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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • The words have meaning. Of that. We can be certain. But I think you’re asking about people’s values, and doesn’t that always depend on the people in question?

    Of course everything depends on the situation, but I see people supporting their family and community on a regular basis. It’s so obvious that many people really do want to make life better for people around them. It’s not like they do that 24/7. On the other hand, there are a lot of selfish assholes who only think about themselves out there, too. And some people will talk about community for selfish reasons, too.

    It’s been like this my entire life. I don’t see things degenerating. But I don’t live where you live, I don’t know the people you know.

    You mentioned the word country, but I have no idea what sort of background you have. Were you raised to be hyper patriotic? I think patriotism is generally evil because it frequently leads to nationalism and therefore racism and xenophobia. So if you’re suggesting that there is less patriotism in the world, then I think it’s a good thing.


  • Of course the NRA has been quiet. They always do this, because they’re not about to people. Do you remember when California passed stricter gun laws? Because black people were buying guns? That happened like 50 years ago. The NRA was silent then and they are silent now.

    Of course it’s always good to point out the hypocrisy. But let’s also remember the historical context, that this is consistent with the organization’s values and it always has been and it always will be.






  • Even when they had the slogan, it was, don’t be evil. That’s a very low bar, because it’s relative to other tech companies. As long as they were less evil than Microsoft, they could pat themselves on the back.

    If the goal were actually not to do evil, they would have to look at each individual action and consider whether it’s ethical. That’s something they have never done and of course they’re not going to start doing it in the future.






  • Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple…

    You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court…

    If you want to say, “Well, the Dems are less evil,” then great, many people partly agree. But that’s not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden’s tombstone “Not quite as evil as Trump.” Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?



  • Oh no, I entirely disagree. The majority of Washington Democrats are right in the corporate center. They aren’t working to make life better for the average person. If they were, why didn’t they seriously push for universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage, or regulating big banks and other monopolies?

    (I know, you’re going to say the Republicans stopped them, but everyone who actually remembers when the Democrats had the majority knows better than that. But even if we’re mistaken, like our memories are entirely false, that would only show that the Democrats have the power to stop Trump right now, which they’re failing to do… Either excuse only goes to prove the aforementioned claim.)



  • I think it really depends what you were doing. Some of us wanted to run web servers, and it was really neat that we could easily do so using very old hardware. One thing that is hard to imagine now is that, back in the day, there were not nearly as many configuration files. It was a lot easier to see what was going on, because less was going on.

    These days there’s just so much more happening on your system, but at the same time advanced web search has made it possible for us to find better documentation or forums when we need to figure out how to tweak everything.




  • Yes of course that kind of fraud is serious. If it can be shown that Tesla is screwing with odometers in this case, they will immediately face a massive class action lawsuit from current and former owners, and their stock will tank even more.

    It affects routine maintenance, warranties, resale value, business taxes (based on the current value), and all sorts of other things. I think there is potential for other interesting legal issues, too. If Tesla is lying to the customers, then the customers are reporting false data to their insurance companies and state regulatory agencies. So there could be legal issues connecting to those groups as well.