Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.

As Cory Doctorow put it, “An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.”

Our voting system fundamentally doesn’t allow for third parties to win the vote.

Even if we said “vote for a third party, there’s a statistically significant chance they might win!” this wouldn’t fix the issue, because Jill Stein doesn’t take votes from both sides equally.

Jill Stein leans left, which means people who are otherwise Democrat voters are going to be the largest demographic voting for her.

Our voting system is first past the post, which means this will actually decrease the chance of a left-leaning victory.

Let’s say Dems get 55% of the vote without Jill Stein, and Reps get 45%. Democrats win.

Then, we add in Jill Stein. A significant amount of voters switch over, even some Republicans. (which, in reality, would probably not at all, because Jill Stein’s policies are even further from their beliefs than even the Democrats are)

Dems get 35% of the vote. Reps get 40% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 25%. Democrats & Jill Stein lose, Republicans win.

If Jill Stein were entirely impartial, and took votes equally from each side, then we could have a vote like…

Dems get 45% of the vote. Reps get 35% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 20% of the vote. Democrats win in the same way they would have whether or not there was a third party.

The issue is that, obviously, Jill Stein isn’t taking equal parts of the vote, so this inevitably just reduces votes for Democrats, without reducing votes for Republicans.

It’s not an ideal system, (which is why we should advocate for Instant-Runoff or Rated voting) but it’s the option that will lead to the most left-leaning outcome, as opposed to a heavily fascist one.

It’s a bit more nuanced than that, because a human can still develop artistic skills by observing non-artistic creations beforehand.

For instance, the world’s very first artist probably didn’t have any paintings or sculptures to build off.

I’m not saying I necessarily agree that the person isn’t an artist because they rely on external training data, but generative AI models most certainly need to observe other works to ‘learn’ how to make art, whereas humans don’t necessarily have to. (Although if someone were to make a reinforcement learning model based on user feedback as a way to entirely generate better and better images starting from random variation, that would make the original training data point moot)

“Why sex?”

10/10 starter question, no notes.

You’re welcome.

The most asinine, self-centered thing I’ve seen today has got to be you assuming that the emotional state of your employees, which the goods and services you offer depend on for sales, is something that they should simply magically suppress for the sake of customers.

Do you think this employee is going to check the mood of each customer?

Buddy, if every customer going through the checkout line at the grocery store I work for had this pin on, it would make judging how much small talk people want loads easier, and would save me, and them, a huge mental headache. That said, if only I were to choose to wear that pin, I don’t think indicating to customers how up I am for small talk would make me an asshole.

If you were my boss, and wanted to deliberately disregard my mental state because you felt it would make you a few more bucks, that would make you the asshole.

Get your priorities straight.

At least from my past experience observing the media sphere and demographics regarding crypto, it tends to just be newbies that are investing primarily due to the seeking of gains, but not for any sort of ideological reason, as opposed to the people who initially invested in crypto for its other freedom-preserving qualities.

For instance, I had originally mined some Bitcoin years and years ago when I initially just thought the concept of a stateless, distributed-control monetary unit was an interesting concept. I held that bitcoin in a non-custodial (i.e. not on an exchange/company) wallet, because I believed in the actual values prescribed to Bitcoin at the time.

Later, when my father wanted to try investing in crypto because he also thought it was interesting, he invested through an exchange, but refused to withdraw his money because he wasn’t that interested. It was just general intrigue, but not enough to overcome his apathy.

In the Mt Gox days, it was just so early, and Bitcoin was generally so new as a concept, that people didn’t understand the point of self-custody as much. With FTX, it was the masses who downloaded their app simply because they saw it during the Super Bowl and wanted to give it a shot as an investment vehicle, but not because they had any clue what the original values were underpinning the technology.

The people putting their money in the hands of these companies never cared about the ideological reasons for holding crypto (which I believe have now been totally overtaken by greed and wealthy VC firms), they just wanted to see if they could be the next person to get rich.

In my eyes, that’s an ideology problem, not a problem with the technology, but I do see how we could very well disagree on this.

About time.

For reference, visa charges about 1.5%-3.5% on everything.

Oh, plus ten cents for every transaction, because fuck you, that’s why.

Corporations like Mt Gox and FTX are not blockchains, they are companies that use blockchains.

People keeping their money with them were willingly giving up ownership over their crypto, deliberately sacrificing the benefits they would have gotten by keeping it on-chain

I get criticizing crypto, but I get a bit miffed when I see people directly conflating blockchains as a technology and private corporations that use said technology, and use one’s actions to criticize the non-failings of the other.

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Always demand a human support representative until it gives you the option to, then the actual human will usually manually process your refund if you complain about how the initial refund never happened.

Bonus chance of success if you’re a Prime member and say you’re thinking about cancelling.

I think if I found out my country was doing a genocide with an unimaginably higher ratio of civilians murdered, I’d decry both acts, and not actively support the ongoing justifications made for a genocide by an apartheid based regime.

Hey, I actually missed that part. (I assumed it was deaths relating to the pregnancy itself, not including additional procedures like abortions)

Still, 17.4 - 0.45 = 16.95, which is still substantially higher than the case fatality rate of abortion-related fatalities alone.

As much as it fills me with joy to see fascists like JD Vance get mauled by their own past words, I hate how much this will be propped up as an argument against him today.

I think we can all agree that people change their minds, whether it be from propaganda, malicious intent, or genuine education, so the only thing he has to do to escape this line of attack is just say “my opinions changed.”

I’m sure that to a degree, he still believes what he originally wrote, but has simply repressed it in favor of being able to do less thinking about his political positions, and garner more public attention and power.

This is kind of just a bad argument.

Nobody is arguing that an abortion can save a woman from all consequences.

Nobody is arguing that death is impossible as a result of abortion.

But when somebody dies because something prevented them from getting a procedure that would have been highly likely to save them, that doesn’t come into conflict with the possibility of death from the procedure. It’s a matter of personal choice.

Especially considering the maternal mortality rate (# of deaths per 100,000 live births) is 17.4, while the case fatality rate for abortions (# of deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions) is just 0.45

Now imagine how much higher that rate gets when abortions are performed illegally because legislation like this stops safe abortions from being possible, without curbing demand.

Yes, people die from abortions. Yes, people die from pregnancy. Yes, this woman could have died from the abortion procedure even if she was able to get it.

But her chance of death was significantly lower if she had been capable of getting an abortion, which she was not.

Apple just can’t resist making ridiculous margins from their customers, even when their devices do allow for upgrades to the default configuration.

For instance, with a Mac Pro, you have to pay an extra $800 to go from 64gb to 128gb of memory. For $800, you could get about 384gb of ram in 64gb sticks from a different vendor.

I don’t think they believe it works.

I think they just believe that shootings are bound to happen, because why else would they be happening on such a regular basis?

It’s the constant deflection of responsibility, from our choices as a society, to some indeterminate outside force.

Poverty and increasing cost of living? It’s all those darn immigrants.

Your job not paying you enough? Must be overseas industry.

They don’t think their prayers will prevent a school shooting, they just don’t think there’s other options to prevent it that will actually work without “taking away their freedom” (-to own a gun that’s more likely to harm them than protect them)

The highest usage of ad blockers happens within the age range of 18-24, which categorically includes Gen Z.

The second highest age range is 25-34, and the third highest is 12-17, which is also included in Gen Z.

That said, I would argue that, while knowing how to use a smartphone doesn’t make you tech savvy, knowing how to use an ad blocker doesn’t either. It’s as easy as installing an extension.

I suppose they could, but even cold storage has a cost, and with the scale Discord’s operating at, they definitely have many terabytes of data that comes into the CDN every day, and that cost adds up if you’re storing it permanently.

I also think the vast majority of users would prefer being able to upload much higher resolution images and videos, to being able to see the image they sent with their messages a year ago. I don’t often go back through my messages, but I often find myself compressing or lowering the quality of the things I’m uploading on a regular basis.

They could also do the other common sense thing, which is to, on the client side of things, compress images and videos before sending them.