Five

joined 1 year ago
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[–] Five 64 points 14 hours ago (6 children)
[–] Five 2 points 16 hours ago

Swapped out the amp link. Thanks.

[–] Five 2 points 16 hours ago

I was a little disappointed that she tried to find some kind of synthesis between her own fawning opinion and Kim Stanley Robinson's critical view of Always Coming Home.

Ursula's concern with erasure due to sexism is warranted, but everyone's star must fade. No one is completely correct, and while Le Guin was ahead of her time, no one has a perfect vision of the future or even a clear vision of their own present. Sincere criticism is a form of flattery, and many authors long gone continue to be referenced not just because they had a prescient view, but because their critics keep them alive. Tolstoy was the most famous author in the Soviet Union because despite being banned to print, the publishing of rebuttals and counter-apologetics were subsidized by the central soviet, so that everyone knew his name and anarchist views.

In this cast, DeFreitas celebrates Le Guin in a way that is effusive but neither hot nor cold. It's exactly this kind of inoffensive praise that reduces the great to symbols of greatness, and from there to cliché, mediocrity, and obscurity. Good authors deserve trenchant praise, or at least honest criticism.

[–] Five 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I wish this were the case. While greater parental wealth means better health outcomes for their infants, it is still significantly lower than outcomes for comparable infants of wealthy parents in welfare states.

Intentionally undermining health infrastructure with the intention to harm women, working people, and minorities harms health outcomes for everyone.

 
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submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by Five to c/women@lemmy.world
 

Edit: Removed amp link.

[–] Five 15 points 21 hours ago

I appreciate this.

 
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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Five to c/documentaries
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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Five to c/collapse
 

Article from 2003, relevant due to recent reporting on Japan's investment in a hydrogen economy over electric vehicles.

[–] Five 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Voice of America (VOA) is a state media network funded by the United States of America, whose purpose is to project soft power through journalism. In 1948, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens to protect the public from propaganda by its own government. The restriction was removed in 2013 to to adapt to the Internet age.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that suspected Al-qaeda operatives were flown into Thailand to be detained and tortured. VOA's remote relay radio station in Udon Thani province has been widely suspected to be the torture site. VOA has been conspicuously silent on the charges. Their reporters have unparalleled access to the details of the case, but none of them appear to have done any investigation.

According to David Van Zandt in MBFC's methodology:

It’s crucial to note that our bias scale is calibrated to the political spectrum of the United States

To better understand this statement, it should be noted that MBFC regards VOA as "least biased" despite its uncontroversial status as the United States' official propaganda outlet.

[–] Five 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Clean energy infrastructure is desperately needed, but capitalists don't want to pay labor a fair wage.

The stories I hear from tradespeople in clean energy work is that entry level positions are paying less, and the bonuses they were seeing when they started are drying up. Many are looking to move away from clean-energy specific labor and into electrical or construction where unions are better established.

Improperly installed solar panels short out and fail early, carelessly sealed roof mountings leak and damage the dwelling, and most importantly, pressured novice workers make often fatal mistakes while working with electricity or at significant heights. To those with the experience of prison labor as a baseline, the risks and rewards of this kind of labor may be attractive. But most tradespeople know these jobs exist, and choose not to take them.

Instead of support for labor, you see state, provincial, and national incentives to recruit new workers into these fields, as well as articles like this one touting the potential of employment in the clean energy economy. But noticeably absent from the article is any mention of labor organization or workers protections for the people doing this work. If the state was serious about building this infrastructure, they would make these fields union jobs. That's the only way to get quality renewable energy infrastructure built at scale.

[–] Five 1 points 1 week ago

MBFC has an abysmal RSN score.

[–] Five 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because come November- we ALL know you’re going to disappear along with the rest of them and the only evidence that you were ever here will reside in a comment history where you were shown the door

'Til chilly November then, snowflake!

[–] Five 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There is NO blueprint for a working system of socialism in America. NONE. Pretty o much anyone that knows anything about it on an academic level knows it won’t work and has said as much. And as far as leftists go, none of you have a clue about it enough to do any more than copypasta one another’s pseudo-intellectual nonsense on it.

Ask a socialist why they hate capitalism, and they'll give you a myriad of reasons. Ask a capitalist why they hate socialism and they'll describe capitalism.

[–] Five 2 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Leftists warned you that someone like Trump was the inevitable result of the capitalist system before he was elected. And here you are, eight years later STILL scapegoating the left for another fascist turn.

[–] Five 3 points 2 weeks ago
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