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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TE
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3 mo. ago

  • We collectively need far fewer people to have driver's licenses in this country. Being part of the minority that can't drive is harder when that minority is smaller and so less resourced. Although in some ways, with fewer people who can't drive competition for jobs (especially entry-level) that don't need a driver's license may be lighter.

  • Last I checked they were ghoulishly waiting at the prison in the hopes of watching her be sent in.

    The media is garbage. We did not need this many updates on the case, and they did not need to rub it in so much (I think she obviously did it, but on the off chance she didn't they're basically bullying her at this point).

  • You can't prove it, but you can evidence it. And in some cases you can prove it (we've proven vaccines don't cause Autism, for example).

    Although this whole "produce studies" approach is such BS. The "do your own research" slogan is what got us anti-vaxxers (plus, and I can't stress this enough, I really can't be bothered). Expert consensus is how we should approach it. The experts know how to read the studies.

  • Produce studies saying to say it's not harmful, or be quiet. Social media is too new, and all the psychologists that know the implications are working for the social media companies to make it more addictive. We don't know whether social media is harmful, but there is ample anecdotal evidence of the three issues I raised. I should not I haven't actually looked for any evidence because who can be bothered using Google for a Lemmy (Reddit) argument.

    In my experience, the type of engagement that social media encourages is not healthy in any way, and this is not on the level of books or movies (some video games fall into the same category though).

    Or let's just go with privacy laws. Any information on engagement with their platforms should be depersonalized before use in content recommendation and ads. Users should need to manually select the criteria of content they want to see, rather than TikTok deciding they're autistic or something and doing that automatically. In practice though this'd probably just means there'd only be the trending page, but as long as it's useless (and we'd need to rely on human recommendations) then all's fine.

  • I think the harms are real. They're not exclusive to children.

    There are three categories of harm:

    • Radicalization, as the algorithm deliberately feeds you bad takes from your political opponents and good takes from your political allies, to keep you engaged.
    • Overstimulation, the YouTube Kids channel Cocomelon is way too addictive for kids. This isn't exclusive to social media, and YouTube Kids apparently has an exemption.
    • Addiction, social media eats into hours upon hours in kid's days. Time they could spend with their family/friends or processing their emotions, instead they're being numbed out on their phone.

    I think we should ban algorithmic recommendations (or strictly limit them), ban the practices of Cocomelon, and ... I'm not sure what we can do about the addiction thing (humans are super prone to addiction). I'd also ban smart-phones in schools, kids should only be allowed flip-phones/brick-phones.

  • That phrasing comes from a channel that calls the Teals "not-shit". The imported narrative that "both sides are the same" gives license to the conservative working class to vote against their economic interests, but frankly speaking the Labor party is broadly made up of people who genuinely care but are faced with a corrupt system operating under American global dominance.

    We have it quite good in Australia, for the most part. It could be SO much worse.

  • If we're so concerned about the South China Sea, we can give Taiwan or Japan diesel subs. It's not like the nuclear subs would be of much use to us anyway if they're on the other side of Indonesia.

    Although I can't imagine an Internal Combusion Engine sub being at all stealthy, so I'd hope there's some kind of third option.

  • The accounting newsletter my uni made me sign up to had an article criticizing this from the SMSF association.

    Their key complaint is "unrealized capital gains" which is ... real estate basically. You can tax shares and they can just sell a few, "unrealized capital gains" only makes sense if you're using your super fund to evade income tax as a property investor. These elites, even the obscure accounting newsletter elites, know full-well what they're doing.

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis

    You're not 100% wrong. Zero_gravitas answered my comment about the apsis with a comment about the seasons, and I called them wrong even though technically they were just referring to the wrong topic. I was right though, the perihelion occurs in January and the anhelion occurs in July, and that this means the sun is closer to earth during Australian summer than it is during American summer.