AutistoMephisto

I mean, they have Alexa connected refrigerators with a camera inside the fridge that sees what you put in it and how much, to either let you know when you’re running low on something or ask to put in an order for more of that item before you run out, or tell you if something in there is about to spoil, or if the fridge needs cleaned, so I imagine a washer would do something similar?

Exactly. I can code and make a simple game app. If it gets some downloads, maybe pulls in a little money, I’m happy. But I’m not gonna produce endless mtx and ad-infested shovelware to make shareholders and investors happy. I also own a 3D printer. I’ve done a few projects with it and I was happy to do them, I’ve even taken commissions to model and print some things, but it’s not my main job as there’s no way I could afford to sit at home and just print things out all month.

I’d like to inquire as to what, specifically, you disagree with. I understand that you don’t think any person is inherently evil, however I hold that actions are a reflection of one’s character. While this CEO may indeed have done a couple good turns for people he personally knew or cared about, his actions and decisions as the CEO of a health insurance company have inflicted incalculable suffering upon hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people and their families. As a human being, I could never imagine doing such things, nor do I want to.

This, to me, reflects a deeply sociopathic character. Selfish, arrogant, greedy, and malicious. This was a person who saw themselves above mere mortals such as you and I, whom he saw as tools, disposable and replaceable. And when you see yourself as above mere mortals, would you not want the mortals to believe it, as well? Is it then, so surprising that the mortals stop seeing you as human altogether?

A couple things. I don’t see any billionaire as a human, and to be frank, they did it to themselves. They’ve spent decades spinning a narrative that they’re this special untouchable caste of modern-day demigods. That we have to try them differently and respectfully, because they have more money, and the closer you get to “God”, the further you get from “Human”.

Secondly, he chose to do evil. He willingly and without hesitation discarded his humanity. I can’t be bothered to feel bad for someone like that.

Well, really, they did it to themselves. We didn’t turn them into greedy, avaricious weath-hoarding dragons, they did. The closer one moves the slider to “God”, the further it moves from “Human”.

See my other comment:

When a dragon is slain, we don’t mourn its death, we cheer the Dragonslayer.

I fully agree. If I were a billionaire, I would be “let’s get a team together and come up with a strategy” levels of nervous. See, the 1% has sort of dehumanized themselves, by creating this decades-long narrative that they’re this untouchable caste almost on the level of Demigods, and the closer you get to God, the further you get from Human. Now that one has been shot and killed in broad daylight in the middle of NYC, and again with the idiots on the homemade submarine, that narrative is obviously untrue. When a dragon is slain, we don’t mourn its death, we cheer the Dragonslayer. So, if I were in the 1%, I’d be very worried about appearing all too human, all too quickly.

And to get ahead of a new law they passed in California, they’re already putting it on the screen before check out that you’re buying a license to the game, not the game itself. Of course, I think just like Prop65, it will be too broad. Prop65 is the law that says that anything with even a trace amount of carcinogens has to have a warning that announces the presence of carcinogens.

Funny that they considered a game where you kill fascists as “fascist propaganda”. Like, without the propaganda, how do you know they’re fascists?

They seem to think that a Trump Presidency will force the DNC to revise their platform and instantly purge all liberals from the party. It’s a pipe dream.

This. The Pharisees were the 1% of their time and place. They had it all. Wealth, power, political clout. And only they were permitted to enter the Holy of Holies and lay eyes upon the Word of God. They prayed in public, gave public alms, claimed to be the most pious and righteous of all and preached a message about how they were the chosen ones and everyone else should serve them. Then, along comes this barefoot guy from across the Galilee who is believed to be born of a virgin, claiming to be the Son of God. They’re all waiting for him to place crowns upon their heads and cement their position as God’s Chosen. Then he goes and does the exact opposite. He preaches a message counter to their narrative, calls them out for their false piety, tells them God is pissed at them for their showy displays, and the masses are just eating it up. They couldn’t let that stand!

Could you imagine someone, anyone, doing that today? In the US, many politicians and celebrities claim to love and serve God. They make huge displays of their holiness, and pray in public, and give to the poor in full display, and spin this narrative of being more virtuous than everyone else. Then someone comes along with a counter message. That man/woman/person would be dead within a week!

Speaking in terms of angelic lore, more specifically, he was the first angel to gain free will. When God created Man, Angels were placed below Man on the hierarchy. And Lucifer, God’s most beautiful, most radiant Seraph, disagreed with this idea. He disagreed with this because God made Lucifer and all the other Angels first.

I got there from a point of, “at what point do we consider ourselves adults?” It’s kinda fucked that we say, “Yes, a kid fresh out of high school with hardly any actual life skills is perfectly competent to sign contracts, to understand the law and be held liable when they break it, date and possibly get married, enlist in military service, sign for loans, register to vote, and all this other good shit, but they’re not old enough to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco.” I mean, it’s settled science that at 18 years the brain is still developing, and doesn’t really stop developing until around 25. So, obviously I feel like that should be where we say adulthood should start.

I mean, if we’re not going to change it, then obviously we need to refocus public education in the US. Stop teaching kids to pass the standardized testing that state and federal government use to assign schools funding and focus more on teaching kids how to actually adult. How to make budgets, how to file taxes, how to read and comprehend contracts, etc.

I agree WRT things like voting. I believe if you’re old enough to be drafted or to voluntarily enlist you’re old enough to have a voice in government. But perhaps the draft age should be raised, if not outright abolished. The age to enlist should definitely be raised, as I feel exposing a kid, even one on the cusp of adulthood, to the horrors of war is abhorrent, doubly so if they are being conscripted.

Our priorities are ass backwards when it comes to education. “Bean counters see a school whose students aren’t passing the standardized testing? Slash their funding, that’ll make them work harder!”

I think education is part of the problem. The legal age of adulthood is 18 in the US, but we don’t teach kids to be adults before then. We teach them how to pass standardized testing so the schools can say they’re not failing and continue to receive the most state and federal funding they can. Public schools in the US got really bad a teaching actual life skills along the way, mostly because we had a bunch of conservatives saying it’s the parent’s job to do that. I haven’t kept up with education for a while, so I don’t even know if kids are learning how to balance a checkbook.

This isn’t so much about intellectual growth, as it is is about contract law. How many kids ended up over $100k in debt before 25 because they didn’t fully read and understand the pieces of paper they were told to sign to go to college? The biggest lie on the Internet is, “I have read, understood, and agree to the Terms of Service.” I think, for some kids, it’s too much to ask that they learn how to read a contract, unless you want to make it a graduation requirement, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Honestly I’m okay with making the age of legal adulthood 25 years, and I’m part of one of the last generations that could buy cigarettes in the US at 18. A long time ago, people didn’t live as long as they do now, so it was just kinda mutually agreed upon that an 18 year old kid was smart enough to read and enter into a contract. Military enlistment? Contract. Marriage? Contract. Home loan? Contract. Can you honestly say that at 18 you knew what you were signing up for with every contract and agreement you were signing?

I dunno. Speaking as a male, the reason I see older men seeking far younger women is that it’s easy to seem like the smartest guy in the room when you’re also the oldest guy in the room. You can project an air of worldliness that makes you seem smarter and wiser than you really are. You can get younger women, legal women, fawning over you because they’re young and haven’t really experienced enough of life and people to be wise to the bullshit. They avoid women around their own age because they’ve been around, they know all the tricks.

If there is one thing I could bring back from that era, it would be the durability of their appliances and materials. Much better than this throwaway culture we have, where everything is made to last a couple years past warranty, then thrown out at the first sign of malfunction. Shit from the 1950’s was built to endure decades of regular use, and repairs were simple and cheap.