FaceDeer

I find a ton of uses for quick Python scripts hammered out with Bing Chat to get random stuff done.

It’s also super useful when brainstorming and fleshing out stuff for the tabletop roleplaying games I run. Just bounce ideas off it, have it write monologues, etc.

If it saves Ukraine from Russian occupation I’ll at least give them a favorable mention. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Indeed. If the US government were truly dancing on the puppet strings of the arms industry right now there’d be a ton of resources heading to Ukraine.

I think there’s a significant difference between “neutral” and “diverse”.

For example, Reddit is big enough that if you find yourself holding an unpopular opinion in some particular subreddit and you’re getting battered with downvotes, you can probably find some other similar subreddit that’s more friendly to whatever view you’ve got that’s drawing ire. People speak derisively of “bubbles” and “echo chambers”, but really, why should I stick around and try to engage with people who just don’t want you around? Communities naturally tend to segregate themselves along ideological lines like this.

Here on the Fediverse the population’s too small to support quite so many diverse communities yet, unfortunately. So if you’ve got an unpopular minority view you can end up stuck with either routinely finding yourself serving as a punching bag or just not posting. That’s no fun.

It could become a bit more reasonable when you consider that most of that gear is probably reusable, so if she expects to do day trips to the beach frequently the $800 gets amortized.

In this case, though, I wouldn’t assume any forward planning like that was factored in to this.

I could see it being useful for keeping the sun off, serving as a refuge from insects (depending on the local biome), perhaps serving as a changing room for privacy. But yeah, it should hardly be necessary. Just another frivolous expenditure, only do it if you can genuinely afford it.

A couple of weeks back there was an article making the rounds of the fediverse about how people with reasonably decent incomes were nevertheless living “paycheck to paycheck”, and a number of examples were given in the article with their individual stories of woe about how they were baffled by how burdened with debt they were. Most of those stories, when you dug in with just a slightly critical eye instead of an automatic assumption of victimhood, revealed people making foolish choices to take on debt and support the maximally lavish lifestyle that they could manage.

The comment section was weird. It turned out that there were some people there who thought this was perfectly reasonable, giving examples of “necessary expenditures” from their own lives that were just as excessive when examined. If you think that building a deck or buying a new bed simply because it’s “time for a new one” are necessary expenditures then it’s kind of hard to be sympathetic when you complain about how you have no money for long-term savings.

Is there just some basic personality type that finds it hard to be responsible with money, or is this a failure of education somehow? I have ideas for how to help but help will be unwelcome by people who refuse to recognize that they have a problem.

Sounds like a purity spiral may be revving up.

Indeed. There are lots of proposals for perfectly portable decentralized user identities, subscriptions that transcend specific instances, and whatnot, but until those things actually arrive that’s not the Fediverse we’re dealing with. It’s a hassle having to switch instances.

There’s a broad spectrum between reason and murder. You could tackle them, or bonk them with a stick, or distract them with shiny objects.

Yeah. If god’s so powerful why can’t he do it himself?

It’s also possible that you’ve inadvertently wandered into an asshole convention.

The abuse of power is instance-specific, fortunately. The whole point of all this is that there are multiple instances. Just ignore the ones that are run by tankies, those instances are theirs to wallow in if they want.

It says “opt-out” in the title.

Indeed. Firefox already has “sponsored links” and such in the built-in homepage, I simply disable those when I first install it and get on with life.

Big projects like Firefox need big money to support it. If you don’t want it to be beholden to Google it needs to find ways to earn some on its own.

I’m in a campaign (with rotating GMs) where I’m playing a character who is literally an alien infiltrator that has infiltrated the party. Except he’s really bad at it and it’s obvious he’s an alien infiltrator, and because he’s bad at it he has no idea that it’s obvious. The party’s superiors told them to play along for now and try to find out what my character is up to.

It’s been about four years now, going on five, and I practically had to spoon-feed them useful tidbits about his mission. I’ve finally just kidnapped them all and took them back to my homeworld, we’re now running through the adventure where they escape. I had to put an alien diplomat in their cell to monologue information about them.

Still, I’ve been having fun so I don’t mind. Just amusing how much PCs are willing to trust other PCs simply because they’re PCs. :)

Sometimes it’s different for NPCs, but not always - in another campaign just now the party encountered an Aboleth who told them that he was a good Aboleth that wasn’t interested in mind control or manipulating anyone. And by the way, there’s this list of quests he’s working on and he’d appreciate some help. They jumped right in. He actually is on the level, but come on - Aboleth. If there’s anyone to be instantly suspicious of it’s someone like that.

They swore an oath to do no harm. They didn’t swear an oath to mindlessly obey anyone with a badge. It actually should be easy.

And replace it with what? The only two basic forms of democracy are representative and direct, and direct democracy has its own problems.

Are there any laws against it where? You need to specify a jurisdiction.

My main reaction would be that whoever is paying for that data is a fool. It’s available for free.

I can’t imagine how a representative democracy would operate otherwise. In representative democracies you’re picking some person to make decisions on your behalf, and that person is different from you so some of their decisions are not going be the ones you would have made if you were in their place.

You may be wanting direct democracy, in which you would personally get to vote on the government’s actions. Your “representative” would be perfect in that case because your representative would be you. But since you would only represent yourself, that’s not what would normally be called “representative democracy.”