merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

I would guess that most women wouldn't feel the need to be on a woman-focused Lemmy instance for their main / only account. But, some might want an alt account to discuss certain things there.

This seems like a very good niche for someone willing to do it. Problematic accounts could get a site-wide ban instead of each woman having to ban someone herself.

People who cover their drinks when you're around.

The tariffs alone would be enough to cause a recession. It's not just that they're large (even 10% is large by modern standards) it's mostly that they're so chaotic. I've read that most businesses are avoiding hiring, avoiding any expenditures they can, and just waiting to see what happens. Seeing what happens means keeping cash on hand, which means a drop in GDP. The numbers might have been juiced a bit by people making big orders and trying to get them done before the tariffs come into full effect, but once that's done the pain is going to be much more visible.

In addition to the tariffs, there's the firing of federal workers. There are about 3 million in the US, and even if only a fraction have been fired so far, I would bet the rest are cutting back on unnecessary expenses and building up a cash reserve in case they get canned. This will ripple through the economy too.

And then there's the ICE stuff. People with green cards getting deported for exercising their first amendment rights, scientists being refused entry for a post they made on social media in their home countries, Canadian, German and British people being thrown in an ICE detention facility because of a minor paperwork mix-up. This is going to make tourists and business visitors much less willing to take a chance and visit the US, but this won't hit until later. Big tourist season is the summer, and so the lack of business won't show up yet. And some conferences were too close to cancel, but conferences for later in the year might be moved or cancelled.

And there's the invasion threats against Canada and Greenland, and the tariff wars against Canada and Mexico, and the refusal to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. The biggest visitors to the US were Canadians, Mexicans and Europeans, and all of them are going to be avoiding the country now. And, not just avoiding the country. People are trying to avoid buying US goods and services.

In addition, there are treasuries. Many are held by Japan and China. Even just acting purely rationally, they see the chaos in the US and know the US might not be able to pay its bills, or it might choose not to pay them. The risk has gone up. If they aren't being purely rational and self-interested, they also know that they can hurt the US by dumping treasuries, so they're doing that.

And then there are the scientists leaving the US, or choosing not to come. And there are potential international students who see how risky it is for anybody who isn't white, male and christian. This sort of thing might take decades, but it's going to hurt the US the most. So many of the world's most talented people have come to the US and started businesses, but that is definitely going to slow down now.

Even if Trump were impeached and removed, and all his changes were undone with apologies, there has been some permanent damage done to the US by the MAGA majority. But, since it is a majority, since the MAGAs control the supreme court, the senate, the house and the presidency, there's going to be a lot more damage done before there's even a hint of a stabilization, let alone a recovery.

I think any rational investor is going to get their money out of the US, and the slight recovery the S&P 500 has seen in the last week is going to be dwarfed by the crash over the next few years.

It's similar, but homeless encampments are a bit different. The main difference, IMO, is that they're much less permanent. In the DS9 clip it looked like people were not expecting to have to move any time soon.

In a real homeless encampment, the police often come by to harass people and kick them out. People need to be able to move quickly or they'll leave stuff behind, and it will get broken, thrown away or stolen.

The other difference is that homeless people have cell phones. They're not the latest models, they're not in great shape. But, it's really hard to exist in the modern world without one. In the DS9 clip they had no tech, probably because that was easier on the props department than trying to imagine tech that would be 20-years more advanced than what people had in 1995.

Do you mean they're backing down from a ∀פ∀W agenda?

In Canada, the conservative party was basically MAGA, Northern Branch. The same kinds of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the same culture war BS, the same "government can't do anything right" stance, etc. US Republican politicians were publicly supporting Canadian conservatives and vice-versa. Their support reached its peak on Jan 20th 2025, the same day Trump took office.

Since then, support from the Liberals has gone from 20.1% to 43.9%, while the conservatives have dropped from 44.8% to 38.0%. The conservative ties to the MAGAs has really hurt them, while the Liberal government fighting back against the MAGAs has given them a massive boost.

If Trump hasn't picked a fight with Canada, or had just delayed it a few months, he'd have had a friendly conservative government in power who could have legitimized him and been a partner. Instead he decided to attack, causing a huge "rally round the flag" effect and basically guaranteeing the Liberals will win the election.

The program has definitely had issues but the F-35 is a very effective aircraft

AFAIK it's essentially untested. The only way to test it would be to use it in a real shooting war against an enemy who can shoot back. The war in Ukraine has showed that a lot of assumptions about how a war would play out are wrong. It may be that the F-35 can be defeated by a few $500 drones, and is essentially useless in a war.

The Bell Riots weren't what they were cracked up to be. Either that, or they got the date wrong.

But, the writers in that scene went really easy on the set dressers and costumers: "Ok, it's a street scene in 2024, but everyone is poor, and as a result they don't have anything built after... say... 1995."

It's not a MacGuffin. A MacGuffin isn't important to the story, it's just there to serve as motivation for the characters. In the Three Body Problem, the mystery of what happened to science is central to the plot of the entire book.

This isn't "pretending to punch Lois Lane". This is "why the hell did Superman just kill Lois Lane!?" The whole plot of the story is that science stops working. Scientists are killing themselves because of it. One of the characters is seeing a countdown when he closes his eyes. Aside from the Three-Body-Problem game parts, the whole rest of the book is structured as a mystery that they're trying to solve. This mystery is the primary motivation for the characters in the book, and it's presented as a mystery for the reader to speculate about.

Basically, the book is structured as if it were a murder on a train, and the whole structure of the story suggests that someone on the train is the murderer. But, it turns out that the murderer is Zeus, who descended from the heavens, killed the murder victim for his own reasons, and left. Ta-da, mystery solved! (And there's the additional bullshit that scientists are committing suicide because their experiments are failing. That's just so ridiculous. Actual scientists would be so excited by unexpected results. The way to upset a scientist wouldn't be to have something appear to break the laws of physics. What would upset real scientists would be a replication crisis: either they can't match someone else's work, or people call into question their work because nobody can match the results they're getting.)

And those are just the problems with the "A" plot. The "B" plot is the ultra-stupid simulation of life on a planet in a 3-body system. You know what life would be like in that kind of system: nonexistent. But no, you're supposed to believe in people being flattened and rehydrated. I mean, come ON. And you're also supposed to believe that people are playing this "game" and loving it. Has the author ever actually played a game? Has the author ever met any people?

The writing is bad, the characters are bad, the science is bad. It's just a bad book. It's a book that dumb people read and they think the author is smart, and if the author is smart the book must be good, it just went above their heads. But, the author isn't smart, the book isn't smart, the book isn't good.

Real life experience can’t be catalogued

In ye olde days it couldn't. But, what if the current database of YouTube videos survives? You'd get every non-expert trying everything in any way possible. If books and podcasts survive, you'd have every discussion on why things are done a certain way and not another way. Assuming it all survives, there'd be so much more information to future archaeologists and anthropologists than today. Right now we just dig up a shard of pottery and try to figure things out from whatever we can glean from that pottery.

It would make for a cool movie. The only problem is trying to imagine a really distant future that makes the present look barbaric.

They had fun with that in Demolition Man with the three shells. Star Trek TNG did it in The Neutral Zone where they had a bunch of people from the 20th century including a financier who couldn't accept the lack of money in the future. But it's really hard to make a future that's believable and makes the present look barbaric.

If the records survived, they might not need anything from you, because they've already watched it all on video. But, maybe some of them would be interested to see it in person once. Even if we know how warriors fought 3000 years ago, it would still be interesting to see a true expert warrior using their weapons in a way that took a lifetime to master.

If the records didn't survive, you might be a valuable person to study for a while, but it might quickly get tiring to basically be a sideshow performer, there to delight the people who think of you as this ultra-primitive thing that's nearly an animal.

I would bet it would be pretty frustrating for most people after a while. You'd have this mental image of yourself as a sophisticated, modern person who was respected by his/her peers. Suddenly, you'd be living in a world where people around you might be struggling to contain their disgust. Things that are normal to you like eating meat or peeing in a toilet might be seen as animal-like behaviours.

If you're lucky, then your sophisticated construction and engineering techniques might be seen as impressive feats of craftsmanship. In a world where robots fasten everything that needs fastening, just driving in a nail or using a screwdriver might be seen as something really fancy, like we'd now see the kinds of stonemasonry that they might have had millennia ago.

But, if your self-image is that of an advanced engineer, and the best you can hope for is to be seen as a quaint old-timey craftsman, that might not be very satisfying.

Except the new FTL-capable ships are the result of 3000 years of advancement. You wouldn't even be able to figure out how to use the bathroom, let alone do the navigation and piloting to reach a new planet.

Imagine we had some Egyptians from -1000 BC who suddenly arrived unexpectedly in the modern world. They think Ra, Anubis and Horus control their fates. Iron is the most advanced technology they know of, but you're proposing we make them astronauts?

I managed to finish the first book, but it was so terrible that I wasn't willing to read any more or watch the show.

The whole book sets up a big mystery, then solves that mystery with the biggest deux ex machina bullshit ever committed to paper.

Except you're basically a caveman. You leave and you're one of the world's foremost engineers, trusted to know everything necessary to build a new settlement from scratch, with no help from Earth.

You get there and your engineering knowledge is 3000 years out of date. The only people who are interested in your skills are archaeologists and anthropologists. They use an app to ask you questions like "Could you demonstrate how you used woodpaper to wipe your anus?"

Even when he happens to make a correct decision, the decision-making process is pure chaos.

Just think about how chaotic things were during COVID. People weren't allowed to leave their homes. Restaurants were laying off all their staff. Many tourist attractions were completely shut down. Airlines were flying empty planes around just so they didn't lose their airport slots. People switched from spending locally to buying things online, but China was also dealing with COVID, so that made manufacturing and shipping chaotic too. The ports were completely screwed, with completely full ships sitting in the port waiting weeks to unload.

Despite all that, economic uncertainty in Trump's 2nd term is twice as bad. It's literally off the charts.

Nobody can make any reasonable long-term plans because everything might change depending on the mad king's whims.

And, last time things went back to normal because this was a worldwide pandemic and there wasn't anybody to blame for it. This time, everyone knows that this is Trump's fault, and that he was elected with widespread support from the American people. I don't think things are going back to normal after this.

Ok, because in that case they were wrong. In every other case you can't say that they were wrong.

So they said there was a 100% chance that X was going to win but Y won?

I, for one, think the world would be a better place if perjury charges were taken a lot more seriously. For a lawyer, perjury should be career-ending.

The justice system only works if it operates on facts. If either side is not being honest about those facts, things break down.

I've heard that, at least in the US, this is especially bad when it comes to immigration. Lawyers coach their clients on exactly what to say so that they can get refugee status, even if they're really just economic migrants. This is unfair to real refugees, unfair to people immigrating legally, and to society in general.

OTOH, you have to be careful about how something like this is managed. If the government is too free to discipline and fine lawyers, you can end up in a situation like you have down south, where law firms that dared to represent the other side are being destroyed by the government.

So, in your view, it's a dystopia when people are prevented from lying to the court?

What's a utiopia then?

Not only has this not worked, but I can't understand how anybody ever thought it could work.

"You know what our justice system needs?! A way to prevent judges from using their judgment!"