What's funny is there's lots of posts tonight, and I was really got interested in reading this post until I realized I wrote it at the end. :P
tbf though, they can turn off a gasoline vehicle remotely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs
I agree, it was a strawman and I was being intentionally obtuse so I could snark. Reality is a lot more nuanced.
On one hand, there's a lot of "governance" I see which just looks like attempts at bullying and domination to me. Demand everyone obey or affix them with a scarlet letter and try to rally enough people together that the people who control the lists become the most powerful people, able to shut down anyone they don't like.
That being said, even someone like me who has an empty blocklist, an empty mute list, and doesn't defederate anyone may occasionally have to use mod tools. The ideal for me would be having the ability to paint with as thin a brush as possible to achieve the desired result. I want even people I really don't like to be able to talk about things I really don't like within certain limits (which I don't need to tell anyone because I'm not their dad -- it's in the TOS)
On one hand, there's a lot of "governance" I see which just looks like attempts at bullying and domination to me. Demand everyone obey or affix them with a scarlet letter and try to rally enough people together that the people who control the lists become the most powerful people, able to shut down anyone they don't like.
That being said, even someone like me who has an empty blocklist, an empty mute list, and doesn't defederate anyone may occasionally have to use mod tools. The ideal for me would be having the ability to paint with as thin a brush as possible to achieve the desired result. I want even people I really don't like to be able to talk about things I really don't like within certain limits (which I don't need to tell anyone because I'm not their dad -- it's in the TOS)
I've never heard about this before, but it's sorta nuts seeing every party saying "yeah, this makes sense" except the one.
You're not the first person to suggest a blog, but it's more about the journey. I'm thankful to have people cool enough to have conversations about things with and who are willing to tolerate my big walls of text as I try to figure out the world with everyone.
Seems to me like as long as you're following your conscience and thinking for yourself it doesn't matter what you are labeled as.
Labels like that shift and change and some people expect you to shift and change with them, but do people really switch their beliefs on a dime like that? You believe what you believe, not what some label says you believe.
Moreover, the way the political statecraft becomes all encompassing is really harmful. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state" and "everything is political" are two sides of a coin we should melt down for scrap metal. For most of us, the most important questions aren't about some distant capitol, but what's around us and how we affect that.
Labels like that shift and change and some people expect you to shift and change with them, but do people really switch their beliefs on a dime like that? You believe what you believe, not what some label says you believe.
Moreover, the way the political statecraft becomes all encompassing is really harmful. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state" and "everything is political" are two sides of a coin we should melt down for scrap metal. For most of us, the most important questions aren't about some distant capitol, but what's around us and how we affect that.
I've been a rackets fan since the Maddox v. Dick Masterson lolsuit, and it's been sad seeing a decline. Every stream used to be a must-watch, and lately I haven't gotten around to seeing a lot of them.
It's easy to just say he's just a degenerate, but I can honestly empathize with him. As one stares long into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
Everyone has tough times, and tough times don't always look the way you'd expect. Sometimes they look fun in the moment. It isn't until later that you realize you're in a bed of snakes.
Back when he'd say wise things on his show, he said that there are seasons of life, and things sometimes aren't good and sometimes things aren't good for a long time. I hope he can eventually find his way out of the bed of snakes, because under it all he's a good guy.
It's easy to just say he's just a degenerate, but I can honestly empathize with him. As one stares long into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
Everyone has tough times, and tough times don't always look the way you'd expect. Sometimes they look fun in the moment. It isn't until later that you realize you're in a bed of snakes.
Back when he'd say wise things on his show, he said that there are seasons of life, and things sometimes aren't good and sometimes things aren't good for a long time. I hope he can eventually find his way out of the bed of snakes, because under it all he's a good guy.
Some of random things about Megaman 3:
1. The second gamepad on NES is a cheat device. I remember if you press the right button you get a mega jump. If you have megajump active then jump down a hole you can get a death sound then jump out of the hole and you're invincible, but you can't shoot unless you have something activted, and rush components work.
2. The menu is broken. If you fiddle with the D-pad, you can get to one of the rush things without actually getting it. I remember we'd hop into gemini man's stage and shoot the little eggs to get some weapon tanks and once you're on the thing and you pick up a weapon tank you just have that weapon from now on.
3. The end of the game has this sequence where it's like "Oh yeah Megaman has a brother" and my brother and I got super excited because we thought there might be a 2 player coop option in a future game where one of you plays as Megaman and the other one plays as Protoman. That never happened which sucks.
Man, I should make a 2 player megaman-like game sometime. That'd be cool.
1. The second gamepad on NES is a cheat device. I remember if you press the right button you get a mega jump. If you have megajump active then jump down a hole you can get a death sound then jump out of the hole and you're invincible, but you can't shoot unless you have something activted, and rush components work.
2. The menu is broken. If you fiddle with the D-pad, you can get to one of the rush things without actually getting it. I remember we'd hop into gemini man's stage and shoot the little eggs to get some weapon tanks and once you're on the thing and you pick up a weapon tank you just have that weapon from now on.
3. The end of the game has this sequence where it's like "Oh yeah Megaman has a brother" and my brother and I got super excited because we thought there might be a 2 player coop option in a future game where one of you plays as Megaman and the other one plays as Protoman. That never happened which sucks.
Man, I should make a 2 player megaman-like game sometime. That'd be cool.
Remember: High inflation is a tax increase. You have to earn more money to get the same amount of earning power which means you can get bumped up into a new tax bracket -- bam, tax increase.
The neat thing about if someone made a biden bot is all the AI hallucinations would be a feature, not a bug. "I'm.... I was vice president during covid, jack! And barack obama sent me to Detroit!"
The fundamental issue of governance on the fediverse seems to be that somebody on earth disagrees with you and might say so using their own hardware and software, and you don't want to let them.
Fundamentally, it's a supervillain problem if you need to personally control everyone and everything on earth.
Fundamentally, it's a supervillain problem if you need to personally control everyone and everything on earth.
He became eligible for day parole in February and would be eligible for full parole in 2027, which is kinda fucked up.
Stealing from the poor to hand money to the elite.
And a bunch of idiots think that's a good thing.
And a bunch of idiots think that's a good thing.
Earlier today I was writing about this, the difference between the young and the old. Canada and the US are both notable -- the older people are people with million dollar houses, and the younger people are people who can never afford to buy a million dollar house. The older people have kids and potentially grandkids, the younger people statistically speaking are some of the least likely in history to have kids.
Can't blame this on any one person -- not for the policies that caused it nor for the politicians who talk about it (talking about it doesn't make it happen, so not talking about it won't change anything)
Can't blame this on any one person -- not for the policies that caused it nor for the politicians who talk about it (talking about it doesn't make it happen, so not talking about it won't change anything)
Honestly, "charge them both" seems the most reasonable option. It isn't like there's a good guy here.
Trump is insignificant. To focus on him is only to give a doddering old blowhard more credit and power than he deserves.
All he did was say what most people believe (and what most of our indicators show strongly), that the world is worse today than it used to be in the recent past(2004 felt way better than 2024, for example). That's objectively true. Millennials have it worse than boomers did, and zoomers have it worse than millennials did. They're poorer in terms of money, but also many critical life events just aren't happening. Many are more educated than any other generation before them but they don't have productive careers. They don't have homes. They aren't dating. They aren't getting married. They aren't having kids. People are lonely and lack community. Not to mention socially everyone was a lot more chill -- a lot of stuff made in the 2000s they say "of course that could never be made today since it's so offensive" -- everyone is getting exhausted from having to constantly apologize for existing, and it drives people apart because nobody wants to be attacked for being themselves even if "themselves" isn't a perfectly polished marble floor. Nobody's perfect and people need to feel like it's acceptable to be imperfect or they'll check out -- and they have. That may be part of the appeal of many unpolished, often crass populist politicians who say things that aren't acceptable to say by normal standards.
The zoomers and gen alpha will be Atlas holding up the world for a long while -- supporting an overwhelming population of retiring boomers and eventually millennials while also suffering the slings and arrows of those old fogeys legacy projects which both huge generations are demanding so they can feel like they're doing something. Meanwhile, those younger generations will be the ones stuck actually paying the consequences.
It's a great time if you're wealthy. You've got way more dollars than you did last year, and if you got in on stocks like the magnificent seven then maybe you've become overwhelmingly wealthier. The people in charge say "the economy has been doing great why are the rabble complaining?" But the rabble don't have stocks, they earn wages, and they can barely keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies (while the people in charge tell them things are so great). A lot of them aren't keeping food in their bellies or a roof over their heads, leading to record use of food banks, record numbers of homeless encampments.
Moments in history like can be quite dangerous. In the 1700s, discontent in France led to the horrifying reign of terror. In the 1800s, the Taiping rebellion elevated a really nasty character whom claimed to be spreading Christianity but in reality was just spreading misery and death. In the 1930s, Germany made lots of money for American companies like IBM, but the suffering of the common man led to the rise of a horrific racist dictator. But even in these cases, to focus on the Jacobins or Hong Xiuquan or Adolf Hitler is to miss the forest for a tree that happens to be growing in the middle. These people don't just rise, they are made to arise from the circumstances. People look at Putin's Russia with envy not because Donald Trump tells them to, but because it looks like the land of the dictator doesn't have the same problems we do (whether that's true or not doesn't matter, grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence)
Europe and America learned the lessons of the past in the postwar period and instead of punishing the whole people who obviously did horrible things, they punished the leaders and worked to make the lives of the common German and Japanese better, leading to an era of relative peace.
The move that would cripple Donald Trump and people like him immediately would be to take actions that make people's lives materially better. Acting to make housing and food and transportation affordable for everyone. Doing what's necessary to help return meaningful work to the common man. Help people feel like they can make progress towards typical life goals. Instead, as the meme says, the elites want to move the goalposts and tell us we should be happy and proud to "live in the pod, eat the bugs" and live inhuman lives consuming while making the ridiculously rich catastrophically rich. Instead of saying "we have plans so people who work hard can own a home", the famous article says "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (nevermind that oligarchs will magically still own plenty). In spending money to create opportunities, it would be important not to just spend it creating more opportunities for elites, who already have plenty. We don't need to build homes to hedge funds or to create more jobs as political analysts. We need boots on the ground work, and lots of it alongside a lower cost of living. Besides that, a one income family is ideal. If everyone is always working, nobody is able to do the required work of building local community. There's more to life than money and if all people are allowed to care about is money that's a huge problem. It's also important not to single out any one group as particularly marginalized, opportunities should exist for anyone who needs them and if there aren't enough then there needs to be more, not implementing systemic bigotry painted in smiley faces -- hunger doesn't care about the color of your skin or who you fall in love with.
I noticed that the overall discussion ended up as "stupid Americans are stupid", but many of the issues facing Americans are not unique at all to the US. Canada is facing even worse declines in standard of living, and Europe is as well. We can see similar reactions in many European nations with unthinkable wins for Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, and an upcoming change in electoral fortune for AfD in Germany that has the establishment desperately trying any lawfare it can to prevent. The conservatives in Canada under the bombastic Pierre Poilievre are on track for a majority government, and south america has seen upsets such as Milei in Argentina. Even China with its authoritarian government faces problems of this kind, with China's kids engaging in the lay flat and let it rot movements, protests against a perception that they won't be improving like their parents did.
All he did was say what most people believe (and what most of our indicators show strongly), that the world is worse today than it used to be in the recent past(2004 felt way better than 2024, for example). That's objectively true. Millennials have it worse than boomers did, and zoomers have it worse than millennials did. They're poorer in terms of money, but also many critical life events just aren't happening. Many are more educated than any other generation before them but they don't have productive careers. They don't have homes. They aren't dating. They aren't getting married. They aren't having kids. People are lonely and lack community. Not to mention socially everyone was a lot more chill -- a lot of stuff made in the 2000s they say "of course that could never be made today since it's so offensive" -- everyone is getting exhausted from having to constantly apologize for existing, and it drives people apart because nobody wants to be attacked for being themselves even if "themselves" isn't a perfectly polished marble floor. Nobody's perfect and people need to feel like it's acceptable to be imperfect or they'll check out -- and they have. That may be part of the appeal of many unpolished, often crass populist politicians who say things that aren't acceptable to say by normal standards.
The zoomers and gen alpha will be Atlas holding up the world for a long while -- supporting an overwhelming population of retiring boomers and eventually millennials while also suffering the slings and arrows of those old fogeys legacy projects which both huge generations are demanding so they can feel like they're doing something. Meanwhile, those younger generations will be the ones stuck actually paying the consequences.
It's a great time if you're wealthy. You've got way more dollars than you did last year, and if you got in on stocks like the magnificent seven then maybe you've become overwhelmingly wealthier. The people in charge say "the economy has been doing great why are the rabble complaining?" But the rabble don't have stocks, they earn wages, and they can barely keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies (while the people in charge tell them things are so great). A lot of them aren't keeping food in their bellies or a roof over their heads, leading to record use of food banks, record numbers of homeless encampments.
Moments in history like can be quite dangerous. In the 1700s, discontent in France led to the horrifying reign of terror. In the 1800s, the Taiping rebellion elevated a really nasty character whom claimed to be spreading Christianity but in reality was just spreading misery and death. In the 1930s, Germany made lots of money for American companies like IBM, but the suffering of the common man led to the rise of a horrific racist dictator. But even in these cases, to focus on the Jacobins or Hong Xiuquan or Adolf Hitler is to miss the forest for a tree that happens to be growing in the middle. These people don't just rise, they are made to arise from the circumstances. People look at Putin's Russia with envy not because Donald Trump tells them to, but because it looks like the land of the dictator doesn't have the same problems we do (whether that's true or not doesn't matter, grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence)
Europe and America learned the lessons of the past in the postwar period and instead of punishing the whole people who obviously did horrible things, they punished the leaders and worked to make the lives of the common German and Japanese better, leading to an era of relative peace.
The move that would cripple Donald Trump and people like him immediately would be to take actions that make people's lives materially better. Acting to make housing and food and transportation affordable for everyone. Doing what's necessary to help return meaningful work to the common man. Help people feel like they can make progress towards typical life goals. Instead, as the meme says, the elites want to move the goalposts and tell us we should be happy and proud to "live in the pod, eat the bugs" and live inhuman lives consuming while making the ridiculously rich catastrophically rich. Instead of saying "we have plans so people who work hard can own a home", the famous article says "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (nevermind that oligarchs will magically still own plenty). In spending money to create opportunities, it would be important not to just spend it creating more opportunities for elites, who already have plenty. We don't need to build homes to hedge funds or to create more jobs as political analysts. We need boots on the ground work, and lots of it alongside a lower cost of living. Besides that, a one income family is ideal. If everyone is always working, nobody is able to do the required work of building local community. There's more to life than money and if all people are allowed to care about is money that's a huge problem. It's also important not to single out any one group as particularly marginalized, opportunities should exist for anyone who needs them and if there aren't enough then there needs to be more, not implementing systemic bigotry painted in smiley faces -- hunger doesn't care about the color of your skin or who you fall in love with.
I noticed that the overall discussion ended up as "stupid Americans are stupid", but many of the issues facing Americans are not unique at all to the US. Canada is facing even worse declines in standard of living, and Europe is as well. We can see similar reactions in many European nations with unthinkable wins for Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, and an upcoming change in electoral fortune for AfD in Germany that has the establishment desperately trying any lawfare it can to prevent. The conservatives in Canada under the bombastic Pierre Poilievre are on track for a majority government, and south america has seen upsets such as Milei in Argentina. Even China with its authoritarian government faces problems of this kind, with China's kids engaging in the lay flat and let it rot movements, protests against a perception that they won't be improving like their parents did.
Places with really good train infrastructure tend to be places with really high population density. Even in China, there isn't great train infrastructure everywhere, just in areas with very high population density. The areas with low population density such as the mountainous regions don't tend to have lots of great train service. It's particularly good in the highest population density regions.
Similarly, Japan has great train service since there are 250 million people on a small series of islands.
Europe is another example, where a relatively large number of people live in large dense cities throughout Europe. Many Europeans come to North America and assume travel will be similar to Europe where you can visit a bunch of places in a short period of time because they're relatively close together, and then are shocked for example to learn that it takes 4 days to drive from Toronto to Winnipeg and most of the area between is just bush with little to no people living there. Winnipeg only has about a million people. Saskatoon and Regina are only 250,000 people each. Calgary is about 1.4 million and Edmonton is about 1 million, and even in BC you're only getting 3 million people province-wide in a nation 30% larger than the entire nation of France. When you take a flight over the country you see huge forests for hours at a time. The US is different of course, but lots of parts of it aren't that different. There's some highly populated areas, but there's some similarly unpopulated ones and whereas a plane simply ignores those areas, a train needs to travel through every inch.
There are regions with train service in America. In Canada, I've been on good trains in Vancouver, Toronto, and I've also taken trains in Ottawa. In all 3 cases it was the highest population density in Canada. There are also decent trains in New York and California, both regions with high population density.
Under both capitalist liberal democracy or authoritarianism, the construction of a common good requires two things: enough people to justify doing the project, and enough other stuff going on (or potentially going on in the future) to justify the project. Under both systems you burn through different forms of capital to get these projects done, and so eventually the laws of physics will pull you to the ground if you're doing wasteful things that don't help the people or the state.
In both cases, a certain solution must compete with other solutions for time and money. In the case of trains, they compete with planes for long distances and cars in shorter distances. The benefit of trains is they can carry overwhelmingly large numbers of people very efficiently and so if you have the population density you can carry lots of passengers and so justify your rail system. On the other hand, if there just aren't that many people then there just isn't anyone to use the system and so you're using all these resources for basically nobody, particularly if the potential users have other options and so take a car or a bus or a plane.
In the early industrial period, the monopoly trains had on travel allowed a lot of inefficiency. Railway companies built entire towns were built every so often to ensure there was water and coal for trains, and there were also stores in each so people could buy stuff along the way (or for those living in the towns) and in those towns the railway was virtually the entire economy but there was no other option for travel so that level of inefficiency for passenger travel was nonetheless justified. I went to one such town. All that's there today is a clearing, a railroad track, some building foundations if you look carefully, and an unkept graveyard.
Having higher population density would justify lots of investment in trains because you'd have so many people to move. The regions of China and Japan with great train service are highly populated, and to justify really good trains everywhere in Canada and the US, you'd need high population density everywhere. Towns of 5000 or 10,000 people would need 10x that number of people, and regions with nobody in them (of which there's lots) would need lots of people.
Given that the geographical reality is that North America has much more favorable geography than the bulk of China which is largely unpopulated and doesn't have many trains as a result, to have the equivalent would easily require 8 billion people to justify a really great investment in continent-wide rail. Even that may be a low estimate given just how much space we're talking about and the scale required to justify all the expense. Planes only require an airport at the source and destination and a plane. Considering that there might be only a few dozen major destinations, it is obvious why air travel has essentially taken over the long range travel market.
When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger". To get from new York to California by rail you'd need to destroy huge amounts of nature, and burn through massive amounts of energy, including in the production of steel and concrete in unimaginable amounts, particularly for high speed rail systems. I suspect the calculus might not be so favorable in that light, especially if the trains are mostly empty because they don't solve a problem in many cases along American routes.
Similarly, Japan has great train service since there are 250 million people on a small series of islands.
Europe is another example, where a relatively large number of people live in large dense cities throughout Europe. Many Europeans come to North America and assume travel will be similar to Europe where you can visit a bunch of places in a short period of time because they're relatively close together, and then are shocked for example to learn that it takes 4 days to drive from Toronto to Winnipeg and most of the area between is just bush with little to no people living there. Winnipeg only has about a million people. Saskatoon and Regina are only 250,000 people each. Calgary is about 1.4 million and Edmonton is about 1 million, and even in BC you're only getting 3 million people province-wide in a nation 30% larger than the entire nation of France. When you take a flight over the country you see huge forests for hours at a time. The US is different of course, but lots of parts of it aren't that different. There's some highly populated areas, but there's some similarly unpopulated ones and whereas a plane simply ignores those areas, a train needs to travel through every inch.
There are regions with train service in America. In Canada, I've been on good trains in Vancouver, Toronto, and I've also taken trains in Ottawa. In all 3 cases it was the highest population density in Canada. There are also decent trains in New York and California, both regions with high population density.
Under both capitalist liberal democracy or authoritarianism, the construction of a common good requires two things: enough people to justify doing the project, and enough other stuff going on (or potentially going on in the future) to justify the project. Under both systems you burn through different forms of capital to get these projects done, and so eventually the laws of physics will pull you to the ground if you're doing wasteful things that don't help the people or the state.
In both cases, a certain solution must compete with other solutions for time and money. In the case of trains, they compete with planes for long distances and cars in shorter distances. The benefit of trains is they can carry overwhelmingly large numbers of people very efficiently and so if you have the population density you can carry lots of passengers and so justify your rail system. On the other hand, if there just aren't that many people then there just isn't anyone to use the system and so you're using all these resources for basically nobody, particularly if the potential users have other options and so take a car or a bus or a plane.
In the early industrial period, the monopoly trains had on travel allowed a lot of inefficiency. Railway companies built entire towns were built every so often to ensure there was water and coal for trains, and there were also stores in each so people could buy stuff along the way (or for those living in the towns) and in those towns the railway was virtually the entire economy but there was no other option for travel so that level of inefficiency for passenger travel was nonetheless justified. I went to one such town. All that's there today is a clearing, a railroad track, some building foundations if you look carefully, and an unkept graveyard.
Having higher population density would justify lots of investment in trains because you'd have so many people to move. The regions of China and Japan with great train service are highly populated, and to justify really good trains everywhere in Canada and the US, you'd need high population density everywhere. Towns of 5000 or 10,000 people would need 10x that number of people, and regions with nobody in them (of which there's lots) would need lots of people.
Given that the geographical reality is that North America has much more favorable geography than the bulk of China which is largely unpopulated and doesn't have many trains as a result, to have the equivalent would easily require 8 billion people to justify a really great investment in continent-wide rail. Even that may be a low estimate given just how much space we're talking about and the scale required to justify all the expense. Planes only require an airport at the source and destination and a plane. Considering that there might be only a few dozen major destinations, it is obvious why air travel has essentially taken over the long range travel market.
When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger". To get from new York to California by rail you'd need to destroy huge amounts of nature, and burn through massive amounts of energy, including in the production of steel and concrete in unimaginable amounts, particularly for high speed rail systems. I suspect the calculus might not be so favorable in that light, especially if the trains are mostly empty because they don't solve a problem in many cases along American routes.
China is a poor example since to be comparable you'd need approximately 8 billion people on the American continent...