Firewatch is a very beautiful game
Firewatch is a very beautiful game
Depends a lot on your interests! Some good ones I've aggregated over the years:
There are a lot of great RSS feeds out there though! I encourage you to see if your favorite blogs or news sites or things like that also have RSS feeds and suggest consuming them on there (for example I read CBC and Radio Canada exclusively through RSS) as it usually streamlines the whole reading experience.
If you use Apple's Ecosystem, I would also suggest using MacStories' Find RSS Feed Shortcut which will grab any available feeds from any website you feed it and let you copy the link to your clipboard to add to your favorite app. Enjoy!
No in the strictest definition of SAD, where the winter and fall depress you. I have reverse seasonal affective disorder, where the same happens to me but in the spring and summer. The sun saps all my energy away and I thrive in the cold and the dark. All of my positive emotions dull from April until around mid-October every single year. Give me snow and clouds any day over shorts and sunlight
Swiss Army knife, bottle opener, pocket pen, and most important of all: one of those wavy keys to open toilet paper and paper towel dispensers
While it is true that most early astronauts were aviators, specifically test pilots, it's also important to consider that it was the case then as it is now that the US Navy operates more planes and has more pilots than the US Air Force. Just percentage wise, that would edge towards more Navy pilots who use the naval terminology in their ranks (the Mercury 7 were 4 Navy pilots, 2 Air Force, and 1 Marine I think, though I could be wrong). I would assume that the culture would skew even more Naval as space flight progresses as early spaceflight was a couple of guys in a tin can to larger scale craft.
Another weird quirk too is that common military rank terms like "captain" and "lieutenant" don't line up between the Navy and the others (at least in the US). So the OG Star Trek guys would be Colonel Kirk and Captain Uhura under Air Force terminology, and that just sounds weird
For me personally, I’m not necessarily anti-capitalist as a whole; I think it has its place. I think people incorrectly place how old capitalism actually is. Sure in the Medieval Period, people bought and sold goods like how we think of markets, and they even had currency to exchange for it, but it was still much more of a bartering based system. Capitalism itself is also a very cultural phenomenon, only emerging out of Europe (in India for example, capitalist thinking was anathema to the cultural norms and took many years to take hold once the British invaded). In reality, there was a period of time in which all of a sudden, resources in Western Europe and the Americas become suddenly abundant and a system had to be put in place to handle that, and the system was capitalism. Here’s some of the main problems, some of which have been pointed out by others:
Capitalism is based off of a system which inherently assumes infinite growth which is not possible
Free markets require easy and free access to information to govern things like price setting, but that information is almost impossible to obtain accurately
Capitalism even in its purest form is not a complete enough theory for governing an entire economy. Capitalism only has mechanisms for providing resources (money) to workers and capitalists (owners) which leaves out a full third of the population. That last third are non-workers, primarily made up of the old, the disabled, children, students, home caregivers, and temporarily unemployed
Capitalism enforces power imbalances in a population that make capitalism less effective. For a market to work most effectively, all parties involved (buyers and sellers) should be on equal footing, but they never are and never can be
Less of a functionality point, but I personally believe that there are some things that morally shouldn’t be governed by a market structure such as healthcare or food access
As parting thoughts, I would say that capitalism is not a bad thing in the short term. It’s effective at getting a country going to the point where they can become socialistic in the future. Karl Marx himself based his theories in “The Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital” on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”. He also said that “capitalism is pregnant with socialism”. Capitalism is a tool to get to an end goal, it isn’t the end all be all system it’s made out to be though, and it’s also not the only tool that can get you there (see the economic theory of developmentalism).
Sorry for the long post, but I thought the detail was necessary.
TL;DR: Not a bad thing in and of itself, but a flawed system it’s time to move on from
Capitalism has become such a bore Wish waged labor existed no more I’d rather pay taxes Take billionaires assets And distribute some wealth to the poor
In my opinion, most Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle is an amazing songwriter, and he tackles very difficult subjects, especially in his earlier stuff. The Sunset Tree album is all about growing up with an abusive step-father, Tallahassee about a couple who fall apart, Full Force Galesburg about a small town you can disappear in, etc. Some of my favorites include “The Mess Inside” about two people that can’t find the love they lost, “No Children” about a couple that hate each other, and “Jeff Davis County Blues” about a sort of meditative experience after a breakup. I’d give it all a listen. To go even deeper, the albums All Hail West Texas and In League With Dragons have sort of companion podcast seasons (I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats) where Darnielle and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale go through each song, the inspiration, the meaning, stuff like that.
My degree and professional training is all in physics. Biggest one for me is that they use "high temperature" when relating to superconductors like we're going to have superconducting phones next year, when in reality high-T superconductors are still colder than 100 K (-173°C, -280°F). Also they gotta stop flipping out over Water on Mars. That's so passe, there's a literal list on wikipedia on how many times that's happened. On the plus side though, most have just stopped trying to explain anything around physics and instead go for a more "x does y cause physics" approach
Correct me if I’m wrong, OP, but it sounds like you’re talking about retreating to the axioms of the particular belief system, as in there is a point where reason breaks down because you get to things that you (the person whose expressing their opinion) have accepted that’s different than me.
To me this is a bit of a Motte and Bailey fallacy as your question was whether or not you have a good argument and then someone replied to that and then moved to the set of assumptions which has nothing to do with argument.
For me personally, the other person has to demonstrate some level of critical reasoning for me to respect their opinions, even if their assumptions are different than mine. Beliefs that are entered into using reasoning are more useful than ones without because they can be changed which is what discourse is all about
Not sure if this qualifies, but the Church of Scientology. Not cause I think it’s got some good points or that I vibe with any of their ideas, I just think everything about the structure to the Bridge to the mind of LRH is super fascinating
It’s the same stuff with all these programs that have the trapezoid structure (income phase-ins). What the designers of the program are really looking to do is to not spend a lot of money, so the phase-ins move a large group of people (or children) from just below the line to just above the line so everyone can pat their back, they’re not actually interested in
Also actually having evidence that people just want to take care of children breaks the “moral hazard” narrative down which people don’t like
Daniel Abraham & Ty Frank. The Expanse series evolved out of a D&D-like game they hosted together. Abraham also has a good sized Fantasy catalogue to check out too
Stopped drinking soda, started walking daily. 60 lbs over the course of a year a few years ago, haven’t gained any back
The problem isn’t socialism in the countries I’m sure you’ve seen (Soviets, etc), it’s totalitarianism. Leaders have used the guise of socialism to get the initial public support to gain power, and they make a show of it, but the real game in town is the power structure. Look into Pinochet’s Chile for a similar example with a hardcore capitalism as the economic system
I think I recently saw an article about a trial of the 32-hour work week in the UK that most of the companies ended up sticking with.
I work at a smallish company that has to be really precise with how much time is charged to specific (mainly government) programs, but there’s a lot of downtime. I think this would really help.
John Maynard Keynes, basically the founder of modern, macroeconomic theory predicted in 1930 that his grandchildren would only be working 15 hours a week. Ironically, up until the 80’s in the US, average work hours per employee per week was trending down and had it continued would have gotten as low as 15 by now (I think, can’t perfectly recall the trend line)
I like the idea in theory, but I think it would be a hard sell of “hey trade in your $10k+ car for this few hundred dollar bike”
Just in case
About time in my opinion, but “later next year” sounds to me like this will be iOS 18. Hopefully I’m wrong with that though
Fairly far left myself. I agree with the person who said that
The left is loyal to ideals, not people
To me, one of those ideals is being anti-death penalty. I believe that no matter what the crime is, a government that claims to represent all people, as a democratic government theoretically does, can never justify the killing of one of those people by their hand. Were it up to me, they would be removed from office, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and tossed in jail for the rest of their natural life (which judging by the age demographic of the federal government, wouldn't be too long).
The prospect for an impeachment for treason raises some interesting questions about how the legal and political systems of the United States interact though. Because impeachment is a political process, impeaching a government official doesn't constitute that a crime was committed, and committing a crime doesn't necessarily impose grounds for impeachment. If the Vice President was impeached and removed from office due to committing treason and let's say criminal proceedings were brought, there's no precedent as to whether any of the evidence brought in the impeachment trial or the successful removal would count towards evidence of the treason trial itself. In the most extreme of cases that would likely never happen, a government official could be arrested, tried, convicted, and (under current law that I disagree with) executed without ever being impeached and leaving office.
Also wanted to note that impeachment doesn't just apply to the President, it applies to
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States
Which means federal judges, cabinet officers, etc. Though most notably, no one in Congress
Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested
Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between
Someone who lives in California not originally from here chiming in. For me personally, I hate it because of the weather. I live in SoCal, which people claim to have good weather, but to me it’s hell. It never rains, the sun is always shining, and it’s always hot while most apartments don’t have AC. This may sound lovely to you, in which case more power to you. I’m the kind of person where the sun saps all energy out of my body and I prefer being cold to warm, so this sucks. Other main downside is housing cost. My 650 square foot one bed apartment in suburban LA costs over $2000 a month and it’s cheap for the size and area. Maybe Northern California is nicer, but SoCal ain’t it
Think it's just a familiar form factor for the product given that most are used to how the former birdsite's apps (both first and third parties) looked and operated. A few of them are even made by the same developers who had made third party apps. May eventually drift towards something else, but at least for the time being, telling people "instead of logging into this website, you log into this website" and everything else works and looks the same is an easier sell especially during the mass adoption and scaling phase of the platform
But I don't understand, like I said above, how capitalism is causing it and how not-capitalism would solve it.
But I don’t see that any capitalism alternative has a good answer either, so still I don’t see how capitalism is the “bad guy”.
A couple notes on this. Firstly, just as an argument perspective, this is a burden of proof fallacy. Just because "not-capitalism" may not have a good answer, doesn't mean capitalism has a good one or even just a better one. I could be mischaracterising your argument, if so my bad, this is just how it reads to me. Secondly, I personally believe that socialism offers a better answer and a good one at that, which all revolves around incentives. A collective-ownership structure has more incentive for social well being, such as avoiding climate disaster, than a purely capitalist structure does.
As a side-note, I also think you're mischaracterising capitalism by including governing bodies, but you're doing it in a manner that's only one logical step away from socialism. By a government placing restrictions on a market or producer, say by defining a carbon emission cap, the market is no longer operating at true efficiency. While not fully capitalist anymore, that's still okay though as it's serving a social purpose. Zoom out a little and you can see other markets in which the government should set limits in. Now the whole economy isn't operating as a true free market. In this case, the government is defining what the social good is, and (at least in democratic nations), the government defines that based on the voice of the people. The problem with this is that it's reactive. I can pass as many laws as I want saying you can't emit carbon above a certain level, but I can only enforce it after you've gone over that cap at which point the damage is done, and some may make the economic calculation that it's worth it if you get more profits (fines are in essence "legal for a price" after all). If the government owns the industry, this can be prevented before happening.
Also free markets can exist without capitalism. I think another person somewhere on this thread mentioned worker co-ops, which are not a capitalist institution.
As a parting thought, I would also point out that one of if not the most efficient energy companies in the United States (in terms of energy produced per dollar input) is the TVA, a state-owned enterprise.
Your definition for non-sequitur is correct, however the conclusion that Predators are failing to come of age is a logical conclusion of the stated premise. The actual issue, which you pointed out, is that of using a false or faulty premise (that all Predators in the movies are on their first hunts). The validity of an argument isn’t a function of how true a premise is. So you were right that op was wrong in their conclusions, you just mislabeled the issue
I'm still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn't looking good. I don't like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.
I'm not sure I buy this whole "third party votes are wasted votes" or "third party votes are a vote for the opposition". The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn't mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they're not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren't the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won't be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you're approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn't a useful method of change to say "I don't agree with anything the Democrats say, but that's the world we're in". That's how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.
Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they're the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I'm sure the same is true for Republicans. Don't tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don't give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.
You can notice some slight style differences between the Scott and Johnson eras, but that’s probably more to suit their singing styles than more “artistic” reasons
I mean, the absolute cheapest place to put it would be DC if the constraint of not moving the capitol is in place. About 4 million federal employees in the US, DC metro area has about 9 million, so plenty of room, plus most of the federal buildings and offices are right there already. Fairly urban and with a reasonably robust public transport system too. Think you were going for someplace like Kansas, but whatever savings you get on real estate evaporate after you have to take into account cost of transportation to and from DC plus building out the new city’s infrastructure
Late stage Led Zeppelin was definitely affected by Robert Plant’s affinity for country music that not many of the others shared. I agree that Plant’s preferences mixed with everyone else’s was what led to their initial and enduring popularity. I doubt they become one of the best Rock bands ever if they didn’t have everyone pulling in very different directions
Not part of the Fediverse, but The Movie Database is a good alternative to IMDb without all the adds and stuff like that. A lot of the information is user added and supported, so you can contribute as well as consume. Also for iOS, there's a new app for it called Callsheet that gets its data from TMDb
I have read receipts on with my wife, but no one else. Too much pressure, especially for someone like me who habitually clears notifications even if I haven’t addressed anything
Main problem with this is that unemployment isn’t handled by the IRS, it’s a program under the Department of Labor and administered by the States and federal agencies notoriously don’t talk to each other.
There’s also nothing wrong with just giving them unemployment benefits, but you structure your tax system so that the rich people, when they end up needing to claim unemployment, are paying more or equivalent in taxes paying into unemployment than they’re getting in the payout. You simplify both sets of laws, the IRS is in charge of collecting revenue and the subdepartment of Labor tasked with this only has to worry about dishing out your cash so the administration of the benefit is simplified, and you still get your desired result of exceedingly well off people not “dragging” the system
Don’t forget the Baha’i, the Babs, and the Druze. Don’t know if they’re considered people of the book or not. Same with the Samaritan Israelites
Sort of non-tech. Working as an RF Engineer with my Physics degree
Depends on band somewhat for me. I guess preference overall is digital, but I’ve always bought Wilco albums in vinyl for some reason and I’ve always bought Mountain Goats albums on tapes due to his history with the format
Would just like to pop in here and say that terms like “millionaires” and “billionaires” typically refer to net worth/wealth, not income. This is why Jeff Bezos was able to claim some of the federal COVID aide because, despite being a multi-billionaire, his income in that year was below the threshold (I think it was sub-$100k) as income from investments didn’t qualify under the structure of the plan.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment of people whose net worths are upwards of a million being able to claim unemployment, actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy. That would put an unreasonable burden on the unemployment benefit system that would probably end up costing more in administrative costs than the money saved by not including to the ultra-wealthy in the benefit. Preventing the latter is the main benefit of universal programs