Trump is a giant prick. Robert DeNiro is a lesser prick, but an uneducated, stupid, anti-vax prick nonetheless, who should not have the spotlight shined on him any more. Just because the brainless ape happened to say something correct this time, doesn't mean his opinion matters. He's right, but they both suck royally.

The American punitive view vs. a rehabilitative one is terrifyingly real in these comments. It was an awful awful thing that happened, and he should be monitored the rest of his life, but if it is determined by medical professionals (a.k.a. not you) then he deserves to lead a full life, and have the opportunity to contribute to a society that he caused harm too instead of being a cost to taxpayers everywhere for the rest of his life, while he is medicated and able to rejoin society, that harms everyone even more in the long run.

This man should have had the health supports he needed before this ever happened, likely something exacerbated by the US medical system.

Also to dispel some common myths:

• Due to legal fees, it costs significantly MORE to sentence someone to death in the US (sidenote, also one of the few 1st world countries still conducting the backwards barbaric practice), than the cost of them continuing to serve life in prison; it is not the "cheap" option.
• Insanity pleas on average 1) yield longer sentences in mental facilities than similar cases where there was no insanity plea, b) if not successful in getting an insanity sentence yield longer jail sentences on average. From a criminal judicial standpoint, there is very rarely any advantage to pleading insanity, and it's even rarer still that someone actually gets it when they were not in fact insane. The testing, and level of evidence needed far exceeds what you can gather from a casual read and comment online. It is a hugely rare thing legally, we just tend to hear about them as they're represented in the media at disproportionate rates compared to standard trials.

To all my American friends, not shitting on you, you're a wonderful country, of largely wonderful people, but with some bad bad bad policies that I hope will improve in coming years.

Love,

Your hat.

"The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment"

I held on to physical media for a long time, and the legal ownership implications are scary for digital media, BUT the argument of avoiding creating plastic waste at one point outweighed this for me, and I've been all digital ever since, but to each their own. Definitely pros and cons either way.

I would be very interested in an app like this in general that helped you purchase ethically in general, I have to many other things to remember besides all of Nestle's subsidiaries.

No, there isn't.

Do the actual ethical thing and buy a used car. You're putting money back into the hands of actual working Americans instead of companies, contributing dramatically less to climate change by reusing an existing product, you'll get a dramatically nicer vehicle, and save money too.

To try to give you a genuine answer, perhaps because 1) Lemmy is a left leaning environment generally, 2) if you're American, because the majority of the western and 1st world countries are dramatically more left leaning than the US (I live in Canada, and your democrats are more right wing than our main right wing political party)

What a goofy list.

I'm in the fairly niche group preferring digital ownership (although I also strongly feel we need legal revisions and consumer protections over things we digitally own, instead of the "well if this digital shop goes bankrupt, your stuff is just gone", DRM, HDCP hellscape, wild west we're in now) primarily because I'm against the huge amount of plastic and physical materials physical media creates. I am most heavily against the "subscribe to everything, give all the companies your money, and own NOTHING" extra super duper hellscape we're going towards now.

Here's my list that I avoid if and where I can. As with everything, things are nuanced and complex, and it's not like every company I personally boycott is outright bad or good all around. I wasn't going to write down the reasoning for each and every one, but ask away if you want to know about the reasoning behind particular ones. I'll also note, this is 100% not in any order (other than as they came to mind), it was time consuming enough making this vs. ranking them all!

Disney
EA
Volkswagen
Tesla
BMW
Audi
NVIDIA
Nintendo
Google
Apple
Facebook
Shell
Microsoft
X
Discord
Reddit
Old Spice
Costco
Netflix
Spotify
Nestle
Toyota
Tencent
Blizzard
Uber
DuPont
Fountain Tire
Walmart
Boeing
Brave
Princess
Moxies Group
Hewlett Packard
Amazon

On the flip side, companies that while not perfect, I think overall are doing good things that I try to support when I can (if only with word of mouth in some cases):

Valve
Framework
Firefox
Pine64
Raspberry Pi
Hyundai
Lucid
System 76
A&W
Trail Tire
Plex
Amanita Games
iBroadcast
Volvo
Napa
Fairphone

There's probably more I'm missing, I'm a pretty strong believer that companies rule most of the western world and that if individuals want the world to meaningfully improve, we have to vote with our wallets as diligently as we vote at the polling stations.

The degree to which you're wrong is truly astonishing.

As a Canadian, it is my sworn duty to engage in weather based one-upmanship, and thus:

Rain? I live in Edmonton, rain everyday is as liveable as the Bahamas compared the frigid wasteland, PLUS you don't have live with Albertans and their lifted Cummins Turbo Rammins.

Also Ich Iel I guess, I don't know what it means but don't hate me Germans.

Sure, thanks for asking, as with anything, these are my opinions and I hope you form your own as well. My opinions aren't perfect, and none of these companies are outright "good" or "bad".

Haha, you're closer than you think, chemical burned my wife. This one is fairly personal obviously rather than an overarching issue, but there was a class action lawsuit maybe 8ish years ago over a faulty batch, my wife was unable to be involved for compensation since the class action was in the US, but we were applying gauze and antibiotics, and watching her skin goopify and have to peel it off her screaming in the shower, it was pretty awful. Despite reaching out, all we got was a resounding "deal with it bud" from Old Spice. I refuse to ever use their products again.

As a Canadian it really depends whether I say Zee or Zed. Looking online I was surprised to see that it has apparently been Zed in Canada for a long time, but I distinctly recall being raised on Zee until about the mid 2000s then everywhere in the curriculum it was Zed and I started hearing it more. Probably the biggest influence on whether I say Zee or Zed just depends on pop norms, and what sounds better.

Some examples:

• Zee Zee Top, obviously
• Jay Zee
• 350Zed and 370Zed (in reference to Nissan's sportscar models, this actually changed for me over time, for the longest time I would say 350Zee or 370Zee, but when referring to the model broadly, it's always Zee Cars, or for the classic model, it's Fairlady Zee. Fairlady Zed just sounds awful)
• Day-Zee (the movie and video game)
• Dragon Ball Zee (ALWAYS, Dragon Ball Zed would be madness, I've never even considered saying Zed here, perhaps because I encountered it more in my Zee prevalent childhood)
• Zed-DX (the Acura)
• BMW Zed4
• La-Zee-boy (the sofas, obviously, ruins the pun otherwise)
• Alfa Romeo SZed (another car, it seems any time it is separate letters or a series of letter making up a name it's virtually always Zed)
• ABC song, is always Zee for me, but I've heard others say Zed her often. To me it's weird because otherwise it doesn't rhyme with "next time won't you sing with me". Oddly if you asked me to say the alphabet backwards though, my first instinct would also be Zee.
• the phrase "from A to Zee"
• If you asked me what the last letter of the alphabet is, or to spell Zebra, I would say Zee, it seems when referring to the letter alone I pretty consistently use Zee
• I just asked my wife to spell Zebra and she said Zee though

At least the British and Americans are consistent, I don't even know what the heck I'm doing here!

I follow tech pretty avidly, my wife has a steam deck on her christmas+birthday list (they're close so it's a combo). I've intentionally not told her about the refresh and all the goodness it brings, so that I can surprise her with a 1TB Steam Deck that surpasses everything she expected! I've got the whole family pitching in to get it, Valve's timing couldn't have been better!

People far too often argue "Communism/Socialism/Capitalism/etc. is the best economic system, because blah blah blah". Anyone that has played Civilization and has half a brain cell can tell you that there is no single best economic system, as it's so heavily dependent on the structure of a country, current levels of development, and many other factors.

I have always said, that capitalism is very probably the best economic system for rapidly developing countries in a state of industrialization (there was obvious horrific cons to this, but the complexity of discussing the use of slavery, child labour, land repossession, genocide, etc., is a conversation beyond the scope of this simple remark on economics. Consider the dominance of France, Britain, and Spain in 1800 and compare it to the juggernaut that the US became in the next 100 years by 1900, and the benefits of relatively unfettered capitalism during industrializing periods, should be readily apparent given that colossal level of growth from a sparsely populated and undeveloped country in it's infancy in the late 1700s-early 1800s) and is probably the best economic system for this, BUUUUUUT commensurate with the level of automation, and computerized work roles within a society, a more and more heavily socialized economic system makes sense to stymie the accumulation and sole ownership of the automated systems by the wealthy few who profit off of it, while job opportunities dwindle for the rest.

The world needs to socialize more heavily, and fast, the US is in a particularly precarious spot. The number 1 job in nearly every state is truck driver, and there are already autonomous trucks on the road today. Between AI, and autonomous vehicles, we will see what happened to jobs in the automotive sector from 1950-2000, in industries like taxis, truck driving, coding, graphic design, journalism, and much much MUCH more in the next 50 years, and the US is not ready for it's job market to do country wide, what happened in Detroit. The wealthy owners of these automated machines, and AI systems filling these job roles will become richer off of them, while the rest of the country struggles. Heavy socialization, alongside reduced work weeks and either subsequent massive increases in minimum wages, or guaranteed basic income will be a necessity for coming generations to not exist in poverty.

I haven't read The Martian, but Shipwreck by Charles Logan is one of my greatest hidden gems. Not well known at all, I have never heard anyone talk about it. I picked it up for 25 cents at a senior's home garage sale, on a whim and loved it.

The basic plot is that Tansis crash lands on a planet in deep space, the others have died in the accident, and the book starts shortly after the last crew member but him dies. The planet is hostile, filled with a specific plant that has dominated with no signs (at first...) of animal life, and the atmosphere at first doesn't seem safe to breathe. It's a story of isolation, trying to survive, trying to escape, and coming to terms with one's situation. It feels very real, without being extravagant, engaging writing style, and I never quite knew what would happen next even right up to the satisfying (but perhaps not for everyone!) ending.

I really hope you read it, but if not that's okay :)

I feel like that's a bit of a cop out to say "it was good except for the last season". That statement is true, much of GOT of absolutely S-tier stuff, but the last season was also part of the show. That's like saying "that meal I was the best I ever had", and when your friend asks "what about the chef's eccentric decision to put dog feces on the potatoes?", you replying "oh don't get hung up on that, it was the best meal I had, but you have ignore that part", if it was on the plate, it was on the plate.

I adore the first few seasons of Community, but would never in a million years (like Game of Thrones) say it's the best show I've ever seen because they both have garbage parts, that as unfortunate as it is, are legitimate parts of each of them.

I replied above if you want more context for my reasoning. It seems to be one of the more controversial takes on the list, perhaps something for me to reassess!