There seems to be a lot of resentment about brands honoring pride month. I get that it’s mostly a ploy for more customers, but even so I don’t think it deserves the criticism it gets. Support for the community is widespread and mainstream and I think that should be celebrated in all its forms. If this public corporate pandering ever goes away it should be a red flag that the mainstream support has waivered and everyone should be worried.

Honestly, for how much fresh water they hold, I’m surprised how small their watershed is.

It would be so awesome if they went employee owned. I get the impression the employees are people who are passionate about video games. I feel that they would choose leadership that is both good for the community and good for the long-term health of the company.

Paint.net

A great point! I feel like the overarching end goal is a meritocracy - people are rewarded for their talents and hard work. I’d wager most people agree with this goal.

The problem becomes disentangling history and circumstance from our ability to measure talent and hard work. The only way we know to break some social norms that hinder a true meritocracy is to unfairly manipulate the playing field in the short term, which in itself does not follow a meritocracy.

I think there are a few main obstacles:

1. Perceived talent and hard work that was actually the result of circumstance - those that think the system is currently working and therefore their position is justified.
2. Lack of acceptance that the goal is long term / generational. Those that are unwilling to accept a temporary ‘manipulated meritocracy’ in the short term that would allow a better one in the future.

OOTL: Can I get a summary?

The perfect use case is tickets to live events. One entity creates one NFT for each seat or spot available and can initially sell them. The owner of that NFT (ticket) can then do whatever they want with it without the need for a third party (Ticketmaster) to scalp the shit out of any subsequent transactions.

Proof of ownership of a single ticket at the time of the event is the end goal, which is what NFTs do.

Why this hasn’t been done is pretty baffling to me.

What’s better, is if artists want to provide a subset of tickets that are not resellable they can. Those tickets will only be accepted if a single transaction has taken place.

That’s quite a bomb to drop in your last sentence. Gonna need a source on that one.

Ooo there’s a great video on Minute Food about vanilla extract vs synthetic vanilla. It basically comes down to: if you cook the vanilla, synthetic will taste the exact same, if you never heat up the vanilla it might be worth getting the real stuff.

I assume the same is probably true of most oils, if you use EVOO for salad dressings it might be worth it, but if you’re using it to saute you might as well use sunflower oil and save some money.

Damn, everyone could have been right if the OG just relented. He changed his mind to agree people don’t change their minds? Chess grandmaster move right there… What a missed opportunity.

Guilty, I have a standard transmission AWD car and it is so much fun to drift corners in the snow!

I never do it in traffic or near other drivers, though. They don’t deserve to pay for the consequences of my stupidity.

Love this write up! Thank you for posting, I really like your ideas. Out of curiosity how would apartment buildings work in your plan. There are many cities where you probably don’t want to encourage single family homes to reduce urban sprawl. How would you encourage high density housing in your plan?

I understand your sentiment, but it took all of a half second to think of one scenario that would cause problems in the proposed system.

As frustrating as it is to hold off on a good-intentioned change, it is far more detrimental to charge headlong without considering the consequences. The systems that are in place now are there for a reason. Some of those reasons are greed and corruption, but others are because of they fulfill people’s needs. It would be stupid to build a new system to address the greed side without addressing the need side.

How do you handle situations where people want to live temporarily in houses? An example would be a traveling nurse that doesn’t want to be in an apartment building.

Honestly, probably the most contested* area throughout history. Maybe after Anatolia, but that has been relatively peaceful in my lifetime so it feels different.

*And by that I mean contested by the most powerful players at their respective times. I’m sure there are places that have had more consistent fueds at a much smaller scale.

I understand your frustration, but unless the voting system is modified to approval or ranked choice you are probably not acting in your best interest voting for a third party. I hate that fact as much as you and I want to see it changed, but that’s the reality of the system we’re in.

Honestly, I disagree. It is much more surprising to me that lifeforms I recognize are older than stars. They’re different timescales in my mind that I never even considered comparing.

Wow, sharks @439mya, Polaris @70mya. They’re more than 6 times older! This is NUTS!

Wow, fuck grandma. Why have modern convinces if you’re still expected to work as hard as the last generation? Shouldn’t our goal be that each generation has a shorter work week than the last?

Most, if not all, laws should include annual inflation adjustments. That includes minimum wage, social security, food assistance, as well as minimum fines for breaking laws. Inflation is built into this economic system. The Fed is mandated to keep inflation at 2%, we should not be surprised that these laws become outdated.

It feels like an unnecessary way to keep politicians relevant since they have to keep voting to update these figures instead of just building inflation into the law.