What makes you think that the average politician is actually a leader, rather than just a follower who pays attention to polls? That would imply they have a spine, which seems unlikely.

That might be the optimal solution to you and me, but it isn’t the optimal solution for the rich and powerful. Apparently the average voter hates the sight of homeless people more than they hate hostile architecture too.

And it’s impossible to get a decent night’s sleep outside with all the traffic, pedestrians, noises, cops, etc. unless you self-medicate. If you can’t get a good night’s sleep you go insane.

And politicians think removing their best option is a solution?

Because it gets them votes. The politicians aren’t the problem, they merely reflect public attitudes.

Sure, commuters with jobs are the bourgeoisie.

Cheaper too.

But, it’s probably not the optimal solution. I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. As bad as hostile architecture is, the old way of dealing with the problem was to have cops beat the shit out of homeless or drunk people if they tried to sleep in a place where other people might be offended or annoyed.

It really seems to me like many people really want to recycle and make a difference if they can, they just need a gentle nudge, or for it to not be too difficult. It’s just that other people don’t want to feel bad about not recycling, so they speak out against any change that makes it easier. Then there are the idiots who are in denial and think climate change is a hoax.

If individual behaviour didn’t matter, Canada wouldn’t have 307% of global per capita emissions, and the US wouldn’t have 285% while Finland only has 118% and Sweden has only 71% of the world average.

I picked those European countries in particular because they’re rich, have cold winters, and have a low population density in a lot of the country.

The reality is that the US and Canada are decades behind Europe when it comes to these things. Sure, this guy in panel 2 is telling his kid to recycle, but Americans never took recycling seriously. Meanwhile in Zurich you have separate bins for green glass, brown glass, clear glass, along with the normal paper and plastic. If you don’t want to recycle, you can do that, but it’s going to cost you. You have to buy expensive special garbage bags to throw out anything that you don’t recycle.

In panel 3 the guy is shown with a bike, but less than 0.5% of people bike to work. Meanwhile, in Finland, it’s about 10% of people who commute by bike.

Some “Actual Real Human Facts” related to how many months there are:

Ever wondered why SEPTEMber starts with the common prefix for the number seven, and is followed by OCTOber, NOVEMber and DECEMber? but those are the 9th to the 12th month, rather than the 7th to the 10th?

That’s because the Romans started numbering the months starting in March, so it was the first month. But, the really crazy bit is that between December and March… there weren’t any month names. I don’t get how that worked. Say you wanted to order some marble in December and asked when it would be delivered. They couldn’t say “January 15th” because January didn’t have a name yet. So, what. “Two weeks after the end of December”?

I’m not sure what public displays of affection have to do with anything.

You mean a secretary who lives at your house?

By “self-hosted personal assistant” you mean LLM?

That person doesn’t need to leave WhatsApp completely right away. They can just talk to some people on Signal and others on WhatsApp.

What I want out of a Discord-a-like:

• Screen sharing / game sharing
• Voice chat
• Text chat
• Video chat (voice + camera)

Do your bots and plugins make that possible?

But, not you.

I’ve always hated that it’s not just “Damage” but “Damage per second”. Is it “Healing per second”? No. Just “Healer”.

From that article:

Lilly doesn’t know “how present my transness was in the background of my brain as we were writing” The Matrix.

They weren’t consciously making it a trans allegory. And, the studio would never have accepted it if that was all it was. In retrospect it’s obvious that that was a major influence in the story they were telling. And, they’re happy that in the present people are interpreting it that way. But, it wasn’t as intentional as people like to claim, and that’s far from the only possible interpretation.

It has been ruthlessly coopted by people who want to see it that way and refuse to believe that any other interpretation could possibly exist.

I freely admit that the the fact that the writers and directors later both changed their gender makes a good case that that was an element of the story.

But, this was also a huge budget action movie produced by a mainstream Hollywood studio in 1999 when the world was far less trans-friendly than even today. There’s no way they would have OK’d a movie that could only be interpreted as a trans allegory.

I really preferred the workflow(?) / pattern(?) that only existed for a few short years when pagers were common and cell phones weren’t. Someone would page you. You’d get it, decide if you needed to call them back, decide when to call them back, and where to do it.

You could do it from a payphone, you could wait until you got back home, or to your friend’s house, or to work, or whatever. If you wanted to stay out of touch, you could do it.

It’s the same reason that the children these days prefer to text rather than call. A text doesn’t have to be acknowledged instantly. You can think about your response if necessary. If you want privacy for your communication, you can arrange for that.