agegamon @ agegamon @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

I agree that pi-hole is an option here, but yeah, the reality is that most daily users don't even know what it is. At least, not yet.

Adblock Plus and it's betters became ubiquitous in large part because they were so incredibly easy to install. As easy as gramma accidentally installing yet another yahoo toolbar on accident. Like, too easy.

Pi-Hole isn't hard to install, and there are some fantastic guides to help users get it running with essentially zero prior knowledge. But in my opinion, I think until it gets closer to "push-button" easiness, pi-hole and systems like it will really be limited to the <5% of users motivated enough to go through the steps, who aren't mortified of logging into their router's admin page. I want us to get there faster, and we're a hell of a lot closer than 10 or even 5 years ago. But we're not quite there yet.

Edit-typo

Silly investors, must learn from my secret method to obtain true inner haopiness:

1. Buy house during shortage when prices are insane
2. Everything breaks and you struggle through replacing it all one by one
3. Prices go down more than offsetting your efforts with loss
4. ????
5. Profit. Emotionally. Because you're happy with the heap of wood sticks plywood and fancy paper over your head that keeps you dry and comfy and weren't planning to sell it anyway.

I appreciate 90% of your comment. *I thought it was a wall of text at first but a fantastic example of science being misapplied, and I appreciate it. Thank you for following through.

Part of what science purists need to understand is that current science can be - and sometimes is - completely incorrect.

I will also point out, however, that one anecdote does not discredit my original argument. Yes perception is important but the human condition is inherently flawed. Your perception is not perfect, no matter if it ultimately is "right" or "wrong." We must be critical and question results. I am glad in this case that losing weight is possible without a calorie deficit (and in fact am doing it myself through the same method you mentioned!). But that doesn't mean our perception is somehow better than the scientific method. It means - as you rightly pointed out - that science was not being practiced by those doctors, et al, who said it was "impossible."

You misunderstood my point about perception and the feather/bowling ball, though I see what you mean and am not upset about that. Yes, basically all people will tell you that the feather falls slower. However, does that mean that gravity affects the feather less? If a person didn't already have modern science/knowledge to tell them how gravity and air resistance, fluid mechanics, yadda yadda work, a person might come to the wrong conclusion - as many did before - which is that gravity affects heavy things more. It's completely nonsense, as you and I know. But we know that because of that objective, thoroughly reviewed science.

The jibe about science as my "god" is personally insulting but understandable for you to make, especially since I have zero patience with trolls and will immediately discredit and block them. I will not argue with you if you want to discredit me in a similar way, I simply want people to not be idiots and want them to use science rather than regurgitating the same horseshit that they "feel" is right.

"supposedly objective, scientifically peer-reviewed facts" "supposed 'objective truth'"

1. Please provide some specific examples. Anyone who paints science in such a negative light, as you have, usually has a specific personal example of where their feelings or internalized nonscientific beliefs conflicted with reality and became an issue for that person. If you are not being a troll, please follow through with the conversation sincerely.
2. Perception is inherently flawed and for all intents and purposes cannot be as correct as objective, peer-reviewed science. The scientific method exists in large part to remove hand-waving guesswork and pure fictitious nonsense that is speculated from direct perception from our understanding of everything. Being sceptical of our perception and feelings is critically important, arguably even more important than being critical of scientific work.

A great example is a feather falling slower than a bowling ball in atmosphere. Your first perception would not lead you to understand the science of gravity as we now know it thanks to rigorous scientific proof. It would lead you astray, as it has lead many people astray before and today.

The title is pure clickbait lol. It's like "who could these mysterious people be???" meanwhile hey it's just some good old regular folks.

In all seriousness I am glad more people are doing their best to be reasonable and put science first. It's heartwarming to see.

It's desperately needed, and in some senses it doesn't go far enough.

Regressives held our state government hostage via superminority rule and actively forced us to compromise on their inhuman policies to make any progress for three straight years. Without this, only a rewrite to our state constitution's quorum rule would prevent eternal hell regressives holding our state hostage via minority rule.

Now, we can at least revoke these turds after they fuck us over. But in the grand scheme of things, I worry that what this law doesn't do is prevent this new cycle from repeating. It doesn't take many of them ruling over a few tiny, horribly misinformed districts to screw us all over. In other words, it only takes a tiny number of regressive candidates each year to accomplish that goal.

It's not like our current state of affairs is equitable either though. Flying is specifically cheap today because of a combination of subsidization, lobbying, and big business demands. It's not built to be fair to the little guy either, and if it ever is it's just a convenient side-effect.

As much as big oil, airlines, automakers, et al are subsidized, if we could round up even 50% of that money, we could easily accomplish low-cost mass transit and reliable long distance rail. Even high-speed rail between major cities in some cases. Combined with cutting out taxpayer subsidized air, thay would go a long way to make things more equitable

I won't give the mouthpeices much credit. But be careful in underestimating them. Self-delusion is deep and complex, and that's frightening enoguh. Even more frightening though, is that if you go searching deep enough in conservative donors networks, conservativeism always winds it's way back to members of the 1% seeking unchecked power.

Conservative and religious institutional donors do think ahead, and they are a special breed of cruel, ruthless, and smart. Yes, most of the conservative bloc is dickwaving while they push the "give money now" button of reaction hate politics. It's pretty obvious that on the surface there's nothing particularly thoughtful going on there.

But the underlying strategy is as fascinating as frightening. There is a LOT of effort that goes in behind the scenes to figure out how to manipulate literally every aspect of people in society. These big donors typically have highly lucratice connections, often very direct ones, to big corps. Some of the most insidious manipulation that goes on in our society today is the result of capitalist businesses finding ways to perpetually squeeze us harder for a dollar. It's no coincidence when we see the same tactics being used in politics.

So yeah. I don't entirely disagree with you but progressives consistently get our asses handed to us when we underestimate anything.

Keep up the good work. Teachers here in Portland got significant gains from the last strike, even though ultimately they didn't get as much as they needed. Budgets for education in this country are ridiculous. Getting passed over due to 1%er concessions and their for-profit whiney horseshit is so normal that I think many folks have forgotten what a good system we could have.

Oh sure, he's an absolutist: Free speech for him and people he likes? Absolutely. Free speech for people he doesn't like? Absolutely not.

Yeah, implementing policies like this has to be done really damn carefully to prevent unintended consequences from dragging the whole thing down. It's also not a push-button solution to a problem; it requires persistent, long-term commitment and gradually change to get right. Tricky, especially when, at least here in the US, regressive politicians regularly get elected and scuttle policies that would eventually work if left alone.

Anyway, yeah, just focusing on a land-value tax alone won't solve the problem of equitable housing. It'll have to be worked in carefully with safeguards to prevent the 1% from abusing it, that prevent public green spaces from disappearing into the concrete jungle, that ensures we have space to build and improve public transit, infrastructure , etc.

For example, single family home zoning on large (7000+ sq ft) lots isn't appropriate major cities. It's reasonable to expect people to compromise away from that type of housing into smaller lots and mixed-use zoning, so that SFH's can exist in small spaces but be surrounded by businesses and apartments. But, if a small single family home or an apartment wants to work in a small garden or share a public garden, I think those types of things should be protected and, at least if they're public access, exempted from land use tax to a certain point.

We of course have to be careful not to allow loopholes that enable people to exploit that and keep inappropriate amounts of land to themselves without paying dearly for it. But we also need provisions for that kind of land use to exist without it being so expensive that only the wealthy have it, or that horrific things like HOAs are the only ones able to afford them.

It's a mess. I'm glad though that they're trying it out. Just putting the idea off because it's hard will keep things worse forever.

Check!

Also, I forgot all the tomfuckery he pulled with starlink in Ukraine, cutting off access and the like.

It's truly a testament to how much shit this guy has done that we forget so much of it.

Literally only the best strategies here! I mean lets recap:

• Threaten to buy company then double down and agree in writing as a bullying tactic: check
• Roll a nat 1 on your intimidation check: check
• Be forced to follow through when called out on being mentally an 8 yo by the feds: check
• Fire critical employees, like basically all of them: check
• Yoink verification away from public news orgs: check
• Let anyone pay to be "legit," even if they're parodying you: check
• Rename twitter to the stupidest thing imagined since head-on (apply directly to the forehead): check
• Gut content moderation policies but also stop enforcing regardless: check
• Post own hate content and racism to the platform: check
• "Accidentally" run ads next to hate content: check
• Be told your sign sucks and to take it down by city: check (lol)
• Become a living embodiment of "big yikes" energy while telling aforementioned advertisers to "go fuck yourselves" on live TV: check
• Hallucinate about making x into a libertarian wechat alternative: check
• Tank the value of the company while blaming literally anyone else for your failures: mission in progress, #1 priority

10/10 solid buy, gonna grab some long calls rn. The koch boys and rupert murderjock must be holding back a tsunami of jealousy by now 🤣

Yes, exactly. The short term solution requires that people recognize the greater evil in the room and defend what little progress we've made. We can't let perfect be the enemy of good. Our first part the post voting system is horrible, but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system, priority 1 is exactly what you said.

Choosing not to vote for Democrats because they're not perfect is choosing to step back and give republicans a free ticket to burn all of our progress to the ground. It's naïve to think otherwise.

And honestly, that naïveté is holding us back from actually addressing issues like us aid to israel. Enoguh splintering among progressives will by default give control back to republican leaders who would happily sit back and watch palestinians die while lying about it and blaming it on anything anyone else other than themselves.

Fuck Amazon. I cancelled amazon prime years ago when the facts came out on how much damage they were doing to us and to our environment. I use it as little as possible now, and I'd certainly never consider using their steaming services. I'm forced by some 3rd-party companies to use AWS, since many sites exclusively host their content on them. But, that's as far as I'll go.

Pretty much every amazon employee is strangled by the fucking neck and kept on as little pay as will avoid federal lawsuits. I'm not going to be any more complict in this total monopoly if I can help it.

A van is certainly going to be cheaper to put solar on than a whole house LOL! That's completely understandable. Yep, I'm sorry, I usually assume people are talking about homes because I don't have a van, and so I misjudged youe capial involved as a lot more than I'd have. For van living I'd say it's a must-have regardless of price, considering that you might not have grid hookups consistently!

When the options are sue or plan for the future....

You've omitted the critical, first-priotity option: get out. Unless that I what you meant by "plan for the future...."

Absolutely nobody who is sane of mind will look at texas, with its radical conservative "leadership" and sociopath 1% investors, and say "I want to stay here even though I could move." And I'll admit, I'm very quick to judge you for what you said: if you can afford whole-home solar, you can afford to move to a nice fucking house.

Now, I was in the same boat.

I left idaho (which by many measures is worse than texas) years ago, and have been trying to convince my family to do the same. They agree they need to leave that hateful shithole, but selling their home and uprooting from their tiny circle of non-psychopath idaho friends is still very hard. I'm going to end up digging deep financially to make it happen, but it'll work out in the end.

Still, nobody deserves to end their life in such a hateful place. Leaving is an option once you can afford a home, no matter what anyone says. And at least if people leave, they won't be actively forced to support a radical conservative hate state.

Free Geek here in Portland OR used to do this. Might still be doing it too, but I haven't been back there since 2018 so I'm not 100% sure.

But yeah, the last I was there, you could walk in and just buy a refurbished laptop or desktop with Linux on it. They would even give guidance on what people needed if they weren't tech-savvy.

Earthen walls are also effective at keeping our trolls, though obviously then you have an earthen wall to stare at so it may not be what you want...

Just a sidenote, I absolutely love the website's warning for adding this to your cart.

*Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.

Hell yeah lol