I keep joining discord rooms because I just want to search for something specific real quick… I don’t want to dig up my real account or join, I just want to take a peek inside and dig up the answer to my question

Almost every time I sign up with a username and get just enough time to start looking for what I need before it decides to kick me out for “suspicious activity”

At this point I just search the project name when it happens… I’m usually there to evaluate a project, and if that’s not enough I just drop it

But again, it’s all for their personal benefit. A human Their money is managed to grow by any means, and that has a lot of knock on effects

They generally either put their money in funds with the highest returns (which often use unethical and illegal but accepted practices, and the best ones require large minimum deposits), or they directly own large percentages of a company and use that influence when it suits them

I see where you’re coming from, but I think the line is blurry. Their direct personal actions don’t capture the full extent of their actions, but this also assumes full responsibility for their ownership, where honestly it’s impossible to know what level of emissions the companies would have if the billionaire’s wealth machine wasn’t involved

I wouldn’t say this is totally unfair to say though - at the end of the day they own what they own, and letting others do your dirty work doesn’t absolve you of responsibility

The fact that their life would barely be affected if they added emissions to their criteria for investment makes this worse - these are the figures the billionaires should be looking at to make decisions

A billionaire is a business themselves. One person can’t even passively possess a billion dollars without tons of support staff

If you separate the direct actions of the person from the actions of the staff required to maintain and grow their wealth, you’re missing most of the reason why billionaires are so harmful to society

For me it was a mix of that, plus “great, so you’re going to close everything maybe was using, sometimes restart some of it, and everything is going to be on the wrong screen and virtual desktop. Now that I’ve spent several minutes getting back to where I was yesterday, let’s see what garbage I don’t want that you’ve added”

Linux has its own inconveniences, but I don’t regret the switch… It gets better every day while windows gets worse

No, I also made the switch and honestly it’s pretty much worked out of the box for me. I’ve got the integrated graphics with a discrete card too - I was worried initially, but it seems to handle it fine

I’ve had some sound issues, and a few games run worse or need some tweaking to run, but after dual booting for a while I’m considering wiping windows for extra storage

There’s inconveniences, but with windows getting worse and Linux getting better I’m feeling pretty good about the deal

No, they’re not people. They’re royalty

So the CEO gets less than half their salary for the year?

Sounds like a great deal for the company. Until, you know, the whole thing collapses because they laid off the workers who kept the whole thing running

Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. Why are they here? If it’s to troll, don’t give them what they want. If it’s for social interaction… Why are they venturing out of their echo chamber?

Every interaction with a community pulls you slightly closer to the group consensus. You can fight it to some extent, but we’re wired to fit in with the tribe

Social rejection is wired similar to pain in our brains - it’s far more salient, far more memorable and impactful, than normal interactions.

The highest form of this is rejection by the community - it hurts most when everyone’s attention is on you and they all reject you. Even a single person quietly reaching out afterwards is like a lifeline - it stands out to you. It takes hundreds or thousands of “normal” interactions to counteract one extreme negative one

A supportive community back home doesn’t counteract the impacts from an away game. Don’t go to their turf, let them come to ours. Do not feed them - we have better content, they’ll lose members to us, and if we do it right they’ll shrink until their echo chambers can no longer sustain themselves

I just pass the create table statements after the instructions. It does pretty good up to 2 or 3 tables, but it will start to make mistakes when things get complicated

On the plus side, it’ll generate tedious code very well - double checking it is less draining than writing it yourself. Especially because I make more typos than it does - I often use it to get a starting point, then write the business logic myself

What do you mean? It works the same way, the opinion of the community will pull you closer to the group consensus. Too much exposure will have horrible things you don’t really believe spilling out of your mouth

Don’t go there, don’t spread word about it, don’t feed it in any way. It’s like flood water - pull others out of it if you can, but minimize your exposure

As to shutting them down if you have the ability? Shutting down a cesspool is good - it fragments the echo chamber, and some members won’t make the migration. The only question is if I trust the one making that decision to remain impartial

Therapy is also about fit. It takes something like 5 tries to get a good match - both the kid and the parent need to be on board, or the whole thing will end up as a bad experience for everyone involved

On one hand, I kinda get it. Corporations do things, and if they get killed over small oversights there will be very real effects for many people

On the other hand, holy fuck, look around. Everything is going to shit, the planet is literally dying and we’re not even living it up anymore

be sick Warn others I’m sick They make a show of not avoiding me Come up with even more reasons to approach me like some twisted bravery test

Why are people like this? Just leave me alone, I don’t want to spread illness and I don’t have the energy to deal with you today

I always thought of it as a machine… Like a crappy auto doc that’s actually just a soda machine that’s extra slow and noisy for dramatic effect, probably advertised by a snake oil salesman

How about the opposite? A decentralized system, avoiding concentrating power in any one place, and focusing on building platforms for coordination to act on larger scales

No, the community needs to cyber bully them off the platform. They need to feel rejection for their words, not censorship. Censorship lets them frame themselves as the victim as they seek out a smaller echo chamber on the fringes. They need to learn their words will turn the community against them

We still have to live with them. We can’t ignore them or silence them - we have to correct them

Then you should definitely go vegan. A vegan diet comes with the least amount of plant deaths and plant suffering, since lifestock is being fed with billions of individual plants before being slaughtered. You can save all of them.

Sounds like there is still some room for improvement in terms of “eating as sustainably as they can” then.

What is your goal, and what are your methods to get there?

You genuinely asking yourself that means far more to me than winning some Internet argument. Our goals are mostly aligned - I want you and your movement to succeed. But your methods push our shared goals further away.

It’s frustrating.

Ok, I’ll draw the through line for you

Meme about bees being animals or not, to know if honey fit the rules for veganism. No discussions about the well being of bees, the environmental impact of beekeeping, or anything else was present. Only if it followed a rule or not

I find this ridiculous - it’s lost the plot. Being vegan isn’t some cosmic good - the farming industry is horrible in numerous ways, but bees cannot be battery farmed.

Industrial honey production requires large untamed fields of wildflowers, which I consider good. Bees are good pollinators, I consider them good. Bees are dying out due to unrelated human activity, which is bad. Honey production requires more bees, and harming the delicate insects is disincentivized by nature - the well being of the bees is required for honey production

I then made it clear I was operating under my own moral framework, which from what I know of beekeeping (and I could be missing information), judges beekeeping as a good thing

I then alluded to my own moral framework, which recognizes that to live, the suffering of life is required. We are animals, and while we can minimize the suffering, we can’t live without it. Damage to the environment causes more suffering to life than anything else, so it’s the priority

Then you asked if I was already vegan, I said no. I explained that I eat little animal products, ethically sourced when practical. You took that opportunity to say I should do more - but by eating meat rarely I reduce the meat consumption of others easily, doing far more to further what should be our shared goals than I ever could individually

I don’t need or want praise for my eating habits - I want my habits to spread. I want as many people to do what they can when they can - that’s all I ask of others, and that messaging works. I’ll tell them it saves money if that’s their concern, I’ll tell them of the horrors of the meat industry in passing, I’ll tell them about how obesity is unnatural and result of highly processed foods, or the health implications. I tell them what will resonate with them, without judgement.

I know my goals, and I’m using the best methods I have available to spread them. I’m not confused at all - I know my goals, I’m conscious of my choices. I’m deliberate in my words and actions.

Our goals are mostly aligned, and yet I believe your messaging undermines mine. Our goals require collective action. You demand more of me under your moral framework, yet I feel no understanding from you, you’ve offered no new information, only judgement. Why is that?

This is why I find it confused.

I just told you how I’m doing what I can, and having great success convincing others to do the same

I told you I don’t subscribe to your moral system

You’ve entirely ignored most of what I’ve said and failed to engage me in any area where we have common ground. Instead, you attacked me for not doing more under your own value system

You’re working at cross purposes to your goals… You’re a hardliner. This approach is why some of my family gatherings have a vegan and a “normal” option for foods that taste basically the same. This is why I can’t reach some of my family members on this topic - they were attacked and talked down to for their eating habits, now it’s about winning and losing for them

Veganism is not the highest ethics of eating habits. The correct answer to my concern for the suffering of plants was a fruititarian diet… But it isn’t higher in my own value system, due to the transport involved

Doing more for me means growing my own food, and maybe keeping chickens. Maybe hunting the occasional deer. It means reintegrating with the ecosystem… But I’m not able to do that yet

Also, voting with your wallet is a lie to keep people complacent. Systematic issues must be solved systematically - already there’re huge subsidies for the meat industry to keep prices down and for big agro to over produce certain crops. This can only be changed through collective action

So if you don’t want me to see you as confused, ask yourself “what are my goals?” and “am I using the best methods available to me to meet my goals?”

There are people basically immune to caffeine. There are extreme caffeine addicts. I can drink two pots myself, and I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine

The metaphor works because it doesn’t matter how much coffee you drink - it matters how fast you drink it. And that’s a limit set by the business - the size of the cups and how quickly they’re refilled

At this point, I feel like you’re not even trying to understand what I’m saying…