I think the solution is attack the systems themselves and when that isn’t sufficient there are only a few people at the top with power.

I am leaving or unsubscribing from as many monopoly powers as possible: Google, Amazon, meta, Twitter, Netflix, etc etc. Be vocal about it, take friends and family with you if you can. I’m choosing open source when possible over more polished closed source, like jellyfin and Linux (transitioning this weekend 🤞), and donate. These actions take a small fraction of their income from them and if enough people do it I believe it will cause them issues.

I’m trying to not just leave these things but build communities for when we leave. For me this looks like trying to get a blog off the ground for friends and family, developing friend circles that have these discussions frequently, and then contributing/volunteering within my direct neighborhood or community (working on this one as I’m new in Germany and that comes with it’s own time taxes).

Also, if you can afford to, buy local. Buy from someone you know. Buy from people with good supply lines. Be vocal about how this is critical and necessary. The more money that goes to our neighbors instead of the 1% somewhere else in the world, the better. That’s all the shift of power, and it starts with not shopping at whole foods or Walmart and buying bespoke or sometimes worse products for sometimes more money so that those good people can work on their process and products.

But these are small steps, and personally I don’t have any idea of the connective tissues between a person or group of people and the political systems most of us exist in. I guess in the past political parties were more grassroots driven, like get in a room with your neighbors and develop policies and debate. I’ve never lived in that reality. Getting back to that is probably incredibly important. I guess new age political parties and old school unions are the best path forward there.

But the inevitable path, if all else fails, is violence. That is the reality. That becomes a lot less personally risky the larger a community you have before starting it, but as we’ve seen one Super Mario brother is sufficient to make changes.

It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.

Is there a guide or any educational material on this? I’m about to swap to Linux (some fedora distro focused on gaming) and I’m interested in potentially one day swapping to arch after I’ve gotten my toes wet. Doing a bit of extra work and planning ahead to make that easier sounds nice.

Ya, I live right next to where this happened. It’s an immigrant heavy area. These guys planned, and a similar group the following day, to protest right next to the people they hate and want evicted from the country.

I agree, no one should be stabbed for their beliefs and free speech (to a degree) is important. But if someone came to my neighborhood and spent the whole day shouting out of a loud speaker that I didn’t belong, my family didn’t belong, my neighbors and friends didn’t belong, despite some of them living here for multiple generations - I’d be upset, I’d feel threatened.

Now couple that with doing it in a poorer district against a specifically marginalized group who has been historically treated poorly for decades with talking points that are clearly racist and easily disproven - idk. No one should get stabbed but even if I believed those awful things I wouldn’t do what they did unless I was looking for trouble.

Idk, my roommate and I have been talking about it all weekend. Yes we believe you should be allowed to punch Nazi’s, no we don’t think we should be allowed to stab anyone, yes 20% of the German population roughly hold dehumanizing beliefs that are dangerous and we should be educating them, no the government isn’t doing enough to better everyone’s situation and therefore racism and fascism are growing at an alarming rate.

I just switched to Kagi because I liked the idea of a paid search engine who’s aim was to remove the internet’s clutter, not use any profile besides the one I create to show me results, and where I could weight certain sites that produce good content.

Reading the blog post the issues allegedly are:

1. Privacy is not guaranteed, like with a 3rd party audit
2. AI usage is growing not shrinking
3. The business seems to be poorly run and could have a short lifespan

Is this correct?

This video was fantastic and I hope they keep this series up. I’m switching to Kagi from ddg because of this vid and I’ll spend time this weekend looking into ente/immich and all the DNS options highlighted here.

Super excited. It’s weird paying for email or search engines given they’ve always been free in my lifetime but the services have been noticeably worse as of late and I miss an Internet constantly bombarding you with things you should believe or buy.

It’s not about capitalism vs something-other-than-capitalism, it’s about all the small systems that make up our way of life. As a simple example, housing shouldn’t be a vehicle for profit seeking. It should be illegal or so greatly discouraged that owning an unhealthy amount of properties is non-viable because if house prices must always go up and everyone needs a place to live - the cost of living must always go up. A subsystem of capitalism that needs fixing, not “a new system that isn’t capitalism”.

And I’m not suggesting people not have 401k’s or not invest or not save money, I’ve got my retirement fund too. But we have to realize that that system isn’t doing it’s job and it’s harmful to society and the more we participate the more incentivized to keep it harmful, to keep it around. So participate like an intelligent person and then leverage your power and position to better the systems for everyone - eventually at an expense to yourself.

You got to remember, most of the wealth is still in very few hands. So telling yourself “the stock market also benefits the people who are retiring” makes it sound like there’s a good side to this when really it’s only a silver lining to an otherwise meaningless and arguably downright hurtful event.

The economy is as bad as it is, we’re seeing fascism rise as much as we are, partially because our major economic systems aren’t designed to actually benefit the people they’re built on sucking value out of.

So no, I don’t care that everyone currently cashing out of the system just got a little bit more money or more time out of the recent layoffs and the recent COVID profitteering and the recent inshitification. I think we have to be careful defending bad systems even minorly, despite that being rational and logical, because it feels like we’re coming to a tipping point and minor defenses like that make it seem as if we can extend the shelf life of these systems a few more decades, a few more unnecessary deaths, a few more degrees of warming, etc. Idk, only politics is weird. At least you’re participating, so thanks for that.

Just chiming in, I’m 28, American, immigrated to Germany. Can’t speak for Lemmy but I migrated from reddit when they shut the APIs down. Just want a shelf stable Aggregate site where I can stay up to date on my favorite hobbies and periodically connect with other humans. A healthy political debate is good every now and then but I’m also in the camp that the answers for our current problems are well researched and pretty fuckin obvious so debates have gotten… Idk stale.

Generally Lemmy feels like reddit but smaller, less polluted, but also less connected with every niche major update.

For these things I don’t think you have to prove anything, just a report to your govs food agency could prompt an inspection - or so I think.

Having no experience in the service industry I don’t have great advice so I’ll just say I’m sorry you’re going through this and I hope it gets better.

In gigs where politics matters more than output or social skills it can be hard to instigate change.

Is eating off of food a reportable offense to a health agency? That seems illegal or it should be.

I’ve been using Nord VPN for years. Maybe someone can educate me on why it’s not good but I’ve had zero issues with it and it allows me to do everything I need to for a great price.

This was a fantastic read and is getting me to move over to 7zip from .rar at least. Thanks for posting!

I think the scenario I described applies to most Western countries.

Congrats on having rich renters then. If they’re wealthy enough to not take reduced rent then they are likely not your countries average renter.

Ya, seriously, their take is crazy. I’m a two income household, both software engineers, and to save enough money to afford the loan to buy the home would take us years. The cost of a mortgage right now is higher than my rent by a huge percentage and that still requires 20-30k of down payment.

Could we downsize to a 1 bedroom apartment, eat PBJs every night, and stick to cheap hobbies such that we could afford to start the loan in two years or something - yes. But why am I required to trade my youth for the ability to pay the bank the better part of a million dollars over the next 20 years of my life just so I can install a nice bathroom and AC and maintain the flat properly.

You are forming your opinion on a statistical anomaly worth of experiences. The reality is rent is priced fixed by very few algorithms - all of which by their nature drive the prices higher every year.

You are renting to people who choose to rent, the vast majority don’t get to choose. And even if they choose to rent, that’s because owning is too expensive in their eyes (money or time or paperwork or otherwise) - it does not mean they wouldn’t want to own if the cost was lower.

I can’t imagine anyone declining reduced costs unless phrased poorly or out of guilt.

I think part of convenience is name brand recognition. I don’t know how you took a heartfelt compliment and made it hostile, but the reality is I grew up knowing what Google was and using it as a verb. Gmail was an obvious and convenient tool to pickup.

I just found out about Protonmail, or at least heard of it for the first time that it broke the barrier of not-caring into carrying. I imagine user numbers reflect that pretty readily.

That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying Protonmail is worse in anyway, please don’t assume I am. It’s okay to like a product and admit it’s flaws, in this case the only flaw I’m suggesting it has is being less known than Gmail and even then only for me and my small corner of the world.

Thank you for this recommendation, I’ll look into switching. It’s a slow process of moving towards less convenient but more private services but your comment has moved the needle for me at least.

Which is a silly conclusion… What’s the point? The better question would be why isn’t more housing being built? And I suspect the answer to that question is there is a vested interest in increasing that deficit.

Whenever someone starts to conclude that housing is so expensive purely because there aren’t enough homes, they often follow that up with pointing to construction costs. Which to me screams deregulation and wage complaints, two things an improving society should not be encouraging.

I really hate all the replies attempting to poke holes with minimal effort. Thanks for this comment and your robust set of examples.

Housing shouldn’t be a vehicle for interest or making a living, I’d take it more extreme than what you have if I’m being honest. You can own the buildings you use 60% of the year for work or for housing but nothing else. We don’t sell stocks in bananas, we sell stocks in farms. Housing should be a consumable commodity not a line item in a corp’s assets sheet.