It’s ok for symbols to have different meanings in different contexts. If someone is new to the context, they should research or ask about it. People that are familiar should provide the mutual understanding, provided they have the will and ability to educate.

The meme doesn’t make sense to me either, but I can tell you that the person in the second panel is Michael Parenti, a highly regarded communist historian known for analyzing history through class struggle. The quote in the 3rd panel is a famous one from his lecture about the US War against Yugoslavia:

• Cited quote
• Full lecture

Africa is rich! Only it’s people are poor. There are still problems in Africa today, there are still outrageous things happening today. ‘“Building your own pharmaceutical factories in Sudan” where do you think you can get off where you think you can do that, when you should be buying from the multinational pharmaceutical.’

Take the case of India. India was a rich, advanced, developed country. Until the British went in 1800. Between 1800 and 1830 the Indian textile industry, which was outperforming the British textile industry, was dismantled and the great industrial centers were de-industrialized. The people were sent back out onto the land to grow cotton for the factories in Manchester and London. Between 1850 and 1900, the per capita income fell by 65%. So that poverty in the third world, that so called ‘underdevelopment’ … These countries are not underdeveloped, they were overexploited- they’re maldeveloped.

I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.

We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.

Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.

It would violate my NDA to say anything more than: yes, all of the software I’ve helped develop use the name of mythical creatures during development

The US has the WARN Act, which requires 60 days’ notice or 60 days’ pay if at least 500 employees or 33% of the workplace are getting laid off (whichever is smaller). It’s a threadbare legal minimum on severance, but there is a minimum.

Don’t wait for a layoff, start organizing a union for that juicy ‘represented’ employment status (as opposed to at-will). Unions can’t stop layoffs, but they can minimize the impact, negotiate a higher severance, and provide advanced notice. I highly recommend the good folks at CODE-CWA, they specialize in organizing tech workers

Whatever it is, it isn’t worth it

I’m not talking about what could be. I’m talking about the political reality that surrounds us.

Maybe not the government or citizens, but war helps the congress members, the CEOs of the military industrial complex, and their families fabulously wealthy.

The West Bank would turn into a “cash economy” that could benefit terrorist organizations that largely use cash to operate, the G7 official said.

This is exactly what they want. It’s part why Hamas exists, because Israel intentionally created it and molded it into an extreme militant group. Who knows how long they will wait, but Israel is going to invade the West Bank with this excuse.

I highly recommend the online book How to Think Like a Computer Scientist.

Fun fact, the person maintaining this book is professor emeritus from my college and received multiple awards of recognition from the IEEE

They have a debian based version, it’s pretty awesome. It’s still a beta fork atm, but it’s rock solid so far

If game companies stood to make no money, why would they bother with such a large production?

I’m a games industry professional. I would continue to do this work as an unpaid job if my basic needs were met on a societal level.

You think you’re asking a neutral question, but you’re not. Companies operating within capitalism will behave in the interests of capitalists. IP laws aren’t required for the AAA studios other than to domineer control over an idea. A game like Call of Duty is a titan made by 1000s of professionals. One of those games gets launched every year. By shear force of momentum, there are very few companies that could ever replicate it in any fashion.

Now imagine if COD was made by a company in which IP didn’t exist, all the profits went to the workers rather than shareholders, and that the workers have a say in the launch schedule. Would you be willing to pay for a game in that instance?

My workplace offers a mental health benefit similar to this, we inform HR that we’ve scheduled a mental health appointment during work, tell our manager that we’re stepping away for an hour, and then return to work after the appointment. It would be a good idea to ask someone in your company how to use your benefit.

I’ll be the first person to remind you that HR is not your friend, but this is exactly what they exist for

I use the app opentask. Based on your criteria, it’s exactly what you’re looking for. It’s all stored locally on your phone, it has the ability to set recurring tasks, and you can create categories of preset and custom tasks. Deadlines can be set as far into the future as you need, down to the minute. It’s available on F-Droid.

Content moderators are superexploited. These employees primarily work from African countries like Kenya, so there’s a whole second layer of neo-imperialism that I won’t get into right now. They’re given poverty wages, sometimes as low as $1.30/hr. Because they’re content moderators, they have to look at images and read descriptions of traumatic events without respect for mental health. OpenAI, Amazon, and Facebook have engaged in aggressive union busting tactics for these workers as well, though workers were still successful in organizing one of the largest labor unions in Africa.

• https://www.medianama.com/2023/07/223-kenyan-workers-call-for-investigation-into-exploitation-by-openai-3/
• https://time.com/6296196/ai-data-gig-workers/
• https://futurism.com/the-byte/african-workers-openai-training

You’re probably out of luck trying to convince this person of your opinion. However if it comes up again and you want this person to walk away, I’d recommend mentioning the horrible working conditions that content moderators have to go through. Contrarians don’t like unassailable facts.

Consider pixelfed, the fediverse alternative to Instagram

It’s only guaranteed to work with pixels. It still works with other phones, but with varying degrees of success and obviously no official support.