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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Exactly. Centrism, and the very idea that there is “moderation” to be sought between progressive ideals and back-assward conservatism, is a fucking plague. We all suffer because people don’t want to seem “extreme” and I’m fucking tired of it. We have to commit to being progressive and admit that all centrism has ever done is seek validation for and to normalize right-wing viewpoints long enough that we stop paying attention.



  • I trust the government, in that a government elected by a moderately intelligent population won’t be doing this fuckshit.

    The biggest problem is that human beings are, by and large, far too stupid. As one guy put it, too many fully-grown adults are falling for obvious games of Peek-a-boo. There are billions of people so stupid that there are birds with greater levels of intelligence and problem solving skills.

    We could have a wonderful world with a government that genuinely works for the people but instead half of us are voting our lives away just to spite already-disadvantaged minorities and the other half is voting for centrists because they’re too scared of even moderately progressive politicians. And the whole time polls show us as generally quite left-leaning, even the “conservatives” but we aren’t clever enough to see the tribalism right in front of us.

    Governments are representing their people, that’s the problem, and there’s also no solution that doesn’t itself devolve into authoritarianism almost immediately. The only thing I’m genuinely holding out for is that the leaded-fuel-poisoning theory is real and we all smarten the fuck up ASAP. Reality is screaming at us to figure it the fuck out.







  • Sure, but we’re acting like self-driving cars will save us and not like they’re a neat little extra thing. Yes, some people donneed assistance moving, but there are entire para-taxi services that could receive better funding. In Ottawa, for example, the public transit service has a whole program called “ParaTranspo” with soecialized buses and everything. People who have trouble moving, in our society, are very not going to be able to afford self-driving cars and even if they did many will not be able to get themselves into them without assistance anyway. Also, in well-built neighbourhoods, people with disabilities can get around on their own on scooters and such, even in the winter; I see this in my own neighbourhood all the time and they are so mich more free than if they were tied to a car.

    Self-driving cars aren’t much more than cheap propaganda that people slurp up so they can keep pretending that cars are a viable form of personal transport outside of edge cases. As someone with a sportscar who mostly just takes public transit and walks I can assure you, cars are largely stupid and we’re kinda dumb for wanting them.




  • Does that make Bezos special? The bar is so low that someone doing the bare minimum of what most regular people are actively for is somehow an intelligent thing. His big thing to make money was to undercut local bookstores, that’s what he really did, and even that wasn’t new.

    His “income” is around $2,500 per second. He “makes” more than most people do in a lifetime in a matter of minutes(single digit minutes) and what you described is not anything that requires special intelligence to pull off. What made him special was a silver spoon and the willingness to hurt others for personal gain.

    Even Steve Jobs’ main quality that made him a standout leader in so many ways was that he simply allowed the people to he was paying to do a job to do that job without being micro-managed, and he told people who tried to get him to chase short-term gains to fuck off. Again, not genius level stuff unless you’re comparing him against the truly stupid and evil, which is most rich people.


  • That’s one extreme way to take the comment, I guess. I worked from home for a while and I think these return to office orders are stupid as hell, largely because going to the office needs unpaid commuting time, annoyances related to needing to bring a lunch, and it takes away your ability to do small chores and stuff during the work day that might be often impossible during the evening for one reason or another.

    Look, if you want to work at the beach or whatever then go for it, but the idea that California is the “envy of nations” because people can do labour at a beach is insanity.