25+ yr Java/JS dev
Linux novice - running Ubuntu (no windows/mac)

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: October 14th, 2024

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  • UBI only exists to solve a problem of capitalism […] moves it from the rich to the poor.

    I’m not sure I agree that UBI is the best way to solve this, but we are in agreement about the massive flaw in capitalism. When the richest man extracts the final dollar from his rival, capitalism is over. Money has no meaning because no one has any except for that one guy. That’s an impossible extreme, but it demonstrates the fundamental flaw that without money circulating, there is no economy.

    Putting money into the hands of the poor stimulates the economy. It gives them some ability to participate beyond the simple need for shelter and sustenance. Anyone with no discretionary income has no role other than demand for basic necessities (that’s not intended as an insult, that’s the reality of a wealth-based society)

    That being said, handing money out to everyone has an inflationary effect, so there would have to be some thought put into countering that. And I guarantee payday loan places would find a way to keep the poor impoverished.

    Anyway yours was a good comment I thought I’d piggyback into. There are flaws with UBI, but unfettered capitalism is unsustainable and it certainly one way to address the issue.










  • I once did something sort of like this.

    Back in the early days of the internet, I was on IRC playing trivia. Often people would talk about wag or wagging. I didn’t know exactly what it meant but I’m pretty good at inferring from context clues… usually.

    They asked a Star Wars question and of course I knew it right away. I realized in the moment I was practically wagging in anticipation of being correct and I announced it as my first wag.

    Of course, wag stood for wild ass guess so I had gotten the meaning completely backward. It still haunts me to this day, some 35+ years later, even though no one but me probably knew about my mistake.


  • Sometimes my wife does things like this at work to emphasize a lack of gender (or other) assumptions. Don’t have to worry about pronouns or offense if you just talk to everyone as if they are the same.

    I haven’t heard about her doing it as much lately but at the peak of conservative banter at her work she did it to emphasize we have a gay son and a gender fluid kid as well still trying to figure out their place in the world, and bigotry was not tolerated around her.



  • I think it would be fun to be able to read back to the day to get some perspective on how things have changed. What I was right about, what I had wrong.

    I’ve never written a journal that lasted more than a week or two. But what I sort of wish I had done was write like to a close friend who is far away, telling them about my life. “Dear Diary,” is how they traditionally begin right?

    It doesn’t have to be super formal or in a particular format. Years later it will trigger a bunch of memories that you will have forgotten. That’s the fun part.




  • I think we need about two more within the next month to have an impact on CEO risk calculation. Of course the guy is definitely going to get caught if he strikes again.

    Cops have one singular mission: protect rich folks. They will pull out stops we’ve never seen before to get this guy if he looks like he won’t stop on his own. He’ll probably get caught anyway, but if he’s smart he’ll take the W and disappear.

    Of course, the most likely result isn’t a change of behavior, but having bodyguards be part of the standard CEO compensation package.



  • I would do this with one caveat: sometimes people link really garbage articles. There was one here yesterday written so poorly I feel less informed for having read it. I would like the option to take my money back for reading such a bad article.

    I do want to pay for news, but I can’t subscribe to everyone, or even just “the good ones”, because I do use aggregator sites.

    I also wonder if that would lead to a model of paying every website for content because if Reddit is good enough to train AI on and good enough that many people include it in their Google searches, who is to say the comments aren’t “articles”?

    or reading time or whatever

    Could result in badly written, overly long articles and poor UI to force people to take longer. I know you’re just spitballing, but thought I’d point out how easy it is to induce unintended consequences.