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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • People should keep right except to pass, typically.

    Over short distances, the difference between going 40 and 30 or even 20 are miniscule. I’ve still had people lose their shit when I wouldn’t blaze through a school zone. Just chill out bro, the fast food will be there all day.

    But I live somewhere I don’t need to drive anymore, and I’m happy with it.




  • A friend and I were talking about what’s wrong with the world, and one of the things we discussed was there aren’t any consequences for minor infractions. We’re all too polite. Someone does something shitty, like this person in their car, or someone taking up 4 seats on the bus, or throwing their trash on the street, and no one does anything. No one wants to start a fight or make a scene.

    Many people operate at a very basic level of moral reasoning: avoid punishment. Some people, some of the time, achieve higher levels of reasoning like “I should follow the rules” or even “I should do what’s good for society.” But many people chill out at the toddler level of “I don’t want to be punished.” So it follows that when these oversized toddlers never get punished, they think they’re doing just fine.

    But concurrently, the institution we have to enforce laws and norms, the police, sucks dog shit. Racist, corrupt, no accountability, and lazy. If I see a guy littering, I’m not going to call the cops. They wouldn’t even come, for one thing, but I also don’t want to bring a bunch of armed assholes into the scene.

    I don’t know what the best way forward is. My friend suggested local “guardian angel” volunteers that patrol and “Deal with” people who are shitty, but that feels like it could just turn into the police-but-worse. But I really want people who shit up the world to stop, and it feels like they don’t have enough empathy to understand anything more complex than “you took up four seats on the bus and were blasting youtube out of your phone, so we threw you out. Enjoy walking home, asshole.”




  • One of the reasons I prefer playing on PC over other platforms is there’s usually fan made mods / cheats. Like, yeah, I could do something really tedious for four hours, or I could get a mod to skip it. This is my leisure activity, not an exam.

    I try to be mindful that too much cheating can water down the experience. Like, if I was playing BG3 and just set everyone to max level from the start, I would probably have less fun, personally. But if someone just wants to do the story and have fun with exploding barrels? Not for me to judge.

    (I do draw the line at multiplayer. Cheating against other people is rude as heck. )


  • Yeah. Often when I talk to people who say they “don’t have time” I wonder where their time is going. Often to watching TV. Sometimes podcasts. Social media is a big time suck.

    But like if you have time to watch all of the office again this year, you had time to play video games.

    A friend of mine realized they were just losing hours a day to Instagram. Delete that, and you have time for better hobbies. Play a game. Read a book.

    Having children seems like a bigger factor. The only couple I know that has kids still has time. One spends it on DND, and other on TV and simple phone games.


  • Right, humans are bad about that kind of thing. I think it has to do with Dunbar’s number? The monkeysphere? It’s hard for us to model a lot of people as full people in our head, especially as they’re more removed from us.

    Like you probably don’t really think about the garbage man as a fully fleshed out guy with hopes, dreams, a favorite band, a love that got away, and all that. When you have some absolutely rancid trash, you probably just throw it in the can and forget about it. But if it was your mother or best friend that was going to have to deal with it, maybe you’d be more careful. Wouldn’t want the bag to rip and spray maggots all over Mom.

    That’s fine. That’s all of us.

    But I think there’s degrees. Shades. Like you mentioned cell phones. Most of us accept the out of sight horrors that go with them. But, like, some people are absolute assholes to wait staff. Just treat the waiter like shit, are rude to the coffee shop people, whatever. I think most of us recognize that as bad.

    Somewhere between those two points I think is “I’m going to build software to spy on people”. Personally, I think that should be ok the far side of the line. The not okay side. Why? A bit of self preservation, a bit of ethics, and a helping of “I don’t want to contribute to bad things happening to people, even ones I don’t know”.

    This post is getting long. I think you’re right that it’s not as simple as “doesn’t care about other people” but I think that’s a factor.







  • I’m so tired of “AI”. I’m tired of people who don’t understand it expecting it to be magical and error free. I’m tired of grifters trying to sell it like snake oil. I’m tired of capitalist assholes drooling over the idea of firing all that pesky labor and replacing them with machines. (You can be twice as productive with AI! But you will neither get paid twice as much nor work half as many hours. I’ll keep all the gains.). I’m tired of the industrial scale theft that apologists want to give a pass to while individuals who torrent can still get in trouble, and libraries are chronically under funded.

    It’s just all bad, and I’m so tired of feeling like so many people are just not getting it.

    I hope wikipedia never adopts this stupid AI Summary project.




  • You have a lot of life ahead of you. The feelings will fade. Don’t wallow. You’ll be fine.

    When I was a youth I had a lot of big feelings about relationships and crushes and friends. The feelings were real. They certainly took up a lot of space in my head, but they weren’t really proportionate to what was happening. Everything felt big because it was new to me. I barely talk to anyone from that time in my life anymore. I live in a new city with new friends.

    You’ll be fine.



  • Also the text says

    When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

    That’s not a metaphor. The camel thing was a colorful metaphor to demonstrate the point.

    That’s luke 18:22

    Most people who call themselves Christians do a piss poor job of it. Some of them then go “oh well I’ll be forgiven it’s okay”. That’s not really following the intent. That’s trying to take advantage of someone’s kindness.