Fuck the poor, fuck the old, fuck the environment, fuck soldiers and veterans, fuck the sick, fuck food safety…

My mom is so stupid she’s a fucking hazard.

If there’s a club for that, I’m in it too.

I literally don’t understand how my mom gets through day-to-day life. It’s just a matter of time before her bank accounts are drained by a scammer because no matter how many times I try to explain it to her, she believes everything she sees online as long as it reinforces something she already believes. If it challenges her beliefs she ignores it.

She got an email that said she owed money to an internet service provider she doesn’t use, and hasn’t ever used. Obvious scam, right? She knows she doesn’t use them, but the email seemed “Truthy” so she was really worried that she owed them money. There’s no way to convince her that it’s a scam because even facts like “that’s not your ISP, you don’t and have never used that ISP” can’t penetrate.

She trusts memes more than family members who have degrees in something and are willing to patiently explain it to her. She spends a lot of money buying snake oil, or overpaying for things she can get essentially for free (i.e. buying bottled water because she’s afraid of fluorine in municipal water). This has made me realize what a huge amount of the world’s economy isn’t people buying things they need, or even things they want because it makes their lives better, it’s people buying things they don’t need because they’re afraid of something that isn’t real.

Anyhow, yeah, Trump won the idiot vote, and he’s going to make changes to the US that will increase the number of idiots. Things are going great.

Online? Yes.

In person to friends while chest bumping and hooting? Yes.

In person to a woman they don’t know in all seriousness, and not just to antagonize? I sure hope not.

It definitely looks like you are.

Someone in their late 40s is not a girl.

I heard yesterday about how a lot of Imams in Michigan posed for selfies with him.

Everyone knows where he stands.

I strongly suspect that isn’t true. I think anti-Trump people know where he stands, but I bet a lot of pro-Trump people are about to be in for a big surprise.

Give them a break, it’s really erarly.

It is. It’s that plus an important process for living organisms rather than just burning something.

What makes you think there’s a threshold?

It would also effectively mean that every region in the world would have to have the same laws.

Take Canada and the US. Very similar culturally, very similar economically, but some pretty important differences in human welfare. Like, every Canadian resident pays taxes to support a healthcare system, and if you need healthcare it’s free.

If you eliminated the US/Canadian border, people could live in the US where taxes are cheaper until they had a serious illness, then they could move to Canada to get free treatment whenever necessary, moving back as soon as the treatment was done. That obviously wouldn’t work well.

The only ways to make that work are either to eliminate the border, and have both regions have exactly the same healthcare system, or keep the border and allow both to have different systems.

I like my boarders to be easygoing rather than strict, makes the conversation easier.

In the past that was true of certain classes, other classes were tied to the land and forbidden from leaving their manor lord’s land.

Yes, but the next town over is protected by the same military, is under almost exactly the same laws, is covered by essentially the same tax system, and so-on.

If you’re suggesting eliminating borders once there’s one world government covering every country and a planetwide tax system, then sure. Until then, it seems like it would be a disaster.

It’s not just one generation receiving an education vs. another one that didn’t. It’s that the platforms the generations used are fundamentally different.

Gen X / Millennials grew up with Macs and PCs, computers that were fundamentally not locked down. You could install any software you wanted. You could modify the OS in many ways. DRM wasn’t really a thing in general, and there were almost always easy ways around it.

Gen Z / Gen Alpha grew up mostly with cell phones. The phones they had are much more powerful than the PCs from 20-30 years ago, but they’re incredibly locked down. The only applications you’re allowed to use are the ones that Apple / Google allow on their app stores, unless you root your phone which is a major risk. It’s very hard to even load up your own audio files, movies or images let alone “dodgy” ones. DRM is everywhere, and the DMCA means you risk serious prison time if you bypass access controls.

Gen X / Millennials grew up at a time when there were still more than 5 tech companies in the world, and the companies out there competed with each-other. There were plenty of real standards, and lots of other de-facto standards that allowed programs to interoperate. Now you’re lucky if you can even use an app via its website vs. using a required app.

It’s not just a difference in education. It’s that companies have gained a lot more power, and the lack of antitrust enforcement has made for plenty of walled gardens and “look but don’t touch” experiences.

Long-term stay hotels used to be a major source of short term housing. They mostly disappeared because of zoning law changes and in some cases fire code / housing code changes. There are problems with hotels / hoteliers. But, having a variety of solutions means various housing options have to compete with each-other, which is normally good for the person needing a place to stay.

There is a legitimate service being provided there. It just shouldn’t be “lords” who provide it.

The problem is that the “lord” is earning tens of thousands of dollars per year for essentially no work. This makes it essentially similar to how a “lord” worked in a Feudalist system. This isn’t even capitalism where someone owns capital and uses that capital to generate profit. This is just demanding a payment for being in a place.

Since being a landlord requires essentially no work, landlords can accumulate wealth, buy more property, get even more income, buy more property, etc. More wealth / property means more political power. The main thing that political power will be used for is to gain and retain more wealth, which is equivalent to more power.

Imagine how different would be if nobody could ever rent out more than one property, especially combined with a vacant units tax. You’d still have “landlords” but they would be much less lord-like.

Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to).

But, their business model doesn’t work unless those mods are working for free. So, while they may replace mods, unless people keep signing up to work for free to help a for-profit company deliver value to its shareholders, eventually it’s going to collapse.

It’s amazing to me that so many people are willing to work as unpaid moderators so that Reddit’s investors can make more money.

At least it adds noise to the system. It’s better than the people who are happily training the AI.