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The core of the problem is that deflation encourages and enables wealth hoarding. The rich get richer by doing nothing but sitting on the wealth they already have.

Partially true. It’s also an attempt to run away from deflation, which destroys economies. Holding a stable position with no inflation or deflation is not really possible in the real world.

Marriage… Marriage is what brings us together today. Marriage, that blessed arrangement, that dream within a dream. And love, true love, will follow you forever and ever…

Hmm…

1. Discourages voting
2. Username is “GuyFawkesV”

Are you 13?

The Tragedy of systemd - presentation by Benno Rice

What I hope that this talk has provided is a removal of fear and particularly a removal of pity of SystemD and the people who actually use it. […] So, yeah, what I would challenge everyone here is look at SystemD and try and find at least one thing that you like, and then go see if you can implement it. Thank you.

Oh, wait I bet we can write a decent anime plot around this…

See there’s this thing called the Waffle House Index:

The measure is based on Waffle House’s reputation for staying open during extreme weather and for reopening quickly, albeit sometimes with a limited menu, after very severe weather events such as tornadoes or hurricanes. The chain’s disaster preparedness measures include assembling and training “Waffle House jump teams” to facilitate fast reopening after disasters.

Our hero is having a normal day working the griddle, when suddenly a kaiju destroys half the town. The hero works hard to get the restaurant open, making good use of the disaster recovery planning, and helps feed people whose homes have been destroyed, as well as the emergency response workers that come to town.

Their work is noticed, and they are recruited to join the Waffle House Jump Team as a specialist on responding to kaiju incidents. From there it’s like Evangelion, but instead of fighting and killing the monsters, the hero learns about different types through experience and develops (increasingly extreme and improbable) ways to prepare the Waffle House to survive kaiju incidents and reopen quickly, eventually leading to Waffle House creating a mech to defend and repair its locations. (End Season 1)

The reveal of the prototype mech provides the hook for Season 2.

The rise of generative AI is the death of picture or video evidence.

And the written word, as useful information is buried under mountains of generated trash.

No one to date knows what the real consequences of this will be.

Dark Ages II

Call me crazy, but maybe we shouldn’t be allowing people to work on such “advances” if they don’t have the humanities/social sciences background to understand the consequences.

Consequences be damned! We have quarterly earnings reports to worry about!

And it’s on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/

Awesome, thank you!

I mean, OK… Until every bank, government service, health care provider, etc implements this.

What app are you using to log the requests?

“I got mine.”

Would it be a huge shock to find out some conglomerate like Koch Industries or ExxonMobil were involved in an astroturf campaign

Maybe not, but there’s no evidence of that here, it’s pure speculation.

The influence campaign being perpetrated here looks very similar to Russian operations against former Soviet states, where they encourage or create a “separatist” movement within the target nation and then antagonize both sides until the separatists eventually break off a chunk of territory from the target nation, and then wouldn’t you know it Russian troops show up and “help” establish a new orderly, Russia-aligned government. For example:

• Georgia

“… the South Ossetia war and the Abkhazia war resulted in Georgia’s loss of territory in what had been the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast and the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, respectively, to two internationally unrecognized separatist movements that were supported by the newly independent Russian Federation.”

• Moldova/Transnistria

“… the Transnistria War, in which Russian-backed Transnistria managed to stay separate from Moldova.”

• Crimea

“The referendum was held under Russian occupation and, according to the Russian-installed authorities, the result was overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia.”

• Ukraine

“Intercepted phone conversations of Sergey Glazyev, a top advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, disclosed the specifics of the project Novorossiya to take over not just Crimea, but also the Donbas, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, which Russia apparently aimed to annex following Crimea. The plan involved fomenting widespread unrest using pro-Russian agents on the ground, and then orchestrating uprisings that would announce rigged referendums about joining Russia, similar to the one that took place in Crimea on 16 March 2014.”

This fits the pattern, with the obvious major difference being that Canada is not a former Soviet nation.

Also speculation, of course. But to me it looks like Russia has this strategy which they play over and over, and with which they’ve been getting more ambitious and seeking larger targets.

He’s not the biological father.

Yeah, you’re right. They’re more like clones, or siblings.

“…and yes, somehow this assembly of three aluminum tubes will cost you $2000.”

Communism breaks your leg, then “Oops, sorry comrade! No crutches produced in factory this week! Maybe new crutches in six months! Have new toaster instead!”
“Also no bread unless you have a roof!”

Stalinism breaks both your legs, then issues you a pair of state-sanctioned non-Western shoes and asks why you’re so lazy you can’t get up and go to work for glorious motherland.

Um… if Odo is the father, how would you describe what happens at the end of the episode?

Um, isn’t the money in this case coming from a Dutch company? Youtube is being used to propagate this misinformation campaign, but they’re not driving it.

It doesn’t matter that Youtube is an American company, what matters is that there is a large audience on Youtube to influence with this campaign. Similar campaigns are done on every major platform, regardless of what country they’re based in.

Blasphemy. We are all wrought by His noodly appendage.

Stargate SG-1 characters reference Star Trek several times throughout the series. Star Wars too, but less often. Also there’s this.

It could be really useful for various social or psychological research

The only application I can see for such research would be to extend and refine the distopian use cases. What else would such research be used for? It will only feed back into the cycle of privacy invasion and the surveillance state.

… or monitoring patient status.

Impersonal patient status monitoring (beyond vital statistics like heartbeat monitoring which we can already accomplish much more easily) will not have any practical benefit. The most likely outcome is that it will be used to justify reduced nurse staffing.