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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I appreciate the thoughtful response - I haven’t noticed that trend specifically with BI, but have seen the general tendency you’re describing in media at large. For this specific article, I find the concept of a dumb phone more intriguing than “Lifehack: Eat Gruel!” Type stuff – see my other comment in this thread if you’re curious about why – but also did roll my eyes at the person who has three such devices for different purposes.

    Thanks for elaborating!


  • I agree with you in concept, but I think in practice people struggle with the self discipline, and that’s kind of the fundamental problem with apps (and particularly algorithm-based social media). I’ve set timers to limit my usage of certain apps, including my Lemmy app, to encourage mindful use, but I can understand why someone might want or need more of an enforced limitation.

    You might not replace your current phone with a “dumb” device, but when it’s time to get a new device eventually, you could ask yourself if less-smart device might meet both your functional and other needs.

    Edit: I guess to me this is kind of like: why are people overweight? They can just not eat as much. And while that’s technically true - and advice I follow - it’s apparently not that easy for everyone. If it was, we wouldn’t see problems as pervasively as we do.







  • Atlas Shrugged changed my political beliefs entirely when I read it as a teenager. Real life experience and empathy changed it back again a few years later, thankfully. It’s tough when you’re young, recognizing that the world is flawed and searching for something that might be an answer.

    It’s not quite the same because I was never any kind of ardent “pro-nuke” activist, but the movie Threads took me from a position of resigned ambivalence regarding the existence of nuclear weapons to a strong believer in global disarmament. If anyone is neutral on the topic of nuclear weapons, I’d suggest they give it a watch.








  • The Battle of Chile is a three part documentary about the military coup against Salvador Allende in the 1970s. Patricio Guzman and his associates recognized that crazy things were about to happen and took to the streets to capture as much footage as they could, knowing that a record needed to be kept. One of the cameramen was disappeared, tortured, and presumably killed, while the others smuggled the footage out to Cuba.

    It may feel too prescient for American audiences now. Gods, it was plenty powerful to me as an American watching in 2012. It is well worth your time.




  • My understanding is that the cotton gin led to more slavery as cotton production became more profitable. The machine could process cotton but not pick it, so more hands were needed for field work.

    Wiki:

    The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations that used black slave labor, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy.[35] While it took a single laborer about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[36] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850."