To add, a majority of those voters discontent isn’t gas, too. They murdered school children, y’all.

It’s not a majority of all Americans, but murder of Iranian civilians and Gazan civilians does break through to many people not on a 24/7 propaganda loop. That mattered in 2024 as it mattered in 2026, to obviously different outcomes.

Got a bit of a push closer to DSAs but… yeah.

Yup. Agree, especially in regards to Biden and Dems being ineffective; it’s kind of weird to hope Trump set a new standard for what happens when a Dem takes office because I very much do not want to see ineffective leadership like that again.

Also, I have a close friend in Missouri and he expressed a similar sadness about that. I hope you and him are mistaken, but I know how short term memory voters have. None the less, there are Democrats everywhere, other states are a nice reminder of that.

To be fair, Trump made overnight changes; this has just been one of the least active Congresses in the history of the county which includes ignoring violations. Basically being effective by being ineffective.

But I’m with you on this one… between Senate filibuster and presidential veto, they go back to the whine approach we’ve had in the past. I hope not, but I’m not quite as enthusiastic as others. (But I am excited to see state legislation change for once, that might have long term ramifications!)

I mean, who better to be security minded than the people whose job it is to spy on people? (But yeah, the open source part is doing the heavy lifting on trust).

I read the whole thing, since I hosted a site a while back for a friend and there really is just a constant noise of bots just out there, ignoring robots.txt, being awful and stupid.

I think the most depressing part is who this is… it’s just fucking there, cloneable, but AI chuds just can’t imagine something being that accessable.

Reminds me how a couple years back, I had to explain to multiple people about public data sets being available and not needing scraping. I laughed then when they wanted to scrape the Dept of Labor for data tables when it’s all literally just pulled from tab delimited files that’re just… there to download. Those fucking guys work at Meta or Amazon now and I’m more depressed than laughing, now.

Quite right! When they email me for advice it’s often AI generated, too. I always come across as the insane person telling them not to trust AI (why even ask me for advice if you’re just going to vibe coded your site anyway…)

My thoughts exactly. I know two folks who are going all in with AI and haven’t even considered any controversy. Feels like they live on another planet. Hell, one of the guys was even showing off his pervert glasses and when I called them pervert glasses he laughed and said he hadn’t heard that before.

I really hope those folks are in the minority.

Ironically, I can’t really get into detailed discussion right now because I’m literally walking to my social psych class I teach, lol.

To the first point though, take a step back and understand that more recent studies have shown empathy to be the normative state of humans. Humans, like most pack animals, need strong intuition and empathy to survive with both their own tribe and others.

That has limitations, of course, as we’re most empathetic to people we identify with or find similarities to. People fight for their kin, not necessarily their neighbor.

I recall a study… I forget the name (author name sounds like Nier) but they found that folks even cooperated more when wearing similar sports paraphernalia, even bridging racial divides. The stakes weren’t huge; just signing a petition, but you can’t necessarily ask for more from an academic paper.

As to the point of being on offense, that’s probably outside the realm of social psych but I’ll try with what I know. I know helping behaviors tend to get stronger when people feel they have the agency to do so. Studies are quite a bit more tame than taking arms or something, but the Good Samaritan study kinda shows this. People running late aren’t willing to help someone clearly in need, but people running early are. Imagine the parallel to society-- who has the money, the time, and the energy to help?

Edit: the comment on walking to class is real and not a flex, btw. T-minus 15 min now, though it’s only undergrad and we’re teaching love and friendship today, which is totally unrelated, lol.

Well, no, putting people through distress in this manner isn’t a necessary step to producing empathy, nor is hardship a way to reliably produce empathy. I thought so for a while, too, except there’s far too many people who suffer hardship only to turn it around and want to cause it to others.

What is shown to be effective is an educational approach, as learning about power dynamics and injustice tends to reduce obedience. Authoritarians fear education because it creates that kind of person, hence why “colleges are woke” and such persist. That, and finding common ground with “outgroups”, as people are much more empathetic to those they identify with.

Most ethics boards cap how far you can go, since the original caused participants distress. It’s not too hard to replicate the effect without being a monster.

I have used AI a little for Linux adaptation but I do want to caution overuse since it’ll sometimes give you really bad advice, like regarding important dependencies and such. Sometimes it cites info for a wrong distro or outdated info, so it’s not so much made up BS, just bad search results essentially.

Even in the early days with a Vive, I found games like Crypt of the Necrodancer and Hollow Knight to be weirdly immersive in VR mode.

I think it’s the blocking out of the outside world that did it for me, plus who cares about the old screen door effect when it’s pixel graphics?

Iirc, there is also a way to play old emulated games in a made up 1990s bedroom on a CRT in VR, but I can’t remember how.

(And on the topic of emulation, I also wonder if they ever made progress on the emulated Dolphin VR games? Star Fox was a fantastic experience but was still a bit glitchy a decade ago.)

Yes… but it’s really… WINDOWS 98.

Funny enough, I already guessed what parts of the brain they were talking about.

I always thought it was fun to think of the brainstem as the Id to the midbrain and cortex’ Ego and Superego (specially the prefrontal cortex, that’s my favorite part of a brain). Freud was pretty coked out of his mind but those terms remain kinda cool to me as a metaphor, lol.

This is the correct reply. AM is trash, but we even have highway signs that mention AM stations for certain road condition alerts and stuff. Most places don’t rely on it, but when you’re in the mountains it’s useful.

Hell, even here in CA we only barely started getting cell signals in places like Malibu pass and the like. I can usually get cell service and FM on the 5 or PCH but the moment you leave those, all bets are off.

I don’t understand the desire to not use a desktop PC for all the power it provides, but I’m not an everyday normal consumer. For a wireless VR set attached to a computer, it sounds lovely-- I’d like a cheaper, gutted version that’s strictly for streaming.

But I suppose for now, I can stick to my Index, especially with prices for parts the way they are. I still much prefer it over Quest 3, tether and all.

You know, you’re not supposed to cut over the center dividing line when you turn but plenty of people do if you’re not making a perfect arc with your turn (and I mean, just a little bit). A friend got pulled over for it. We both agreed it was probably racial.

It certainly sounds “more legitimate” than pulling them over for a failure to use a blinker or doing too sharp of a left turn, as friends and victims of DWB can attest to having happened to them.

Although given the paper trail here, it is probably easier to fight in court.

I’ll never understand why anyone would swallow very hot drinks. The article is mostly about that, hot coffee or tea can still be pleasantly warm and fine. But I knew people who drink their coffee painfully hot and… why? To feel ALIVE?

Granted I also don’t understand why people smoke or drink alcohol so… eh.