Unpopular Opinion

Whenever I'm driving, I appreciate a good traffic delay, as long as it doesn't make me late. I tend to leave at a time where I'll be 20 minutes early if I need to be somewhere, so a modest delay for traffic just adds some extra excitement to my day. I love examining the traffic shockwaves caused by road work and such as well. I look forward to my morning traffic now that a road I drive on is a work zone.

Additionally, traffic is just super cool and human. Its the perfect balance between predictable and unpredictable. Also when I'm in really dense traffic I enjoy hanging out with all the other cars too, like I have some (very temporary) friends. and when I exit the highway, I always tell the traffic still on it "goodbye, have a nice day!" even though they can't hear me

lastly, when I get somewhere on time despite the traffic, it feels so good. It energizes me and makes me feel like I've gone on a grand adventure. Sometimes I'll even take detours through the gravel county roads and such and that makes for quite a wild adventure as these often get backed up as well when others have the same idea as me.

edit: by within reason I mean like a 10-30 minute delay. Additionally, I'm not a huge fan of congestion on roads with traffic signals, but on the motorway where we're all going 5-20 mph consistently its fun

Corporations are betting on long-term investments, taking short-term losses while being bailed out by their allies in government.

REASON: They will replace you with bots and robots. Therefore, the potential rewards in the long run will far exceed whatever was lost, by a factor of 100 or more. Besides the upper class knows we are about to shift from a fiat currency to a social credit based one.

The useless credits will be for the previous worker class to keep them obedient. We will have resources and "labor" as our currency. Robots, minerals, gold, you get the point.

I see it every year. People overspending just to celebrate Turkey Day. They don't even know what it is about. What it really is is over customerism for the food industry combined with something irrational gluttony

Something needs to cause the internet to cut off. Causing people to think and those with the inability to detox from the internet to fade away. I believe our society can greatly reduce dumbness, propaganda and uselessness (trend & people) by cutting the internet.

I mean, the likeliness between the two is incredibly similar. I mean yeah sure, Spez has no power here in the Fediverse and Lemmy in general, but that doesn't take away how there are so many problematic users. The same problematic user type, that you'd find on something like Reddit.

I had this experience just recently, some asshole fashioned themselves to be a torpedo and just took a great dump on a post of mine. With intent to gaslight and incite arguments which they successfully did, while acting like an oblivious bastard when they knowingly are being the instigator in an otherwise civil discussion.

That is so something a Reddit user would do and I'm not convinced that Lemmy is any different. Lemmy is just simply a spinoff of Reddit, just a place where the rejects go to, to shit up on everyone at any given time.

And don't give me the whole "but but the internet is full of these kinds of people." argument. Redditors have a special kind of behavior that is distinctive from any average asshole you find on the internet.

It's not the owner (although pretty often the owner doesn't help matters), it's the breed. I sincerely don't know how many children have to be eaten by these monsters before everyone wakes up to the reality of these dogs. They have bloodsport fighting genetics hard wired into their brains, the same way you can't stop a pointer from pointing or a herding dog from herding. They are the most impulsive breed, and they turn even on kind and loving owners all the time. Pit bull owners will flock to the comments to gaslight everyone about what wonderful dogs they are and how they must have been triggered by the child breathing or blinking and it's not the dog's fault. I'm attaching an image of such an argument I saw today.

I think many pit bull owners secretly like owning a killer dog, and just have some sort of oppositional defiance that makes them want to prove to everyone how wonderful their dog is, and until the dog turns on them will defend them to insane degrees. I think they like seeing people and pets and livestock get hurt or killed. I understand some people get caught up in romantic thoughts shaped by publications like The Dodo of helping a poor abused dog become a wonderful pet, and I totally understand wanting to help, and this isn't their fault, but stark reality sets in quickly when they bring the dog home and it promptly tears apart their cat.

The Bennard family is a prime example, they are middle class people who lovingly raised their pits from puppies, and when they were 8 years old one day the dogs killed their baby and toddler and hospitalized the mom in the ICU. Pieces of that baby were everywhere. Apparently the reason was because the toddler picked up the ball the mom was throwing for the dogs, but she had had to break up a very vicious fight between the dogs shortly before. For that two innocent children lost their lives, from family pets who were lovingly raised.

I know what many of the comments here will be like, but I stand convinced that not one of these dogs is safe simply because of genetics. They are doing what they are bred for, and it's high past time people get realistic about them.

(copied the lead on yesterday's comment)

This agreement spans a decade BTW, not next year's paycheck, $90,000,000/yr. Obscene? Yes, but here's the rub...

The full compensation would only be delivered if Musk vaults the company from its present value of $1.1 trillion to $8.5 trillion...

You've got to be fucking kidding me. Is that an actual expectation or is it, "Fuck him, won't have to pay."?

"Tell you what Elon, push the company to the most valuable of all time and by a monstrous margin, we'll pay ya. 10 years buddy! You're on the clock!"

Even NVIDIA, the most wildly overvalued company in history is "only" at 5-trillion, and that's a bubble. I know it. You know it. They know it.

The compensation package also includes a set of production goals, including one million Robotaxis in commercial operation and the delivery of one million humanoid robots over the next 10 years, according to the securities filing.

One million Robotaxies?! A cursory Google search shows Waymo with a paltry 2,000 in operation. Another quick search shows 393,400 taxi and shuttle drivers in the entire United States. I know, there's a whole 'nother world out there, but Europe is not going for Elon's death traps. Other countries? Dunno. Also note, that's one million in operation, not parked at your local mall like excess Cybertrucks.

One million humanoid robots?! And who is going to be buying these and for what purpose? Sure, some rich people will get a few on a lark, just a toy, but no way these things become cheap and useful enough for mass deployment in a decade. Again, sold and delivered, not merely manufactured.

In my opinion, the AI bubble is going to pop and we'll be in worse shape than the Great Depression, at best this will be the worst economy any of us have ever lived. (Look up the "Buffett Index".) Who is going to be paying taxi fares and buying robots?! With what money?

That's just three of the goals he must meet, who knows what else is in there. Bet there are clauses concerning TSLA stock price, another bubble. Knowing his track record on delivery, think any of this pans out? It's almost like the board is making fun of him. "You go genius boy! We know you can do it!"

So yeah, if he manages to hit these terms in a decade, he deserves $1T, no shit. Anybody want to give me a cool trillion if I can manage to eat a whole skyscraper in the next decade?

The memes about it coming starting to pop up in mid october. Its one joke about the song being overplayed, the joke is never original, Ive never seen a creative version of it. If old people have "boomer humor" whats the short term for "Millenials without two brain cells to rub together who will share on any joke that they understand"

The song is well produced overplayed pandering pop garbage. The jokes about it suck more.

The taste is just plain dreadful. Not only is it bitter, the whole “sweet” part doesn’t even taste like the usual sweet you think of. Like lemonade, yes it is perfectly sweet. Soda beverages, THAT’S sweet. But TEA, awful. And it’s like no matter how many sweetener packets you put in it, it doesn’t at all help. It’s one of those drinks where you might give it another chance if it’s available thinking it might be better but it always lets you down.

Feel like people who say that are just following a trend and trying to have a different mindset on purpose to sound cool. Infinity War was amazing, but it’s far less memorable than Endgame. Endgame epitomizes MCU and the hype before watching and after watching was insane. The unexplainable feeling you get after hearing the words “On your left” and seeing everyone come back. There are several videos on YouTube to prove how much it meant to fans. It was a big deal. You can argue that without Infinity War there is no Endgame but to say it’s better? Sorry no

As a widespread cultural phenomenon in the US, I dislike that Halloween is becoming aggregated to the rich neighborhoods. Perfectly good lower class neighborhoods that are exceptionally decorated for the holiday are soulless on the night.

Not bagging on trunk or treats or anything like thay. My mixed zone, mixed generation, vibrant neighbourhood is so cute on Halloween but then there is no real community engagement. It makes the holiday kinda sad and individualistic except for those lucky enough to have money. Another loosening the fabric of community in the US.

Just my two cents.

Edit: FWIW I dont blame parents for wanting to give their children the best Halloween experience by trucking them to such neighborhoods. The problem is not them, it is the wealth disparity.

The United States of America has become the biggest aggressor and oppressor on this planet. They went from being "upholders of democracy" just after WW2 to downright Nazi-land.

They haven't won a single war without the help of their European allies and yet have all these military bases around the world that help fund their disgusting military-industry complex and put on this pseudo narrative of being global peace-keepers when all they have done is kill innocent people, and raped women and children.

Their latest victim is going to be Nigeria and unless other countries band together to boycott and sanction the US, nothing will change.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37715538

As you can compute for yourself, AI datacenter water use is not a substantial environmental problem. This long read spells out the argument numerically.

If you'd like a science educator trying to make the headline claim digestible, see here

Expanding on this: Even if we take the absurd values of LLM growth from the industry, current and projected freshwater use of AI datacenters will still be small compared to other obviously wasteful uses. This is especially true if you restrict to inference, rather than training, resource use. Once a company has already trained one of these monster-models, using it to respond to a content-free work email, cheat on homework, lookup a recipe, or help you write a silly html web page is usually freshwater savings, because you shower and use the toilet surprisingly often compared to the cooling needs of a computer.

I will acknowledge the nuance I'm aware of:

• we don't know the specific tech of the newest models. It is theoretically possible they've made inference require burning several forests down. I think this is extremely unlikely, given how similar they behave to relatively benign mixture-of-experts models.
• some of the numbers in the linked long-read are based on old projections. I still think they were chosen generously, and I'm not aware of a serious discrepancy in favor of 'AI water use is a serious problem". Please do correct me if you have data.
• there is a difference between freshwater and potable water. Except that I can't find anyone who cares about this difference outside of one commenter. As I currently understand it, all freshwater can be made potable with relatively upfront investment.

(Please note this opinion is not about total energy use. Those concerns make much more sense to me.)

EDIT: LOL, downvoted faster than the post could have been read, with zero rebuttals. Achievement unlocked: KICK HORNET'S NEST.

(America-centric post because that's where I've spent my 54-years and know the most about.)

Capitalism ain't the problem. Capitalism for the economy and democracy for the government is the best we humans have figured out. Problem being, money has been funneled to the top. The top took our vote via lack of education, media control, and union breaking, and their power has been snowballing for the last 20-40 years. Now we're too ignorant and misled to vote in our own best interests, no unions to back us. We're seeing the end game, the end game of any unregulated system.

Said many times, almost every evil of capitalism gets nullified when the government disallows and breaks monopolies and megacorps. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, argued vehemently against monopolies. Couldn't find a succinct quote because he explained the evils in depth. Sorry, no sound bite for this one.

Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, I am stunned by what is allowed. A handful of corporations own and control our health, food, entertainment, news, banking, everything. Education is the one thing that's not wholly corporate, and the oligarchs have had that sector in their sights for decades.

And they're not after education merely to skim more money. Education in history, math, critical thinking, current affairs, is how they can be beaten. FFS, we're repeating the mistakes of exactly a century ago, people can't figure when back-of-the-napkin math doesn't make sense and can't tell when they're being conned. I see the latter items on lemmy, daily.

Stumping for socialism? Well, the Soviet Union failed mighty fucking hard. "But that wasn't true socialism!" And capitalism isn't what you are experiencing now. In neither case does the name fit the theory. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Oh, and they're "socialist". Want to model their system?

"But socialism gives workers the power!" As the great socialist Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Coal miners aren't organizing to stop fossil fuels, and neither are roustabouts. Were those the workers you imagined handing power? How about insurance company employees who would be out of a job with universal health care?

We can't let workers vote for bread and circuses. Capitalists compete amongst themselves. That competition works for everyone, as long as unions are the brake pads on that train. We took the brakes off and blamed the train conductor wanting to go fast. Well, that's his job in this poor metaphor, hope it comes across.

Blaming capitalism is as naive as saying, "Trump did this!" We can acheive nothing but backlash from ignorant supporters. Instead say, "The GOP did this!" (politically) and "The billionaires did this!" (economically). Words matter if you want to win hearts and minds.

I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.

The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.

It's been all over Lemmy, but if you haven't seen it, this is what I'm referring to.

They're promising autonomy in the future but right now, it's just controlled remotely by a human user. I don't think that's a problem, and in fact, is actually an ideal final method for a specific use case.

If you were alive in the 90s, you probably remember the commercials for LifeAlert, basically a wearable for elderly people that could be used to contact emergency services if (for example) they fell and couldn't get up. That's the actual use case for this robot - a new take on LifeAlert. Imagine an elderly person with mobility issues (or whatever) just having this thing in their home. No autonomous functionality, but with the ability for them to call on it to help with whatever tasks they need help with, at which point a human in a remote location could take control of it, perform the task, and then have it go dormant again. This could be anything from "I need help lifting this thing" to "Help me put away my laundry" to "I've fallen and I can't get up". Basically, imagine someone who otherwise would need to live in a nursing home or other assisted living facility instead being able to live independently, getting help as needed from a remote assistant via the robot in their home.

Economically, it would likely be expensive, but a single remote worker could connect to and operate potentially hundreds of these things over the course of a single shift, making it much more economical than a live-in assistant, and much more of an on-demand service. If the agent could talk to the end user through the robot it could even be used for simple assistance like tech support or help reading a medication bottle.

Obviously this still has (some of) the privacy issues the actual advertised use case does, but it's maybe preferable to not being able to get help when it's needed.

My dad said this and he's an antitheist. He didn't say this about every kind of suffering but most kinds of suffering are a choice. This what most religions teach. Even if suffering isn't a choice, dwelling on it is a path to eternal suffering.

I’m using it extensively, for instance, I have to create contracts with businesses that I work with, and AI is really helpful, works within minutes, and I don’t have to get a lawyer involved (I have sufficient legal know how, to be able to check the texts). I ask Claude.AI many questions, which help me to find out about any kind of topic (eg I wanted to know more about mobile nuclear reactors and got a quick summary within seconds). Naturally, you should take nothing at face value, blindly believing AI won’t do you any good, AI does not replace your brain. I create marketing materials and personal profiles with the help of AI, and I’ve also improved my CV. I have even used it to write a message to a friend who lost their son to cancer, I truly was at a loss for words, but AI helped me to come up with some useful sentences (which I personalized). All in all, it is extremely useful, even to answer questions here on Lemmy.

Test should be required to own dogs and cats and people shouldn’t be able to own more than three pets max. The same way you need to pass a drivers test in order to operate vehicles and more advanced drivers test for more advanced and complicated vehicle, that needs to apply to pet ownership as well.

Most people can’t handle owning pets, they are incapable or don’t have the resources to do so. This isn’t even including the neglectful and abusive pet owners who don’t maintain the hygiene of the pet or property the pet is in.

I don't know why people always make 2020 sound so horrible. It was great!! I was traveling all year. Everything was cheap; gas cars, rentals, tourist traps, everything.

Traffic was clear and low, restaurants weren't crowded. I also made a ton of money that year.

It was amazing and I think people speak too negatively of it. It was the best year in the last five years for everything I just named and it was a good start of the decade.

Also I AM BEING SUPER SERIOUS. Only a few people I had this conversation with in person understands the epicness of 2020, the rest make it seem so drab and I don't know why they had such a negative outlook on it.

If society pushed this it would make the parents more responsible at teaching their children to be aware of their surroundings, how to defend themselves and how to not be victimized. Also if the parents didn't teach their child, the children would pick up on it by association, as their friends and peers would resonate with the mindset and ability.

[note: downvote this post if you disagree with this being an unpopular opinion and vice versa if you upvote, you are saying it is a popular one] Every time somebody posts a negative comment about drug use on lemmy, they immediately get downvoted, and a lot of (mostly crackpot) arguments are offered why drugs are actually fantastic, and only corrupt or suppressive governments prohibit it. Medical arguments are swiped aside, and anecdotal “evidence” is provided to point out why drugs are great. The reality is: no recreational drug (alcohol, cannabis, design drugs, mushrooms,…) exists, that is safe for everyone, or that has no detrimental side effects. In addition, people that refrain completely from taking ANY drug usually lead healthier, more balanced and happier lives.

Firstly, let me explain that I don't mean this in a way that society keeps us unequal and it needs to be fixed. I mean this in a way that we are not all equal and that's the way it's supposed to be. We are individuals for a reason, because we are not the same as everybody else. This is what gives us uniqueness.

Some people are faster, some people are smarter, some are braver, richer, poorer, more competent, better in certain fields, and worse in others. This doesn't mean person A is better overall as a human being than person B just because they're more talented at some random skill.

However, it does mean they aren't the same and thus not equal in their ability. When there's a competition, everyone doesn't come in first place because someone is the winner of the competition. This can be applied to real life applications, and situations as well. To think we're all equal is a very dangerous thing.

The delusion of thinking equality exists, creates conformity, and we all become part of a group think. No one does anything different. No one has uniqueness. No one has individual identity. I'm not going to go into extreme detail how this ruins society just look around you.

Society isn't worse off when we understand that equality is a falsehood. It is worse off when we give the false pretense that equality is a real thing. The person that trains to be the fastest runner cannot be categorized in the same group as someone who is lazy and doesn't even like to go on walks, who is slow.

It is by that person's effort, determination, their dedication and devotion to their training, their exercise, practice, or growth that they are superior, not equal to that person who is lazy and slothful. (The runner example can be used for any example that it is applicable to. There doesn't have to be physicality involved.

We are all human but we are not all equal. Sometimes people are better. Sometimes people are worse. And that's perfectly fine.