FaceDeer

Especially given that this particular comment is 90% quotes from some other author.

I find a ton of uses for quick Python scripts hammered out with Bing Chat to get random stuff done.

It's also super useful when brainstorming and fleshing out stuff for the tabletop roleplaying games I run. Just bounce ideas off it, have it write monologues, etc.

We've got LLMs now that can do that. Sorry, you've been replaced. Please gather your things into this box and cheer up.

If it saves Ukraine from Russian occupation I'll at least give them a favorable mention. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Indeed. If the US government were truly dancing on the puppet strings of the arms industry right now there'd be a ton of resources heading to Ukraine.

I think there's a significant difference between "neutral" and "diverse".

For example, Reddit is big enough that if you find yourself holding an unpopular opinion in some particular subreddit and you're getting battered with downvotes, you can probably find some other similar subreddit that's more friendly to whatever view you've got that's drawing ire. People speak derisively of "bubbles" and "echo chambers", but really, why should I stick around and try to engage with people who just don't want you around? Communities naturally tend to segregate themselves along ideological lines like this.

Here on the Fediverse the population's too small to support quite so many diverse communities yet, unfortunately. So if you've got an unpopular minority view you can end up stuck with either routinely finding yourself serving as a punching bag or just not posting. That's no fun.

It could become a bit more reasonable when you consider that most of that gear is probably reusable, so if she expects to do day trips to the beach frequently the $800 gets amortized.

In this case, though, I wouldn't assume any forward planning like that was factored in to this.

I could see it being useful for keeping the sun off, serving as a refuge from insects (depending on the local biome), perhaps serving as a changing room for privacy. But yeah, it should hardly be necessary. Just another frivolous expenditure, only do it if you can genuinely afford it.

A couple of weeks back there was an article making the rounds of the fediverse about how people with reasonably decent incomes were nevertheless living "paycheck to paycheck", and a number of examples were given in the article with their individual stories of woe about how they were baffled by how burdened with debt they were. Most of those stories, when you dug in with just a slightly critical eye instead of an automatic assumption of victimhood, revealed people making foolish choices to take on debt and support the maximally lavish lifestyle that they could manage.

The comment section was weird. It turned out that there were some people there who thought this was perfectly reasonable, giving examples of "necessary expenditures" from their own lives that were just as excessive when examined. If you think that building a deck or buying a new bed simply because it's "time for a new one" are necessary expenditures then it's kind of hard to be sympathetic when you complain about how you have no money for long-term savings.

Is there just some basic personality type that finds it hard to be responsible with money, or is this a failure of education somehow? I have ideas for how to help but help will be unwelcome by people who refuse to recognize that they have a problem.

Sounds like a purity spiral may be revving up.

Better than having people get convicted based on fake evidence, though.