Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

When a car is repaired after a crash, the GDP goes up.

When a fruit or vegetable is grown only to be thrown out by a supermarket as food waste, the GDP goes up.

When you replace a phone that still works because of planned obsolescence, the GDP goes up.

When you throw out a perfectly good coat because it's no longer fashionable, and buy a new one in this season's style, the GDP goes up.

When a bridge has to be replaced because it wasn't built right, the GDP goes up.

When a piece of packaging is manufactured only to be thrown away straight away, the GDP goes up.

When a site needs to be decontaminated because chemicals weren't stored correctly, the GDP goes up.

In each case, society has no more usable wealth than it would have had if the car didn't crash, the vegetable wasn't grown, the phone wasn't replaced, the old coat was still being worn, there was less packaging, or the chemicals were stored correctly. Yet the GDP goes up.

Meanwhile, most of the wealth that is generated ends up in the top one percent's pockets.

The truth is that GDP isn't a useful measurement. It's just a convenient one.

#economics #politics #gdp #auspol #ukpol

Found a new way to confront people gendering inanimate objects. Some nerd came into the office and was all "she's a beauty isn't she?!" at the server cabinet behind my desk and I said "actually he's a he". Confusion ensued

OH: *meowing to the tune of Megalovania*

To be fair #ChatGPT is a fantastic bullshit detector. 👀

Here's how you can use it: when you see anyone peddling ChatGPT-based "solutions", that right there is almost certainly bullshit.

You're welcome! 👍

Do you know why you won't find any mention anywhere on the W3C website of #web3? It does not exist. BOOM! There is one web.

the thing you don't realize as a child about "when I'm an adult I can go to bed whenever I want" is that sometimes ""whenever I want"" is, like, 9pm

I saw a meme on tumblr earlier that said the best response to “Can you explain this gap in your resume” is “No I signed an NDA”

#LifeHack

The new Bing is really creepy

Dear Company, no thank you. I already have an app to read your content. It's called a web browser.

I'm sorry, are you trying to say "apartment building"????

Let's all pour out a glass for the intern at Google whose project just became the backbone of Google Search because Microsoft's timeline was too aggressive.

Please don't domain block mastodon.lol! The entire situation there is the fault of the admin, not the users on that instance. There's a lot of people who are currently trying to migrate away. Defederating will impede that and restrict their ability to communicate in the meantime.

If you feel compelled to block something anyway, then consider only a "silence"-level block and/or only block the admin personally. There's no reason to attack all the people who had absolutely nothing to do with this.

#FediBlockMeta #FediMeta #Fediverse #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin

we should also keep in mind that art consumption is often a social activity

beyond even buying merch, stuff like participating in the fandom sends signals to other ppl. and what you are signaling is not wholly under your control, as is the case w all language. if the social meaning of a word or gesture or act changes, then what you meant by it is IRRELEVANT. if a certain phrase came to mean, idk, "i hate gay ppl," then if you don't want to signal that, YOU NEED TO STOP USING THAT PHRASE

I'm looking for web resources about organizing, generally and especially in tech, that I can share with a buddy who's company desperately needs some collective action.

protests are supposed to disrupt. they are supposed to be a pain in the ass. to ruin people's day.

and yes, they are supposed to do this even - ESPECIALLY - to the ppl who are not responsible for the problem.

protests put a price on their participation. protests force them to confront the issue at hand. "just let them enjoy the game" is fucking literally the opposite of what a protest is trying to accomplish.

if a protest doesn't jack up someone's day, it's not a protest, it's performance art

I always knew that mastodon.lol was sketchy as hell, but its instance admin, Nathan, has revealed themself to be tremendously vile:

https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836633022272265

This is blatant weaponization of "allyship" status to put a boot on critics who they claim to be an "ally" to. This completely overshadows the shittiness that preceded this of treating spoilers of the antisemitic wizard game as more important than the serious harm J.K. Rowling causes. That was bad, but this weaponization of "allyship" is violent, and absolutely unacceptable.

To anyone who does this, and to all the people who responded to this bullshit with well-wishes to Nathan after they did this, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you.

It got worse, by the way: in replies to this post, Nathan told some of his critics to kill themselves. That makes it even worse and more blatant, but it was already unacceptable before then. Screenshot of one of those cases attached, in addition to a screenshot of the original post.

🦇