I think the general point is that the financial hurt that I can put on a company is peanuts compared to someone with deep pockets (ie: shareholders & businesses). Even if I were to get all my friends, family and direct coworkers to alter a shopping behaviour, it’s unlikely to result in any change.

On the other hand, if I were to take that same group and be able to pressure my political representatives to do something about it (as we frequently see in California), then something may change. Similarly, me quitting my job out of disgust with a non-recycling policy won’t get any attention, but if I can get my union to take it up, then the company will listen.

TL;DR: a person can’t make change, a group of people can.

From Wallet Voting by Cory Doctrow:

Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.

It doesn’t mean to keep shopping at Amazon if you hate their business practices, it just means that you & your friends won’t have any impact on Amazon’s business policies.

Granted, you’d be a hypocrite, so definitely don’t shop where you hate, but don’t expect a giant corp to change.

It’s already a thing: rentahuman.ai

I would wonder if it would be illegal to promote your live of the country by hanging a giant flag directly in the viewing path of the camera. Would you get arrested for being too patriotic?

This is too defeatist for me. I am upset to see these all over town, but too small minded to do anything about it. I want to start something to pressure community leaders to change, but i worry that i’ll make a lot of noise then drop it like i do with everything. I’d love to join with a group.

The minnesota attorney(ies) isn’t pressing charges because they are derelict in their duty

This then becomes a voter issue to install someone who will represent the people. Alternatively, protests to hold elected officials accountable to their duties or promises.

democrats do that with every issue opposed by powerful interests they promised to do something about, they make a performative gesture, get stopped, then say well I tried

I’ve seen this far too many times. Again, holding elected officials accountable may be the only way.

I remember the “have fun with that” quote. It was oddly smug and childish, which is why it stuck out.

Perhaps it’s naive of me to think so, but I read that the Minnesota District Attorney is deliberately not pressing charges (at least for the 2 murders) until the chance of a presidental pardon is nil.

I read a speculation somewhere that DHS want to declare all opposition to their activities as domestic terrorists and then remove their right to vote. There have been multiple articles detailing how the people who follow agents around and report their location are served papers later declaring them to be domestic terrorists and then they are placed on a no fly list. I’m sure more is to come. Reportedly, all the agents use facial recognition cameras to sweep the crowds for logging in a database, but another report suggests that the recognition part isn’t working so well.

You could be right, but I read an opinion piece a while back that suggested that removal of 230 would allow the government to indirectly censor speech online by selectively punishing the platforms that don’t moderate in the way that the administration would like. This may not be a problem under the current administration, but what if a wanabe dictator were to somehow become president?

I got tired of telling everyone to close the pantry door. It obstructs free movement in the kitchen, bangs against doors, drawers, the oven and fridge. I installed a spring hinge and now it closes itself.

I read an opinion piece that suggested that he is upset that Minnesota is the only blue state in a region of red. Given that Minnesota is primarily white, he felt that he could use the Somali fraud as a way to turn [white] people against the democrats using xenophobia.

Edit: I found the article.

I think they prefer to be called Native United States of Americans.

(This is a bad joke, playing on the original topic, don’t hate me)

I have 3 cordless drills and 1 corded. Every time I need to use one, the cordless ones are out of batteries despite charging them before putting them away. The battery pack is stored for a couple of months between projects. These are the second set of batteries and they weren’t cheap.

Oh, and I’m cursed for batteries. I’ve had two instances of a brand new car battery failing after a few months due to fused plates. The mechanic says that it never happens.

I’d love to get an electric car, but feel that that would be tempting fate.

I used to care but as it became a political tool, it became too much effort to care.

As far as i know, the only exposure is in Minnesota, but that can’t be the only place that these federal dollars were being misused. It smells funny.

The journalist you’re probably referencing is a YouTuber/influencer and has no journalistic credentials that I can find. It feels like an opportunistic popularity grab. Strike 2.

I read that the guy making the video was invited to produce a piece by a possible candidate for governor, opposing Gov. Walz. This tells me that it’s now a political advertisement and has lost any credibility and I don’t care enough to fact check everything,so I’ve stopped paying attention.

The whole thing bothers me. I don’t like it when people don’t follow the rules. Right now, it’s too hard to know the truth, so I’m closing my eyes. There’s enough other stuff to be upset about in life.

I often wonder how much of the toll is used to fund the road maintenance itself vs funding the structures to collect tolls like the toll booths, the collections, technology, billing, and all the employees.

Not 75%, just 3.5% is needed (probably).

source

You have a lot of good points and I may have missed the intent of the article, but a knee jerk reaction of “lower traffic = AI is bad” is not helpful either. My point is that I frequently find myself hitting a page just to check a reference, quote or remember something. AI search results can be useful here. It’s no different than how DuckDugkGo has a sidebar if the results are from StackOverflow. It’s nice to get quick answers. I would like to see a fair solution to the content creators being able to stay in business.

This will be unpopular, but hear me out. Maybe the decline in visitors is only a decline in the folks who are simply looking for a specific word or name and the forgot. Like, that one guy who believed in the survival of the fittest. Um. Let me try to remember. I think he had an epic beard. Ah! Darwin! I just needed a reminder, I didn’t want to read the entire article on him because I did that years ago.

Look at your own behaviors on lemmy. How often do you click/tap through to the complete article? What if it’s just a headline? What if it’s the whole article pasted into the body of the post? Click bait headlines are almost universally hated, but it’s a desperate attempt to drive traffic to the site. Sometimes all you need is the article synopsis. Soccer team A beats team B in overtime. Great, that’s all I need to know…unless I have a fantasy team.

This is probably the best answer based on the stuff that I’ve heard.

During the first term, a local talk radio show had a woman on who grew up in a cult. She was born into it. She described her own story about how she learned what was happening and eventually got out. IIRC, her parents cut all ties with her, as that was the way of the cult. Anyhow, she described the process of “deprogramming” someone and it is basically along the same lines of what you describe.

Sadly, it’s easy to “mass convert” people to cults, but deprogramming is a one on one conversation over a long period of time.

You just described most tech stocks.

As Cory Doctrow explains:

the fundamental duty of every CEO of every high-growth tech company: explaining how his company will continue to grow. These growth stories are key, because growth stocks trade at a huge premium relative to the stocks of “mature” companies.