If I were truly thrown into this scenario, my first step would be accepting likely death. Even if you maintain status quo and do no good, you’ll be killed by the next guy in line. There’s nearly no way to both satisfy the current oligarchs and maintain enough power to prevent being replaced by one of them. There is also no way out, as Russia has carried out assassinations in foreign countries. Not that you’d make it onto a plane.

So I really would try to do all that. I’d tell them that whatever force got me there also gave me time to enact failsafes so that, if I disappeared, every property that every Russian billionaire owned would make unexpected contact with drones. Then I’d go ahead and post Putin’s files with every billionaire’s dirt and holdings hoping to start some fires they’d need to put out before coming for me. From there, an aggressive push towards democracy by appealing to the people in the hopes that they’ll back me, which might buy a little extra time.

I think this secures a few hours. They won’t want to move against a complete unknown that suddenly became president. That’s enough to call Biden (allegedly to negotiate US withdrawal from Ukraine in exchange for election interference in Harris’s favor) and send him every bit of data on the military that I could. That might be enough deterrence to buy more time: “the US military knows everything now, so killing me might have consequences.” I’d CC several other NATO members, but for time’s sake Biden is probably the one to call.

Maybe I could get some bodyguards that appear loyal to me, maybe not. But every bit of bluster I could muster, I’d throw it down out the gate, then start trying to fix the country before they call the bluff.

Yeah, I still die quickly, but even a single step towards improvement is worth my life. An easy decision to make when it was forfeit the second I became president. Even if I failed miserably, merely dumping presidential documents would have been worth it. Perhaps it’d get the ball rolling.

Edit: I missed the part where everyone loyal to Putin would be loyal to me. That opens up a ton of space to actually set up these failsafes or move against the oligarchs myself, as well as secure the Kremlin with men more or less actually loyal to me (by wiring them all a million USD on the spot with promise of more). Putin put down a rebellion from one of the most powerful oligarchs, so there might actually be a way to survive long enough to do many of the things on that list. I’d probably not dump the oligarch files and keep that on a disappearance failsafe then proceed mostly the same hoping to generate serious, potentially irreversible momentum before dying.

I try not to get vitriolic but I fucking hate the DNC. They slanted things towards Clinton in 2016 and we got Trump. They slanted things towards Biden in 2020 and we’re now in a truly unimaginable spot trying to just keep a vague democracy thing going. The country is in such bad straits— really, the world— all to screw over one guy just because he said socialism.

Far right ideology is rising shockingly quickly since Trump brought it to the west. Perhaps I am naive, but I believe that Bernie’s policies would have calmed the brewing storm of far right fury. Politicians could scream all they want about it, but Medicare is so objectively better that I think enough lower class right-wingers would’ve loved it. Like the guys who got their loans forgiven and were like “oh shit an actual benefit, if it’s for me I guess it’s not so bad”

I have some ethics issues with how Tidal pushed MQA snake oil for years, charging more for less. Outright deceptive advertising for nothing but the money. I have bigger ethics issues with Spotify funding Rogan though.

Now, Apple is obviously its own titan and almost inherently harmful, but the music department does less active evil than the others. Qobuz seems fine in general so it’s the one I’d rec

A good point, but I personally see it like this: a small percent of humans created weapons of extreme destruction, then the small percent of humans with access to them still did not kill as many as they did back then. The faceless violence sucks, but weapons development was set to outpace peace development before every living human was born. Pretty soon everyone with access to those weapons will have simply inherited it, making them more capable of war but not more warlike.

Yeah same. I first remember hearing it when Apple was planning that amazingly invasive local scanning of user images. Now it seems to be everywhere.

I’m not against it though. CP could’ve described multiple things and this one is a lot less mistakable when you know. CP wasn’t particularly intuitive either— no easier to decipher, merely that with years of use many people knew it— so it’s an upgrade overall I think.

Another benefit is that it includes “abuse” in the name. That’s important and ensures the people who seek that stuff out won’t borrow the term like they did CP.

If you’re willing to deal with a bit of bulk there are adapters. They look silly but I hear they work fine. Or even better, you could get a portable amp like the Qudelix 5k and just mount it to the headband. This is max silliness and adds a significant amount of bulk, but the 5k also allows for EQ.

Anyway I agree, stick with budget. I fucked up and got way into it and I don’t think it’s improved my life. It’s way less convenient as well. Like with most things in life, better to not stray from accessible options, especially for taste-based things that you might accidentally like too much.

There’s a wireless Ananda. Probably the best sounding wireless headphones, but I’ve been out of the scene for at least a year so there may have been advancements since. Focal Bathys is decent too but not open back iirc

I like the extremely narrow opinion held by whoever took the original screenshot, judging from their use of the agree/disagree buttons. They believe that some form of washing is necessary, but only the exact amount of a bidet— using soap is too much. A very specific middle ground.

This is my take on Lemmy as well. I was impacted by the removal of third party apps because I used Reddit as a mobile quick reader between activities where the bite-sized format of title -> elaboration -> brief discussion was great, but maybe a little too much. On Lemmy I don’t feel the need to keep reading. This also means I wasn’t invested enough in Reddit, so when they made clear their disdain for the users, I simply left. Nothing there is important enough to keep going.

Lemmy is definitely lower quality though. All is primarily single topic outrage and there is a significant amount of extreme rhetoric that makes me feel like I’ll be put on a list for reading, which would have been removed on Reddit for lack of civility or worse. The niche things don’t exist and, even if I wasn’t a bite-sized mobile user and had the time or thoughts to form a community, these Reddit clones are always most active at political… discussion users can’t express elsewhere and that tends to kill the niche hobbyists who don’t want to look at or be surrounded by that type of passion. So it’s difficult to curate a personal feed of anything but that.

Lemmy still works for my use case and it’s about the next best thing to Reddit. I do think the “circlejerk” feeling is contributing to the decline though, and wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up like Voat.

I don’t think anyone is actually enjoying the animal’s suffering, it’s more meant to be a humorous juxtaposition of the annoying dog yapping and the dog’s own dislike of sound. Upon further thought, it’s obviously not the same as annoyance because they display fear. Humor often comes in the first beat though, before deeper reflection.

I hate fireworks. They annoy me, but I’m also very aware of the affects of repetitive loud popping sounds. From pets to people/veterans with PTSD, they cause unnecessary suffering en massé every year. They also pollute, from the manufacturing to the smoke that most fireworks (to my knowledge) still emit, all for a pretty minimal gain. I still thought it was funny though, just from the base comparison of undesirable sound vs undesirable sound. That said, I’d run for president on a platform of “ban fireworks” either way

Has to be PR or you can’t say “PR or ER” anymore

The operating word is “would”. If it served their needs, they would. Not that they’re going to right now, obviously.

Pretty weak reasoning. It just as often “or” like this/that. If not more— who’s actually looking at fractions that often? I’d argue the punctuation attached to that specific date format shouldn’t be the basis for the order itself, and dashes or periods are common too.

The better reasoning is that the day is typically more relevant than the month. A downside though is that it’s bad for sorting: YYYY-MM-DD is the best way to automatically sort by date, and ease in digital sorting is arguably the most important factor in date formatting. It’s kind of a silly thing that people don’t care about outside of memes otherwise.

Alright I’m not certain there’s not a genetic variable here but I have not found it very hard to avoid. I wear a mask indoors and eat outdoors and don’t really do anything else.

But like, I travel a lot not for business which I theorize is riskier than business travel. That’s a lot of airports, and even with an optimistic 70% lounge rate it’s probably not great for avoiding illness (plus I managed to get flu somehow). I do eat indoors for special places but I guess those typically have less than 20 seats so the risk is reduced. Still.

My immediate family all got it and were extremely symptomatic so I doubt it’s genetic though. Plus I don’t think I’m related to my SO and by using an N95/KN (I prefer N for comfort on the ears) we’ve managed to avoid it despite frequent travel and separate social lives. I know masks are very uncommon now but honestly, didn’t really change my life that much. I’m pretty sure they work too, the second time I was in Tokyo this year masks were a minority thing and you couldn’t get onto a bus or train without people coughing. I resigned myself to Covid but somehow still didn’t get it.

Anyway now that I’ve gone on this incoherent ramble I’m definitely gonna be sick next week. Probably deserved.

And it’s easy. Society spends so much time and effort making life easier via improvements like simple image uploading and sharing, so of course some piece of shit will use it for this. Just a few clicks and they’ve created headaches for thousands of people. It requires no ability so the barrier of entry is as low as being the kind of trash that likes that stuff.

Yeah you really can’t. I’m pretty desensitized from earlier internet with death and other shock gore content but had managed to avoid CSAM until today. It was a lot worse than I expected, felt my heart drop. Worse, my app autoplays gifs in thumbnail so it kept going while I was reporting it.

I’ve mostly forgotten and it wasn’t on my mind until I saw this thread (happened less than 24hr ago) but even the slightest reminder is oddly upsetting. Wish I’d thought of the Tetris thing.

Gates has the money to do both, and more. It’s just sometimes better to let others do it instead— having your own space company means worrying about competition, contracts, and potential profitability. Meanwhile if he wanted, he could hitch a ride on any of their rockets with no effort.

Musk and Bezos also have the money to do both, but they merely elect not to. Perhaps in the future they will, like Gates, begin funneling more of their effort and wealth into altruism to improve their reputations.

The person she told that to, Homer Hickam, had no say in the firing, expressed disappointment after, and helped her get another job after (though I do not recall if it was successful). In an era where companies are increasingly sensitive about what employees post online, she had it much much better than just about anyone else in the world fired for the same thing at least.

And really… perhaps I’m old fashioned, but posting stuff like that in the same tweet as your NASA offer was pretty poorly thought out. NASA doesn’t feel like the type of organization that wants its employees associated with messaging like that.