NaibofTabr

Isn’t that the administration’s goal?

Equivalent towing capacity of a Chevy Impala, so yes.

This is less of a truck and more of a truck-shaped go-kart.

After reading the article and the website, I can’t find anything that explicitly says there is no network connection built into the vehicle.

The instrument panel is a screen, and will be used to display the backup camera video. There is some computer capable of handling video processing and displaying the instrument graphics - so more than just low-level electronics to handle the battery and drive control. It could have built-in GPS, it could have 5G, it could still be collecting and sharing data on driving habits &etc, it could be subsidized by that on the backend. Just because those functions aren’t displayed to the end user doesn’t mean they aren’t in the system.

AI is a surveillance technology.

There’s this quote attributed to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter:

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

There are two lessons here. First - the best way to affect meaningful change is to start local. Rather than spending a lot of time agonizing over national politics, get involved in your community - your neighborhood, your town, your apartment building, even just the house you share with your family. Your community will take better care of you and the other people that you care about than any national government ever will.

Second - ultimately the only person whose behavior you can change is your own. Don’t be too harsh with other people when they don’t behave the way that you believe they should. Be a more stringent judge of your own behavior.

But temper that with this:

Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much. Or berate yourself too much either.

Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Baz Lurhmann

In which case anyone who wants to can read the message traffic and make changes to it before passing it on to the receiver.

No, you can’t conduct business this way.

No one can bank online without reliable encryption. No one can transact business online without reliable encryption.

Darths and Droids - Star Wars rewritten as a TTRPG campaign, started in 2007, still regularly updating, fantastic (ab)use of the source material

Also check out Dr. McNinja. It ended years ago but the entire series can be downloaded from archive.org (legally).

The spear in the Other’s heart
is the spear in your own:
you are he.

There is no other wisdom,
and no other hope for us
but that we grow wise.

-attributed to Surak

as written by Diane Duane in Spock’s World

Empathy is not some mere emotion that you feel - a fleeting reaction to some external sensation. Empathy is an intentional shifting of perspective, where you experience another’s circumstances as if they were your own.

This is a skill, meaning that it is something which you learn through practice, and that you do on purpose, until the doing of it becomes instinctive and no longer requires intent.

To say “I do not feel empathy” is to give yourself an excuse not to practice. This is a cop-out, used by weak people. Do not wait to “feel” it before you practice. Always remember you do not practice only for the sake of other people, but for the sake of your own growth and edification.

Just a prank, bro

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Amazon is a terribly exploitative company, but… they might actually be better than Oracle, and AFAIK Bezos isn’t in bed with Trump like Ellison is.

/c/[email protected]

We’re not quite here yet, but… it’s only been 2 months.

So couple things:

1. Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are certainly not untraceable. Public ledger means that all the transactions are publicly visible - if you can associate a wallet to a person or organization then you know where the money went, and there are businesses that specifically do that kind of research. Every single transaction ever is part of the blockchain record. Cryptocurrency is a terrible way to make a clandestine purchase.
2. All currencies are made up (I know, real imfourteenandthisisdeep energy, but still technicallythetruth).

*Edit - A silly caveat to this is that if the US government starts regularly transacting in Bitcoin, it would be very easy to audit… using blockchain means there’s a built-in transaction record… anybody with a little bit of experience in reading the ledger could just track everything.

Other than that you’re absolutely right.

1. Cryptocurrencies are still largely unregulated, and the crypto market has attracted exactly the kind of people you would expect to be most interested in unregulated financial transactions - scammers, thieves, con men, ransomware gangs, money launderers, and anyone who wants buy or sell CSAM, narcotics, weapons, DDOS-as-a-Service, and North Korea’s government funding crew. The crypto market is absolutely chock-full of criminal activity, so it’s entirely reasonable to assume that anyone who wants to participate in that market wants to participate in the crime.
2. As you said, trading physical gold for digital currency is a stupid idea. It’s also uneccessary, because the FBI is already sitting on a collection of cryptocurrencies that have been confiscated through criminal investigations, including large amounts of Bitcoin. It is technically illegal right now for the US government to do anything with that, but that could be changed with a law. There’s nowhere else for that cryptocurrency to go anyway.

It seems likely to me that a play to distribute gold from the reserve is about having an excuse to open it and take gold out, and disappear some of it in the process. It’s a cover for a plan to rob the US.

Uni Jetstream:

Yeah people here are overlooking the Sharpie pen, it’s quite nice.

I’ve read a bit about Teflon. My understanding is that the big health hazard is during the application process, primarily for the factory workers - you really don’t want to breath aerosolized uncured Teflon, or get it in your eyes. It’s not the most hazardous industrial chemical out there, I don’t think there’s any particular ethical issue with manufacturing products with Teflon as long as workers are provided PPE. If it’s a sweatshop product well then there are obviously a lot of ethical issues.

Once it’s cured it’s chemically inert (which is kind of the whole point) - I’m not aware of any research showing that the human body can absorb any harmful chemicals from cured Teflon - basically your stomach acid and digestive tract bacteria can’t do anything to it. You shouldn’t worry overmuch about being harmed by cooking in a Teflon-coated pan, it’s not a heavy metal or anything like that.

That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard. The material is fairly stiff and again, your digestive system can’t break it down. Any small particles should (hopefully) pass through, but larger flakes could get stuck somewhere and then… well your body can’t break it down. It’s going to be there causing a blockage until something dislodges it, it’s not going to bend very much, and it might have sharp enough edges to irritate or damage the surrounding tissue.

And yeah, nothing breaks it down naturally, so it is just going to be in the world forever, gradually eroding into smaller and smaller particles along with all of the other plastic pollution, so yay.

I can’t point to any specific sources on this, it’s from reading various articles over two decades, I’m definitely not an authority.

This concept is inherently flawed. There is no static form of ‘true’ self.

Who you are now is different from who you were five years ago, and who you are tomorrow will be different from who you are now. Who you are changes depending on who is in the room with you, because your relationship with that person changes the context of your actions and interactions.

This is not to say that personality or identity is fungible, but that it is not fixed and there is no end state (no goal).

We do tend to reflect and repeat behaviors that we observe, and I think there’s some truth in the idea that you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. With this in mind, think about who you feel most comfortable with in your life - the people who, when you spend time with them, you feel most at peace with yourself - then try to arrange your life to spend more time with those people.

In regard to “masking”, I’ll just point out that privacy implies that some things are not shared with others. Therefore, to have any privacy in your life some things must be hidden, including some thoughts, feelings and opinions. Having a private life is healthy and normal and doesn’t mean that you are suppressing your “true self”.

some BOFH energy