The hubris of thinking that a random driver-exploiting app is some kind of godsend utility and we'll be scared of losing it.

At this point the old school taxi companies have their apps too, you're not the cool kid anymore, uber

Heh. The same man who was found commiting long-term welfare fraud. He lived in Sweden long enough to get citizenship, then left for Iraq without registering as foreign resident - and collected welfare payouts while on the minister post. No one noticed for years.

Scooter. Not an electric one. I had a thought once "hey I did ride one in childhood, maybe it can be a bit of nostalgic fun from time to time". Got myself the cheapest Chinese thing I could find, "no point investing too much into a fad".

Turned out a scooter is absolute peak urban mobility. Short distances become much shorter. Mid-long distances become short. Granted, for a longer trip somehow the time gains diminish, probably because it's not as efficient as a bike. But a scooter isn't a long-hauler. It's there to zip through an empty mall. It's there to be folded up in a second and brought into a bus or a shop without being a hassle. It's like 3-4 kg, not too fast for sidewalks but fast enough for bike roads, extremely easy to stop, doubles as a cart when carrying bags of groceries home.

The chinese one broke after 1 season because I was riding it everywhere. Then I got myself one from a better company, I chose it for small weight and portability. It's technically children's thing but I'm well below weight tolerance and also smol so it's easy to handle. It's already like a 5th year and whenever it's not raining or too cold I ride it for shopping, errands, leisure walks, to work... Almost daily.

Whether pro-Israeli bots like it or not, numerous acts by IDF do fit perfectly into descriptions of the acts forbidden by the convention. Even if the case is eventually dismissed it will be on technical grounds such as "it's actually a war crime not a genocide" not because "IDF did nothing wrong".

I'm not American, can someone explain why Biden does this when his "one job" for 2024 is to not look like a fash?

And another question: did someone already lay out a roadmap to google's collapse?

Right now we're going through a financial crisis, big tech needs to start making proper money so they try to squeeze the users. Google hopes to "drm the internet" to maximise ad revenue. Let's assume they succeed. 3 years from now the dystopia of dead adblockers is live, google and other leeches make bank off ads.

But there's no more adblockers and no more ad revenue left to squeeze out (because every internet user is already chained to a screen and force fed ads within ads). And shareholders demand increase in profits. What do they do then? Is there any hint of a long-term strategy? How long before the maximum theoretical ad revenue is reached and plateaus? Then COVID29 or something comes, fed raises rastes again and...?

Was there a massive behind-the-scenes NWO plan between billionnaires, old aristocracy and top politicians to fuck up the world, reduce population etc? No, the world ran its natural, chaotic course for most of history.

Is there this kind of conspiracy now?

ABSOLUTELY YES.

In 2023 it is not possible to have any influence and not be aware of the climate disaster. Anyone who does have big influence and does not act to mitigate warming and its consequences is doing it willingly and with full conscience. Doubly so if they act to worsen the situation. It's almost like the elites read some of the crackhead theories and thought "hey, this is actually a decent plan!"

I watched the first 2 seasons. The "sitcom in space" parts work quite OK, Kaylon's concept was somewhat interesting, space battles are well animated, particularly in the 2nd season which clearly got more budget, but...

Whenever the scripts stray away from "personal drama of the week" and dumb jokes about starships it becomes uninspired and shallow. It's clear to me that MacFarlane tries to "dunk on both sides". Sadly, his attempts at political/social critique look like "enlightened centrist" reddit rants which don't try to think about broader consequences and context of points being made. To the point of some stories being somewhat problematic when dissected.

I watched the first episode of the third season to see where does the series go. It took a highly sensitive topic, again reiterated high-school philosophy arguments and made this potentially hard and relatable for viewers subject into an awkward bedtime conversation. I decided the rest of the season is not worth my time.

Luckily Strange New Worlds premiered soon after and I never looked back. SNW beats Orville on all measures.

With one notable exception: report, inform and spread news about Swedish metalworker union strike against Tesla.

Knuth's arrow shows up in... Magic the Gathering. There's a challenge of "how much damage can you deal with just 3 cards and without infinitely repeating loops?". Turns out that stacking doubler effects can get us really high. https://www.polygon.com/23589224/magic-phyrexia-all-will-be-one-best-combo-attacks-tokens-vindicator-mondrak

It's the "make sure to eliminate as many people as possible so that the unwashed plebs and non-whites don't spoil the view over oligarch-owned estates, cities and states". The corporate probably is fed up with inventing bullshit jobs for people made obsolete due to automation and decided that straight-up culling is better for the bottom line. The most efficient way to curb population numbers is to fuck up climate and starve the undesirables out.

Wait for euthanasia rolled out globally within a timeframe of 2-3 years (2-3 years from the start, we're not there yet) and then promptly made the default at insurers.

Wait for border guards gunning down climate refugees in plain sight, then going with the same guns for whatever scapegoat the corporate+politicians invent. Again, we're not there yet but the first signs are showing up.

I like Stand-up Maths, usually starts with a real-life situation and escalates into proper math, sometimes also programming shows up.

Wait... It's not "firm" as in "company that made the stuff"? FIRMware = the official software a firm pushes to patch things they make

not coincidence, but not conspiracy either. Smarter people would explain it better, but essentially big-money investors got fed up (hehe fed) with unprofitable 15-year-old startups and demanded returns on their investments. This means a big social media platform needs to either start generating cash or get new cash quickly to pay CEO's early retirement bills. Reddit's IPO is an attempt at getting cash quickly - tell the suits at Wall Street that if they give Spez money he'll give them more money later on. To make this claim even remotely credible he needs to plug holes and at least stop losing so much. Plugging holes means killing off everything that can be easily killed to reduce operating cost, such as API, trimming workforce etc.

This happens all across the industry, I wouldn't blame it on some big setup by billionaires, Saudis and Xi Jinping. Just economy doing its things but this time it does things with services used by millions. The one question is how long until the bulk user has enough and leaves bringing the whole house down.

I recommend everyone who hasn't to look up the idea of "Potiomkin villages" (and subsequently Potiomkin anything eg. Potiomkin AI). In short: back in the tzarist days lower ranks put up mock villages which looked clean, modern and prosperous for higher ranks (and tzars) to see during visits. These mockups were essentially theatre decorations which hid the real state of the matters - dilapidated, dirty, poor and corrupt. For at least the last decade everything we saw of Russia was Potiomkin in nature - either to show off before the West or to hide corruption before own superiors.

let me introduce you to the progressive tax rates.

Imagine I earn 100k$/year. Let's say the tax rate is 30% at this point (I'm pulling these numbers from a hat), so I pay 30k, I'm left with 70k.

Next year I'm promoted to vice-CEO (I'm pulling these positions from a hat) and earn 500k$/year. Luckily my state says that at 250k$ the tax rate jumps to 50%. This means I pay 30% on all earnings up to 250k (30%250k=75k) and 50% on all above that (50%(500k-250k) = 125k), effectively I'm left with 300k in my pocket, more than 4x what I earned before despite the tax hike.

The next further year I became the final boss of capitalism - the CEO. Earnins jump again to 2mil$/year. Again luckily, my state says that all earnings above 1mil are taxed 75%. So again I pay the 30% on all earnings up to 250k (30%250k=75k), 50% on earnings between 250k and 1mil (50%(1m-250k) = 375k) and 75% on the earnings between 1m and 2m (75%*1m=750k). I'm left with 800k in my pocket, almost triple of what I earned last year despite the tax hike.

anyone richer than lower middle class will fight tooth and nail against progressive tax rates, but the fact is that at these levels of salary even if you're left with like 25% it's still a hideous pile of money.

Okay now I'm stretching the OPs idea a little bit, but America is big.

How people live in South America never needing to learn other language than Spanish and plausibly never interacting with a foreign language outside movies. I spent some time in Chile, the place I lived in had a nice janitor. He did not speak English, I only knew a few loose words in Spanish so communication was... peculiar. Only after 2 months of awkward interactions he realised, that I probably am not Spanish native speaker and it hit me.

When your entire life in a continent where everyone speaks flavours of Spanish or Portugese, you can have successful, international career only in Spanish, participate in all kinds of rich culture only in Spanish and all signs and labels are only in Spanish, huge majority of tourists speak Spanish... it is not immediately obvious, that people may not speak Spanish.

Don't get me wrong, it's not dunking on "dumb spanish speakers". There are ton of places in Europe where people disregard English, where it's famously hard to communicate in anything other than the local language, but the fact, that other languages exist is apparent to everyone once they learn to read. Awareness that people actually speak these languages is the most natural knowledge from ground school as we learn that "Germany speaks German. Italy speaks Italian" etc. A perspective which does not involve being in constant proximity to numerous foreign languages felt like something that made no sense to me in the past until I actually came into contact with it.

How does this work as a business? Are ad companies so desperate they will buy ad space on machines destined for people with zero disponible income and zero loan capability? Are the data from stalking people who can't afford anything that valuable?

At the end of the food chain surveillance capitalism works thanks to profit from conversion from ads to purchases. How do they expect conversion by targeting people who can hardly afford rent and necessities?

Azerbaijan gets a nod to host COP29

Ah yes, host the climate summit in an authoritarian fossil fuel exporting country, it has never caused problems.

SALAD DRESSING?! Are you Americans going to a restaurant and ask the waiter to bring you a salad with clorox?