c/Superbowl

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I pretty much only knew the name and that he was a right wing propagandist like a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson or the like.

    The vast majority of people I don’t think really loved or hated him as actively as they are doing right now. This is just a moment for both sides to radicalize over what they see as either proof the conservative haters are all violent and need to be dealt with in kind, or for those that do want anti-conservative violence to call it “a good start.”

    I feel he met an end that isn’t really much of a surprise, as he encouraged “his people” to oppress others and/or yo provide extreme reactions from his opposition. He encouraged violence, but it backfired on him.

    Never paid him much mind before and not planning to start now. I am worried about what unrelated people are going to suffer the vengeance for one random person’s actions.

    My feelings on the public’s general reaction is it’s a more extreme version of what happens when a celebrity dies that most people probably already thought died years ago. People talk like they were the greatest thing ever when they either never watched the movies before or hadn’t seen them or thought about them in ages. They’re just fired up as an excuse for attention or to push an agenda.

    But as I said, never listened to the guy, so I may be a little off, but he was filed under radical conservative in my mind and that was good enough for me.



  • I feel it more wanting to see it as a black and white issue than something with a ton of nuance. This deal had to have been complex, and for whatever reason they willingly sold to Unilever, I doubt any of us commenting here will ever understand. I wouldn’t want to be in their situation.

    If people want to point out areas where they think they could have done better, let’s discuss it. But all we tend to get is “rich people bad.” I won’t totally disagree with that statement, but it seems like they have also done a lot of good for Vermont and beyond. They’ve given over 70 million in grants, but so what, right? Why not 71 million?!

    I just think we’ve got better people to be mad at now than some hippies that went corporate. To just write off what they did because they got personal benefits as well is likely hypocritical. I never see these screen names talking about what direct action they’re part of or what solutions they’ve got. A little funny how that is.

    If they want to complain or downvote, that’s their prerogative, but I bet it won’t accomplish as much good as what Ben and Jerry have done. 😉


  • I did, and that was why I felt it was a decent source.

    The article is dispelling the part of the mythos, created by the public with some help from Ben and Jerry, that the sale was purely a legal issue of that they were forced to sell due to (mistakenly, according to the author’s take) believing they had to do what the majority of shareholders wanted them to do, which was to sell to Unilever, as their stock had lost 50% of its previous value.

    That may be true or not, I’m not a business lawyer. But the law itself wasn’t so much the interest I had in this source. With it being written as a legal paper, I’m going to lean that the background they are giving is pretty impartial facts on what actually did take place. The history of the sale and why it occured is what is relevant to the point I’m attempting to make here, disagreeing with people say Ben and Jerry deserved this treatment from Unilever for being sellouts. That’s a moral and ethical argument, not a legal one, so all the legal stuff here is moot to the conversation I’m having.

    The Ben and Jerry’s shareholder and Unilever prior to the buyout both wanted to ax the social missions of the founders to keep those profits for themselves. In response, they reached what they felt was a deal beneficial to all 3 parties, themselves, the shareholders, and Unilever, who was going to buy the company one way or another. In return for cooperation, Ben and Jerry ensured their social programs lived for another 25 years. My thoughts are that is a positive accomplishment and that rather than being greedy stakeholders, they extended their contributions to the betterment of society, while making Unilever do that, the exact opposite of what they would have done on their own. You guys want to crap on them, but they did an additional quarter century of good, at least partly at the expense of a megacorp that would not have done so. This is the kind of thing all you guys cheer here, but when executives do what you talk of doing, you still badmouth them.

    Leftists have no bigger enemy than gatekeeping leftists. Ben and Jerry have given over $70,000,000 away, and I’m sure a good chunk of that was taken out of Unilever at this point. How’s that a dick move on their part?


  • Why are so many people here mad at Ben and Jerry while they tried to do the best they could?

    The decision to sell sounds a lot more grey than comments are playing it off as. If people want to debate if they ever should have taken the company public that’s one thing, but B&J seem to have tried to make the best of their financial and legal situations while being beholden to shareholders, and laws that would have helped prevent being sold to Unilever didn’t exist in Vermont until over a decade after the sale.

    Instead of being forcefully bought out, removed by Unilever, and had all their social agendas canceled immediately, they made a deal to continue to be able to serve in some capacity after the acquisition. They remained active with the company for 25 years, so they seemed to do a lot with their “empty promise” they were given by Unilever.

    This is the summary I read on the story of their sale to Unilever. It doesn’t really support one side or the other, so take what you will from it, but treating them like jerks really doesn’t feel called for.





  • Was listening to a podcast this morning discussing BlueAnon and why people believe in conspiracy theories so readily. There was a quote discussing actively believing or non-believing being so much more attractive than basic disbelief. The activity makes us feel like we have some power or control over a situation instead of it just being an immutable way things are.

    There was a decent bit of sympathy for the conspiracy believers, because many of them just are grasping for some shred of hope, as unbelievable as it may be. If our choices got us into our bad situation, surely if we make better choices, we can get ourselves out. If we think 99% of us are systematically entrapped in an oppressive system led by the most powerful, where is our hope?

    The article was not as hopeless as I expected, which is a little reassuring. It was just slightly over half saying homelessness is an individualistic issue, while 40+% said it’s systematic, so we’re not too far off the deep end. The victim blaming leans hard conservative, as you probably suspect already.

    Seeing the homeless can be bothersome to people for a variety of reasons, but I’d have to think if you’re also part of the same group that leans against removing those social safety nets while also being in the same group that limits workers protections and preventing us from having healthcare provided to us as a human right, there’s some self-aware part of the subconcious that knows they’re one misstep, accident, or medical event from them being there, and seeing these people can be a painful reminder that those face-eating leopards are out there waiting.




  • Article says there’s a pepper ball launcher and a glass hammer, so this thing is mainly for surveillance and mild distractions, which is much better than I was prepared to read.

    "Currently, an officer’s job is to run toward gunfire, alone, with no support or intel—basically a standoff. With our drones, they’re not alone; they know what the suspect looks like, what they’re doing, and we take point around every corner.

    “We usually find the shooter before they do and keep them occupied. Every officer who’s seen this live has said they want it.”

    If this actually encourages them to do their jobs, great. If this is just a kickback to private industry and further militarizing schools while police still sit cowering, than I know where they can dock those drones…


  • I very valid question with a very valid answer.

    I’m sure Meta dislikes my use case, as I’m basically a data miner. I have a profile that I haven’t contributed to in probably 5 years or so, I don’t post or upload. I was going to delete my account around the time I moved over here to Lemmy, but I started posting to the Superbowl community as it was fizzling out already. I shared what handful of photos I had, but I soon ran out.

    I started getting stuff from various sources like Flickr and eBird and the news, but I started getting really interested in wildlife rehab. As charities, Facebook is still the way to go to promote charities since it’s free, widespread, and easy and quick to use. When every penny, second, and view counts, what beats Facebook for that?

    Now my feed is basically nothing but animal rescues and wildlife photographers (and increasingly AI) and I curate (steal) the good stuff and bring it to you all here without Zuckerberg getting his mitts on your data and the original source still gets all the credit.

    Doing that and seeing the positive stories lead me to volunteering at my local rehab this year and it’s been lifechanging. So there is still some good that can be taken from it if one puts in the effort, but you still shouldn’t because it’s Meta and they’ve got the ick. So let me do it for you. I’ve already taken the hit and shared enough stuff, so now I’m going to siphon their stuff like they want to do to us, but I do it to promote wildlife rescue.

    It’s not like any of the rescues particularly love Facebook that I’m aware of, they just want people to exist and know they need volunteers and money. Photographers want to promote their work or sell prints or their guided tours. I pass all that info along to you guys so you can find them on whatever platform you want. It’s not like I want to take any credit for it, I want you guys to support them, but if you guys won’t touch Facebook, they lose out. But I’ve dedicated hundreds of dollars and 100+ hours this year because of my sharing content, one or 2 of my subs have become volunteers, and hopefully a handful of others have kicked in something to their local rescues.

    So Facebook can still provide some stuff, at the cost of privacy, but if I can extract the good and leave the bad behind for my 5000 subs, I feel that’s me doing something good.





  • Unfortunately I spent more time watching him for anatomy lessons than taking his fitness advice! 😂

    Guy seems very legit, gives away so much help and info for free, good sense of humor. I love seeing the internals of movement on the skeleton, especially things like impingement, and then the demos with his body or an assistant so you see what you’d see watching yourself do movements. I’m glad to see he’s still doing his thing.




  • Yeah, it may be more than coincidence since it started this year. I try not to worry about things beyond my control, but it’s been hard to look anywhere lately and not see something dark.

    I’ve had to learn how to deal with things in healthy ways since “getting better” and this may just be the hardest situation I’ve come on since then.

    Some of my stressors should be going away soon, and I have a few vacations coming so perhaps relief is near.