Being government-run, the store will obviously have:

• a poor selection of products leaving you with no choice
• ugly packaging meaning only the poors will go there
• long waiting lists for entry
• yearly, quarterly and monthly subscriptions, all required and renewed seperately, taking hours in a queue and three trips to the social services hq each to renew
• quotas on all items, groups of items and time limited - whenever one is passed the rest don’t matter
• no added value like delivery or good customer service
• no market research or innovation
• no incentive to do better or improve service
• an active loss of money due to bueraucratic ineficiencies

(Likewise, also spined it (almost) as much as possible.)

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You have free will, but you also have chains that bound you.

Starting from the social order, you need money and other social relations (friends, family, bosses) to literally survive in the modern world - you’re not omnipotent.

Then you have the cognitive chains - stuff you know and understand, as well stuff you can invent (or reinvent) from your current knowledge - you are not omnipresent.

Then, as a consequence, without these two, you cannot be (omni)benevolent - you’ll always fuck something up (and even if you didn’t, most actions positive towards something will have a negative impact towards something else).

All these are pretty much categorically impossible to exist - you’re not some god-damn deity.

But does this mean free will doesn’t exist?

Hardly. It’s just not as ultimate a power or virtue as some may put it. Flies or pigs also have free will - they’re free to roll in mud or lick a turd - except for when they’re not because they do it to survive (cool themselves or eat respectively).

We humans similarily eat and shit, and we go to work so we have something to eat and someplace to shit. Otherwise you die without the former or get fined without the latter.

So that’s what free will is - the ability of an organism to guide what it’s doing, how, when (and, to some extent, even why) it’s doing it, according to its senses and sensibilities. It’s the process with which we put our own, unique spin on the things in our lives.

Being an omnipotent, omnipresent and (omni)benevolent would in fact remove the essence of what free will (with all its limits) is, because our actions wouldn’t have any meaningful consequences. It’d all just be an effective (what I’ll call negative) chaos - a mishmush of everything only understandable to the diety.

So in fact, the essence of “free” will is that it’s free within some bounds - some we’ve set ourselves, some we’re forced with (disabilities, cognitive abilities, physical limits, etc.). Percisely in the alternative scenario would “free” will cease to be free - because someone already knows it all - past, present future, local and global, from each atom on up. There’s perfect causality - as perfect as a movie. You can’t change it meaningfully - any changes become a remix or remaster - they lose their originality.

With the limits on our thinking which cause us to be less-than-perfect, they cause a kind of positive chaos, one where one tries to do their best with what they have on their disposal - as they say, you get to know people best at their lowest. Similarily, everyone gets corrupted at a high enough power level - some just do it sooner than others. So surely, at an infinite power level, not even someone omnipotent, omnipresent and (omni)benevolent all at once would be able to curb this flaw.

And no such century lasted for a century either.

“You are right, I made a mistake. Here is a better answer.” Continues to give wrong answers.

To be fair, the AI’s not wrong. It’s probably better, but just a teeny tiny bit so.

Honestly, AI is like a genie - whatever you come up with he’ll just butcher and misinterpret so you start questioning both your own sanity and the semantics of language. Good thing these genies have no wish limit, but bad thing that they murder rainforests while generating their non-sequitur replies.

adding that “no one is safe”

Of course no one is safe. Once you “fall from grace”, it’s a free-for-all. Seems the time has come for America to take a stronger stance against most of the “western” world.

82% of world imports came from China.

Wow, didn’t know the world imported stuff (China wasn’t part of it).

Ever heard of the world global?

is not a king

Even if be were called “King” rather than “President”, the Constitution is still a thing. He can call himself whatever, really.

Funny thing is, many citizens of the US seem to have less rights and priviledges than subjects of the UK.

Just as there is no for cops murdering pretty much anyone for anything on the clock. “Standing your ground” to these bastards is plain playing with fire. If you’re not perfectly white and very lucky, you’ll be just signing your own death warrant.

the page will immediately get blocked because it tried to load a result from Reddit or coursehero or something

Does that mean any search (AI insight notwithstanding) will get blocked if it includes a Reddit, Coursera or something on the blocklist result at all?

Because if yes, that’s much more than just asinine. It’s basically blocking entire search topics due to the sheer fact that Reddit will appear on the furst page of Google a lot.

Tell grandma with Parkinson’s to “adapt”. While not as ubiquitus a disability as daltonism or blindness, interfaces should still cater to people with them.

When it’s kids adapting it’s fun. When it’s someone with tremors physically incapable of gently and precisely tapping the exact 5px, it’s just bad design.

I’ve yet to see an accessibility setting for this very valid usecase.

It merely says “go European”, not “go domestic”. Of course you can join!

I’d say one point thirty-two. As others noted, much depends on geography.

Personally, I say the “actual” number up to 3 or 4 decimal places, with a lot of the reason depending on the specific context. If I had to asses, I’d say I say the “whole” number in over 50% of cases for 3 digits, and in about 10% for 4 digits. Anything over 4 decimal places and I fall back to individual digits.

It’s not meaningless - it moves the comment/post a bit higher for others to see on some sorting options. It just isn’t summated per user and obsessed over.

I’d say putting up cameras violates the person’s dignity, but knowing how hellish these places can end up I’m not surprised well-meaning people have to do that to protect their loved ones.

Linux definitely has a learning curve but

I’d like to interject here a bit.

For a “normal” user (read non-tech, perhaps even a bit lower on the “tech literacy” scale) any change requires a learning curve. While we Linux people don’t have too big of a problem switching distros and UI setups, someone “non-techy” finds the switch from Win7 to Win10 challenging, as well as from Win10 to Win11. We’re not in the 95/98 era when a “name” upgrade meant you don’t have to install USB drivers off a floppy - the UI stad the same. (which just means Greg won’t need to bother with that while he sets up your new computer)

Nowadays, the move from 10 to 11 is anything but “painless” to me - and for me it’s just annoyances. For people less tech-savvy it’s an enigma at times.

So, my point is - the switch from Win10 to Win11 will probably be worse than Win10 to Mint for old people (mostly). Those deeply rooted into varous ecosystems aren’t the focus of this comment.

Is it just me, or do the two thugs look way too much like thugs?

I disagree. Wanting to know, researching and googling isn’t a bad thing. Sure, googling does always make the problem seem larger than it is, but other thanthe anxiety there are no ill effects.

Do go to your doctor. Let them take a look at you, and ask for concrete tests. I know a family friend who felt off and had gained weight quite rapidly with no change in lifestyle. She went to the doctor who brushed it off and 6 mo. later she died from a cancer the size of a large infant. The doctor said she should stop worrying about her weight. True story.

Most definitely, this won’t haooen to you, but remember - doctors are human too. They’re also lazy and like to not spend their budget on tests. And then stuff like this happens. It was totally avoidable. The doctor just needed to take a fucking look. She’d have noticed somethig was off. Now she has no job. I’d say I was sad for the doc, but it wasn’t even incompetence that caused this avoidable death, but rather pure laziness.

Morale of the story: Looking out for yourself is not a bad thing. Try not to worry, see a doctor, inquire and ask for a check-up. It takes only a little bit of their time. If they say all is fine without doing jack-shit, call them out on it. Hell, be a Karen if need be - it’s your health on the line, not your kid’s football match causing you to get home 5 minutes later than usual.

Odds are you’ll worry much less when you know you for sure your’re fine than when you have no clue what causes your ailment.

outright confirmed the exclusion […] Notably, he didn’t specify whether or not

Yeah, that’s what “outright” means all right.

You’re right, I didn’t make myself clear. I am very much an atheist and against everything organized religion stands for. I have, however, been indoctrinated by religion for half my life so I have some insight into how a part of that giant population thinks.

Recently I’ve been looking into religion again, and while I won’t ever be able to find Sky-Daddy, I do appreciate stuff like Vatican 2 which, while not perfect, as far as the Church goes, is a pretty good change of direction. Shame they don’t extend it to things like abortion or gay people wanting to have sex (currently it’s okay to be gay only if you don’t). Now, I don’t “appreciate” it bacause it’s great, but because it’s way less bad than before, and with a potential listening audience of 1+ billion people, sometimes referring to their “higher power” yields results. I have “oened the eyes” (a little bit, but any scepticism goes a looong way) of a few sect members (JW, Adventists, Latterdays) and, hopefully, “deamericanized” their view of communism. I couldn’t have accomplished this through insults. It took more than a few hours of polite debating. It was exausting. But also, very rewarding. It was also unbelievable how may defense mechanisms kicked in.

But, I called upon the Church here because of two simple reasons: even the World’s largest opressive society which has done volumes to squander lives and stifle progress has somehow through the absolute fucking miracle of Vatican 2 , while not admitted its past wrongdoings (they’re infallible in their own eyes, after all), at least gotten a sane outlook onto this single branch of human rights. Abortion is still a no-go - they’re greedy for any indoctrinated kids they can get. But hey, at least they let guys wear a rubber (they almost forbid that as well).

Since OC to me gives vibes of christofaschism, I think pointing onto the World’s largest criminal communion which is like a clock that strikes right only once in a blue mlon is worth something when even they have a sane take on the matter.

And to OC reading this, I didn’t mean the “christofascist” as an insult (although it might just be one). As Eco said, he was a smart kid. Luckily for him, he was a kid and nor a teenager, so he never had the opportunity to act on what he’d been indoctrinated with. While “OG” fascism was (is?) an inherently Italian thing, it bears resemblence to a lot of very bad regimes.

Education and pointing this out to people who believe the lies is of utmost importance because every single person going about their daily lives and trying to endure the terror quietly (which, in my eyes, is exactly what the deportations and executions in the US qualify as) because they silently condone and enable it.

Not to speak about outright supporters like OP (which can still be rehabilitated), or about those actively participating (these can also), or ringleaders (these might not be, but using their knowledge of efficiently runnung death camps for efficiently running a banana plantation is better than the current medieval ceremony with priests, black hoods and a crucifix “gurney”). Honestly, for all the Christians out there, I have no clue how they can’t see the fucking crucifix and think “Isn’t this wrong and against everything I stand for?”

Agsin, I don’t identify as Christian, but even when I did, I condemned all of the things. I havebeen a steadfast pacifist my entire life. I’m not defending anything. I’m just pointing out that the world’s most corrupt institution things “better” than the fascists. On the tiny little topic of people getting murdered as payback.