This article makes me tempted to take out a short position in Apple stock.

Oh, I think people care. Bernie is very popular for a reason. One of the political parties clearly isn't interested in fixing this, and the donor class of the other party doesn't want them to make material changes, even if they give lip service to improving material conditions for people.

And those are the only two choices when we vote. I hope that peaceful political activism becomes more common.

Yeah, why not.

Someone else commented that there are some smallish internet forums still kicking, and those are nice. I agree.

I feel like your timeline needs another breakpoint for the pre-facebook post-1993 internet, when people still made individual websites or had their own blogs outside of major platforms. I remember some fun times on IRC in the mid 2000s.

How is this a problem? It sounds nice. I like what neocities and nekoweb are doing.

Even if it did, that's not a reason to give in.

Ads and monetization have made Google search so useless for finding technical information that I now pay for a search engine subscription with Kagi. The irony is that they use the same backend data as Google, Bing, etc. but due to the subscription model are motivated to return relevant search results rather than the most monetizable links.

So there's at least one precedent for the excesses of advertising and monetization creating a market for actually useful services funded by means other than advertising.

I've hated advertising with a passion since I was a teenager.

Makes sense.

Now that Google has made their search engine really ineffective at finding specific technical information, I am willing to pay for a search engine that actually works. I have a kagi subscription, and it's great.

Yeah, makes sense. Honestly, I haven't used AI yet; I just hate ads. I do have a subscription to kagi, and it's great. Have only used it for search so far.

Kill it with fire. Not because I'm necessarily opposed to AI but because I hate advertising. This is one very tiny step away from filling ChatGPT with ads.

Please humor me. If another global pandemic like COVID occurs again, what should we do and why? What is your alternative to scientifically based publich health interventions?

Right. The standard model is so comprehensive and successful that it's very, very difficult to make further progress. They're working on it...

Masks and social distancing are effective public health interventions to prevent the spread of an airborne virus. The vaccines were tested and are yet another effective public health intervention to prevent the spread of a virus...

I guess you did help me understand where someone making the claim "Every new imposition on personal freedom is justified by The Science" might be coming from. Do you have any other examples?

Please provide specific examples.

Impositions on our freedoms these days seem to come by way of executive order. The justifications vary, but they don't tend to use science.

That is some wild hyperbole, my man. The big deal with climate change is emitting less CO2. Nuclear power (uranium) is great for this—it emits no CO2 other than that used for mining, building the plants, etc. Burning oil emits a lot of CO2. Burning wood emits CO2 unless it is done sustainably.

No one is saying we should all live in caves. There aren't that many caves.

Malicious compliance. A similar bad practice in the context of junk email is several different lists from the same entity, and you can only unsubscribe from each list when you receive that type of email.

Hopefully they update the law to deal with these kinds of bad practices.