The amount of money Trump & family have made during his presidency really is terrifying.

By numbers, I suspect that the majority of his supporters have e very little income.

It annoys me that there is no fourth ring in the north east corner.

I understand why. You do not need to explain it to me. It’s still annoying.

It’s an established playbook.

• climate change isn’t happening
• there’s no consensus in the data
• climate is changing due to natural processes <-- we are here
• things are so bad, now is not the time to upset industry <-- due when we have many millions of climate refugees
• this is the new normal <-- when we have a decade of 2 degrees average increase in temp

I think the current strategy is “perhaps climate is changing but it’s not caused by humans”, rather than outright denial.

I think the early days of Google docs were peak google-love for me.

Our lizard brains don’t care about positivity or negativity - any kind of engagement produces dopamine.

Maybe it’s just a conditioned response. It takes more effort to say something constructive than it does to be snarky.

Meh. I can see both sides.

I’ve always struggled with interactions. Didn’t like it as a kid.

That said, I often wish I’d learned more about how to behave in polite company, because what seems obvious to others is not obvious to me.

With my own kids, I certainly don’t “force them” to hug creepy old people, but encouraging them to greet acquaintances is just part of the normal things you teach kids because saying hello to people is not in fact intuitive.

Honestly, if having to hug grandma when you were a kid even though she had a weird mustache is the worst thing that happened to you, then things were pretty good right?

Yeah, I also think that we are a lot closer to collapse than most people like to imagine.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I anticipate that we will collapse, rather that it’s a lot more possible or likely than people presume.

War, nuclear disaster, volcanic eruption, tsunami, meteor impact, viral outbreak.

Aside from nuclear war or widespread nuclear disaster, all of these things have happened previously in earth’s history.

“More popular” is the wrong objective.

Focus on creative the best possible experience.

Better moderation, better content, better participation.

Sadly, its all pretty meaningless.

There’s three types of people, those who understand public health measures, those who hate fauci, and those who don’t know or care about either.

Fauci taking the 5th won’t move anyone between any of those categories, even with the headlines.

Things are getting worse.

Yes we can access information more easily but things are also getting much worse.

Despite what they may say out loud, wealthy oligarchs are well aware that climate change is going to cause widespread famine, and natural disasters like drought, fire, floods, and storms.

My understanding of the term “dark age” was the period of time after the collapse of the roman empire in europe where no written history existed. It was “dark” because we didn’t know what happened. Archaeology has pretty well filled in the gaps now so it’s no longer so unknown.

I think you’re using it to mean upheaval or unrest. IDK enough about history to rebut you, but I never really thought that’s what it meant.

Boomers are in their 70s and 80s.

He wasn’t in office when that verdict was handed down.

for attending protests and similar

Emphasis added.

I remember reading warnings about having laptops and devices checked at airports a decade ago. As a matter of fact I think that’s why I was looking into having hidden, encrypted partitions: because getting caught with some pirate TV series on my laptop might have meant having to pay a bribe or whatever.

Regardless, it doesn’t really change my point - if there’s a chance you’re going to interact with a government official and they might want to look at your device, wiping it is going to attract attention.

I don’t really know anything about privacy and security in this context, but I remember playing around with encrypted disks and reading that encryption isn’t really useful if your adversary knows that something exists albeit encrypted.

I think this is similar: having a freshly wiped phone is going to attract attention. I’m not saying it’s the wrong move in all cases, but it’s probably the wrong move in the kinds of situations most people are going to encounter.

I think the latest advice for attending protests and similar is to take a cheap burner.

Yes, but regulating pollutors requires a populace that won’t accept anything less. Instead people are placated by paper straws.

Oh little Askew, I think you’re fucking amazing and it’s my genuine honor to watch you conquer new things at activity club.

My experience was the same as everyone else’s here: strict christian upbringing, not talking about things because they’re “bad”, and making up answers to things mum and dad don’t know.

I’m trying to figure out parenting now. My plan, and I’m sure it won’t survive contact with the enemy, is to be as open, thorough, and honest as I can be about sex and drugs.

While it is scary for me, I do want my kids to experiment with these things, but I want them to do it with as much contextual information as I can provide.

“The talk” which I plan to give often, as commonly talked about house rules, is that there’s two ways adolescents can inadvertently change the course of their lives: car accidents, and getting pregnant.

It’s indicative of the lack of benefit that LLMs are providing. If gen AI was providing tangible benefits to anyone, people would identify a need for data centres.