merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on What does everyone think of the economic outlook for the next year? 13 hours ago:
The optimistic scenario for the economy is a pessimistic scenario for the world.
For the economy to do well would require the AI bubble to not pop. It would mean that these absurd valuations for the AI companies turn out to be correct. That all the circular financing somehow comes good and all these ridiculous-seeming bets about the future of AI turn out to be at least partially correct. It will require that the companies that fired workers to replace them with chatbots turned out to have made a good and profitable decision. It’s the scenario where Musk becomes a trillionaire.
- Comment on Know Yourself! 1 day ago:
It does change the meaning. The only places someone is likely to encounter “thyself” today are in works from Shakespeare or in certain translations of the bible. As a result, people give certain weight to the term “Thyself” that they wouldn’t to the modern meaning of the word “Yourself”. “Thyself” is a word used by gods, “yourself” is a word used by normal people.
- Comment on Dead 1 day ago:
Is that meant to rhyme?
- Comment on Know Yourself! 1 day ago:
Except it’s just “Know Yourself”, because the inscription was in ancient Greek, so when translating it to English, we’d use modern English, not centuries-old English which uses personal pronouns that haven’t been used in English in centuries.
- Comment on Dead 1 day ago:
She says more “theeeeeeis”, there’s a hint of an “is” sound at the end of the word.
I don’t get it. It’s meant to rhyme with “disagree”, and it’s not like the song is interpreted differently if it’s “these” vs “this”.
- Comment on We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible. 2 days ago:
IMO the biggest problem with the post is that it is ignoring that natural world completely.
We can’t colonize mars, not because it’s far away and hard to get to (although those are problems). The real issue is that we don’t really understand our own biosphere enough to build even an imitation one somewhere else. The ISS is orbits so close it’s barely out of the atmosphere. It’s still well protected by the Earth’s magnetic field, and gets regular deliveries of food, water, spare parts, etc. Every time we’ve tried a closed biosphere (biodome?) on earth, it has failed.
The bigger Earth’s population, the shorter the timespan we have before we can realize we screwed up somehow (i.e. overusing artificial fertilizer, emitting too much carbon, etc.) and having to urgently fix it or the whole planet is wrecked. If we had a “planet B” it wouldn’t be so urgent. If we knew perfectly how the ecosphere worked, we wouldn’t screw up. If we had “save points” and could just load them if we screwed up, then we could run closer to the edge and go back if we messed up. Unfortunately, this is the only planet we have, and we still don’t know how it all works. Because of that, we should really run with a much lower population so that when we inevitably screw up there’s a buffer to protect us while we adjust.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 5 days ago:
SWATting happens all the time and it works, the police kick down doors.
So, it’s not like you need some special magic incantation to get them to do it. It’s more that that’s how they operate and all they need is an excuse to do it. If there were real accountability for being used as someone else’s weapon, they wouldn’t be so willing / eager.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
Yes, but that’s very different from claiming that the people who came up with terms like “moron”, “idiot” and “imbecile” as a way to describe people with intellectual disabilities were necessarily racist.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
I can’t think of any call where they need to go in guns blazing unless they can actually see that someone’s shooting, or in the process of being killed.
Anything else and there’s time to peek in windows, send a drone up to upper floor windows, and so-on.
Even if it is an actual situation where someone is in mortal danger, doing that will mean they’re not walking into a dangerous situation blind.
If they do that and can’t see anybody in any kind of distress or danger, then the logical thing is to calmly knock on the door and ask some questions.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
If you don’t have someone authorized by the state to enforce laws, you’re still going to get people enforcing “laws”, it’s just going to be vigilantes, people with grudges, etc. Just look how frequently you see incidents of road rage. Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.
Take all those incidents of people calling the cops on black men having a picnic or taking their dogs for a walk. If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?
I think the US needs to scale its policing way back. It needs mental health specialists to respond to certain kinds of calls. The person who responds to a report of a stolen bike probably shouldn’t have a gun. But, at some point you are going to need people who will use physical force to enforce the law. Those people should be heavily supervised by a truly independent body. But, they still need to exist in some form.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
Why don’t the king’s guards attack the king?
The police know their job is to enforce the law, but they also know who gets a free pass… or at least who gets a lot more leeway than other people. At a minimum it changes “shoot first and ask questions later” into “ask questions then maybe shoot”.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
It’s not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report
Why not?
and they respond with “sounds fake, not coming”.
Why wouldn’t they just respond with “we’ll have to verify this”.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
It’s not that they’re idiots, though many cops are. It’s that they don’t get punished for falling for a SWATting attempt.
If you could lose your career if you fell for it, they’d try a lot harder not to fall for it. But, instead, they never face punishment for being overly aggressive, and might face punishment for not being aggressive enough in the case of a real emergency.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 6 days ago:
If they’ve been told that there are several dead in the street, and they get there, and there’s nobody dead in the street, it’s time to not go in going pow pow pow.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
Nice one.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
Eugenics was related to racism, but it wasn’t the same thing as racism.
The intellectual ability / disability axis of eugenics was completely different from its skin colour axis.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
I’ve never heard anything about it having a racial component.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Languages change. Moron, idiot and imbecile used to be medical terms. Gay used to simply mean happy and excited. A fag used to be a term for a cigarette.
I really doubt it would have appeared in a mainstream children’s book if it were seen as at all offensive.
Words like “bugger” and “damn” used to be extremely offensive curses. Now they’re often used as very mild expressions of annoyance to avoid using the serious ones.
- Comment on Anon tries watching nu-Trek 1 week ago:
I’m glad someone caught that. :)
- Comment on Anon tries watching nu-Trek 1 week ago:
Sure, they’re trying to make a joke. But, when this kind of thing works as a joke you can go through each item in the list and say “hmm, yeah, I guess” even if as a whole it’s clearly not true.
In this case, some of the list items just make no sense, like “black people everywhere” or “pushes gay agenda”. If they’d stuck with “woke” and “a captain that Trekkies hated” it could have worked.
- Comment on Anon tries watching nu-Trek 1 week ago:
You could maybe argue that there was a hint at a pro-Trans story there. She falls for a guy, but the person she thinks she fell for isn’t actually the person she thought, and in the end it’s a girl. But, she decides not to continue the relationship after that final twist. And it’s also one episode in a very long series and Crusher is clearly straight… even if the Trill is maybe bisexual, or maybe pansexual.
- Comment on Anon tries watching nu-Trek 1 week ago:
woke
By the standards of the 1990s, sure.
lame attempts at fanservice
Not really. McCoy made a very brief appearance in the pilot. But, it wasn’t until season 5 where Spock would show up in a pretty major role. Scotty showed up a season later. I wouldn’t say there was much fan service at all, given that the TOS crew was mostly all around and available.
giRrL pOwErRr
Hardly. Troi was the most important female character, but she was less important than the Captain, Number One, Data, Chief Engineer Laforge and of course Miles. It was a bit unusual to have a female head of security, but she didn’t even last 1 season before being replaced by Worf.
pushes gay agenda
Was there a single gay member of the Enterprise? The only hint at homosexuality I can remember is Riker going for an androgynous person. They even had to make it clear that Tasha Yar wasn’t a lesbian by having her fuck a sex robot.
handwavy magic “science”
It’s Star Trek…
retconned Klingons to look super weird
The brow ridges showed up in 1979’s Star Trek, the Motion Picture. They were a major departure from the TOS design. TNG just kept that design
unrelentingly woke
You already said that
captain with a goofy hairstyle
Sure
black people everywhere
Laforge and… Guinan? Sure, the actor playing Worf is black, but it’s hard to tell anything under all that makeup. There were remarkably few black characters in TNG, if you think about it.
politics politics politics
Yes, it’s Star Trek.
- Comment on You're either HYDROGEN or HELIUM. Carbon-based lifeforms don't exist, sweatie 1 week ago:
According to astronomers there are 3 ‘elements’ in the universe: Hydrogen, Helium and Metal.
- Comment on It's about the *option* 1 week ago:
The JLTV apparently has a curb weight of 6.4 tonnes, that’s almost 4x the weight of the modern oversized F150 at 1.8 tonnes. Not ideal for a post-collapse world where energy is expensive.
Those Stadium Super Trucks though. Also impractical, but those sure are goofy fun to watch.
- Comment on It's about the *option* 1 week ago:
Jeeps were really innovative when they were created… in World War 2. That’s when they really were off-road vehicles. The pattern was repeated again with the Humvee, or HMMVW. It’s not just converted military vehicles either. It’s also race cars and rally cars. Some series have rules that to be legal a car also has to be a production model. Sometimes if you get that exact model you get a race-capable car. But, mostly the cars they sell are variants of the race design, which maintain the fast-looking design, but one which would handle terribly if you put it on an actual racetrack.
- Comment on Haxxed 1 week ago:
I’m short, so I don’t like that trend. It also seems like the more stuff you’re “rolling over” the smaller your contact patch will be, so the less traction you’ll have.
Anyhow, probably doesn’t matter to me since those aren’t the kinds of bikes I buy.
- Comment on Haxxed 1 week ago:
Or 26 inches, ye olde mountain bike standard. Are they putting 32 inch wheels on road bikes now?
- Comment on Haxxed 1 week ago:
Really? What’s the new wheel size? Get me in on this controversy!
- Comment on Haxxed 1 week ago:
That’s the problem. Believing in a flat earth isn’t just some weird quirk, like believing that gluten is bad for you or the number 4 is bad luck because in Chinese it sounds like the word for death. You can have beliefs like that and still maintain friendships with people who don’t share them. It’s such an illogical belief that people who express it are always mocked, and it’s also such a big “conspiracy” that believers have trouble not talking about it. That means believers tend to form a community to support each-other and defend against these insults. It’s basically an especially stupid religious community or a cult.
Giving up on your belief that the earth is flat means losing your whole community. There’s no real way to be a sphere-earther in the flat earther community. Some of the people “lose faith” but don’t admit it to the others in the community because they don’t want to be ostracized.
I would guess that the people who manage to leave the community are the ones who have friends and family that are willing to forgive and forget and welcome them back after they leave the cult. That also means that the ones who have lost their friends and family due to their wacky beliefs are never going to drop those beliefs because they’ll have nothing left.
- Comment on systemd 2 weeks ago:
Because we know it’s true, and we hate it.