That seems to be the case for many societal changes that come from the common people, rather than being forced by people already in power.

Create a separate card for that ingredient, and in the main card list “add X% of <other card>”

There’s lots of great examples of this across the Netherlands as well, Amsterdam and Nijmegen come to mind personally. After WWII so many places were rebuilt for cars, only for people to eventually realize that was a bad idea and begin designing with people in mind first.

It’s not even uncomfortable, the student is quoted as expressing “mild discomfort”

Which makes this all the more insane. Somebody is “mildly uncomfortable” and so they upend their professor’s entire life.

Absolute insanity.

Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”

Wikipedia’s description is pretty good:

In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal economic policies promoted by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics have risen to global prominence because of a deliberate strategy she calls “disaster capitalism”. In this strategy, political actors exploit the chaos of natural disasters, wars, and other crises to push through unpopular policies such as deregulation and privatization. This economic “shock therapy” favors corporate interests while disadvantaging and disenfranchising citizens when they are too distracted and overwhelmed to respond or resist effectively. The book challenges the narrative that free market capitalist policies have been welcomed by the inhabitants of regions where they have been implemented, and it argues that several man-made events, including the Iraq War, were intentionally undertaken with the goal of pushing through these unpopular policies in their wake.

There is nothing Oracle could ever do to convince me to use their services or software even if they were free.

Fuck Oracle, fuck Larry Ellison!

There’s a weird level of brain rot going on with AI. My wife recently had some troubles trying to research who owned our home in the past (it was built in the 1880s); she posted to a local forum asking for some specific information about who & where they were buried and so on and was getting replies from somebody that were seemingly plausible but just had no basis in reality when she looked into it further. After pressing him several times for his sources the guy finally admitted it was ChatGPT.

Just… why the fuck? Why would anybody do that? They wasted not only my wife’s time but their own as well, they contributed nothing useful (and if anything, their “contribution” was purely negative).

It’s baffling behavior.

Towards the end of last year I bought a home. It wouldn’t have been possible without my father’s passing just a month into his retirement and leaving me everything he had; it wasn’t much but just enough. He was never very close, to the extent that all I have from him is a couple of small statues and photographs – and now my home.

Do you mind if I ask where you are? I’m in Nijmegen and I just don’t see it when paying in person.

Just earlier I went out to wander through the Vierdaagse parties and all of the street food/beer vendors just offered a straight card reading or a qr code to pay.

The article doesn’t match my experience either. I see the option to add a tip when ordering from ThuisBezorgd or restaurants websites for pickup, but they don’t offer a percentage: it’s usually an option to add an extra euro or two or five.

I’ll add a few euros if I’m getting something delivered and its hot or raining, because then I feel bad about being so lazy.

I grew up in a hyper conservative family in a super conservative part of southern Indiana. Even with the remote contacts I made online via BBS, IRC, forums, etc; I was still a quasi-suicidal (and incredibly closeted) atheist and bisexual. If I hadn’t had some kind of community to which I could vent some of my frustrations I’m very confident I would have done myself in. I even met my wife over IRC when we were teenagers.

And, weird as it is to say, if the price of my mental health and training in what would eventually become my profession is that I occasionally had people trying to trick me into looking at goatse… show me that horror anus.

Setting aside that train delays are usually no worse than usual auto traffic jams (and even when delayed are still less delaying than a car jam), and that being slightly crowded on a train is still far more pleasant due to being able to relax and read a book or nap, and the fact that I (in the Netherlands) never really see homeless people on the train…

… do you think homeless people don’t deserve to travel anywhere? They have no right to see their friends or family in other towns, or to visit a medical specialist that isn’t where they are? How else would you suggest the poor travel (other than obvious answer that you wish they didn’t exist in the first place)?

It probably helped a lot that I was 19 and had nothing going for me in southern Indiana.

Asked a friend of mine if he was interested in moving too, and he was. I found somebody with an apartment listing on the then-new Craigslist and mailed them a check, then my buddy and I crammed everything we could into my Ford Escort. We stopped to get a little sleep just after Albuquerque.

Advice: don’t make that drive in two days, it should be three. It is so fucking long to drive.

Challenges: apparently Texas’ highway speed limits go down at night, and (at least at the time) the signs don’t indicate this. I got pulled over for going 75 in a 65 at ~2AM, right next a sign that said the limit was 75. Fuck Texas!

Actual advice: spend some time seriously considering what needs to come with. Most things are just things, they can be replaced. Don’t let your things weigh you down.

It doesn’t count if it’s just the tip!

Programmer and systems admin

My job is currently working on creating an “assistant AI editor” for our customers to help them write stuff. One thing I’ve found is that most models tend to be weirdly averse to any kind of violent language; for example I have a document about a bakery ran by rats (I have pet rats, they’re adorable). If I specify in the AI bot instructions to avoid violent references, especially to knives and stabbing and then create a document full of references to knives it will suggest replacements… because that language is “unprofessional”.

It will never specifically cite the previous instructions of “don’t allow violent phrases” in favor of calling it “not business friendly” or “unprofessional” even though the root instructions make no mention of professionalism or the like.

Not to say that TripAdvisor isn’t doing it intentionally, but I could absolutely see this as being a side effect of most LLM models avoiding unpleasant terms.

In the Netherlands my electric prices have remained steady but gas went up substantially.

As far as I (a non-British person) can tell the actual proposal hasn’t been released yet so: nobody knows.

I do know that I wouldn’t count on them doing a good job of defining what “social media” is; and if we’re being honest then IRC, Usenet, forums, and Lemmy should all be included in that definition as they are all forms of it.

I started coding when I was 10 (yea, I know, that’s earlier than usual, but still!) and I learned so much from programming forums and mailing lists that I think it’s safe to say my entire career would be on a very different or VERY delayed path if I wasn’t allowed access to those until I was 16.

Sorry, you must be old enough to pilot a multi-thousand-pound vehicle at highway speeds before we let you learn about the dark magic that is Perl and awk.

Should we attempt to regulate how social media companies operate, educate children and parents on the possible harm and how to avoid it, or do anything with the goal of just improving the way technology is used?

No, we’ll just ban it. Something that has famously always worked well.

In a way this makes me a little sad. I met my wife via IRC, I built long lasting relationships with random people I met online when I was a teenager; I learned so much about programming and Linux/BSD/Solaris from online forums of people that took time to help my dumb ass out. All of that same potential to be swept under the rug because of trash like TikTok and Facebook.

Living in the Netherlands, I do a Grandpa Simpson and walk right back out the door.

But uh, being from the US and having not lived there in a few years… 40% tip now? Growing up it was 5%; 10% if it really good and 15% to be generous. The whole practice is so weird to start (there’s no difference in the effort involved serving an expensive steak vs serving a glass of soda, so why the hell does one demand a higher tip?) but saying the prices on the menu come with an invisible 40% markup… wtf?!