These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.

Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day…Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.

Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it’s a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.

If I were in Olga’s position I’d go create another Natasha account on the same platform and start making videos saying “Hey, Natasha here. I just learned what things are really like in Ukraine and I’m furious about what Russia is doing to innocent civilians. Putin is an evil man. Also my main account has been hacked, please report it so I can get it back.”

If Natasha is Olga then Olga is Natasha. Olga probably has a case to take over the accounts, given they’re videos of her, and start pushing out antiwar propaganda.

Maybe I like mischief too much

“I don’t have to worry about my financials or working a job, and all I have to do is marry a horrible man and accept the possibility of spousal rape”, said the woman who doesn’t yet understand how bad rape is.

Problem is once the government has the power to disarm criminals, they can make revolution illegal, call revolutionaries criminals, and prevent the population from rising up against the oligarchy. The only two good things America did is kill Nazis, and kill monarchists. And it looks like the second amendment is going to protect their right to do both after Project 2025. In my country we have very strict gun control laws, which is why I own a bow for self defence and Nazi killing.

Presidential candidate Trump claims to be tough on crime. But is that really true? Record incarceration rates, increased violence, increased crime statistics. President Biden is the toughest president on crime yet. Debt forgiveness, decriminalisation of drugs, police reforms, rehabilitative incarceration, mental health subsidies, affordable healthcare, and free housing make Biden America’s biggest enemy of crime. President Biden: say no to crime.

Whitehouse should just run this ad and actually implement these policies. Start redefining what it means to be tough on crime. It’s not hard, it just takes actually disagreeing with reactionaries on premises. Unfortunately, Biden is trying his damndest to lose the election this year.

Narcisstic Personality Disorder is a lifelong disability with no cure. You can be a nice person with NPD. You can be a wise person with NPD. You can even be a healthy person with NPD, because disorders and illnesses are two different things. Having NPD is like having type 1 diabetes. You can live a normal life, but it’s still going to take constant attention to treat, and some stuff is always going to be just a bit harder for you. The myth that people with NPD are abusers is pseudoscientific bigotry. There are plenty of self aware people with NPD and there are plenty of non-abusers with NPD. People with NPD are most likely to be the victims of abuse compared to the abuser, but the kind of people who prey on the disabled to satisfy their own desire for cruelty don’t want you to believe that.

The “thousands of people” watching your “stream” are bots. They can respond to what’s going on in the video in real time because they’re bots. Actually I technically think this would be more efficient and therefore is probably designed so that it’s only one LLM pretending to be thousands of people, but I’ll call it bots because that’s easier to visualise. The bots know what’s going on in the “stream” because they can understand what the “streamer” is saying, which means the pickup artist can put on a convincing performance to trick the mark. If it was just a recording, it wouldn’t be able to respond to novel situations caused by the mark’s behaviour.

I don’t actually know if this technology even works, but that would be the intent used to sell it to pickup artist bros.

“Maybe if I date someone who’s famous, they’ll have enough money that I won’t have to worry about paying for medical bills or groceries anymore. Gee, maybe we could even buy a house and raise kids.”

We live in a capitalist hellscape where such things are no longer taken for granted, and are now associated with the heights of success.

For those who don’t want to read the article but do want to understand what it’s about:

1. You download an app on your phone that makes it look like you’re streaming to thousands of people
2. You go to a bar and show your phone to a woman “look, I’m famous”
3. The woman fucks you because she thinks you’re famous or something

The creator of this app is a misogynist scumbag who edits interviews with journalists to erase criticism and promote his app.

The roommate was also Chinese?

You know how transphobes say to trans women, “You’re a biological man, that’s a physical fact of reality and you can’t change that”? That’s the kind of reality, law of physics, and limitation of our bodies that soulism seeks to abolish. Soulism recognises that such “laws” of reality as immutable sex are myths, and seek to abolish all belief in such laws.

If I was the wolf, I’d just point out that the shepherd eats lamb too, and is therefore just as much a murderer. The only difference is the amount of power in the equation. The wolf doesn’t need to be bigoted to make its point, there are much better criticisms against the way the shepherd deprives the sheep of liberty. I didn’t really understand why Lincoln was describing a foolish wolf who attacks the shepherd for bad reasons instead of readily available good ones. What the wolf says is pretty nonsense to me.

WTF does the sheep’s colour have to go with liberty? Do black sheep taste better? I thought their colour only mattered to humans because humans like to dye their woolen garments. A wolf doesn’t need to dye clothes.

the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord’s land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

That’s the USSR.

The man also concentrated ownership of the means of production in the hands of one person, administered by a hierarchy of national and regional subordinates who controlled the labour of the people and the distribution of resources. This is an economic model known most commonly as feudalism. Now given the term left wing originally referred to opponents of the monarchy in France, I don’t see how there’s any way to argue in good faith that a feudal dictator was left wing.

Also, I’m a soulist. I recognise that all parts of our experiential reality are subjective and socially constructed. And right now, that reality is defined by the rich and powerful. You cannot fight a war while believing that your enemy’s weapons are natural and immutable. You cannot fight the rich from inside a reality they control and win. Even if you kill them all, you’ll still live in the world they created. You need to take power over reality for the people. That’s the only way anyone can ever be free.

Stalin wasn’t far left. The man made being gay illegal. That’s not the behaviour of a leftist.

Everything is a bias, everything is subjective, everything is open to interpretation. But most people think their own point of view is unbiased, no matter what it is. This is just a fact that naturally arises from believing in such a thing as unbiased information. It should be obvious. People want to hold whatever viewpoint they think is unbiased, so they do. People can be convinced to become racists, which necessarily implies that people can be convinced racism is unbiased. You didn’t think racists all knew they were biased, did you? They think they’re unbiased the same as you do, because you’re both humans who want to believe that you have the good opinions, and that good opinions are unbiased. And the fact is, you’re both equally correct on that front. You’re both equally biased. It’s just that you’re biased in favour of compassion and equality, while they’re biased in favour of hatred and supremacy. But the amount of bias is the same, because there’s no such thing as an unbiased viewpoint. You just think kindness isn’t a bias because you like kindness and you’ve been taught biases are bad things. Likewise, they think supremacy isn’t a bias because they like supremacy and they’ve been taught biases are bad things. And if you’re wondering if there’s an alternative to the way both you and this racist think? Yes there is, you can knowingly adopt good biases. I’m knowingly biased in favour of kindness, because I like kindness. I think choosing such a way of thinking makes me more capable of empathising with people I disagree with, understanding why they act the way they do, so I can attack the more foundational reasons for their belief effectively. It means I’m never surprised to see stuff like this. Because the thing is, they think exactly the way most people do. Just with different starting points.

I upvoted it. I don’t think it’s literally just as bad as meta, but I still think it’s bad. Websites should let you opt out of cookies in one click. If they don’t, I prefer not to use them. I’m sure this website’s article is very important, but if they want their journalism to be read they should present it in a respectful manner. Otherwise I’m just reading the headline. I like the headline, it’s a good headline, it will inform my views going forward. I will not read the article and I will not give them ad traffic.

This article seems strangely lacking in how it wants this goal to be achieved.