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sj_zero | @sj_zero@social.fbxl.net

Author of The Graysonian Ethic (Available on Amazon, pick up a dead tree copy today)

Admin of the FBXL Network including FBXL Search, FBXL Video, FBXL Social, FBXL Lotide, FBXL Translate, and FBXL Maps.

Advocate for freedom and tolerance even if you say things I do not like

Adversary of Fediblock

Accept that I'll probably say something you don't like and I'll give you the same benefit, and maybe we can find some truth about the world.

Ah... Is the Alliteration clever or stupid? Don't answer that, I sort of know the answer already...

Do you have the whole set? I've got them hanging on my wall, from 1 to 100 trillion.

"No, don't be stupid. The global megacorp could never turn against me! We're the good guys!"

Banananam (do dooo da do do)

No kidding. "We need to reduce fossil fuel use!" How much does one of them f16 burn again?

I'd expect a casual effect there. Spend thousands on rings and you're not spending those thousands on building your life. $10,000 could either buy you a big rock that you keep in your drawer because it's going to get hurt anywhere else, or it could buy you all of your furniture and some of your minor appliances.

I also suspect a degree of selection bias, because the sort of people who think that spending a whole lot of money on a rock is a good idea I probably going to have unrealistic expectations about other parts of their life.

Seems like you did the right thing even if it sucks you didn't get the job: "oh, a noncompete? Looks like you can not compete for my labor"

It seems to me that you have a generation or two of people who think that things that are powerful will always remain that way, and it's only by virtue of the application of power that things become or remain powerful, rather than by being something beneficial or useful to many people who then empower the thing by making use of it.

The problem is that such a mistaken belief about the nature of the world is eventually going to run up against reality, and that's exactly what we are seeing. People who pursue power make their way into positions of powerful institutions, and then run them into the ground thinking that those powerful institutions can't possibly fail because they are powerful and all that exists is power.

In my view that's what we're seeing with stuff like people trying to take over media franchises, where they think that they can do anything they want with those media franchises afterwards and everyone will just sit there and continue buying it. We're also seeing it with respect to the US dollar system where obviously there's a lot of power that comes with being in the world's reserve currency, but you can't be the world's reserve currency while also using that currency to impose your values upon the rest of the world. Eventually, the rest of the world is just going to say "that's fine, impose your values upon yourself and we will use something else"

It goes to show that the neomarxists who only look at anything through the lens of power are incorrect. Power can come from many different things, either from violence such as the barrel of a gun like what mao believed, or alternatively through service such as proper capitalistic pursuits where the only way that you can convince someone to give you more of your money is to provide something that they want at a price that they want to pay. Arguably, the greatest generation of Americans understood this deeply which is why rather than absolutely crush Germany and Japan after they lost world war ii, and they helped to rebuild those countries into something new. This soft power is something that China also makes use of, and it's a lot harder to cultivate and maintain, but if you do things right it can mean that you have a much larger power base than if you try to cultivate power through hard power such as violence or other forms of hard coercion.

I started adding cursive to my alphabet lessons with my little one a year and a bit ago. Have to admit, at first it was a bit tough trying to remember how to do some of the letters myself!

They kept on saying that cryptocurrency stuff was web 3.0, but I think the real web 3.0 is federation with ActivityPub.

One key part of the argument in my view is that unlike crypto stuff, federation actually keeps you on the web.

That is the angriest looking flamingo I've ever seen.

True anime enjoyer confirmed.

I was in downtown Vancouver the other day, and as far as I can figure it's probably about as good as it gets as far as high density cities go, and I just wanted to get back to the bush.

Pippa and Tenma are my favorite comedy duo.

Last year I kept on writing a news articles about how it was the hottest year ever, but last year had something very unique about it -- I went out for a walk with my son every single day I could, and at no point in the entire year was it too hot for us to go out for a walk. That's actually relatively unique, it was a cool summer.

Of course, weather is local and they're claiming climate is global, but I think it goes to show you have to be very careful about taking these people's claims at face value.

Isn't wanting more stuff for less money a common human experience?

I'm making a distinction between the rank and file and the media, I don't really believe most rank and file are really like whatever the media or the like claim.... I mean if they really did flip 180 like that then it makes them incredibly disingenuous people...

People probably think he chose to live in the middle of nowhere in west virginia (I think it was?) because he's gone down the far right rabbit hole, but I strongly suspect it's because you can get a giant compound for the price of a studio apartment in most big cities.

I strongly suspect that most Democrats don't actually want to fund a bunch of forever wars either. I mean, that's what Obama was elected for, he just turned out to do the opposite of everything he was elected to do. "Help the poor, end the wars, shut down gitmo? I agree but let's tweak it to help the 0.1%, keep the wars going forever, keep gitmo going!"

Went better than expected.

With the 15% inflation we actually see up here, "middle class" starts at about 250,000/yr

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