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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
10
Comments
3686
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • They have a point...

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  • Part of that attitude was that Gen X never had power. The Boomers have been clinging onto power since Gen X was in high school. Gen X could have fought for power, but would it really have changed anything?

  • Trump Administration Deploying More Border Patrol Agents to Minnesota | More than 100 agents will be redirected from other cities after the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

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  • It doesn't matter if the excuse is plausible. People who want to show their loyalty can do it by claiming to believe the unbelievable thing.

    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. -- Frank Wilhoit

    By claiming to believe the lie, you also lay a claim to being part of the in-group so the rules (like telling the truth about things) don't apply to you. Of course, the truth is that 99.9% of the people who think of themselves as part of the in-group were never part of it, and will eventually be treated the same as the people who they're trying to trample on.

  • Managing an endless todo list

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  • Cooking for 8 people isn't 8x as hard as cooking for one person. But, it's still significantly harder than cooking for one person. 1 house is cheaper than 8 houses, but 1 house with enough room for 8 people is huge compared to a house for a single person.

    I have relatives that live in a kind-of communal way like that. It works pretty well for them. But, I couldn't possibly survive living with my mother. To give you an idea, she came from a family of 4 sisters. One sister died estranged from the other 3. My mother hasn't visited the other 2 in decades. The one she'd like to visit, she won't because she doesn't think they can stand to be in each-other's company for a week. That one's her twin.

  • Solid advice.

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  • Somewhat relevant: when I first searched for those videos I searched for "robot that tests Ikea chairs by sitting on them" or something. I got lots of results, but every one of them was about robots that were building furniture, not testing it. To actually get the results I wanted I needed to say "furniture testing machine".

    So, I guess the Internet doesn't think those are actually robots, so they don't worry about their purpose.

  • Solid advice.

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  • It's not a question.

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  • The other thing that has changed since the 1700s is communications technology. In 2025 in theory it's possible for normal people to instantly communicate in a way that the government can't monitor. But, realistically, the way most people communicate could easily be intercepted in real time by the government, so it would be difficult to organize any kind of resistance against the government.

  • Solid advice.

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  • On the subject of devices lasting a long time, does anybody remember when Ikea used to have displays in their stores where you could see a machine testing a piece of furniture over and over? Like, they had one that simulated someone sitting down in a chair over and over again, or one that simulated a drawer being opened over and over again.

    Those machines were great. They should bring them back.

  • Solid advice.

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  • Start a tech company. They spawn garages as part of their "backstory" stage.

  • Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”

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  • Nice.

  • Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”

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  • Ok, now tell us what your magic 8 ball said.

  • Doom 2016 forces you to accept 4 agreements before playing.

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  • They're not going to patch the game with an update that removes the TOS, privacy policy and code of conduct now that the multiplayer elements are no longer relevant.

  • It's not a question.

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  • The 2nd amendment was drafted at a time when there were no standing armies. While cannons existed, most battles were decided by individual soldiers with their personal weapons.

    In the modern world, you still need individual soldiers with individual weapons to hold terrain, but it's very difficult to advance or take terrain from a modern military without artillery and bombs. So, a militia could maybe ensure that an attacking force was never able to fully settle and control a region (i.e. what the Taliban managed vs the western forces in Afghanistan) it can't really conquer much if opposed by a real army with real army toys.

    The real joke of the 2nd amendment is that it was obviously intended to be about citizen militias used to fight off opposing armies, but has been transformed into people's right to own whatever they want for "self defence", which 90% of the time actually means suicide, road rage, domestic violence, accidental shootings, mass shootings, gang warfare, police shootings, armed robberies, etc.

  • It's not a question.

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  • I'm curious where your dad lives. I don't necessarily disagree with that, but America's such a dominant force in the world politically and economically that it's hard to avoid America and Americans.

    If America is the enemy, does your dad refuse to deal with the enemy? Does he avoid all American products? Refuse to deal with any service offered by an American company? Refuse to speak to Americans? In some countries where the economy is so closely intertwined with the US one, that would be really hard. But, maybe there are countries where you can actually treat the US as an enemy country and fully cut the US out of your life completely.

  • Doom 2016 forces you to accept 4 agreements before playing.

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  • It makes it easier for your lawyer to organize the briefing document she prepares for you when she's suggesting whether or not you agree to the terms of the contracts.

    What, not everybody has their lawyer look over contracts they're about to agree to? What, so they just act as their own lawyer and carefully review these legal documents without the benefit of a law degree? That sounds risky!

  • Doom 2016 forces you to accept 4 agreements before playing.

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  • OP says it's a single-player game, but it looks like that's not the case. If it is multiplayer, a code of conduct is 100% necessary. The rest seems pretty standard for something online: privacy policy, EULA and TOS.

    I wish EULAs would go away, or at least be heavily restricted in what they can force you to agree with, but they're standard.

    TOS is useful to define what you can expect out of their online service.

    I also wish there were privacy laws, so the Privacy Policy didn't force you to agree to absurd terms, but here we are.

  • Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”

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  • Once again proving that while AI can't do a programmer's job, a tech writer's job, an artist's job, a composer's job, a doctor's job, or any other job involving thinking and understanding -- it can easily do a CEO's job and probably better than the CEO.

  • Internet picture of a monkey

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  • NFTs were bought with crypto, which had various hidden costs, scams and thefts, so it's basically the same.

  • Internet picture of a monkey

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  • True, but while you're still paying those timeshare fees, you still have access to the place.

    The real difference is that a time share is never thought of as an investment where you buy low and sell high. It's thought of as getting a good deal on something you plan to use. For it to be similar to an NFT it would have to be something like a dude in Nebraska buys a time share in Australia and then tries to make money from Australians or something. AFAIK almost everybody who buys time shares does it because they plan to use the place as a vacation property and actually do use it that way, at least for a while.

  • Elon Musk’s AI Grok Goes Rogue with Posts Suggesting Trump Is a Pedophile and Erika Kirk Is JD Vance in Drag

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  • Yes, any journalist who uses that term should be relentlessly mocked. Along with terms like "Grok admitted" or "ChatGPT confessed" or especially any case where they're "interviewing" the LLM.

    These journalists are basically "interviewing" a magic 8-ball and pretending that it has thoughts.

  • Elon Musk’s AI Grok Goes Rogue with Posts Suggesting Trump Is a Pedophile and Erika Kirk Is JD Vance in Drag

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  • No, they haven't. They're effectively prop masters. Someone wants a prop that looks a lot like a legal document, the LLM can generate something that is so convincing as a prop that it might even fool a real judge. Someone else wants a prop that looks like a computer program, it can generate something that might actually run, and one that will certainly look good on screen.

    If the prop master requests a chat where it looks like the chatbot is gaining agency, it can fake that too. It has been trained on fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Wargames. It can also generate a chat where it looks like a chatbot feels sorry for what it did. But, no matter what it's doing, it's basically saying "what would an answer to this look like in a way that might fool a human being".