iamthemonster

For people from outside the silicon valley bubble it's entirely incomprehensible that technological development in a capitalist society would bring about a UBI or post-scarcity for the broader population. When have the oligarchs been altruistic in history? The closest to altruism would be the construction of self-aggrandising monuments.

I just don't understand why anyone would think silicon valley oligarchs are more altruistic than the other oligarchs in history? Even if human labour were devalued in future, oligarchs would continue to extract as much as they could out of others. You don't become an oligarchs unless you are already an expert at exploiting others.

I'm in engineering in the oil and gas industry rather than IT like most commenters here, but since it's a very highly volatile industry I'm starting to think the same way.

As far as I can tell, staying in the same industry but at a vastly lower level would still net me about 60% of my current salary, and I'd be reasonably confident of still getting 70% with enough searching/networking even in a downturn.

All alternative careers where I'm starting from scratch, I'd be lucky to start on 50% of my current salary.

The smart thing would probably be to turn to some form of entrepreneurship. My skillset is in working with massive high-risk hazardous facilities so it doesn't lend itself at all well to small scale entrepreneurship but setting up on your own is ideal when you're later in your career as you have the financial buffer in case you fail, and you're not fighting against age discrimination.

I love that you can play every previous version for free too! I THINK I like the current version the best, but there are some other good versions in the past, like just before food disappeared (I actually thought food was a great mechanic).

Now that I'm getting back into it, I am tempted to stick with the current version for a couple of years so I can really learn it.

I'm giving ToME a go on steam deck now, I like the idea of having more of a narrative and open world. I feel like the dungeon in DCSS is more like a series of individual encounters.

It's really sobering how much your use of international data impacts the failure rates. If you limit yourself to US historical data then I think about 3.5% withdrawal rate is bulletproof. But in your data I managed to get 2.2% failure rate when withdrawing just 2.5% p.a for 20 years!

Yeah I'm on a similar path myself. Instead of punishment, I connect with my kids first and then make them reflect on their behaviour and what impact it had.

It is very inefficient in the short term! It takes a lot of time and effort in the moment.

But now that mine are 10 and 12, parenting is not much work at all because they've developed skills over the long term that allows them to reflect on their behaviour. As parents we also model good apologies too.

I'm not ideologically opposed to punishment entirely, but it has never really had a place. The closest was when a child stayed out past their curfew and the natural consequence was that it showed they weren't ready for managing their time and we shortened their curfew.

But I do know other parents whose kids genuinely respond much better to very simple and firm commands. A lot of kids would just be confused and frustrated by our family's method of having to reflect on our behaviour verbally so often.

Does your browser not automatically translate? It took an extra 2 seconds to load but that's it.

Parent of a Year 7 kid here (that's the first year of high school and a very common age at which all kids have phones).

The social media ban has been a wild success in preventing 11-year-olds having their social connections locked into the major social media platforms. Prior to the ban, if you weren't on insta you weren't connected. Now my kid talks to other kids on the phone or sends SMS, but also doesn't really stay in constant contact with their peers outside of school hours, they do their own thing or organise socialising themselves.

It's been hugely positive for interrupting the hostile social media companies from hijacking kids' social connections for the purpose of addictive algorithms to drive ad revenue.

From what I hear, once social media use is embedded in the older teenagers, they are all working around the ban very easily. The social media companies have made no real effort to enforce the ban or comply at anything more than a minimum level, and I wouldn't expect them to as they have absolutely no concept of social licence.

It's beautiful to see civil society take back one little bit of freedom from psychopathic oligarchs.

In 1990 it was only 5% of Americans and now it's 50%. In the UK it's 85% but a better comparison is probably France who are in the Schengen Area so only 60% have a passport.

If I lived in France I doubt I would travel outside of the Schengen Area.

Where I live in Western Australia, it is perfectly normal for 10-year-olds to be getting on their bikes and going round to their friends' houses after school.

The swing towards "Fuck Around And Find Out" parenting has been going for the last ten years here, and everybody gives you rapturous applause when you encourage kids to have their own independent playtime.

I have also never seen a man at a playground get dirty looks, in fact there are more men out with their kids than women on the weekends (fewer during weekdays).

Absolutely. My kid just started high school shortly after our social media ban started, and they only interact with their friends outside of school via phone calls and text, without the interference of addiction-optimised algorithms. It's superb.

I always had it in my control go prevent my child using social media, but I couldn't control every other child in the school using it as the way to stay in touch. This is the kind of collective action that is beneficial for kids.

I will forever remember my experience with the development of a new tool in my job as an engineer in hazardous gas processing. We had a consultant who was developing this tool that worked in a double-act with one of our engineers, and they sat there watching us use the tool. Whenever there was something we found confusing or didn't work how we wanted it to, she just said "oh I'll change that right now, give me a sec... ok press refresh it should be working now".

This tool was mainly just a form with some free-text fields, some drop-down and email notifications of each workflow step. But the fact that it was developed by constantly iterating with the users, meant that it has been adopted universally and been incredibly efficient at managing this particular workflow.

It's the only example I can remember in my 20-year career where that happened. It is more typical that there's a vast disconnect between the people with the industry experience and the people with the skills to apply fundamental IT skills to product development.

In my particular example, the IT skills required were probably completely trivial for a professional, and all the value came from tight cooperation with users.

The Noongar calendar from the south west of Western Australia is, of course, a much better fit to the local climate. We are just starting Djeran, with probably the best weather of the year, then it'll be Makuru, with by far the most rain and plenty of rainbows, and coldest temperatures. Djilba is when it just starts warming up again and at the end of Djilba is wildflower season which is probably the most beautiful time in the region. Then it's Kambarang around October November which is perfect temperature again, and then we are into Birak which is "first summer" and Bunuru "second summer". Obviously it's linked to food availability rather than the weather but it does fit far better than the British four seasons.

I've got a 12 year old in Australia and the social media ban has been amazing. Since the algorithm-distraction-machine is parasitical on users' social network, the kids just have little interest in it because their social network is not there. They aree making phone calls to each other and riding round each other's houses on bikes.

Older teenagers who already has social media accounts have generally found workarounds, but the young teenagers are just not joining up.

It's been an excellent success story of collective action overcoming the harmful effects of private profit-motivated interests. The tech giants literally could not care less about the mental health of some teenagers in Australia, but their parents do.

It's easy to simply ban one teenager from using social media but removing a teenager from their social network is a date worse than death from their perspective. So once the parasite of social media has infected teenagers' social network and established itself, teenagers were really lumped with the choice of "do I lose contact with my friends or continue using this distraction machine specifically designed to get me hooked?" and they will always choose the latter.

I was skeptical initially, but having experienced the effects, I'm incredibly impressed that for once we have put a red line against foreign private companies harming our citizens.

My solution to this is that I ring my bell when I'm far from people, usually twice while I'm still a fair way away. It just gets pedestrians conscious that there's a bike around, while also being far enough away that it's not going to surprise them and I don't think they assume it's an aggressive bell.

My least favourite is when a cyclist speeds past and shouts "on ya right" (I'm in Australia) but they shout it when they're so close that there's no chance of hearing and understanding in time.