kibiz0r

Corpse/remains

transhumanism

Idk if that means you’re on the pro- or anti- side, but if I can suggest some content either way:

• Philosophy Tube
• CJ the X (I assure you, it is about transhumanism)
• Team Human on TESCREAL
• Behind The Bastards

It’s supposed to be an alternative to the publisher system.

In the overall software industry:

• 25% of projects succeed, with minor changes to budget, schedule, or scope
• 50% of projects deliver, but only after significant changes to budget, schedule, or scope
• 25% of projects fail to deliver at all

Games are probably even worse. (Edit: and this is just talking about delivery, to say nothing of market success.)

What happens to publishers in this environment?

They get risk-averse. They pass on weird ideas, they offer insulting amounts to new studios, they pull the ripcord at the slightest hint of trouble.

And… they inflate the price of successful games to cover the losses of the rest.

You were already paying for failed projects before Early Access existed, you just never got to see what they were or decide which ones you wanted to fund more than the others.

That’s not to say there’s no outright abuse, but that’s a small percentage of the flops that people complain about. For the most part, it’s just the normal boring everyday kind of failure that you pay for whether you get a chance to see it or not.

I agree about your main point, but:

And like we saw at the inauguration, Biden doesn't even care

The inauguration where Trump droned on about seeking revenge on Biden, while he was sitting right there?

The inauguration during which the White House released a series of scheduled preemptive pardons for Biden’s immediate family?

I think he does care, but he thinks that:

• Neoliberal policies are the right answer
• Whatever policies we do opt for, we should follow established law and procedure, down to the letter, when implementing them
• Funding the number one factor in winning elections

I think all three of those are outdated ideas, but I can understand a geriatic lifelong politician believing them earnestly.

The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads

The Post Office has the constitutional authority to designate mail routes. The Post Office is also empowered to construct or designate post offices with the implied authority to carry, deliver, and regulate the mail of the United States as a whole. The Postal Power also includes the power to designate certain materials as non-mailable, and to pass statutes criminalizing abuses of the postal system (such as mail fraud and armed robbery of post offices).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause

IIRC, even a faint T line is a positive result.

Yeah, MMT is not a prescription for how to behave going forward. It's just an account of how money has worked so far. We're seeing international robber barons take shape, and I don't think there are good historical examples of how that ends up functioning and what our options are for handling it.

I'd argue that MMT not having an answer for relating the "real economy" to a specific monetary policy is actually a good thing, because it keeps it descriptive instead of prescriptive, but you're right -- the obvious next step is "Okay, so, if balancing the budget is not a good metric, then what is?"

Stephanie Kelton's answer is to look at the state of the real economy and make decisions that way. It's... a very tall order. There are massive organizations dedicated solely to getting a clear picture of the real economy of a single sector.

You might spot 10 functions that appear under-utilized, so you fund those and expect to see a return, but they're really constrained by one small thing, and once you fund that thing then those 10 functions roar to life and get into a bidding war and wreck pricing for that little pocket of the economy.

But it's worth noting that these problems exist right now, we just aren't paying attention to them because we spend more time trying to chase the dragon of austerity instead of taking a single minute to talk about utilization.

Taxes are massively important. They're just not the source of the government's money, which... yeah, is... printed. It even says so on the bills.

Yep. That was point three here:

We’ve got stickers left over in the economy. So now our new stickers, allocated for next month’s projects, are competing against last month’s sticker-holders. To some extent, this is healthy, because it means people who worked extra hard this month can relax a bit next month. But we don’t want too much to accumulate in the hands of too few people, or else our government spending becomes worthless.

Deficits still matter, they just don't matter in the same way that we usually see in the media when they talk about "revenue" and "spending taxpayer dollars".

Taxes primarily exist to create demand for the currency.

Let's say we're starting a new club with 100 members. We've got 5 big projects for this month, and we want to make sure all the members pitch in.

So we say: a month from now, everyone will turn in 10 "I helped!" stickers. If you don't, you're out of the club.

Then we hand out maybe 1500 "I helped!" stickers total to the leaders of the projects, to make sure there's enough to fill the demand for 1000 stickers since we know some will do more than others and end up with more than 10 stickers.

The leaders delegate the work out to other members, giving them stickers along with their assignments. Some members end up having scheduling conflicts, so they trade assignments between each other along with the corresponding bounty of stickers.

The month ends, everyone turns in their stickers, and we start all over again.

Notice a few things:

• We're not limited by how many stickers we get back from the members. Say we only get 800 back. We can still issue more than 800 stickers into the pool of members next month if we want to.
• We didn't have to ask for stickers from the members first before we could spend them out. We spent first, and taxed later.
• We've got stickers left over in the economy. So now our new stickers, allocated for next month's projects, are competing against last month's sticker-holders. To some extent, this is healthy, because it means people who worked extra hard this month can relax a bit next month. But we don't want too much to accumulate in the hands of too few people, or else our government spending becomes worthless.

So taxes are important for giving people a reason to contribute and do something for each other, controlling inflation, and making sure wealth stays somewhat evenly distributed. But they're not a prerequisite for spending.

What a wild take.

Open up access for machines, but keep human access closed off?

In the age of sloppification, you’d think the correct move would be to preserve signal-to-noise ratio, by opening up human access — for read and write.

I hate these arguments that are like “We need to be the ones to ruin everything, cuz otherwise the e n e m y might ruin everything!”

Eggs because:

Vance gave a quote bashing the price of eggs, but he cited a number much higher than the sign he was standing next to.

Dems pounced on this, mocking the blatant exaggeration and dismissing any concerns about a cost of living crisis.

It stuck around because it’s emblematic of the overall situation:

Repubs don’t give a shit about facts, just vibes, and wanna paint as dark of a picture as possible.

Dems only care about being correct on paper, and don’t give a shit about listening to the problems of ordinary people or doing anything that could be called “radical”.