I don’t remember who said it (so I’m likely butchering the phrase), but I’ve heard that any creative work exists in three forms: The mind of the author, the physical copy, and the mind of the audience.

For example, a book/story exists as the author intends, as the author writes, and as the reader interprets.

No one of the three is more “correct” than the other.

I mean its not even too late for this to happen starting like right now 2025, right?

No, it’s not. The US, and increasingly the rest of the western world, is infected by a bunch of politicians who think ‘1984’ is an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.

IT being used to weaponize surveillance against the people is happening right now.

Yep. “1” is 12:00am on 1-Jan-1900

Numbers less than zero just give a weird error. Between zero and less than one give a nonsense date-formatted non-date.

The “late, great” Hannibal Lector.

That’s not an argument, that’s somebody who only looked at the cover of the cliff notes on presidential terms but didn’t read it.

Right, but he can’t read, so it can still be his position.

And of course, anything passed by the normal legislative processes can just as easily be repealed that way.

Lasting change is going to require constitutional amendment(s) to harden the democracy against bad actors.

Is this a “what happens if we outlaw all News Organizations” situation, or a “What if the world evolved without News Organizations” scenario?

From there, the answer depends entirely on how you define “news” and “organization.”

Nobody would define aunt Sharon gossiping about her neighbor’s cat’s digestive issues as being a “news organization.” Almost everybody would define the New York Times, or CNN as one.

Between them lies a million shades of gray, and any distinction is going to be arbitrary.

In the “outlaw” scenario above, even the best attempts to define clear and unambiguous rules will just lead to gamesmanship and disappointment.

Nixon aides wanted a pro-administration network, and some of them were eventually instrumental in getting Fox News going, but it took over 20 years between Watergate and the launch of FNC.

The question is basically answered now, so I’ll just drop this video here for some additional context about Microsoft’s history of trying to build a file system that solves the problem, and the challenges they faced even in the early XP days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5d5H92c4Mk

tl;dw: MS tried to understand the context of each file, not just the name. Once you add dozens of pieces of metadata to each of tens of thousands of files (even 20+ years ago), the whole system became too difficult for them to properly index and manage efficiently.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-methodology/

A total of 205,100 sampled addresses were mailed survey invitations. Respondents were given a choice to complete the survey online, by mail, or by calling a toll-free number and completing the survey over the phone with an interviewer. Of the 36,908 U.S. adults who completed the survey, 25,250 did so online, 10,733 did so by mail, and 925 did so by phone.

It goes on to say the results were then weighted to get a representative demographic sample, e.g. if more older people answered, younger responders would count for more.

Even if you discount all other forms of taxation, and only focus on income taxes, the sentiment is irrelevant to this particular vote.

His support appears to be concentrated in the middle class. (Median household income in NYC is about 80k, right about the peak of his vote share)

Yeah, my wife teases me all the time about not answering. “Going to the store after work” doesn’t, IMHO, require me to do or say anything about it.

A direct question will almost always get a response.

It’s going to be a little different for married couples, though. Even if I don’t respond, we’ll be talking face-to-face in a few hours tops.

Martavius Garantus Hawthorne IV is my real name, officer.

Might be too late. They changed the policy a few years ago when they introduced mod packs. They didn’t want entire packs to fail if one person pulled their mod, so total deletion was disabled.

Folks can still hide their mods and make new individual downloads impossible, but it’s still there in the background.

(All this is from memory. I hope I’m wrong)

Ha, T1 is so outdated, his team doesn’t even know it’s an existing slow standard.

It’s like naming your new gold-plated “luxury” car brand “Horse & Buggy.”

This is the answer. I would put the ‘nuclear death in a bottle’ type sauces on everything in my 20s. Switched to more normal hot sauce in my 30s. Since 40, even that has to be done in moderation. My fridge is full of hot sauces gifted to me that I won’t touch, but the extended family still thinks I like.

As soon as I graduated, ‘too many people are fighting for IT jobs, depressing salaries, meanwhile we’re paying plumbers $100/hour.’

That was 2001. Almost 25 years later, I recently paid a plumber $300/hour.

I’ve always maintained that the first was a fine game that was tanked by the price. It was priced to drive gamepass subs, not sell the game. At $35-40, it would have been received much better, imo. Years later, now that it’s more appropriately priced, it seems to be more well-reviewed.

Unfortunately the second is going down the same path. It may take 5+ years for the game to be appreciated to its fullest (assuming no glaring issues), through no fault of the devs.

This is why subject matter experts matter. Support for the vague idea of “deport people here illegally” is pretty high, but any specific method of actually doing it is much more unpopular. Media is essential in getting that distinction out to the laypeople, but they’ve largely failed.

And I’d argue that it’s not just immigration where this disconnect exists. Lots of policies have broad support until you start talking about specifics. People just want to “get things done” but the “how” is either boring or unsavory.

You can handle what you can handle, and trying to drink from the firehose will only burn you out. Be as active in your community as you can, when you can, then take a break when you need to. Your own mental health matters, too.