I oppose it simply because it doesn’t work. It is not a deterrent, and it does not serve justice to put people to death, and it costs far more to execute someone than it does to rehabilitate them (the most expensive alternative - I’m not suggesting rehabilitation is an option for everyone).

And sometimes we execute innocent people. Like, how many of your family members would you be willing to put to death to keep the death penalty? Every innocent victim of the death penalty had a family, and that family never imagined it could happen to them.

I would argue that it would impact the effectiveness of the effort, but the intention is just as important.

Like if you want to make the world a better place, you can pick up litter in your local area. You could volunteer at the library or conserve energy in whatever way is easiest for you. The desire to move forward is critical, because nobody has all the information. Nobody can know all the angles, and be aware of every impact. Everyone is just doing the best they can with the information they have.

Wanting to be better informed is also a progressive ideal. Know better, do better. We might discover that something we thought was beneficial is actually harmful. The difference between a conservative choice and a progressive choice is that when new information demonstrates that behaviors conflicts with values, the progressive changes their behaviors while a conservative changes their values.

I don’t think it’s helpful to think in terms of left and right. That presumes that each side is roughly a mirror analogue of the other.

Think in terms of forward and backward. Will your ideas and political leanings push society forward? Will you be making the world better than you found it? Or are you trying to resist change, fighting against progress because the status quo, or the recent past, benefits you in some way?

For photos and videos, Immich. I don’t really care about backups for contacts, messages, or games, so I just do photos and videos.

Sure, it’s fiction, and Superman’s powers and limitations are whatever the plot demands.

But if he could move that fast, and he was in a real major city with real people and real problems, then he would be saving people nonstop. Because he could. If he’s faster than light, he could go save everyone without anyone noticing he left the room (setting aside physics, of course). But he’d never be able to stop, and he would never run out of people to save.

And none of it would be supervillains and giant robots or space lasers.

But then, applying any sort of real world rationality to Superman never ends well.

He has super hearing and super speed, and can hear everything across the city. In NYC, an approximate analog of Metropolis, there are over 37,000 car accidents with major injuries or fatalities every year. That’s 100 car accidents each day, every day, just car accidents. If he were to actually try to save everyone he could, he would never have any time for anything else, not even sleep. It’s one thing to go take a sudden bathroom break when Lois is dangling from the ledge on the roof of a building. It’s something else to leave the room every 15 minutes of every hour because people can’t stop texting while driving.

What the chicken fried fuck are you talking about?

Fridging is a form of reductionist misogyny. It’s not just that somebody died, it’s that a woman existed only to die in a brutal fashion.

Yeah but that’s because many human cells are really big.

Fiction also usually includes a flashback to see how horrific it was, and then it cuts back to the person telling the story, as though they just finished describing everything that happened. In reality, nobody can ever describe a scene in such detail, and while you are reliving the moment, everyone else just hears you say what happened.

Bacteria constitute 56% of the cells in your body. You’re more bacteria than human.

I still double space after a period, because fuck you, it is easier to read. But as a bonus, it helped me prove that something I wrote wasn’t AI. You literally cannot get an AI to add double spaces after a period. It will say “Yeah, OK, I can do that” and then spit out a paragraph without it. Give it a try, it’s pretty funny.

Who says that?

Yeah, I just switched to Jellyfin because of the Plex updates to their accounts, but I miss Plexamp. I considered running both Jellyfin and Plex just for plexamp, but I’m wary that they might eventually paywall remote audio streaming, too.

Thanks!

What’s your preferred client? I switched from plexamp to fintunes, but I really hate the app and the lack of functionality.

We study animal communication a lot. We know when many different animals have a noise or communication for “human.” Bees have different dances to describe arbitrary locations, so they could also have a specific dance for “that jerk over there with the mesh helmet.”

It’s crazy we’ve never had a Metroid/Mega Man crossover game. Like consider a team/squad shooter RPG with Samus, Mega Man, Zero, X, Roll, and you run around collecting upgrades and weapon types. I feel like the two universes would work well together.

Keep in mind the nature of fiction. It has an obligation to create friction and conflict. Intrigue is built into a fish-out-of-water story. Reality is far stranger, and far more complex. People and culture interact in imperceivable ways, and our influence on each other isn’t something we can predict. Nor is one type of culture drift good, or another bad. It isn’t better or worse in reality to have concetrated pockets of similar-thinking communities. In fiction, it is narratively expedient.

In project management, we call it “scope creep.” Day one, the job is to use your newfound powers for good. Maybe stop a mugging. Day two, catch a bad guy. Day 3, try to balance life and your secret identity while foiling a bank heist. Day 200, you’re negotiating with an interdimensional cosmic deity for the survival of the Universe by demonstrating feats of strength and fortitude.

When wireless charging was announced, every layperson out there started imagining their homes filled with powerful waves of harmless energy that would keep their devices charged and eliminate the need for all wires. People thought we could have LED bulbs that pull volts out of the air and provide light for your dining room.

Wireless charging is slightly more convenient than plugging your phone in to a usb c. But it’s also slower. I have a wireless charger next to a wired charger, and 90% of the time I plug in because it’s faster, and I can still use my phone while it charges.