Anyone come up with a good measure of distance that makes the speed of light a nice round number? I like the metric system, but the meter feels pretty arbitrary. We could do better!
Wouldn't the speed of a swallow be a intelligence check?
It's the transitions that are the enemy! Getting un/dressed and getting dry are both annoying. In summer when I'm only wearing shorts and can airdry in the warmth I'm fine taking a shower. But most of the year I just hate the transition...
I thought there was going to be some punchline and I was quite confused at the end, what else would paramedics do if some kid was sick? Then I read the comments and remembered about America... I genuinely don't know how people can live in a country that is so antagonistic to its own citizens.
You don't need to personally own companies in those industries. The secret of insider trading is knowing what announcements will effect stock prices. If the government says that they're going to ban cigarettes, the value of tobacco companies will fall. If I know that the government isn't serious, and will never implement the ban, I can buy stock at a reduced rate safe in the knowledge that it's real value hasn't fallen.
If i run the government there's countless ways to profit from that insider knowledge. Gold prices go up when the stock markets are uncertain and people are worried about financial choas. So, I could buy lots of gold ($2300 an oz in Jun 2024), then make some wild decisions and statements so that the markets start panicking, and watch the gold price rise (peaked at around $3400 last month) . So I sell my gold for a substantial profit, and dial back a bunch of the most wild policies and stuff goes mostly back to normal, but I'm a lot richer.
Same as Liz Truss killing the queen. Sometimes, when you're old and in poor health, you just experience something that makes you think "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit anymore."
For sure, it's worth letting people know if they aren't aware. It's been a while since I installed boost, but I remember there being very clear messages about the ads and tracking, explaining it was to compensate the developer for the time he spent converting the reddit client to lemmy, and with the option of a one time fee to completely avoid trackers and ads.
While I love it when things are truly FOSS, I understand that I pay my barber and my plumber for their time, and I don't have a problem paying a one-off fee to buy software I want. What is exploitative are many subscription models, and all software that takes your money AND still monetises you (looking at you microsoft).
It's good to make people aware of genuinely free alternatives. But I used jerboa, voyager and a few other lemmy clients and I'm much happier with Boost and it was worth every cent.
I commented at the same time as you, otherwise I'd have replied to you directly. It is a real tweet, but satire, Jack Kimble is not a real politician (he purports to represent California's 54th district, out of 52).
Up lemmyed, funny, but for anyone else confused about the satire https://www.truthorfiction.com/rep-jack-kimble-a-whopping-25-of-american-students-are-in-the-bottom/
I mean, I agree, I'm not going to be losing any sleep worrying about the unsatisfied billionaires. But what he's saying is that given the cost (losing 30 years of his life) the 'reward' ($35 billion) wasn't enough. He's not saying he doesn't like or want the money, he's saying its not enough to give up your life for.
If anything, it would explain why rich people keep pursuing money long after any sane person would be content with their millions/billions. Maybe if you just get given a few million you could be satisfied with it, but if you've had to sacrifice your life, friends, morality and so on to get it... And you realise it doesn't actually make you happy, so you keep chasing more, hoping that eventually enough will be enough. Better that than realising you're an idiot who fell for capitalism's big lie and gave up the stuff that actually mattered in life to get more numbers on a sheet.
I remember when everyone was excited about playing Pokemon Go and wishing that there was a way to do something similar but in the wilderness rather than cities. I wanted to be able to wander around the wilds trying to encounter strange and rare creatures. Then I realised I had just invented birdwatching.
We really need to come up with some DIYable devices. A future where most nation states insist in this sort of backdoor feels distressingly inevitable at this stage...