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thisCtx

27 karma · joined May 1, 2021

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thisCtx··on Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue
IMO most of the “exceptional” people in a country “by of and for the people” are hypocrites for waiting on billionaires to fix things

How is political capitulation by the masses exceptional?

Covid offered a perfect opportunity for info workers to show solidarity with on-site workers by not opening those laptops at home.

But really it’s the leopards fault they keep eating our faces because we refuse to build a cage (higher taxation, breaking up monopoly).

The solution is not new either as we just went through it in recent memory with ATT.

I’m rather tired of the general public pointing fingers at everyone but themselves.

Stop going to the jobs they offer. It’s our agency not theirs. Demand they respect it.

thisCtx··on Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
Yeah who cares though? I thought the story was apocryphal altogether.

I was using it for the concept not the specifics.

thisCtx··on Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
That’s because email providers have it backwards.

They could deny by default unless the sender is in a contact list.

But I mean the messenger list has to be updated to allow people in every time you meet someone worthy?

You are still doing list management.

thisCtx··on Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
The problem is just a presentation one.

Email is thought of as grandpas business tool.

Look at Spike for IOS.

Messengers are just whitelisted users. Email providers or clients simply provide a shit interface for managing that list.

To me it’s like that story about NASA spending millions on a zero gravity pen when Russian astronauts just used pencil.

Someone was looking to impress people with their spam filtering code and never thought “maybe I can just drop all by default and only allow who I want?”

thisCtx··on Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
So your messenger app read your mind?

Pretty sure you create a whitelist on that too, yes?

Of phone numbers, usernames, or …email addresses… depending on what the app uses, that you wish to hear from?

Check out Spike for IOS. I’m not saying you have to USE it, but that it’s a UX problem, not an “email” problem.

thisCtx··on FDA authorizes Pfizer vaccine for kids age 12 to 15
Nil != 0

:-p

thisCtx··on Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
When I’m trying to do computer tasks, I want to get them done, not decipher some design wonks metaphor and hyperbole.

You want thinking different? Try trotting out a line that doesn’t start out like an old man pissed at them kids for not being as competent as folks were “back in his day.”

The whole point of modern logistics is to simplify them so we can maximize time for ourselves instead of flogging the profit chant of last generations rubes seeking Valhalla.

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Oh I just remembered neuroscience has revealed we “sync” brainwaves just being in a room with another. We can take on others processing patterns.

No reason to assume similar can’t occur between species.

Perhaps the bird “read his mind” in such a way as to intuit something was breaking.

Perhaps applying simple cost/benefit analysis is too reductionist to reach a conclusion?

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Yep, maybe. This is an endlessly circular discussion without falsifiable experiment.

Which is my whole point.

You have fun falling into the abyss. I’m gonna go see what reality is made of.

thisCtx··on We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
So all the people alive that are uneducated in US history can’t step foot in America unless they learn about George Washington?

It’s literally impossible for us to be where are without history as it was. It’s not an obligation for us to keep making kids aware Thomas Jefferson existed.

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Dogs and smell were one example. Maybe it’s sight related. Maybe it’s electromagnetic field sensitivity.

I’m not seeking meaning, I’m seeking falsifiable experiment to conclusively rule out the possibility.

thisCtx··on Chrome extension recommends local businesses while shopping on Amazon or eBay
Many online retailers have UPS pickup as part of the service. Amazon for sure, but I’ve used apps from clothing stores directly and some provided the option.

Unfortunately that was a while ago and I don’t have the apps installed to know which it was.

“Going shopping” is an asinine use of my time.

thisCtx··on Chrome extension recommends local businesses while shopping on Amazon or eBay
To the store? Not me.

With a free UPS pickup because it was included with the purchase? Me.

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Evolution is a property of reality itself and imbued humans with the abilities you highlight.

We’ve done absolutely nothing to “beat” reality.

Personally I’m leaning into the idea more and more that technology how we think of it, machines, will not be how we survive. I suspect some will be too useful, like nanotechnology and automated manufacturing, but consumer machines will become passé, maybe just too environmentally toxic to build at the scale we do. I doubt humans will make it “off world” for long if at all. There’s a scaling problem to the endeavor I doubt humans will maintain the momentum to overcome.

It took a very specific planet and millions of years of evolution to get here. We cannot possibly do better than reality itself.

Michael Levin’s bioelectrics, manipulation of electric fields to regrow limbs, could be an early peak at crazy future.

Why build VR if we can, for example, mix chemicals, drink it, effectively loading simulated experience like The Matrix, through fine grain manipulation of exotic properties of reality. Earth becomes a lot more sustainable if we’re not eating it up for phones and graphics cards.

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
I think I confused which feature they were talking about.

It’s far fetched maybe but dogs can smell Parkinson’s and cancer before the person develops medically detectable symptoms. So maybe not so far fetched.

Doesn’t have to be a pet. Doesn’t detect when the person will DIE of cancer, yet it shows up later.

Birds have been shown to return to the same locations if they fit their needs. Perhaps it was indicating an illness.

Far fetched but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Statistics are not science. Science requires real world evidence and other animals offer at least some evidence they can detect fatal illness in advance.

thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Same motive you have when smelling something rotten; embedded biological response.
thisCtx··on We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
I didn’t mean “hide it”. It can exist in books but why must we point to it in public today?

The truth is humans behaved as they needed to survive given the world at the time. The rest is analogy and metaphor handed down as song and story. We can never know truth just speculate.

It can be in books but to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, we must update our society as our experience reveals new truth.

Am I under an obligation to discuss Jesus and Roman Empires to educate my kids why we goto a grocery store and why it’s bad to hate on others? Or repeat the Founders when we vote?

Can’t we simply do as we do, justify it as we need to today, without uttering the names of the dead?

thisCtx··on We’re on track to set a new record for global meat consumption
I did not see you propose a solution so much as regurgitate one.
thisCtx··on I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
I grew up rural.

I buy into a lot of the “bird” wisdom. Science is discovering dogs can smell disease.

Our modern world isn’t more complex, just more distracting with asinine theory chasing. It’s always been ridiculously complex in ways we can’t imagine, we’ve just started realizing it in detail.

Turns out animals with their “lesser” cognitive powers are tuned into the hidden complexity in ways we barely understand.

Yet we deem ourselves the more advanced species.

Humans will surely kill themselves off and the specifically evolved for their ecosystem “dumb” animals will remain.

thisCtx··on Over 96% of Apple Users Have Blocked Facebook from Tracking Them
Given that Facebook as a UX has become user hostile, they are absolutely banking on clueless masses assuming “big data” is being used to produce magic.

Larry Page was one of the keys to selling that story years ago.

Find me a web app with a truly novel utility, UX, and real problem those things solve. You can’t cause they’re all the solve and designed by factory thinkers. It’s all about agency management.

It’s emotional flock building just like with the churches. Believe, buy-in, die before you realize it was an empire building scheme for a rando with no other life skills, and a rich family to support him.

But here’s the twist; are the rubes the users or the advertisers? Double twist: it’s both!

People will need stuff and find it with or without Facebook.

thisCtx··on California population declines for first time in more than a century
To be fair the gerontocracy is pretty much saying that to all millennials in the US.

They invested all those years ago and we damn well best recognize their sacrifice with eternal servitude, and be thankful our buying power is deflated to prop up theirs!

thisCtx··on We’re on track to set a new record for global meat consumption
The market compensates the future for real consumption?

Or are you thinking in purely abstract models?

I’m more of a physical sciences type. I feel no obligation to coddle completely made up, self re-enforcing garbage.

How is the market compensating for the real impact facing the future of the species?

Hint: it’s not. Everyone in power will simply be dead by the time the bill comes due.

“Trickle down economics” is a meme intended to mock the rubes. “Fuck them kids” is similarly something we uncomfortably laugh at as a joke while behaving with real indifference.

thisCtx··on We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward?

Can we not set the idea of “human rights” on its own pedestal and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition and song?

Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an actual useful concept?

Let’s dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we claim to; within the legislative and judicial process we in practice are all afforded the same privileges and obligations.

Let’s discuss how in practice that’s not true and stop giving a shit what dead guy first conjured the idea. Caretaking the literal lineage is nothing more than banal taxonomy fetishism.