Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
this is a very interesting sentence to find in a post that outlines the ways in which the opinion page will be losing some of its editorial freedom.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
In the grimdark future of the 2nd millennium, there is only way.
It’s also gotta be one of the worst sentences I’ve ever read, yikes. Maybe get an editor to look it over.
Hey, I like to think that sometimes I might feel the need to write remarkably similar sentences to the kinds that you, u/bearboiblake might have referenced in this particular editorial expression of human nature and sentiment in America, today.
-You know, badly,
They did. They just looked at it and said “hell yes” while sweating profusely.
Yeah two em dashes in a single sentence is too many, and that one’s got three
Wow, you mean he was an enormous sack of shit the whole time??
Everyone should resign. Or strike. Striking would be better
Interestingly, the Post and the NYT both lean heavily on their Opinion sections to pretend they’re not licking boots. Now the Post won’t have that option.
Y’all, stop buying shit from Amazon, completely. That’s where you start.
Bezos has money because we continue to give it to him. So, the first order of business is to simply stop spending money with him.
As in, forever.
Find an alternative vendor, or even schlep on down to a physical store if you need to.
Would love to see a really comprehensive list of sites that aren’t garbage AI slop scam alleyways that would help cover the goods and services that Amazon acts as a one-stop convenience for. I don’t want to support Amazon, but I also don’t want to get scammed by handing out my credit card info to any old shopping site.
Feel free to add more suggestions in your own replies.
I’ll start :
Electronics : B&H Photo - owned by religious folks so hours of operation are a little odd sometimes, but overall good customer service, fair prices, reliable shipping
Grocieries : Central Market - HEB’s high-tier store chain for high-quality groceries, instead of Whole Foods
Kitchen supplies : Webstaurant - Wholesale store for things like home kitchen goods and supplies, as well as things like flatware and dishes
Thanks
This is only for software, and focused around tracking cookies (or lack thereof), but maybe it can expand to consumer goods: CookieSlayers
B&H photo isn’t just “owned by religious folks”. They staff everything above the warehouse exclusively with Hasidic Orthodox Jewish men.
Afaik they aren’t tied to supporting Zionism. They had some problems a decade ago with safety standards and union busting.
deleted by creator
And their website won’t let you order anything on the Sabbath, which drives me insane. I’m not expecting anyone to be working on the weekend, but computers don’t need to take breaks!!
I want a non profit/open source store aggregator where we can search for what we want like Amazon but direct is to the site with the item we are looking for.
Like pcpartpicker, but for everything!
For software, I started this directory: CookieSlayers
Most of the software there is open source, but not all of it. Nevertheless, it’s about companies/services/products that operate a bit more ethically.
Ooh neat.
Isn’t proton mail run by shitheads though?
I agree, but also they don’t make their money from sales. They make money from AWS servers/ services. I would bet that they lose money or maybe slightly break even on every sale of a physical item.
Yeah, the warehouses are quite badly run.
Edit; I’ve had a beer. In my experience of the one I’ve worked in.
Are any lemmy instances hosted on AWS?
Ugh, that really sucks. I didn’t realize AWS was their bread and butter now.
Even so.
This has actually always been the case. Iirc, AWS was the only profitable piece of Amazon for years. The retail and consumer services arms will never catch up.
Amazon is a server hosting company that happens to sell cheap junk.
All of lemmy shopping Prime is a drop in the oceans of the millions per month my company pays aws
“V0te with ur d0ll4rzzz!!!”
Do you actually think the next best option is actually good? There is no escape from capitalism.
Last time I looked at Amazon’s books, their retail arm was barely profitable. Most of their actual profits came from AWS.
Azure (MS) or GCP (Google) are the alternatives.
Or if you want to avoid Big Tech altogether, there’s DigitalOcean, Akamai, Linode, IBM, Cloudflare, and a handful of other point providers.
You have to be careful as some providers and PaaS use AWS under the hood.
For example Heroku is essentially a nice skin over AWS.
if you want to avoid Big Tech altogether, there’s … IBM
If I had been drinking anything when I read that it would have ended up all over my screen.
IBM used to be big. They still are, but they used to be too.
OIC, too.
The fascism is happening.
Took about a month
I’d say a couple weeks. Keep preparing yourself…
What a pompous cunt.
Washington Post was one of the few marginally respectable journalist organizations remaining. It’s a sad day for the freedom of the press.
Washington Post was one of the few marginally respectable journalist organizations remaining.
lol
marginally
Maybe try looking up this word in a dictionary, it seems like you don’t understand what it means.
What contemporary paragon of journalistic integrity do you subscribe to, if I may ask? Which organization is more respectable than WP?
Buy your axe grinding wheels now before it’s hard to keep them in stock.
I find it important that he writes, that freedom of individuals and markets is important because it is without coercion.
To then go on and write that he tried to coerce his editor to accept the change with a “hell yes” or basically resign. This is coercion. Doesn’t he see this? Is the irony lost on him?
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.
He doesn’t give a fuck about whether his statements reflect reality at all, he only cares that his statements push reality towards being like how he thinks it ought to be, with him in charge and us under his thumb
Ah yes, the “personal liberty” to just accumulate wealth without limits or taxation because that is a “free market”. Never mind Amazon drives on roads built with federal dollars—they are a job creator and everyone should lick their boots for that.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.
Democracy dies in the free market.
There is no such thing as a free market.
Capitalism
Who wants democracy, when we can have an anarcho-capitalist libertarian utopia?
At least guns and ammo will be plentiful because the market will soon demand more.
Ammoseek is pretty good for ammo. Just be careful around the low rated vendors
Thank you. What about good gun deals?
People voted for the leopards, you can’t say it’s not democracy.
In a more democratic system there wouldn’t be president Trump because there would be no presidents. So I disagree with the premise.
The presidency is fundamentally undemocratic, regardless of the quasi-performative democratic ritual by which he is selected.
A real democracy wouldn’t allow a fascist to even run for office. Advocating for fascism and authoritarianism in a republic isn’t a valid political stance. It’s sedition.
Well, if over 50% of votes agree, is it sedition? The American people wanted the treasonous, corrupt, criminal, draft dodger sexual predator as president. We might not like it, but it’s what the majority wanted.
*Plurality and it’s still sedition on the part of the leaders. If you advocate for authoritarianism in a republic then you are inherently advocating for overthrowing the republic. You are advocating for some people to have rights, while others don’t.
It doesn’t matter if a majority of voters want that, they don’t have the right to strip the minority of their right to representation.
All authoritarian ideologies are inherently incompatible with the concept of natural rights
Those who don’t vote make an explicit choice, so it is a majority.
And the fascist, dictatorial intentions were known from the beginning so kind of hard to argue with the result.
People voted to convert the republic to an empire.
I see this comment a lot, and I legit don’t think we did. I think it’s weird how Elon had this team of hackers ready to go for Doge. The weird, “they’ll never know what we did” comment out of his kid who seemed to be imitating Elon in the Tucker Carlson interview, and Trump’s odd vote counting computers comment has me seriously thinking they hacked it. I think they both had their backs against the wall. Trump with his criminal prosecution, and musk with the starlink investigation.
With Elon, let’s start at the smallest issue. Recently Musk has talked about how he’s like the greatest gamer ever and is ranked super high in a bunch of games. Turns out he’s just paying people to grind those games and boost his ranking. He’s so concerned about being on top that he’s willing to hire people to get a top the leader board and lie about how good he is to stroke his own ego. It’s a very small thing, but points to a larger pattern of behavior for Musk.
Now, onto the Ukraine thing. If anyone remembers, he wouldn’t let Ukraine use starlink for an attack because he was “worried it’d start a nuclear war.” Whether it would or wouldn’t was not up to him as the guy selling Internet satellites to the government. He had provided all the starlink kits to Ukraine during a war to help them, and the US was paying it. He was not supposed to be the arbiter of what they could/ couldn’t be used for. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were going to come after him for treason as he actively aided a (then) adversary through this action.
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-ukraine-starlink-russia-air-force-fde93d9a69d7dbd1326022ecfdbc53c2
Trump and Musk had to win, or they were fucked. The guy that worked for Doge happened to make a sketchy ballot counting app which you can read about below that could have been used to disqualify dem ballots.
https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lhowh3ijgs2f
Elon has always found ways around the rules. When his company needed money all of the sudden magically the value exploded. I think he was involved in squeezing the stock price up through the use of call options, and once that happened, they were able to raise money in the form of multiple stock sales. You can read this now 5 year old thread that proves itself time and time again. Do I have any proof Elon was behind this? No, but who has enough money to do something like this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/hk7nqe/tesla_infinity_call_gamma_squeeze/
When the election came in 2024, Elon gave away (illegally I might add) $100 to anyone who registered Republican. There had to be something nefarious going on there too. I would not be surprised if they thought anyone who took them up on that was only doing it for the free money and wasn’t actually going to vote so they cast ballots in their names. Again, I have no proof, but if anyone would have the will to do something so shitty to win, it’d be him.
As for Trump, Jack Smith said they had enough evidence to convict Trump, and only couldn’t because of arbitrary sitting president rules. They have like a 99% conviction rate for a reason.
Trump and Musk are absolutely petty enough to bend / break rules and laws to get what they want, and are going to go all out to avoid prison. I strongly believe that this is not what we voted for, and we are going to be stuck with this the rest of our lives because what is happening cannot be undone, and they will cling to power as long as possible to avoid facing any consequences. They will break everything and fire anyone who was involved in any way shape or form in any of the investigations and will break the system beyond repair to ensure that they remain in power. Elections are still going to happen, but they will never be voted out.
That’s a very well written comment, and Elon and trump certainly have committed more crimes than we can count, but the polls before the election were all pointing to the same result, so trumps victory wasn’t a major upset. I don’t think they hacked the election, I think the people are that dumb.
anarcho-capitalist libertarian utopia?
I hate that edgelord libertarians are trying to rebrand themselves as “anarcho-capatalist”. Anarchy and capitalism are antithetical to one another. It doesn’t have anything to do with anarchy if you aren’t evaluating hierarchy, and capitalism is literally one of the most hierarchical organizational structures possible.
It’s anarchy for the hierarchies, not for the components of the hierarchies
edgelord libertarians are trying to rebrand themselves as "anarcho-capatalist
Actually, American style " libertarianism" IS anarcho-capitalism. They’ve just been trying to keep that a secret until recently.
Anarchy and capitalism are antithetical to one another.
Yes, and no. Anarcho-capitalism is anarchic in the colloquial “no rules, no order” sense, whereas political anarchy very much isn’t.
The stupidity of the term is what makes it apt, though: the people politically illiterate enough to think that a total lack of regulations and worker’s rights would lead to anything resembling freedom also think that the colloquial definition of anarchy is the politically accurate one.
Fun fact: Conservatism was literally invented by a monarchist in the aftermath of the French revolution trying to find a way for an aristocracy to exist within democracy.
I would like to read more about this shitstain, and why I should throw axes at a printed out image of his face. Name and source?
Except England wasn’t a democracy at the time, it was a heavily rigged parliamentary system with a limited franchise, and it could be overridden by the Lords. But yeah, conservatism represented the interests of the aristocrats, in opposition to Englightenment notions like equality, accountability, rule of law and meritocracy.
I at least was talking about Burke, whose most influential work was talking about the French revolution, not the English revolution(s). That one was, at least in the start, a proper democracy.
anarcho-capitalist
So, sociopath.
libertarian
That’s like a narcissist hat on top of a sociopath hat. It’s a hat on a hat.
“free” “market”
He’s basically making the exact same argument as Faux News did, 30 years or more after anyone reasonable realized that they were blatantly lying.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views.
That’s exactly what a journalistic organisation is meant to do Jeff, especially now when the world is increasingly being filled with mouthpieces that regurgitate what their owners want them to.
An organisation that puts out only one opinion, or is only allowed to put out one opinion, is nothing more than a mouthpiece.
Its a shame to see the Post becoming just another mouthpiece.
Among many reasons, I’ll never subscribe to WP again. I used to.
I used to as well. And I’m Canadian.
Never again as long as that asshole owns the paper.
You misspelled propaganda.
Bezos’s exercise of greater control over the Post‘s journalism in recent months has raised eyebrows.
Raised eyebrows? Is mild-washing a word? It should be.
The gall of these billionaires to just buy a news organization and then blatantly state “we’re not going to do news anymore” is just incredible.
Even Rupert Murdock had the courtesy to come up with the Fox News “Fair and Balanced” slogan (even though it was completely full of shit).
Bezos is just like “yeah we’re going full on propaganda, go fuck yourself.”
On the other end, you’ve got billionaire Jeff Lawson rescuing The Onion from private equity hell. I count their revived print subscription as one of the best things I’ve spent money on recently, considering it used to be free.
TBH the honesty is refreshing compared to the historical bullshit.
True, but it was just an internal memo. I’m sure the public-facade won’t be as honest.
Historically, journalism was about sifting through the different things that multiple people say are true, in order to figure out what actually is true.
But now it can just be about what one person says is true, and the internet can figure out what’s actually true!
All of these capitalist propaganda outlets pump out the same imperial message. The firing of this one guy won’t change that at all.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
Just dragging this newspaper into the right wing muck at full speed now
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
“Market of ideas” but you’re only allowed to say what I like
It’s a good thing I stopped bothering with the Washington Post even before Bezos bought it. In fact pretty much every news organization that is owned by a singular entity is completely worthless nowadays.
