Foxconn employees in particular are very well protected:

…from the ground.

“Failing to meet a quota or making a mistake can draw public condemnation from superiors. Workers are often expected to stay silent and may draw rebukes from their bosses for asking to use the restroom.”

https://wonderfulengineering.com/story-life-death-apple-forbidden-city/

The installation of suicide nets reflects a broader commitment to employee well-being and mental health within the tech industry.

https://wheelermethodist.org/religion/suicide-nets-apple/

Yeah, say that with a straight face.

Every silver lining has a cloud.

I want to get off Mr. Bones’ wild bridge

If this is true:

If you report the message it then the full text gets sent to WhatsApp.

That means there’s a software switch that dumps a plaintext copy of a supposedly encrypted message when flipped.

Therefore, all you need to read any WhatsApp message is the ability to flag the message as “reported”, and access to wherever the plaintext copies get sent.

Considering how often security is an afterthought for corporations, the access part is probably easy.

So… anyone with access to the report API can read any message they want?

The Century of Self - documentary by Adam Curtis

The Century of Self, by Adam Curtis, discusses the emergence and rise of psychoanalysis as a pivotal means of persuasion for corporations and governments. It covers the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, as well as PR consultant Edward Bernays. The series reveals how those in positions of power have used Freud’s theories to influence and control the public.

…until the next time we decide that you need to do a ‘one-time’ license check.

All of human language and culture is “made up”, that doesn’t make any of it less consequential or “real”.

I don’t know man, prepping to run a session can be a lot of time and effort. Between the rapidly rising cost of living and the very troubled job market, if someone can help pay their bills by DMing a few sessions I don’t see a problem with it. People need to eat.

I think there’s a lot of demand out there right now for more human entertainment. A TTRPG is a lot more personal than playing a video game, and people want that, but not everyone has a friend group that includes a DM.

I think a lot of what is currently happening is a consequence of the COVID years. People were isolated for long periods, and a lot of small businesses that provided social meeting spaces collapsed. Post-COVID, people want to go back to socializing but so many local restaurants and other such places shut down, and it seems like habits changed too. People don’t go out as much as they used to, and there are fewer places to do it, so it’s a lot harder to meet new friends as an adult.

At the same time, a lot of people lost their jobs and didn’t get them back. They had to find other ways to support themselves and their families, and the rising popularity of D&D in particular (I think largely due to content on YouTube from Critical Role &etc) has created an opportunity for that.

The TTRPG space is changing for sure, and it’s growing. I can tell by looking at the shelves in my local game stores, there’s more and more books for non-D&D RPG games. Plus, there are groups like Legends of Avantris who are now producing their second D&D module, for which they’ve hired a bunch of artists, musicians and other creative people to help with.

I don’t have a problem with the idea that the growing popularity of roleplaying games is producing more opportunities for writers & artists &etc to make a living.

It’s literally the end of thirties.

[ Dennis, 1975 ] Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!

These people are cartoon villains.

Well for starters Thich Naht Hanh has written a lot of books. Personally my next recommendation would be No Mud, No Lotus. There is a fair amount of conceptual overlap between his books, so it’s probably not necessary to read every book he’s written unless you find his specific philosophy compelling and want to emulate it.

I think of Being Peace as a good entry point for a person looking to change their mindset, a sort of reset. It’s good guidance for getting some control of the emotional noise of daily life, especially anxiety, fear and anger.

A good next step is Getting to Where You Are by Steven Harrison. This has practical guidance for regular meditation as a practice, without any of the mysticism. It is a signpost on the path to self-regulation and self-acceptance (but I think not the best starting point if you don’t already have some grounding in mindfulness and meditation).

After the others, I think Journey Without Goal by Chögyam Trungpa is worthwhile. This one does lean heavily on the religious background of its philosophy, and I think it’s necessary for the reader to know what they’re looking for while reading it, to understand the mythology as allegory. The value of this book is in changing your concept of how life might be lived entirely, a sort-of restructuring of your perspective on existence and your path through it. I don’t think it should be jumped into without an established foundation of meditation practice. Frankly, if you haven’t already established patience within yourself and built that place of internal calm, and taken at least some steps toward self-understanding and self-acceptance, this won’t do you any good. I think it’s important to note that in spite of the title, some people heard this message and believed that it was a pathway to enlightment as some sort of end goal. No such thing is promised, and if you go into it expecting that you will get lost.

So yeah,

1. Being Peace - find calm, and begin meditation practice
2. Getting to Where You Are - self-acceptance, and refine your meditation
3. Journey Without Goal - self-knowledge, and looking forward

…in that order.

Some other books I’d recommend which kind of extend these ideas:

• Rules For A Knight by Ethan Hawke
• The Analects (of Confucius)
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

I think that change only comes through a big, imaginative idea

This seems overly optimistic to me. I think the historical record demonstrates that broad sociocultural change primarily happens after some great destructive crisis (war, famine, plague, etc) during which the status quo breaks down and a lot of people die, and the survivors have to pick up the remains and try to patch some form of society back together like a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces have been burned in a fire.

Sometimes, the survivors get together and try to imagine a better future, saying to themselves, “we don’t want our children to have to go through what we just went through.” More often, the person or people with the most resources left after the crisis take control, attempt to form society such that it sustains and increases their current power, and repeat the same old cycles of exploitation and selfishness.

Or, hope and fear/despair are two sides of the same coin.

Yes, and both only produce anxiety - either in despairing over what might happen, or hoping over what might not.

It can be difficult to explain why you doing orient your life around something like hope though.

If I understand what you mean, I disagree. Orient your life around something rational. Planning will do you better than hoping, any day of the week.

I suppose, but only if you consciously recognize it as a form of self-therapy (which I would still just categorize as meditation) and don’t expect anything practical to come from the prayer session (which is what most people mean by the term prayer - asking a higher power for help - and which I would categorize as delusional).

Self-determination. It is an individual’s choice to be selfless or selfish, and it is the fact of making that choice independently, without the expectation of reward, that makes the selfless behavior laudable. Similarly we can condemn selfish behavior, but not necessarily criminally prosecute such behavior.

In either case, other people do not get to decide whether the individual in question is allowed to behave that way, at least not preemptively.