I think I misunderstood what you were originally saying and we’re more or less on the same side. My point was that it’s not about saying “okay we’ll stop caring about this” but about saying “this isn’t the thing we need to be focusing attention on right now.” I worded it very poorly.

I get what you’re saying, but every rights movement has worked the opposite way. It’s not about giving up ground, it’s about picking one battle at a time. Gay people fought to be not killed, then fought to be accepted, then fought to be able to marry. It wasn’t a single “equality” battle, it was a series of battles in a longer war. They didn’t slide back immediately when they couldn’t get married, they fought the next fight.

Some people really suck, but for a lot I think it’s more misunderstanding or reluctance to let things change. There’s many reasons. Labeling everyone who doesn’t get on board with every facet of what you want means you’re reducing your allies. And those people who are comfortable with one thing but uncomfortable with another may become more comfortable when they see that the first thing doesn’t lead to the collapse of society.

It’s not a real rule. More like a running joke, because she’s had problems getting chicken dishes right more than anything else. It probably does not come across on a random comment on the Internet, but I do think it would be kinda crazy to actually have rules like that in a real relationship.

I’m married. I do most of the cooking anyway. My wife is banned from cooking chicken because of the last time. So… “<Wife’s name>, we talked about this. No chicken. Let’s go to the Mexican restaurant nearby tonight.”

I use a little mini PC with a DAS connected via USB. So you don’t need to go full server to expand the storage.

It sounds like Hollywood tech lingo. Like when you’re watching a movie or a TV show and the designated techy character starts just saying computer words that make no actual sense in the real world, but I guess in CSI: Idiottown the hard drives have severe overheating issues.

I think it’s a case of correlation not causation. To become truly wealthy in present day society involves stepping on a lot of people. To relish in being on top, desire more and more wealth and power even as you achieve levels that set you apart from the rest of society. I don’t think that mindset is the same as being a pedophile, but it’s the same as the mindset you would probably have to have to actually have sex with a child.

I agree but I feel like you’ll almost never get honest feedback, and companies never seem to do anything with the feedback they get. I mean if you’re firing someone, you’ll probably get a list of grievances that are exaggerated because they’re upset. If someone is quitting, they might hold back to not burn the bridge so to speak. The only time I had an exit interview was also the worst job I ever had, and I doubt they did anything as a result of me telling them, “Hey, when you tell someone they can’t take their legally mandated break, and then write them up for not taking that break, it’s kind of a demoralizing dick move.”

That’s the neat part: Convicted felons ARE excluded from most public service jobs like being a teacher or a mayor. It was widely believed that this included the presidency until the Supreme Court decided it somehow didn’t.

I love the other comments you made, but I want to point out one other thing: How did those privileges come about? That is, what were the conditions that led to the government taking the power to grant companies de facto monopolies?

In some cases, it was an unintended consequence of political conditions. For example, private insurers came to rule our healthcare system because of a cap on income to raise funds for WW2. In order to get around this cap, employers offered non-cash benefits and the rest is history. Libertarians love this one, it’s pretty cut and dry that a form of socialism shot itself in the foot.

However, there are many other cases where it was an unintended consequence of regulation written in blood. An easy and popular example is the FDA. Making food and adhering to food regulations at scale is definitely something that requires so much up front capital that it has been favoring existing corporations for quite a while, leading to a relatively small number of companies controlling a huge portion of the food supply. But that regulation came about because companies large and small, unfettered and unrestricted, were adulterating the food or cutting dangerous corners to maximize profit. The solution can’t just be less regulation, those same companies will continue to dominate but now with the ability to outright feed us poison while buying or otherwise destroying any competition.

The bar is kind of low these days, so the fact that he doesn’t go lower still somehow makes him better than a large chunk of famous people.

It’s been a long time but I recall a study featured on Freakonomics where a national park tried different signs to get people to not steal rocks. Signs like, “Taking rocks hurts the ecosystem” and “Taking rocks is a crime.”

The only effective one was something along the lines of, “A million people visit this park every year and leave things alone.” Suggesting that telling people to do the right thing is less effective than peer pressure.

I knew healthcare was messed up but I legit didn’t know how messed up until it happened to me. My daughter got put on a specialty medicine because of a relatively rare kidney condition. It had to be compounded, because she is a small child but the medicine only came in adult doses.

Aetna denied coverage, stating I had to get the medicine from CVS (which is owned by the same parent company of Aetna). CVS does not compound medicine, so we couldn’t get it from them. I spent almost a full year on the phone arguing with them and around $6000 paying out of pocket before I was able to switch insurances.

I consider myself reasonable. Even in a functioning system, mistakes can happen and need to be resolved, and I spent the first month or more assuming this was just an innocent mistake. What got to me was the total lack of recourse. Day after day on the phone with people, some of whom genuinely seemed to care but could do nothing. They intentionally separate the patients from the people making decisions so that all the decision makers get is a few fields in a form, not the whole story. The people in charge are even more separated so they never have to hear anything about the people they’re screwing over. And if I couldn’t afford the extra $6000 burden, I just wouldn’t have gotten the medicine and in the best case she would have spent that year in and out of the hospital and in the worst she wouldn’t have survived the year.

I tend to think most people are decent. But the system we’ve built makes sure to separate people by impenetrable layers of bureaucracy to ensure that the decent people either can’t do anything or never know there’s a problem, while the indecent never have to be confronted with the damage they do. It’s insane.

I think of it exactly in terms of the trolley problem. The whole premise is that if you do nothing (don’t vote) more people die. By flipping the lever, fewer people die but you’ve taken an action that leads directly to their deaths. The philosophical question isn’t just “is it better for fewer people to die” but “in pulling the lever, are you directly responsible for those deaths?”

My answer would be that inaction is itself an action. In this scenario, you have found yourself responsible either way. Suppose you pull the lever, though, to save as many lives as you can… Wouldn’t the ones who die as a result of this have loved ones that absolutely do blame you?

As a nerd, I don’t expect my parental control settings to work forever. They’re more there to prevent childish naivete from getting them into trouble, they probably won’t stop dedicated teen horniness. And I won’t even be mad, figuring out how to get around them requires learning more about how technology works.

You are correct that a reboot will trigger a full rescan. I’m always on the lookout for better sync. I just don’t think it’s out there right now for easy bidirectional sync.

Basically, if you want to set and forget, Syncthing is the best option. If you want more control, you’ll need to look into setting up rsync scripts or similar, which will at least better let you control how often to sync.

I like async but dislike await. I spend entirely too much time on everything I build trying to maximize how much I can do in parallel because I find it tremendously satisfying.

I would argue that your points about kids not caring and forgetting information are not inherent to the concept of education, but to how most places do formal education.

Humans learn best through practical examples that affect their lives, and through doing things. Sitting people down and giving them information, and then later having them regurgitate that information, is just not the best way. It’s cheaper, it requires fewer teachers and fewer resources, but it is not the most effective.

My city has both, and they’re decorated the same. I just wonder whether a really good burger place did this first and then crappy ones showed up to copy the decor and forgot to make the food good.

Look, I’m basically a communist most of the time, but I don’t think this is a good take. I’ll admit I don’t actually know the numbers but I know air travel is expensive and not great for the planet.

It could be better, sure, but I would argue that cramming people in and offering the barest of amenities is a good thing when it comes to air travel. Yes, it sucks to be in a plane but it sucks to pollute the air too. It’s good that more people have more travel options now, and it’s good that we can get more people to more places with less fuel than ever before. We shouldn’t bitch about that, we should accept it as a necessity for getting what we want: to arrive someplace far away in an amazingly short period of time, allowing us to see more of the planet than any of our ancestors, while minimizing the harm as much as we can.