Also, every other week we get another reason to make it a priority

The arguments against it boil down to "it's different and scary/I don't understand it", "there's compatibility issues that might be complicated to fix", or "well what we have now is good enough for my needs"

When an organization as problematic as the world Bank won't work with you...

Well, those were certainly words.

As a reminder, luckily code does not mean understanding... It's just the right words in the right order. The code itself is blameless, it's not great code or anything (and on request, I can be extremely precise in my criticisms), but it's good enough to be used for good things

Conflicts of interest. Sometimes illegal, but not nearly as much as they should be (almost always)

Like congress members being allowed to trade stock, which can then be affected by their vote

Or one of the specifically carved out exceptions to the medical kickbacks laws is for the people who negotiate drug prices for pharmacies

My favorite sport to watch is girls volleyball...I don't like to watch sports in general

Most people treat me like a creep when I bring it up, but it's way more dynamic and interesting than men's volleyball. I used to scorekeep the sport, women's volleyball is just more entertaining

IDGAF about basketball to start with, but if the boys can't compete we should throw them by the wayside. I don't get why this is even a question

Dragon for sure. It's getting increasingly embarrassing to be a human...

In fairness, if someone did this I'd probably do the same... Not because I thought there was anything to it or to fit in, but I'd think "huh, now I wonder what it sounds like. Does it make a cool sound?"

I don't think it's group think so much as it's a social learning behavior. If you see someone do something confidently and appear satisfied with the result, you'll start to wonder if you should try it... It seems to be working for them

Eggs in a basket.

This was my first thought... But then why are the employees taking a stand against it?

There's got to be more to this story

Why do you have to address people? I've gone years without knowing someone's name, I'm really bad at names. And then you get to the weird social situations

I was close enough with my friends family in high school that I used to hang out with them years even after he moved away, at least a few times a month for almost a decade.

I have no idea how to address them. Do I say Mr/Mrs X? Do I call them by their first name? Do I call them Aunt and Uncle in another language like what is normal in their culture?

I have no idea. So I just didn't. For years. Occasionally it's awkward, like at a party when it's loud, but not so loud you'd need to tap them... So I'd either wander around and repeat the approach, start talking to someone near them (sometimes even refer to them via relationship with the person I'm speaking to to get their attention), or pretend like I just remembered something so I could make a noise without it being psychotic.

I think I brought it up with my friend and his sister a couple years in, and they thought it was hilarious, but said any of those options would be fine... Which I did not find helpful.

But again, you'd be shocked how easy it is to avoid it. Compared to that, you can just say "excuse me" or "sorry to disturb you" or whatever... Humans are really, really good at noticing when someone is talking to them

I really, really hope this happens.

At first I thought this was just a bluff... Then I remembered "right! It's 2023! Our economic structures are imploding!"

But seriously, this would be great. At best, Google starts indexing cached versions and they get into a slugging match with Reddit as they both slide down the cliff, at worst Google and Reddit both become useless for all us technical folks, and after the immediate damage to knowledge, it'll become fragmented and open the door to new players still at the "don't be evil" phase of the inevitable path to "become an amoral orphan crushing machine".

Stack overflow and Reddit suck... But not intrinsically.

Especially since generative AI can spin out the basics of a site like that, making it an easy and better structured place for general reference, and draw in the expert discussion that leads to building very specific knowledge bases (and definitely not scrape that info from existing sites and rephrase everything to obscure the fact it's stolen info)

But the one thing we know for sure... Threatening Google to make a deal with all AI companies is "let's make everyone mistrust Twitter until we reach a trust underflow and everyone trusts it as a one stop financial platform + paid advertising posing as microblogging social media" levels of "gradeschoolers could have told you that makes no sense"

I think people often underestimate the animal mind

It's not like they have discrete thoughts in words, but animals form friendships even across species in the wild. It's not abnormal for one animal to partner up with another - with an imbalance in size/strength the smaller one often will scout out prey and the larger one will give them scraps. Sometimes equals will share territory and even raise kittens/cubs together, taking turns babysitting.

With less abundant food, that's certainly got to be more rare now, but we've seen it happen, even captured it at length on video

Cats are going to have all sorts of ideas about our relationship, from a parent to a big predator friend to a giant clueless kitten. Or, maybe just another predator sharing space, or sometimes they totally discard their instincts and live by human rules

It's not so dissimilar from what we'd think if an alien took us as a pet and we didn't try to put a label on it - every relationship is unique