I’m a software engineer who makes games as a hobby. I love making tools for creatives, and I love incremental games. I’m the creator of Profectus. He/him
thepaperpilot.org

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 14th, 2024

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  • I honestly think that philosophy is fine. Before the major social media sites all came about, the Internet was filled with much smaller communities that didn’t need to be profitable or scalable - they could be run by an individual as a hobby project. I think returning to that (possibly with the use of federation so these small communities still have a good amount of content) could keep things free, ad free, and privacy conscious


  • Good point, I guess we should just let the homes remain empty and the homeless on the streets?

    I get that having your home squatted in sucks, and if you were only out for a week long vacation and come back to a break in then you have my sympathy, but the message here is ultimately pointing out that houses have been commodified and turned into vehicles for investing by the rich, rather than a right like they should be. We have more empty homes than homeless people, and that simply isn’t just.







  • This comic reminds me of a classic argument used for leftist policies, unrelated to ayn rand though. Under capitalism, technological advancements are harmful to the working class because companies are likely to keep pay and hours the same, and just scale up production and/or lay off surplus labor force.

    Under a system where the workers own the means of production, those same advancements could go towards lowering the hours of the employees without lowering their pay, or if they decide to scale up production then it would mean more profit that the company could decide democratically what to do with, making it likely to result in pay increases for the workers. Point is it wouldn’t just go into the hands of the capitalist class, but rather stay under control of those who labored for it.


  • Yeah, I’d never vote for the Republican party but holy shit I’m going to pressure the DNC to give us a non geriatric candidate every moment I can. I will criticize the failures of the Democratic party so loudly and publicly because that’s the only (non violent) way to get them to change. We need a better candidate, a better party, and a better country. I’d encourage everyone to send a message by telling polls they’re uncommitted.


  • Both China and Russia have also called for cease fire. Stop justifying us spending ungodly amounts of money to bomb children. The US is actively engaging in arming a genocide despite the majority of its population supporting a cease fire. It’s not complicated, it’s clearly Biden supporting the industrial military complex over his own constituents. This horrific act is all for some rich assholes to become slightly more rich. It’s unjustifiable.


  • I don’t think what the democratic party does counts as just compromising. They often expand the awful systems they inherit, or at best just fail to revert the bad policies of their predecessors. There’s a reason for the ratchet theory to exist, or the saying that democratic policy is just Republican policy on a 1 election cycle delay. Just look at our foreign policy - Obama massively increased drone strikes under his term, to say nothing of the atrocities Biden has been funding and providing arms for in Gaza. Why did Obama promise to codify roe v wade on the campaign trail, only to make no efforts when in office? Why did Biden do the same? Why are they now calling for voters to vote blue in November so roe v wade can be reinstated when we already did vote blue, and the guy we’d presumably be voting for is already in office? If Biden as president is all it takes to reinstate roe v wade, why the fuck hasn’t he done so yet?

    Honestly for all the infighting, I think plenty of leftists would agree over common ground and change tons of things so long as they’re going in the correct overall direction, despite the specific details being so contested. But they attack the DNC because the DNC is not progressive in any way shape or form, it’s neo liberal.


  • I’m big on urbanism and walkable cities and absolutely don’t mind people who don’t want to live in cities. We don’t tend to argue rural areas shouldn’t exist, but rather point out that suburban areas have a lot of problems and are way more common than they should be, when looking at demand for mixed use development, walkable cities, etc.

    For what it’s worth, for most of human existence rural towns existed without need for cars, so there’s still some truth to the idea that America has been rebuilt for the car, even in rural areas. There’s a variety of explanations out there for why and how they worked, but one I’m a fan of is how many rural towns would organize around a central “main street”, and keep the houses near it while the rest of their land spread outward. That way food, entertainment, and neighbors were all still easily accessible despite the large average amount of land.

    And tbh, even setting that aside, I don’t think many urbanists actually have an issue with rural areas. The movement really focuses on suburbia. A lot of the problems stem from suburbs being spread out like rural areas, but with city level amenities, without paying the amount of taxes to get those amenities that far out. Most notably, paved roads are extremely expensive to maintain and gas taxes are not high enough to pay for it. But to some extent most services suburbs get are going to be subsidized by those living in a nearby city, because it’s just so much cheaper to provide those services when everyone lives closer together. And besides the subsidization, suburbs (unlike both cities and rural towns) just have a lot of qualities to them that make them bad for the environment and unpleasant and dangerous to live in - I understand not wanting to live in a city, but no one thinks hour long commutes through rush hour traffic is a positive.