kava

@kava@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  If a new World War was coming, we would definitely want to be closer with our border countries than give our foreign enemies a chance

  think of it this way. let’s say WW3 kicks off with China tomorrow. Will Canada or Mexico suddenly ally with China?

  Reality is that Canada and Mexico are totally dependent on US trade. It really doesn’t matter if you piss them off they’re gonna be forced to deal with you anyway.

  80% of Mexican exports are to the US. 30% of their GDP is based on American trade. If US exports stopped tomorrow, Mexican economy would immediately enter a deep depression. They have no choice but to play nice, even with 25% tariffs.

  Canada is similarly stuck. 75% of exports are to the US. 50% of their imports are from the US. 20% of their GDP is based on American trade.

  If you took both Canadian and Mexican trade combined and compared it to the US economy, though, it wouldn’t even reach 5%. If trade with both of these countries were to stop tomorrow, America will suffer- but growth may slow by 0.5% or 1%. Both Canada and Mexico would see a depression.

  Do you see why Trump feels like he has the power to do this? This is the point I was trying to make above. Historically US presidents have been more diplomatic and subtle about how to abuse the leverage that America has by the nature of being a superpower. Trump isn’t fundamentally different except he’s exploiting this leverage loudly and in an ugly and aggressive way.

  As for the upcoming war, I think it’s only a matter of time. But we’re talking a time scale of 5-10 years. We’re preparing for the future showdown. There will be one or two more flashpoints before the main war. Ukraine was one, Israel is another.

  If we had to make an analogy with WW2, I’d say we’re roughly in mid ~1930s. Our Spanish Civil War is the Ukrainian war. Our Italian invasion of Ethiopia is the Israeli conflict. (Gaza, Israeli invasion of Syria, war with Lebanon, Iran, etc)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Anyone who’s even remotely qualified to lead the military is being replaced with sycophants

  it’s a purge. we’re watching our own version of what Saddam Hussein did when he took power. it definitely weakens the country overall but it strengthens the hold on power for the executive.

  as for the military, we’ve been spending more than like the next 8 countries combined for decades. it’s hard to understate the relative power of the US military. there are hundreds of military bases all over the world.

  even a weakened superpower is still a superpower

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If no enemies exist, they are created.

  i don’t disagree. that’s why the rhetoric. but I would disconnect the rhetoric from the policy. trump says one thing and does another. he wants to deport everyone but at the rate he’s going we won’t even see a 10% reduction in the illegal immigrant population.

  notice how tariffs were a trend that started a decade ago. Trump placed tariffs on China on his first term and then Biden increased the number of tariffs.

  Trump isn’t doing this because he’s some brilliant strategist

  couple of things. first, i wouldn’t underestimate trump. he successfully hijacked the Republican party which is a party full of wealthy and powerful people.

  second, the people around Trump are very principled ideologues (ie people like Peter Thiel and the dark enlightenment ideology they’re enamored in)

  these people are educated, intelligent, and dedicated to their cause. they also have near-limitless money and now they have the control of the federal government of the strongest country in the world- a country that has an executive branch that has gotten progressively more powerful.

  they have a vision and they planned for this and they are enacting it. this is not a spontaneous thing. they view a future where there is a showdown with China and tariffs play into that future

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)

  sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham

  South of queers, north of Hell

  The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell

  We guard the border and we guard it well

  But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell

  Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go

  'Cause in real life, Goliath wins

  And then sells all the silk that the widow spins

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  because there’s a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

  in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it’s an amazing thing.

  but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it’ll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that’s one industry… now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

  so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn’t hurt as bad.

  it doesn’t really matter if you piss off your allies. since you’re the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle about it.

  Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren’t really allies. Being someone’s ally implies there’s a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship?

  to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

  so you can say they “allied” with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America’s orbit. and the US ultimately doesn’t care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don’t think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

  tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  just means they are in bed with Nazis

  Fascism is always the best business decision. This is the inevitable result of capitalism. The institutions on a good decade are strong and resilient. Oligarchy, yes, but still a more or less free society.

  Eventually though, there will be a series of crisis in succession that causes the establishment to weaken just enough for a strongman to slip in and take the reigns. In the 20th century it was the fallout from WW1 and the Great Depression. In our time it was COVID and the Ukraine + Israeli wars (and to some extent, 2008 housing crisis)

  One key part of fascism is that it is almost paradoxically

  a) A populist-driven ideology, which means it appeals to the lowest common denominator

  b) An elitist-driven ideology, which means it idolizes and puts value in the elites of a society

  What ends up happening is the state picks and chooses elite groups of people who end up running the show. So for example, if you are Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos… you know that if you play nice with Trump that he will reward you and you will have certain advantages by having a friend in an authoritarian government. You also know that if you don’t play nice with Trump, he will try and hurt you using both legal and illegal mechanisms.

  Therefore, the best investment you could make is aligning yourself with the fascist state.

  This was always going to happen. Sort of humans eventually will catch a cold or develop cancer. The immune system on a good day is strong enough to repel these types of problems. But eventually, you will be under some stress for one reason or another and your immune system is not enough to stop the inevitable cold or what have you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israeli speaker of parliament calls for bombing food stocks in Gaza now that Israel has cut off their food and water.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  yeah well said. and while there isn’t much of a difference to the people getting rained on with bullets and bombs… i think there is a fundamental ideological difference between at least pretending like you care.

  we’ve reached the point where the executive is so powerful he doesn’t feel the nice to put the mask on. it’s a blatant and almost ostentatious use of power. Trump says and does ridiculous things (did you see that Gaza AI video?) that have no coherence because he understands his power lies in the chaos. one day he says one thing, one day he says another. ukraine and US will make a good deal one day, zelensky’s a dictator the next day, zelensky’s a good leader one day, and then zelensky’s disrespectful the next, etc etc

  it’s sort of like when Stalin would go through one of his purges. He would have a long list of names on a paper and he would look through him. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, he would cross a name off the list. He was reminding everyone that his power was absolute and he could arbitrarily choose to end you or spare you.

  Trump is toying with this same type of arbitrarily derived chaos but instead of it being occasional he seems to be embracing it as his source of power

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israeli speaker of parliament calls for bombing food stocks in Gaza now that Israel has cut off their food and water.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  and privately supported

  we openly sent over thousands of MK84 2,000lb bombs that have used to kill thousands of civilians. not really private to be honest

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The situation got so bad that actuall news overtook memes in top posts on Lemmy⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  kamala was more biden. the same group of people that was around behind created the conditions for a kamala run to even be possible.

  they had to pull some weird “democracy games” to even get her on the ballot. pretend like biden was gonna run so he automatically wins the primary and only then announce he’s gonna leave. really shows how far this democracy has fallen

  as for kamala, biden’s immigration proposals were “compassionate approach” and “immigration reform”

  if you went to her website and looked under immigration there was only “strong border” and “border security”

  to be honest, i only wanted kamala to win because she was a woman and that woulda been cool. but the descent into fascism would not have been meaningfully slowed down, i think

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  a chromium skin

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life isn't easy if your last name is 'Null' as it still breaks database entries the world over⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How do devs make this mistake

  it can happen many different ways if you’re not explicitly watching out for these types of things

  example let’s say you have a csv file with a bunch of names

  id, last_name
  1, schaffer
  2, thornton
  3, NULL
  4, smith
  5, "NULL"
  

  if you use the following to import into postgres

  COPY user_data (id, last_name)
  FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
  WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true);
  

  number 5 will be imported as a string “NULL” but number 3 will be imported as a NULL value. of course, this is why you sanitize the data but I can imagine this happening countless times at companies all over the country

  there are easy fixes if you’re paying attention

  COPY user_data (id, last_name)
  FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
  WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true, NULL '');
  

  sets the empty string to NULL value.

  ---

  example with js

  fetch('/api/user/1')
    .then(response => response.json())
    .then(data => {
      if (data.lastName == "null") {
        console.log("No last name found");
      } else {
        console.log("Last name is:", data.lastName);
      }
    });
  

  if data is

  data = {
    id: 5,
    lastName: "null"
  };
  

  then the if statement will trigger- as if there was no last name. that’s why you gotta know the language you’re using and the potential pitfalls

  now you may ask – why not just do

  if (data.lastName === null)
  

  instead? But what if the system you’re working on uses JSON.parse(data) and that auto-converts everything to a string? it’s a very natural move to check for the string “null”

  obviously if you’re paying attention and understand the pitfalls of certain languages (like javascript’s type coercion and the particularities of JSON.parse()) it becomes easy but it’s something that is honestly very easy to overlook

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The devs have the same kind of “we know better than you do” mentality towards design

  It’s not “we know better than you do”

  It’s “we have a vision for the desktop environment”

  If you granted the user every little thing they wanted, you don’t become a better piece of software. You end up middle of the road. There are limited resources and by keeping a limited scope and having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish- you can do what you aim to do really well. Instead of being mediocre at a lot of things.

  My experience with Gnome- it does 95% of what I need a Desktop Environment to do (and certain things others don’t do very well). Some features like

  • Being able to push a button, start typing an application’s name, and push enter to start that application
  • Being able to push a button, and immediately see at a glance all of the windows I have open and quickly navigate to them
  • Being able to easily set keyboard hotkeys so that I launch applications and can run my own custom scripts with the push of a button

  Example- I have a script that I set to “Control+Num Pad 5” that opens up a Gnome folder search dialog. I navigate to a folder and click “Ok” and then 4 terminals open on my left monitor. Three small ones stacked on top of each other on the left, one big one on the right. Basically like a tiling window manager. This script has custom commands that run depending on the directory. If I open a react-native folder, it runs an Android emulator and neovim on the big terminal.

  • Being able to easily run scripts on files and directories directly from Nautilus (Gnome’s file manager)

  Example- When I right click on a pdf file in Nautilus, I have custom scripts that I can run. One is “splitPdf” which creates a new folder called “split” and then creates n.pdf files where n is the number of pages. I also have “compressPdf” which will compress the pdf as much as possible and pops up a notification showing you how much. I have one for .xlsx and .doc files called “printPdf” that converts those to pdf files.

  Those 4 things I think Gnome does better than any other default desktop environment I’ve ever used and I’ve used a lot over the course of my life. The remainder of the items (the 5% of stuff Gnome can’t do) I have found custom plugins and in one scenario it took me a couple hours to write my own custom plugin.

  MacOS does #2 and #4 well by default (although it’s harder to write scripts with their clunky apple script language whereas with Gnome because you can just use regular old fish or bash scripts). With certain applications (like better-touch-tools or karabiner) you can get similar functionality as Gnome.

  Windows with Autohotkey does #3 although you have to again use a clunky language (even clunkier than Apple script)

  KDE can do #1 (search/launch apps), but feels slower and less streamlined than Gnome’s immediate overview. It does #2 (window overview) and #3 (keyboard shortcuts), but buries these features under layers of settings and inconsistent menus. For #4 (file manager scripts), Dolphin technically supports actions, but configuring them requires wrestling with clunky .desktop files whereas on Gnome you just use fish or bash or python or javascript or whatever the hell you want and stick it in a directory.

  In my opinion, Gnome is miles ahead of KDE and while it’s obviously not as polished as MacOS, it has accomplished so much more with its limited resources than a megacorp like Apple does.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  NP++ was good 20 years ago and it’s been coasting on that good will ever since

  It’s OK for a text editor (compared to something totally basic like notepad) but other text editors have caught up in every single category

  like you said, VS Code is now the default go to code editor for a lot of people. if you don’t use VS Code, you use vim.

  for non-coding uses, I don’t see the functional difference between NP++ or something basic like Gnome’s text editor

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Gnome is an opinionated desktop environment and that turns some people off. But it’s bold enough to make some design decisions and have a limited scope. KDE tries to be another Windows alternative.

  Of course, you could go with a tiling window manager but my vote goes to Gnome. I’ve had a very smooth experience on Gnome for the last couple years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon is changing what is written in books⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And also if you want books that can’t be altered buy a paper book

  The books on my 1st generation kindle have been there 15 years unchanged. Just don’t connect devices to the internet that don’t need to be connected to the internet.

  The “internet of things” that was sold to us is just a way for corporations to exert more control. I am pro-technology. I think an ebook reader is infinitely more useful and valuable than a paper book - I can fit tens of thousands of books on my Kindle, more than I could read in a lifetime, and a full charge lasts more than a month at a time.

  I can use whatever font I want, I can scale the size to what I want. I can change the margins, place bookmarks, gives a % of how far I am in a book, skip to chapters, etc.

  Like, it’s objectively better than a book.

  But it doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Next week, Amazon is stripping away your ability to download your ebooks.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure where exactly they made the switch. Basically, I got my girlfriend one a year and a half ago and it did not need the software. I explained to her to turn off the wifi and just download books and drag and drop.

  But then around Christmastime last year my girlfriend’s cousin wanted an ebook ready so we bought her a Kindle and I gave the same advice. But she couldn’t figure out how to drag and drop, so she brought it over.

  So the switch happened at some point in the last ~18 months or so my memory’s a bit hazy

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Next week, Amazon is stripping away your ability to download your ebooks.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Up until fairly recently, you could just drag and drop files onto the Kindle with a usb. I’ve had my first generation Kindle for almost 15 years now and it still works. Just download an .epub file, convert it to .mobi with Calibre, and drag and drop it over to the Kindle.

  I have a newer one too, that I got a couple of years ago as a gift.

  The trick is just disable the wifi and never let it communicate with Amazon servers. They will mess with your settings and push secret updates that remove features. For example, it could “sync” your books with your Amazon account literally resulting in you not being able to remove items from your Kindle without logging into your Amazon account on your computer and going through a million menus. It won’t let you do it from the Kindle, even if you’re offline.

  But if you just never let it connect it to the internet at all, you’re fine.

  Although the new Kindles now require a special Amazon software to copy files over (because of “convenience”) and it won’t communicate with the usual protocol so you can’t drag and drop like you could for the last 15 years.

  So yeah, don’t buy a Kindle. at least not a new one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think his is absolutely the right course of action. We as humans have a weird psyche and we sometimes externalize internal issues and project them outwards either onto ideas or people.

  So for example, incels have serious issues with self-worth and they externalize those issues into hatred of women and society at large for their position in life. They feel, perhaps, they are not the man they feel like they should be- strong, handsome, wealthy, etc. And so they take blame at external circumstances in order to lessen the cognitive dissonance that if they are lonely and undesired- it’s almost always due to their own decision making and perspective on life.

  So for example a young male teen may feel all sorts of negative emotions and decide that gender dysphoria must be the diagnosis- when maybe he’s just a little feminine and attracted to men. But if they start to identify with the trans label prematurely, they could end up doing unnecessary damage to themselves and their development.

  I wholeheartedly and unapologetically support trans people and in my opinion if transitioning is determined the most effective treatment to gender dysphoria by one or two clinical physicians, I would absolutely support my kid transitioning. Trans kids have a very high rate of suicide so this is actually a very serious life and death diagnosis. It’s more dangerous statistically than some types of cancer. And if my kid had cancer, I would want to obviously look at all possible treatments plans we could take.

  But just like the dad, I would start with regular therapy and work our way up. See what else is going on. I would also spend time with my kid and really try to get a sense for what’s troubling them. I don’t think there is a substitute for a parent who cares.

  Anyhow, interesting post, thanks for sharing this intimate exchange. It’s a reminder that we are all humans and even those who we may label as “conservative” cannot be condensed down to one statement. This is one of the reasons, for example, I love Florida even though it’s a red state. I’m the furthest thing from right wing, but you’ll find that many Latinos who identify as right-wing have many views that would be considered “progressive”.

  We’re all ultimately people who hold multitudes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Get an old Kindle. The news ones make it hard for you to connect to your computer. But even just a couple of years back you could plug in your Kindle to your computer through a USB and just drag and drop files. It only reads the proprietary .mobi format but Calibre, an excellent piece of software, will automatically convert .epub files to .mobi for you and it has a great algorithm.

  Then all you gotta do is look up whatever you want on libgen and for the price of one kindle you can have a virtually infinite library of books.

  I’ve actually had my first generation Kindle for about ~14 years now and my newer one for about ~3 years. I won’t ever buy a new one, but the ones from ~3 years ago are excellent pieces of hardware.

  You just have to disconnect it from the internet and never turn on the wifi. If you do, Amazon will fuck with your settings and make your life difficult.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you feel like you've reached the end of what the world has to offer?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  i’m kind of lost on how to respond to this. we weren’t talking about games, the card analogy was to show that even with a relatively small set of starting conditions you can get to relatively absurd possibilities very quickly. it was to highlight the chaos theory that rules our lives.

  the OP wasn’t about winning or losing anything, it was about “having experienced all life has to offer”. that would necessarily include both winning and losing combinations, no matter your subjective definition of “winning” or “losing”

  and even having said all that and to follow your analogy- there are many games where drawing a face card (a-k) is a bad thing.

  you ever play rummy? you want the least amount of points at the end of the round and face cards are worth more points.

  you can make a straight flush with a 2 3 4 5 in poker, a face card can be enough to bust you in blackjack, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you feel like you've reached the end of what the world has to offer?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  this is the wildest statement i’ve seen all month

  the breadth and depth of the experiences that life has to offer is unfathomable. do not be so brazen to assume you have experienced even a tiny drop of vast ocean of what humans have actually lived through

  From suicide in the trenches to the raising of a child; from gazing upon Earth from space to hunting a predator with a spear; from meditating in silence for weeks to leading a entire nation through a crisis; from winning a chess tournament to starting a business—and losing it all in a bankruptcy—existence is infinite, or may as well be.

  think of it this way

  there are 52 cards in a deck. that means every single deck has a specific order, right? what are the chances of you getting one specific order of cards if you shuffle? Well, how many different combinations are there? 52! ( ! means both factorial and emphasis here)

  That’s 52 × 51 x 50 … all the way to × 2 × 1

  That’s 8x10⁶⁷

  That’s 8 with 67 zeros. Here

  80000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

  For reference… the number of seconds since the Big Bang is estimated to be about 4×10¹⁷

  Now think of your life and human life in general. Think of all the variables. Hell, there are 7 days in a week. 52 weeks in a year. Coincidentally the same as a deck of cards.

  If you do something different every week, there are going to be 8000000000… different ways your year could turn out.

  So, please do not fall victim to this type of irrational thought. I’m not sure if it’s arrogance, depression, or something else leading to that delusion, but it’s a wild statement—absolutely nuts

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess the main difference is that I think things are salvageable

  To be honest, I think we are very ideologically aligned. I agree that government power is something that should be used with very precise care. Look at what happens for example when we introduce Pell Grants, giving lower income kids the opportunity to go to college.

  That sounds great, right? Who doesn’t support that? Well, I sure want poor kids to be afforded the opportunity to go to school.

  But look at what actually happens. Now you have a whole new class of people with a sizable chunk of government money. The demand for college goes up. Tuition rates skyrocket. The few thousand you get from the Pell Grant is now meaningless and it counter intuitively costs you more even with the grant.

  Kamala was campaigning “taxes incentives for first time homeowners!” Great. Who is going to say to no to that, right? Support young families. Sure.

  What would inevitably happen? Large increase in spending => large increase in price. So if they get a $10,000 tax credit but the houses are $15,000 more expensive- what’s the difference? These are arbitrary numbers, obviously, and not borne out of some analysis.

  But yes, I agree 100%. I rather like Chomsky’s take on this. Every single use of government power should be consistently and continually challenged. Every single time the government spends a dollar, it needs to be transparent and justified and there needs to be a way to challenge it.

  The thing is, government spending is not inherently a bad thing. Government action sometimes is exactly what is needed. For example in an economic crisis, government stimulus can be enough to turn things around or at least ameliorate the situation for the working class.

  But and the big but - and the but that basically had made me lose all faith in democracy over the last 10 years or so is the way you put it

  But no, “drugs bad,” and the public wants to control “bad” things

  Politicians do not do what is rational. They do what is popular. These are two separate things entirely. And even worse, they can modify what is popular with a variety of mechanisms. For a simple example- look at the death tax. You ask average Americans whether they support a death tax, they will say of course not. It sounds absurd, right?

  If you call it an inheritance tax, all of a sudden majority of people support it.

  So yeah, I think you’re right in that we more or less align on what the ideal system should be but you still believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment and believe that egalitarianism and liberty is possible.

  I think humanity is brutal and stupid by nature and we are bound to be ruled by people with strength. I think all government systems eventually deteriorate into fancy feudalism.

  For a bit of an absurd statement- I think what we need to do is create a constitution that is very explicit. And then what we need to do is let an AI enforce it. Assuming the AI is objective and not able to be influenced, I think then and only then would we have a free society.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You said you’re not pushing socialism, but you didn’t offer what you do support, so I’ll speak broadly.

  I’m a big of a nihilist here. I think free market capitalism is a terrible system that will inevitably crash and fail. It is also the best thing we have come up with so far. Essentially Churchill’s quote. I only hope that after our next foray into fascism we will come out the other side with a new 21st century ideology that is somehow able to fix the fundamental contradictions.

  I really support Liberalism (and I mean you know, freedom of speech, free market, pursuit of happiness, etc). I would always prefer to live in a society that gives me the freedom to live life on my terms. In theory, we could have a socialist version of this, but I think like we discussed it falls victim to precisely the same fate. When the Soviets initially took power, they were genuine in their desire for revolution. They did many great things- they created written languages for all of the local ethnicities that didn’t have them. They put local leaders in positions of power. They increased literacy and invested in education strictly for altruism.

  That only lasted a couple short decades, however, because the wheels of power inevitably turn.

  Here’s the thing, I think you make great points. And the solutions you propose would benefit the system both in the short and long term. But I think collapse is inevitable anyway, and specifically collapse into fascism. Perhaps in a system where the institutions are strong and we have policies in the line of what you’re suggesting (campaign finance reform, proportional representation, etc. I’d even say higher salaries for politicians counter intuitively) will last a long time.

  But ultimately, it’s the classic criminal versus police officer. You can put up a border wall to stop drugs coming in, they’ll go under the ground. You put ground penetrating radar sensors, they build DIY-submarines. You invest in a coast guard, they build drones. Etc Etc

  It’s a constant battle that requires constant vigilance. However, here’s the kicker. Here’s the reason why it will always inevitably fail.

  The people with significant wealth and by extension power- they will always have incentive to change the system to their advance and they will always have the ability to influence it. They will never stop trying to come up with new ways to either exploit current laws or create new ones.

  The average people, the consumers and voters, they will sometimes have the incentive to change the system and they will sometimes have the ability to influence it. In times of trouble, people get upset and they start protesting. They start voting for new measures, different policies get enacted. Like you mentioned, we broke up Standard Oil. Or when we broke up the Bell Telephone Company.

  During that time people were both discontent, which means they had the incentive to change the system and coincidentally that also gives them the ability to influence the system- politicians are only scared into making positive change for the average person when there is large scale dissent.

  But what happened to both of those examples (and virtually every other anti-trust regulation we’ve ever tried to implement)?

  Today, Bell Telephone’s descendant is AT&T- a behemoth of a megacorp that participates in an oligopoly over the telecommunications market. Today, Standard Oil’s descendant is Exxon Mobil and remains the largest oil and gas company in the US.

  What happened here? Well, the public interest eventually fades. Some other crisis shows up on the news channels and people become content with their lives. If the economy is doing well, people are paying their bills, etc, they don’t care. If they economy isn’t, the politicians have become exceedingly proficient at redirecting that discontent towards scapegoats (today it’s immigrants for example).

  So, it’s a simple math equation. Let’s say the corporations win 51% of the coin flips and the free market / law abiding public wins 49% of the time. For a very long time, it can stay more or less even. Cops versus robbers- the equilibrium stays intact.

  But imagine a limit that goes to infinity. What happens? Eventually the interest of wealth wins. Now, different societies can have different coin flip ratios.

  I think our society is nowhere near 51% / 49%. I think your solutions would bring us closer to that 50 / 50 but due to again, the very nature of the capitalist system- the law will never be in the driving seat.

  Two very simple axioms determine that, which we have discussed above

  1. wealth tends to accumulate due to economies of scale

  2. wealth leads to power and power self-perpetuates

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas

  Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market

  This is a fantasy. We talk about “free market capitalism” as if it’s some pristine, untouched mechanism that would work perfectly fine if only the government followed the rules. But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in. Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.

  This is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s fundamental to the system. A free market can never remain a free market. For two very simple reasons.

  a) economies of scale. It’s cheaper to a lot of something per thing compared to a little of something per thing. so there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there’s only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.

  b) wealth is power. if you have power, you will use it to ensure your position is improved. this is human nature. this works the same in any other political economic system.

  It’s not that a pure free market is corrupted by government, or that a pure socialism is corrupted by incompetent central planners; both are myths in the sense that they never truly exist in the real world. We either get forms of crony capitalism or state-managed capitalism, but the “free” part is always an abstraction.

  What we need to acknowledge is that the political and economic systems are not two separate worlds that only overlap by accident. They’re conjoined twins. Pretending one can neatly excise government from the economy is a fantasy—just as fantastical as imagining the perfect socialist utopia.

  The trick is to recognize that the moment large-scale wealth accumulates, it necessarily accumulates political clout. And from there, the “free market” gradually becomes a marketplace that’s anything but free.

  This is what people mean by late stage capitalism. It’s capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root. We’re witnessing the transition right now as we speak.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.

  I think one thing we need to get out of the way is that the political system and the economic system are intertwined. There is no way to have a democratic capitalist society without having one influence the other.

  If we go back to Adam Smith- he’s seen as the father of economics. But he didn’t consider himself an economist. He considered a moral philosopher and a political economist. The political system and the economic system are one and the same.

  You believe these large corporations gaining too much influence is because of poor maintenance. Because of a corrupt government. You believe it’s because we’re not enforcing our anti-trust laws and so on.

  I disagree and say this was always inevitable. It is impossible to keep your garden free of weeds starting from a free market economy. Again- wealth snowballs and wealth buys influence.

  It’s a simple cause and effect. As long as the profit incentive is the main motivator in our political economy, the political system will be shaped by those with the most money. And they have the incentive to remove those free-market systems in order to maximize their own profit.

  It’s a deterministic cycle. Free market capitalism -> late stage capitalism -> fascism

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.

  Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.

  It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious.

  Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable

  Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.

  The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.

  This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.

  We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.

  We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gulf of Make a Report to Apple⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What difference does this make? Some lower level employee will see this, roll his eyes, and then continue on with his day.

  Beyond this, do you think Apple can actually take any other position than aligning with fascism? That was always going to happen. They literally can’t help but align with fascism- this is the culmination of late stage capitalism.

  It’s like politely asking a dog not to salivate when it sees a steak in front of it.

  You’re not gonna get anywhere and you’re just wasting time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Corporations, at their core, are profit-generating engines—nothing more, nothing less. The corporate board’s one legal imperative is to ensure the shareholders see a return on their investment, by any means necessary. Morality? It’s merely a decorative flourish, not the operating principle.

  All companies are evil. Google is not any more or less evil than any other company. The difference is they have a significant power base and therefore have a lot to gain or lose in the transition to fascism. They understand that Trump is spiteful and willing to bend and even break the law to punish those who defy him. They also understand he rewards those who bend the knee. Therefore, the most profitable path of action is bending the knee.

  This should not surprise anybody. You substitute Google for any large corporation and they would have done the same thing. Don’t believe me? Google around (while you still can freely search for information) for the Coca-Cola saga in Colombia, where union leaders were getting forcibly suicided by narco-paramilitary death squads hired by Coca-Cola.

  You know- the commercials that make you feel all warm and fuzzy around Christmas time with the polar bears and Santa Claus? Yeah, they’ll murder you if you threaten their bottom line. It’s just what they do.

  There’s a simple math equation:

  Let

  P = Probability of getting caught,

  F = Expected fine or penalty,

  R = Potential revenue or profit,

  Constants

  α = The weight assigned to the probability of getting caught ( P ). If this constant is high, the corporation is more cautious… if it’s low, the corporation is willing to make more risks. In Colombia, this is much lower than in the US.

  β = The weight assigned to the probable size of the penalty ( F ). A high β means there’s a serious potential danger. However, if β is low (like when Ford decided the cost of simply paying lawsuits from deaths due to known car malfunctions was probably lower than the price of recalls) then they’ll be more likely to push forward

  γ = The weight assigned to the impact on their bottom line ( R ). For example, if Boeing thinks they will lose a lot of money from whistleblowers, they will find a way to suicide them. If the impact is small, then it’s not worth the potential risks.

  C = ( αP ⋅ βF ) − γR

  Let’s give an imaginary example. Let’s say a corporation is considering dumping toxic waste illegally into a river, potentially giving thousands of people cancer. Let’s say they’re gonna save $10M a year from doing this.

  R = 10,000,000

  The probability of getting caught is 10%

  P = 0.10

  The expected fine is $5M

  F = 5,00,000

  Let’s try out some constants

  α = 1.5 ⇒ they’re somewhat cautious about getting caught

  β = 1.2 ⇒ they’re moderately concerned about the penalty

  γ = 2.0 ⇒ they’re really motivated by profit (maybe their profits went down 10% last year, a big no-no)

  Plug in the values

  C = (1.5 · 0.10 · 1.2 · 5,000,000) - (2.0 · 10,000,000)

  C = (900,000) - (20,000,000)

  C = -19,100,000

  C is less than 0? Dump that toxic waste, baby. It’s the logical position if you’re trying to maximize profit. Sometimes you will get caught, but imagine you did this in a simulation 1,000 times. Most of the times, you will be more profitable because of it and therefore you dump the waste.

  It’s like a poker player. If you get AA, you raise pre-flop. Sometimes you will lose on the flop to some dunce who goes in with 2-7… but in the long term, most of the time, you will win. Therefore it’s the right move.

  This is what companies do. People need to realize and internalize this. They are profit generating engines. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not your friends. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about the future of the world or anything. Literally nothing at all.

  They are a math formula and if destroying everything you love happens to be the most profitable move most of the time, they will do it without second guessing. Because they aren’t people. They are a machine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Mark Zuckerberg wants to redefine open source so badly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Literally 3+ billion people’s lives are the training data.

  yep. I never thought about it but you’re absolutely right. that is Facebook’s “competitive advantage” that the other AI companies don’t have.

  although that’s part of it. I’m sure they do web scraping, novels, movie transcripts, college textbooks, research papers, newspapers, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I lose a beer belly working out one day a week?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.

  however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away.

  but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise