FriendOfDeSoto

I think with PCs it will be harder to lock them down and not disgruntle consumers too much in the process. I’m also hopeful that over time right to repair will be the standard, so they have to allow for third party repair. So all these restrictions like chipped components and software only from our store will be phased out by incremental legislation. The EU is not perfect but it’s on this path. Even in the US people are thinking antitrust more often now. There is hope, however small.

You can run whatever you like in your Android phones. Jailbreaking iPhones is also possible. All these devices are just computers that can run anything within their hardware specs. Hacking some of these things may be against the Ts and Cs or even illegal. But technically possible. The restrictions are mote political, not technical.

Chromebooks are not the way to the future. They fill a niche in education for cheap hardware in connection with limited capabilities. They are not technical limitations, they are designed to limit users in what damage they can do. AFAIK you could technically wipe a chromebook and put Linux on it. It may violate the Ts and Cs and we’re right back at political. Google would like to develop future customers at an early age. They don’t care about the education so much as about their bottom line.

Sci-fi is delightfully circumspect on how an intergalactic empire would work. Maybe Herbert’s Dune universe is clearest and he just took us back to the middle ages with sandworms and drugs, fiefdoms and nobility.

I think whatever area shares the same government is a country. It doesn’t have to be contiguous or on the same body floating through space. It could be the size of the Vatican or half the universe.

I suspect the definition of the word will change once (if) we make it to the stars. We have gone from nomadic life to loosely defined borders to kingdoms to empires to multinational and intranational federations of sort. These terms may no longer be fit for purpose when we colonize Mars etc. And maybe that’s why you struggle to comprehend how it would all work behind the scenes. We don’t know for sure, sci-fi authors don’t know (or don’t want to be too specific and limit themselves in what stories they could tell in the future).

Like the river finds the sea, people will find a way around it. Satellite connections, just as an idea.

Anything a chip does can be backwards engineered to fool it. People will break your proposed surveillance chip eventually.

Most of these companies are maybe US-owned to varying degrees but they don’t produce everything in the US. Also, they would put a very high price on these government mandated chips for two reasons: 1) government has deep pockets and 2) it would keep them away from very profitable so-called AI biz opportunities.

The pandy has shown us that with a few disruptions in the supply chain, any system that requires a cryptographic chip check to function can be sent to hell in a handbasket. I forgot if it was HP or Canon or some printer company had to teach its customers to bypass, i.e. hack their own cryptogtaphic chip checks because they couldn’t get more chips and otherwise the printers wouldn’t print. A few disruptions could also affect the censorship chip supply chain.

The great firewall of China has also shown how creative people get to get their message across. If it’s not just human censors but also so-called AI censors it will just take creativity to a new level. Necessity is the mother of invention.

So there are some reasons why you might be worrying too much. I think another one is much broader. The majority of Americans did not vote for the current president. If he started censoring the internet now there would be Civil War II - Now It’s Digital. The reason why Russia or North Korea can censor their people much easier is because they have never had or only on paper a brief period of liberty and rule of law. It will be much harder to control the US population. There isn’t just the one media outlet, the one ISP, the one judiciary to dominate. It’s splintered. And populated by feisty people, some of them armed. You couldn’t pull off what you suggested without much more support for 47. And he seems to be losing it more than gaining these days.

Of course, I didn’t think far enough. Thanks for setting that straight.

I think there is data on it. Back in school I remember looking at the population pyramid. It’s a visualization of the number of men and women (x-axis, going both left and right) per birthyear (y-axis). In ye olden days, that formed a triangle. Many babies at the bottom, fewer olds at the top. You could tell a lot from the shape this took. You’d get dents on the male side that will correspond with armed conflicts, like the world wars. And then in the 1960s the pyramid with war chips in it massively narrows. At least in countries where the pill became readily available. It turned the pyramid into a tree with a big head at the top and a wide but thinner stem growing under it. I suspect now 80 years later we’re at a much narrower elongated triangle shape again. So you can probably count the shift in numbers there and put a number on “prevented accidents.” But you would have to account for other factors as well, improvements in medicine, vaccinations, etc.

Were all births accidental? That’s a question you could only ask in hindsight. Humans have always looked for ways you prevent conception because we like to party but without reliable success. It’s only in the second half of the last century that we have come up with measures that the Catholic church really doesn’t approve of. Before that, children weren’t really planned in today’s sense. They just happened. They were expected to happen. And with most women being relegated to raising them and running the household, there wasn’t much else they could do. The concept that a wife could be raped by her husband is sadly fairly new. The patriarchy was strong. Abortion was a gamble and many women died from bad jobs of them. Most of the time, if she got pregnant, the decision was made, end of story. If you weren’t married yet, shotgun wedding. That’s how it went until we developed contraception that actually works. I wouldn’t call any kids before that accidental.

Sure, you could remain abstinent. But we like to party.

Depends on your definition of common. When the movable type printing press came to the British Isles, the available characters didn’t include the thorn so printers used the y as a stand-in. It was the beginning of the end and all “ye olde shoppe” signs are just a snapshot of a particular time in history.

Did he really do them though? The reason why this is within the scope of belief is the fact that there’s no conclusive evidence that removes reasonable doubt by contemporary standards.

Let’s say it’s all exactly as it says in the four different versions that are somehow considered canon and none of it is a millennia old game of telephone: did he choose to do them? Did his dad force him? Could he maybe not have had free will in this regard? Do we know about all the miracles? Maybe there were more! Would it be fair for us today to judge him based on incomplete records?

I think the sound you’re hearing is a bunch of people creating throwaway accounts for this one. Not me though. I’m a saint.

Perp walks. Teachers in school in front of class. Other kids in school being mean. Public dress downs at work. I’m sure there are more. Not all perps walked reoffend. Kids get their shit together because they don’t want to be made to look silly in front of their peers. I think for some employees this works similarily.

Shaming only works if the shamed feels any. The doublers-down are often the ones who don’t feel shame. So it was the wrong tool for the job. Won’t work on 47 if you know what I mean.

Just to clarify: I would personally put this tool in the “break glass in case of last resort” section of the tool box. But I’ve worked with bosses who didn’t put these restrictions on themselves and it can work.

You could question their leadership qualities if you wanted to. That’s a benefit of arm chairing this stuff in an internet forum.

Just by origin of the word polyglot means you have many tongues. Tongues is of course well established as a stand-in for languages. If you can speak more than one, you fall under the definition.

I think people have attached more to the term than just that though. I’m thinking of well traveled and culturally sensitive as well. Somebody who would be alright no matter where you dropped them.

How many languages can your better half say good morning in? She might just be trying to pay you a compliment and you with your humilis gloriatio are not having it. In any case, I wouldn’t recommend going back to her with arguments obtained from a random group of internet users to settle your interpersonal disagreement.

I was shooting for “neutral you”.

I think you missed.

I assumed that you were also a fan.

You know what you do when you assume, don’t you?

Thus any course of action that happens to also serve it warrants scrutiny.

If that’s what you think I’m surprised you asked the question in the first place considering one of the binary choices you provided is essentially d-humping. Your mind is already made up. I also feel you’re moving the goal posts. You asked who is more idiotic, not whose behavior should be under more scrutiny.

So I wonder what “you” you, and from here on that means you personally unless otherwise stated, are referring to. Are you ascribing idiot-shouting behavior to me personally? Or are you referring to the neutral “you,” which can be replaced with “one?” The reason I’m wondering is that I have given no indication that I shout at idiots but your reply could be incorrectly construed in such a way that I do. Which then doesn’t make the motive warning any clearer also. Because it could be a interpreted as meaning I like to be “dominance-humping” and I ought to reflect on that. Or that my reasoning is too Darwinistic. Or that I shouldn’t judge tight calls by small statistical margins. Or that I like correcting people? Etc. It just isn’t clear.

If this was pointed at my personally then you in particular and one in general should keep in mind that the person answering a binary question of the calibre “Which is worse, the plague or cholera?” doesn’t necessarily need to be suffering from either disease to make an assessment. So looping back to your OG query: I would say it’s better not to shout at anyone in general. But I’m also sure you and I after careful deliberation could agree on some exceptions relating to your query that aren’t monkey business. E.g. the idiot could be in danger, the idiot could be a racist abusing the marginalized, the idiot could be hard of hearing, etc. This sort of longer discussion isn’t encouraged by a binary prompt.

If we have defined “idiotic” to a sufficiently objective degree, I think the idiot wins the race. The shouter - although not in the best manner - is at least trying to make the idiot aware of their transgression. It’s a reaction to the idiotic behavior, not out of the blue. And while it will not work in correcting the idiot’s behavior all the time, there is at least the chance that the reaction is memorable to the idiot - public shaming is s powerful tool - which could lead to reflection, and thus prevent a recurrence. It’s these small odds that tilt this seesaw of a question for me.

I would say that’s technically not a bad joke. It just doesn’t come across well given the context of this thread.

You should maybe indicate if you’re critical of this exploitation or in favor. If it’s the latter it would be easier for the mods. And if it’s the former you would lessen the inherent yuckiness people feel when reading this.

Let’s say you’re right and you’ve prevented the birth of Adolf or altered him to send him to another life trajectory. Who is to say that there wouldn’t be another mad person, naturally a man, who would rise to power and commit similar if not even worse crimes. It’s not only the person that made the fuehrer possible, it’s also everything happening in the world, especially politics at the time. So you’ve bumped Adolf but you’ve created Anton who was similarly radicalized but he wasn’t a landscape painter, he was a physics major and he made Germany develop nuclear weapons much faster. So now you have to go back and disturb Anton’s conception. Which brings about fuehrer Armin and so forth. You might be stuck in a time loop you’ll never be able to stop because you can’t control all the variables.

If you enter into starting a family, adding kids through whatever means, and you think this should not alter the relationship, you have another think coming. Kids are hard work. First your focus is to keep them alive and out of trouble. And over time this gradually shifts towards them not becoming a-holes. This takes energy and time, a lot of it. And that’s the most common reason why some couples have much less bedroom fun. They’re exhausted. They’re stressed. People behave differently when they’re exhausted and stressed. Raising kids is a marathon, not a sprint. Ideally, it’s a series of never ending gut wrenching crises until they move out. And truth is it doesn’t even end there. Some relationships handle this better, some don’t. None stay the same. If you think that your current childless relationship is any indication of how this would work with children, and you measure it by loving attention and how much sex you’re having you’re looking at the sky to measure the sea level. Get your head out of the clouds. You have to look at how you handle problems under pressure together. How you can support each other and not look at it as transactional. If that works, you stand a chance of a less bumpy transition into a functional family life.

Of course, every relationship is different. There are many other factors that will play a part and make shit even more complicated. I’m fairly confident though that I’m more right than wrong here with my generalizations.

You couldn’t survive such a radical personality change? Yours changed too. You will probably not win any argument on the assumption that your partner changed into a version is their folks while you stayed the exact same. You’re just the frog in the pot who didn’t notice it got hotter.

I’m a still married father of two.

But we already know what to expect thanks to Stormy Daniels.

It’s where all good engagements start!

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No, I mean engagements to marry.

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Is it just me? It’s just me, is it. Oh, okay.

qA fA qing plaH! Today is a good day to die!