immutable
@immutable@lemm.ee
- Comment on Powell indicates tariffs could pose a challenge for the Fed between controlling inflation and boosting growth 1 week ago:
The fed controls interest rates. That controls how cheap or expensive it is to borrow money.
Lower interest rates are a great tool if you’ve got people sitting on capital. You lower the interest rates, borrowing becomes cheaper, and capital takes advantage of this to start more enterprises and the economy heats up.
Higher interest rates help fight inflation, there’s too much money in the system, higher rates make getting more money to pump into the system more expensive cooling it down.
Now what a keen observer might notice is that there no direction to move the interest rates which counteract nonsense trade policies.
You can cut rates to 0, flood the market with cheap credit, and if your inputs are tariffed and you can’t turn a profit… it doesn’t change shit.
This is where stagflation thrives. The cheap money floods the economy to try to spur economic growth, but the thing holding back growth isn’t access to borrowing, it’s the disaster out trade policies. So the market flooded with cheap money just becomes inflationary.
You get little economic development, high inflation, this is a classic stagflation trap. And trump and his advisors are going to apply maximum pressure to cut rates to “save the economy” from their terrible trade policies and all that will do is sink us deeper into this hole.
- Comment on ooo.ooo 2 weeks ago:
He likely has narcissistic personality disorder and so this is less an act and more a mask, a shield. The person he’s protecting the most is himself, he needs to be this facade.
I found this video really quite fascinating about what it’s like caring for a dying narcissist. Whatever family that remains hold out hope that as death itself nears the narcissist might finally let down their guard and show their true self. Apparently the opposite happens.
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 2 weeks ago:
Neat, I appreciate your insight. Upvote from me and today I learned.
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 2 weeks ago:
Yea I tend to think than when someone identifies as a Libertarian they almost certainly don’t mean a civil libertarian, which is how the aclu actually identifies themselves.
We have grown from a roomful of civil libertarians to more than 4 million members, activists, and supporters across the country. The ACLU is now a nationwide organization with a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices filing cases in both state and federal courts. We appear before the Supreme Court more than any other organization except the Department of Justice.
This is literally the only time the word libertarian appears in their own history www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history
- Comment on Obama wasn't a hero; he just wasn't terrible 2 weeks ago:
Thank you.
I feel like a crazy person sometimes because I remember when the ACA was rolling along it was reported that it was just the Heritage Foundation, a notoriously right wing think tank, plan.
I looked into it because I thought “certainly this can’t be true, hope and change and all that” I went and looked up their plan. It was a market based approach that used tax incentives and penalties to increase the size of the insurance pool.
That’s the ACA.
And people act like it’s some litmus test of progressive policy success.
This is what I’ll never forgive Obama about. He captured an entire generation of voters energy stumping with progressive speeches about making real change. He had no real desire to do that, constantly governing from the center / center right.
So that whole generation learned a lesson, progressive policies don’t work. Which is amazing considering that we didn’t even try any. We somehow passed a bunch of corporate friendly policies and peoples lives didn’t get meaningfully better and they chalked it up to “progressives don’t have an answer either”
I think this is a contributing factor to the absolute shit show we find ourselves in today. America has deeply broken problems that are entrenched because them existing makes someone very rich. Not the same guy for every problem, but for every problem in America you can rest assured there’s a small group of assholes that need that problem to exist so they can buy a third yacht. People feel that pain and they went “well fuck, the lefts best orator, the guy with a vision and plan and skills couldn’t fix it” then along comes trump being a blowhard jackass saying “I can fix it” and people were like “sure, let’s try it”
Obama could have actually delivered on that change, it wouldn’t have been easy, he would have had to actually use that supermajority for the few weeks it existed to pass legislation. He would have had to bring blue dogs to heel or blow up the filibuster. But if he could have found the gumption to do it, and those policies meaningfully improved peoples lives, he would have cemented multiple decades of democratic dominance.
Instead he passed uninspiring half assed solutions that tinkered around the edges of our societies most difficult problems. Structured them so that all the pain would be felt up front and all the benefits would slowly phase in over time. Tried to find compromise so that the right wouldn’t attack him and even after giving everything away they screeched about death panels.
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 2 weeks ago:
Liberal policies are an actual thing, a thing that leftists frequently disagree with.
Libertarians are often placed on the right part of the left-right divide. The fact you’ve chosen the label libertarian instead of conservative is animated by the exact same “purity test” that you find so silly.
- Comment on Replit CEO Amjad Masad says learning to code is a waste of time, citing Dario Amodei's prediction that AI may generate essentially all code by next year. 3 weeks ago:
What’s weird is he’s the ceo of replit.
Replit’s product is a website where you can write a snippet of code and run it without having to install anything. An activity that human developers would do to test out something.
So if his prediction comes true, his product will lose all value.
- Comment on am i responsible if i hurt someone by leaving them after "making" them fall in love with me? 5 weeks ago:
If I were your partner, although it might not feel like it in the moment, the sooner the better.
If you aren’t going to commit to them, that’s your choice to make, but free them up to find someone that will. Every ounce of love and time and attention they pay you from the moment you make the decision to leave until you find the gumption to do it is a waste for them. The most respectful thing you can do is not waste the precious and finite moments of their life.
Let them know what you’ve decided. Have the courage to tell them plainly and honestly that you are leaving and that you won’t be the person to love them. Let them get over you so they can find the person that will love them.
And don’t you dare double back unless you mean to stay. If you stay do it because it’s what you want not because you feel bad. That partner is a human being, one that deserves the truth and to be loved. If you can’t do that, or don’t want to do that, that’s your choice.
This is the least we owe our partners, to be honest with them, to love them or let them find love elsewhere.
I know you are getting a lot of downvotes. Choosing to leave someone you love is not a popular opinion. I could not do it and I think most couldn’t. In time I suspect you will find one of two things to be true.
- You will find someone you truly love and you will recognize that this relationship had affection and care but was different.
- You will find that what was out there wasn’t worth what you gave up, that this was love, and you will wish you had it back
This is life though, the hard decisions, and only you get to make them. I hope you make a good one, and above all, if you want to be a decent human being, treat your partner well. If that means standing by their side in love, great. If that means being honest with them so that they can be happy, also fine. Just don’t lie to them, don’t be needlessly mean in ending it, have the courage of your convictions and tell them the plain simple truth. Don’t make up a reason that feels better, don’t blame them for the relationship falling apart, don’t trick them into hating you.
You owe them that at least.
- Comment on am i responsible if i hurt someone by leaving them after "making" them fall in love with me? 5 weeks ago:
Explain your situation then.
Sounds to me like you love your partner and they love you. You’d like to leave to go have other life experiences.
It’s pretty easy, which do you value more, the love you have for your partner or these life experiences you could have?
I don’t know you, but my guess is that if you are thinking about it enough to want to find an answer, then you already have your answer. You value the life experiences more, you care about your partner, and you don’t want to hurt them.
I’ve been married to my wife for over a decade now, I love her with all my heart, I can’t think of any kind of life experience that would make me want to leave her. I imagine that love is not a binary on or off type thing that there are degrees and kinds of love. It’s very well possible that you love your partner but not enough to want to stay together forever.
This is really a question that only you can answer. Which do you want to do, it’s your one life, you get to choose. But don’t stay with your partner because you are afraid of hurting them because if that’s why you stay, you will become bitter and resentful and the idea of “what could of been” will always be this perfect thing that they kept from you.
Stay because you want to stay or leave because you’d rather leave.
- Comment on am i responsible if i hurt someone by leaving them after "making" them fall in love with me? 5 weeks ago:
In general you can’t be responsible for someone else’s emotions.
If you were having a casual relationship and the other person has big feelings you don’t reciprocate, that sucks but it’s not your fault.
If, however, you reciprocate those feelings, or pretended to and led them on, then you do bear some responsibility.
The actual salient question though is if you love this person that loves you. If not, you aren’t doing them any favors stringing them along. That person deserves to be loved like anyone else and you will be causing them more harm than good if you pretend you love them just to save them some heartbreak.
The correct course of action is to be honest about how you feel and also recognize how your partner feels. Whether or not you intended them to fall in love with you, recognize that that is significant and your loss in their life will be painful. There’s no two ways about that, so be kind and compassionate to your partner.
But do not fool yourself into thinking that what’s right is to just keep them around because you don’t want to break their hearts. If they love you, they want to be loved back, and if you can’t do that that’s fine.
Pretending you love them so you won’t hurt them will cause the greatest pain of all.
- Comment on Tesla shares fall after Lutnick goes on TV and recommends stock 5 weeks ago:
Was going on tv and desperately pleading with Americans to pretty please buy something not an effective strategy?
Did people immediately wonder, “if this is so good why do all these politicians have to keep hawking this stuff?”
Tesla, much like Elon, is giving big divorced middle aged man energy right now. Like me, I’m cool, see I got this 78 year old orange dude to stand out on the White House lawn and say “hey kids, this guy is cool” so why won’t you believe me!!
Ok I got another one of my paunchy middle aged friends to go on tv and tell everyone how cool I am, did that work? What?! People think that’s cringe… oh boy, why won’t anyone think I’m cool anymore.
Remember like 10 years ago? I was Tony Stark! I don’t know why everyone thought I was so cool back then, but I would give anything literally anything to be cool again. Why don’t people like my shitty cars that I haven’t updated in over a decade. I mean they looked cool and futuristic in 2015, what do you mean they looked dated now?!
Did you see we made some gold, and I pinky swear that in 12 to 18 months, this time they will super seriously be self driving and you can just sit at home and earn money by turning your car into a taxi. It’s so cool!! I mean I know I’ve been saying for a decade now that this super cool thing is 12 to 18 months away, but this time I’m really serious.
Wait? Is that why you don’t think I’m cool, because I stopped doing cool things like make affordable stylish vehicles people want and I spend all day tweeting and making overpriced pieces of shit? I make promise after promise after promise and never keep it? You are sick of waiting around for the super cool things I say I’m going to give you that never materialize? I mean sure it’s not a hyper loop, but I have like 20 teslas slowly driving a mile long loop under Las Vegas. It gets rid of traffic jams for like 200 people per day, unless there’s a traffic jam in the one lane tunnel I dug.
Has everyone gotten sick of my schtick of promising the future only to deliver a wet fart and even the amazing star power of sex symbol commerce secretary Howard Lutnick can’t turn this around?!
Fine, I’m going to go dismantle social security and your grandma can eat cat food until she dies in the gutter. Maybe then you’ll think I’m cool. Now where’s that Ketamine at…
- Comment on Trump Voter Says He Doesn't Regret Choice Despite Wife's ICE Arrest 5 weeks ago:
Is this those famed family values I keep hearing conservative whine about?
- Comment on Why are autistic people so odd?? 5 weeks ago:
I’m neurodivergent, let me take a crack at this.
First off, disclaimer, autism is a massive spectrum so this whole thing is a gross generalization.
Neurodivergent people act differently than neurotypical people for 3 broad categories of reasons
- different stimuli processing
- different thinking patterns
- different skills
First, is stimuli processing. Have you ever been in a crowded room and there’s lots of people talking but your brain does you a cool favor and ignores all that noise so you can focus on the person in front of you? Did you do anything to make that happen, probably not. It’s just a thing your brain did for you when processing all that stimuli, you placed your focus on the speaker in front of you and your brain filtered the rest. What if you couldn’t do that?
Stimuli processing issues can present in both dimensions, both over processing and under processing. Neurodivergent people are often placed into situations that are relatively easy for neurotypical people to process but can be very challenging for neurodivergent people to process. If you want to do a thought experiment (or actual experiment) select a stimuli you can’t ignore, pinch yourself hard every few seconds and try to carry on a conversation. You will notice it takes a lot more energy to focus on your tasks and ignore this unwanted stimuli.
Second, different thinking patterns. We all process the world differently. Neurodivergent people can have very different ways of processing information, I know first hand of three patterns that are common and that I exhibit.
- Perseveration. Perseveration is when you can’t stop thinking about a topic. Kinda like getting a song stuck in your head, but for me it’s having a difficult technical problem and literally being unable to carry out other functions because I can’t keep my brain from working on it. I wake up at 4am thinking about technical problems and then can’t go back to sleep. A puzzle might be a fun diversion for you, it can be a dangerous trap for me where I know my brain will continually turn it over again and again no matter what I want.
- Hyper literal thinking. I think about things in very black and white terms. It can be very frustrating for things to happen outside of the rules I’ve established. There are rules that make obvious sense and the contravention of those rules is distressing. For example, you aren’t supposed to hurt people’s feeling but you also aren’t supposed to lie, this makes white lies distressing (I find all kinds of deception distressing, and it’s amazing how much you are just supposed to lie to people in many social situations).
- Hyper focus. Neurodivergent people often have special interests that they can focus on for extended periods of time. If people were to leave me alone, I could write code for days, only stopping when hunger or some other undeniable physical pain occurs.
Third, different skills. Frequently neurodivergent people find social skills difficult. I said to someone recently that neurotypical people seem completely insane to me. The complex web of contradicting rules make little sense. On top of this, rules are often predicated on being able to ascertain the feelings of the person you are interacting with. Many neurodivergent people find this difficult to impossible.
The best I’ve been able to come up with is it’s like being color blind. I struggle with understanding facial expressions, body language, tone, etc. I also have problem displaying the correct things in kind. To operate in the world, many neurodivergent people adopt a system of “masking” where we learn what we are “supposed to do” and carefully study people and make sure to make our faces look right and make our bodies look correct. This is extremely taxing even if you get it right, so neurodivergent people end up sometimes getting it wrong and also spending a huge amount of energy doing this.
So to sum up. Neurodivergent people are asked to operate in a world that is constantly bombarding us with negative stimuli, spending extra energy trying to understand social signals that come naturally to others but our brains don’t pick up. Following these weird scripts requires a ton of energy and it’s easy to mess it up and then someone wonders “why are autistic people so weird?”
- Comment on Tesla shares plunge 15%, suffering steepest drop in five years 1 month ago:
Skinner meme.
Was it a bad idea to have a ketamine addicted far right lunatic as ceo
No, it’s the markets who are wrong.
- Comment on "Peace" 1 month ago:
You sound so cringe.
We aren’t calling everything we hate woke anymore. Now anything we hate is DEI
Check out the comments on this video youtu.be/sTCZ0f1IhIQ
All white fire crew does a bad job, stupid DEI hires!!
- Comment on The very first thing that every human does when arriving in a brand new place, is take a piss on it. 1 month ago:
The “very first thing”?!
This is why you don’t get invited to parties
- Comment on Branded pothole repairs. 2 months ago:
I dunno, reading the FAQ this seems like some of the least bad public private partnerships
It’s an insurance company that doesn’t want to pay out for people damaging their cars on potholes. Seems like a rare win for everyone. Insurance company pays out less, people don’t slam into potholes damaging their cars, and I guess the insurance company gets some advertising.
There are so many dystopia things going on, but I think this one is fine.
- Comment on ugh i wish 4 months ago:
This problem has always bugged me writ large as well. It seems nearly impossible to have any conversation that looks at the bigger picture of things in a complete and nuanced way.
Take for example employment rates. It’s just taken as a given that high employment is the goal. But stop and think about that for a second. In any other part of your life is your goal to completely saturate all time with labor? No, obviously not.
But the goals are set and we must achieve them. More money next quarter than last quarter, it doesn’t matter if every conceivable customer already has a subscription, we must grow. Make the product cheaper to make, charge more, do anything but consider that we might have picked stupid goals.
- Comment on Is it normal to feel tired of technological progress? 5 months ago:
I don’t think it’s weird to feel exhausted by the pace of innovation, especially when the innovation has nebulous value.
I felt this way with the wave of “smart house” stuff. I’m a software engineer, I spend all day programming and debugging stuff. I do NOT want to spend 1 fucking second off life debugging a fucking light bulb. Not one. Oh I can say “Alexa, red alert” and all my lightbulbs turn red, fucking fuck you. I don’t want my refrigerator connected to the internet, I don’t want my toaster monitoring my speech patterns to serve me ads and customize my toasting experience.
To every shitbag manager out there tying to shove this garbage down our throats, fuck off and die. And you might think “you don’t like a smart (whatever) then don’t buy one.” Fuck you too, over time I fucking can’t. Try to buy a tv that isn’t a fucking smart tv, you just fucking can’t anymore. And slowly but surely everything you use turns into some shitty piece of fuck.
The good news is that AI is probably a bubble. We’ve fed the sum total of the internet into our LLMs and we’ve gotten pretty convincing liars that are sometimes right. We are running out of data and 99 out of 100 uses of AI don’t make sense.
I’ve been in the startup scene for my entire adult career and if you talk to people that try to jam AI into their products to make investors happy you’ll hear very similar things every time. It was incredibly expensive, no one used it, and no one liked it.
There are some use cases for AI, but not nearly as much as what’s getting thrown at the wall. AI has been through many winters where progress stalls, the hype dies out, and AI winter begins.
Final thought, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. People are enamored with using AI to make false memories (sorry, there comes a point where you’ve touched up a photo so much it isn’t reality anymore), destroying their ability to use their brains for critical thinking, art, writing, reading. You don’t have to. Those people might deeply regret not having a single real picture of their child. Maybe the clouds made the photo look bad, but now you can’t remember laughing as you ran through the rain.
Our lives do not need to be curated and polished into some technicolor madness. Do what you want and in 20 years people will ask you “how are you so interesting and fulfilled” as they shovel AI garbage into their maw. I see a future that is similar to what happened to social media (I know, I’m using social media right now, we are all hypocrites). People working everyday to present some faux reality to others, jealous of everyone else’s faux realty, unhappy and unable to go 5 god damn minutes without a dopamine hit.
The other day I had to wait for something, I sat and looked out the window at the beautiful trees rustling gently in the wind. I took in the glory of the world around me, I sat in peace and let my mind wander. These are skills too few enjoy these days because they let the future happen to them. You are in charge of your life.
- Comment on Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done' 5 months ago:
Why would you complete a game when you can make a constant stream of income and increase that income stream with announcements and drip feeds.
Look at this madness robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
- Comment on Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic 6 months ago:
I suppose you might get to kill people but that doesn’t mean that the law is going to be ok with that. Proportionality of force is a thing. Stand your ground states are doing their best to change that, but that’s a very mixed bag.
If you shoot and kill someone for blocking your waymo and being a creep, in most places you are going to have to convince a district attorney and a jury that you were justified in ending their life. Even if you do that and escape criminal liability, you’ll then have to convince more people not to hold you liable in civil court.
Sounds pretty cool to go “I got a shooty bang bang so if I feel threatened in any way I can come out blasting.” It is true in the moment, but if you place any value on your future liberty, money, and time you might want to consider the ramifications of killing another human being.
Finally, even if society decides you shouldn’t face any criminal or civil penalty for killing someone, you will have to face yourself. Sitting behind a keyboard it sounds badass to shoot someone that’s pissing you off. In the moment you will probably feel justified. Many a young man sent to war or employed as a police officer didn’t think that taking a life would change them, only to find the reality of taking a life is not what the action movies promised. Self doubt, self loathing, ptsd, depression, these are all common reactions to reckoning with the fact that you are the cause of another persons death.
It is hard to feel like a righteous badass as you watch a grieving widow mourn someone that may have even done something stupid or wrong, knowing that their child has no father now and their wife no partner. Are these people jerks and creeps, sure, is the punishment for being a jerk or creep death, rarely. It is a heavy burden to carry to end another.