

after she refused to pledge that she wouldn't break a national railway strike

JUST LIE my god youll already be in office and can make up some nonsense why you had to break the strike (Im not antiunion, Im just saying)

JUST FUCKING LIE or were all the existential threats you wouldnt shut the fuck up about (instead of actually having a platform) not worth doing whatever you needed to get into power!?

... sigh

I played around with old iPads for a bit and then gave up. successful vendor lock for sure. I just wanted a home assistant front end without having to sign in to apple or use safari