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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Every dollar spent on wars of aggression signal that my tax dollars aren’t that needed. They can apparently waste billions killing children, which to my knowledge is not a primary function of most governments, so how desperately do they need the money I send? That being said, I agree that in general taxes are needed and the rich don’t pay enough. It just makes me sad to know that although I can afford some changes in taxation, there are families out there that really can’t and the government isn’t tightening its belt in the areas needed and is just making things more expensive. We need less wars and more healthcare and education, yet our president is going around saying the exact opposite. Every person that has died in the war, every person that has died because of ICE, every person that has been stripped of house and food and life because of our military support of other nations is an indictment against the idea that anyone, rich or otherwise, need to pay more in taxes at the moment. I think that really affects people’s perception of how much they really need to be paying.



  • Really sorry that happened to you. I had a relatively similar experience, though I still believe children should have access to the internet as a whole. I had a home life that made the internet a place of refuge and people took advantage of that, but if it wasn’t via the internet it would’ve likely ended up much worse for me. I think part of the problem is what people consider “kids”. I would not give an 8yr old the entire internet, but by 12-13 I’d feel like access should be pretty wide. Mostly unsupervised but in a shared space. They have the freedom to explore, but an adult is around and could theoretically see what they were doing at any time. 14+ and I would still be talking to them about online safety, but not regularly checking in on them while they’re online. 16+ and it’s a free for all imho.

    Though I had a lot of negative experiences online, the fact I had access to the whole internet meant I was able to independently explore topics I found interesting and really helped me understand myself better and learn so much about the world I never would have known. I grew up around racist religious republicans and as a queer kid I felt alone and confused. I like to think I would still be a good person without all the exposure to amazing people online, but boxing kids into their local social circle in their formative years just dooms some of them. I shudder to think of the kinds of things my less online cohort were doing. They should be able to see what’s out there. I think restricting children’s access to information because there are awful people online really centers the wrong thing. Basing this wide reaching policy on your experience is unfair and does nothing to address the actual problem. Children need better sex ed. They need to know it’s not “bad” to send nudes, but that the person they’re sending them to is a criminal and that person is the “bad” one. They need to have safe people to talk to. Parents need to have more time to spend with their kids. Laws like this are a bandaid and a bad one at that.



  • I’m not acting any way about him. I haven’t called for his resignation or even an apology. I originally pointed out that having stayed in contact is not a valid defense against abuse. When you reiterated a concern regarding a similarity to the situation with Al Franken, I pointed out the ways in which this differed. You can disagree if you feel as though a CNN article that states text evidence was obtained has an equivalent journalistic value to a right wing radio station running with a story their host brought, but I was just pointing out how this situation differs.

    It seemed to me like you felt you had to rush to his defense because of a letter in which he stated there was ongoing contact between them. I think wanting to see how things shake out is fine, but quoting his defense and comparing it to the Al Franken situation makes it seem like you think it’s a lie. That’s ok if that’s your perception and you’d like to share that, but it didn’t come across as “wait and see” it came across as a defense. Just my 2 cents on the matter.


  • Al Frankens main accuser was a republican trying to add to her star power and the story was first published by her republican radio station that openly admitted to not fact checking. The reporters here DID dig. It’s in the article. They saw texts, spoke to people who were told of the events at the time, and have medical records. This guy is being accused by people who used to work for him and are openly on the left. I understand wanting to wait for more information to come out or more to be corroborated, but it feels dismissive to compare this to the Al Franken situation regardless. This is being published by a reputable outlet and they seem to have a lot of people willing to back up these accounts with contemporaneous evidence.

    To use the defensive letter saying “well you asked for a letter of recommendation” as evidence that this is at all like the Al Franken thing seems like a misunderstanding of who accused these people and of what.


  • People (not me), seemed to really like Thank Goodness You’re Here. Undertale is a popular one. Date Everything seemed funny from what I saw of it, and if playing with friends things like peak, baby steps, or getting over it. Lots of different genres there, but steam also has a tag for comedy games. Even if you don’t end up buying it on steam, you can always check that out in case you don’t get enough options via comments.



  • No please. Do not reward this kind of posting. People are just going to flood the fediverse with this kind of engagement farming. If they want to get eyes on their content they are welcome to post it in the relevant communities, ideally with a disclaimer that they made it.

    Reddit was filled with posts like: “no one cares about my neurodivergent differently abled nieces art project 🥺👉👈”

    Let’s not encourage that here.


  • Exactly this. There was a pretty infamous outage in 2024 and a couple smaller ones in 2023. I don’t think I know a single working adult that hasn’t had at least one payroll delay for some stupid reasoning. I helped someone troubleshoot an issue that caused all of peoples second paychecks to be delayed. During onboarding they’d tell people to expect a delay in their 2nd paycheck and people just never complained for years. Banking is such a fragile part of infrastructure. It’s strange to imagine someone quitting the second the paycheck didn’t hit their account. I’m anti capitalist as hell and companies are not your family etc etc, but at least make a phone call or something first.



  • She didn’t stand for the pledge so her teacher told her to go back to her own country, and apparently the settlement is:

    As a part of the recent settlement, the Plymouth-Canton community schools district has pledged to provide diversity, sensitivity, and first amendment training for staff. The district has also agreed not to punish DK, remove any indication from school files that suggest her protest was inappropriate and provide needed counseling.

    I understand that it needs to be officially written out, but it’s unbelievable to me that part of the settlement is that they won’t punish her. Yea, obviously you shouldn’t because she did nothing wrong. I know teachers unions can affect the outcomes of these, but that teacher should not be employed in a school. They are racist and I don’t know how students of color or immigrant students in general are meant to feel safe in their class.


  • Guy work in IT and spent 100k to pay devs to make an app so people can talk to his tuned ChatGPT? I hope anyone who has hired him checks his work. That does not bode well for his work product.

    Another case from the article:

    “I still use AI, but very carefully,” he says. “I’ve written in some core rules that cannot be overwritten. It now monitors drift and pays attention to overexcitement. There are no more philosophical discussions. It’s just: ‘I want to make a lasagne, give me a recipe.’ The AI has actually stopped me several times from spiralling. It will say: ‘This has activated my core rule set and this conversation must stop.’

    What’s weird to me is they now recognize AI will lie to you but somehow think they can prompt it not to? Your rules can be “overwritten” because they do not exist to ChatGPT. It does not know what words mean.