Relational database. He’s got children, which joins tonaughty and nice on childid and both record their status each year so that he can monitor trends.

I’m not going to let the robots change the way we talk. They’ve already taken enough from us.

Nah. That’s been a linguistic construction, especially on Tumblr, for a fairly long time.

“tomato” is an open-source router firmware package. You can use it to access settings that the manufacturer intentionally hides away, or to set up features like UPnP more easily. Some versions even enable features like a built-in NAS (just bring your own drives), networked printer support, or running a publicly-facing website on your router.

Along with packages like DD-WRT, it’s a pretty common modification for a lot of tech-savvy users to make.

Though, to be honest, I’m not entirely certain that a 2011 Belkin router would be compatible with Tomato (probably?).

I am also not a journalist, but if you’re filing articles from the field, it could make a lot of sense that you might just do it on your phone from a gaudy bathroom in the White House or something rather than needing to pull out a laptop somewhere. Back in the 70s, reporters on location would call their stories in and have them typed; this could be a pretty good modern analogue, maybe?

Autocorrect, I’d assume. “Office” doesn’t sound much like “orifice,” but it would be easy to swipe-type it the wrong way.

But either way, yeah.

Someone did a study on various means of welfare support, and figured out that doing away with all other forms of poverty easement and replacing it with an equivalent amount of UBI would actually save taxpayers a significant amount of money. And further, it actually costs way more to try to identify and prosecute fraud than the system actually loses to said fraud.

I think the easiest way to accomplish UBI, without dealing with a lot of rigamarole and nonsense, would be to figure out what amount “basic” should mean—you suggested $2000/mo, but for some cities that would barely cover rent, so maybe let’s say $3000/mo—and then have anyone who wants any form of government financial assistance register with the UBI office, indicating the compensation they receive at their highest-earning job. The UBI office would then simply pay them the difference between $3000 and their monthly paycheck. UBI office automatically cross-references with the IRS every year, so you can’t hide income without getting audited.

I generally agree, but rather than making it a specific number, I think we should tie it to some multiple of the poverty line or the average income of the lowest 10% or something like that. That way, if the rich want to earn more, they have to make things materially better for the poorest people in society; and if they don’t do enough, the government takes that money to do it for them.

It definitely said 181 before. I’m almost positive.

Nah. ChatGPT sounds like us.

Some humans write like this too. That’s kind of how it learned it.

“They should come here legally!”

“They’re trying.”

“Wait what they are? Well we’d better stop that then!”

There’s a lot of competition for that title. A shocking amount.

Oh, I wasn’t blaming you—I don’t really mind the downvotes, if I made a bad joke I’m happy to take my lumps. Just surprised me, is all.

But I think you’re right. I was going for a sort of absurdist thing (lol, a train participating in a drag race. Lol, Tesla bro thinking he could outrun a high-speed train. Lol, some internet commenter who doesn’t get social cues and tries to inject his special interest/hyper focus into everything even when it doesn’t make sense) but I wasn’t absurd enough to not sound like I was legitimately saying those things.

Definitely a fair point. But for the most part, being in the country that collapses is going to be worse than being in a different country.

This is just me, and I’m no expert. But I kind of think that, if you’re legitimately worried about your country’s currency collapsing, you might want to consider leaving your country. Any sort of collapse that leads to hyperinflation or the large-scale elimination of financial infrastructure is probably going to be difficult if not impossible for the average person to survive, gold or no.

That said, precious metals are a niche enough market that I can’t imagine it not being rife with predatory sellers; companies that aren’t offering scams per se—you’ll probably pay them and receive what you pay for—but companies which are counting on people not knowing anything about the market and accepting a terrible price or poor quality goods.

Again, not an expert. But my end-of-the-world investment would be in shelf-stable food, easily-stored seeds (for planting), medicine, hand tools, high-quality camping gear, books, that sort of thing. If there is a collapse, those sorts of things will be immediately useful and also tradeable.

Man. I did not expect this joke to thud so hard.

I don’t mind people who have one thing as their “entire personality,” so long as they don’t try to make it into everyone else’s personality, too. When every conversation is about your special interest, and every occasion has to be about your special interest, and you refuse to talk about anything else, then you’ve gone from being a person who’s got a special interest to a person who can’t have anything else.

Same. Generally speaking our company is pretty healthy, but we’re still stuck in this really stupid leveling system where advancement is tied to greenfield development and I’ve been doing maintenance and compliance work for the last five years.

Me, in a CR400AF:

(Nothing, I wasn’t stopped by the stop light, so I sped past at 350 mph, only spent about 0.13s in earshot of this conversation, and covered ¼ mile in 2.57 seconds—about three times faster than Tesla Bro’s hoopty. Also I was insulated from the sound of their inane conversation by the sound isolation and also by the sound of the aerodynamic noise that the sound isolation was actually installed to block)