The difference is maybe that there is no cremation while you're still alive (at least before) just because you keep driving that SUV to get your mail because the 100 yards from front door to mailbox are too far a walk.
That would be a pity, because that's basically what makes them more reliable. Internationally, too.
I can't make international deals with an unreliable, volatile partner who may change his position on a whim. Trump is used to get his way simply because he usually bullies smaller companies into complying with his wishes, simply because they can't afford to not play along. Basically his policy, in business as in politics, is that of a 5 year old: Try out what you can get away with before you get a spanking.
To see anyone but a democrat or republican take second place, you have to go back more than a century.
To see one win, you have to go back before the civil war (and, essentially, start one because one of the reasons for the secession was that Lincoln was elected).
To a smaller extent on the left? Please. Have you ever listened to some of the more insane SJWs? Both extreme ends are fucking nuts.
My only hope now is that we're just looking at a vocal minority on both ends, with a middle ground disgusted by both of them that eventually will want to have real information again. So far, though, I see no justification for that hope.
The number of people who actually follow the creed you bolded is increasing. Yes, for many people it doesn't really matter anymore whether something is true. Does it fit my narrative? Great, I believe it! Does it go against it? Boo, fake news.
Verifying something? Pff, what for, if news outlets can't be assed to do it, why should I?
What is doesn't matter anymore. What you want to is what's important.
Yup. Sadly this was posted as AC, but this is exactly the problem: Facts don't matter.
It doesn't matter what is. What matters is what people want to believe. Why do you think religions are so popular and successful through the millennia? Looking at any religion and checking it against simply demonstrable facts would instantly debunk any religion instantly. Still people believe that bullshit. Why? Because they want to. Because it makes them feel good.
Same here. People want to believe bullshit because they feel vindicated and supported if that bullshit was true, and since someone "important" says it, it must be true. We're taught to believe in authority. That's how we're brought up, simply because it's easier for parents (and later teachers) to work on that premise. Only a select few manage to notice early enough that the emperor has no clothes and that an argument from authority is worthless.
The rest simply believes it when someone "important" makes a claim. That claim gets transformed to truth simply by virtue of authority, not because it's actually true.
Let's rather call it "trust" than admiration. I trust a brand to work the way advertised because I either have relevant experience or because someone I know does. It doesn't mean I put it on a pedestal and bow towards it during a daily prayer.
When you only have the choice between a dangerous idiot who has no agenda (other than lining his own pockets), no plan, no idea what he's doing and no experience in exploiting the system, and a dangerous idiot who has all that, the former is actually indeed the lesser threat.
Well, mostly they're dismissed because the "proof" cited for them is none and easily debunked if you have at least a minimum of education and bother to actually dig past the surface. It's a bit like debunking "proofs" for god. And it's also, funny enough, usually the same crowd that believes in either bullshit.
Well, technically, on weed, no matter what anyone says matters any longer, so technically you're right... but a bit like that aforementioned broken watch.
Unfortunately that doesn't mean that nothing is real and everything's different. Facts are still facts and reality is still reality.
Being skeptic and questioning what you're told is a good idea. But going "I am told A, so A must be false, so I believe B which contradicts A, no matter how harebrained and idiotic, but because it's not A it must be true" is even more insane than simply believing what you're told. Just because you don't like reality doesn't make it go away.
Do some conspiracy theories turn out to be right? Actually yes. 20 years ago something like "the government is tapping every conversation on the internet and recording it all" would have been chalked up as a conspiracy theory, only after Snowden showed us that it is that way we understood.
The problem is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it takes a working clock to know when that time is. Conspiracy theories are worthless, what we need is relevant evidence.
We have a part in our brain, the Nucleus accumbens. Our "reward center". Which gets tickled when we get something, when we accomplish something and yes, when we take drugs. But also when we discover something. Yes, really. Having a revelation gives you a high. Anyone who ever tried to debug something and found the bug after 2 hours of searching can vouch for this.
Now, discovering something in this time and age is kinda hard. This ain't the 1500s when finding out that two things drop at the same speed no matter the weight is any new revelation. And if you check the more recent Nobel prizes, you'll notice that they usually went to very large teams because making some really great discovery is really, really hard work, and takes really, really intelligent people a really, really long time and requires some really, really big effort from them.
Yes, really.
Now, of course people with... how to put it nicely... limited resources in the metal department, they don't really get to have groundbreaking revelations too often. The trivial things are simply not something that would tickle the aforementioned Nucleus and the more complex things are, well, let's put it that way: The high only happens when the Nucleus thinks that you understand it. Not by just hearing it.
Conspiracies now fill that niche perfectly: They are simple and easy to grasp and they are a new discovery that changes their world view instantly and profoundly. This is exactly what makes the Nucleus accumbens go into berserk mode. And, to make things even better, there is still plenty of room for discovery, even if you are not exactly Nobel prize material, because nobody who is would bother with this bullshit. So you can invent a few new continents that "explain" away some of the things a flat earth simply cannot or you can find new "hidden" inventory numbers in moon photos.
Unfortunately, the Nucleus accumbens doesn't give a shit whether what you find out is true. All that matters is that you manage to believe it.
Getting someone to snap out of it is not trivial. Essentially, you're trying to tell a junkie to stop taking smack. You think he cares what reality is? All he cares about is the next "revelation", the next fix, the next high.
The design was that every node can route traffic so the (nuclear) removal of a node wouldn't destroy the network. We long abandoned this, today it's a commercial version with very little redundancy left.
And a centralized DNS system that is maybe the most critical SPOF on the entire network. And DNS is way more by now than "only" translation of names you can easily remember to numbers you hardly can.
What? But... but... don't you read the news? In China, all there is is uneducated peasants in the countryside, exploited workers in sweat shops and a small sliver of elite corporation owners that exploit the first two, keep them poor and stupid and rule them.
This headline you chose is a perfect example of what will be lost quickly in the flood of information we're facing. What people want and can remember is a short slogan, a punchline. Not something long winded and convoluted, possibly with subclauses or, even worse than that, main clauses and subclauses that interject each other, or get interrupted by long, convoluted lists of adjectives that add no information, with inelegant gerund constructs interjecting and interrupting that, if they are grammatically correct used in the first place, only add fluff but no substance.
I blame it on the fucking tick-box-counting idiots. The kind of customer that has no idea what he wants or needs but looks at the cute little "informative" cards next to a product where you can see a bunch of tick boxes with some label, a label the idea of which they also don't grasp. But the tick box is ticked, so the product is "better" than the other product next to it where that tick box isn't ticked. What tick box? No idea. Do they need that feature? Need? They don't even know what the feature does! But it has the feature, so it's better.
When Homer said "you should have taken an existing product and add a clock to it", he was pretty much predicting what we're heading for. Appliances that get more and more useless gimmicks nobody wants, needs or even knows what it's good for.
Slashdot Mirror
If that fails, try some Obama. It's a bit like homeopathy, you try to blame one, notice no improvement, so try blaming someone else.
Depends on what orifice you use. Sperm is pretty high in zinc and iron, afaik.
The difference is maybe that there is no cremation while you're still alive (at least before) just because you keep driving that SUV to get your mail because the 100 yards from front door to mailbox are too far a walk.
Not really, but someone able to drop 600 grand on a Tesla sure won't have a problem affording food.
Someone not able to drop half a million on a car might, but who cares about peasants?
That would be a pity, because that's basically what makes them more reliable. Internationally, too.
I can't make international deals with an unreliable, volatile partner who may change his position on a whim. Trump is used to get his way simply because he usually bullies smaller companies into complying with his wishes, simply because they can't afford to not play along. Basically his policy, in business as in politics, is that of a 5 year old: Try out what you can get away with before you get a spanking.
But I can't make deals with spoiled little brats.
To see anyone but a democrat or republican take second place, you have to go back more than a century.
To see one win, you have to go back before the civil war (and, essentially, start one because one of the reasons for the secession was that Lincoln was elected).
What good is a protest if nobody gives a shit?
To a smaller extent on the left? Please. Have you ever listened to some of the more insane SJWs? Both extreme ends are fucking nuts.
My only hope now is that we're just looking at a vocal minority on both ends, with a middle ground disgusted by both of them that eventually will want to have real information again. So far, though, I see no justification for that hope.
The number of people who actually follow the creed you bolded is increasing. Yes, for many people it doesn't really matter anymore whether something is true. Does it fit my narrative? Great, I believe it! Does it go against it? Boo, fake news.
Verifying something? Pff, what for, if news outlets can't be assed to do it, why should I?
What is doesn't matter anymore. What you want to is what's important.
Yup. Sadly this was posted as AC, but this is exactly the problem: Facts don't matter.
It doesn't matter what is. What matters is what people want to believe. Why do you think religions are so popular and successful through the millennia? Looking at any religion and checking it against simply demonstrable facts would instantly debunk any religion instantly. Still people believe that bullshit. Why? Because they want to. Because it makes them feel good.
Same here. People want to believe bullshit because they feel vindicated and supported if that bullshit was true, and since someone "important" says it, it must be true. We're taught to believe in authority. That's how we're brought up, simply because it's easier for parents (and later teachers) to work on that premise. Only a select few manage to notice early enough that the emperor has no clothes and that an argument from authority is worthless.
The rest simply believes it when someone "important" makes a claim. That claim gets transformed to truth simply by virtue of authority, not because it's actually true.
Let's rather call it "trust" than admiration. I trust a brand to work the way advertised because I either have relevant experience or because someone I know does. It doesn't mean I put it on a pedestal and bow towards it during a daily prayer.
That's why other notebooks have those little rubber feet.
When you only have the choice between a dangerous idiot who has no agenda (other than lining his own pockets), no plan, no idea what he's doing and no experience in exploiting the system, and a dangerous idiot who has all that, the former is actually indeed the lesser threat.
Politicians lie, the media lie. As long as they tell different lies, democracy still has a chance.
If they start to tell the same lies, run for your life.
Well, I guess that proves my point, then. ;)
Well, mostly they're dismissed because the "proof" cited for them is none and easily debunked if you have at least a minimum of education and bother to actually dig past the surface. It's a bit like debunking "proofs" for god. And it's also, funny enough, usually the same crowd that believes in either bullshit.
But debugging software is hard. Coming up with harebrained ideas is easy. And it's the same fix. So why bother with the debugging?
Just like you can get a high from working out, still, most people would rather pop a funny looking pill, simply because it's easier and less 'work'.
Well, technically, on weed, no matter what anyone says matters any longer, so technically you're right... but a bit like that aforementioned broken watch.
Unfortunately that doesn't mean that nothing is real and everything's different. Facts are still facts and reality is still reality.
Being skeptic and questioning what you're told is a good idea. But going "I am told A, so A must be false, so I believe B which contradicts A, no matter how harebrained and idiotic, but because it's not A it must be true" is even more insane than simply believing what you're told. Just because you don't like reality doesn't make it go away.
Do some conspiracy theories turn out to be right? Actually yes. 20 years ago something like "the government is tapping every conversation on the internet and recording it all" would have been chalked up as a conspiracy theory, only after Snowden showed us that it is that way we understood.
The problem is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it takes a working clock to know when that time is. Conspiracy theories are worthless, what we need is relevant evidence.
I have a hypothesis for this.
We have a part in our brain, the Nucleus accumbens. Our "reward center". Which gets tickled when we get something, when we accomplish something and yes, when we take drugs. But also when we discover something. Yes, really. Having a revelation gives you a high. Anyone who ever tried to debug something and found the bug after 2 hours of searching can vouch for this.
Now, discovering something in this time and age is kinda hard. This ain't the 1500s when finding out that two things drop at the same speed no matter the weight is any new revelation. And if you check the more recent Nobel prizes, you'll notice that they usually went to very large teams because making some really great discovery is really, really hard work, and takes really, really intelligent people a really, really long time and requires some really, really big effort from them.
Yes, really.
Now, of course people with... how to put it nicely ... limited resources in the metal department, they don't really get to have groundbreaking revelations too often. The trivial things are simply not something that would tickle the aforementioned Nucleus and the more complex things are, well, let's put it that way: The high only happens when the Nucleus thinks that you understand it. Not by just hearing it.
Conspiracies now fill that niche perfectly: They are simple and easy to grasp and they are a new discovery that changes their world view instantly and profoundly. This is exactly what makes the Nucleus accumbens go into berserk mode. And, to make things even better, there is still plenty of room for discovery, even if you are not exactly Nobel prize material, because nobody who is would bother with this bullshit. So you can invent a few new continents that "explain" away some of the things a flat earth simply cannot or you can find new "hidden" inventory numbers in moon photos.
Unfortunately, the Nucleus accumbens doesn't give a shit whether what you find out is true. All that matters is that you manage to believe it.
Getting someone to snap out of it is not trivial. Essentially, you're trying to tell a junkie to stop taking smack. You think he cares what reality is? All he cares about is the next "revelation", the next fix, the next high.
The design was that every node can route traffic so the (nuclear) removal of a node wouldn't destroy the network. We long abandoned this, today it's a commercial version with very little redundancy left.
And a centralized DNS system that is maybe the most critical SPOF on the entire network. And DNS is way more by now than "only" translation of names you can easily remember to numbers you hardly can.
What? But ... but ... don't you read the news? In China, all there is is uneducated peasants in the countryside, exploited workers in sweat shops and a small sliver of elite corporation owners that exploit the first two, keep them poor and stupid and rule them.
No, wait, that was the US. What was China again?
Supernovae.
Next question.
This headline you chose is a perfect example of what will be lost quickly in the flood of information we're facing. What people want and can remember is a short slogan, a punchline. Not something long winded and convoluted, possibly with subclauses or, even worse than that, main clauses and subclauses that interject each other, or get interrupted by long, convoluted lists of adjectives that add no information, with inelegant gerund constructs interjecting and interrupting that, if they are grammatically correct used in the first place, only add fluff but no substance.
In other words: Want to be remembered, be terse!
I blame it on the fucking tick-box-counting idiots. The kind of customer that has no idea what he wants or needs but looks at the cute little "informative" cards next to a product where you can see a bunch of tick boxes with some label, a label the idea of which they also don't grasp. But the tick box is ticked, so the product is "better" than the other product next to it where that tick box isn't ticked. What tick box? No idea. Do they need that feature? Need? They don't even know what the feature does! But it has the feature, so it's better.
When Homer said "you should have taken an existing product and add a clock to it", he was pretty much predicting what we're heading for. Appliances that get more and more useless gimmicks nobody wants, needs or even knows what it's good for.