AlexanderKingsbury

@[email protected]

One thing I will promise; I never block anyone just because I may disagree with or dislike their words. Because the only people who do are cowards. Want to attack me? Fine. If you think that makes the world a better place, go ahead; you cannot hurt me with your words.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@junesim63@mstdn.social avatar junesim63 , to random

"The government subsidies are simply huge: a nuclear tax is being levied on hard pressed consumers. What is the government thinking of? The fossil fuel industry, which has thrown its weight behind nuclear power, is of course delighted; all these decades of new construction without any electricity to show for it gives at least another decade or two of unabated burning gas"
Paul Brown on his life as an environment writer.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/28/after-a-career-as-an-environment-writer-heres-what-i-have-learned

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@junesim63

And if you look, time and again, the big parties are all for more . push huge subsidies for charging stations, , . push for more for , , etc.

It is only the who says "Don't subsidize them at all. Let the people choose where to spend their own money; do not take it from them at gunpoint and then spend it "for their own good"".

@poisonpunk@mastodon.social avatar poisonpunk , to random

research finds out ppl on both sides of the political spectrum favour censorship over the books their kids read. well..in so-called at least.

: we all know how much they care about ; the most oppressed, abused, & exploited resource of all vulnerable groups in society. cause that's how ppl think of them, a resource to extract profit from. and ppl become narcissistic through lifelong conditioning,..

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

"Both sides"

Yet again, the standard position, which is heavily in favor of free speech, gets tossed to the side by people too ignorant or dismissive to even be aware of it.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

And because people like to spread lies. There are a pile of people on here who peddle lies about capitalism all day long, lies they cannot defend because there is no defense. That's not a problem of people with "power" or "wealth", it's a much simpler problem; intellectual dishonesty.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

Pure nonsense.

If you want to learn the actual facts and realities about capitalism, I'll be here.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

"i study this shit"

I'm sure you do. I'm equally sure you "study" it from some deeply questionable sources.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

If that's the kind of garbage they're peddling? "capitalism is about 1 thing: profit & power."?

For heaven's sake, that's not even one thing! If that's what they're teaching you, they can't even COUNT.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

Exactly the sort of attitude I'd expect.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

Look, you can fill yourself with hate all you like. But that does not lead to anything good. Many people have tried alternatives before, and as much as you may object to how things are now, they get WAY worse under those alternatives. During the "cultural revolution", there was literally a mass movement of cannibalism in Guangxi. Mao, Stalin....these people are responsible for killing more people than Hitler. EACH of them, not just combined.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

I think you CAN fill yourself with hate; that's what motivates most anti-capitalists I've met.

I don't imagine that what we have now is free-market capitalism, but it's a lot closer than, say, the USSR. And we are thriving, depending on your metric. Infant mortality has fallen dramatically, lifespans are increasing, the average standard of living is WAY higher than it was a generation ago, over a BILLION people have risen out of abject poverty in the last few decades...

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

"my AI tells me"

So, not a trustworthy source.

Of course we have wealth inequality. Other than envy...I'm not sure why anyone cares. I'd MUCH rather live in a world where people are rising out of poverty and becoming wealthier while a few people are becoming MUCH wealthier than one where everyone is equally poor and destitute.

Many who object to economic inequality do so because they imagine that it's the cause of poverty; it is not.

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@poisonpunk

I don't think there is a single cause; the idea that it's caused by the wealth of others is an example of the "fixed pie fallacy". But the amount of wealth in the world is not fixed.

But really, poverty doesn't actually require explanation; it's the natural state of people, and indeed the lifelong state of the VAST majority of the people who have ever lived. Wealth is what's unusual, and to me, it's the unusual that begs explanation far more than the commonplace.

@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar eniko , to random

You ever think about how everyone in the world (except Americans lmao) agrees that universal healthcare is good and necessary because it is of vital importance to live and depriving people of it for money reasons is cruel?

And how most never extend this thinking to food or housing. Baffling, really

Like, "well yeah of course healthcare should be free you need it to stay alive. Besides, making it not-free costs society more in the end!"

Boy do I have news about housing and food!

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@eniko

Somehow, though, no one who advocates for these things is willing to take them to their logical conclusion. And, tellingly, many of them accuse people who disagree with them of "not caring" about other people.

Seems odd to me that, as a , I supposedly "don't care" about other people, and yet I want them to be free. Also seems odd that I spent so much time as a volunteer firefighter if I "don't care" about others.

@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar appassionato , to bookstodon group

Understanding Capitalism by Richard D. Wolff, 2024

Understanding Capitalism aims to answer the question: "Why capitalism fails us"?. It explores the different definitions of what capitalism is and is not – showing why definitions matter. It dissolves the many myths that make it hard to understand the system. Readers acquire tools needed to engage basic economic and social issues of our time by showing precisely how they depend upon the capitalist system.

bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

Then the book shows how and where we can go beyond capitalism to specific alternative systems. Doing that, we argue, can and should be part of solving today’s great issues, of making the world better than we found it.
ALT
AlexanderKingsbury ,

@appassionato bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

"showing why definitions matter"

This will be a particularly novel concept for many who purport to hate capitalism.

@georgetakei@universeodon.com avatar georgetakei , to random

Over the past 17 days, Donald Trump has unleashed a firehose of executive actions designed to overwhelm us, many of which are blatantly illegal or unconstitutional. Todd Beeton broke down the most egregious and looked at how Democrats and the courts are taking a stand against them for the Big Picture. https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/trump-musk-lawless-orders

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@georgetakei

I wish I was amazed at all the people who apparently suddenly care about what is and is not constitutional. As if the government hasn't been doing flagrantly unconstitutional things for literal decades.

@ProPublica@newsie.social avatar ProPublica , to random

Segregation Academies in Are Benefiting From Public Dollars, as They Did in the 1960s

ProPublica identified 20 in the state that likely opened as segregation academies and have received almost $10 million over the past six years from the state’s credit donation program.

https://www.propublica.org/article/mississippi-segregation-academies-taxpayer-dollars-1960s

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@ProPublica

"ProPublica identified 20 schools in the state that likely opened as segregation academies"

"Likely"? How likely is it? Are any of them actually segregation schools now, as the headline claims?

Are you planning to write any articles about federal student loans being spent at colleges that discriminate racially? Or ones that did historically?

@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar ajsadauskas , (edited ) to Technology

My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.

Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.

There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.

So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?

technology@lemmy.ml icon Technology

AlexanderKingsbury ,

@ajsadauskas @pluralistic technology@lemmy.ml icon Technology

Then we will quickly learn which people were prudent enough to keep backups, and which were not.