There’s a shared theme with like all of humanity’s woes: people don’t care that much.

From pollution to injustice to shitty websites, if people cared just a little more the problem would be dramatically reduced or even eliminated.

But so many people are just apathetic. Overwhelmed and checked out.

I’d like to privatize Wells Fargo, where I also mean “dismantle and leave behind an unrecognizable corpse”

Most people like to be productive.

There is enough money and resources. It’s mostly just consolidated in the hands of the rich. You’ve probably seen https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ . If you spread that around, you get more economic activity.

Lots of people choose to do stuff instead of just chilling. Go look at all the open source projects that are just made by hobbyists, or community gardens, or any number of other self organized projects. Capitalism with all the profit is theft bits isn’t the only way.

Conservatives aren’t generally considered smart, kind, people.

I’m not sure I follow. What do you think is bullshit?

Someone still needs to do work, but not everyone needs to work all the time.

We would probably be fine if people who wanted to work just kept working. Or if we had universal basic income, so people could more freely choose if they wanted to trade their time+labor for something else.

Like, if absolutely no one wants to tend the fields then that’s going to be a problem for food. I think there are enough people who would do it because they want to, especially for jobs that are local. But even if not, you could still offer money. Having basic income (or some other mechanism to assure basic needs are met) in place means it’s much less coercive, because it’s no longer a question of labor or suffer

No. Your reading of it is unusual, in most contexts. It almost always means “agreement, and I have nothing of substance to add”.

It can be rude if the thing you’ve said should warrant a substantial response. Like if you wrote “my brother just died in a car wreck”, a thumbs up (or probably any emoji) would be an inappropriate response. Heavier stuff warrants whole words.

But if it’s like “Can you get cat food at the store? The kind we always get” then a thumbs up is an acceptable shorthand for "yes, I understand and commit to this request "

On the one hand, this is bad for a lot of innocent people.

On the other, I kind of just want the anti-vaxxers and their enablers to die.

Need to either organize so you and your closest 50,000 friends can march up to wherever he’s living, or go the stochastic route and hope some random person decides to rid you of this meddlesome priest.

Organizing is probably better overall, but harder.

Maybe was thinking of https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/ ?

It would be a crime to shoot anti-vaxxers dead, like when they’re sleeping or stopped at a traffic light, but it would probably be a net positive on lives saved.

true, though sometimes i find the more verbose style easier to read, and more maintainable (eg: you want to do something else in the block, you can just add a line instead of changing your ternary / etc). Small things

I had a thought earlier in the bathroom about AI. It’s like building a fancy indoor toilet when you don’t have plumbing.

If people’s basic needs were met, housing food health care all that, then it wouldn’t really matter as much if people want to fuck around with AI. People who do things for passion could still do so.

But we live in a capitalist hell, this AI stuff will primarily benefit the ownership class while everyone else suffers.

I don’t need a fancy toilet. I need clean running water.

Public transport and walkability is really nice. Big changes are needed to level up the car-first spaces we built, and people don’t want to pay that debt. But that debt carries interest, and the longer we put it off the worse it’s going to get.

Probably not the most effective metaphor because humans are famously bad at long term thinking.

I’ve heard of this one. Maybe I’ll check it out.

The downside of reading a lot of depressing non fiction is I increasingly feel like I’m living in a cuckoo clock, and get frustrated with how everyone else seems oblivious and uncaring.

As an org that seems pretty historically apt. But it only takes one guy to have his own ideas

I guess? With enough money you can just buy bonds, which sort of depend on consumerism but indirectly. Some municipal bonds return like 5%. 5% of a shit load of money is enough to live on.

Depends on how it’s set up. If the setting is going into the env it’s a string, so I’d expect some sort of

if os.getenv("this_variable", "false").lower() == "true":   # or maybe "in true, yes, on, 1" if you want to be weird like yaml
  this_variable = True
else:
  this_variable = False

Except maybe a little more elegant and not typed on my phone.

But if the instructions are telling the user to edit the settings directly, like where I wrote this_variable=True, they’d need to case it correctly there.

Is the backend Python and the frontend JavaScript? Because then that would happen and just be normal, because Boolean true is True in python.

It would be really funny if the jury nullifies (like so hard it’s an acquittal, not just hung so they have to do another trial), and then he went and shot another scumbag CEO.

I would nullify again