Privatize Social Security? … that sounds like an oxymoron - ‘An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction.’

Think about it … let’s pay a private company a fee to support people who need some social assistance … basically, let’s pay a rich guy to pay some of their money we give them to give to the poor and allow the rich guy to monetize and profit from this system as much as possible. What the hell do you think is going to happen?

The American model of using public tax resources … let’s pay rich people to distribute our taxes … let’s pay a middle man for no reason other than to profit to handle how public money should be spent

Sounds like a hawk or eagle … which kind of makes sense since they are originally from the Central Asian mountains where a lot of these birds also live

If I heard that cat sound in the mountains, I would just think it was a bird instead of a cat

We need to make a throne … like the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones … but made out of USB cables

So … what is the leading alternative browser then?

One of the reasons Firefox became so popular was that it was an alternative.

Now that they’re drifting towards something we don’t like … what is the new alternative?

I used to eat that on a regular basis when I was younger … now it’s a meal I reserve about four or five times a year now. If I ate that more regularly, I’d probably be dead or dying within the next five years and if I were still alive after that long, I probably want to die.

What the hell for? If you want to censor the ending of a film after allowing people to watch the whole thing … why not just censor the whole thing and not allow it anywhere. The fact that everyone watched it will now make everyone who saw it want to see the actual ending.

It’s like giving things to a teenager and then telling them they can’t have the last minute, the last inch, the last piece or the last word … you know full well they will do whatever it takes to get that last piece just to spite you.

Haven’t you ever engaged in honourable battle against another opponent with a stick? Many bruises, scratches and scrapes have been endured as well as so many tears from epic battles fought and lost in the woods, parking lots and beaches of the kingdoms of sticks. I was never a great warrior and I have been beaten many times. Stupid Thomas and his dumb stick … I’d beat him again if I had the chance. :(

You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause you picked up a stick that looks like an awesome sword!

How did you become King again?

Now we need to build the Stick Throne … using all the famous sticks that have been defeated in battle.

It works about a well as video editing capabilities from the start of the movie making era from the 1920s onwards. You can make a simple basic straight forward production that can be shared online. It makes great documentaries or just simple straight forward film production that doesn’t require any special effects.

They were able to make full featured films in the 1930s and 40s with far less editing capability. The only limitation is your ability to capture great images and content with your camera and video equipment.

Same here, I have a hard time budgeting most months but I do go out of my way to donate $20-$30-$40 a year to major projects or to sign on to $1-$2 a month contributions.

I think of it from the point of view that I won’t buy that hamburger this week and instead give the money to a developer instead.

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I’ll repeat my comment here to give it it’s own thread
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Nice idea but we shouldn’t associate open source software as “free software”. Yes it can be associated to freedom and freely available but it also suggests that no one ever has to pay for it.

This software even though it is freely available is not free of monetary cost. Someone has to pay for it either with their own money, their expertise or their time … all of which cost people money.

It becomes a whole different level of cost when it comes to open source social media. You need people to run the software, maintain the software, update the software, secure the software … then throw in servers, routing, security … and as instances grow in size you need more hardware, hardware upgrades, updates and people and organizations to maintain it all … at one point in the growth of open source social media, you start to need dedicated full time people to work at maintaining these things.

I’ve chatted with some instance owners and maintainers who say they don’t mind the work because it is limited at this time. Many of them are already professionals with well paying jobs and they don’t mind doing this on the side as a hobby or passion project. However the work is light at this time because there aren’t that many users and the communities are small. But over the past year I’ve noticed more and more instances changing and growing to accommodate a growing user base … it all ends up costing money.

So it isn’t totally “free”

A better and healthier way to see it is to call it “Open source” and remind every one that a critical thing that we should all understand in this new age of open source software is that crowd funding, sponsorship, contributions, donations should all be normalized by everyone who uses this software. And it doesn’t cost that much either. If every open source user just spent a dollar once in a while to the project or software that they used the most or liked the most, then it would add up to thousands of dollars for the developer. The same goes to instance owners and maintainers - we need to properly and regularly fund these guys to keep them all stable and working.

Personally I’ve been contributing for years to projects like Wikipedia, LibreOffice and GIMP … and over the past year or two I’m a small time regular contributor to the instance I use at Lemmy.ca

The danger with just calling it ‘free’ is in making everyone believe that no one has to pay for these services. The danger to not properly funding these projects is that eventually the costs have to be taken up by someone and that is usually the developers themselves or the maintainers or managers. And as popularity and user numbers grow, the costs only add up.

The problem comes when developers and managers have to figure out how to get more money to keep their project alive which is where corporate creep and advertising options start appearing. And also, as one platform becomes popular and becomes too expensive to maintain then it starts showing monetary value for corporations to take over. Corporate rot starts setting in when these projects are not properly funded and kept alive and developers or owners have to make the choice between being underfunded by their userbase … or making a bunch of money by selling out to a company or corporation.

We have to start normalizing funding, sponsorship, contributions and donations because that will protect our communities from being swallowed up by corporate interests in the future. If we don’t fund or pay for these things … some millionaire or billionaire will eventually come along to use their wealth at the cost of ownership and control and eventually lock up everything again behind a wall and a gate.

Nice idea but we shouldn’t associate open source software as “free software”. Yes it can be associated to freedom and freely available but it also suggests that no one ever has to pay for it.

This software even though it is freely available is not free of monetary cost. Someone has to pay for it either with their own money, their expertise or their time … all of which cost people money.

It becomes a whole different level of cost when it comes to open source social media. You need people to run the software, maintain the software, update the software, secure the software … then throw in servers, routing, security … and as instances grow in size you need more hardware, hardware upgrades, updates and people and organizations to maintain it all … at one point in the growth of open source social media, you start to need dedicated full time people to work at maintaining these things.

I’ve chatted with some instance owners and maintainers who say they don’t mind the work because it is limited at this time. Many of them are already professionals with well paying jobs and they don’t mind doing this on the side as a hobby or passion project. However the work is light at this time because there aren’t that many users and the communities are small. But over the past year I’ve noticed more and more instances changing and growing to accommodate a growing user base … it all ends up costing money.

So it isn’t totally “free”

A better and healthier way to see it is to call it “Open source” and remind every one that a critical thing that we should all understand in this new age of open source software is that crowd funding, sponsorship, contributions, donations should all be normalized by everyone who uses this software. And it doesn’t cost that much either. If every open source user just spent a dollar once in a while to the project or software that they used the most or liked the most, then it would add up to thousands of dollars for the developer. The same goes to instance owners and maintainers - we need to properly and regularly fund these guys to keep them all stable and working.

Personally I’ve been contributing for years to projects like Wikipedia, LibreOffice and GIMP … and over the past year or two I’m a small time regular contributor to the instance I use at Lemmy.ca

The danger with just calling it ‘free’ is in making everyone believe that no one has to pay for these services. The danger to not properly funding these projects is that eventually the costs have to be taken up by someone and that is usually the developers themselves or the maintainers or managers. And as popularity and user numbers grow, the costs only add up.

The problem comes when developers and managers have to figure out how to get more money to keep their project alive which is where corporate creep and advertising options start appearing. And also, as one platform becomes popular and becomes too expensive to maintain then it starts showing monetary value for corporations to take over. Corporate rot starts setting in when these projects are not properly funded and kept alive and developers or owners have to make the choice between being underfunded by their userbase … or making a bunch of money by selling out to a company or corporation.

We have to start normalizing funding, sponsorship, contributions and donations because that will protect our communities from being swallowed up by corporate interests in the future. If we don’t fund or pay for these things … some millionaire or billionaire will eventually come along to use their wealth at the cost of ownership and control and eventually lock up everything again behind a wall and a gate.

That is amazing. Most people don’t know how difficult it is bake a good loaf of bread. I make passable plain white bread … it’s good but not great.

Yours is a work of art and something to be proud of. Beautiful!

It’s a modern day worldwide religion … the religion of money. It only exists if we faithfully attend church every week or every day and pray to the gods of finance and hold everlasting faith to the almighty dollar. Our churchs are the banks, ATMs, restaurants, stores, malls and online shopping sites we see every day. Our membership cards carry our prayers in our credit and debit cards. Once the brethen lose faith in any part of it, the whole organization starts to fall apart.

We’ve always been like this. 3,000 years ago it was a golden calf. Today it’s the little numbers counting which god is winning or losing on a stock market website.

beautiful

It was our evolutionary success as a human animal. We were never the fastest, strongest or even the most numerous at the start. But working slowly as a cooperative community, we conquered every liveable space on the planet. We can do the same online.

As an armchair scientist … I have no idea what I’m talking about … but you’re probably right.