Basically (and I’m not an expert here), the Uber rich get tax free spending money without taking big taxable salaries by leveraging their assets for super low interest loans. Current tax codes don’t consider these loans as taxable income, but they’re being used for the same things us peasants use our income for. By considering these cash flows as taxable, billionaires wouldn’t be able to hide behind the “it’s net worth not liquid income” bullshit these use to dodge taxes.

You could certainly make the argument that reddit / Lemmy and anything similar is social media, but the anonymity means you aren’t seeing or competing with people you know.

Idk, maybe I’m just coping, but I’ve never felt the need to do anything performative for the masses of internet strangers - unlike some friends of mine who studiously document anything fun we do for the ever important task of impressing people on Instagram.

Whenever the negative effects of social media come up, it tends to be about people comparing their “boring” lives with the carefully crafted veneer of other people’s lives they see on social media. That doesn’t happen (as much) when you don’t use your identity and you don’t know anybody else on the platform.

I think the main issue with air tag stalking is somebody else slipping their own air tags into your car, purse, backpack, etc to always know where you are

The problem with audiobooks :P

I have to guess how everything is spelled!

I haven’t read the third book yet so maybe in not aware of this scene. What scene is this though? When Vin fought Ellend’s fiance?

Her name was Shad?

I’m pretty specifically trying to bring to mind the time it takes to hone the skill. Photography is similar in that it takes many many hours to get to the point where you can produce a good work of art.

If an artist (or photographer) spends a couple hours on a peice, that’s not the actual amount of time needed. It takes years to reach the point where they can make art in a few hours. That’s what people are upset about, that’s why nobody cares about “it took me hours to generate a good peice!”, because it takes an artist 10,000 hours.

What AI art is doing is distilling that 10,000 hours (per artist) into a training set of 99% stolen works to allow someone with zero skill to produce a work of art in a few hours.

What’s most problematic isn’t who the copyright of the AI generated age belongs to, it’s that artists who own their own works are having it stolen to be used in a commercial product. Go to any AI image generator, and you’ll see “premium” options you can pay for. That product, that option to pay, only exists on the backs of artists who did not give licensing for their works, and did not get paid to provide the training data.

If I took a few hours to make an impressive AI generated price of art, that’s still %0.0001 the amount of time an actual a real artist would’ve spent developing the skill and then taking the time to make the peice. I get to skip all that because AI stole the real artists’ works.

I’ve sat in more than a couple mortar pits in my time, and have pulled rear security for sniper teams.

There’s always technical solutions, ballistic calculators, holds for known targets on mortars, etc, but absolutely no way you’ll catch charlie or a sniper not capable of the mental math to run their weapon system.

Mortars; often they just drive around with truck mounted systems and get sent coords, pull out a map and start calculating, snipers range find and then adjust with the markings in their scopes via mental math. They don’t dial their scope to 648 meters or whatever you’re thinking. I’ll admit I’m less clear on sniper math, but they usually all have notepads with them on performance data, DOPE, of their weapons systems to make needed adjustments to their calculations.

I do want to be clear that the math isn’t crazy, and there’s often tech solutions available, but it’s definitely trained and often practiced.

And mortar men and snipers?

You say, on social media :P

Yeah so why doesn’t this piped bot pause until it’s working again, if ever? Lol

Windows user here, have used Linux here and there too:

Gaming. It’s gaming. Yes, Linux has workarounds and options, and some people are super knowledgeable and willing to go through those hoops. I’m not, not anymore.

I spent a little bit of time hunting down and eliminating W11’s annoying behaviors, and now I don’t mind it at all, and I get to just jump in games with very little hassle.

I’m pretty excited about the future of Linux gaming now that steam OS exists and Linux is a super viable target for developers, though

Holy crap everything you were saying was hitting word chords in me, so relatable, then you said Monticello. I just moved to Earl Park, was going to have to decide between Century Link and satellite, then Mainstream came through like a week before I closed on the house and installed cheap fast fiber.

My wife has suffered from post Lyme disease effects for the last decade. Yes we need a vaccine for this.

We’re kinda past the point where ONLY lethal diseases need to be prevented, yeah?

Seems most gyms do ban filming, just don’t enforce it at all. Either way, it’s always so annoying and egomaniacal when people go to public gyms for their Instagram. Build a home gym, people! Leave others out of your ego-stoking!

You need to be logged in and have nsfw enabled on your account. I had the same issue for a bit.