arquebus_x

NPR is not free; it’s paid for by taxes, which means that every U.S. citizen is in fact paying for news whether they like it or not. And “not for profit” is not the same as “no cost to the consumer.” In addition, most of the outlets for NPR are local public radio stations that are - you guessed it - funded by taxes (as well as fund drives).

It doesn’t help that wage growth has largely been in the “unskilled” sectors (I hate that term, every job is skilled), but inflation reduction has largely been in non-essential goods. Which means that upper-middle to upper income people have been noticing their wages not increasing with inflation despite inflation overall being lower, and lower to low-middle income people have been noticing inflation impacting their budgets despite their wage increases.

But in aggregate, “everyone” is being paid more and “inflation” is down. So at a macro level everyone “should” be happy with how things are going. But human beings don’t live at the macro level.

Economists don’t call something a recession until rich people start feeling the squeeze. The definition of a recession, while vague, is really designed around that fact. So even if they’re not doing it on purpose, their analytical blinders prevent them from recognizing other conditions that are at least as meaningful to many more people.

Before we get out the flaming pitchforks, let us not forget that pretty much no one reads or cares about the New York Times. Their readership (print and web) is minuscule compared to entities like CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC (and Fox, OANN, Breitbart, Joe Rogan…).

Sure, it sucks that the NYT is sucking Trump cock, but in the end, that won’t move the needle.

Even if risks are under-reported (plausible, but unlikely, given the amount of scrutiny), it’s definitely the case that the risks from getting COVID are still not fully understood. Long COVID is a major issue that is still under investigation. So by your own metric - “highly reluctant to try the new possibly risky thing” - the vaccine is important. Because “the new possibly risky thing” in this case is getting COVID. You definitely don’t want to “try” that.

It’s about the same as everywhere else. The most fun I have on any social media platform these days is blocking assholes.

It makes sense why a Starbucks would be across the street from a Starbucks (coffee buyers are not, as a rule, brand-loyal, so they will go to the nearest/most easily accessible spot - so Starbucks grows like a weed to prevent other shops from taking the business of fickle customers). But two Apple Stores cheek to jowl… that’s weird.

Kbin defederating from Threads would be an own goal of hilarious proportions. The only entity that would be harmed is Kbin.

Threads presents a serious danger to the long-term viability of the fediverse if we become dependent on it for content, and our best bet at avoiding that is defederation.

If Threads federates… it’s part of the fediverse.

Even if you don’t accept that tautology, sure, maybe the fediverse (not including Threads, which is also fediverse at that point, but ok whatever) doesn’t do great, but kbin will definitely suffer if it defederates from Threads, once Threads becomes part of the fediverse federates does whatever you think it’ll be doing that’s not exactly the same thing as joining the fediverse and therefore becoming part of the thing that you think will become non-viable after the most viable piece of it joins. Kbin will become an also-ran within the fediverse, because most users will want to use tools that allow them to interact with the most people.

I guess what I’m saying is you can’t in one breath say that “Threads will join the fediverse” and then in the next breath say “the fediverse will become non-viable” as if Threads isn’t part of the fediverse in the second breath. Let’s not do “separate but equal” with social media, please. It’s silly.

If Kbin defederates from Threads, it’ll be Kbin that suffers.

What it comes down to there is whether the act of selection is an act of art. If there is no skill other than picking, I’m not sure I’d consider it an artistic act. (For similar reasons I’m very much on the fence about a lot of modern art.)

Makes sense. I got tinnitus in my left ear after a particularly nasty ear infection.

“thereby”?

At what point does the world look at this and say that enough is enough.

Do we ever, really? Over the sum of all war-related humanitarian disasters, the West responds to very few of them, and only when it’s economically or geopolitically useful. The Palestinian crisis is no different; it’s not exceptional in any way. There’s an ongoing nightmare in DRC that’s orders of magnitude worse than what’s happening in Gaza and… no one cares. Europe and the U.S. are on the verge of disengaging from Ukraine.

The thing is, it doesn’t even matter if we “condemn this behavior.” We could do that all we want and it wouldn’t make much difference. And no one wants to be interventionist - there’s too much awful history around it, and it smacks of colonialism, and it means taking resources away from “domestic issues” that always seem to matter more.

We’ve got to move away from the notion that the situation in Gaza is somehow unique. It allows us to conveniently ignore the root causes of the problem, which is much more universal, and stems from the ongoing sense of cultural superiority on the part of Europe and the U.S.

I’m curious: is this still a thriving community? Intel-based Macs are on the verge of being fully deprecated by Apple, so Hackintoshes will (within a year or two) be little more than “vintage computers.” Sure, you might manage to make one more cheaply or more powerful than an Intel Mac, but at some point there isn’t much that’s going to run. Already they’re stuck with older OS releases.

Would be nice, but I’m not convinced that putting him in jail doesn’t hand him the presidency.

Small being the operative word. Gunshot explosions don’t have enough energy to break glass in most circumstances.

Bots aren’t a “problem” for Twitter unless the advertisers think there are more of them than there are real users. But if you can convince advertisers that you’re reducing bots, while also not actually reducing bots, you’ve got a winning formula. Bots are reliable posters, they contribute a lot more than a regular user, and they make high-engagement tweets/posts/tweex that end up getting a lot of views, aka advertising opportunities.

In other words the idea might have the opposite effect - keeping potential new human users out, but allowing the bots in

The galaxy brain shit here is that I suspect the bot problem actually doesn’t concern Musk in the way he claims. If he can make it seem like there are fewer bots (because of these policies) while at the same time not actually getting rid of them, the engagement level stays up and the advertisers are happy in their ignorance. Bots are better users: they’re not fickle, they don’t go to sleep, they can be reliably expected to be posting more regularly than normal users. The trick for Musk is convincing everyone they’re gone.

Stick with “American” because not only is it partially accurate geographically, it’s completely accurate in terms of how self-centered we are as a nation as to think we’re the only ones who count.

My girlfriend works on T-cells (she’s not affiliated with the group in the article) so I understood about 4% of the science!