It’s totally insane that employers expect me to believe you, poorly paid customer service worker, actually care about what I have going on and aren’t just going through the motions to pay your bills.

I respect the shit out of anyone who can put that show on. I certainly can’t do it.

To be fair, though, I only call customer service when I have a corner case that can’t be answered online and 9 times out of 10 I have to lovingly explain about four or five times what I’m even trying to ask because the customer service person is too busy groaning in their head because they assumed I asked something in the FAQ, cutting me off to answer questions I didn’t ask that don’t remotely help, etc etc.

Calling customer service is so weird. I have to pretend like I don’t know the customer service person hates me, and the customer service person has to pretend they’re my best friend. We all know it’s a sham, and really I don’t need them to care as long as they can hear me out and repeat corporate’s policy on whatever I asked, but it makes the people with money happy and they wouldn’t have it any other way, so we all keep pretending.

Like any new format it’s going to take time for everybody’s software to support it, that’s all.

Idk, as a socialist I look at it as a broadly genuine effort to create socialism that came before its time in a fairly unfavorable place which then failed precisely because the conditions weren’t really favorable plus there were no real historical antecedents so by definition they didn’t really know what they were doing.

It merits study, I don’t hate everything I see from the USSR (free healthcare, free higher education, heavily subsidized rents, and a policy of full employment don’t all seem like bad things) but more look to it as a historical example and less as a model.

In some ways I think it could be compared to the French revolution – it’s not that the French Revolution and its collapse into Bonapartism proved that abolishing feudalism and establishing a freer social order was fundamentally impossible, it just proved that the conditions weren’t really in place in France in the 1790’s.

Then of course the USSR heavily influenced most other revolutions that came after it during the 20th century so now we have mountains of data about how that specific approach just doesn’t seem to be very effective.

It’s more that when you’re learning new material looking at the same concept from a variety of frames can help with memorization/comprehension.

I recall a lot of people struggled with sigma. It’s a step up in complexity from what a lot of people are used to by that point in their math education and rote memorization of the definition didn’t work well for a lot of people.

Also, some ways of looking at a concept are easier to learn than others.

I’m so happy I’m able to harvest kale not only because it’s 2023 and I have to eat like a 17th century Dutch peasant, but, like the peasant, I can’t afford to go to market and buy some.

I remember when a bundle of kale at the store was like a dollar!