It’s still hard for me to believe that this is how pharmaceuticals are secured.

Pharmacist: “Should we dispense this potentially dangerous drug, it’s a large quantity?”

Other Pharmacist: “Of course, look at the paper, it has the correct letterhead!”

It’s basically like doctors sit around with a stack full of signed blank checks in their offices, and every once in a while someone steals one and makes a huge withdrawal.

Except “doing your job” doesn’t capture that it’s a deliberate change in how you perform at your job, and “acting your wage” is a newfangled way of saying the long established term, with its on Wikipedia page, “Work to Rule”.

To be fair, “quiet quitting” is a labour action that goes back decades if not centuries. A more common name is “work(ing) to rule”.

I remember that term from when my teachers were preparing to strike a long while ago. The fact is, most workers, teachers especially, go beyond the bare minimums that their jobs require. It made a big difference when teachers who used to supervise after-school activities just went home instead. In jobs that are associated with “vocational awe”, it’s very common for people to do much more than the minimum requirements for their jobs, so when they engage in a “work to rule” campaign, there’s a really big difference.

This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.

“Financial harm” is a loaded term. People expected to make money and then didn’t, but is that a bad thing?

What if the US president declared that it is now a legal requirement that every American subscribe to a new paid tier of Facebook, and that declaration was rubber stamped by the lawmakers. Anybody who didn’t capitulate would be doing “financial harm” to Meta, but is that really a fair way to frame that? If a bully wants your lunch money and you resist, are you doing “financial harm” to the bully?

The way I see things, the initial copyright laws were a relatively fair trade: a 14 year monopoly on something, that could be renewed for another 14 years if the author was still alive. In exchange, everything after that term became part of the public domain. So, it would encourage people to produce writing, and the public would benefit because a reasonable amount of time later what was produced would be available to everybody at no cost. Modern copyright terms are a massive give-away to Hollywood, the record labels, etc. So, while it’s true that infringing copyright does reduce the potential amount of money a copyright holder might hope to receive, morally it’s closer to fighting off a bully than it is to theft.

Anybody who’s interested in Ukraine should follow Tim Mak and his news site Counteroffensive

I’m not sure if he’s Canadian or American. He’s a graduate of McGill in Canada, but apparently served as a medic in the US Army. He used to work for The Daily Beast and Politico, then for NPR for 5 years. Now he’s running his own news organization out of Ukraine. He and his team are reporting on the ground in Ukraine, living through all the drone attacks, then going out to talk to Ukrainians in person. He also covers military issues between China and Taiwan.

Some of the stories he’s covered are things like the drone attacks deep inside Russia that destroyed their bombers, but also things you won’t get elsewhere like secret apartment concerts in Ukraine.

And if that doesn’t convince you, he signs off all his dispatches with his dog of war pics of puppies he and his team run across while reporting on the war.

The quote in his online biography about his modeling career is a bit more detailed:

Dolph took up modeling at the famous Zoli Agency to make some extra cash. ‘A bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40’,

Wow. Can you imagine a bigger ego boost than being turned down to be a male model because you’re just too tall and muscular?

Being perpetually exhausted because your celebrity girlfriend keeps bringing back too many girls for the group sex session is a close second though.

Ha! It makes it sound like you’re saying that young black kids are self-important dickheads and that’s why he’s a good role model.

But, yeah, I know what you’re trying to say. Despite his social media presence, the image that kids generally see is a very positive one. He’s a somewhat stylish (in his own way) guy, who clearly has personality, and is a very accomplished scientist. I just cringe any time he comments on something not related to astrophysics.

Yeah, but look at why he quit:

However, while preparing for the move to Boston, he was spotted in the nightclub where he worked in Sydney and was hired by Grace Jones as a bodyguard, and the two became lovers.[18] He moved with Jones to New York City, where he dabbled in modeling at the Zoli Agency but was described as “a bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40”.

It’s not like he said “this is too hard for me”, it’s more like he said “wait, I can have this other life instead?”

Not the same with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I’m not his biggest fan, but I fully respect his scientific credentials. He has a PhD from Columbia. He published at least a dozen papers. There’s no question that he’s a scientist, a manager of scientists, as well as a science communicator.

The problem is that his success seems to have destroyed his humility. It’s not that he brags about being so incredibly smart. It’s more that he doesn’t ever seem to sit back and say “hey, maybe this isn’t something where my contributions won’t be appreciated”. I think his science communication is doing more good than harm. I think he’s a great role model for little black boys who think all scientists are white, or that they’re all stuffy nerds with no personality. But, I think he’s at his best when he’s in a show where there’s a script and an editor. On social media and on free-form podcasts, he comes off as a know-it-all ass.

NASA says there are only 5 dwarf planets in the system. But, it’s all pretty arbitrary. The line between planet, dwarf planet and asteroid are all pretty fuzzy.

An alien civilization looking at the Sol system might say that it’s only got one planet, Jupiter. Everything else is so much smaller that they’re not really significant.

Another logical cut-off would be that planets had to be bigger than any moons in the system. If we went by that standard, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus and Mars could all still count as planets, but Mercury would get ditched because it’s smaller than Ganymede and Titan.

What’s funny is that we’re still using the name “planet” which comes from “asteres planētai”, meaning “wandering star”. For the Greeks what mattered wasn’t the size or the mass, it was how bright they were. That meant that a tiny object near the sun like Mercury (Hermes) got the name planet, because despite being tiny, the fact it’s close to the sun means it reflects a lot of light. And Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Cronus) got named not because they’re so big, but because they’re big and far away from the sun, which means they reflect sunlight in a similar way to the much smaller inner planets. Earth’s moon might have been given the name “planet” if it had been a lot smaller and/or further away.

Also the search parameters are undocumented internal things that can change or be disabled at any time.

And when it did it also altered the results, making them worse, because it was trying to satisfy “fuck” as part of your search.

Worse is Google that insists on shoving a terrible AI-based result in your face every time you do a search, with no way to turn it off.

I’m not telling these systems to generate images of cow-like girls, but I’m getting AI shoved in my face all the time whether I want it or not. (I don’t).

I’m betting crocs.

If you’d like to abandon society and escape into nature

Where, exactly, can you do that? There’s really no unclaimed nature out there anymore, at least none that can let a person survive on their own. And if you’re not surviving on your own, you’re part of a society.

Do they show shoes or do they show sandals?

Normally not a big difference, footwear is footwear. But, if we’re talking about socks, then the difference becomes relevant again.

How to spot Americans on topics not related to America.

And, while it’s good to challenge dumb social constructs, you should pick your battles. Nobody can fight all dumb social constructs at the same time. Is wearing socks really where you want to focus your energy?

Women are allowed to express “weak” emotions: heartbroken, lonely, ashamed, anxious, panicked, etc. Women are also encouraged to work through their emotions and understand them. If women express emotions that can be associated with strength, they can be seen as not womanly enough: too much confidence is manly. Too brave is manly. Too proud is manly.

Men are allowed to express emotions of strength. Too much might be rude or classless, but there’s no issue with it not being manly. OTOH, too much of the emotions of “weakness” and it’s womanly.

I think men are seen as being less emotional because it’s “manly” to suppress both “strong” and “weak” emotions. Athletes are given some of the most leeway in how they’re allowed to act, but a male athlete who cries after losing is often seen as weak. One who celebrates a win too strongly is seen as a bad winner. Compare that to a lawyer who isn’t really allowed to be sad after a loss or too proud of a win.

Women are expected to tone down certain “strong” emotions, but encouraged to display and talk about most other ones. Nobody would expect a women’s team who lost the world cup final to be stoic. Crying is not only permitted, it’s expected. But, if a female athlete goes too far in celebrating or taunting it’s unusual at a minimum.

I suspect that men and women experience emotions similarly. But, I think male emotion is probably more destructive because men aren’t encouraged to find healthy ways to express normal emotions.

Yeah, even an established creator is going to have a hard time moving their audience.

If YouTube weren’t a near monopoly it would be different. Then other companies would be competing for creators.

Making it worse is section 1201 of the DMCA. It makes it a crime to circumvent access controls. In the past, Facebook was able to grow by providing tools to interface with MySpace. People didn’t have to abandon their MySpace friends, they could communicate with them through Facebook, and Facebook could ensure that messages sent on its platform arrived to people still on MySpace. But, if you tried that today Facebook has access controls in place that make that a crime. The same applies to YouTube. Nobody can build a seamless “migrate away from YouTube” experience because YouTube will use the DMCA to block them.

The governments of the world need to bring back antitrust with teeth and force interoperability.