merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 1 day ago:
but it never spilled over into politics quite to this degree.
Sure. But, look at the media environment. From the founding of the US to the invention of radio, there were newspapers. Sure, there was a strong element of yellow journalism, but to print a newspaper you still needed a printing press so it wasn’t a free-for-all. Then with radio, and then TV in the 50s there were only a handful of sources of information for everybody to follow. It’s only really since the 2010s that the media environment has been a free-for-all with anybody able to put up their own podcast, or put up videos on YouTube, or have their own blog, or post on Twitter, or whatever.
Politicians used to be able to do backroom deals. Those used to get a bad name, but to a certain extent it was a good thing, because at least they were dealing, instead of causing things to come to a deadlock. Now, if anybody dares to talk to someone on “the other team”, they get raked over the coals.
Russia was found to be sponsoring the NRA
Sure, they spent some money, and had some success. But, they hardly needed to push. The NRA’s goals were already aligned with Russia’s. The NRA has over 5 million members, and they were hardly upset with the direction Russia was pushing.
the rise of evangelicals as a voting group seems to be a co-ordinated world-wide phenomenon.
Not to me. There doesn’t seem to be much coordination there. There are just grifters seeing an opportunity.
I’d argue that those same elites thrived more under stable economic growth than an unstable one
It’s hardly the first time that an elite and powerful group tried to use a movement or a politician to further their interests and then found out that they couldn’t control what they’d unleashed.
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 2 days ago:
I think you’re overestimating the influence of Russia and China and underestimating the dysfunction in the US.
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 3 days ago:
Civilization is doing pretty well outside the US. If the US disappeared tomorrow, the rest of the world would do significantly better. I don’t know how the world will deal with climate change, but without the US it would be easier to make progress. The tech firms blowing up the AI bubble, and invading our privacy are nearly all American. A lot of the private equity firms destroying the world are also American. If the US could hurry up and finish collapsing, the rest of the world’s civilization could just move on.
- Comment on I hear he's homeless too. 6 days ago:
Giuffre agreed to a multi-million pound out-of-court settlement in 2022.
- Comment on I hear he's homeless too. 6 days ago:
It sounds like the king (his brother) is stripping him of his titles and kicking him out of the royal residence. But his brother (as non-king) is letting him stay on a property on an estate he owns as a private citizen, and paying him a kind of allowance out of his own “private” money.
- Comment on I hear he's homeless too. 6 days ago:
Andrew is expected to move to a property on the king’s Sandringham estate near the northeast coast and receive private financial support from his brother.
I wonder if he (Andrew) actually owns anything in his own name. The funding for the royals is complex. The “working royals” get about $100m per year as a percentage of revenues from the Crown Estate as a kind of salary / per-diem to do their “jobs”. The Crown Estate had about £16.5b in assets, so the amount they’re paid is only a tiny fraction of its value. The king also gets money from the Duchy of Lancaster which includes land in Lancashire and Yorkshire as well as properties in London. Whoever’s the Duke of Cornwall gets paid from the Duchy of Cornwall which is land in South-West England. Some things you’d think would be owned by the country are actually privately owned by the monarch, like many of the palaces. They also own estates like Sandringham and Balmoral.
So, the monarch owns a lot of stuff privately, which is passed down to the next monarch. The current Duke of Cornwall (often the crown prince) has a billion pound private estate, which then gets passed to the next Duke when the current duke dies or becomes the monarch.
But, I wonder what the rest of them own. It sounds like the monarch is a multi-billionaire, the Duke of Cornwall is just barely a billionaire, and the rest of the royals get paid huge amounts in a sort-of “salary” if they’re willing to do royal-type work (cut ribbons, make speeches, etc.) but they don’t actually own much of anything.
His ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, who had been living with him in the 30-room mansion, will have to find a new home.
That’s interesting. I wonder what that situation was like, and what she’ll do.
- Comment on Where is modern Punk? 6 days ago:
Rage Against the Machine aren’t quite punk, but they’re heavily punk-influenced. It’s amazing that they were such a huge commercial success.
As to whether they’re sellouts, that’s really complicated. They did generate a ton of profits for the machine they raged against. OTOH, I never would have heard their music if they hadn’t been signed to a major record label.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 1 week ago:
Who was born in 1961 making him…
- Comment on Fictional 1 week ago:
What were digits 10 to 59 like in Babylonian?
- Comment on Fictional 1 week ago:
IMO it should be called “base 9+1”. It is a “base 10” system because each order of magnitude is 10x as big as the previous one. But, the key thing is to know which digit is the last one before you roll over.
- Comment on Fictional 1 week ago:
Is your issue with metric, or with the fact that everything in life uses a base 10 (which should really be called a base 9+1) system?
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
Wow. My local library mostly has books. No board games. No media stations – there are some (old) computers you can use to browse the web, so I suppose you could watch media there, but it’s set up as a desk, not a couch or something. You can borrow some games, but not game consoles, and there’s definitely not a spot to play the games on-site. Definitely no VR rooms. There’s one branch of the library in the city that has 3d printers. One branch that has a “music editing station” with a music keyboard attached to a computer. One branch has a high quality, large format scanner for scanning historic docs. Definitely no kitchen or playground.
The idea still seems to be that libraries are supposed to be quiet places where you can read books or study. Any media is meant to be consumed with headphones on, so obviously no shared listening of any kind. They do loan music, video games and movies, but they’re meant to be brought home. You can borrow a lot of musical instruments, but again, there’s no place to play them on-site because the library is a quiet place for reading or studying.
I think it would take a major mental shift for people here to consider libraries as places where you might do something non-quiet, and/or non-serious. And something like cooking on-site would be seen as completely non-librarylike.
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
I’ve been to the Y, and at the moment it doesn’t seem overtly christian. But, as long as that “C” is part of the name, and especially as long as “Christian” is part of the mission statement, it can potentially become a lot more unfriendly to non-Christians.
That document you linked to says that some YMCAs are overtly christian, and talk about the problems that causes:
Ys that have a strong Christian identity may find that non-Christians are uncomfortable with explicitly Christian language, imagery, and activities. Proselytism is an especially sensitive issue.
For example, several survey respondents express discomfort with colleagues offering Christian prayers or reading Bible verses during the “mission moments” that begin Y staff meetings
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
I do think there’s a special thing about church that is this bigger than yourself experience
I’m pretty sure that’s only the case if you’re a believer. And, in general, people who aren’t believers don’t go to church, so you’re selecting for a group of people who want to believe in something bigger than themselves.
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
The Y is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to put Christian principles into practice
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
New Brunswick?
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
Well, definitely not a Christian association.
- Comment on #environmentalist 1 week ago:
The really bad experiences I’ve had with straws is at movie theatres. In that case you’re given a pretty big drink in a flimsy cup, and you’re slowly drinking it over a couple of hours.
There’s no way that the paper straw holds up in those circumstances. You also don’t want to drink without the straw, because the cup is so flimsy that if you try to drink from it like a regular cup/glass it’s likely to collapse. I have permanent metal / rubber straws at home, but of course I never remember to bring them with me when I go to a movie, since I only go a couple of times a year.
The only solution I’ve found is to take 3-4 paper straws with me, and change them out over the course of the movie.
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
In the show Clarkson’s Farm, Jeremy Clarkson is looking around, trying to buy a pub. At one point they talk about wanting to have a pub with a little grocery store attached. Clarkson’s girlfriend explained why that was common at one point in Ireland. It was because in the past men would get paid, go immediately to the pub, and drink until their paycheck was gone. If there was a shop attached to the pub, they could hand in an order at the shop before they started drinking. And then, even if they drank away the rest of their paycheck, they’d still be handed a bag of groceries before they were kicked out and had to stumble home.
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
I like that in the US, New England (NE) is in the North East (NE).
- Comment on Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons? 1 week ago:
Also, in places with significant winters (including Northern Europe) parks aren’t an option in winter.
Northern Europe seems like the kind of place that would realize this is a problem and invent some kind of community building which was open in the winter and had a shared kitchen, a stock of board games, a court for indoor sports, etc. That’s certainly not going to happen in the US.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 1 week ago:
It’s true, and there’s nothing IoT that is absolutely essential. But, if they were secure and safe, there are a lot of IoT things I’d like to have.
- Comment on Anon uses the internet like a normie 2 weeks ago:
“WTF is this bullshit?!”
I think this is literally what I said the other day.
Someone sent me a link for something to buy at a local branch of a national store. The advantage of the link was that it said what aisle of the store the product was in, so I didn’t have to search everywhere once I got there. I opened the link and I literally couldn’t see the page. First of all there was a pop-over ad of some kind obscuring the entire page. Once I closed that, I was confronted with the cookie banner. Once I dealt with that, there was the regular store page filled with its own ads / “promotions”. I had to hunt everywhere to find the one useful bit of data, which was the aisle number. It took me at least 20 seconds from opening the link to being able to find this aisle number and it left me incredibly frustrated.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 weeks ago:
Thou must use the cloud so that thine company hast a recurring revenue stream.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 weeks ago:
I can completely understand it, if you ignore all the privacy issues and potential hacks.
For example, a smart fridge. Imagine a fridge that tracks the expiry date of everything inside and warns you before something goes bad – or detects when something goes bad based on the off-gassing that it produces. Imagine it gets to know your purchase patterns and suggests items for your grocery list when you’re running low. Or, if you fully trust it, it could even order those things for you.
Or, smart lights. Imagine lights that are nice and bright in the winter when you don’t get enough sunlight. Then imagine those lights are smart enough to start dimming and getting “warmer” at a certain point in the evening on your personal schedule, making your body more prepared for sleep. Add motion / presence sensors so that the lights turn on when you go into a room, and turn off when everybody leaves the room. Most of the time a light switch isn’t a burden, but if you’re carrying things it can be a bit annoying, and we all know kids are pretty bad about turning things off when they leave a room.
In a world where you didn’t have to worry about the privacy issues, the bugs had all been worked out, and so-on, smart appliances could be great. But, we’re on v0.1 and so I’m extremely cautious in every “smart” device I use.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 weeks ago:
“Smart” toilets are a privacy nightmare.
Having said that, in the distant future, if we don’t drown the world, or kill ourselves in some other way, smart toilets are actually a smart idea.
Look how often a medical check-up requires either a stool sample or a urine sample. It makes sense. It’s the waste products our body produces, so there’s going to be a lot of data there. Now, imagine if you could get a basic medical check-up every time you used the toilet. You could catch so many problems early. It would be an entirely non-invasive medical check-up and if done right you wouldn’t even need to change your routine. You’d just use the toilet as normal and if the toilet detected anything that required a more detailed check, it could give you a packet of data you could give to your doctor.
At the very least, imagine if instead of trying to pee into a cup at the doctor’s office – or worse, trying to collect a stool sample, you could just use the “Medical Toilet” the way you use any other toilet and it would collect the sample for you.
But, of course, the wealth of medical information it could provide is exactly why it would be a privacy nightmare in the current world. I don’t know why Kohler is jumping into this now. Even if they see it as some way to generate revenue, they have to know it’s going to generate lawsuits too, and when inevitably there’s a privacy breach it’s going to put their good name in the toilet.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 weeks ago:
The nurse knew that the power management system required an Internet connection? That’s one geeky nurse.
Still, I have hope with things like solar panels. I think these are likely to be teething pains there. Being off-grid on a solar panel is probably a pretty common situation, so they’re probably going to eventually work out the kinks. As long as there isn’t a monopoly on power management systems, or regulatory capture by the companies that make them, probably the ability to work disconnected from both the power and Internet grids will eventually happen. But, with Internet-of-Things stuff, there’s often a commercial incentive to mine people’s data and lock them into a subscription service model. So, that’s really going to require regulation to fix.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 weeks ago:
Smart products are part of the issue, and smart products that fail in dumb ways are a really big part of the issue.
Any smart product, pretty much by definition, has to have a computer in it. Anything with a computer in it can be hacked. There’s really no good reason that your bed should have an attack surface.
If you are going to have smarts in something, it really needs to fail well. Like, for a bed, it should have something that bypasses the smarts and lets it go back to “dumb bed” mode no matter what. No matter what position it’s in, it should be possible to make it go flat even if you have no Internet connection. In fact, even if the smart parts are not working at all, there should be a way to make it go flat, even if that’s a purely mechanical system that allows you to bypass the motors.
- Comment on arborholing 2 weeks ago:
You mean the thing where we put tons of greenhouse gases in the air which warms the planet and makes it even better for photosynthesizing life, but even worse for mammals?
- Comment on TRUMP 3 weeks ago:
Why do dumb people think it’s “all of the sudden”?