z3rOR0ne

z3rOR0ne , 14 hours ago

I'll let you know when AI art can evoke an emotion I haven't experienced before, because that's what quality art is defined by.

z3rOR0ne , 14 hours ago

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/

The FBI data also shows a 59% reduction in the U.S. property crime rate between 1993 and 2022, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-75%), larceny/theft (-54%) and motor vehicle theft (-53%).

Using the BJS statistics, the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even steeper than those captured in the FBI data. Per BJS, the U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between 1993 and 2022.

And an NPR article on the same topic:

https://text.npr.org/2024/02/12/1229891045/police-crime-baltimore-san-francisco-minneapolis-murder-statistics

But in 2023, crime in America looked very different.

"At some point in 2022 — at the end of 2022 or through 2023 — there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall," said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

In cities big and small, from both coasts, violence has dropped.

"The national picture shows that murder is falling. We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022," Asher said, citing his own analysis of public data. He found instances of rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all down too.

Yet when you ask people about crime in the country, the perception is it's getting a lot worse.

z3rOR0ne , 2 days ago

I used to work as a Night Auditor at a small upscale hotel. Other than the security guard and the engineer, most of my shift was doing small tasks by myself.

If you can swing the hours, it's not half bad. Pay could be better though.

z3rOR0ne , 1 day ago

Yeah I've got quite a few actually. The hotel I worked at was in the heart of Los Angeles, about a mile north of Skid Row. Additionally, our hotel was also a Private Club, with our clientele including some of the most influential politicians, businessmen, etc. of Los Angeles. On top of all of that, I was one of the few employees who simply worked throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 Pandemic until a few years ago when I finally left to pursue another career. So yeah...plent of stories, in all honesty it's hard to choose one to tell.

Like I said, the job itself wasn't all that bad, but I don't think my experience is exactly the norm for a Night Auditor at a hotel given the aforementioned circumstances I found myself in there. That said, most nightst were quiet and uneventful. I was able to pursue teaching myself how to Code and Program during this time thanks to the sheer amount of freedom and quietude I was afforded at that job, so I am forever grateful I was able to land that position, which I wanted for a very long while, and was lucky enough to finally get it in part because the long term Night Auditor at the hotel retired because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That said, the social dynamics of watching the rich and powerful wine and dine each other, and drunkedly stumble back to their hotel rooms in the early morning, while also having homeless people knock on our locked glass doors every few hours, well... let's just say witnessing that kind of dichotomy up close and personal changes you. Were it not for me being good friends with the Security Guard and Engineer, I think I would have eventually gone insane or worse, and thank God I eventually left that particular job. I'd still go back to being a Night Auditor if I could get decent pay and have it NOT be at that particular hotel. The job itself usually does not entail the particulars of that specific hotel.

One night, a young nondescript woman came knocking on our glass doors after we had locked up for the evening. Usually the hotel guests know to ring a small doorbell next to the door to be let in, and others (usually the homeless), knock on the doors. This woman didn't appear homeless (her clothes were not in tatters, she wasn't disheveled), so I thought perhaps she was a hotel guest that simply didn't know about the doorbell.
She revealed that she was recently homeless and that she was looking for a room. As per company policy, we didn't take walk ins, and I informed her as much. She then proceeded to tell me that her parents were members of The Club and was there anything I could do to possibly make an exception. Normally I would simply shrug this off as being a grift as desperate people will claim a lot of things to try and make their way through our doors and "get lost" somewhere in our building, but she looked rather scared and, perhaps against my better judgement, I decided to indulge my curiosity. I asked her what her parental figure's name was so I could reach out and see if they might be able to cover the room charges for her. She gave me her father's name.

Now, keep in mind, this occurred at around 2AM, and when I typed in the father's name, he indeed was a long lasting member of The Club. Again, against my better judgement, I called the father to see if I could help this girl out. I got her name and tried to confirm that everything was legit, but of course, that early in the morning, I got no answer.

In the meanwhile, The Security Guard, who I was good friends with, had told me he would keep an eye on the girl as, to put it simply, was a young attractive girl on the side streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night with no other company, and yeah... they sadly get harrassed rather aggressively in that situation by passerbys. By the time I got done with my phone call and leaving a message for the father, The Security Guard had had to tell 5 passerbys to beat it when they tried to harrass this young girl waiting to hear if she could get a room. I made another judgement call (again, perhaps against my better judgement) and said that while we waited to hear back from her father, she could remain right outside our doorsteps where the Security Guard and I could keep an eye on her and avoid potential future harrassment. I would have honestly done her one better and let her sleep on one of the couches in the lobby, but the security cameras at that point would have documented me blatantly refusing company policy, as oppossed to simply "making the wrong decision" of letting her remain right outside our doorsteps...

Anyways, a couple hours later the father calls me back and confirms that indeed, that is his daughter who he hasn't seen in years. I ask him what he'd like me to do, and he tells me that they are estranged due to a drug addiction problem she has and he simply has had to cut her off. He told me to do what I thought was best...and I... well I kept my cool while on the phone and thanked him for getting back to me at that early hour and that I'd take it from there...but when the phone call was over I asked The Engineer to relieve me while I could use the bathroom and I went to the back and I honestly wept for a little bit...

Once I had composed myself, I returned to tell the young woman that her father indeed did call but that he was unwilling to help her. I then told her she could stay until one hour before we opened our doors, at which time other staff members would have come in and had they seen her would have told me to tell The Security Guard to have her leave as technically it was loitering... The woman was thankful and did briefly acknowledge that she thought that her father might not help her but she had nowhere else to turn.

The Security Guard kept an eye on her throughout the evening while he did his usual patrols throughout the Hotel, and because she was right by our doorway, I also kept an eye out. The rest of the night was not as eventful, and an hour before our doors open, I went out and gave her a small bag of food and wished her well. I was relieved at the very least that she wasn't heading towards Skid Row when I saw her head out, but it was still a chilling experience I'll never forget.

Normally something like this wouldn't have affected me so emotionally, but it was just the way each of the bits of this poor woman's story unfolded that I just... empathized... or at least sympathized. I, at least on a cognitive level, got where the father was coming from, not letting her "take advantage" of him again, but it nevertheless felt so wrong. She's his daughter... and she needed help.

Anyways. I know you probably wanted a story that was more interesting than depressing, but that's just one that really stuck with me from that point in my life there. I don't think that's a normal experience for a Night Auditor to have, so I wouldn't take my experience as a reason to dissuade anyone from taking the position, but you asked for a story, and so you got one.

z3rOR0ne , 3 days ago

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/ca795cfa-3584-4eb6-9b25-7b777056bba8.jpeg

Anyways...

z3rOR0ne , 5 days ago

The staff and patients fear that without Americans in the hospital to serve as political shields against the Israel Defense Forces, the hospital will be destroyed, as the IDF has done to every other hospital in Gaza.

God that is heart breaking. I understand why those that evacuated did, but I can't help but greatly admire those that stayed. Fuck genocide.

z3rOR0ne , 5 days ago

Lol. I just posted the same vid to !videos

A really entertaining, insightful, and intimate video essay. This one was one of Abbie's best.

z3rOR0ne , 5 days ago

Her presentations are fun. Thanks! Great watch.

z3rOR0ne , 5 days ago

Her presentations are fun. Thanks! Great watch.

z3rOR0ne , 5 days ago

Well dang! This guy makes my neck tired from all the nodding in agreement. Thanks!

z3rOR0ne , 6 days ago

Nah. If you're gonna put this in any community, this is the one...though I'll admit the question could use some clarification.

z3rOR0ne , 6 days ago

Throwing the lamest capitalist party at the end of the world. Wooo...AI....boo...planet earth?....

z3rOR0ne , 6 days ago

Google is required to send you a CSV of your YouTube subscriptions upon request.

If you have an Android phone, once you have said CSV file, you can upload it into the Newpipe Application and voila, watch YouTube without visiting YouTube (or supporting the creators, but that's an aside to this topic). Sadly I know of no way of doing something similar on iPhone.

On desktop/tablet, you can always use Invidious. This is especially useful when combined with the tool yt-dlp and sponsorblock. If you use an RSS reader, you can "subscribe" to YouTube channels that way, and use redirection extensions to redirect you from YouTube to invidious, after that you can use yt-dlp with a sponsor block flag to download the video directly to your desktop, and watch it in whatever quality you want, with subtitles if you want, and have all mentions of sponsors cut out, and of course, no ads.

Obviously, this is too much work for most, but this is what I do to not visit YouTube while still watching their content, which is simply more plentiful and, IMHO, higher quality than what you find on other platforms (save for possibly Nebula).

Rumble is just a bunch of Nazis from what I've seen, so fuck them and their shitty platform.

z3rOR0ne , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

It would be a much smaller business model. My guess is that there have already been multiple market analyses of what you're talking about and the determination is most likely that the majority of hotel arrivals occur later on in the day.

This isn't to say a good amount of arrivals dont occur much earlier in the day, just not enough to justify the cost.

Additionally, to flip that would have hotel staff be cleaning rooms at a much earlier time (midnight to 4am), meaning they would have to arrive at midnight to start their shift. At 4am, the cleaning staff management would then need to spend a minimum of 1 hour to inspect each room to ensure it met company and legal standards. This is all ignoring the various tasks this can incur on the other staff like concierges.

I used to work as a Front Desk Agent, and later on a Night Auditor, in a small, but upscale, hotel. The housekeeping staff were some of the hardest working people I've ever met, and yet they were the least appreciated. Those hours in between check-out and check-in was always a hussle. I was always thankful I worked front desk whenever I saw them and would do them small favors if they ever asked (though honestly more often than not it was the other way around and I was asking them for some small request on behalf of the guest).

If we had the rooms available for an early check in, then we did it, but if not the best we could do was offer them to check their luggage in at the front desk and they were on their own until check in. The occurrence of this wasn't negligible, but given everything I witnessed, I determined, at least for our hotel, it wouldn't have been monetarily feasible to adjust that check-out check-in window to accommodate them. It simply didn't happen often enough to justify it.

z3rOR0ne , 8 days ago

I'm a beginner in both (heavily leaning towards putting more time into learning Rust though). Could you please elaborate a bit?

z3rOR0ne , 8 days ago

Ah yes, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump. Pinnacles of American virtue, as evidenced by Americans electing them into office. Indeed, all of our politicians are examples of the best America has to offer.

z3rOR0ne , 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

No. The convictions for rich white men will go as well as the Trump convictions have gone thus far.

The convictions will go through quickly for the LGBTQ community because that is where the allegations will be thrown at, and the jury will be hung for anyone cis white male, and will be unanimous in the conviction of everyone else.

z3rOR0ne , 8 days ago

Nah. Trump came along and basically said "Hey, you know how we've been openly and loudly racist? Let's do that...but MORE open and LOUDER."

That's what "make America great again" means.

z3rOR0ne , 10 days ago

People are so scared of a Trump presidency, and rightly so. But let's say Biden gets elected, and finally, somehow magically, Trump just disappears and his followers quietly dissipate into the ether?

Do you really think the next election we won't be complaining about the exact same shit? Fascism vs Declining Capitalism (AKA, Good Cop Fascism)?

This is your lives now folks, every four years, choose your flavor of Fascism, they certainly look different, but once you put them in your mouth, they all taste like the same shit.

Elect your Biden, and then don't criticize your government, and get the fuck back to work and don't protest and keep your heads down and your mouth shut.

Then four years later, compromise and vote for the lesser of two evils that somehow gets more evil every four years. That is all of us now. I'd say see you in hell, but we're already here.

z3rOR0ne , 12 days ago

Gotta say, I'm liking the logo. The fact that the devs let you choose to keep one or the other is a really nice touch. I look forward to the release!

z3rOR0ne , 12 days ago

God I love that episode and that line. It's so sad how that observation somehow became even more relevant today than it was back when that episode released.

Thank you.

z3rOR0ne , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

There are many legitimate reasons to not use ecosia, and yes, from the ecological perspective.

Planting trees has shown to be not as effective at curbing the effects of climate change as previously thought. Contrary to popular belief, the oceans have a much larger effect on our climate than our forests, and we aren't doing nearly enough to clean those up because the task would require us to fundamentally change the way we farm, fish, and obtain oil (i.e. pretty much stop everything we're currently doing).

This isn't to say planting trees doesn't have some benefit, but there are much better ways to curb your CO² emissions which you can see at the end of this rant/post.

Sneak peak though, if you eat meat, and actually give a fuck about the forests, perhaps you should stop consuming animals. Eating meat in particular is directly related to deforestation, as often deforestation is done to make room for massive CAFOs, which even if the deforestation didn't occur, would still significantly contribute to climate change.

Ecosia's funding comes from advertisements, which incentivizes consumption, which itself contributes to climate change innately. Every purchase you make, every meal you eat, every time you travel by automobile, airplane, or petroleum powered boat, contributes to the ever growing mass of CO2.

Advertisements and marketing exacerbate climate change by cultivating a never ending consumerist desire for products that are almost entirely produced using a petroleum derived process and/or packaged in petroleum derived plastic, resulting in the consumerist behavior being inherently responsible for climate change.

Ecosia is a moldy old band aid on a gushing neck wound that honestly is causing more harm than good by distracting people from the real source of the climate crisis, which is modern capitalism and the resulting consumerism.

Actually fighting climate change requires more of you than some passive empty gesture. Here's a bullet point list of things you can do today to make a real difference:

• Stop eating and utilizing animal based products.
• Stop eating foods that were grown using petroleum derived fertilizers (i.e. eat Organic).
• Stop eating foods that had to be trucked in from over 100 miles away (i.e. eat local).
• Stop buying plastic packaged goods.
• Stop traveling by any means that require oil.
• Stop living in or working in places which utilize electricity from the standard fossil fueled grid.
• Abandon the fast fashion industry.
• Only buy local goods and services.
• Stop buying new electronic devices unless absolutely necessary.
• Stop buying things you don't absolutely 100% need to survive.
• Don't use AI as it utilizes an insane amount of fossil fuel generated electricity and consumes an exorbitant amount of water.
• Same goes for playing AAA video games on high end GPUs.
• Same goes for participating in Cryptocurrency mining/trading.
• Protest the continuation of the exploration of space until Earth's climate has stabilized, as the utilization of resources required for space exploration greatly contribute to climate change and encourages a techno futurism that "solves" the climate crisis by abandoning Earth, rather than actually creating a future where humans are the stewards of the Earth, not its masters.
• Get politically involved to pressure your local governments to implement safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists and generally improve public transportation infrastructure like railways and metros.
• Spend all your spare time fighting the fossil fuel, plastic, and privatized water industries, because all of the above only makes a difference if those industries are GONE FOR GOOD.
• Don't have children (biggest contributor to climate change is more consumerist humans).
• Don't leave this problem to the next generation to solve. The moment is now or never. You either care about the future of humanity and their place on Earth, or you don't.

There is a reason climate scientists are increasingly becoming climate activists. This is not something you can buy, recycle, or search engine your way out of.

As I've pointed out, there simply are far more impactful ways you can make a difference today than using a search engine that gets in bed with marketers and advertisers all in order to make relatively empty gestures while playing nice with corporations that, I guarantee you, are far more interested in pursuing business as usual than preserving the planet for their own children, let alone you and me.

z3rOR0ne , 13 days ago

Link to background image?

z3rOR0ne , 13 days ago

Sweet! Thank you so much!!

z3rOR0ne , 14 days ago

• Even More News
• Behind The Bastards
• Party Girls
• Translash
• Antifada
• Tech Won't Save Us
• Better Offline
• Factually
• Knowledge Fight
• The Hamilton Morris Podcast

z3rOR0ne , 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

Coffee, Tea, and caffeinated beverages have been a double edged sword to humans, and specifically human society, since its discovery.

Michael Pollan authored a book on the subject a while back. Here is an article which summarizes some of it.

Ultimately, Capitalism as we know it today would not have been possible without stimulants (like caffeine) and the invention of the lightbulb. These two factors allowed human beings to remain awake and alert 24/7, vastly expanding the time window for us to consume and produce, and ultimately further solidify Capitalism's hold on the world at large.

z3rOR0ne , 14 days ago

Yeah, you must listen to Hamilton Morris's Podcast! It's a fascinating story and an example of one of the many roles stimulants have played in human history and society.

As a coffee addict and enthusiast myself (used to home roast High grade Arabica when I had more time on my hands), I'm not going to knock stimulants outright.

But it's not lost on me that we wouldn't have a 24 hour economy without caffeine and electric lights, which block the uptake of adenosine and production of melatonin respectively, creating the biochemical response necessary for our civilization to exist as it currently does, for better and worse.

z3rOR0ne , 13 days ago

This article from the guardian indicates the need to develop and produce synthetic coffee in the future after climate change has ravaged land reserved for coffee usage.

Honestly while coffee's days are likely numbered, stimulants will likely only be further developed in the lab to be more finely honed to enhance potential human productivity levels and, hopefully, be made safer for human consumption.

Stimulants are necessary particularly to modern militaries and the usage of stimulants in a wartime context have been well documented since WWII.

Given the important role stimulants play in both modern capitalism and modern warfare, it's unlikely we'll see a "Stimulopocalypse" any time soon.

That said, the world you allude to might look somewhat like the world awakened by the Knocker-Up, although really it's more likely all aspects of human life would simply slow down without stimulants.

z3rOR0ne , 15 days ago

Ever since bypass paywalls started getting hit and miss, I've been pasting this into my Ublock Origin Filter list. Works well from what I've seen.

z3rOR0ne , 14 days ago

You're welcome.

In regards to which elements to pick out, I wouldn't know what to tell you other than monitor the Network tab in the browser's devtools and block one by one until it works? Other than that perhaps reach out to someone more experienced at generating these filter lists (like the Dev of the linked repo) and see how they go about it.

Cheers and good luck!

z3rOR0ne , 13 days ago

Roflmao. 🤣

z3rOR0ne , 17 days ago

Great article. The author, Ed Zitron, covers this same topic on his podcast, Better Offline. I highly recommend it.

z3rOR0ne , 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

Oh I missed that, lol. Oh well, it's worth mentioning regardless. Great podcast. Thanks for pointing that out.

z3rOR0ne , 18 days ago

Good. This generation will be the ones writing about this time period as the sad pathetic chapter of human history it is.

Let our children be the ones to rain down upon us unrelenting and constant reminders of our own compromises made with corporate and government fascists. Compromises where we were willing to sacrifice the lives, autonomy, and national identity of an entire ethnic group of people in exchange for imperialist power.

Don't relent. Don't let the fascists off the hook. Call out this genocide for what it is and fight to stop it. Fight until the world bows its head in shame and drops its arms, and then execute the war criminals.

z3rOR0ne , 18 days ago

Let the infinite forking on infinite platforms commence.

z3rOR0ne , 18 days ago

Probably something touching and inspiring right before my bowels loudly empty themselves and an unbearable stench fills the nostrils of my loved ones.

z3rOR0ne , 18 days ago

Arms Dealer. Anything to do with Wall Street. Law Enforcement and Incarceration. Human Trafficking. Anything dealing with the Military. Religion/Cult jobs. Scam artist. Lobbyist. Probably a few more I can't think of at the moment.

There are lots of jobs you couldn't make me do even with a gun to my head, let alone a paycheck.

z3rOR0ne , 20 days ago

Don't bother even giving them your traffic, just use a redirection extension to LibReddit or use Stealth

z3rOR0ne , 20 days ago

We Don't Need Warrior Cops Policing Campus Protests

Period.

z3rOR0ne , 20 days ago

Surprised no one has mentioned Archer's ringtone.

z3rOR0ne , 21 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

Just use a Invidious instance. Don't even bother with YouTube. You can use an RSS feed reader to port your subscriptions, then use a redirection extension to bring you to the invidious version of the channel.

If you're so inclined, you can download the video using yt-dlp which you can use to download videos from invidious and even pass a sponsor block flag which integrates with the sponsor block api.

On mobile, if you have Android, you can use Tubular. You can request from Google to give you your subscriptions as a fifle that you can upload to these apps. Tubular also uses Sponsor block as well.

Lastly, if you're on iOS, the best I've found is simply to use the Brave browser.

Hope this helps.

z3rOR0ne , 22 days ago

Aww! Thanks for posting this! I used to follow this creator but left mainstream social media a while back. It's nice to see their work here on Lemmy!

Again, thank you!

z3rOR0ne , 24 days ago

This is a very uplifting and interesting talk. Thanks for posting!

z3rOR0ne , 26 days ago

spawns in Louisville, Kentucky Aww...Goddamn it.

z3rOR0ne , 29 days ago

I'm pretty sure Duckduckgo proxies Bing, not Google.

z3rOR0ne , 1 month ago

Yes! More FalseKnees! 😁