Instigate

How I would love to offer an extremely exclusive and expensive product or service and have a billionaire approaching me trying to get it for free, to be able to say “Oh, I’m sorry, can you not afford it? We only offer this to people who have enough money to pay for it. I’m sure if you work hard, one day you’ll earn enough money to come back and give this a try!”

Nothing would hurt a fragile billionaire’s ego more than insinuating that they’re poor. Their entire lives and identities revolve around being rich and to take that away from them, even for a few seconds, would haunt them for many years to come.

It’s a real privilege to know that your vote can never be cast away, wasted or exhausted. I’ve literally never voted for the two biggest parties as my #1 choice, but my vote usually ends up with whomever I preference higher. In Australia we also give a candidate/party election funding based only on #1 votes, if they reach a certain quota, so even when my vote ends up with Labor (our major centre-left/centrist party) I’m actively contributing to the election coffers of a smaller party or independent and sending a message to the major parties.

And then you look at democracies with more pluralistic forms of voting and Green parties actually have decent representation. Here in Australia they teeter between being the third and fourth largest party (depending on the jurisdiction) and have been in governing coalitions a good number of times. Mandatory voting + ranked choice voting + proportional representative voting really changes things.

I’d go one step further to say that empathy and compassion aren’t actually alien concepts to them - they know full well what they are. Empathy and compassion are signs of weakness to them. Empathy and compassion are evils to them. Empathy and compassion are anathema to their worldview. Empathy and compassion are for those whom they hunt.

They view themselves as amoral apex predators, able to take what they want under ‘might makes right’. They aren’t all psychopaths - they’re sociopaths who selectively choose towards whom they feel empathy and compassion. They’re cognisant of this and view it as their strength. They’re fucking malevolent.

There’s also C) How much the individual components of the jewellery are worth if disassembled/smelted down - i.e. the spot price of any gems or metals used in the piece of jewellery’s construction. This is usually the lowest form of valuation as it doesn’t take into account the labour/expertise of construction and has an associated smelting cost to extract the raw components.

I watched his whole speech and the Q&A afterwards a short time ago and, as an Australian, all I could think was that if I were Canadian I’d have been very proud to call him my PM. He has such a sensible approach to the idea that the world has irrevocably changed and that middle powers need to band together to stand up to bullies like the USA. He correctly highlighted that the current circumstances are frightening and challenging but has a clear vision for the path forward.

I, like many others, was concerned that an ex-banker and leader of two federal reserves would just tow the neoliberal line but he’s shown real courage and vision. I hope he continues to back up the rhetoric with action that’s both in the best interests of Canadians but also in the better interests of other middle power nations.

57s are still pretty prevalent, particularly for guitarists with tube amps/combos that don’t have an XLR output - especially those older amps/combos that are still going strong. It’s also the go to for miking drums in larger venues where that’s needed. As a bassist, I ended up forgoing the amp/stack for a SansAmp DI driver pedal a long time ago though - no regrets on that front.

It’s the 27th draft - there are 27 amendments to the constitution. Seems like it’s due for some more amendments for the modern era. It’s supposed to be a living document - at least that was the original intention.

Aren’t mosquitoes the most dangerous animal on earth? I guess it depends what measure you’re using, and how you define ‘animal’. If it’s how many human deaths they cause, mosquitoes are at the top of the list and humans are second, with many others coming in before hippos. I can’t really think of another relevant measure. Even if you disregard invertebrates as being animals, I’m pretty sure that dogs and crocodiles kill many more humans than hippos each year.

Sure, they’re bloody dangerous, but I can’t think of a single way of measuring ‘most dangerous animals in the world’ that puts hippos at the top of the list. I’m happy to be corrected though.

The article really isn’t for those of us who already know how terrible ‘AI’ is - it’s for those who treat it like it’s the infallible holy grail of all the answers in the world. Sadly, I’ve met some such people for whom this article might be illuminating.

Actually, the military way to say that would be “sixteen hundred hours”. 4:30PM would be “sixteen thirty hours”. You always specify the minutes, even when it’s zero minutes, which is notated by saying “hundred” for the double-zero.

I know people who have intellectual disabilities who are some of the loveliest and most caring people I’ve ever met. Intelligence does not dictate a person’s capacity to be a productive and caring member of society. Empathy, however, is a skill that can be taught to all but a few who are clinically psychopathic. Intelligence is not a marker of a valuable member of society - empathy and compassion are.

Sex work is work. As long as a person enters into that work wilfully and can legally consent to it, it’s functionally no different than a labourer selling their body in labour constructing a building, painting a house, or digging a trench. Denigrating sex workers serves no purpose beyond needlessly moralising the choices of consenting adults.

It’s even better in Australia - not only do prisoners get to vote, legally they must vote or face a fine for not voting. We have compulsory voting for all eligible and enrolled citizens, bar none. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) sends representatives to every prison to ensure that the votes are all submitted correctly. This isn’t even in our constitution - we legislated it in 1924 and no political party wants to go near the idea of removing compulsory voting nor taking away the rights of the incarcerated to participate in our democracy.

The original Citizen CIA was great and this is an awesome re-tooling of that song! Very on brand for DKM. Punk has been the backbone of anarchism and has always embodied how to solve the Paradox of Tolerance - the Dead Kennedys’ 1981 song Nazi Punks Fuck Off definitely comes to mind.

He’s been doing all of the awful, harmful, spiteful things he said he’d do. He’s done none of the helpful things he said he’d do. The cultists are still holding out hope that eventually he’ll get around to helping them because he kept the angry and bigoted promises he made. Many will keep burying their heads in the sand because the cognitive dissonance of admitting they followed the wrong man for a decade is too much for their fragile egos to bear.

This is exactly how it works - I became single after 13 years and so had no previous experience with dating apps, so I decided to go all in and get one month’s subscription to Hinge, Bumble and Grindr. Before the end of the month I was concurrently dating five people (four women and one man) as a bi man in his thirties. Shit was pretty cash.

A lot of people asked me why I was so successful and I told them it’s because I paid for the subscriptions. For what ended up amounting to around $100AUD I got to date a bunch of people, had some great dates and great sex, and one of those five people is now my long term partner with whom I’m living. She was one of the ‘top recommended’ people on Hinge and the algorithm really got it right!

YMMV but paying for the apps actually provides quite a good service.

This is the exact same argument used against gun control and it’s disingenuous at best; obfuscating and lying at worst.

Of course we should limit the scope and availability of the tools that people use to cause harm to other people. Especially when other LLMs have been able to prevent this from occurring.

The heart of capitalism is definitely theft - theft of labour; theft of time; theft of energy; and theft of value. Intrinsically, it is a system that creates hierarchy and rewards exploitation of fellow human beings. The core tenets of unregulated capitalism are, subjectively in my opinion, a reflection of the evil of the sociopaths and psychopaths who benefit from how the system operates.

While I believe in communism as an ideal and socialism as the next-best-thing (preferably governed anarchically), I don’t see how western societies will be able to immediately get from where we are today to there without terribly bloody war in which countless lives are lost and suffering of the proletariat is rampant.

I think that moves to restrict capitalism (UBI; genuinely enforced workers’ rights; nationalisation of critical industry; stripping corporate personhood to hold individuals liable for the actions of companies; universal high-quality public education from birth to higher adult studies etc.) are the way to edge closer towards a more utopian society.

I don’t know how we make that happen while the billionaires and centimillionaires still have their thumbs on the political scales though. But, a man can dream.

What’s terminal?