During one ASL argument I witnessed, outside a Six Flags if I remember correctly, I saw something that stuck with me. One person literally turned their back from the other person. It never really struck me until then that it’s so hard to ignore someone yelling at you, but all you have to do with ASL is not look.

I don’t disagree but I think there is more too it. Many forces working in tandem to push people into marriage.

Most simply, marriage is glorified by society. It’s considered the ultimate declaration of love (within normal circumstances). Humans often feel the emotion so strongly and wish to express it. Society tells them this is how they should do it. It’s also viewed as an achievement or a measure of love by many societies. You aren’t committed (married)? Do you have cold feet? Do you not love them enough to marry them?

I may be viewed as one of those people for saying it, but there are a lot of pressures to conform to those around you. There is a certain life script - a series of things that those around you have done and expect you to do because… that’s just what you do. You find someone, get married, have kids, etc. If you don’t do these things or take too long to do these things you are defacto weird. You’ll be slowly ostracized, gossiped about, avoided, suspected. You won’t share the life experiences of those around it. It will be awkward. You won’t fit in unless you manage to find enough atypical people to surround yourself with.

Also, most governments create a society where it is beneficial to marry, to encourage stable families and population growth. Certain circumstances can negate the benefits or even counter them, as some commenters have brought up, but in most cases married couples are given boons from the government.

If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear.

The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.

So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?

I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we’ve done our part. We’ve done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.

The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It’s so complicated and it’s just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.

Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better… or they just buy them out.

Three concerns:

• Heat - Will degrade faster and perform worse than it likely can because it will throttle itself
• Upgradability - Looks like only SSD and Memory are serviceable.
• Warranty - How is customer service? I have heard mixed reviews on most mini PC manufacturers.

The same thing that the billionaires have been doing. Paying fealty and demonstrating loyalty in the hopes of avoiding attack or maybe even getting rewarded.

The situation is actually quite awful. I remember when TPM was palladium and there were apocalyptic talks in tech conferences about it being the end of general purpose computers. The idea that your computer could veto what it was used for.

The backlash only set them back a few decades apparently. Everyone forgot and now it’s a literal requirement for the latest Windows and in two months they’ll stop supporting the old Windows…

it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant.

This is what I think AI and automation is generally good at and should be used for - mitigating unpleasant or repetitive work so that the focus of the user is productivity/creativity.

This is what this integration is for - it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant. As are all LLMs.

The context is something we disagree on wholeheartedly. Those funding and fundraising for AI and an enormous subset of those using are not looking to use AI in the way we are talking about. The prior are hoping to use AI to extract value from it at the expense of people who would otherwise need to be paid, or they and claim it can do anything and everything. Those using it, many of them, do not have a sufficient understanding to comprehend the solution. They are basically “vibe coding”. Tell the LLM to do something they aren’t knowledgeable about, then keep telling it to fix the problems until they don’t see problems anymore. Yes, spreadsheet formulas are likely simpler than an app but I know people who use AI for Google Sheets and they rarely test any results, let alone rigorously.

Anecdotal, sure, but I don’t have enough faith in humanity to presume everyone else is doing something wildly different.

Edit: To expand, LLMs specifically, are what I consider to be the worst side of “AI”. You can use ML and neural networks to create “AI” (self altering, alien blackbox algorithms) to become proficient in analyzing information and solving problems. LLMs create a situation where the model appears intelligent because it knows how to mimic language… and so now we pretend like it can do whatever people can do.

I think the concern is that you can come up with a number of formulas that will get correct answers for some combinations of values and not others.

If you do not understand the logic of the formula, and what each function does, how do you verify they are correct and will always give you the results you think they will? Double check every result in its entirety?

I feel you. I’m fearful of being so open about my diagnosis though. These days I “wear so many hats” for my job. Unfortunately I have to be support for a number of related systems, script automations, and a tons of other stuff. Recently I’ve felt like this last project has taken forever and I’ve been hard on myself because of it.

Only in the last week or so did I realize that I’m writing scripts far more complex than ever before and I don’t get into a flow state until everyone else goes home but then it’s time for me to go home. Half of my normal work time is trying to get back into the mindset I need to continue building the project. Then I have to focus on different project for a few days and WTF was I doing with that first project?

people not willing to integrate

This is the only “issue” I can think of from my own experience in the US. I imagine some resentment can form if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake. An influx of people with different “culture” might feel like an attack on your own culture. I frankly don’t understand but that’s why I mentioned the base population of the US being large and diverse. Perhaps we’re already such a “melting pot”, at least in the densely populated cities and suburbs, and having so many pockets of cultures is just what I’m used to. I want to better understand but it still just sounds like ignorant fear of a different culture.

Hell, it’s a well established statistic, that many people pretend doesn’t exist, that criminality is lower among the immigrant population. Any population will have some bad apples, but the incoming population is thinning them out if anything.

Can you link me to some credible sources on legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe? I’m in the US and I don’t see the downside of immigration. Most of the folks angry about immigration here are just being sold a scapegoat.

Admittedly, we’re much more culturally diverse to begin with, harder to get to, and have quite a large base population so maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges.

Is it not possible some of those many losses were just that?

I’m in no way defending this situation, but what mechanisms would prevent this?

Forgive me, but as someone in the US I’ve had almost daily shower thoughts that, to my surprise, often end with me spouting the same thing that conservatives used to say (empty words, in hindsight).

How can we empower a government to check/modify itself to self correct when it becomes corrupt without the government having the ability to use those same powers to falsely check/modify itself to be more corrupt under the guise of removing corruption when the government itself is actually corrupt.

Basically, how can we create or maintain an organization that is empowered to do “good” when “good” can be made subjective? Or, how do we make what we consider “good” to be objective so that power can’t be corrupted?

All I can come up with is a better informed population and democracy, but that’s a tall order these days.

Be aware of the venue and how crowded it could be. I’ve been to plenty of metal shows in my youth and been waaay to close the speakers. Surprisingly, what fucked my ears worse than anything was when I got invited by a girl friend to see the band “Live” (known for the song “The Dolphin’s Cry”) at a standing room venue. I was only like 20 but still being packed in tight among countless shrieking girls/young women gave me tinnitus for a week and my hearing has never been the same since.

Really though, don’t worry about how you are perceived. Just have fun, but maybe bring ear plugs just in case. Hell, I likely should have worn earplugs for most of my concerts regardless.

Better to get upset about a stupid ballroom than any other, more damning issue in the current news cycle that the current administration might prefer you forgot about…

For me, it’s hard to say one or the other is worse. It might depend on circumstances. Is someone making a false claim of rape worse than someone raping someone, or worse than a child rapist, serial rapist, etc? In damage collectively done to all victims, quite possibly. However, the intention of the false witness isn’t usually to delegitimize the claims of other victims. It’s usually shortsited and desperate - a desire to avoid social consequences or to punish the accused. I suspect such false claims are also more common among a younger, naive, immature population. It’s fucked up and selfish, surely. As fucked up as feeling you have the right to use another person’s body for your own physical pleasure or to assert dominance or whatever shit goes through a rapists mind? I don’t know.

Frankly, I’ve never been the victim or perpetrator of either crime, nor have I even been in a situation where either crossed my mind. All I’m qualified to say is that I wish neither crimes would happen to anyone.

People who pretend to be victims upset me almost as much as people who victimize others (they are not equal, but it is still so fucked up). Victims have a rough enough time already being taken seriously. It doesn’t take more than a few false positives to completely take the air out of legitimate accusations from victims. I wish there was some way to solve this problem.

I switched from Manjaro to Bazzite on my gaming PC. I don’t have time to read changelogs.

Things went fantastically so I put Kinoite on my laptop. I do a lot more random shit on the laptop so it’s a bit more complicated but so far so good. Atomic distros take getting used to but it still feels less stressful than coming back to my computer after a few days and digging through like 100+ package updates and eventually saying “Fuck it” and just updating blindly.

I mean, this was their idea last year…

Forever “Subscription Mouse”

I feel like “AI Mouse” is right up their alley.

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