An explosion is pure entropy. It's high energy releasing to a low energy state in an uncontrolled manner

We climb down the energy slope very slowly to reverse entropy and create order

The universe is like us - temporary order emerges as it slides towards entropy

Makes perfect sense. It's so simple I can't believe I didn't understand until now. How do you scare a fascist? Not by calling them a Nazi piece of shit

Question their status in the "in" group.

Neet has a "failure a launch" implication - a NEET has a home, a bum might be crashing on a couch

My pronouns are "put me in whatever box you like, if you try to make me put myself in a box I'll throw acid in your face"

No one wants to work, which is clearly a human trait despite the fact we do work like this constantly, across the board, for fun

Their stance is "if it's illegal for a person to do it, it's illegal for an algorithm to do it"

If you use a 3rd party to collude, that's still collusion. Here, that algorithm is the third party

Could never hold up in court... If you pay for a decent lawyer

It was - and it's not that the need has gone away or been fulfilled elsewhere, it's just that it's no longer viable.

I think paying close attention to this is important though. It's a case study that just keeps giving - every couple weeks we get an important reminder that billionaires and billion dollar companies aren't a good thing - their interests are not aligned with ours

It's very simple. There are all sorts of long term rationalizations tossed around, like future tax revenue or making more disadvantaged people who are more likely to vote Republican.

It's a whole lot simpler than all that though.

It's a distraction.

Think about it this way - do they seem like they give the slightest shit about the long-term? Minimum, this would take a decade before it does much for them.

But by fighting over this issue, which will have a profoundly terrible effect on a lot of people, we don't talk much about how inequality skyrocketed during COVID. We don't talk about ranked choice voting, we don't talk about UBI, we don't talk about the fact the Internet is being locked down or talk about how we could reform the system to be better.

They fight over issues like this, and they're free to do whatever they want economically. And sure, it's a popular idea for the rich - a pregnancy through delivery costs like 12-20k, it makes you less able to change jobs or move, it makes you consume stuff you would never have needed otherwise, and a population decline is going to make all of your profit projections fall in the long term. I'm sure it brings in donations

At it's core, it's because it's making careers for a certain type of politician and a blank check on every other issue for sitting congressmen

I'm with you there, but that seems like a reason to fight

This would very likely be added to cloudflare by default (it would lower their costs), and that would put a solid chunk of the Internet behind the blackwall

A month isn't very long, they haven't even figured out their basic features - this was more a "maybe later this year" timeframe. It could be done quickly if they decided to start by reproducing mastodon and going from there, but building something that federates but is highly monetizable takes time - honestly they were probably pleased by the numbers and decided to go for monetization first

Making it clear they are unwelcome was the point though.

It seems they've put the idea on the back burner after we largely made our position clear, but it's not unlikely that they try to quietly federate down the road... Every time they think about it, we have to make them believe this would be more trouble than it's worth

Haha never has been

There's one interesting thought that never comes up in history class...

What happened to the aristocracy?

They didn't give back their land holdings (basically anywhere), they didn't pay reparations, they didn't give up their investments... In some places, they never stopped getting a stipend.

France and Russia. They killed the aristocracy (although others filled the void). In the Americas, if they existed they were killed and replaced with Europeans. In much of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, locals were raised up to the position.

The US is organized into counties (Counts), territories (Marquis), and states (Duke). There's a couple commonwealths like Virginia too... Why? What does landowners mean? It's all over the constitution. A jury of your peers sounds a lot like a group from the peerage. A redress of grievances from the federal government isn't an option for the common man, but it's in the bill of rights.

When did it end? Because Lord Fairfax isn't a title held anymore, but Fairfax county VA most certainly still hosts the Fairfax family, who are extremely wealthy landlords. They called capitalists who rose up from the common people "robber barons" only a few generations ago... Maybe not because they stole from the people (Carnegie and Rockefeller most certainly gave back to the community), maybe because they didn't come from a certain social class? Name a billionaire or a senator that didn't come from the "I never have to work" class...I can't.

Yeah, the game is rigged. It has been since Rome. The lines have been blurred, but they're still clear if you look for them