Notices by Greengordon (greengordon@spore.social), page 4

@vwampage

Minor but important update:

"Does AI entice people to buy?

"No. No it does not. People are less likely to buy things when AI is a part of the product description.”*

* Corporate executives excepted.

How to feel hopeful given this? Guardian columnist answers.

"There is a feeling of dread lurking in my everyday. Wars, famine, the cost-of-living crisis, governments turning their backs on the most vulnerable, inhumane asylum seeker policies, the rise of the far right in Europe, the climate crisis.

"I know this is not the first time in the history of humanity that it seems like it is all going to shit, but that knowledge does not necessarily bring me any peace."

#hope

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jul/12/i-feel-despair-about-the-state-of-the-world-how-can-i-find-the-courage-to-not-abandon-hope?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Israel is a rogue state and should be sanctioned like Russia.

"Israeli politicians have long sought to find ways to permanently seize, or annex, the occupied West Bank, which it captured in 1967 and where millions of Palestinians live."

#israel #westbank #gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/20/idf-transfers-powers-in-occupied-west-bank-to-pro-settler-civil-servants?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Biden has been a very good president in some ways, but he fell down morally and practically on Israel’s obvious genocide and Netanyahu’s obvious sociopathy. Many, many people have been advising for months that Netanyahu and his government are deeply evil and that he is waging ‘war' to avoid personal justice.

"The US administration finally reached the conclusion...that Netanyahu was deliberately defying it…”

#uspol #israel #gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/06/biden-end-gaza-war-netanyahu-months-israel

@Migueldeicaza

Sounds like a Trump government. Probably all governments led by psychopaths are like this.

“With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand,” read the cable, which was written five months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor. “Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere.”

#uspol

@lolgop

Great article. An key insight from it:

"we forget what Trump is good at, and that makes sense because he’s despicable, and our brains don’t want to cede him anything. But like Elon Musk, he’s good at conning people, exploiting weaknesses in society, and appealing to masculine fantasies of domination."

#uspol

The world that capitalism and conservatives have created/destroyed:

"almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children, due to the environmental crises afflicting the world."

#capitalism #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/climate-scientists-starting-families-children?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@kevinrns

Pretty tough to boycott oligopoly.

"Home Depot’s Billionaire Founder Says He’ll Fund Trump... Even If He’s Convicted"

"Cancel Home Depot Into Bankruptcy. Gone."

Israel is a rogue state and needs the apartheid South Africa treatment ASAP.

"Ministries and offices within the Israeli government are behind all the largest and most contentious of the projects, sometimes in association with rightwing nationalist groups with a history of trying to evict Palestinians from their homes in parts of the city.

"The rapid approval or construction of settlements that are illegal under international law"

#Israel #palestine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/revealed-israel-has-sped-up-settlement-building-in-east-jerusalem-since-gaza-war-began?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@sleepfreeparent @onepict @cstross @alex

British meritocracy in action:

"0.3% of the British population owns 66% of the country, and these 160,000 families who own two-thirds of Great Britain largely descend from the army of William the Conqueror — the first Norman King of England who first conquered the country in 1066."

#capitalism #inequality

@aral

This is a common trope among executives and it is a lie. Corporations are autocracies, as these actions show: speak against the corporation or its leaders and you’re out. Corporations are fundamentally anti-democratic inside and out.

“One of the privileges of working in a company which represents democratic values”

#google

@czarbucks @StillIRise1963 @drjudystone

Great to see this in a major business magazine.

"Vulnerable patients are rebuffed when they want other people in a waiting area to mask—being told, “We can’t tell other people to mask,” yet if there were a case of measles, they could do so. Similarly, in an oncology or rheumatology office with many immunocompromised patients, the staff’s “right” to go unmasked trumps the patient right to a safe environment."

#covid #CovidIsNotOver

@jimcarroll

Great article. I did some research into this myself a few years ago and discovered that some Boards of Directors seek out narcissists as CEOs because they have a grand vision and supreme confidence. It always ends badly.

@jimcarroll

Musk is a narcissist, meaning someone who didn't fully develop as a human. Narcissists have an emotional maturity level somewhere between toddler and teenager. He cannot be any different and he cannot 'get better.' He does not and never will have a conscience or empathy or anything except a huge ego.

“Passing through the 1.5C world is a significant milestone because it shows that the story being told by the United Nations, with the acquiescence of its scientific advisory body, the IPCC, is a load of bullshit,” Hansen said.

“We are not moving into a 1.5C world, we are briefly passing through it in 2024. We will pass through the 2C (3.6F) world in the 2030s unless we take purposeful actions to affect the planet’s energy balance.”

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/08/global-temperature-over-1-5-c-climate-change

@youronlyone

Capitalism rewards psychopaths:

"Many widely celebrated character traits in CEOs, such as risk-taking and courage, often coexist with psychopathic tendencies, according to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, author and chief talent scientist at ManpowerGroup. A professor of business psychology at Columbia University and associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, Chamorro-Premuzic, wrote the book, “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?”

This is genocide. Cut Israel off now. I don't want to be complicit.

"the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population - close to half- a million human beings - dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes and the collapse of the medical system. It’s a crude estimate, but one that is data-driven, using the terrifyingly real numbers of deaths in previous and comparable conflicts."

#israel #gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@jimcarroll

Actually competent economist JK Galbraith: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

"The darned global economy kept chugging along, with month after month and quarter after quarter of continuous growth. Yet at the same time, global economic forecasters and financial pundits kept peddling their forecasts of doom and gloom, almost seeming to will for it to happen - and then seemed apoplectic and angry when it never transpired!"

@PacificNic

No kidding. But when I suggest their 6-week-and-counting cold might be because COVID wiped out their immune system…nobody wants to hear it. Back to normal, proles!

Some smart people are making very unwise choices. I had no idea how many people actually are sheeple - it’s most of us.

"I have met multiple people who "don't know anyone with long COVID" that are suffering from post-COVID-like symptoms, following a COVID infection.”

#covid #CovidIsNotOver

So the company that engaged in price-fixing for years has been caught selling underweight packages of food? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. I'm sure they'll get a small fine that, as an oligopoly, they will simply pass along.

"Some Ontario shoppers have uncovered packages of Cheerios and a Loblaws brand of potato chips that weighed far less than what was printed on the package."

#galenempire

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cheerios-cereal-loblaw-1.7044272