Evidence for “the elites” eating children?

Absolute statements are easy to dismiss as you only need to come up with a single counter example to prove them wrong.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You can just say that you’re not coming and leave it at that. You can tell them that you have your reasons and you wish not to talk about it but don’t lie. That just makes you the asshole.

Sounds like the left-wing version of pizza gate.

In most cases people get paid by the hour. The wage is compensation for your time, not effort. If a new technology comes along that increases your work productivity you’ll still end up working the same hours because that’s what you’re being paid for. I’d say that there’s still a real difference between spending 8 hours a day swinging an axe compared to running a chainsaw. Same amount of time is spent working but the effort needed goes down while productivity increases.

However, this isn’t always the case. I work in construction and it’s not untypical that someone has a fixed price for completing a job. There you are not compensated for your time per se but effort. If you’re quick you do get to “go home early.” However this doesn’t lead to people working less either - quite the opposite. They get greedy, hoard too much work, rush it, the quality suffers and they tend to get really stressed out and easily irritated.

Propaganda is not a term I’d personally use. Makes it sound more systematic than I believe it is. I’m sure that on every social media platform there are also the state-level actors wanting to put their thumb on the scale but how I see it is that there’s simply this Overton window of acceptable speech and views on each platform and it’s mostly set up by the loud minority of “activists” on that platform. People grow accustomed to encountering their views there and it becomes normalized and creates the illusion that this is a commonly held view among the userbase there independent of whether it really is. People quickly learn that expressing certain sentiment reliably gets them praise and approval whereas others result in them being attacked and ostracized. This then leads to an echo chamber where that small minority with the most extreme views basically holds the rest of the platform as hostage. If one tries to bring in nuance it tends to get viewed as opposition and that person gets labeled as the other. This leads them to then just self-censoring, remaining silent or simply parroting the same cliches even if they don’t agree on the details. It is in a way exploitation of loneliness because group membership is what it ultimately boils down to: if you want to be accepted to the group then here’s the stack of views you’re to agree with - please sign below or get the fuck out.

They’re expressing a sentiment, not making a factual statement.

Ofcourse AI can improve things - it already has. Even LLMs have their use cases. However while improving some things it can meanwhile also make other things much worse.

Thank god the service providers here ditched data caps on their plans like 15 year ago.

I feel that way about meaningless things that are trending on social media. I might wake up one day and a new term like hawk tuah has appeared or I see a headline about a sydney sweeney controversy and my first though is that I don’t know what that is or who that is and I’m glad that I don’t. Even better if I don’t hear about it at all - it’s just noise.

I’d totally run away with it.

Wait and let time take care of that.

Needing to look older isn’t something you need to do unless you’re an actor or a 16 year old trying to buy beer.

Some number of years in my teens browsing mostly /b/.

Looking back it’s interesting to see how much the company you spend your time in makes you become like them. It pretty successfully radicalized me into many stereotypical right-wing beliefs. Then when Trump got elected I over-corrected to the other extreme. I’ve since settled somewhere in the middle and now it’s curious to see this exact same influence on other people I hang with. I was under the illusion that the thoughts and beliefs were mine but they weren’t. I simply adopted the views of the group wholesale. Then I discarded them all and did the exact same thing again from the other extreme. We’re so gullible.

I don’t hate much of anything to begin with so not that.

Nowadays I’m self-employed but back in my previous job I was paid by the hour. I earn exactly the same amount of money independent of whether I spend the whole day cutting steel with a hacksaw or an angle grinder but from my perspective as an employee, the angle grinder sure saves me a ton of effort. Same applies to other tools, better workwear and so on. Yeah, I don’t get to go home at 12pm because the better tools were so much faster but it sure made the 8 hours I spent at the jobsite that much less unpleasant. Naturally that is even more so the case now that I’m the beneficiary of the work that got done quicker.

I honestly can’t believe how cynical some people are here. I truly don’t envy you.

Better technology frees more time for other tasks. Whether that’s work or leisure depends on the individual. Everyone has the same 24 hours a day independent of how you use them. Most people don’t just sit and do nothing. To even suggest that things like an electric stove, washing machine, lawnmower or a bicycle aren’t saving people real time on tasks they’d have to do either way is ridiculous.

I hate leaving a dying animal to suffer even more than I hate ending that suffering.

A so called “solved world” is the best case scenario when it comes to AI but it’s not guranteed nor can anyone give you a timeline for it.

Washing machine.

Also, lighter work loads and less time consuming are different arguments - unless you mean no technology has ever resulted in neither, which is a rather bold statement.

People complaining about it online.

I found a wounded squirrel lying on a walk path a few years back. I first thought it was already dead but upon closer inspection it was still breathing. I didn’t see any visible injuries so I have no idea what had happened to it.

I carried it into the forest, placed it on a stump and crushed its head with a large stick. It was as quick as it can be and I think I did the right thing but god damn I felt shitty about it for multiple days after. Red squirrels are my favorite wild animals around here. I just hate having to be the one who has to make the decision to end a life. I don’t feel like it’s mine to make.

I have an old pet gerbil too and I often wonder what I’d do if something happened all of a sudden and it was obvious it’s in a lot of pain and needs to be put down quickly. The quick way is to just slam it onto the ground at full force but holy fuck I don’t even want to think about having to do that. The alternative is a fabric bag tied around my truck’s exhaust but those are some really uncomfortable final minutes. An enclosed container and a bottle of nitrogen would be the ideal method I believe. That leads to loss of consciousness and suffocation without the sense of suffocating (which is triggered by excess carbon dioxide).

In my truck I carry a hatchet for just this reason. A friend had to strangle a dying racoon once because they didn’t have anything to hit it with.