
That movie always wilds me out because it was so much better back then for this shit, and it was still recognized that it’s insane we live like this.
“some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.”
“Those who died are justified; by wearing the badge, they’re your chosen whites”
These problems have been seen forever. Everyone is comfortable working through controlled opposition so we just chill on the ratchet. Its only going to get worse until people grow a spine and stop being tolerant, which is never going to happen.
Man, I know. Too many people didnt understand the point of these events or the cultural icons that spoke about them, and instead chose sides of an imagined political spectrum in North America. Abbie Hoffman and Fred Hampton are rolling in their graves.
…hindsight, for some reason, always appears in 20/20…

What is this from?
They Live.
Yes, but what’s the name of the movie?
No, What’s on second.
Third base!
Brought to you by rich boomers who bought a new car every 2 years. True story.
I never know what kind of car my dad drives because he seemingly always has a new one.
If my new car don’t last me 10 years I’m going be petty pissed off.
Had an uncle who did that, learned it from his dad. I never understood that.
Not doing that either, but from what I understand after two years cars get you the most bang for buck. So economically it makes most sense to trade it in after two years for a new one. But of course you’ll need to keep doing so to keep that *advantage "…
from what I understand after two years cars get you the most bang for buck
If you mean buying a two year old car, maybe. If you mean buying a new car every two years as implied by the previous commenter, absolutely not. Cars lose a ton of value in the first couple years.
Pretty sure he means after 2 years it gets a lot harder to sell. So they’re selling at the moment when they’ve had a “new car” longest.
Not saying it’s a good idea, just that there’s a logic to it.
It only works if you paid for the very first new vehicle in cash. Save up for 2 years and cash out the subsequent vehicles as well. Then the numbers pencil out.
If you to take a loan out it’s fucking stupid.
After 2 years at 10k miles per year, historically you have lost 20% or so of the value of the car. With a 5 year loan you have paid the principle down to around 63-64% of the original value.
This means you can trade in the car for more than what you owe on the loan. The difference is a partial or total down payment on a new vehicle.
Lenders strongly encourage this behavior. Due to the amortization schedule 2/3rds of the interest is paid during the first 2 years. So people who do this with loans are always paying the highest intereston their vehicle.
The best thing to do finacially is to buy a car with 20-30k then run it for as long as possible. Once the cost of a common major repair is more than the value of the car, get another low mileage used one.
What if, bear with me here, what if people just don’t have as much disposable income after the dramatic transfer of wealth to the rich class we’ve been seeing?
The economy is collapsing and the lower classes are feeling it already. The rich investor class isn’t seeing it because the tech industry has been propping up the market with their investments going all-in with unrealistic expectations for AI technology. We are currently experiencing a K-shaped recovery where the richest are on a spending spree while the poorest are cutting back their expenses. How much more obvious must it be that this is what’s going on?
You want the general population to start wasting their money on useless crap again, you’ll have to give them more money to work with.
They’ve also been propping up the market with some sketchy circular deals, swearing up and down they’re not like Enron.
I agree, but I gotta point out the area you’re wrong. It’s the internet after all. So don’t take my hyper-focus to heart.
The investors are absolutely aware. They don’t care if AI has any material value. They will happily invest in a bubble and inflate far beyond what anyone believes is possible. The capitalist system has only evolved to be BETTER for capitalist when the bubble pops. They know this. They literally have lobbies dedicated to ensuring their wealth is protected.
I think we confuse the “irrationality of the market” with the investors being irrational themselves. They are doing exactly what any rational investor would do in an economic system that has been built to favor them.
I’m sure you’re aware of this given your perspective. But I think it’s important to use the right vocabulary to describe this. The problem is not a “broken system” with irrational actors. The system is working EXACTLY as intended and the investors are acting completely rationally within the economic system that has been created for their benefit. This isn’t “bad capitalism” that needs regulation. This is just capitalism.
Bubbles and crashes are not something that investors are working hard to avoid. They are a feature of the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalist are very much aware of them and have ensured they can benefit from them while the working class takes the losses.
I agree with Frank Herberts take on the “power corrupts”: its not power that corrupts people, corrupt systems attract corrupt people.
the poorest are cutting back their expenses
those people have nothing else left to cut back on.
Yes, these people are truly insane. I recently read the following headline:
Rheinmetall shares: Fear of peace shocks investors
(Translated from German, source | Rheinmetall is an arms manufacturer)
wtf
This world is fucked.
They can pry my Galaxy S4 with removable battery and IR blaster out of my cold dead hands. (Thank you LineageOS, because Samsung dropped updates for it a decade ago.)
This guy gets it.
Samsung s20 fe with microsd slot for me. I got comics and audoobooks to download! Let me use expandable storage!
Sitting on the same phone, i don’t know what to do when it dies, really low spec ones got sd slots and a 1500 euro xperia…and thats it. But i like my local files so much
You would need a lifetime of comics to fill even a few dozen gigabytes…
Nope! The power rangers year 1 omnibus is over a gig.
Nah, the 12 dead laptops undef my bed I use for hardware salvage and experiments are device hoarding. The multiple disassembled game consoles in my closet is device hoarding. None of it is sorted, the retro stuff isn’t sorted, the new stuff isn’t sorted.
I’m device hoarding. The average consumer is absolutely not.
Is it hoarding or simply a step of Reduce, Reuse Recycle?
Godspeed, you future museum contributor!
The hope is to eventually open a repair cafe/lounge with the
carcassesdisassembled dead retro units as display piecesMy sibling in Aiyuna, that is a museum with extra steps <3
If you make it there and happen to recall this interaction, I would be glad to hear of it!
In a heartbeat, friend!
“Costing the economy”
Thankfully wealth hoarders aka. billionaires pouring money into offshore bank accounts, unaffordable real estate, government bonds, and inflated stocks are all in our benefit. Only us peasants are being selfish.
If those billionaires wanted to increase the GDP they should pay more so more money circulates.
But they are so generous because they are protecting the rainforest in subsuharen Africa or something. Case closed, no need for tax reform, they know better and are better.
Seriously, the belittling nature of some these billionaires borders on perverse, Bezos mentioned something about how he likes to be looked at like a daddy to his employees.
Can we get a headline about bazillionaires hoarding wealth?
Some journalist should start calling them all Smaug. The problem is a bunch of us asshats would then be like “Smaug did nothing wrong!”
Why should dragons pay tax. He earned that gold fair and square!
#temporarilyembarrasseddragons
Don’t know if it was serious or not but someone did a calculation of Smaug’s wealth and he’s on the lower end of the billionaire class. Like single digits compared to Bezos, Musk, and Gates. A literal mountain of gold is less money than they have acquired.
If you want people to buy a new phone every year “for the economy”, the $1800 phone must be reduced to $50, and the quality stays at flagship levels. The citizens are not here to make the oligarchs wealthy. Fuck your economy.
For real… “device hoarding”. Lol. What about “saving”, “environmentally friendly”, NOT wasting resources for nothing"? No, we need a negative term for that!
Work productivity? That’s a strange way to say “shareholder value”.
Seriously, I remember the days when buying the newest model of phone every year was seen as near parody levels of hyper-consumerism. It was lambasted, mocked, looked down on.
In the meantime EU is forcing manufactures to use replaceable batteries, provide updates for 5 years and spare parts for 7 years.
I had to buy a new phone for work. My current jailbroken one was rejecting the auth app I needed to logon suddenly after an update.
I tried using an older phone using a newer (lineage) OS, no root, but the App kept saying no. I was beginning to lose quite a few working hours on this, and my work said “no” when I asked them for a phone.
So I bought a Fairphone6. Unnecessarily. I’m certain it’s a good phone, with great repairability, and I will probably switch to it at some point in the future if my current phone ever stops working.
But it exists to log me in to work. That’s its sole purpose. I dread to think what I’ll have to buy next if the logon app gets too old on this phone.
Same thing happened to me ounce. I downloaded older version of the app and was able to keep using it.
Also, I’ve checked recently and in my country the employer can’t legally force you to buy devices you need for work. If job requires a device they have to provide it. So it’s worth checking the regulation.
Currently I’m forced to use MS Authenticator app but it works fine with Graphene OS.
All that being said, I also have two phones because my car has Android Auto and I only recently was made available on Graphene. EU has a big issue with dependency on US tech but I think we’re seeing some progress here. They should really focus on Android and force AOSP compatibility on everyone.
Buying an old galaxy s7/s8/s9, oneplus 3/5 or something like that would have cost 90% less and saved a phone from the landfill. Or one with a cracked (but working) screen for 95% less. If all you need is the login process, an old phone with stock firmware would have been good enough.
I have two of those old phones, I flashed the stock but the Android was too low, I flashed the lineage with Android 13, re-locked the bootloader, and the App still fucking said no. Once you’ve opened the bootloader even once, a flag is set in the gsettings.
At that point I wasn’t even sure if my boss was going to let me keep this job, so I just went out and bought a new phone that I knew would be delivered the very next day
If it was a work requirement, it should have been provided by work. Employers passing their own costs down to employees needs to stop.
Agreed, but welcome to the US where people are fearful of losing their health insurance because they got fired after pushing back at their job.
Well, then a S20 or something, still around 100 bucks/pounds/euro and new enough. Not 90% but 75%,still a good deal.
Fairphone seemed like a good longterm purchase. Im tired of collecting phones from family members and ex’s and repurposing them ala lineage or postmarket.
Nokia N900 was the last phone I truly felt anything for. Fairphone seems to have a modular design that might accomodate a similar experience in the future
The Nokia N900 is the only phone I actually have been excited about. Still have the muscle memory.
Same, I remember one long wonderful car trip with my parents through scenic europe where I was staring affixedly at my screen as I learned to write a game in python ncurses for the first time
My company recently took away text-message as a way to 2FA and wanted us to download their app. I told them (politely) that I had an authorization app already that I trusted because it was Open Source (Bitwarden) and could I use that instead of installing a corporate app on my device.
They said no.
Never install your work’s corporate spyware on your own personal device. Rule #1. If they want me to install their shit, they can provide the phone for me to do it.
I saw the phrase the other day and thought the same thing. They should be complaining about the manufacturers “feature hoarding”.
You see, here’s the thing.
When this whole smart phone thing started, smart phones sucked. They ate a lot of power, so the battery didn’t last, they were slow, both in computation, and loading data, the screens were pretty trash (dim, low res, huge bezels)… Everything needed improvements.
Now-a-days, my phone, whether new, or a couple years old, has an all day battery life, it’s pretty quick and snappy, apps load quickly, data appears almost instantly on it, the screen is bright, with minimal bezel area… Nothing I care about changes.
So why am I upgrading? Slightly better camera? Slightly better everything else? Stuff I don’t perceive has been “improved” and I don’t actually give a shit.
My reason to upgrade isn’t there. Currently, my reason to upgrade is: this phone will no longer get upgrades, I should get something that will… For security. That’s it.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
I’d start questioning an economy that relied on getting rid of perfectly good things.
As is right.
The ability to repair your stuff has been all but eliminated. Just throw it away and buy a new one so some billionaire can make more money.
If you turn your phone off at night and just leave it unplugged the majority of the time, it will last for many, many years.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
Hell yes.
Also 1k or more? Fuck that. I usually get 1 to 2 year old phones. My pixel 6 pro is still doing well.
Same. Plus you’re upcycling.
Nothing wrong with that. I might get a pixel 9 second hand to replace my 7 when it finally goes.
Why would I need more? The 9 has what? 5+ years of updates that Google has committed to… So I’ll still have ~4 years of security updates if I switch right now.
I had to buy a new phone recently. There were 4 or 5 different AI bullshit things trying to hassle me, I managed to remove most but one or two I couldn’t uninstall.
It’s been that way for a long time. I went Nexus 6P -> Pixel 2 -> Pixel 6
I don’t break my phones, so I basically buy the device with the longest software support and keep them as long as support lasts.
I’m the same. Went from the Nexus 5x to the pixel, to the pixel 4, to the pixel 7.
I didn’t really like the 5x, they screwed up on that one. Went to the 4 because the pixel wouldn’t get updates anymore, went to the 7 because the 4 lost battery capacity and the local shop I usually use to replace my pixel batteries got bought out by dickheads… They refused to ship a battery in for me, I couldn’t find another shop that would do it, so I just got the 7.
The 7 is still going strong. We’ll see how much longer it lasts though. I expect to replace it sometime next year, but I might go with a used 9 rather than a new 10/11 or something.
Hoarding - i do no think this word means what you think it means. This is the opposite of hoarding, this is reducing the amount of objects you possess
I did think this would be about people like me — I still have my acer phone from 2009

















