It's crazy that they change the weights on these indexes. How are you supposed to get an accurate inflation number if you keep moving the goal posts
I have to give credit where it's due, I actually like this change. Likes used to be private, and then they became public and subject to the toxic performativity of social media
Online market places to be jointly and severally liable for anything on their sites
This should be something AI can do now. Give it a list of what kinds of ads are not allowed, and ask it if the contents of this ad are acceptable
Everyone is the just the product of luck
Totally agree! Isn't an argument against the carbon tax though, but an argument for more transit development
There's been a slight downtick in recent years, but it's still up +10 years from 1970
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/life-expectancy
While I think the student protest are misguided, this seems like a good development. People have a right to (peacefully) protest, and universities shouldn't forcibly remove people that aren't hurting others or damaging property
It's not the simple unfortunately, because of 2 factors:
-
Our boomers are a very large generation, larger than the millenials
-
Life expectancy has increased so people live much longer (with high medical costs)
In the 70s - 2000s we had a large generation of in their working years paying for a small generation's 5-10 year retirement
Now, we have a small generation in their working years paying for a large generation 15-25 year retirement
And this is not something we can solve by just "taxing the rich". The numbers are so huge that taxing Canada's richest people is a drop in the bucket
I can't believe the carbon tax is getting such bad press lately. IMO it's one of the best policies to come out of the current government. Everyone is upset about high gas prices, but the forget that they get a big rebate at the end of the year. This means for people with fuel efficient cars, the tax is minimal, and the gas guzzlers pay a lot. Encourages better use of limited resources.
It's anti-tech propaganda. The same is happening with crypto. Certain groups don't like it, so they try to convince the public that it is bad for the environment so it will be banned
This isn't a good situation, but I also don't like the idea that people should be banned from using energy how they want to. One could also make the case that video games or vibrators are not "valuable" uses of energy, but if the user paid for it, they should be allowed to use it.
Instead of moralizing we should enact a tax on carbon (like we have in Canada) equal to the amount of money it would take to remove that carbon. AI and crypto (& xboxes, vibrators, etc) would still exist, but only at levels where they are profitable in this environment.
This is a bit of a fallacy. In a normal market, the rent for a home is less than the costs of home ownership (mortgage + maintenance + taxes) and that saved money can be used to purchase other assets.
Until the real estate mania of the last few years, if you followed this strategy, you would not be any worse off than the person who bought their home.
I personally would much rather have equity in more fungible assets than a home. Owning a home ties you to a specific location, and can't easily be sold in an emergency. Plus it's not a very diverse portfolio if most of you wealth is in a single property
It would be very stupid to set up a system where you have to give the porn site your ID. Better to just have an attestation that this user is over 18 years old.
There even ways to do this without the government knowing which site you visited with zero knowledge cryptography. But that would probably require everyone to get a Yubi key or equivalent, which might be hard to swallow
Governments already have systems to handle citizen IDs. They're not perfect, and fake ones do get created, but they're good enough. All that is needed is to connect that system to a UBI key or other device. Then websites could use cryptographic tools (signatures, ZK-SNARKS, etc) to verify that someone is over 18 without revealing their identity
I fear internet ID is coming whether we like it or not. AI powered bots will pass all captchas and be indistinguishable from humans. The open, pseudonymous internet cannot survive under those conditions. You could spend all day without seeing a comment by a real human.
I suspect some of the negativity comes from porn users who are in denial
It seems to me much more likely that the porn industry is financing studies that say there is nothing wrong with porn use. The means and motive make a lot more sense going in that direction, as they don't want to be seen as the new cigarettes
I agree some are problematic. The first one is based on brain scans, which is hard to refute. And there are many more like it
The porn industry has a vested interest in suppressing this, and billions of dollars to spend muddying the waters.
I'm going to run my first DW game soon. I've never GM'd a TTRPG before, but I've played a few. Most players haven't played TTRPGs, so I like DW for it's simplicity to learn. I'm very comfortable improvising, but I have a bit of prep and would like some feedback on it.
My current idea is to start where all the characters are in a large jail cell. I'll ask the following to set up the world.
- Where is this jail cell? What's the city name, vibe, etc?
- Why have each of you been arrested?
- Who else is in the cell with you?
Then we'll set up bonds and then the adventure will begin. Based on how things go, they'll either have to do a prison break, or fight in a gladiator style arena. I'll have some enemies prepared for those scenarios. For anything else, I will just wing it.
Does this feel like good prep for the session?
I created a GPT to answer DW questions. In my testing it's pretty good about not getting confused with DnD rules (which regular ChatGPT does). I'm organizing my first DW game as a GM and I'm planning to use it to help me out.
Some good prompts for it:
- How much XP does a character need to level up?
- How do I resolve damage from multiple NPCs attacking the character?
- Suggest 3 monsters the party might encounter in an evil wizard's castle
- Create some stats for a Giant Chihuahua monster
You do need ChatGPT Plus to use it though
I've been doing Vipassana meditation for over a year now, but I recently decided to experiment with some other forms. I have been trying the noting technique lately and each time I try it, I end up being overwhelmed with energy in the body, tightness in my chest and throat, and I begin sobbing quite hard. I cut my meditation short today because I was weeping too much.
Has anyone else experienced this? Should I stop this practice?
I was introduced to mantra meditation in a yogic setting, so I began with traditional vedic mantras ("Om", "So Ham", "Om Namo Narayanaya", etc)
Recently I've been experimenting with different mantras. Some of my favourites have been: "Be here now" and "Love, Truth"
What mantras do you use?
This ambitious, innovative luminous signature is a tribute to an iconic feature of Montreal’s urban landscape.
EDIT: I know many people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything crypto, but this is not a scheme to make money. I would be happy to see this done with fiat as well, but IMO this is much easier to do with smart contracts.
I am very excited about the possibility of the Fediverse, and the potential for many experiments in instance governance. A problem that all instances must content with is trolling and spam. It seems very difficult to impose a cost on these bad actors without harming honest users as well. Either instances have minimal signup friction and are vulnerable to being overwhelmed with bad actors & defederated (see the recent defederation decision from Beehaw), or they present frustrating barriers such as manual approval or waitlists for folks who just want to have fun
A possible solution comes from the blockchain space, which has been dealing with anonymous bad actors since its inception. Many blockchains and blockchain apps require users to stake some asset in order to gain certain privileges (basically a deposit). If the user is determined to be a bad actor, they lose some or all of their stake.
An instance could be integrated with a smart contract to manage membership could be very effective at dissuading trolls and spammers. A user could stake a small amount of money (say $10) in order to create an account on the instance. This could be done very quickly and would require no manual approval from admins. If the admins determine they are acting poorly, they could ban the user and slash their funds. If an honest user decides they don't want to stay on the instance, they could delete their account and recover their deposit.
(EDIT: An important part of this is that the funds are destroyed when slashed, not given to the admins or mods. This prevents a profit incentive to ban)
I've got a prototype smart contract for this. Would be interested in working with someone on this if there's anyone with experience with the instance management