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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 10th, 2023

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  • One thing to note - The science is still calculating. Yet. SpaceX (and presumably others) are allowed to continue and increase what they’re doing. This is the bass ackwards way to protect future us.

    Its the same mentality as driving in a random direction for 20 minutes while someone looks in the car for the map on the off chance that when you get the map open you’ll be where you wanted to be anyway.

    It has the potential (and at this point, just the potential) for planet level changes, and is being done by one group. Should I, a random dude, be able to do something that might possibly affect the entire planet, and the planet as a whole just have to wait and see how it turns out?

    The hopeful thought that its probably nothing, before anyone can prove that it’s probably nothing, makes a bet where the short term wins are mine, but any long term losses are everyone else’s.



  • In the face of the established historical record of over 100 lawsuits brought against farmers, the amended PUBPAT complaint asserts, “Monsanto implicitly acknowledges that its transgenic seeds can contaminate the property of non-transgenic farmers,” but in its asserted “commitment” to not sue farmers over “inadvertent,” and “trace” amounts of contamination, the company fails to define either term. Therefore, the Complaint argues, “the clear implication is that Monsanto indeed intends to assert its transgenic seed patents against certified organic and non-transgenic farmers who come to possess more than ‘trace amounts’ of Monsanto’s transgenic seed, even if it is not their fault.”

    When Monsanto sued family farmer Percy Schmeiser in Canada over contamination caused by transgenic seed blown off a passing neighbor’s truck, it cost him a half million dollars to fight them, and he had to mortgage his farm to raise the money, Patterson recalls. In the process, he lost control over 50 years of his own traditional, non-transgenic seed development work, according to Patterson and published reports telling the Schmeiser story. “Monsanto reportedly spent $4 million on their case against Schmeiser,” Patterson says. Percy Schmeiser told him Monsanto had 19 lawyers at one point in the courtroom up against his own single lawyer. “In the school yard and in the NFL, that is called ‘piling on,’” he concludes. https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/763/family-farmers-amplify-complaint-against-monsantos-gmos-reinforcing-their-arguments-with-two-dozen-additional-plaintiffs

    They don’t own anything, the modified something that came with the planet, and they want everyone on the planet to be forced to use it, and them to pay them for the privilege. I’ve never been to Msto HQ but I’d give Dollars to Donuts that that is printed on the wall.



  • proven. there’s a list of new inventions that were proven safe in 1950. Do we think they were just idiots back then?

    Also its about directing cash from the sale of ‘Golden rice’ far more than about having these folks afford good food.

    https://grain.org/en/article/10-grains-of-delusion-golden-rice-seen-from-the-ground

    I’m no expert but these folk are almost

    While many doubt the ability of golden rice to eliminate vitamin A deficiency, the machinery is being set in motion to promote a GE strategy at the expense of more relevant approaches. The best chance of success in fighting vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition is to better use the inexpensive and nutritious foods already available, and in diversifying food production systems in the fields and in the household. The euphoria created by the Green Revolution greatly stifled research to develop and promote these efforts, and the introduction of golden rice will further compromise them. Golden rice is merely a marketing event. But international and national research agendas will be taken by it.

    The promoters of golden rice say that they do not want to deprive the poor of the right to choose and the potential to benefit from golden rice. But the poor, and especially poor farmers, have long been deprived of the right to choose their means of production and survival. Golden rice is not going to change that, and nor will any other corporately-pushed GE crop. Hence, any further attempts at the commercial exploitation of hunger and malnutrition through the promotion of genetically modified foods should be strongly resisted.




  • [ confirmation bias at play. you have switched to bluetooth. it meets or exceeds all your needs. you don’t see much public indication to the contrary. you figure bluetooth is the best. ]

    1. simplicity the cable just works. no configuration. no pairing .un pairing, figuring why it worked yesterday

    2. Audio quality - bluetooth is lossy. we just were given AptX lossless in 2021 ( another confirmation bias ) “Sounds great to me” “I can’t hear the difference”.
      2 things are both possibly true though: I can’t hear the difference. Other people hear a big difference. this seems impossible to some people. As if their senses are the apogee of human sense.

    3. lag. new codecs lower latency, but lag lag lag. You couldn’t possibly use your device as a synth/music instrument and ‘play’ the lag is far to great. Same with games.

    4. whats the big deal. This is a bias for the plug users - would it hurt to keep it? we’ve always had it. The work is already done. Its already baked in the cake, why you gotta take it out?

    5. Investment - I have really good headphones. I have really good earbuds. Yes there are adapters but they are finicky exactly when you want them to just work. They inevitably break. They often downgrade the sound - I have 3 usb to audio adapters for android that all hiss for no reason.

    The issue is that when the marketers are selling us a ‘clean vision of the future’ they purposefully gloss over the things they are taking away. Then they paint the people who feel pain because of the change as neanderthals who wouldn’t know better if it bit them. When they do know better. They had better (for them) and progress made it worse (for them). To which the marketers generally say - you should be someone else.



  • What about the one sided ability to change a contract??

    A year from now Roku pop up says “Click to Accept” , the text says **"this contract means you’ll have to give us your first born child? ** My reasoning says if they can do one then they can do the other. There is nothing that would prevent them from adding ‘fees’, or ‘subscriptions’ or simply turning off the device. (!)

    This is egregious. We bought something. In normal commerce, the contract was set in stone at that moment. The seller can’t roll up 2 years later, change the contract, force you to agree before you can use your device, and then say , well maybe if you beg, you can opt out.


  • late to the party, but I had OperaGX do a clever evil thing recently - I have an old machine running MacOS 10.14 (for reasons), I had GX up, and I alt-tab’d and noticed there was the “don’t symbol” (ghostbusters) over the OperaGX Icon. I thought, “that can’t be right”. I’m running GX right now. I double checked, and I was using GX with several windows open. But the symbol was right - they had Updated OperaGX that I WAS running, WHILE I was running it, to a version that WOULDN’T work on the computer I was on. I eventually restarted GX, and got a 'You can’t use OperaGX with this version of MacOS". Jerks.

    I dug around, and very roughly, the .app file is not the App. They use a folder off in Library to store the actual pieces of the app, and it there is a few different pieces, and the .app file points to the actual executables.

    Anyway it was fun while it lasted. Never again.