I’m not arguing for police states and surveillance, but this is wrong:

a rare misbehavior

Nearly half of all motor accidents are at intersections. It’s estimated there are annually a quarter million red light running accidents, and somewhere between 700 - 1000 fatalities yearly from these accidents. I suppose you could argue that with the number of deaths yearly from auto accidents (30,000 - 40,000 in the US) that a thousand “isn’t that much” but I feel like if a thousand people a year died to anything else we would be up in arms and demanding something be done about it.

Red light cameras have been demonstrated to reduce crashes at intersections, actual studies and data, so maybe check for all sources on all angles of a problem. The reduction isn’t drastic but it is there. It shows that there are ARE things that can be done about intersection accidents, but whether or not it’s cameras is a separate debate. I don’t think the harm of illicit data collection or the instances of some cities using corrupt methods for collecting funds outweighs the lives saved, but I guess you can ask the families of people who died how they feel.

I am open to better ideas for reducing auto accidents but everyone seems pretty stuck on the idea that we should have the freedom to pilot thousands of pounds of steel as fast as we can as a method for compensating for bad time management, and I think it’s safe to say that a LOT of the opposition to automated methods for managing traffic laws irritates people because they don’t feel like they have a way to “get away” with breaking the rules.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10487344/

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/

The fact that there are so many tankies who don’t in fact move to Russia is pretty telling. It’s not like there’s a huge barrier to entry, they are desperate for more bodies more people who support their propaganda and nationalism :D

I don’t need a system of law not to shoot people or walk out without paying. Some of us have ethics.

I cannot take your word for that, even if it’s true, I cannot trust everyone, and even if someone is a good person, every human is vulnerable to emotions and failures of judgement, so yes we do need laws and rules and nothing can change that short of some system of taking away everyone’s free will. I already said that the enforcers as, top to bottom, are a separate issue.

Police officers and FBI directors are broadly stupid, abusive and incompetent, but that doesn’t encompass all authority.

You face authority every day. You follow systems and rules and contracts so that society functions. You use traffic laws. You don’t shoot people who make you mad, you don’t write bad checks or walk out of stores without paying. You are under a system of authority whether or not you agree with the values and enforcement of the people who enforce these rules.

I’m fine with throwing out the leadership and officers who enforce the laws, but we HAVE to have rules and laws, and this includes safety issues like speeding. I don’t care what motivates you to follow these rules, as long as you do, because I am also on the road.

The country’s “rugged, free individualism” is a fucking menace. It has given so many people the righteous feeling of being above the law, of being offended at the law applying to them, and especially the “social contract” a phrase that literally enrages some segment of the population on both sides of the political spectrum. I hate it here.

There are a LOT of other cameras placed everywhere that collect your data, being mad at the objects that also try to get drivers to behave isn’t the best use of our desire to rebel against authority. Maybe let’s attack the corporations and not the infrastructure hardware.

There is some political horseshoe theory that connects “People who cannot stand any kind of authority at all and start shrieking even when a forum mod removes their comments.”

It’s the weird far-left anarchists and far right libertarians finding common ground in wanting a society where mommy doesn’t tell them to not run with scissors. Some of the “sovereign citizens” who make for hilarious Youtube content are sincere in their their irrational hate for any kind of rules and laws.

I have had enough dealings with these folks that I have a pretty strong opinion that nobody has been able to change, that these folks just have serious authority issues and do not give a shit about a broader society and are just mad at their parents.

They are the absolute worst people you could ever have as neighbors. I sometimes think we should drive them into the sea via mobs with torches.

edit: let me double down - if you get angry at the idea of authority (not considering the enforcers or management of that authority, which is a separate thing) you need to be driven into the sea via mobs with torches. We need systems and rules and taxes for a functional society. Work on changing the way that society enforces and motivates people to follow those rules instead of blindly lashing out at anything designed to keep people safe.

Just up here watching from solipsism as you weird automated entities go about your business.

People have been using cats for pest control for literally thousands of years, wildlife problems mostly arise from people in suburban or semi-rural environments who let their un-spayed or un-neutered cats wander outside for no good reason. Farm cats have plenty to hunt at home and there would be rodent problems without other natural predators in these environments.

Not everything is a crusade. Get your pets fixed, keep them indoors if you care about them, don’t let them wander outside if they’re just going to kill birds for no reason all day. Simple as.

I had a black and white laser printer for a decade for printing mailing labels in a home business. The thing died from incompatibility long before I even had to change the toner cartridge.

The even smarter solution is do whatever it takes and make any and every sacrifice in order to redesign your entire life to NEVER need to use an inkjet printer in any capacity.

I spent three days cooking and cleaning and socializing and then spent today angry and despairing without any idea why.

There’s no faster, easily recognizable way to depict “radicalization” than clown makeup, even if you don’t know the movies or Joker lore, it makes a strong point. I don’t know what iconic signifier you could draw from Fight Club that would make readers go “Aahh she’s fed up, even the people you least expect have a breaking point.”

Yah the more I use AI the more I can detect the absolute bullshit people on both sides spew.

It’s the most amazingly complicated averaging machine we’ve ever invented. It will take the most interesting source materials, the most unique ideas of other people, the most creative materials, and it will find a way to find the safest, most average common qualities between those things. This isn’t a model problem or input problem, it’s fundamental to how generative AI works.

It helps with searching for things online, it helps create guide plans for taking on new tasks like learning some new skill. It’s far better at teaching how to do something like coding than it is left to just code on its own and you copy and paste. It can certainly do that, but you spend so much time correcting it and fixing it that you do far better learning the code yourself and how it works.

Same with art, the people who are using it to best effect are themselves already artists and they use AI to thumbnail compositions or rough layouts, color tests and such, and then just do the work themselves but faster because they already know roughly what direction they’re going.

But using it to write your scripts, to copy/paste code, to generate works of art… it’s literally just giving you other people’s ideas mashed together and unseasoned.

You probably should have your emergency flash drive on your house keys with the big red label “ANIMAL EROTICA FOR EMERGENCIES” because that’s just an amateur mistake.

But there are several other very important differences between human beings and animals that you should know about.

I frequent a wildlife site called e621 that explains and demonstrates these differences. There’s so much you can learn about the natural world!

This is valuable effort that could be used to get people who are not active to be active

This is not a zero-sum game, you can do fucking both. If you’re too fragile, that’s fine. Don’t. But I will not stand for people on the left saying it’s useless to reach people they don’t agree with, especially since we have minds and brains on our side (usually.)

Not only does this work, I am standing testament to it working. I’m sorry if you’ve had bad experiences but I promise you in real-life conversations you can change people. Like I changed. Like I have changed people. You can’t sit there angrily saying someone is dead-wrong for promoting a proven strategy for reaching people. If there were more people trying to do this, we would be in better shape broadly, but please, if you don’t have it in you, just don’t stand in the way of those who are trying. What are you even hoping to accomplish here other than trying to get recognized for having bad experiences?

You have now shot down TWO of my ideas without offering an alternative towards a better future and better things we can do as individuals.

Shrek 5: The Voyage to Save Donkey

Well then I guess our only solution is genocide/mass murder.