Bill Gates who has more or less devoted his life to saving as many lives as possible.

…

Buffett who last I heard had donated some 50 or 60 billion to different foundations.

…

Even Musk, for all his recent evil got rich trying to reduce our dependence on gas cars

Maybe they are happier than OP suspects - I’m not them so I can’t really comment on that. As far as your framing of their motives and achievements though… Hard disagree, especially Musk and Gates. All three fucked over tons of people to get their obscene wealth.

I’d go into great depth as to why I feel that way and how they are unworthy of any praise, but it usually ends in nothing being learned and a lot of my time wasted so I’ll just hard disagree and bow out.

The few times I’ve used LLMs for coding help, usually because I’m curious if they’ve gotten better, they let me down. Last time it was insistent that its solution would work as expected. When I gave it an example that wouldn’t work, it even broke down each step of the function giving me the value of its variables at each step to demonstrate that it worked… but at the step where it had fucked up, it swapped the value in the variable to one that would make the final answer correct. It made me wonder how much water and energy it cost me to be gaslit into a bad solution.

How do people vibe code with this shit?

But if you fire half your staff while only making 400 units…

FYI, a few typos in “3. Organize with Categories” first paragraph in the getting started tutorial/blog post.

If you had a religion that, as part of it’s core system, explicitly yielded to science as it progresses… or a religion that explicitly framed all of its claims in such a way as to avoid all possible future contradictions with scientific discovery… sure. I’m not a “religion expert” or anything but I’m not aware of any such religions. It sounds like a hypothetical, philosophical proposal.

If you pay low enough wages and workers are too exhausted to do anything about it, lower productivity is profitable. It’s about the bottom line.

Thirty-five percent of motorcyclist deaths in 2023 occurred in single-vehicle crashes, and 65% occurred in multiple-vehicle crashes.

Source

The most harmful events in 2023 for 3,843 (60%) of the 6,432 motorcycles in fatal crashes were collisions with motor vehicles in transport.

Source

An article noting some highlights

The stats are the stats

…

The graph is showing the relative unsafeness of various vehicles as a whole

Yes. As a whole. As an average of the entire population.

the fact being drunk or dumb on a bike has an outsize impact on killing bikers emphasises the fact it’s less safe.

Which I acknowledge and don’t dispute. Bikes are inherently less safe than cars.

Cars have a lot of mandatory safety features like airbags, crumple zones, and seatbelts. They have four wheel stability and four points of contact on the road. They are relatively forgiving when it comes to mistakes and crashes.

Bikes don’t even have universal helmet laws in every state… and if they do mandate helmets, often a brain bucket is legally sufficient. However, with only two points of contact, and a potentially high rate of acceleration, it is much easier to lose control and crash, especially if you are riding recklessly or without experience.

My point is that inexperience and recklessness can lead to a fatal crash much more easily on a motorcycle and likely contribute to the statistics for motorcycle fatalities more than it does for car fatalities.

Basically, squids kind of juice the numbers and make them more scary. It’s not just squids - riding is not as safe as driving. Still, if you plan to ride responsibly your odds will be better than the stats suggest. Yes, the same logic applies to anything, but I believe it applies to bikes more than it applies to cars.

Doing hard things is harder to do. This doesn’t mean you can’t successfully do hard things it just means you have to try harder to do them. Taking a shortcut often ends in failure. In this case, failure can mean injured or dead.

And no, I’m not trying to say I’m cool and skilled because I ride a bike. I’m not yet that experienced or skilled on a bike… but I ride responsibly. I take it slow. I wear protective gear. I’m aware of my limits and I push them carefully.

Thanks for the demonstration.

The problem is that science overlaps religious claims, and will continue to do so as we learn more about the universe.

You are more likely to die riding a bike than other forms of transportation but riding responsibly and defensively will absolutely change the severity of the stats.

A driver could still plow through you and you are still more likely to die - I’ll absolutely concede that. You are just way, way more likely to die if you don’t know how to ride (unlicensed), are impaired by alcohol or something, wear no helmet or other gear, and/or ride recklessly or carelessly.

Yeah, speaking as a rider from the USA it’s a mixed bag. If you ride safe (licensed and know what you are doing, not drunk, wear a helmet, and assume you are invisible) it’s orders of magnitude more safe than the statistics say. Sadly, there are a lot of reckless riders dying on bikes.

Still, a ton of drivers will absolutely drive like you are invisible and just plow into you. You also have to ride carefully and be constantly aware of your bike and your surroundings. Plan for bad situations as you see them forming even though most of the time nothing happens. Small mistakes can be negated by four wheels but won’t be forgiven on two.

I didn’t start until the pandemic, which gave me an opportunity to work remotely for a time and save money. I have enjoyed riding. The motivation to be present in the moment for the sake of safety is a bit zen for me. In a car I feel like I can arrive at work deep in thought about the horrors of the world and not even remember how I got there. Admittedly, as I got more comfortable on the bike, my mind can still wander but it’s easier to snap back and focus on not dying on the bike.

For instance, I too voted for Harris, and I’ve been called a gEnOciDe suPpOrTeR, a bOoTLiCkEr, and. bLuEmAga™. Just for voting against a fascist.

The hatred between left leaning Lemmy users over the last election is crazy to me. Instead of focusing on getting rid of the current fascist regime together, so many just dogpile on anyone based on whether they voted for Harris. I feel like every other political post has a flame war that starts with a comment blaming the news on anyone and everyone on the left who didn’t vote Harris or criticized dems during the campaign.

There are those of us with a bit of nuance though. I was and still am disgusted and disappointed with the Dem’s positions and empathize with those who sat out in 2024 but I voted Dems them over the party looking to fast track fascism and white nationalism. I regularly get flamed for suggesting we move on from blaming each other and focus on getting rid of the fascists here and now.

If the workforce makes a pittance and is too exhausted to rebel, the bosses win.

Stephen Miller. I’m hesitant to call people evil but… he is. He’s more or less the USA’s shadow president - he maneuvered himself to be Trump’s right hand man and has the clown president’s trust for many domestic issues, particularly anything related to hurting and abusing non-white people.

Are you gaslighting or fucking with me? The retention system for motorcycle helmets still gets referred to casually as chin straps. It goes under your chin, which also happens to be in front of the neck.

I own and ride a motorcycle. I own and wear a helmet. I call them chin straps. Everyone I know calls them chin straps. Diagrams for helmets in English call them chins straps or, on occasion, the “helmet retention system”.

I honestly don’t care what you call them - I’m just trying to be helpful and interpret what I thought you meant. I don’t understand why you are being argumentative? Is it a translation thing maybe?

They may be referring to the motorcycle helmet chin strap.

but I like to offer arguments I hear every day from working class people who are vehemently right wing Trump super capitalist/authoritarians

If they are “vehemently right wing Trump super capitalist/authoritarians” then they aren’t going to listen and, as I said, you achieve nothing but antagonism.

“I totally agree with you but I’m going to pop your bubble and remind you that people who disagree with you to the extreme offer ignorant talking points and won’t agree with you. I totally agree with your answers to but those people don’t.”

It sounds like you are trying to demoralize the left while pretending to be an ally. What are you hoping to accomplish?

If you think the majority of people would do things to better society rather than be lazy if they were given handouts…you dont know humanity all too well.

See, I don’t think you’re “being an ass on purpose”. I think you are either just an ass or purposely being difficult to no productive end.

Im being an ass on purpose, because these are real world arguments you need to convince real people of why capitalism is actually bad, because many people are not convinced it is.

I’m not sure which sentences are you trying to be an ass and which are legitimate ignorance. You literally said you don’t disagree? I’m happy to try to counter ignorance, even feigned ignorance, but it is a waste of time if you trying to be an ass or are just going to reply “Well I know that but…”