Assuming they’re American: they’re an idiot. Sorry. They don’t understand how things are intertwined, and you can’t have social justice for free. If you let laissez-faire policies be, you don’t get socially liberal outcomes. You get capitalist dystopia.

Any plan that depends on “and then the common person develops discerning taste” is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time

I was going to say something similar to that too. Specifically, the consolidation of power means there’s less smaller companies taking risks. You’d think a big company with Disney money could afford to be weird and experimental, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I say this despite enjoying superhero movies

Others have touched on this but this also feels downstream from the capitalist hellscape. Most people don’t have a lot of spending money. Movies are pricey and a bad money:time ratio.

I bet if wages were up, more people would go to the theater. I don’t want to spend $40 to watch a movie and eat popcorn, but I’d consider it for $3.

I used to use RPG.net a lot. They have pretty strict moderation, which keeps the place from turning into some kinds of shit holes. But you also can’t tell someone they’re a fool, or all Republicans are traitors. Takes some getting used to, but is probably worth it.

I really thought this was the onion. Satire is dead. Republicans are scum.

Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.

Also frustrating: how end users don’t care. You can explain how Uber mistreats employees or Airbnb causes rents to rise double digit percentages, but they’ll just be like “oh but it’s convenient”.

Twitter is a Nazi bar but “it has such good memes!”

If people cared just a little more, things could be so much better.

every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income.

One irritating note on this: there’s a limit to how much social security tax you pay per year. So if you’re making a lot of income, you just stop paying this tax partway through the year.

This is pants on head stupid and regressive. It should be the other way around. Your first, let’s say $10,000 should be exempt from the tax, and it should get steeper as income goes up.

Rich guy absolutely does not need the bump in take home pay from hitting the cap. Poor guy definitely could use the extra income early income not being taxed.

I’m just so mad all the time about people licking the boots of the rich. They don’t need breaks! They’re rich! They’re going to be fine!

I read this and the other linked article about how bad musk is at poker and I’m so mad now. He’s such a fucking fool.

If you think ‘voluntary’ is acceptable for anything important you want corporations to do, you have no business making decisions about real life. If it’s voluntary, they’ll only do it if it benefits them.

If those Internet duds that get mad about black people in video games spent like half that energy being mad about, like, wage theft, we’d be so much better off.

That’s really bad. You might get other people sick with what you have, but if they’re immune compromised or otherwise vulnerable they could have a really bad, possibly fatal, time.

Apply it to healthcare, science, finances, and the world will become a better place, especially in healthcare.

That’s all kind of moot if we continue down the capitalist hellscape express. What good is an AI that can diagnose cancer if most people can’t afford access? What good is AI writing novels if our homes are destroyed by climate change induced disasters?

Those problems are mostly political, and AI isn’t going to fix them. The people that probably could be replaced with AI, the shitty “leaders” and such, are not going to voluntarily step down.

There’s a shared theme with like all of humanity’s woes: people don’t care that much.

From pollution to injustice to shitty websites, if people cared just a little more the problem would be dramatically reduced or even eliminated.

But so many people are just apathetic. Overwhelmed and checked out.

No. Your reading of it is unusual, in most contexts. It almost always means “agreement, and I have nothing of substance to add”.

It can be rude if the thing you’ve said should warrant a substantial response. Like if you wrote “my brother just died in a car wreck”, a thumbs up (or probably any emoji) would be an inappropriate response. Heavier stuff warrants whole words.

But if it’s like “Can you get cat food at the store? The kind we always get” then a thumbs up is an acceptable shorthand for "yes, I understand and commit to this request "

Ah, I always liked Three Panel Soul. Shame it doesn’t seem to update anymore.

true, though sometimes i find the more verbose style easier to read, and more maintainable (eg: you want to do something else in the block, you can just add a line instead of changing your ternary / etc). Small things

I had a thought earlier in the bathroom about AI. It’s like building a fancy indoor toilet when you don’t have plumbing.

If people’s basic needs were met, housing food health care all that, then it wouldn’t really matter as much if people want to fuck around with AI. People who do things for passion could still do so.

But we live in a capitalist hell, this AI stuff will primarily benefit the ownership class while everyone else suffers.

I don’t need a fancy toilet. I need clean running water.

Depends on how it’s set up. If the setting is going into the env it’s a string, so I’d expect some sort of

if os.getenv("this_variable", "false").lower() == "true":   # or maybe "in true, yes, on, 1" if you want to be weird like yaml
  this_variable = True
else:
  this_variable = False

Except maybe a little more elegant and not typed on my phone.

But if the instructions are telling the user to edit the settings directly, like where I wrote this_variable=True, they’d need to case it correctly there.