I think others see this but not enough: the slow collapse of Liberal democracy.
A rot has set in and people in politics and government no longer believe in liberal democracy. If you read history you find impassioned fighting for liberty, freedom and equality.
Now we have quasi democracies, with erosions of freedoms, rights and even dumbing down of access to news coverage and knowledge. Countries like the USA and UK that were leading lights in liberal democracy have fallen back into more authoritarian regimes. Countries in continental Europe that were bastions of liberal democracy also seem to losing their way. Big corporations and a wealthy elite are working against the interests of Liberal democracy and we're letting them do it.
Authoritarianism is the scourge of our age - being pushed by China and Russia and taking hold in India, the middle east, Africa and increasingly in the west.
It's depressing to see the rot.
When I was young I saw the night sky with the milky way clearly visible. I never got the chance to see it again.
I travelled to the top of a remote mountain free of any light pollution or air pollution. It was a dark night with new moon. The sky was completely clear. I still had good eyesight at that time.
The starry night sky was magnificent and mesmerizing.
It would have been a lot more colourful to your kid eyes too.
This is a weirdly universal statement for an anecdotal experience. If one were to go to an actually remote location, many miles from any city, I don't know of any reason that the stars wouldn't be visible.
Weather (clouds), moonlight.
And the fact that I have responsibilities as an adult, and it is not easy to go to an actually remote location at the right time.
Going to a dark site is not as easy as "just drive an hour from your home."
Take a look at this: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/how-to-find-good-places-to-stargaze/
The way fear, anger, hatred, and the resulting division is being used to control populations.
We have more in common with one another than we think. We all do. But our media highlights the things about each other that we fear or hate.
I know plenty of people across the political spectrum. There is a distinct lack of empathy for anyone who doesn’t share specific views or experiences.
Note, I am not trying to “both sides” here, I’m really not. Modern conservatism is dangerous. But it remains in place not only because conservatives are fed fear and hatred about progressives, but also because progressives are fed fear and anger towards conservatives.
I don’t think the original goal here was to control people, I think fear sells. We seek out warnings, they impact our mental state more. News organizations originally realized they could make more money by making their audience afraid.
But there have always been those who capitalize on those fears. And today it means that those who control the channels simply need to keep us afraid of and angry at one another over some wedge issues and they don’t then need to fear anyone coming together to make actual meaningful societal change happen.
I wish we’d all spend a bit more time talking to other people. But that’s becoming more and more rare.
Very well said!
I'll consider empathizing with conservatives when they aren't trying to legislate away every aspect of my existence. I'm not going to apologize for having disdain for white supremacists and their supporters.
Watch the CGP Gray video "This video will make you angry". Absolutely changed my world view and how I interact with the internet
Following a reaction to being put under for surgery, I see way more colors than I used to. When I look at a rainbow, I can see more bands of color than normal.
Down side? Bright light is physically painful. When I woke up from surgery I had to beg to be put in a dark room.
What surgery was it if I may ask?
Tonsilectomy of all things!
Do you see new, unique colors, or are you more sensitive to what's already there?
There are like 5 bands of red, then a space, then a really dark almost brick red. As an example. Almost brown.
Found the masked Terran.
Having spent too much time in OS security, I wish people building today's products could realize and internalize just how their project is a house of cards built on top of a house of cards, security-speaking. We've normalized a seriously insane amount if sketchy shit that the critique of a modern product core to many linux OS distributions was seen as just old people ranting ... and the shady shit continued.
One day we're going to run into a series of deep-seated security exploits that will blow our mind and cause a chernobyl of damage, and we may not even link it to a particular weak link among SO MANY weak links; but that's what we're looking at. And the fact that we're ignoring common-sense, best-practice rules to develop core apps is leaving a hole in the proverbial fence that we're ignoring as well.
God help us.
Saw in the news recently that it was possible to radio an exploit to semi trucks in a way that could spread every time two trucks pass each other (default passwords, natch.) - and it's just utterly unsurprising.
Security teams have to get it right every time.
Hackers only once.
Having worked in product security, the biggest challenge we faced was upstream vulnerabilities in both closed and open source software. The biggest problem with FOSS is that its allure is the F part. No company wants to dedicate resources to patching vulnerabilities in software they don’t own, and no OSS developer wants to work for F500 companies for free.
I work in the field of mental health, specifically mostly in the area of recovery mentorship.
This is an area that is effectively dominated by women.
I wish women could see how that within the realm of healing, they have constructed their own systems of power where men are oppressed, abused, belittled, and prevented from accessing those services without standing up to / enduring that level of hatred.
In short, once the oppressed have the guns, they become the oppressors.
This is a really bold claim. Do you have any examples? (Of the systems of oppression, I'm aware women are overrepresented as mental health professions)
That is not a bold claim, that is a factual statement from someone that works directly in the field.
Yes, a specific example is being in a men's session and having one of the female counselors invalidate the males' experience because "Oh yeah, you should try being a woman in a man's world". That is just one tiny incident, but it is revelatory of a series of repugnant biases.
The (for lack of a better phrase) flicker from led lights. For those that don't know what I mean.. Stand near a strobe light and move your hand in front of your face. You get basically a shutter effect.
That's what I see when I'm near led lights and there is movement . It's hard as hell on the eyes.
I wished every one saw it so it would get fixed.
I should have bought a pallet of incandescent bulbs when I had the chance.
The kicker is, this isn't even necessary. It's not LED lights that are the issue, it's poorly-implemented dimming of LED lights.
In some cases (home lighting dimming), you can either buy a dimmable LED light or buy a dimmer made for LEDs.
But sometimes, it's just built in to the device, and there's nothing you can do about it. All it technically takes is a really simple circuit that adds capacitance to the line.
If you have a cheap strip of LEDs dimmed by a cheap PWM controller, you might even be able to just take the positive and wrap it through and around a ring magnet multiple times. I'm not sure that would work, but I've seen it done before for noise filtering, which this is, effectively.
What that does is averages out the highs and lows, significantly reducing flicker. There are some devices out there that do the (small amount) of work that is required not to flicker. It's just.. ..dimming by flicker is really easy, and if a manufacturer can save a few cents at the cost of quality, a lot of them will.
Older lcd and plasma displays used to flash yellow when moving my eyes around the screen. People thought I was taking crazy pills.
The world's population is getting significantly sicker and we're blaming the victims for "lifestyle diseases" as a way of dismissing the problem. But research needs money and time, so there will always be better and stronger evidence for money-making remedies instead of the slow and complex research into why people are increasingly experiencing disease.
We're hurting ourselves, and each other, and because disabled people are excluded from huge parts of society, we're also covering up the evidence. It's only when we're wounded that the reality is clear, but by then it's too late - you're just written off as someone who made bad choices.
e.g. "More than 500,000 under-35s in UK out of work due to long-term illness" - obviously, the government response is to reduce the help available.
Capitalism has eroded society to the edge of what is tolerable. The push for infinite growth has pushed the world to the extreme, with 0.001% of human holding 99.999% of the riches.
We are now at a point where growth cannot continue because the customers are too poor and the thumbscrews are all the way in. And yet, corpos want more. It will break - very soon. Then what happens?
Unbridled uncontrolled capitalism, that is.
Capitalism in on itself isn't necessarily bad, it's a tool. Just as you can use a knife to carve out a nice image, you can also use it to stab somebody to death.
Captialism is quite powerful and is pretty much the reason why western nations are as powerful as they are. The uncontrolled part is the reason why things got bad and are getting worse
It's clearly working very well for itself, but it's doing it for the benefit of the stock holders, not for the community, not for the employees, and certainly not for the environment - those are all just annoying cost factors that must be minimized to maximise profits.
I am saying this is not sustainable, and we have now reached that point. People have several jobs and still can't pay their bills - that's new, and a sign that we've reached the limit.
Then what happens?
People die is what happens. Societal upheaval doesn't happen peacefully. Unfortunately.
How gamer culture is heavily based around the ability to have an accessible and more real-feeling power fantasy in your imagination to fill in for a lack of power in real life, and the damage this is doing to our societies.
Games allow you to feel like you're very good at something. You used to have to earn that feeling in some way, but no longer. Now it's purchasable for $40.
I agree with the observation but not the conclusion. It isn’t the people who use some digital escapism that are failing society, rather the reverse.
People feel powerless and helpless in real life, without any real perspective for betterment, because our economic system needs it that way. Getting to feel good for a bit in a digital world is an attempt at treatment, not the disease.
The people are the society, society is not something outside of you. That said, I agree it is an attempt at treatment. Just not a very wise one, it's comparable to a drug addiction in its likelihood of actually improving a person's situation in any concrete way.
So, I guess I'd describe it as an offshoot disease, that stems from another disease.
Por que no los dos? Why the urge to dilute it to a black or white issue? Why can't it be the people and the current society? I am a gaming addict, I know it is up to me.to change that and not fall in the hole. Could there also be a society change, of course, but it is not 100% my problem or 100% societies problem.
I can fight my own phyche and make small gains, then spend that spare time to improve my community.
Society is fucked, but we can all try and make it a bit better
The value of good frontend engineering.
I recently stumbled upon this blog post that describes it better than I could
That the solutions that benefit all beings are always the best. Even if they require more effort. Also, that there are never just two solutions to any problem. The human experience is not binary, there are infinitely many solutions to all problems.
I've started to think of "optimum solutions" rather than "right solutions".
Yes, good point. I try not to get too hung up on words. But, when speaking to others, you point out a more productive way to word it. Thanks!
Does anyone else hear every electronic device and feel a wave of comfort when the power goes out?
Only some things. Like a TV or a speaker. Even when nothing is playing or they're muted, there's like this high pitched whine coming from them. A busted GPU in a PC makes a similar sound, though louder (coil whine). I sometimes feel like Quark that time he kept hearing shit in the shuttle with Odo and it turned out to be a bomb; hearing a faint thing no one else does until I pinpoint the source and turn it off.
My hearing isn't sharp enough to hear EVERY electronic device, but idling vehicle engines and noisy refrigerators do this to me.
I don't hear most of it consciously but I do feel the wave of comfort. It happens allot more now that I live rural. Lose power bout once a month for an hour, or two. It is just enough that you're still comfortable temperature.
I think it is mostly the Fridge. That thing loud AF and is always making noise.
You have a 6th sense...
Starting to wonder, I'm talking about hearing even electricity in the wires. It's hard to exactly explain it, but it's like a pressure on my eardrums and sensation in my head. It's not a distinct sound like a refrigerator, just a presence. There's different pitches for different devices too, oven burners are a low hum where led lightbulbs are a shrill whine.
Do you hear your phone too when its doing nothing?
It makes a sound before text messages or calls come in, sometimes other random clicking hissing sorts of noise? I almost always pick it up before any sound plays or vibration happens as a result. Constant sound? Not that I notice, but I'm around it 24/7
The hidden walls and the dwarfs in them
How much damage suburbs strodes and massive footprint drive up box stores actually do. The amount of materials and ecological flattening needed so that everyone can have their own yard with a patch of shit grass. All the concrete reflecting heat into the atmosphere and causing temperature instability, the damage to the water and carbon locking systems we all need to survive because so many people can't stand being around people outside their own isolated family units or need to find a place to park their car. We need affordable city and high density village housing and flip the script on housing costs heavily incentivizing moving out of suburban areas.
We need more trains and buses but more than that we need design where our land use is treated as an actual resource that requires harm reduction policies instead of just "unused" land because "unused" land is what is keeping the planet alive and if we don't start reclaiming it we are gunna be in massive trouble.
The ISS. Woke up around 4-5 am just to see it a couple of years ago. I was afraid of missing it, but then saw a fast dot on the sky. First a dot, that split into 5 and a line, after that back to a small dot before disappearing.
Seeing the human technology in space with naked eyes is beautiful.
There was helpful site on Nasa to know when to look for it, but looks like theres an app for it now. Give it a try if you like space stuff, it cost nothing, well maybe a sleepy morning.
little history tidbit. Some of the first satelites for communications were actually just giant balls of aluminum foil. You could literally see them from space at night. They were like an itty bitty little moon almost.
For a multisensory experience also grab a walkie talkie and tune it to 437.8
Which dynamics (political, economical, privacy-wise) will lead to a less enjoyable future for all of us.
How stupid we humans are for coming up for all kinds of biases based solely on where other people were born at, more than their parents. Not only country wise, some people can get super defensive against people born 20-30km away within the same country and state.
To a lesser extent, more people should be aware of Dyogenes of Sinope, aka Dyogenes the Cynic's antics. A man that "saw through" society's bullshit and was willing to live and act according to what he preached: owning nothing, living in poverty, giving no fucks to societal norms of the time and being truly honest to everyone in their faces, behaving "like a dog", kynos, which is the root of the word cynic.
that we don't have freedom (in the us specifically here) there is a party that is pretty well known for it's "individualistic, and freedom centric approach"
I call bullshit though. Have you seen how much red tape surrounds everything? How much shit you have to get through in order to simply, do something. You want to build a house? Just wait until you find out about how many different possible ways that can be different. You want to run a business? Well you better believe that shits a mess also. Taxes? Simple? There are numerous variants. Federal, state, sales, property, estate, etc...
You want to do something trivial and supported by ALL of society? Even that is arguably more difficult than it should be. You can genuinely talk to people who have actual degrees in business (or at the very least, work in business) about business, and they will not be able to understand a single word you say. Because you aren't speaking the way that they speak, which is quite ironic considering how business is supposed to work.
You wanna go outside? You are probably being surveilled, and the likelihood of you ending up in the hands of law enforcement controlled AI recognition software is above 0.
Having been a linux user for 4 going on 5 years now. It's honestly kind of appalling, how much bureaucracy that everything has these days.
None of this matters. Every part of your existence is electrical impulses and chemicals reactions.
