I take it the down vote is coming from someone misinterpreting my points. Lack of unionisation in many industries is partly due to the fact that they are very individualised in nature (individual works hard to distinguish themselves amongst their colleagues and get an individual pay rise). I don't know the best path forward to change this mindset, but we need to recognise it and talk about it.

Unions are great and everyone should have one, but unfortunately there are some professions where unionisation is beyond the current imagination. Software engineers for example. They didn't need one historically because wages were higher than many other professions, but that has changed over time due to an over supply of professionals. Its the kind of profession that encourages individuals to compete against each other for salary increases. I see many people doing unpaid overtime, partly because the field attracts people who work compulsively for reasons of professional pride.

I see it as more of a demand and supply issues. I'm an engineer and all my unpaid overtime over the last few years never resulted in an adequate pay increase because too many qualified people want my job, despite the value it added the company, which leading the market in a competitive new technology. The bargaining power isn't there.

How the hell are wages going to rise though. Everthing I see points to continued stagnation.

Fair enough. I have friends with windows frustrations and I try to convert them to the joy of Linux, but I understand not everyone is in a position to do that. I opened up my jellyfin instance to friends over covid to watch movies together and that was pretty fun.

Why not just run jellyfin as a service on your remote server, then access that service on each local device?

The major leap is the devaluing of human work, but instead of coming after material craftsmanship, like shoe making and cabinet making etc., it's coming after abstract thinking. Copy writers are fucked for example. We will accept the inferior product because we have no choice. And yet we have to fight for a job to exist as those jobs becomes scarcer. I think if David Graeber was still around he would have a bullshit jobs 2.0 book out expanding on this.

I bought a printer for my dad and the refills cost more than the printer. It's built into the business model. We're in the age of the capitalist monopoly squeeze. The squeeze continues until it's squeezed dry. Same reason there's a huge number of computers heading to landfill due to windows 11 artificial hardware requirements.

Your point about the ozone layer response is very relevant to our expectations of solving climate change. I think replacing CFCs was just low hanging fruit, which I didn't understand as a kid. I just assumed if we kept recycling and not consuming so much it would put us on track. So naive.

For sure, I think the patriot act was a turning point in trust of government in the US. It filtered though to our government in Australia during the Howard years. Similar to the US, around the GFC we had a hopeful change of government, but that hope for progressive values (Obama for you guys, Rudd for us) turned out to be misguided. I tend to think of those "centre left" governments as representing managed societal decline as opposed to the accelerated decline of the right wing parties.

And every hair on your back, shoulders and ass is step towards being Chuck Norris.

I think part of the problem is disillusion. Millenials in the west grew up in a period where it looked like tech was going to benefit society, and climate change was going to be addressed, and ethical consumerism was somewhat meaningful, and social mobility would still exist. We are having to downgrade our expectations and it hurts.

Cory Doctorow talks about how printer ink is the most expensive liquid you can buy as a consumer. More expensive than pure bred racing horse semen (gross comparison though). He suggests a response to US tariffs being that Canada disregards printer firmware copyright and undercuts the US market by offering 3rd party printer ink cartridges via illegal reverse engineering.

There's an interesting psychological analysis about musk on a podcast called Psychology in Seattle. They speculate that he is unconconsiously recreating his childhood bullying on twitter due to a psychological phenomenum called "repetition compulsion". As in, you recreate relationships from childhood to try to have a " corrective experience" to heal the trauma.

Win the expectation to do more work without proper compensation, in my experience.

I'm surprised (or maybe not that much) that there's no mention of the historical context of the 1936 revolutionary war, which was partly driven by inequality. How much land must fall into the hands of the wealthy few until we see something like that again.

Even people who have put the work into therapy need a loving attachment figure. It's healthy to be open and vulnerable when you need it.

Yes, but millenials have been doing it since we were kids. It's not that hard, just embrace the joy of naughty computing.

Difficult topic to discuss in a sensitive and respectful manner.

"He's among a group of psychiatrists who argue the gender-affirming treatment model discounts underlying psychiatric issues in youths who present with gender dysphoria."

Reasonable statement that deserves some discussion.

"There is NO reliable evidence that trans identification can be differentiated from psychosis," he wrote on X last year.

And immediately this individual's credibility is tainted by a hyperbolic and disrespectful statement. I wish the ABC wouldn't do that.

There are a small number of people who detransition due to misdiagnosis, which should lead to a discussion about lack of access to high quality psychologists when you're trying to figure out what you need to do to feel OK.

I think sexual insecurity plays a role. The trans hate is repackaged homophobia. Gay panic used to be a legal defence for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense