billionaire could pay off someone’s $500,000 mortgage, their $30,000 car, pay off $50,000, give them $100,000 in cash and forget about it the next day

They could, but they won’t, and that’s part of the problem.

If billionaires walked around clearing people’s mortgages and paying for everyone’s dinner, they’d be less hated. They’d still be a problem, but they could buy popularity.

But they don’t. Because they’re assholes.

Maybe this will scare some of them into changing the behavior. Maybe it will get some of them killed.

You all remember that “you are Jeff bezos” game, I hope: https://direkris.itch.io/you-are-jeff-bezos

At the risk of repeating myself, “dying of whiteness” was a pretty interesting and depressing look at this. Turns out a lot of people would rather suffer if it means those people have it worse.

That’s an interesting point I hadn’t considered. Probably not the case with my coworkers who are on a physical keyboard, but maybe my parents

Reddit initially catered to a young, libertarian, white male internet crowd, clinging to a “free speech at all costs” ethos, until the hate speech and harassment became too extreme, and too alienating, to ignore.

Idiots.

In the end, Reddit became just another neoliberal venture, seemingly willing to cash in regardless of any concerns of social harm it might inadvertently cause.

Yep. Capitalism.

Reddit’s foundational problem is that it grew out of a narrow demographic with socially negative and often exclusionary values.

What a polite phrasing

Structural flaws, cultural toxicity and algorithmic design have turned what could have been an ideal forum

I don’t think a privately owned for profit platform could ever be ideal

No, I meant one where the business is owned by all the workers, not one where the owner also does some work.

This is saying if you have a module with public functions A and B, they shouldn’t call each other, right? But it’s not saying that module A shouldn’t call module B’s public functions. That’s what I thought it meant at first, but that seems crazy.

Capitalism remains a problem.

I don’t think worker owner businesses would be so rabidly eager to do this AI shit. It’s ghouls and anonymous shareholders. People who don’t even work on the stuff being made.

Middle managers like to set targets and goals because it counts towards their bonus, and it looks less like they’ve got their dick in their hand when the boss comes calling.

It’s the same problem all over. Capitalism. You have people who don’t do work keeping the benefits from the work.

Most people aren’t going to give themselves stupid or useless metrics. Software people aren’t going to impose “tokens used” or “lines of code” metrics on themselves. They know those are stupid.

Some players are hoarding all the resources, and formed gangs to keep their power. Sucks. You can’t just shoot them because the other players whine, and you’ll probably get banned.

testing is fine as long as it doesn’t slow anything down.

Insane position.

I’ve found that there’s a weird rift where a surprising amount of people who like board games dislike tabletop RPGs. I think because they’re so open, where board games are more structured and directed.

In the biggest polycule I know, there’s a mix of “likes both”, “doesn’t do RPGs but like board games”, and … I don’t know if anyone likes neither in that crew.

If I expanded that explanation to everyone, that would be silly. In no way am I proposing everyone has the same reason for disliking pink Floyd as my 10th grade friend. I do think some people feel like he did, though, about various things.

This is vital context. Big difference between like working in a kitchen with a bunch of people and working a software remote job.

I did poly for a long time and wasn’t that into board games. But yeah a lot of poly people are into them.

I’m more into tabletop RPGs, but never achieved the dream of a polycule party.

Nowadays I wouldn’t even recommend crossing the streams that way.

“knock knock”

“What?”

“Interrupting cow”

“What are yo–”

“MOO”

Hm still works.

Anyway, about memes, there have been illustrations since maybe longer than the written word. You see a picture of the guy using the stairs during a fire instead of an elevator and you don’t go “I don’t know who that guy is I don’t understand”.

Private profit from community kind of sucks. Thus, reddit sucks. Fuck them.

I had a friend in high school who was always putting down pink Floyd. He’d say the lyrics were simple and the music was gimmicky.

Eventually, one day, I got out of him that the real source of his ire was he, quote, “didn’t want to be one of those kids who’s into pink Floyd”.

I think about this sometimes. He made up all these plausible sounding excuses, but the truth was something social that he was embarrassed to admit.

Granted, we were in 10th grade, but I think a lot of people still act that way.

Hopefully Tim’s doing good these days.

Good. Fuck that management. Oust them and give the company to the people who actually do work.

It definitely seems like we’re setting ourselves up for a dystopia, where no one knows how to do software anymore. Like the time machine or Idiocracy. Management just wants short term gains, and they don’t care if there’s no one around in 10 years with any experience

A guy at work got so mad when I asked if some confusing code on a PR he submitted was from his brain, he went directly to my boss to complain.

Fuck you, Sam. I hope your AI lover tells you to mix household cleaners.