Look! I made a meme!
Everything is feeling slightly more dystopian than yesterday, but this brightened my day:
Software firm Adobe received a less-than-hospitable reception from the community after debuting on fast-growing X alternative Bluesky.
Users seemingly lined up to roast the Photoshop and After Effects maker after it made an introductory post on the platform earlier this week, which asked artists, designers, and storytellers: “What’s fueling your creativity right now?”
“Y’all keep raising your prices for a product that keeps getting worse,” one user commented in response to the post. “You aren’t a monopoly anymore, y’all need to adapt.”
“I assume you’ll be charging us monthly to read your posts,” another user wrote.
Adobe deleted all their posts and has since fucked off. I love that for them.
One of the real problems right now is that one reason so many of these billionaire douchebags are all fawning over Trump is because that is the culture they come from at their organization. That they created. None of them has anyone telling them no, and all of them are surrounded by obsequious toadies. They are all used to seeing everyone suck up to the boss, so now they are. It’s that way with the corporations with rare exceptions- hell Zuckerberg has probably pissed away 50 billion on metaverse and no one looks like they are gonna stop them from losing more. Unfortunately, it feels that way about most everyplace, including universities and law firms and, well, everywhere.
To them, this is normal. It reminds me of one of those hackneyed scenes from an 80’s movie involving Americans doing business with the Japanese and there was an obligator groveling scene when one of the Japanese underlings fucked up. I mean, it looks that crazy to you and me, but to these guys and a lot of people like them, it must be normal to them. Every day I have multiple “Did that really just happen did they actually just say that?”
Everything is so upside down and just bizarre. And while I know it is very real and think so lowly of my fellow humans that I should know better, but every now and then I catch myself thinking “this can’t really be happening, right? Like this is gonna stop, right? People are going to rise up, right? Republicans electeds are eventually have enough, right?”
But they won’t and as I have said repeatedly it is going to get worse and worse and people will adjust and get used to it and that will keep happening until something finally breaks the cycle and people rise up. Who knows when or what happens between now and then. Will we set off a rogue nuke. Will we start extraditing elected Dems to El Salvador. I bet we have already burned 1000’s of CIA assets. Who knows? I mean if they pass SAVE and 70 million women can no longer vote I would think some shit would hit the fan. But christ I thought abducting and illegal rendering people would never happen.
We’re dealing with a generation of right wingers who watched Abu Ghraib and all they learned was “We should do more of that and we should do it on Americans.”
I really do not want to go back to WV, but I must. I spent decades in that state but instead of feeling like I am going home, I feel like I am going behind enemy lines. On the other hand, it is very beautiful this time of year and I really miss trees and the birds, so that will be nice.
Oh, well. Talk to you tomorrow.
War for Ukraine Day 1,146: The Only Permanent Peace Putin Wants is a Piece of Ukraine & That Piece is Ukraine
Melancholy Jaques
I am going to visit my home state Ohio this summer. I am going with the same feeling.
Halteclere
I don’t get the meme, and I’m in my early ’50’s
Splitting Image
I love Adobe.
I have Windows XP installed in a virtual machine set up on my computer and the entire CS3 suite runs flawlessly in the VM, so it’s all there whenever I need it, and it all works just as well as it did when I used it for work 20 years ago. Yay for well-made products.
I occasionally have to use their more recent shit at work, but I avoid it as much as possible. The only program we use regularly anymore is Acrobat, and even for that almost all of our work is done through third-party plugins.
Enshittification sucks.
RevRick
The only thing any of us can really do, even if the world is plunged into political darkness for a thousand years, is plant seeds of hope where we can. I refuse to submit to ugliness and lies. And if there are mass demonstrations, like Hands Off, I will show up in my clerical robe and stole.
Jackie
JC, maybe this trip back home will help you decide where “home” really is.
I don’t think you’ve left WV; I think it’s possible WV has left you?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Melancholy Jaques:
Were you going to be able to make it for the Ohio meetup next month?
geg6
Watched a YT video of Tim Miller interviewing my congresscritter, Chris Deluzio. I found it a bit comforting. We have some really good young people fighting the good fight besides the ones that get all the press. Courage!
https://youtu.be/z6pgqeS0m4U?si=8xG5xm6yhvf0WbB7
eclare
@Halteclere:
Same here.
Matt McIrvin
I think the COVID lockdown and the labor-market crunch that followed it caused a situation where a lot of Big Tech workers were feeling their oats, quitting bad jobs, demanding concessions and starting to organize, and caused the CEOs to FREAK OUT.
Trump promised them he’d put an end to it.
Urza
Arizona was beautiful in its own way, but it really causes an “itch” to not have greenery.
Martin
God, that meme is so wrong.
I make a nice vegan 10 bean soup that my daughter loves. Takes about 3 hours. You know how many hour long D-Day in realtime podcasts you can get in during that time? Three.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: I made this a few times, and it was deeeelish: https://dragonwagon.com/greek-lentil-soup/
“HERE’S THE RECIPE FOR THAT STORIED WASHINGTON POST-WORTHY LENTIL SOUP, “RICH, FRAGRANT, SATISFYING””
Chetan Murthy
@Splitting Image: Y’know, one of the nice things about using a VM, is that often the VM manager has a “rewindable disk” (not sure what they call it) where when you quit the VM session, you can discard any changes you made to the virtual disk. So you start off each session with the identical image. So great, no need to worry about cleaning up after myself.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I think the most disturbing thing to me is that all of these guys are fawning all over Trump when he’s not even that popular and he barely won, not even a true majority but a bare plurality. There’s a lot of people that oppose Trump and Trumpism in this country. That’s been made very clear at those Tesla Takedown protests as well as the April 5th Hands Off protest, where what, nearly 2-3% of the US population were estimated to have shown up? And yet they’re acting as if Trump won in a landslide and what’s he’s doing is popular, when he didn’t and it’s not.
Not all of them are dumb and they have to understand the immense damage Trump is doing to the US and world economy as well as the US’ reputation in the eyes of our trade partners and allies. Do Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk truly want to fight the rest of the world on behalf a 78 year old senile mad man?
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I remember reading a study of companies in Germany during the Nazi times. And, like, only two of them suffered anything bad: all the rest made out like bandits. We know the name of Fritz Thyssen (bankrolled Hitler, ended up breaking with him over the Final Solution (or maybe something before that, got sent to a camp) but most of the industrialists came out juuuuuust fine.
These guys know where their bread is buttered.
Splitting Image
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The alternative is admitting that they were wrong about something and what’s worse, that a woman was right.
Chetan Murthy
In their defense, surely they fear that if they don’t fall in line and nuzzle the Orange Tuchas, their companies will be screwed-to-the-wall at Mousselini’s rage-tantrum orders. Of course, if the had any kind of backbone, any kind of decency, they’d -also- know that if they banded together, Mousselini couldn’t touch ’em. But ….. well, these are moral weaklings.
Librarian
I use Adobe only to make PDFs and I’ve never had any problem with it. I was unaware of its other uses.
Aziz, light!
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They want to rule the world themselves, long after the old man is pushing up crabgrass. Musk in particular believes he is the savior of humankind.
Melancholy Jaques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No, I won’t be there till the week of July 4th.
Betty Cracker
Trees and birds are certainly a comfort. Safe travels!
Jeffg166
I watch this video of Paul Krugman talking to Zachary D. Carter about his book The Price of Peace. The book is about John Maynard Keynes. So very much of it is very relevant today.
Of the many things to jump out at me reading the book this one bit stopped me. I copied it out.
Keynes wrote this at some point during the first world war.
I reflect with a good deal of satisfaction that, because our rulers are as incompetent as they are mad and wicked, one particular kind of civilization is very nearly over.
I am hoping that in our time period the particular kind of gop fascists rule will implode and not take us all with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F-MQHUSS2U
gene108
On top of this, there is a very strong culture of “I’ll scratch you back, you scratch mine” among the business people I have worked with.
Doing Trump’s bidding, like banning DEI, or paying $5 million to dine with him, and expecting something in return is the world these guys approvingly inhabit.
Paul in KY
@Splitting Image: They like having a dipshit ‘in charge’. Allows them to steal and plunder without anyone competent there to stop them.
TFG is a latter day Henry VI (with a completely different twist, personally). The oligarchs in power loved Henry VI, as he was so incompetent and uninterested in actually doing the job of King, they could do as they pleased.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: this soup sounds amazing.
i wonder if using buttercup squash would make it even more fantastic. It’s my favorite squash, and really the only winter squash I think is yummy.
The dated beans from rancho gordo sound amazing, too.
Gloria DryGarden
@gene108: I’m beginning to think they can’t see the big picture, hi# their business fits into, impacts and even harms the community/ populace. I suspect they blocked off all their windows that look out beyond, except for the window that shows competition, bottom line, personal benefits, talents to hire and use, and their circle of like minded buddies. That’s all they manage to see.
In feudalism, at least the lord had some responsibility to protect and care for his workers who made him rich and fought for him. In Asia, I understand that community good and protecting others is an important value, thus they wear masks when hey have a cold. Because you matter, not just me.
somehow this fits with the dark triad and new light triad I’ve been reading about, and the geography of where each is more prevalent.
Gloria DryGarden
@Betty Cracker:
the trees welcome with open arms.
The river of bird song
amazing sound
carries the heart
Gloria DryGarden
@eclare: i am trying to figure out this meme, too.
He’s walking around, going steady with the facts, which he has to hand. But he turns away, as some are wont to do, and his attention is captured by something sexy, and new. Like a woman in a red dress. So he ignores ordinary reality, like the real facts, to entertain fantasy.
there’s nothing like a young woman in a red dress
soup is perhaps the state of his mind. Watered down reality. A stir of thoughts and denial, imagined escapism. Are people having an affaire with their disinformation and sane washed prettified pseudo-world?
( no insult to soup is intended. It only seems to work here as a figure of speech. I love soup. Children of the depression tell me they hate soup, it was all they had, making do on rations. We’ll all get good at making soup then, pretty soon.)
Gavin
I’m too tired to even pretend to sound intelligent, and I will forget tomorrow, just want to say that meme speaks to me, heart and soul 😂
Kayla Rudbek
@Splitting Image: I absolutely hate Adobe Reader, as scanned PDFs (such as patent documents) don’t have OCR enabled, so I can’t use CTRL-F to find any of the words that are actually in the PDF file unless I have Acrobat Pro which does have an OCR function. Sometimes I want to be able to flip back and forth between the numbered parts of the drawings and the actual words describing what is in the drawings using CTRL-F, and work had to spring for a license for Acrobat Pro for me.