Having worked at Google there wasn’t any anti-unuon propaganda or anything: it was just genuinely the best work environment I’d ever experienced… Right up until they laid me off.
So while I was there the thought of joining a union would have been “meh - what can they realistically get me?” and after the layoff was “oh yeah right they could’ve gotten me protection”
Doesn’t blind require you to validate via corporate email yearly or something?
Edit: cause some jackass is implying I’m a bot - I should have joined a union and a union would’ve protected me from the mass layoff in '23 but that doesn’t change that while there I never thought about needing a union because it was such a nice place otherwise.
As someone who previously worked at Google - they didn’t have any antiunion propaganda.
They just, like, paid well, had top tier benefits, great perks, and had a good work life balance.
The battery life is definitely worse because of it but it doesn’t bother me much
Taiwan is a natural fortress as well. Even if the mainland invaded the guerilla fighting in the mountains would be a new Afghanistan for the occupying force.
All for the political victory of “we did it!”
Taiwan has few natural resources that China doesn’t already have. They mostly have high tech industry… Which would be annihilated by an invasion. No way chip fabs survive: either they get bombed while softening up a landing or they get sabotaged as a spoiling action.
Note: the latest pixel fold is about the same size and weight as the pixel 9 pro.
It’s actually kinda incredible that it is that light and thin while folding.
Snowboard, ski or surfboard wax
What I find particularly interesting is that it’s an ad they’re serving directly from their own infrastructure - ublock isn’t blocking it as an ad.
Nearest convenience store is 200m Chain supermarket is 200m Bus stop is 150m Library is 50m Park is 500m Train station is 800m
NYC makes everything easy
I honestly think that difference in opinion speaks highly of Banks as an author - the books speak to us differently and he wrote diverse enough stories that they capture each person separately.
Big disagree on the best - Use of Weapons, Surface Detail and Consider Phlebas are the favorites of my partner and me.
Not that the 3 listed are bad just that I like my 3 more :)
3.4bn is their gross - we have no idea what their operating costs are since they refuse to share them.
Some estimates say they’re burning 8 billion a year.
To call my statements unnuanced is patently false. Unnuanced is your assertion that getting rid of religion is genocidal.
You consistently conflate religion and culture and act as though a group that lets their religion die has somehow had a genocide committed against them.
The death of a religion is not the death of the culture and genocide has no role my desire for the extinction of the dark and superstitious past that we are in the process of leaving.
There is not a single thing that a religion does to help people that is irreplaceable with non-parasitic communal structures.
What religion does beyond helping people is leech off of superstition and ignorance to control and coerce its adherents into its modes.
If a religion is free of superstition it ceases to be a religion: requiring no faith.
Cultural practices are beautiful and deserve preservation - religions are shackles that keep those marginalized people we care about enslaved to the past.
Religion as a concept is evil.
These are arguments from a position of pure concept and theory, the realm that religion deals in.
Pragmatic reality means that we’re never getting rid of religion because people will continue to perpetuate the abuses of the past into the future.
That doesn’t make them bad people; they sincerely think they’re doing good.
Nonetheless: their belief does not make what they’re doing good.
My youth spent canvasing in favor of the bigotry of Prop 8 in California is not absolved because as a fundamentalist I believed it was the best thing for “the gays”.
I’m sorry it makes you uncomfortable but the truth is that religion and the religious cause endless suffering on this world and they deserve to be called out.
The latest releases ChatGPT 4o costs $600/hr per instance to run based on the discussion I could find about it.
If OpenAI is running 1k of those models to service the demand (they’re certainly running more since queries can take 30+ seconds) then that’s 200M/yr just keeping the lights on.
You’re religious so you’re being defensive and fighting for reasons to keep your beliefs. You don’t want to believe that you participate in a larger organization that harms humanity. That means you’re a good person.
The religion you participate in still harms people. It doesn’t matter what religion it is.
Good people trying to do good things participate in evil organizations that perpetrate harm.
Religious people are part of the religion but not the whole.
As demonstrated by my previous comment: it is the religion that is the problem, not people finding camaraderie or community therein. I’m glad the previous commenter finds solace but it is important to call out that mechanism is exploited by the religion itself to propagate.
You cannot fully separate a religion and the religious. Without the religious a religion has died.
It would be best if all religions died: the religious that keep them alive are good people who have been misled.
All religions, no exceptions. To kick things off with the lowest of low hanging fruit: your religion practices male genital mutilation.
But the abuse, manipulations and control go all the way through from patriarchal hierarchies to an “exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation;”
Which is to say cult brainwashing techniques used by any religion from Judaism to Mormonism to Hinduism. From the Branch Davidians to the Sumerian high priesthood: humans have never ceased using the 0-days of the human mind to exploit and manipulate their fellow man.
Does that mean religions can only do evil? Of course not. I’m glad you get a sense of connection and peace from it.
But that connection and peace serves to perpetuate the primeval toxic hierarchy. You’ll raise your kids on it. Make sure they believe it from a young age. After all - “Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) You gotta get em young or they’ll never believe when they’re old.
To be fair to my naive past self: it was the first mass layoff at Google, ever.
Based on my friends still there: the vibes are decidedly less trusting all around.