BillyClark

I have wondered the same about scammers. Like, if their mother knew they were going to do that with their life, she’d probably regret all of that wasted effort raising them.

k

Don’t feed the trolls. Report, block, move on

Very good advice. But if you have some sort of personality defect that makes you occasionally engage with trolls like I do, here is some additional advice:

Make your comment less effort than the trolls. Don’t argue every point. Focus on their weakest point.

Essentially, if you can’t resist responding to a troll because you’re an idiot like me, make it like one short sentence where you point out their biggest mistake, and then if they respond to you and you respond back, keep doing that and never let them change the subject. At least you’re causing them to waste effort.

As a person with a long history of intermittent insomnia, I had this bad feeling last night that I’d not be able to go to sleep no matter what.

So, I did what I normally do in those situations, which is probably not the right thing, by the way. I stayed up and tried to distract myself until I forgot about that thought. It usually eventually works, but last night, I couldn’t seem to forget the thought, and at about 4:30 am, I was so tired that I thought I should be able to fall asleep, regardless.

And I did fall asleep, but I think it was around 6. In retrospect, I should have just taken some medicine at midnight.

The style of interface invented at Xerox PARC in 1973 (and almost certainly used by you if you’re viewing this on a Linux computer) is called WIMP, for “Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer.” Microsoft just stole the name.

it’s important to have verifiable studies to cite in arguments for policy, law, etc.

It’s also important to have for its own merit. Sometimes, people have strong intuitions about “obvious” things, and they’re completely wrong. Without science studying things, it’s “obvious” that the sun goes around the Earth, for example.

I don’t need a formal study to tell me that drinking 12 cans of soda a day is bad for my health.

Without those studies, you cannot know whether it’s bad for your health. You can assume it’s bad for your health. You can believe it’s bad for your health. But you cannot know. These aren’t bad assumptions or harmful beliefs, by the way. But the thing is, you simply cannot know without testing.

Especially the American military personnel stationed there always crashing helicopters.

When I lived in Japan, apparently, somebody revved their motorcycle engine too much at night, and it was covered on the local TV news the next day. I guess they didn’t have any other sorts of local crime to present.

I have been following British media a bit and unless I am mistaken, this Mandelson chap ran afoul of his Epstein conduct back in September, which was before the DOJ even started releasing the Epstein files as part of the Epstein act, which hadn’t passed at the time. The subsequent release and redactions seem to have exposed even more, but his goose was cooked before that.

Current allegations are that Mandelson handed Epstein extremely sensitive government information. I forget what Brits call it, but we’d say it was classified.

And it currently seems like PM Kier Starmer is probably going to fall with him, since he apparently knew about Mendelson’s continuing association with post-conviction Epstein.

Anyways, that one particularly seems somewhat unrelated to the redaction choices.

Whatever bad shit I want to say about Henry Ford, at least he understood the basic idea that people could only spend the amount of money that they have or make. That’s one of the things he’s famous for is that his factory workers could buy their own Model Ts.

We now live in a stupid reality where the world is controlled by rich people who see others as slaves and who are wanting to keep slave labor in perpetuity, even when the labor doesn’t need to exist.

Assume for a moment that AI really was taking all of these types of jobs, which by the way, almost certainly includes CEOs. It would only be a matter of time before robots take those other jobs he’s talking about.

A normal human of normal intelligence would see that and conclude that people simply wouldn’t have to work anymore. And that therefore, everyone should have their basic necessities taken care of by their governments.

People would be free to do whatever they want, whether it be “humanities” work or creating things or whatever. We’re no longer constrained by the fact that our lives depend on our usefulness in jobs to the ruling class.

Only a member of that ruling class would see themselves as indispensable and others as slave labor.

I have heard that when people are starving they’re more likely to overthrow their government, but looking at North Korea, I’m not sure how true that is, or how true it is anymore.

In that email about Trump blowing Bubba, the actual point was to ask whether Putin had the picture.

And it was asked so casually that it seemed like it was the normal course of things to leak incriminating pictures to the Kremlin.

I think people should rate things consistently, and both of those criteria in the post are fairly subjective. Like, they could both vary based on your mood.

Here’s my 3-star rating system, which is less subjective:

*** I would happily watch this movie again, or I have already enjoyed it multiple times.

** It wasn’t bad, but I don’t see myself watching it again.

* I would refuse to watch this again, or I turned it off because I couldn’t watch it once.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Movies like Dear Zachary would be forced to be 2 stars. But for the most part, since star reviews are to help people decide what to watch, if the criteria is whether or not people would want to watch it a lot, I think the intentions line up with the implementation better.

I suspect that most Linux users are former Windows users.

The only reason anybody should listen to a celebrity’s political opinion is if that celebrity has shown some political expertise or astute political insight in the past.

Celebrities are not better than other people. They often have one thing they’re good at, and are ridiculously stupid outside of that area. And often, they don’t even have that one thing they’re good at.

It’s irritating to see him looting the company like that when he actually delivers negative value to the company otherwise. Literally it would be better for Tesla to give those bonuses to some random person on the street than to Musk.

a large chunk of the replies were “well MY displays work just fine!”

I just went to check the previous thread, and I think there’s miscommunication both ways here.

They read your post as “I’m trying Linux, but it’s even hard to get monitors to work.” So, they responded, “I haven’t had a problem with monitors on Linux in decades.”

There’s not much else they can say, as you weren’t really asking for advice, so you didn’t give any technical details, but you were still complaining about something that they like.

Meanwhile, you read them as you said, “well MY displays work just fine!” So their replies seem utterly baffling, defensive, and unhelpful from your perspective.

The word “robot” can be defined in many different ways, and that affects whether this has already happened, or how soon it may happen in the future.

If robot means remote controlled machine, think Battle Bots, or if it means something with a robotic arm, then it’s probably already happened.

If robot means human shaped machine, then I’d guess if it hasn’t happened yet, if only because of the expense.

If robot means sensors, processing, and actuators, like I learned in school, then I’m guessing it hasn’t happened yet, simply because it’s more work than a machine that follows a routine, but I could easily be wrong.

If robot means fully functional human sized android type robot with integrated processing then who knows? If it also requires AI, then I’m guessing it’s a ways off.

I’m pretty sure that I’d remember if someone cut off my ear, unless, hmm… What if I had a lobotomy and don’t remember?