This is, unfortunately, part of nostalgia itself. There’s a rare gem that is as good as you remember, but for the most part, your brain lies to you.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t revisit things, just prepare your expectations.

Narrator: The fire detector in fact did not work.

There’s more than one kind of backup in life, check them all.

I’ve been in some craft shops before that sold all sorts of crystals and other knick-knacks, and while I would never believe they have some magical power, there were some pretty cool things. The prices though… not that they were overpriced really, just that I couldn’t afford them. :D

I got a meteorite for last Christmas that I keep on my desk. Technically it’s just a little lump of pitted metal, one of hundreds of thousands sold. But it’s neat to look at and think about sometimes.

You missed the biggest one that most anti-tax arguers don’t think about. It’s not the fact that you’re paying taxes to support society that’s the problem, it’s how that money is being applied correctly. A tax based on use/demand makes sense in some instances, like road maintenance and development tied to gas tax. But things like schools and utilities should be based on what they need to support the community, not how often it gets used.

But if your taxes in any area is being wasted or misdirected, that is where you should be angry, not at the fact you’re paying a tax for something. Better utilization and less fraud mean lower taxes with the same application, which is what you were wanting.

But how many citizens are even aware of where the money goes? They just see their bill and think they’re paying too much, not why.

They watch out after their own kind.

Me too. Enjoyed it a lot.

Since it’ll still be in theaters, going to find time to go see it. Worth it.

But then it’s swung even harder the other way now.

I always try to imagine: if my younger self had grown up in today’s world, how would that have felt compared to then? And it’s not a great vision. Millennials and younger, you guys got fucked over, and I think most of you know it. I get your anger and despair.

From a Gen-X - Sorry. I did try to do something about it (I feel I did anyway), but I know I didn’t do enough. I thought it would get better.

Two easy ones:

No 9-11. There would have eventually been an attempt somehow, hell, maybe it would have been worse, like a dirty bomb. But the ball wouldn’t have been dropped on staying alert. Climate activism. Still think it was far too late even by 2000 to prevent the worst that’s coming (which tells you were I think we are now), but at least Gore knew the science and would have tried to change something.

Still would have had our problems, but it’s such a different path, it’s hard to say what would have still happened.

And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles They can always fly away from this rain and this cold You can hear them singing out their telegraph code All the way down the telegraph road

If the goal is to level the playing field (upwards), then maybe that would be more fair. Turn it around, why should you be making less than them because of location? You said you felt like you were just getting by, right? Maybe your wage is the correct wage for a rural town.

If a person moves to a new location/job, the wage would adjust for that area.

It depends. Cost of living and other factors.

https://livingwage.mit.edu/

Note that the minimum wage level is called the poverty wage here.

I think any sort of basic income effort would have to have a base federal level to meet all areas, and then state and county additional amounts to account for the cost of living differences.

A reminder that while we need to fight for higher minimum wages (or simply a broader safety net for all, which is a far better solution for workers), the $15 target for most places, the $20 for California, is still far below what a reasonable living wage would be had wages kept up with inflation and productivity earnings for corporations starting in the 70s. They’re holding us down at decade-old amounts, making us fight for minimums that are about half of what’s needed, letting us win occasionally to think we’ve made progress.

It’s also why discussions of how expensive things are can be misleading. Taking inflation and wage comparison into account, some costs are where they should be given normal change over time, while wages have stagnated.

Hell, both Gemini and Claude have done well for me in throwing some code together for simple apps, but I still looked it over before running it. I try to do that for even human-made open source code, although at least in principle, if it’s been up a while, others have at least tried it and given feedback.

I’m sure this is just a joke or a proof of the issue; you’d have to look at the PDF or whatever it gives and see that something is way off.

And for the record, the best code that I’ve gotten from an LLM has been the first few runs of an idea, one that was thoroughly explained in the prompt. If you put together a vague prompt and continue to add to it, it will get worse quickly, with the LLM even changing parts that were perfectly fine. Maybe turning the temperature down, if possible, will help with that randomness, but it’s always better to keep sessions short and precise.

It is a real historic term for fighting fascism, it’s not just a right-wing label. Don’t let them things away, they’ll just take the next thing.

Not fully. But I’m not saying gravitational theory doesn’t qualify as a theory, I’m just saying we understand evolution very well.

I’ll call. We understand much of how evolution works. Do we really understand how gravity actually works at the core level? There are a few theories, but that’s just it; we’re not sure, and have different models to try and explain what’s going on. Not one.

So what about the renaming of Office to Co-pilot? Microsoft is so confused. Or truly trying to make 2026 the year of Linux.

It’s a miswording. I meant the act of being falsifiable. Testable. If we found something that went totally against the core of the theory and was shown to be factual, we’d have to reconsider what was wrong. But the only debate within evolution are the details, not the main concept, which still hasn’t found bunny fossils older than dinosaurs (to use a common example).

Because the US was isolated from the war damage in Europe, due to distance and waiting it out, and even their early war ability was going to be greater than what an island nation could pull together. I know there are alternate histories where Japan doesn’t poke the tiger, and things go a lot differently because the US stalls longer or just avoids the war.

Still, fighting against Japan on their terms was hardly easy. It was ugly. It was horrible.

Sure, there are levels of inspiration and skill, but there’s still work to bring it to fruition. There’s also the artist’s eye to see a sudden masterpiece for what it is, and even stop before they make it less. One could say that someone using digital tools has to have that ability as much as any artist to be successful.