zenforyen

joined 3 months ago
[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 0 points 2 days ago

What is it that you call capitalism is the question.

Market capitalism is a practical approach to solving a intractable optimization problem - allocating finite resources in the best way to get optimal results (whatever it may be, such as maximizing production of certain goods while minimizing waste and loss and minimizing "unfairness", however it is defined).

The alternative to capitalism is planned economy. It could not work 100 years ago because technology was not even close to the advancement level to be able to optimize a whole economy, i.e. solve a highly complex set of equations with billions of variables.

Maybe today it would work out, technology-wise, but it is not clear in detail how a society completely without markets could work. Certainly not everything is feasible to be decided by some election or by decision of some committee. It would lead to what was seen in the soviet union - bad planning based on incomplete and unreliable data.

Markets solve this problem and the whole thing works.

The question is who controls the markets.

In capitalism = neoliberal dystopia actually the capitalists themselves all instead of competing try to transcend beyond competition by either becoming a monopolist or becoming the market itself ("platform"). The fascist US oligarchs are working towards this.

On the other hand, China has state capitalism - the government has a strong upper hand, but use capitalistic market mechanics (with the needed biases to ensure the market is working towards the goals of the state, not some wealthy class).

Now you can explain to me how I maybe use the terms all incorrectly, but what I'm saying is: what China is doing is working, what the Soviets tried to do did not.

If China was not authoritarian, but had elections, it would be democratic and capitalistic, so what wie also call social democracy. In contrast to socialism, which is supposed to be democratic and anti-capitalistic, i.e. planned economy, which never worked and probably still would not.

The problem is not capitalism as a mechanism of economy, it's the distribution of power. Corruption and decay and abuse is possible in every coceivable economic system. The question is, who is the system working for.

Ideally the state works for the people, in the sense of a collective of respected individuals, and the economy works for the state. If that is given, details such as the exact structure and processes for decision making and resource allocation are irrelevant, as long as they are sustainable and ethical.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Social democracy as a concept would work if those doing it would have a spine and not be traitors of the working class.

But whatever is sold as social democracy these days (or actually the last 20 years at least), I absolutely agree is a scam.

At least in Germany, there is no left party that is both realistic (not trying to be pacifist when facing bullies, or promising unrealistic things making sure they will never get more than 15%) and also truly acting in the interest of the people, sadly. SPD is the German version of what you said, slightly softer neolibs in sheep's clothing.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 5 points 3 days ago

That sucks. I forgot a doctor's appointment I waited 3 months for. Had to wait for another 3 months...

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 8 points 6 days ago

Bandcamp solves all problems - you buy the CD as before, but digitally, including lossless FLAC, like 90% goes to the artist or their small label instead of Sony or Universal or Spotify, you can download the album or stream it with the app. It's good enough for me that I only store the files for backup and use the app for listening to most of my recent music purchases.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

Nope, if you lose a referenced object mid execution, your GC has a bug

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

If there was such a demihuman bike god, I would ride my bicycle more often. I just don't want to have to maintain it and waste time of my life again because some dumbass broke a beer bottle on the street.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

Interesting discussion, I kind of understand both of your stances.

One stance is driven by fear of the slippery slope and the frog not noticing being boiled until it's too late. The fear of normalizing fascist parties and views until they dominate, which is a fully rational fear given existing history.

The other stance is driven by fear of ever increasing polarization and hostility, which is another slippery slope, to fragmentation of society into parts that live in different realities, inability to agree on almost anything, causing alienation and opposition, leading to stagnation and possibly violence, when the other side is so abstract they cannot be emphasized with anymore. That again is also a fully rational fear to have, watching what happens in societies in the last years.

I don't even know who of you is more "right", if that notion even applies. Truth is, nobody will know until we see the consequences. In hindsight (a pretty privileged vantage point) many wrong decisions look obvious.

That said, if you care about your friends and think they really do value you and your opinions and truly have no general prejudices (and you are not some "exception from the rule" to them), you maybe should try to understand what makes them vote the way they do and explain how this could have bad long term consequences on you and whether they would want that or find taking that risk acceptable.

Because, if they truly are your friends and have something called empathy and heart, they might reconsider, and otherwise, maybe they are not really your friends and would drop you the moment you become outlawed.

I don't know your friends, but I hope you do.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

This.

I grew out of video gaming the moment I started to realize that games are a manufactured irreality where nothing you do really matters, because once you quit the game you gained nothing in life, it is a well engineered time sink.

Since my time became a scarce resource and I started to value it, only a rare unique mind twisting puzzle game or short experimental experience might be worth my time, but I will not touch games that eat hundreds of hours of your life for well, nothing at all.

Also, when I was young and had almost no friends, games were a refuge and distraction, now I don't need them. If at all, now I'd rather play a board game with other people, because it's wholesome real world interactions and social fun.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

Fair enough.

I held on to this possibility for similar reasons for years, but after some honest self reflection I cannot say there would be anyone from my past life who is still important and I have no other means to contact, my Facebook bubble from 10 years ago and more is long dead, i.e. similarly inactive.

Maybe giving people an email address, phone number or username somewhere else via Facebook message before leaving for good could also be a solution.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

With just one simple Zig zag movement

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

Fascist neoliberalism is right now a metastasizing cancer and we are at the point of where everybody knows that the patient has not much time left and survival chances are slim. Good night democracy, it was at least not bad, for sure better than whatever will happen next.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 3 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Be brave, do it. I just did it a few months ago. Just push the trigger and delete it. Let it go. They will of course keep the data, but at least not legally anymore.

 

It's in some mix of cannabis soil I had, with 30% added compost.

A tomato plant got the same mix and is doing just fine, this cucumber guy seems to be unhappy.

I checked the pH (mixed soil with some water and used my pH / EC meter) and it was around 6, so I thought it should not be nute lockout, cucumbers are supposed to be between 6-6,5?

I have no clue but I would guess it's iron, guessing from images I've seen, but I'm surprised how it could be lacking iron if a tomato is doing fine in the same soil.

Also whatever it is, how should I fix it?

 

Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I'm allergic to them.

The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.

My wife sends me couple of shorts each day and sometimes it's even interesting content-wise, but I absolutely hate this horrible format, procrastinate watching them and wish back a world where this form of media did not exist. It all started even before shorts in the way people did videos, and somehow it spiraled into this kind of hell scape.

Anyone else feeling like this?

EDIT: thanks everyone, now I feel validated, thought maybe I'm the odd one with so strong negative feelings about them! And sorry about the confusion about pants and stocks (that provoked some funny answers though so no regrets). Yes - as you have all figured out, I'm talking about the annoying short videos almost everyone seems to be addicted to.

 

I've grown chilis and cannabis without really knowing what I am doing, now I wanted to learn to grow any veggies, but finally learn about soil and prepare it well myself.

I naively tried to use coco substrate with tap water and killed off my tomato seedlings pretty fast. Then I've did some research into soil and learned about more organic approaches, and also that pure coco is a bit like dry hydroponics and needs a lot of understanding, and that I probably both over-fertilized and starved them at the same time.

I'm going to start from seeds in Mel's mix with 1/3 coco 1/3 perlite/vernaculite 1/3 compost. Is this kind of substrate to be treated as organic or as mineral approach? The compost probably adds the typical soil properties including the buffering of pH and EC and taking care of fertilization.

But I do not want to re-pot all the time, it is messy and inconvenient. I don't really like working with soil. Instead I want to use mineral fertilizers. Once the compost is depleted, can I consider it to be like a non-soil grow? I got a pH/EC sensor to check my water and the drain coming out, diluted a pH- down based on diluted citric acid to normalize my water to 6,5pH, which seems like a good starting point for any situation.

Does it make sense to follow some generic approach (like keeping pH/EC in certain ranges in certain growth stages)? I do not want to use commercial fertilization formula schemes. I want to work with standard off the shelf mineral fertilizers. Is it possible to get decent results with that?

And where can I find that kind of information for general vegetables, like tomatoes or cucumbers etc.?

The whole soil business is pretty overwhelming, but I want to learn enough (without getting a degree in agriculture) so that I can do this not blindly but improvise with available substrates and fertilizer. How to get this knowledge?

 

That is what I wonder. Don't know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.

Being a true European patriot means to me: caring about all of the freedoms we have, our social democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us, stop those who want to lock us all up, back in the small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.

They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?

The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?

 

Learn to ride the waves. We have a different rhythm of existence. You can't fight the cycle, but you can learn to work with it.

Some people are marathon runners, but we are sprinters. The trick is to break down marathons into many sprints, and take breaks by switching your marathons.

Just pick half a dozen things your meta-self wants to work on and stick with it. Instead of a bit of everything, we do a lot of everything, but one thing at a time.

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