Two come to mind.

College. There was a platter of leftover bagels on a table outside one of the classrooms. Looked like the students had had their bagels and were now in the lecture hall learning, with bagels. No one else was around. I went to pick one up and this lady comes bustling over and says “they’re not for you!!”. She picked up the platter of leftover bagels and took the whole thing into her office down the hall. Really important to save $2 worth of bagels from my thieving appetite, I guess.

I was doing a cross country road trip in my youth. We stopped at some gas station in like Missouri, and I chatted with the guy working the counter. He was probably in his late 30s, early 40s. I told him about how me and my friends were doing a summer road trip. He got a little faraway look and said he’d love to do that, to travel with friends. I thought about being fuck-it spontaneous and telling him to quit his shit job and come with us, but his vibe was a little off. I wonder if he ever traveled.

I lost a lot of respect for a coworker over this.

This was pre pandemic. They brought a nurse into the office to give everyone who wanted a flu vaccine. She wouldn’t do it.

I said to her that if she got the flu, she’d probably live, but she’d also pass it on to other people. She’d be contagious before she knew she was sick, so she might be on the subway and infect a bunch of vulnerable people. Old ladies. Little babies. Anyone.

She was like no that’s not how it works. That’s not going to happen.

I was like, why not? In what way is that not how it works?

“I’ll just stay home if I’m sick”

“What about when you’re contagious and don’t realize? Or if it hits when you’re already at work?”

“That won’t happen”

Just denial.

Can’t convince people with facts. You have to play on their emotions. Make them feel good about themselves, or reinforce something they believe in. I can’t always figure out how to do that

If we had some sort of new Nuremberg trial he might die in front of a crowd.

I had a similar thought. A nice HUD for navigation would be nice. But we live in the bad place, so it’s all privacy invading enshittifying trash.

Class solidarity

I get most of my music from Bandcamp, on bandcamp friday’s. It sucks they sold out and are probably circling the drain, but for a long time they were a solid independent source.

Buying directly from the band at a show or through their label is also cool.

It’s more of an up-front cost, but after years of doing this I have a large drm-free library.

True, true, an individual can do little. But I hope that every so often someone will read a post about how the owners keep all the profits without doing all the work, and move leftwards.

Anyway. Good chat. Let’s all continue doing the best we can.

That kind of capitalism is not the only way for a society to be.

In actual small business I’ve found it’s common for the employees to earn the same or more than the owner.

Ehh. It still has a structural problem where the non-owners get a wage, and the owner gets a wage plus indefinite profits. The people who built the thing will eventually leave or be fired and stop profiting, but the owner can cruise or sell. Like how a baby tiger is cute, but it’s going to grow into something dangerous.

felt nice to support the team

I think most places are capitalist orgs, so your money is just going to shareholders. The developers got paid a wage, and maybe some stock options.

Really small teams, purchases probably go to people doing the work. But for a larger company, especially something like Microsoft (who own overwatch), buying stuff only kind of sort of through several layers of indirection helps the team.

It’s kind of a bad system, honestly, because people who don’t work on a thing keep profits from that thing

I don’t do microtransactions. Fuck 'em. They made the game shittier so they can try to annoy me into paying money. They know that once you spend any money, you’re more likely to spend more.

A big chunk of that is capitalism. People who aren’t doing work make decisions and keep profits. A self directed team might blow their budget on famous voice actors, 8k graphics, and executive retreats, but probably not.

A member of the general public can’t issue a citation.

My lawyer tells me it’s a “crime” to smash the windows of an illegally parked car. Even if they’re double parked in the bike lane.

And the people who run this shit need to go to jail. I’m sure a lot of them would rat out their corrupt buddies for a reduced sentence.

I went back to windows for a little bit a couple years ago because when I tried to install mint on the new desktop, Ethernet WiFi and HDMI didn’t work. I tried some fixes but it was a real shit show.

After a little while on windows, I went with pop!_os , which worked out of the box

They’re not smart or visionary. They’re just rich. They sell us a myth that they’re titans but it’s a lie.

I don’t think so. I think it looked like a normal rectangle flash drive, but with some buttons on one side.

Oh! It was the creative nomad muvo, the model without the screen. Looking online it was actually two pieces- the flash drive part slid onto the audio part? Man, it’s been a while.

Maybe around 2003? It was a weird little device that was also an MP3 player. It had a headphone jack, play/pause/next/prev, and that was it. Was like 128mb and played mp3s in order they were written to the device, I think.

I thought it was really cool, but maybe not my best purchase.

The part of capitalism where the owner sits back, the workers do the work, and the owner keeps the profits is not necessary. It is in fact fucked up.

You can have competition without that. (You can have other bad things too- it’s not a magic cure-all for workers to own the business)

This is a hard hitting point. We could have a better world, but a few rich people and their enablers don’t want it.