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People in this thread are hell bent on the excuse that prisoners have it easy as they dont pay for housing or food while majority of people here easily manage to pay for the basics and easily have enough time to workout and read. Its such lazy cope. Stop pretending like you have it harder than a prisoner its cringe.
And before some sap comes in and tells me they work 16hrs in the mines and are starving and disabled with no healthcare and no home. Ok you are the exception but most people here have a job, buy food and have free time. Enough to do some bodyweight exercises and read a book.
I remember this peculiar exchange, some guy who told me that reading is such a time consuming activity (it isn’t). Upon further inspections, he had several donzens or even hundreds of comments in 4chan adjacent pages. Yeah sure buddy, no time to read uh? Even a chapter/day will eventually take you to read a full book.
I’ve done time. Getting jacked and reading books is like… 75% of what you do…
God I read so many books. It was a fucking rainbow. I read everything from atlas shrugged and tolstoy to one piece and the new 52.
Getting jacked and reading old books are examples of hobbies. If these sound strange and foreign to you, you should look into them!
Hobbies are activities that you do because you want to, not because you are forced to. (Pause for fellow Americans to catch their breath…) Hobbies have the potential to help you enjoy life, to have something to look forward to, get excited about, and hopefully even improve yourself or broaden your horizons in some way.
You don’t have to make money at it. You don’t have to be “efficient” at it. You don’t even have to be any good! But if it’s something you care about, there’s a strong chance you’ll end up pretty good at it.
My example is along the lines of the meme of the linkedin profile that ends … -> Senior Architect at Microsoft -> Goose farmer.
I’m a middle aged computer nerd software engineer, typing this in LibreWolf on Linux. 100% on-brand Lemmy user, lol. But I am a science & nature nerd first, and I have a distinct memory of a divide in my high school science classes: I gravitated towards physics and especially electronics and mechanical design, and I really disliked studying chemistry. My chemistry teacher was awesome and shared lots of college stories to prepare us, and that left me notably terrified of organic chemistry on top of the general dislike.
So it might not be a surprise to find that I am into carpentry, woodworking, and home automation, given some of my past. And my love of animals has led to lots of pets, including a pond in the back yard. The surprise? I kinda fucking love organic chemistry as a hobby! What is your Oxidation-Reduction Potential, babyyy?
Plato-maxxing
Men in literal prison tend to have more time on their hands than people with jobs.
Friendly reminder that you, a free man with a job, are paying for men in prison to get jacked and read books.
We live in a society.
Thats fine I’d rather pay for them to be in there doing that than out in society attacking people or commiting crime.
That’s ok, they’re having it hard enough, they deserve some relief
Fuck, if we don’t have a better plan than imprisoning someone then I’m gonna be pissed if we don’t offer them opportunities to improve their education and health while they’re locked up. I would like functioning members of society for the society I live in please
Exactly, I want the worst society does to people to be reasonably bearable. I want it to try to improve the lives of all people in it
There is full coverage health care and, classes. In addition, the prison system is the #1 provider of mental health services in the United States. Statistically, the women in the system avail themselves of those services, mental and medical, 3x as often as the men.
In addition, the prison system is the #1 provider of mental health services in the United States.
That’s really more of an indictment of US health care, isn’t it
Yes. In addition to speaking to the incarcerated. Quite the cycle.
Considering its not great service being provided typically through the prison system… Its a massive indictment of the horror show that is US healthcare, yes.
US-defaultism
I can confirm that they did indeed reply to a comment from a non-American too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_(imprisonment)
They pay for it themselves more often than not.
Edit: In the US, not everywhere.
Friendly reminder that places other than America exist
You mean the ocean??
What ? Impossible.
I’m neither a man nor do I have a job (disability). Even if that were the case, I don’t see your point?
It’s not a point, it’s a (humorous) observation. No offense was intended with a public comment meant for everyone to read.
I thought the “we live in a society” part meant it had a point? Also, I too read your initial comment as a reply to the user even if it wasn’t intended to be
I don’t see the humour but you do you.
I think it would be kind of you to edit your comment to avoid calling that person a man
Look on the bright side, as a free person with a job your tax dollars also help the local library provide books, services and many other things to your local community!
Or kids
Or jobs and kids.
Actually in most of the US prisoners are explicitly required or just “encouraged” to work (“More than three quarters of incarcerated people surveyed (76%) report facing punishment—such as solitary confinement, denial of sentence reductions, or loss of family visitation—if they decline to work.”) And of course if they get compensated at all it’s typically literal pennies per hour. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-violate-fundamental-human-rights-new-report-finds
But you’re right that the lack of alternative leisure time activities definitely encourages getting jacked and reading.
You can’t really compare incarcerated people with US state slaves.
Actually, I (and most likely the user you replied to, since we’re both on a German server) don’t live in the US and while prison labor does exist here, it’s certainly not as strongly encouraged as it is apparently in the US.
Good info, though.
You can always help the world to become a better place and go kill billionaires until you end up in prison where you get jacked and read books. I don’t see a single flaw with this plan.
They didn’t say it didn’t come with any other downsides, to be fair.
For legal reasons I reject this proposition most vehemently.
And fewer options for activities. Would prisoners be as likely to choose exercise and reading if they had the option to instead play video games all day?
Edit: I retract this comment, I think it might come across the wrong way, because tone doesn’t translate to text very well.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime…
Men in literal prisons are provided food, housing and healthcare.
Food that is rotten, housing where you have to worry that your bunkie will stab you and healthcare of the guard telling you to “stop acting up”
And time. They’re literally doing time.
Barely. The food sucks, the housing is worse, and the healthcare is maybe if you’re lucky.
Yes, but men in literal prison don’t have to worry about neither rent nor mortgage.
Or food or healthcare or heat or air conditioning or being late. Hmm
Prison healthcare in the US is super poor and often in violation of local or international laws. Basically most preventative care isn’t provided, testing for severe concerns is often put off for months or even years, and any kind of regular care required is frequently delayed.
See John Oliver and Deviant Ollam’s Cara updates (I can’t find the exact one but they freaking made her even more disabled by failing to replace her catheter and if I remember correctly either using an incorrect catheter or incorrectly installing the catheter)
Really makes you think of the old dilemma of “freedom versus security”, huh?
Ironically, arguably not being in prison prevents them from doing that. When your basic needs are taken care of (and assuming you aren’t in a state which still allows mandatory prison labor), you have a lot more latitude for choosing how to spend your time.
so you think you can just trick me, by making sense? yeah nice try, you’re not destroying my gaming time!
In the US at least prisoners do not really have a choice of reading material. Men in prison get jacked and read what they can get their hands on which is not necessarily what they might want to read. This is a good DB. Prisoners might also have to pay to read if it’s digital. I would personally contend that it’s harder to read in jail than prison but I don’t have a good study for that. More people go through jail than prison so the ability to read is much lower overall.
The rest of the world might treat prisoners a little more like human beings so I don’t know if this works outside of the US.
For those unaware of the difference, everyone in prison has been found guilty and sentenced for a crime, jail is typically where people are incarcerated before being tried and/or sentenced.
An officer can literally arrest you on whatever charges they might make up on the spot and take you to jail, and depending on a number of specifics you may simply not have many options to leave jail before your trial which is often many months later. I think there’s some form of protection against this sometimes but I’m not well versed enough on the subject to know for sure and make a general statement
Fun fact, it’s perfectly legal for them to hold you for three days without even charging you with a crime.
sentences that smell like privilege
I’m priviledging rn
Non stop work and exhaustion that comes with it in order to have a place to live is a barrier so bad take.
They didn’t say anyone was preventing them from doing this, they just expressed a desire. I don’t understand why you would go on the offensive for such a tame post, even if it is a bit cringe.
Don’t you have to do slavery levels of hard labor in prison tbf? Whole point of the private prison industry, at least in the US.
I don’t know what INT is but gzzz on 99 strength. Did you get your skill cape?
Int is intelligence
You just gave him INT +1
While I know the big takeaway in the comments here is “it’s easy to do when you don’t have a job”, it’s also worth highlighting the various options to spend time in general and how being in prison changes that decision making process.
I know a lot of people who complain. About not having money, not being in shape, not having the time to do what they want, always feeling anxious and depressed. And I don’t mean to undermine that- material conditions can be very real, you cannot simply budget your way out of poverty, and mental health is a real issue to be treated professionally.
But I do think there is also room to reflect on our habits, decisions, and environment. Right now I could be working out or reading a book, and instead I’m on Lemmy looking at memes and commenting. How many hours have I wasted in the past on social media? How many hours have I wasted watching video essays on things I can’t remember? How many hours did I waste watching all of the Marvel movies and TV shows through Endgame because my wife’s friend was insistent we HAVE to watch them all and they’re great (spoiler: they were all pretty much soulless forulaic corporate cash grabs).
How much time and money do we spend going to bars and restaurants? How much time spent sitting in cars or buses or trains or planes? How much time with my face in some mobile game to kill time?
I don’t bring these up to say none of us should ever do those things, but I think a lot of people need to look at their priorities. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the people around me who seem the most dissatisfied with their personal lives are also the ones who never make time to get to “lower” priorities. Sometimes it’s the sheer financial truth that people need to work several jobs and basically dedicate their entire lives to chasing income. But other times people are trying to maintain too many relationships. Too many friends and friend groups, not enough time spent on maintaining or improving their self. It’s a balance everyone needs to find, but I feel like social media (especially for-profit platforms) has driven a lot of people to be dependent on the constant stimulation and validation that comes from constant connection to several other people.
