I agree with that - iOS looks good but Android is actually more functional to get stuff done in. Though, caveat being whose Android - some vendor customizations are horrifying

I totally agree with that. I’ve also found Google worse about being influenced by SEO tactics (probably just because it’s targeted for that) and so you get bogus results like GeeksForGeeks that are often really poorly written and irrelevant, sometimes even wrong, up at the top.

Canada is a bit of a mess too, although different. We never really use miles, but we do use feet and inches and pounds pretty regularly. The construction industry is a real mess in particular because so many things are measured in either imperial or metric units

I can’t see it anymore for some reason - it doesn’t mean anything really but I remember the first character being 毛 which is hair haha

Wow that is a terrible translation haha

Being able to read Chinese characters, I had a really hard time seeing your name as you intended it…

Anthocyanins are responsible for the color and they act as a pH indicator, changing color from bright red in acid to bright blue in basic solutions. Soil acidity could have an impact on their color at harvest, but it also really depends on how you use them. If you put them raw in a salad, they’ll probably turn quite red regardless, but it’s also quite common to find them as a purple color.

Especially early on in the Iraq war it was considered anti-American to be critical of it. Of course, that doesn’t have the kind of baggage that anti-Semitism has, but I do think it’s being used in exactly the same way, and it’s just conveniently more effective because of the very real history (and present) of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence. Where as (settler) America isn’t exactly an oppressed people

You have to shoot big if you want to get anything close to what you want - it’s a basic principle of negotiation

Or they just can’t leave for one reason or another – moving is tough

Also so many sites that haven’t given in to the ad content farm / have found it to not be worth it are now just putting up paywalls… which I’m okay with in principle, but in reality I can’t afford to subscribe to 20 different sites I only read occasionally

There’s going to need to be a new model of revenue sharing somehow at some point. I wouldn’t mind paying for one subscription that gave me broad access, but the problem then is the control that gives whoever collects the money (e.g. YouTube Premium)

Refused to invent the engine? This is a new conspiracy to me

It’s true in a capitalist system for sure. Automation causes fewer people to be responsible for more profit, so fewer people see the benefit of it. Capitalists argue it will just cause prices to fall, but a) to what, if many people can’t find a stable job, and b) prices are quick to rise but slow to fall, nobody wants to take a loss on what they paid for/forecast, and businesses implementing this tech certainly aren’t expecting to have to lower prices. Less money getting you more value increases the value of money - also known as deflation, and something economists avoid as it’s quite painful.

Automation itself can be good for humans though. I don’t think people should be stuck doing a bullshit job nobody really needs just because we don’t want to eliminate a job. Our goal as human society should be for people to have more and more choice over how they spend their own time. Even if we eliminate basically all necessary work from human existence, creative works have intrinsic value to the people who create them at the very least, and often value to many other people as well - AI will never eliminate that even if AI becomes very creative itself.

Mandatory work should be something we try to eliminate, and replaced by people generally being able to choose to do whatever they want within reason. This is not something that makes any sense in a capitalist system, so rather than attacking automation and keeping capitalism just because that creates a more equal income distribution, we should be working toward replacing capitalism with something better, and automation is a part of getting there.

Yup, that’s how I see it too. I don’t like seeing ads, the creators do at least get more money, and the actual value I get out of YouTube is pretty high

The typical English name for that is Canaan. There’s a lot of history surrounding that name in the Bible (OT, so shared by Jews, Christians, and somewhat accepted by Muslims too) and a lot of it not positive. I don’t think a lot of people would appreciate that association even though it’s likely based on myth.

Personally I don’t really see that Palestine is a bad name as it’s really just a name for the region and the only baggage it has is quite modern; Zionist Jews might prefer some acknowledgement of the land as Israel and so it would be tough to get them to accept something that doesn’t include that IMO

Definitely making the most of that gas stove

It’s still something you can argue should be done even if it’s not currently politically feasible. Things don’t always stay politically unfeasible, but they usually don’t get pushed in that direction by people not making that argument in public.

My utopian take would be that Israel should become fundamentally secular, remove references to being a ‘Jewish state’, grant all Palestineans citizenship and full rights, and perhaps change the name - a lot of people would say that should just be called Palestine, but frankly I think a compromise of Israel-Palestine or some other completely new name would be fine too. End the colonialism & apartheid, everyone who’s there lives in peace, people who had to flee during previous wars get to come back.

I don’t know that we’ll ever see that, but it probably is much more unlikely if we don’t try to convince people that it’s a good idea.

And ironically screwing it up by still supporting European settler colonialism?

There are absolutely very important reasons to still vote for Biden, but you can’t rely on millions of people to all do the right thing just because it’s logical. The person who’s running for office ultimately has the responsibility to ensure people want to vote for them. It’s just not really useful to blame millions of people when you know that there are statistically for sure going to be disaffected people out of those who need to be motivated. It doesn’t even matter whether most voters who would vote for Biden turn out to vote for him - they almost certainly will - because this fight is at the margins, and to win, you have to capture the irresponsible and unreliable people too.

I always wonder how this works. Do we have free will, or does everything we do follow God’s plan? If it’s the former, then God is clearly either not all-powerful or not entirely benevolent, since there are many ways we make things worse for our fellow humans and other life on this planet. If it’s the latter, then God is directly responsible for everything bad that happens as well as the good, nothing else really matters.