Give a man a raise and you feed him for one year. Teach a man to unite for regular raises and good benefits and you’ll feed him for the rest of his life.

Real answer, Elon made it more friendly to the far right (the racists and Nazis) and unbanned a bunch of them who had previously been banned for being too racist and Nazi. Then he introduced a subscription service where you pay to have Twitter spread your content.

So that started a doom loop: The far right bought the additional views, people who didn’t appreciate the extra racism and Nazi views on their timeline left Twitter, but the view boost was paid for so it kept pushing those views to the fewer people who remained, then THAT volume of hate pushed more people away, etc.

It probably got to the point that they couldn’t keep paid views high enough with just people who care about politics and they had to just push at all costs, eventually to you.

This happened at my work with internal docs as we switched from an ancient intranet to a new service that had a ton more features but no backwards compatibility so all the pages got updated to PDFs with helpful links that went nowhere and it caused chaos for like 3 months.

It’s all a hypothetical, feel free to just decide you are that type of person. No harm in it.

In real life though, if money is no object, the difference between a 2017 normal car and a 2025 luxury car is literally just “do you want extra features and a bigger screen on a car that will last longer?” It just doesn’t make sense to get the cheaper version, unless you are giving up something else because you only have a limited amount of money.

They can put the reviewed items on the coffee table to keep them on camera, and it’s more professional looking than a kitchen or child’s room.

The US tried to ban it and it just led to gangs becoming super powerful because they sold people illegal alcohol.

So it’s not really a policy choice like “this is safe enough, this is not safe enough” it’s legal because making it illegal doesn’t work.

But like, you and I didn’t buy those TVs. If people who needed TVs used the checks for that, great. Everyone else used it for car payments or food or whatever they needed.

That only works if literally every landlord is conspiring together. If they’re not, then people will flock to the landlords that don’t increase the price, or only increase a little. Meanwhile, you think car salesmen will see an extra $1000/mo and not try to take advantage? Why do you think landlords will successfully take all $1000 and nobody else will get a penny?

Everyone will try to get that $1000/mo, but they will have to compete with each other and the people with the money are rational actors who will pick the best use for their funds.

Meanwhile, the question of whether it’s inflationary will depend on where the money comes from. If it’s matched by a tax that pulls money out of the system at the same time the UBI puts money in, then it won’t be inflationary it will just redistribute wealth from the taxed (in every plan I’ve seen, the wealthy) to everyone else.

Seems like the weakest links are doing fine. Even the weakest among them had a bit of idiosyncratic trouble but they got a cash infusion and they’re fine.

I honestly don’t understand the math of not releasing movies and un-releasing games. People say tax purposes but I’d think streaming is essentially pure profit, hard to imagine not being able to make 20% of your money back or whatever credit you get for taxes.

The tale of the internet has been curation, and I would describe it a little differently.

First we had hand made lists of website (Yahoo directory, or we had a list of websites literally written in pen in a notebook saying “yahoo.com” and “disney.com”).

Then it was bot-assisted search engines like Google.

Then there was so much content we didn’t even know where to start with Google, so we had web rings, then forums, then social media to recommend where to go. Then substack style email newsletters from your chosen taste makers are a half-step further curated from there.

If that is all getting spammed out of existence, I think the next step is an AI filter, you tell the AI what you like and it sifts through the garbage for you.

The reasons we moved past each step are still there, we can’t go back, but we can fight fire with fire.

With enough approval, the US could do anything. It’s either Constitutional or it would be Constitutional after an amendment is passed and approved.

I don’t know if there are laws about it but most places will let you return for store credit at least.

Yeah I similarly got the SUV because of kids and I think there are use cases for them, they’re just vastly overpurchased and a tax could curb that.

I own an SUV and I’d still vote for a parking tax on them. Or pay per pound, estimated of course. You don’t want people deciding to go for the mega F-250s because they aren’t subject to the SUV tax.

Again, sure, but dressing with a feminine aesthetic is not a kink any more than being goth is a kink. People don’t have to abide by your gender norms.

As long as we’re careful here. People can be however they want to be. If you’re saying people shouldn’t be making memes that assume all people are like them, yes. If you’re saying living how they want is “involving everyone else in your kink” we’re getting into iffy territory.

Libby app.

It’s an incredibly popular podcast. There’s every possibility the connotations are wrong about this specific individual. I wouldn’t try to dig too deep into it.

What is the percentage of the Western world that believes in profit motive and private ownership of property, 90%? I don’t think it’s BECAUSE they are religious conservatives.

I don’t think religions are inherently socialistic. There’s a socialist reading of the text, but in terms of like the historical role of the Catholic church it was more like a government than a commune. Governments aren’t inherently socialistic (unless you’re using a pretty broad view of the word). They help the poor and set rules to follow but they’re only directly managing their portion (10%-30%) of the economy, the rest can be anything.