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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Beliefs are, essentially, opinions that people hold to very tightly without any evidence to support them.

    Folks believe in gods, aliens, ghosts, trickle-down economics, eugenics, and all sorts of interesting things. They believe that crime rates are rising in exactly the same way.

    While it is possible for someone to have a change in their beliefs, that change does not come easy. Certainly it does not come by presenting them with data that contradicts. Our best chance to change mistaken beliefs is in a dramatic and shocking event. The nature of a suitably dramatic and shocking event to shift a belief in the rise of crime eludes me completely.

    Which gives us only plan B in two parts:

    1. present younger folks with the actual information and help them avoid falling into the collective delusion
    2. wait for older folks to die.

    It occurs to me that we could speed this up by killing all the older folks, but that would obviously have an impact on crime statistics.




  • Not OP, but I think I could answer.

    Traditionally, mail is uncountable. One can count letters and packages, but not mail. Thus “I received three mails” is currently grammatically incorrect, while “I received three pieces of mail” or “I received three letters” or “I received three packages” would all currently be grammatically correct.

    It seems logical that email should follow the same rules of grammar. Thus “I received three emails” should be incorrect, while “I received three pieces of email” or “I received three messages” would all be grammatically correct.

    But English grammar is not consistent. Email is a new word and the folks that use it have decided that it is countable.

    I don’t mind this, but it seems OP does.




  • Not everything is a sequel, reboot or remake.

    Every week, original films are released. Most lack money for advertising and are commercial failures. If we wish to see more films like them made, we need to see them - preferably with people who wouldn’t otherwise have, and spread the news about them in person or Lemmy or whatever you wish.

    Or you could just wait. The movie industry has gone through this many times.



  • I’ll cheat the question a bit.

    I’d like all critics to have standards and to hew to them. I don’t mind if each critic operates by different standards, so long as all critics can articulate their standards and are consistent in their application.

    Most movie critics, for example, are offering their reactions to movies. They may review a movie. But nearly all of them are utterly inconsistent (hypocritical?) in their work. They explain their bad review of a film because of X and then praise another film despite it being just as much X as the film they loathed. If they address this conflict at all, it is with a great deal of handwavium - “This film makes it work.”

    If critics had standards, it would be possible to really compare the things they critique. Without those standards, each thing gets its own bespoke write up. Very entertaining, but useless when we want to know which is better or worse.






  • I do live in Tokyo and you do make good points.

    I do not have any problem with automation and see it as absolutely essential (along with more open immigration) to Japan’s future. I do not have any problem bussing my table in an establishment where that is the norm and has been for decades.

    I do feel, however, that it is important for business owners to continue pay something for automation that replaces workers. This is hardly a new idea. Or a popular one. But it is what I believe is right.

    I don’t mind if they want to pay me for doing the job of a cashier (this would probably just be a small reduction to price similar to the reduction in price for transportation if you use an IC card or app and in contrast to how asking for a plastic bag results in a small addition to price) though I think the best way to handle this is for owners to pay fees to the government just as they would have if humans were doing the jobs. Just as I think those who own robotic assembly lines should.