Catzilla. Truly a loaf incarnate.

A mild cigar.

With due respect, it is time to go outside.

Individual data points like “I take pilates”, “I work nights and weekends”, and “I live in Smalltown, ST” might not mean anything on their own, but if you can connect this data to a single person, then realize there’s only one pilates studio in Smalltown, then look up their hours and notice there’s only one day class on weekdays, you can make a reasonable guess as to a regular time when a person is away from home. This is called data brokerage.

This is a comically contrived example; the real danger is in the association of countless data points spread across millions of correlated identities. It’s not just your data, it’s the association of your data with that of your friends and family. Most people are constantly streaming their location, purchases, beliefs, and affiliations out to anyone who cares enough to look. Bad actors may collate their data and use it to take advantage of them, and the only move they have is to ask for prohibitive legislation. As if we don’t already have prohibitive legislation.

Anonymity is expensive, inconvenient, and fragile, but it’s the only mechanism that protects individuals from the information economy, which I would put right next to ecology in terms of critical 21st-22nd century social problems. It also helps us resist censorship, but that’s a different essay.

Relatable. Obviously completely unacceptable behavior. Yet relatable.

https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/

Don’t wait in town.

All it is necessary to do is to abolish all other forms of taxation until the weight of taxation rests upon the value of land irrespective of improvements, and take the ground-rent for the public benefit.
~ Henry George, Social Problems

Avocado oil is great for popcorn. It doesn’t add any flavor but I love the resulting texture: very crisp and clean. I like using red or blue corn because the contrast is visually appealing. You want long, skinny kernels to get the butterfly popcorn. Personally I’m crazy for cheesy popcorn, and the secret there is to find cheese powder with some savory herbs like oregano. I also love to do it with Kashmiri (floral hot Indian chili) powder.

Important edit: Do NOT under any circumstance use chili popcorn to spice up Netflix & Chill. This is a snack for lonely degenerates who don’t even masturbate daily any more. It’s for watching war documentaries and French New Wave, not pervy cartoons and superhero throwdowns with a plot designed to be ignored while you finger your frenemies. You won’t look worldly and sophisticated while you’re driving somebody to the fucking hospital. Be responsible.

The issue isn’t the composition of the object but rather property and contract. The prosthetic limb comparison isn’t bad in my opinion, except this would be an experimental prosthetic limb that patients agreed to test with full knowledge and consent that it could be removed without their permission.

Again, I would hate to be in that position, but if I agreed to it, I understand my legal options would be limited. Again, this isn’t a company ruining someone’s life over a little money, this is a corporation unable to continue operating. Again, please consider the fact that a corporation which can treat epilepsy went backrupt because it couldn’t afford to do business in the regulatory environment of the health industry. I don’t understand how adding more subjective laws with hand-waved economic foundations is supposed to help this situation.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with epilepsy, nor to have a debilitating disease reenter your life after you’d become accustomed to its management. In her position, I imagine I would be doing everything I could to regain access to life-changing technology. Sympathy for Rita Leggett doesn’t make this story “dystopian,” nor is it a violation of anyone’s rights.

It was a trial! All participants agreed to have the device removed. If they didn’t, they’d be walking around with unsupported hardware in their brains, because the system that hardware was connected to was dissolved. Representing this legal outcome as a human rights violation is a predictable dilution of human rights.

Ienca likens it to the forced removal of organs, which is forbidden in international law.

There’s a vital difference between the removal of a body part and the removal of a tool you agreed to host, on condition of its release, before changing your mind. NeuroVista used novel technology to make meaningful progress in the treatment of epilepsy! Our response to this should be to encourage others like them, not to build bureaucratic restrictions hindering new innovators.

Companies should have insurance that covers the maintenance of devices should volunteers need to keep them beyond the end of a clinical trial, for example.

Who would insure this requirement?! Indefinite support of novel technology? Be serious. This article absolutely breezes over NeuroVista’s bankruptcy like it’s a little inclement weather. The fact is that biotech research is nearly illegal by default. Try to restrain your distaste for industrialization long enough to imagine starting and running this company:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6763675/

I feel much better now, thank you. How are you?

Oh btw if you’re, like, 15 and you’re confused because you’ve seen pictures of Steve Huffman, don’t worry, you’re not having a stroke, that’s Ned Beatty in Network (1976).

hoes mad

Only if being “entitled to the fruits of labor” does not preclude the state (or any state-like entity, don’t even start with me) from seizing and/or arbitrating the value of that fruit. If that’s the case, what is the value of the so-called entitlement?

The reason private property is vital to a just society is that we do not know the ultimate purpose of society. We can not even estimate the size of the universe; claiming to understand the role of mankind without knowing its position in the cosmos is like claiming to understand a blood cell with no knowledge of the circulatory system. We all have exactly the same right and cause to determine the purposes of our own lives. Different life goals lead to different evaluations of goods and services. I do not eat flesh, listen to K-pop, or ski. To appropriate the value of my labor for the benefit of these systems for which I have no use is a violation of my natural right to determine the purpose of my own life. To phrase it collectively, it is a violation of our equal rights to determine the purposes of our own lives.

The abolition of private property.

I suspect we may be operating on slightly different definitions of communism.

I’d love a longer bio. I can only fit a few links in there right now. It’s definitely code, not config, but I haven’t found if it’s set in lemmy-ui or in the API/DB. I could also understand if that’s too expensive, but would like to see it addressed.

You kinda get what you deserve for doing real politics in 196

Try not to take it too personally: the commies are extra sensitive at the moment because they have to share the fediverse with a giant influx of liberals. You’d probably be upset if they were pouring into your space. Not that anybody owns it, but we all take things for granted. It’ll cool off.

edit: the gears of this sarcasm machine are lubricated by Marxist tears