Japan: Can anything be done to stop population decline?
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    You're talking about the Netherlands? It's 5 days fully paid.

    I can take several months if I want it, but I have to take a 30% pay cut, which we can't afford. Paternity leave in the Netherlands sucks.

    5
  • Japan: Can anything be done to stop population decline?
  • "Initials" by "Florian Körner", licensed under "CC0 1.0". / Remix of the original. - Created with dicebear.comInitialsFlorian Körnerhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearAG
    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    I taught English in Japan (JET) for one year, and at the end I said what a lot of people say: I'd love to visit, but I'm never going to work here again.

    The work culture in Japan is fucked. The fact that the amount of time you spend at work, not your actual output, determines how "productive" you are is so fucking stupid. I worked my contract hours and I was seen as lazy. Despite the fact that everything I was asked to do was always done and done well, the fact that I didn't come in 2 hours early and nap at my desk meant I was lazy. Add onto that the fact that I only got a (generous for Japan) 15 days of nenkyuu (paid days off), which you can't actually use because what happens if you get sick. Sick leave exists, but does it? Does it really? The one time I tried to use it, I was told "it'd be better for everyone if you didn't", and then had to use my nenkyuu anyway.

    And that was me working a pretty privileged position! If I was coming from Vietnam to work in a retirement home, I'm sure the working conditions would be far worse with the threat of deportation looming over my head. Immigration is a band aid at best. As soon as immigrants have the opportunity to move somewhere better, they will of course take that.

    In contrast, I now live in the Netherlands, which shockingly has some of the least generous child benefits in the EU. And yet, we get about 100€/month from the government in support, plus about 50% the cost of childcare paid for. My wife gets 4 months of maternity leave at full pay (I only get 5 days which is super fucked), with up to 3 years at 60% pay with a guarantee of her job being there when she gets back. We each have 25+ days off a year, which are actually used for days off, if the kid gets sick, we can use sick leave to care for it, and sick leave is unlimited. Also, healthcare for children is 100% paid by the government. And with all of that, we're barely in a position to be able to consider having children.

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  • Exemployees of a company, what was your "fuck this shit I'm out moment"?
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    Not me but my partner.

    She was working as a research assistant in a lab for several years. She asked her boss if she could be promoted to a research associate, which was one level above her. She already been doing the job of a researcher (3 levels above her). Her boss said that they were in a hiring freeze and that it wouldn't be possible, but maybe in 2-3 YEARS she might be up for a promotion. Her boss wanted everyone to get the most they possibly could out of their current position before promotion. What my partner heard was that even if she eventually got the promotion to the next level, it might be 5-7 years after that promotion until the next promotion.

    I've never seen her so angry when she came home. She immediately started applying to new jobs in a different field. She also stopped doing work above her pay grade, to which her boss actually tried to retaliate against her. Within 2 months, she moved onto a new job that is 75% WFM, pays more, has a better culture and is in a field where she can much more easily move upward.

    Her former company has started layoffs.

    112
  • Dutch Prime Minister resigns because of deadlock on thorny issue of migration, paving way for new elections
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    No he didn't.

    He's announced he won't be on the party list on the next election, but he's still going to be the caretaker PM until the next election. He's still in office, which again, this terrible article makes it sound like he's not.

    1
  • Dutch Prime Minister resigns because of deadlock on thorny issue of migration, paving way for new elections
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 75%

    This is poorly written at best and outright misinformation at worst. But maybe don't source news about Dutch politics from an Indian news source?

    Anyway, Rutte resigned the cabinet, he didn't personally resign. He said "my government can no longer do its job" not " I can no longer do my job".

    The way this is written it makes it sound like the latter, where Rutte personally resigned, which is definitely not the case. Especially considering Rutte is blaming literally everyone else for his cabinet collapsing.

    2
  • What's one thing you can't stand at all?
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    Where I live it's only legal to use the horn to prevent serious situations, so someone doing this could (and would) be fined by police/eventually lose their license.

    Even in places where this isn't directly illegal, is it illegal to make loud noises after certain hours? If so, that could be a reason to call the police or make some kind of official complaint against the driver.

    Also, have you tried talking to this person? Maybe they don't realize that its disrupting literally everyone (a lot of people forget that other people are not just NPCs).

    1
  • Which do you find more practical, Top box or Side bags?
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    Top box. It's legal to filter forward where I live, and while side bags definitely look better IMO, they add to the overall width of the bike, which makes filtering much harder.

    As it stands now, if I can get my mirrors past two cars, I can get through. If I had side bags, I would be able to tell until after i get stuck.

    1
  • Commuting by car makes people miserable, and the longer the commute the more miserable it makes you.
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    I live in the Netherlands, where a huge percentage of people commute by bicycle.

    People also don't want to go back into the office here either. My work has been begging people to actually come back into the office (another advantage of NL is that worker protections make it really hard to fire people, and firing people who are working hard just not from the place the employer wants is unlikely to be successful).

    So I think this idea is largely irrelevant to cars/driving.

    2
  • "Tipflation" may be causing tipping backlash as more digital prompts ask for tips
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 83%

    I’m not sure if this backlash will actually cause any change because for businesses it’s a win as long as even one person decides to tip and it costs them nothing to have the option on.

    I'm a university lecturer, and this sounds a lot like students who will ask for extra credit/more points because "it can't hurt". And if one of their professors/lecturers gives them extra points one time, it's worth it for those students. To them, it costs nothing to ask, they can only gain, and there are no downsides.

    But there are, just not directly. My students think that the worst thing I can do is say no and their score stays the same. But I can also be less lenient in the future (which I definitely am with grade grubbers). I will also refuse to write letters of recommendation or supervise theses for students that do this shit, because I genuinely don't want to deal with those students anymore.

    You are right that it does not directly cost businesses money to have that option. But it can still cost them in the long run. I know I'm less likely to support businesses that pull this bullshit, especially if they try harder to guilt you. Also, it's increasingly giving the appearance that needing to give tips means that workers are underpaid, so by turning on that option, the business is effectively announcing that they underpay their staff, which is a bad look for the business.

    4
  • I can't believe how sycophants some people are.
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    They can’t get to see content that they used to, and despite not creating it themselves, or doing ANYTHING other than consuming it, they feel entitled to access it, as if it were “theirs”.

    I completely agree with you.

    I was a mod on an advice sub (that I recreated over here), and people would message modmail after posting and say "why is no one commenting on my post". Like, you aren't entitled to free advice, you're asking for it. But people would get legitimately angry whenever they wouldn't get any advice, or if the advice they got wasn't what they were looking for.

    The thing that made me the most angry were the people who would delete their post after getting advice. Like people wrote comments for everyone to read, not just for you, and then you go and defacto make those comments private?

    I fully believe that audience of people does not understand that they aren't the center of the universe and that there are actual people on the other end of comments...

    1
  • Lemmy.world officially has 33k users! 3000 users away from becoming the #1 lemmy instance.
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    but things should normalize after that.

    There's a greater likelihood that the content creators are the ones moving. Most of the reddit power users likely used third party apps. Most of the reddit power users are also the ones who wrote most of the comments worth reading.

    So if on june 1 most of the reddit power users flee, reddit's enshitification will have reached a terminal stage. Eventually, reddit will stop having things worth reading, and the lurkers will all move over.

    I think we're in for a long decline of reddit a la facebook. However unlike facebook, there isn't a market of old people/foreign markets that can fill their user numbers.

    6
  • So... apparently Walmart's closing all of their stores in Chicago.
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    In some areas of some cities, yes. But that's not entirely what's at issue here (though this is what many companies will claim).

    Some US cities are dealing with opiod and homelessness crises which are on a scale that most cities have never faced. The complete lack of a social safety net is creating areas that are, for lack of a better word, overrun. Those areas are functionally devoid of commerical activity.

    I want to be clear that the fault of those who are homeless and those who are suffering from addiction lies predominately with the government and shitty policies enacted over the last 50 years. With that said, it is understandable that people are only going to be in spaces with a lot of homeless if they are 1) homeless themselves, 2) helping the homeless in a humanitarian capacity or 3) harassing the homeless (talking about cops here).

    Combine all of that, and you have areas of cities where customers aren't going to go (because they don't feel safe) and that have a higher proportion of crime (due to the lack of priority of law enforcement).

    I've left the US, by my home town (city) has areas that are just no-go zones. Like, you only go there if you're desperate. And the McDonald's in that areas has long shuttered because they weren't making any money and they were dealing with a bunch of issues caused by vandalism and attacks on their employees.

    The US is showing what happens if you have no social safety net.

    10
  • let's cut the "Reddit" circle jerk and start actually making content
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 88%

    That's not how any of this works...

    Communities (as you put, sublemmy) can't be individually federated, only instances can be. And needing another account is a sign that you are looking at a post on the wrong instance, not a sign that an instance is not federated. In fact, finding out an instance is not federated can be pretty difficult unless you check the list of instances that are defederated on another instance.

    That's not a universal link, so you ended up on a different instance. A much simpler and easy explanation than what you came up with.

    7
  • Reddit CEO learns going to war with the internet is a LOSING battle
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    My NFL team last year gave up its franchise quarterback, and the subreddit basically only talked about the former QB for the entire preseason, and then still talked about it for half the season. Then it died down. And before the protest, he wasn't really talked about all that much.

    Reddit is still fresh in people's minds. It will go away. In the early days of reddit a LOT of people talked about digg, but within a few months it just wasn't mentioned much anymore.

    A lot of people here spent years on our ex-platform. It's going to take some time to get that out of our system. In the meantime, enjoy the shadenfreude!

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  • How the beehaw defederation affects us
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    I was a mod on an advice sub on reddit, this is a terrible idea.

    It was enough work as a mod to sift through things that actually needed to be reported. For advice, downvotes are needed to express when something is genuinely bad advice. It can't be up to mods to sift through every single comment, that'd be impossible.

    6
  • Reddit CEO Digs In Heels As User Outrage Engulfs Website
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    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    Just fyi, when posting links to communities, you should just use the "/c/" without the link to the instance. Like this: /c/mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml

    This is similar to how those links were done on reddit (/r/). The problem with your link is that it is instance specific, which is really helpful for anyone in your instance, but anyone in a different instance will be thrown out of their instance if they click it (they'll be unable to subscribe).

    31
  • Why do I still see new post from Beehaw even though they defederated with us?
  • "Initials" by "Florian Körner", licensed under "CC0 1.0". / Remix of the original. - Created with dicebear.comInitialsFlorian Körnerhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearAG
    AgentGoldfish
    Now 100%

    I explained this in my post: https://lemmy.world/post/149743

    Those communities still exist on this instance, they just aren't synced. You can see new posts from only lemmy.world users. Any posts/comments you make are not shared within the wider lemmyverse.

    Effectively that community is a zombie community on this instance. Just unsub from that community, it's useless to you unless behave decides to refederate.

    44
  • ou might have seen that we've been defederated from beehaw.org. I think there's some necessary context to understand what this means to the users on this instance. ## How federation works The way federation works is that the community on beehaw.org is an organization of posts, and you're subscribed to it despite your account being on lemmy.world. Now someone posts on that community (created on beehaw.org), on which server is that post hosted? It's hosted on both! It's hosted on any instance that has a subscriber. It's also hosted on lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, etc. Every instance that has a subscriber is going to have a copy of this post. That's why if you host your own instance, you'll often get a ton of text data just in your own server. And the copies all stay in sync with each other using ActivityPub. So you're reading the post that's host on lemmy.world, and someone with an account on beehaw.org is reading the same post on beehaw.org, and the posts are kept in sync via ActivityPub. Whenever someone posts to that community or comments on a post, that data is shared to all the versions across the fediverse, and these versions are kept in sync. So up until 5 hours ago, they were the same post! ### "True"-ness A key concept that will matter in the next section is the idea of a "true" version. Effectively, one version of these posts is the "true" version, that every other community reflects. The "true" version is the one hosted on the instance that hosts the community. So the "true" version of a beehaw.org community post is the one actually hosted on beehaw.org. We have a copy, but ours is only a copy. If you post to our copy, it updates the "true" version on beehaw.org, and then all the other instances look to the "true" version on beehaw to update themselves. The same goes for communities hosted on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml. Defederation affects how information is shared between instances. If you keep track of where the "true" version is hosted, it becomes a lot easier to understand what is going on. ## How defederation works Now take that example post from earlier, the one on beehaw.org. The "true" version of the post is on beehaw.org but the post is still hosted on both instances (again, it has a copy hosted on all instances). Let's say someone with an account on beehaw.org comments on that post. That comment is going to be sent to every version of that post via ActivityPub, as the "true" version has been updated. That is, **every version EXCEPT lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works**. So users on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works won't get that comment, because we've been defederated from beehaw.org. If we write a comment, it will only be visible from accounts on lemmy.world, because we posted to a copy, but our copy is now out of sync with the "true" version. So we can appear to interact with the post, but those interactions are ONLY visible by other lemmy.world accounts, since our comments aren't send to other versions. As the "true" version is hosted on beehaw, and we no longer get beehaw updates due to defederation, we will not see comments from ANY other community on those posts (including from other defederated instances like sh.itjust.works). The same goes for posting to beehaw communities. We can still do that. However, the "true" version of those communities are the ones on beehaw, so our posts will not be shared to other instances via ActivityPub. And all of this is true for Beehaw users with our communities. Beehaw users can continue to see and interact with Lemmy.world communities, but those interactions are only visible to other Beehaw users, since the "true" versions of the Lemmy.world communities (the ones sent to/synced with every other instance) is the Lemmy.world one. Communities on other instances, for example lemmy.ml, are unaffected by this. Lemmy.world and beehaw.org users will still be able to interact with those communities, but posts/comments from lemmy.world users won't be visible to beehaw.org users, as defederation prevents our posts/comments from being sent to the version of these posts hosted on beehaw.org. However, as the "true" version is the one on the third instance, we can still see everything from beehaw.org users. So we see a more filled in version than the beehaw users. ### Why can I still see posts/comments from beehaw users? Until they defederated us, posts/comments were being sent to lemmy.world, so we can see everything from before defederation. After defederation, we are no longer receiving or sending updates. So there are now multiple versions of those posts. ### Why can I still interact with beehaw communities? This won't ever stop. You'll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won't see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities. Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we're only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they're pretty pointless for us to be in right now. ### Why do I still see comments from beehaw users on lemmy.world communities? Again, comments from before defederation were still sent to us. After defederation, it will no longer be possible for beehaw users to interact with the "true" version of lemmy.world communities. Their posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. They also aren't getting updates from any other lemmy, as the "true" version of those communities is on our instance. ### Why do I see posts/comments from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org? That's because the "true" version of those posts is outside beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn't defederate beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on lemmy.world. The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of the post. ### This seems like it's worse for beehaw users than for us? Yes. In my opinion, this is an extraordinarily dumb act by the beehaw instance owners. It's worse for beehaw users than for us, and will likely result in many beehaw users leaving that instance. They said in their post that this is a nuke, but I don't think they fully assessed the blast area. Based on their post, I don't think they fully understand what defederation does.

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    IWantOut AgentGoldfish Now 100%
    Ok, let's build it again!

    The old IWantOut community was great for getting advice. Let's put together a new community to help us all get to where we want to go. Until more people join, I'll do my best to answer questions based on my own experience.

    7
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    "Initials" by "Florian Körner", licensed under "CC0 1.0". / Remix of the original. - Created with dicebear.comInitialsFlorian Körnerhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearAG
    Now
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    AgentGoldfish

    lemmy.world