I'd guess it's largely just a consequence of the Tragedy of the Commons. My favorite example demonstrating the effect I read in Meditations on Moloch:

The Fish Farming Story

As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.

But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.

A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.

But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.

Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.

Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.”

Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit…

A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.

Until it's more profitable to do the right thing it's likely we'll continue doing nothing, if not outright exacerbating things, just so we can get ours before it's all gone.

What am I missing that's mildly infuriating? If it's because it's shown backwards it would make sense to show the mounting hardware & location if the front side looks the same as the back.

And rarely you get to see gems like this from the movie Sgt. Bilko (1996):

What kind of filament is that printed with and are you concerned about it failing over time? Especially if there's spinning disks in there I'd be paranoid as hell about it falling.

It's not a universal truth that you can just choose to get a vaccination without making an appointment or needing to involve insurance etc.

In a hypothetical extreme scenario, imagine having to weigh the risks between getting the vaccine that will potentially save your life and unexpectedly getting an appointment reminder text/email or follow-up contact that alerts the controlling partner and they potentially end your life for the "transgression."

The vaccine being "cheap" is also not universal and if you aren't allowed personal discretionary spending anything >$0 isn't cheap enough.

There's a great (and short) video about encryption back-doors by CGP Grey: "Should all locks have keys? Phones, Castles, Encryption, and You." (Piped link).

"No matter how much we might wish it, there's no way to build a digital lock that only angels can open and demons cannot. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics or less of an angel than they appear."

EDIT: I still hate you Piped bot.

Someone else asked if this was a real thing (I also had my doubts) so I did some quick searching -- as far as I can tell this is legit. I also found a macro photography site that has a bunch of adorable pictures.

Enshittify👏Enshittify👏Enshittify👏Enshittify👏

No, ISO 8601 is the proper order. YYYY-MM-DD.

It's insane that "Brady lists" are considered the better remedy than just removing the offending officers from police work entirely (as well as charging them with some kind of perversion of duty).

Police officers who have been dishonest are sometimes referred to as "Brady cops". Because of the Brady ruling, prosecutors are required to notify defendants and their attorneys whenever a law enforcement official involved in their case has a confirmed record of knowingly lying in an official capacity. This requirement has been understood by lawyers and jurists as requiring prosecutors to maintain lists, known as Brady lists, of police officers who are not credible witnesses and whose involvement in a case undermines a prosecution's integrity.

We don't just make lists of doctors that intentionally harm their patients, arsonist firefighters, chefs that poison etc. -- they are barred from the profession once discovered. But cops (and priests) get to keep doing their thing and at most just get moved around.

I’m sorely tempted to start circulating claims about what Chauvin had in his system at the time.

Are we certain the wound was caused by a stabbing and not "Incarceration Delirium"? Or maybe it's a holy miracle stigmata!

This could have been a fun mashup but this execution just feels kinda wrong/gross overall to me.

• Why are so many main characters not included (Hermes, Zoidberg, Nibbler etc.)? At least Bender is present as the flaming mass we all fondly remember from the film...
• Was it really necessary to include perky nipples and a camel-toe on Amy?
• The staff Professor Rhod is holding has what resembles a golden swastika in the only significant change from how it appears in the movie. And though the Professor is occasionally shown without teeth in the show is there a reason he doesn't have any here?
• Why does that train have eyes?
• Just a bizarre composition in general. Why include so much of the stone and vents around Amy, then make the openings between the slats just reveal the background image? If Leela was shifted over slightly left her fading tendrils and feet could have been cleanly hidden behind the Professor.