I’m not well travelled but, Canada just feels like home of course, and Italy didn’t feel strange in the slightest.

Japan was like being transported to a different world.

Guatemala was as well but, getting picked up by a bodyguard at the airport and driving past slums on the way to a gated community of mansions left a sour taste that still lingers.

I’ve never met a single person who believed Facebook was a force for good. Why allow it to exist in its current form at all.

If these companies are the new town square then make a real online town square run by the government people can use if they so choose and then break up the monopolies that are destroying the fabric of all the societies on the globe.

We never in a million years should have allowed these companies to establish global scale communications platforms without the ability to properly moderate them with human intervention and that’s not even to speak of the actual nefarious intent they possess to drive engagement and the anti democratic techno feudalist sickening shit we see from their CEOs like Thiel et al.

They are a plague on our species that makes sport betting apps look like childs play.

I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.

Overall the site has become social media. Any sub that reaches critical mass gets absorbed into the slop hivemind. Browsing r/all is almost indistinguishable from browsing public facebook posts nowadays. Just loads and loads of bot slop catch-all subreddits like r/interestingasfuck or r/woahthatscool and drama subreddits like r/amioverracting. My filter list is over 100 subs long at this point.

When i log on to an actual classic forum like tacomaforum.com the difference is stark.

Who is doing this? Did I suggest that addressing the systemic issues with the cycle of poverty precludes individuals pursuing education? No, I said it doesn’t on its own resolve the issue of poverty as a whole.

> Only if we keep repeating things like this.

I still think the answer to this problem will not hinge on individuals choosing to interact with social media less and more intelligently. The vast majority of us know social media is manipulating and dividing the population. We all know we should use it less. We already have these discussions and have been for years and it shows to have very little actual effect on the overall situation we find ourselves in.

You are right in that it can be a yes-and type situation but my worry is that bringing personal responsibility to the forefront of the conversation mostly serves to diminish the responsibility we face as a society to reign in these monstrous (in both ways) companies that are actively destroying our social fabric in pursuit of profits in the most charitable view, or in pursuit of bringing us into a hellscape of a new world order, re Thiel et al.

It’s much akin to suggesting that poor people should not blame the system that keeps them poor and instead should focus on their education and getting themselves out of their current situation. Sure it’s accurate for the individual but, it’s not an actual solution to the problem at scale.

Heroin addicts quit aided by the intense and direct efforts and support of the people around them. Whether that’s hospital staff or family. And you often do tell heroin addicts it’s not their fault. You tell them addiction is a disease. That their addiction is not a moral failing.

Maybe I just need more time with it but, my toyota had adaptive cruise and slammed on the brakes one time and I did not like it. On a one lane highway the car a decent ways in front of me slowed down and started moving into the shoulder to take a right turn into a driveway. As i came up on him he was almost all the way over, just his driver side wheels on the line. I moved to the far side of the lane with plenty of room to clear without slowing down and my toyota slammed on the brakes going from 65 to like 40 and it scared the shit out of me. It was a greater level of surprise and fear than I’d experienced in probably the last 20k miles of driving and was completely avoidable had I been using dumb cruise control.

Driving my mom’s Honda insight with lane assist also made me nervous when I would be near the edge of a lane on purpose and it would move the wheel on its own.

I’m not opposed to fully automated driving, but what I don’t want is to be in a situation where I need to remain alert and responsible for managing a system that does the driving. I’d rather just do the driving myself. I’ve driven for almost 20 years now, some of that professionally, and it’s second nature at this point and doesn’t require active thought outside navigating new routes and finding parking. Managing the system requires more effort for me.

I now drive a standard 33 year old truck and it’s bliss. No software updates, no bs, just a machine that takes my inputs and gets me from A to B. That said, without airbags, crumple zones and abs I’d have to get something more modern if there were children in the picture.