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  • My most downvoted posts here were agreeing with Hillary Clinton in an interview where she said in a personal interview, not a campaign event, that left wing voters need to "get over it" (infighting during election season) and support then-candidate Biden because we only get 2 choices and if we don't we'll end up stuck with another Trump term.

  • I can't prove it nowadays, but I once remarked that society should find a way for homeless people to be separated by how they became homeless.

    The context was that homelessness is a spectrum and that being indiscriminate when doing anything related to the homeless downplays the enormous gap between forms of it. I've been on both sides of it before; I've technically been "homeless" (I've had a roof over my head for as long as I can remember, but it was often couch-hopping), as well as have done things related to the homeless. Sometimes I ask about it, I expect by now it might range between "I'm a teetotaler whose house burnt down and I've been on the streets ever since" to "I keep getting a home but keep losing it in shady gambles". Surely homelessness is a case-by-case thing, right?

    People are blind to these differences, however. To most outsiders, homelessness is just homelessness. From the outside, these things don't come to mind when people are protective, so if you mention wanting to do it case-by-case, you feel the wrath of the population who I have seen seemingly insist I'm being discriminatory over victims of a sensitive topic. I think maybe a few hundred or so people weighed in against me. It was not only what many might call the most particularly severe example but also one of the earliest. The tragically "funny" thing is that it's one of those things where most people immediately learn the reality of as soon as they become a victim of homelessness, actually interact with them, or even spend time in a psych ward like me because a lot of them turn themselves in because it means you'll get care, so it becomes one of those things that's said to be like a litmus test for if someone is genuinely associated with it versus someone who sees portrayals of it and tries to look like they are.

    • This was probably all in the phrasing or maybe people just don’t understand the reality of the situation?

      I worked for several years doing mobile therapy that included a significant amount of homeless outreach and crisis management. Everyone deserves to be housed, bottom line, but what it takes for that to happen is a complex situation

      There’s the “xxx,xxx amount of homeless but xx,xxx,xxx amount of empty homes in america” statistic that people throw around. I forget the exact numbers but I’m pretty sure thats the scale, if not the take away is that you could literally give each homeless person a free house and still have millions of empty houses. But this would not solve homelessness, at least in the current system. The overwhelming majority would be back on the street fairly quickly. Even if you eliminate the need for mortgage there’s still the need for property taxation; if you eliminate that then communities start to get real shitty. Even if you eliminate that there’s still utility and food costs. Even if you eliminate that there’s still maintenance and not actively destroying the place.

      Institutionalization isn’t necessarily the answer although in extreme cases it can be. We had supported rehabilitation programs that were pretty successful, basically apartments with staff that would keep tabs on you, help you budget, do resumes, help you get to drs appointments, make sure you took medications (but didn’t force you to unless there was a court order/probation situation and even then it wasn’t like a “force” situation although there was inherent coercion as not taking meds would be reported to po/court), apply for section 8, etc. you would stay there for a year or two and then move to a more independent placement once supports were in place.

      There were also longer term programs for people who genuinely struggled and just couldn’t get that step down to work. These were similar but had less focus on connecting to services and were more akin to nursing homes with more psychiatric care

      But then there were also more intensive residential programs we referred to for people with more serious mental illness or addiction issues

      The issue, of course, was funding. We had like 32 beds in the short term and 11 in the long term. Funding was like 50% state funding, 20% grants, 30% donations and fundraising and the budgets were tight. Meanwhile the town probably had 30-50 actively homeless at any given point on top of whoever wasn’t in the program and another 50-100 with insecure housing. Even the intense programs, which generally had more secure state funding, still had an overall lack of beds and would have very long wait lists. Sad stuff.

      That was about a decade ago now, I feel like it has to be worse now post Covid and trump. I can only imagine what the next 4 years will do to their funding

    • It’s almost as of there are archetypes for patients in hospitals due to common, middle of the bell curve occurrences of comorbidities. Example: diabetic dialysis patient with anemia and 1-2 amputations above/below the knee due to pernicious vascularization complications. No, that’s not your family member, that is a common scenario given the convergence of certain conditions.

      Should medical professionals be indiscriminate here? Treat everyone like a dialysis patient? No. That sounds ridiculous because it is. People are wild and varied within every context including homelessness.

      Here’s an archetype situation seen among the homeless population. A pernicious issue with lower extremity circulation occurs (due to diabetes, frostbite, infection left untreated) such that patient can no longer walk after receiving medical care (often amputation). Patient is also homeless and can’t just be discharged to street due to inability to walk. Patient needs to be placed, on Medicaid, in a nursing home. Patient is on the sexual predator list and thus no nursing home will allow them in their facility. Patient sits in hospital room taking up space, not receiving medical care because they no longer need any, waiting, for months. That hospital room is now a hotel room with medical professionals supplying room service.

      Go to the sex offender registry and do a 3 mile radius search of your own address. Good odds you’ll find some, and more than you think you should. No address, then how do these guys get registered by their location?

      It’s not as daily scenario, but a memorable one that happens every 3-6mos like clockwork. And those are just the homeless sex offenders coming in for medical treatment that cannot then just be discharged back to street.

      People are not the same and should not be treated as such. You are not wrong there. Destroying children shouldn’t receive the same consideration for an apartment as someone living in their car due to a bit of bad luck.

  • On reddit. I think it was a comment about how DLSS was going to make devs lazy and optimize their games less because DLSS would do the work for them. People thought I was crazy.

  • I corrected a commenter who clearly hadn't read the article the post was based on. 22 up/31 down. I was obviously a Russian bot, you see. XD

    Did you read the article? Biden made many of Trump's tarrifs permanent and Harris, while critical of Trump's tarrifs, hasn't put forth her own plan or disowned the Biden strategy.

    Edit: Fucksake, Lemmy. It says this in the article. I said nothing positive or negative about either candidate or their positions on tarrifs. 😆

  • When I said that excessive profits are essentially stealing in the context of Steam: https://lemm.ee/post/37004161/13249135

    I still stand by that comment very much. If a company makes a lot more than most other companies per employee, then quite obviously the profit margin is much higher than other companies. If the profit margin is much higher than other companies, then the price could be lowered. Steam is obviously the best and basically a monopoly which is why they can do that, but this is an example of how capitalism does not lead to the best efficiency.

    I'm essentially advocating against more profit. I live a relatively poor life by choice. Almost everyone I meet calls me crazy, I rather work less than earn more money. I think one of our main problems as a species for sustainability is that everyone always wants more and more and is never satisfied. This applies individually and to companies/other organizations. As long as my basic needs like food and housing are covered, I'm happy.

  • I posted that the new Twitter logo looked like a broken image icon.

    That was a weird week. Every post I had ever made, going back to the day I registered my account, got dozens of downvotes. I figure someone with dozens of accounts used me as a test case for one-man-brigading.

    • Went to your account and sorted comments by Controversial. I see what you mean. Your most downvoted comments seem really benign.

  • Probably when I debated with some kids that thought capitalism is the root cause of loneliness. My point was that loneliness was a condition of being alive- not a result of a system of government. Besides… There’s loneliness in communist countries too. Safe to say capitalism cased that? Shit… Even animals get lonely. I’m pretty sure animals don’t really have a concept of the inner workings of capitalism. And even if there is an anecdotal instance or two- it’s still a dumb thing to hang on capitalism.

    There’s enough real shit you can pin on capitalism to argue its ineffectiveness. But loneliness?

    • Loneliness appeared the moment humans stopped living in tribes

      • Yep. And according to a lot of people on lemmy, that’s around when capitalism must have started.

  • Any time I point out that nuclear energy from new plants is really fucking expensive. Some people get mad at me for pointing out basic economics.

  • I know you're all going to have to get this out of your system, so go ahead. Mock the leftists who stubbornly refused to vote for Kamala. Assign the blame for fascism taking over on those who could not see past their principles to the bigger picture (at least, as you see it). Eventually, you're going to have to move on and acknowledge that the blame cannot fall solely on them.

    I voted for Kamala Harris. I, like most of you, felt strongly that doing so was necessary to prevent a far worse outcome. In the short term. The truth is, those that you mock for failing to see what was so plain to you were looking past it to an even larger picture, and that is why they could not see the strategic necessity of their vote. Why they chose not to see it, just as many of you choose not to see something that is very plain to them, the inevitability of this outcome.

    Kamala Harris began her campaign to thunderous applause from those who were hopeful that the Democratic Party was finally embracing progressive ideals, only to then abandon and insult those very same hopefuls while moving further to the right than even Biden dared go. Kamala Harris then also proceeded to approach the economically anxious right with the same limp-wristed and tired economic messaging that has consistently failed to address the concerns of the working class. She campaigned as a moderate old Republican, the very same that the Republican electorate abandoned in favor of Trump.

    A large number of progressives and radical leftists saw this and surrendered. They sacrificed their hope for change and reform to preserve their principles, and embraced accelerationism where previously they resisted it. I felt what they felt but held onto hope not because I truly believed Kamala Harris would turn around, but because I feared that we were not ready. I voted for Kamala Harris because I wanted to buy just a little more time, but fascism is here now, and we've run out of time.

    Accept responsibility, stop assigning blame, we can't afford to. Accept responsibility not because you are at fault, but because no one else will.

    Roughly equal number of upvotes and downvotes on this one, commented on a thread in c/meanwhileongrad bashing some random tankies after the election for abstaining or voting 3rd party. I stand by it.

    Context.

  • In all my days, the two most hated comments I dropped were:

    1. Explaining that traveling specific speeds is not inherently less safe, but that context of conditions and location heavily change how safe we feel.
    2. Attempting to give someone a free trip across the country so that I could have a body to assign one of her three cats to, since it was just after covid and finding any way to get a cat across the country was strangely difficult or exceptionally expensive. Apparently I'm a terrible person for not including a place to stay, or a return trip, or anything? Like.. I'm trying to save money getting a cat across the country, why would I then spend more money for someone I literally don't know? It was more of a 'please help get cat from a to b, I'll pay for it' Ended up dragging my wife with me for the third person because people were being weird and angry about it.

  • I am not sure. A mod already deleted it and I don’t care enough to look it up. Probably some dumb shit I wrote while being on autopilot.

  • I reacted to a comment to a meme about parents having the power and the right to withhold what their children's privileges relating to some trauma I've got.

    The comment I replied to went:

    We take away what each kid values the most. Works well. If they complain or don’t stop whatever got them in trouble we start adding days.

    In hindsight, taking the context, it's kinda reasonable, but I was triggered by the “what each kid values the most” remembering a painful part of my childhood, which lead me to be way less open to my mother.

    I commented:

    Wouldn't that end up with a kid who values nothing, not even their own life?

    My mom used a similar technique to get me to do what she wants me to do, and I ended up, well, the way I am right now. I hide a lot of things from her, and if necessary, only pretend to show interest in things I don't give a damn about just to have a semblance of a personality. Worse, even if I‌ die right after this comment, I wouldn't mind one bit.

    Admittedly, that last part is totally unnecessary.

    That response became my most controversial and downvoted for understandable reasons.

  • I said switch owners have never played real games on a greentext that is no longer available because it was hosted on kbin

  • I'm pretty sure my bickering about the election. I was very unpopular during that period. Now I'm just regular unpopular. 👍🏾

187 comments