I like the sound of it, but I worry that instead of producing the Cincinnatus-types, we’ll produce an electorate that is mostly comprised of political hacks who are too entrenched in their views to be able to effectively compromise, because all of the apathetic and apolitical people wouldn’t have the will or the desire to take such a role on. It would require a massive cultural shift to encourage people to participate in the system willingly - “Doing your civic duty” is often said about voting, but so few people actually follow through with it because there is friction involved.

Also, special interests might not be able to bribe future politicians, but there’s nothing stopping one who takes the job from also getting handed a bunch of “favors” and “gifts” to influence their thinking when voting. Not to defend plutocracies, but I feel like it’s a lot harder to bribe a rich politician than it is to bribe one who is working or middle class - if anything, someone who is poor would be more susceptible to corruption, because even a “small” kickback from some corporation looking to get a politician on their side could be a life-changing one for them, one that they could not afford to say “no” to.

But man, wouldn’t it be cool to see what society would look like when any one of us could be called up to make decisions for the entire nation? With some effective guardrails and a strong constitution, I could see it being one of the best forms of representation.

Trying to stay as healthy as possible. It’s hard, because convenience calls to you at this age when you have very little time and not a whole lot more energy to do anything after your soul-crushing job takes it all away from you.

I’ve committed to a Muay Thai class three nights per week, I’ve started a Yoga and joint strengthening and flexibility class that meets once a week on weekends to work on my abysmal range of motion that will only continue to get worse if I don’t focus on improving it. I find that I go to classes more than I would go to a traditional gym because there’s a bit more accountability when there are other people there who know you and recognize you and encourage you to keep showing up and working hard each session, versus the battle I have to have with my own psyche to force myself to go to the gym and do a productive workout.

In addition to those activities, I’m back to counting calories again, the only method that has ever yielded real weight loss results for me in the past because… duh. It’s the only system that makes sense when you think critically about it. Eating healthier meals is also not so bad when you get to convince yourself that you get more bang for your buck, calorie-wise. I neglected my diet for so long, and I blame a lot of my poor discipline on me having an absolutely phenomenal metabolism in my teenage years and early twenties. I could binge eat all day and barely see any weight gain. As you get older, that goes away and it leaves you feeling like the joy of eating tasty food is simply gone.

Luckily, if you can stick with it and find some healthy and filling meals that you can keep in your back pocket, it gets easier over time. Sure, every now and then you have a bad day where you go over your limit, or go get totally wasted drunk with your friends, etc. but as long as you have more good days than bad ones you’ll stay in fairly good shape and stave off chronic illness.

One thing that has never changed about me is I keep a consistent sleep schedule. I get my 7.5 hours of sleep and that’s non-negotiable. So many of my peers report getting less, and honestly it shows in the ones who are barely sleeping or addicted to their phones at night. If you make one positive change in your life, get a full night of sleep, and if you snore, get tested for sleep apnea. I was actually getting really crappy sleep for a long time, and then I got tested for sleep apnea and I was in the moderate range, so CPAP for me. Once I got used to it (~2 weeks to a month) I started getting the best sleep of my entire life and I woke up each morning with energy and vigor, not feeling groggy or somehow more tired than when I went to bed.

Other than that, you just have to learn how to deal with the stress of life and balance working and having fun in ways that doesn’t involve destroying your body prematurely.

Heh, I was also banned for the same reason as you - quoting the exact text of the constitution to say what should happen to insurrectionists. My appeal was denied in seconds.

The time before that it was during the presidential debate live watch threads, and there was a portion of the broadcast where the camera dipped away from the speaker, so I wrote “kill the cameraman!”, an obviously non-serious statement in reference to the subreddit /r/killthecameraman, and got banned for that. That was only a three week suspension I think. The mod who banned me also handled my appeal as well, promptly ignored.

I see people complain about you a lot, but I’ve never felt like anything you’ve contributed to Lemmy has been negative or harmful.

Let the haters hate. Block exists for a reason. If those losers blocked you and every other superposter who provides content they’d complain that nobody posts anything.

As you said, you can’t make everyone happy no matter what you do. Just do what you feel like you want to do right now.

“Um ackshually it’s man in Latin!” ☝️🤓

Yeah, okay, thanks for proving my point. Probably shouldn’t be using a word that means “man” in several romance languages if your goal is to be gender neutral.

Homie comes from hommes, which is French for man/men. May also be closely related to hombre, which is man in Spanish. Definitely think it’s risky to use it as a gender neutral term even though it’s just regular slang in English.

I do this every time I see one of those dorks driving one around.

Slippery Slope Fallacy. It’s the same thing as saying Doom and Grand Theft Auto train school shooters, or marijuana is a gateway drug to hard substances.

This is not me defending paedophiles, I’m just pointing out the flaw in the logic here. Nothing says that having access to these dolls increases the likelihood of them carrying out their desires on a real child, or that by not having access they would never take that step regardless.

Are you telling me my virtual real estate is worthless?!

In a couple of years, the bubble may have already burst.

Also, the robot is not just an employee, it’s an asset that can be sold off to pay debts in the event of bankruptcy.

Only advice I can give is if you are just printing on paper, pay the extra $ and get a laser printer. Avoid inkjets - they are a complete scam and a waste of money. The toner will last 10x longer, never goes bad or clogs up the print heads, and the quality is better.

I don’t know how laser printers handle sticker sheets, but for all practical printing purposes I wholeheartedly recommend a laser printer.

Brother is also a solid brand. I have had mine for almost 10 years now and it’s still running like the day I got it.

I had an idea pop in my head and I don’t know if it’s feasible or not, but maybe the next nascent social media network can try it out, who knows.

Private trackers for torrenting are notoriously hard to get invitations to, specifically because the only way to get in is through joining the community early, limited time windows to register, or some sort of lottery system, but most people get in when one of their friends sends them one of their limited number of invitations - which they don’t do lightly because if you invite a leecher it harms your reputation and both you and the person you invited can get banned even if you are still maintaining a positive ratio.

So what if we implemented a similar kind of system? Bots can’t flood a system if the registration is closed access, but regular people can still get invitations from friends and family. But if you invite a bot, that bot account and the account that invited it get terminated simultaneously, taking out two bad actors for the price of just one. Heck, if you really wanted to go scorched earth, every account that was registered via an invitation from the person who initial invited the bot should also get terminated. Know who you are inviting and you won’t have any problems, but if you use your ability to invite people recklessly, your entire social network gets kicked off the platform.

This would probably never get implemented in a serious social media platform because those spaces rely on explosive growth to compete with other more established networks, and limiting the number of users is counterproductive - I think at some point investors would just start telling management to open the floodgates and let the bots in already.

AI wasn’t the NFT killer, right click > saveas killed it at the very moment of conception.

Digital scarcity is a complete joke.

They don’t just want the machines to create the art and music for us, they want them to consume it for us too, so that we’ll have more time to slave away at our jobs.

I bought a custom sectional sofa for way too much money to shove into a too-small room.

I think my thought process at the time was that I would have a place to relax and also a spot for guests if I had them over for entertainment, but it took up so much space that it was more of a hindrance and I very rarely had people over and when I did they didn’t want to be packed into a small spare bedroom that I used as a computer room.

Couldn’t sell it either. Had to pay junk removal to take it away.

Nah, your posts are good. Fuck the haters. I don’t even bother to look at usernames 90% of the time but I recognized a few of the posts you’ve made over the past few days in lemmy shitpost and they are genuinely good.

His family says they really like me, but they’d never accept me as his wife since I’m not Arab

Who is saying this to you? Are they saying it, or is he saying it?

Because if his family says that they really like you but they are not willing to accept you as part of their family if one of their own desires it, then no matter how good they think their reasons may be, they don’t actually like you. They are just making excuses.

And if he’s the one saying it and you’ve never received any kind of verbal confirmation from, say, his siblings or parents about the topic, I would be highly suspicious of his motives.

I think that this is a larger discussion that has to happen with your boyfriend. Telling him how playing second fiddle to another woman would make you feel might give him some much needed perspective. If he’s not willing to budge on the traditional marriage, you have a choice to make - you can continue to be with him and reap the benefits of the relationship, but you are going to accept that eventually he’s going to push you into a situation that you cannot tolerate (being a mistress, essentially) and you are going to end up with nobody and all the time and years of your life that you can never get back spent cultivating the failed relationship will be lost.

On the other hand, there is a nonzero chance that he might change his mind. Maybe money isn’t as important to him as your love and affection for him is. Maybe he will mature a little more and recognize the importance of keeping someone he knows he cares about close, rather than taking a chance on someone else who just happens to be of the same race. But that’s a lot of “maybes” and “what ifs”.

Personally, I would draw a line in the sand. Like a savvy gambler, you have to know when to quit while you’re behind, because losing the relationship will no doubt be hard for you emotionally, but you know what’s worse? Losing the relationship anyway after trying for years to salvage it and then realizing that you wasted that time of your life chasing someone who didn’t value you instead of hitting the dating scene right away. If you straight up tell him that you want to be his #1 and only wife, and he rejects that, you should leave him. Stick with him for the sex and the company if you want, but don’t hesitate to put yourself back on the market, and take time to start emotionally distancing yourself from him.

They won’t.

Yeah, because the AI will look at everything with cold logic and rationality and come to the conclusion that even though the best chance of survival is for everyone to keep their fingers off the button, all it takes is for one actor to do it for the whole system of mutually assured destruction to collapse into nuclear armageddon, in which case the best chance of survival is to be the first one to launch your nukes and take out all your enemies capabilities to retaliate.

A human being who isn’t psychotic can clearly see that the resulting survival and new world order would not be particularly a pleasant one to live in. The AI doesn’t care about its own comfort, though, so it will see this as the best outcome that minimizes variables.

This is why AI should never be allowed to make decisions.

What could possibly be more important than the patient?

Why, the shareholders of course, silly!