At one point after Google bought YouTube, I signed into YT and was horrified to find that my username was replaced with my real name. I hadn’t been asked or alerted to a change, it was rolled out silently. I changed it back immediately, because holy shit that’s invasive. But yes, Google/YouTube forced real names (at least at that point in time.)

have such hubris that they believe those averse effect only affect others

TBF there is a lot of variability in how cannabis affects different people. I’ve got a friend who had to quit because it made him extremely paranoid, to the point that he’d hallucinate. That isn’t universal by a long shot. I haven’t experienced paranoia or hallucinations, the biggest side effect I’ve experienced is sleepiness. Meanwhile my friend found it harder to sleep while high because his brain kept playing tricks on him. Very different brains, very different results.

Though I don’t doubt that plenty of people misjudge their abilities while high, just as they misjudge their abilities when drunk. But it’s important to note that it isn’t necessarily hubris that makes a person say, “Weed doesn’t do that to me.” Some of us genuinely experience different effects. You can’t truly know what’s going on in someone’s head unless you’re the one living in it.

flailing pussies

New band name

I know compliments we’ve received aren’t necessarily the answer, but it’s hard to think of anything that could top when a former coworker had a baby and told me, "I hope she grows up to be just like you."

Damn, you’re both lucky things didn’t go worse. “I told them it was too dangerous, then I left them alone anyway, and they died from their injuries” would be a hell of a thing to have on one’s conscience, let alone one thing to admit on the defendant’s stand.

I mean, you’re (presumably) an adult who can take responsibility for your own actions, but if she was truly concerned for your safety, abandoning you makes no sense. No matter how skilled my partner might be, I’d be waiting at the edge watching like a hawk, not saying anything, just making sure their stunt didn’t end the way I feared it would. There’s plenty of time for arguments about it when we’re both back on solid ground. Literally turning away and walking off at the height of a dangerous act while alone in nature doesn’t say “I’m concerned about your safety” as much as it says “I’m emotionally-immature and can’t prioritize your actual well-being above my personal feelings.”

Glad to hear she’s an ex.

That’s so bad for a child’s development. A computer can’t guide a kid’s hand to practice fine motor skills. It can’t impart social skills to help kids interact with each other. It can’t help kids revolve conflicts with each other, or handle behaviors that require a human touch. Imagine a couple kids fighting because they can’t share - what’s a computer gonna do? A kid can just ignore its instructions. What’s to stop a kid from physically attacking a robo-nanny or whatever fresh hell gets developed in this field?

I work with kids with difficult behaviors. There are ethical boundaries we need to be aware of. Will a robo-nanny be imparted with those rules? How accountable would it be if it did something ethically questionable? What will it be trained on - actual knowledge of children’s psychology (in which case, using a robot at all should be discounted right off, as children thrive on human interaction)? Or will it be trained on what parents/teachers have already been doing, which would inevitably result in being trained on outdated techniques that don’t follow updates in science? If a robot thinks spanking, isolation, or withholding food is okay, that’d be extremely troubling. There’s so much that could go wrong, and knowing this tech isn’t being designed with ethics in mind makes this whole endeavor terrifying.

Are parents going to be comfortable with their kids being alone in a room without an adult? A group of kids could simply band together to lock the robot in a closet or something and let chaos reign. They could figure out how to power it down, or throw things at it until it stops functioning. A kid having a tantrum can be a powerful force, potentially injuring other children in the act, and I highly doubt a robot alone could handle that situation effectively. Where I work it can take a team of adults with blocking pads, and coordination with even more adults to clear other students from the area. Sometimes those other kids are playing games and don’t want to leave, and it takes a trusted adult to convince them that yeah, no, we need to move now. Which brings us to the relationship the teachers have with the students, and how it is crucial to gaining what’s called “instructional control,” which basically means, “this kid will listen to your instructions.” Can a robot foster that? Do we want a robot to be able to foster that? I don’t like the idea of kids personifying machines to that extent, and we’re quickly learning how damaging (literally, it can cause brain damage) that can be for young minds.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say this whole topic is an ethical clusterfuck.

Same boat. I work with small kids, oblivious to politics, full of hope for the future because that’s how they should feel. I clock in and lose myself in their version of the world for 8 hours a day. It’s no wonder why I’m actually happier at work than at home these days.

It’s true and I hate it

I think about that one-off joke a lot these days. I was already an adult, but stating that Israel was a threat was still verboten. The tides on zionism have turned a lot in the past few years. Rick’s metaphorical dance around the topic, attempting to clarify that his position had nothing to do with Judaism but rather with the state itself, is a hallmark of the era in which it was made. I can’t help but wonder how that joke will be viewed as time goes on. Not that Rick would be proven wrong (Israel’s doing a bang-up job of showing he was right), but the “dance” around the topic will change as more and more people grow up with Israel’s threat being blatantly obvious.

Well, that’s one way to start the new Axis powers. The internal fascist structure could be a gamble (usually even other fascist leaders want to have more authority than deference), but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

What a thing to read as I went to take my first bite of the day.

Breakfast has been postponed.

"I apologise it was taken that way. I was with a group of friends and there was nothing serious about it.”

Haven’t we heard that enough by now to know that’s a pathetic, bullshit excuse? What you say with friends reveals something about you and how you think. The guy could’ve said nothing and he’d have been fine, but for some reason the idea of taking over Iceland was in his mind and for some reason he felt comfortable making light of it. If infringing on another country’s sovereignty is such a non-issue that he feels comfortable joking about it, he’s clearly not fit to be an ambassador. (Though as a Trump-appointee, it’s hardly surprising he’s not fit for the job.)

Trump declares himself the acting president of Venezuela.

He also thinks it’s fine to kidnap the president of Venezuela.

Well, if both those things are true…

Oh snap, you’re right. I saw that earlier today too and thought it was weird.

In b4 bUt YOu dIDn’T aNSwEr thE qUesTiOn

We need some kind of de-Redditing step-by-step manual or something. Lately I’ve been coming across some really silly arguments by people with relatively new accounts, clearly unaware that Lemmy has a different style. Some of the things that fly on Reddit aren’t going to go far here. We know we’re not obligated to play by stupid rules.

Name-calling? From me? Where?

However, the population of the earth increases year over year. At a certain point, we have to stop doing that. How do you feel we should handle that change?

Now this is a better question. I’m sure there can be sophisticated answers, but I feel like a “gestures broadly” at the state of the world can suffice. That is, population increase has been declining, and also many don’t want to bring a child into this world due to worries about the future.

Not to mention, redistribution of wealth would provide more than enough resources for each person. I’d rather take that route than try to control birth rates through artificial limits. But it seems that right now, for many people, just knowing the road humanity is heading down is enough to keep us from reproducing.

You realize not everyone wants to have 10 children, right? A lot of people don’t want any, or are fine with one or two. I grew up in a family of 4 kids and even in the 90s many people thought that was “a lot.” Nice reductio ad absurdum, though. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an example in the wild.

Glad to see you here, I was actually thinking about your situation when I was reading the part about “hidden kids.”

Every step the Chinese government has made here is absurd. Then again, it seems many politicians really don’t see the rest of us as humans, just as a mass to control. I love to see that the young women are like, “Yeah, no, fuck all of this. We’re done with you telling us what to do.”

I’m pretty sure the only posts I’ve put on Facebook in the past five years are all a version of, “Hey, I’m just checking in so y’all know I’m still alive.” I haven’t updated my personal information on there in about a decade.

I asked this same question to my older coworkers back when I was 20. The main answer I got was: travel, travel, travel! “Travel before you have kids.” “Travel before you start a long-term career.” “Travel before you buy a house.”

Naturally, being a Millennial, all three of those things became non-issues. 🙃

So let me give some advice for the ages instead, regardless of what the future may hold for you:

• Never stop learning

• It’s okay to not know what you want to do with life

• And, especially in a post-truth, AI-infested world, question everything!

Take the time to learn what logical fallacies are (at least the common ones.) You WILL encounter them, and knowing when you or someone else is using faulty logic can keep you from harm, whether it be from another person (like what we see in politics) or from yourself (like the “Sunk Cost Fallacy,” which might otherwise lead you to stick with bad jobs, bad relationships, and more.)

Tangentially, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” Nobody knows everything. Anyone who expects you to know any given thing (unless you’re known to have studied it, of course) isn’t someone worth the admiration of. People with realistic expectations will see you as genuine, and being genuine can carry you far.

I could probably think of more if given the time, but those are the most important things off the top of my head. I’m open to questions in the comments; I’ve lived quite a peculiar life, so I’ve got a range of experiences, from being a homeless vandweller, to being a pilot, to pivoting 90° to working with kids and making art. I’m more than happy to answer any questions that might help people out!