ricecake

@ricecake@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives on a budget⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re getting really hung up on mints pricing and ignoring the main thrust of what’s being said: the average price is significantly higher than the low tier your referenced. Mobile hotspot Internet is not an even comparison to most other broadband options.

  Repeatedly stating their price doesn’t change that it’s not reflective of the actual average prices people are charged for Internet and cell service in the US, and that $115 isn’t “on the pricier side”.

  Do you think the majority of the people in the country are looking at their diverse options of equal and viable options for cellular and Internet service and then picking things that are more expensive for no reason?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives on a budget⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You said $115 is on the pricier side and linked to promotional offers to show that a cheaper option exists in some contexts.

  Actual statistics on what people pay show that it’s basically average, so calling it pricy isn’t correct.

  As for subsidization, you’re missing my point: we don’t really have the programs you referenced in the way they existed last year anymore. “Our Internet isn’t that expensive because you can go on food stamps” is both an odd claim and also increasingly untrue as they try to end those programs.

  If you’re addressing the average range of Internet and phone costs, then $115 is not on the pricier side.
  That you can bring your bill down by pestering the company into lowering it every few months or repeatedly transferring the plan between different people also isn’t an indicator that it’s not as bad as people think.

  the average, non-promotional rate of $60 is still cheaper than what this post implies.

  Did you know that if your Internet bill is $60, and your phone bill is $55, that you now have monthly costs for phone and Internet of … $115?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives on a budget⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s directly applicable when you say cheaper options are available and then link to a promotional offer where the pricing expires.

  Government subsidized free Internet is currently not a thing in the US because the government is actively hostile to most of the citizenry. We still have the program to get up to $9.25 off if you make less than $25k a year though. It also requires enrollment in a program whose funding is being cut, is kicking people off , and doing everything possible to reduce enrollment.

  Please read the rest of the comment I previously made where I linked to some actual averages for cost, because again: a lower cost existing isn’t the same as the average cost being low.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives on a budget⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  My “gotcha” was the bit I said right after the fine print: not as cheap as advertised in the long run and not a good value.

  The existence of a lower price for some people in some circumstances in some parts of the country doesn’t do much to address actual measurable statistics on us internet costs: Monthly Internet Cost: www.forbes.com/…/internet-cost-per-month/

  My Internet is about $80 a month, and my phone is roughly $30 per line per month, $120 total because of regulatory fees and such. Looking at what mint typically delivers for internet they wouldn’t work for my requirements, purely for work and not considering I like my streaming to be good quality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives on a budget⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Limited-time offer available to new MINTernet customers who purchase the 3- or 12-month MINTernet plan with any Mint Premium voice plan. MINTernet plan requires upfront payment of $75 for 3-month or $300 for 12-month plans (each equiv. to $25/mo) & AutoRenewal enrollment. Mint Premium voice plan requires upfront payment of $45 for 3-month, $90 for 6-month or $180 for 12-month plan (each equiv. to $15/mo). Combined equivalent is $40/mo. After introductory rate, standard rates apply. Taxes & fees extra. Fixed wireless gateway provided on loan; return of equipment required upon cancellation or subject to fee. Service delivered via cellular network; speeds vary & may be reduced during congestion after 1TB/mo for MINTernet. MINTernet service limited to registered address at time of enrollment & cannot be relocated. Premium “Unlimited” data may be slowed during congestion after 50GB/mo; video streams at 480p. Includes 20GB/mo. mobile hotspot. Not combinable with certain other offers. Terms subject to change; additional terms & conditions apply. See terms for details.

  It’s not actually as cheap as they say, and what you’re getting isn’t really worth the price.

  Regardless, when the thing being said is “wages are crap, things are expensive, people are trapped and can’t afford a future” it sorta misses the point to say that they could get substantially worse service for roughly half the price.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has a wholesome thought⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you would be wrong. The house belonged to the Lord, as did the land, the surrounding lands and so on. The very well could have said “no pets”, if they had cared. They had veto power on marriage, changing labors, and everything.
  The Lord owned the serf in the same way that a homeowner owns the sidewalk. They had to provide basic protections or someone higher would eventually maybe get upset. They could do basically whatever they wanted to them, but the serf could only be sold as part of the estate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey look, a giant sign telling you to find a different job⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Contrary to popular belief, the US isn’t actually unusually litigious. European countries are just as litigious and Germany, Sweden and Austria all have higher numbers.

  The reason we have more “nonsense” lawsuits is because we have a culture that says caveat emptor is a sound defense and negligence on one parties side is equally the fault of the injured party.
  “Why didn’t you look at your food before biting the metal fillings? It’s your responsibility to make sure what you eat is safe” and “you walked on my icy sidewalk, you slipped, and now you want me to pay for your ambulance? I should have put down salt, but you should have known better than to walk there” are both reasonable statements to a lot of Americans. Hell, we have special derogatory terms for lawyers that work with individuals who have been non-criminally injured by someone else.

  On paper, paying the other parties legal fees if you lose sounds good, but what it does it keep individuals who can’t afford to pay legal someone else’s fees to withold valid legal complaints. In an ideal world they would proceed because they were right, but we live in a world where sometimes the person in the right looses, or they reasonably thought they were and were wrong. Due diligence or actual correctness is no assurance of justice, so a lawsuit is a gamble and a more expensive one if you also have to pay the other parties costs, and if they’re a business which has lawyers on staff they might not even view a crippling legal cost as an increased expense.
  On the other side that business just tells their lawyer to file the paperwork, they’re already paying for the legal consult so they’re advised going in if it’s a good idea, and if they lose they’re out a few weeks of lawyer salary.

  Lawsuits are a mark of people using societies tools to resolve disputes. There being more in places with higher trust in social institutions makes sense. People are willing to use the system and they trust it’ll deliver justice.
  The US is up there because people need to use lawsuits to make up for our lack in social safety nets, and our preposterous number of businesses are constantly using them to settle disputes.

  We should eliminate the court fees entirely and provide the trial lawyer equivalent of a public defender.
  A bolt in your oatmeal is a good reason to sue, and if you can’t afford a lawyer to help you pay to get your tooth put back in it doesn’t seem unreasonable for society to give you access to someone to help you find a path to remunerations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey look, a giant sign telling you to find a different job⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  99% agreed, but I’d increase the number a bit. With inflation and rising costs $10 million in net worth isn’t always an obscenity.
  It’s unquestionably wealthy, but still in the realm of attainable by an individual without being a bastard. Owning a single family home and a gas station in the San Francisco region and planning for retirement could put you in that realm.

  I don’t begrudge someone who worked hard having nice things. I don’t even begrudge luck, inheritance, or nepotism getting luxury. It’s when it’s beyond luxury and no one could get it with any amount of work.

  Tie it to the consumer price index or some such.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey look, a giant sign telling you to find a different job⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Right? I work for an actual megacorp and our policy is almost the exact opposite on every point.
  Sick workers make more sick: don’t work and feel better faster. Distracted workers makes mistakes and cause problems: don’t work and take care of your kid. Rested workers work better: take the time around the holidays off entirely. Productivity is crap then anyway and with so many vacations it’s easier to plan around a block where nothing happens than to deal with random teams having unpredictable delays. Car broken? Expense a Lyft. We have a corporate account and your ride to work is a rounding error compared to the sales visits.

  If you’re going to invoke money you should actually understand how big companies function and view money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you ever feel like your life is "scripted"? Like everything is written by some entity controlling your life? Like you live in a fictional universe? Is this feeling normal/common?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ve actually figured out that that one is basically a “stutter” in your memory encoding system. Consciousness isn’t as continuous as it feels, and so you can get a situation where your memory says it just put some stuff in working memory and consciousness thinks it means your current thoughts or observations. So you end up with a feeling of a past recollection of a current awareness. Because it’s tagged “past” you can’t do anything other than understand it to be in the past, even though you’re actively experiencing it.
  A related phenomenon is how you “always” wake up just before the loud noise. Even though you’re asleep you still hear things and process audio. A loud noise happens and your audio processing tells you to wake up. Conscious you wakes up, creating that new memory, and then processes the noise that woke you.

  Consciousness is a process that takes place over a duration, not an instant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WHY???⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Based on what I recall of the explanation by the person who figured it out: spinning makes fluid near the edge spin faster than fluid near the middle. The difference in speed creates a wave. Since it’s finite and moving, the wave interferes with itself and because of math, makes a hexagon. Something about how the wave pattern changes density and brings different glasses to the surface on the planets.
  Then they showed an example by spinning a bucket, and it kinda fell flat because they had to explain that a bucket isn’t a sphere so you have to spin it just right to get it to work, but it did work in the end.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨same shit every day, on god⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, I was just joking around. What my water system is missing is molten salt.

  Although for the sake of preposterousness, I’m going to suggest we use the molten salt to turn a giant water wheel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨same shit every day, on god⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Molten salt. Lower pressure, higher efficiency, and I believe less reactive in the event of an uh-oh.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, the good old fashioned “say a fallacy, refuse to elaborate and cut off discussion”. Truly the mark of someone who actually has a reply and isn’t just getting huffy because their notions aren’t being taken as gospel.

  Protip: if you actually think a discussion is pointless, just don’t reply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Those darn consumers having opinions on things that affect them without being experts in it. Next thing you know they’re going to want to ban smoking in restaurants despite not having medical degrees or knowing first hand how this will impact the tobacco industry! Or carbon emissions, food safety, or anything really…hell, cold calls are just part of the reality of marketing. Eventually consumers will grow up and realize that unprompted phonecalls at 7pm are just part of the reality of effectively offering them products.

  If it’s not clear, I think the notion that people can’t have an opinion on something that impacts them without understanding the process that yields the impact is silly and paternalistic.
  Attitudes like yours that are dismissive of consumer concerns are very much part of the reason why consumers are starting to increasingly reject AI products.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I apologize if I misunderstood your point, but I truly fail to see how

  It’s just a vocal minority that’ll eventually grow up. And public sentiment will grow up Isn’t calling the opposing view childish, which is a pretty strong sign that you’ve failed to actually consider what they’re saying. Same for calling them “brainwashed”.

  Consumers fundamentally don’t understand the process

  Do they need to? You’ll find that most consumers don’t know how a car works or how industrial design is done but they still have justifiable opinions and concerns about the impacts and quantifiable attributes of them.

  If you actually look at what consumers are concerned about you’ll find that IP and copyright concerns don’t even make the list. People are concerned about the errosion of human connection and the diminishment of creativity. Privacy. Data usage and accountability.

  And what’s more, even if they were opposed for those reasons the consumer is still intrinsically correct about what they value. If consumers respect your work less because you trace AI art it doesn’t matter if you still creatively contributed, the value has been reduced.

  Telling consumers their preference is wrong because you want to be able to copy and trace AI content while viewing yourself as a creative is some backwards boomer shit. 30 years making casual games doesn’t give you lofty insight into the nature of the creative process. It’s just “trust me, I know more”. Same for trying to bolster your position by talking about betting on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Saying people who disagree with you are childish is a sure sign that maybe you’re not giving their argument proper consideration.
  Particularly when you’re arguing that the consumers are wrong about their feelings towards the product and need to grow up and adapt to how the producers want to make it.

  You’ve got a situation where people are seeing the assets, coding, design, and writing of games being moved from being human endeavors to being human supervised endeavors, while also being asked to pay higher prices.
  The producers and vendors aren’t entitled to consumers happily letting them do less work to deliver an inferior product for more money just because the graphics card manufacturer says it’s the way of the future.

  I don’t think anyone thinks you’re spending your time doing corporate graphic design putting yourself into your work. No one calls you an artist either.
  People buying art though have a reasonable expectation that the person they’re buying it from isn’t tracing ai content or random things from google.

  Keep in mind that if the “vocal minority” “grows up”, it means people stop paying you, because you’re the one not really adding anything to the equation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your anecdote isn’t as against expectations as you seem to think. People just also think that what you’re doing is grody.
  If you traced a design you found from a Google result, people would object to you saying it was “your” creation. In the ai case, it just also isn’t anyone else’s.
  People used to do your job by learning a bit about what they were designing and applying some creativity. You’re quite literally describing the AI enabling you to be less informed and creative as a creative worker.
  No one much cares when the button layout for an accounting firms CRM is rote, but people do care when they hear that the designers for the game they’re playing kinda phoned in the art design and it’s significantly a mathematical approximation of other designs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it gay to have pleasurable sex with your wife?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And one of the first steps in artificial insemination is giving a guy a handjob.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feynman rules⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t say that’s what you think, I said it’s a mistake you could be making. He had a particularly strong accent and it was something that coworkers commented on.
  I’m not trying to prove you wrong, I was offering an explanation for a different interpretation. If two people watch the same interview and one sees aggression and the other sees a perfectly normal interaction there’s probably a reason one of them sees it differently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feynman rules⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, to each their own. I think you might be mistaking a loud speaking voice and a strong queens accent for hostility. He’s smiling for most of it, answers the question in several lays of sophistication, connects it to other physical phenomenon and explains why it’s difficult to answer directly.
  I went back and watched it since it’s been quite a while and I didn’t recall hostility and I still don’t see it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feynman rules⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why do you assume the magnet interview wasn’t flattering? His legacy is more complicated than he conveyed, and he definitely has some dark portions, but he actually was an extremely gifted mind, a renowned educator and acclaimed scientist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Their streaming system works fine with desktop apps, and it already works with their VR setup on different headsets.

  I’ve streamed desktop to a different headset. I was able to also do stuff like mounting an app in a picture frame on the wall of a little VR house.

  Using the video player on desktop while streaming was a little jank, but since this is a proper desktop I imagine it’ll be easy enough to switch over and use a normal video player without streaming another computers video player.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve been pretty great on Linux. They built on the great work of the wine people and have done a lot to push the state forward.

  I believe they’ve had a lot of good things to say about the stability of the Linux platform from a development perspective. For all the jank and instability that Linux software exposes, it has a lot more stability in terms of things like kernel and driver interfaces as a point of deliberate design choice. So there’s a lot less work needing to code around the specific versions of drivers being used.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CNC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, and a good example on the first one.

  I don’t really care to quibble on the details too much, but I believe a lot of definitions would distinguish the coercive from the forcible.

  In either case, it speaks to the cnc phrase being more apt than otherwise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CNC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, less than the people who said “oh, okay” when they learned what the term meant. Getting hung up on how you feel about the words they use for their sex lives is really weird.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CNC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You do know that no one made them switch terms right? The people doing it and using the term decided to change it because it made it more clear when they were talking to each other.
  Since you hadn’t encountered the idea before, I don’t think they’re super concerned about their sex lives being easy to explain to you. Your opinion isn’t super relevant to other people’s sexual preferences or the words they use to talk about it to each other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CNC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s more blunt, but people who have been raped would point out that there’s a big difference between the sexual nature of consensual non consent, and the objectively violent nature of rape.

  It’s less that it’s less honest than that it’s more clear about what it is, and what it isn’t. It’s about what people think rape is about, and not what it actually is: angry, hateful and violent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Banana⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Twin Towers wholesale outlet: our prices are coming down fast!

  Pearl harbor casual clothing.

  Jim crows bar and grill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve got an alarming quantity. The saving grace is I don’t think I’m strong, say any of the weird shit, post the memes or have delusions about my fighting proficiency. And I’m not bald.

  I used to be rather fit and I wrestled in high school. I’m fairly confident I could break free of someone roughly less skilled than me and maybe a hair stronger and flee. I’ve never been in a fight, I’ve been punched while boxing but was too disoriented to get a good hit back (first and only time boxing), and I’ve punched a friend in the face as the culmination to a funny conversation about how he’s never been punched in the face.

  Flannel is really comfy, and I want to be the sort of person who goes on more hikes than I have time to.
  I have no self delusions in the physical realm.