The CFTC was created to hedge real risk. Onions iirc?
Kalshi creates risk where there was none before. The 'future' on the 'commodity' of 'number of dunks by an aging shaq at a halftime show'.
Courts have taken the dimmest possible view of this legal fabrication and I expect their losses in courts to continue without direct intervention by the Trump scions.
People will say (including in this thread) that it allows them to hedge against negative outcomes. What negative outcomes are experienced by someone hedging against whether LeBron flies his helicopter to practice or not?
This is true, but the nature of declining cognition is to not even notice what used to be possible.
Taking clothing for example, there's more available now than ever. It's disposable at great cost to the environment and the workers that produce it, but very little to you.
Yet, I bet you cannot evaluate garments, construction, or fabric quality. You may not know how to wash woolens and linens. You may have only worn smelly plastic workout clothing and plastic suits for formal events.
You may never have worn a piece of clothing that actually fit your body.
You may not realize that you can alter any clothing, that most clothing was intended to be altered once upon a time. Or that older garments were both more expensive and higher quality, because the expectation was the most important items would need to last for a decade.
The Luddite's central objections about automation was about declining working conditions (objecting to child labour, for instance), bad pay, and declining quality. They used the 'obnoxious' machines they broke. They saw what was being lost and demanded better (without demanding no machines at all).
Later, the rise of unionization brought about many of the changes they'd asked for decades before.
I hope this current technologic movement doesn't end where fast fashion has, with influencers buying a new outfit [repo] every day for a year. A vortex of undifferentiated slop for its own sake.
I don't think externalizing harms to child labourers in the 'third world' is worth the next quarter of LVMH's profits mildly disappointing investor expectations.
Clothing is still stitched together with human hands, and I'd gladly pay much more to know that I'm not underwriting massive harm.
Would you still happily buy your cheap t-shirt if you had to meet the person who stitched it together for a few cents an hour?
The fast fashion parallel is an apt one. Cheap slop (both clothes and code) only can exist because our system does not value the environment or human rights as much as it values profit. It makes me somewhat pessimistic about the future of the AI movement, because we haven't managed to curtail these kinds of abuses in already existing industries. :~/
Native and natural in the sense of 'adapted to its environment', not 'static'
Transplanting 'English Manor' grass and lawn practices to a desert creates an unbridgeable adaptation gap. This kind of lawn cannot survive without draining every aquifer in a 300 mile radius. Texas lawns, in particular, yearn for death, you can watch them die in real time.
Lawns that require almost no maintenance using native plants have always been possible, but they don't reflect the class and status dynamics that neighborhoods want to show off.
They'd rather have dying sickly grass most of the year, and pay yearly to to replace, than allow a single 'weed' to be a part of their landscaping.
"Lawns that require almost no maintenance using native plants have always been possible, but they don't reflect the class and status dynamics that neighborhoods want to show off."
In wild nature, there tend to be spikey things. I still run barefoot there. I don't care about status dynamics, but I do also like a soft grassy ground to jump and run around with my kids,
But I do let patches on the side grow complete, only mowing once a year - and especially before the fireflies come - I let the whole lawn grow extra high (with only some ways cut low) for the fireflies and insects. In spring the flowers are also nice. Still, some patches of nice lawn I always have and use with joy. It all is a compromise (still it greatly triggers me, if family members mow too early and too much).
You are 'pro' an abstract, unrealized union, which is not 'pro union' at all.
You have abdicated your obligation to align your actions with your stated beliefs.
Do not give up before trying. Do not believe the hype that your labour power doesn't matter. Even Amazon couldn't stop their most exploited workers from unionizing, is your company bigger that that? Is your position weaker than theirs?
Worse that can happen is that you started talking with your fellow workers and they aren't interested.
Just because SV is run by several millenarian cults doesn't mean you should take their delusions about neo slavery and feudalism (Thiel/Yarvin; your doomerism stems from here) or apotheosis (anthropic, EA) as inevitable. You should assume they believe their own hype, but not assume they understand material reality outside their insular social bubbles.
Thiel's last 3 or 4? attempts at building his techo-utopia collapsed before even starting; They have no motion outside of what they can purchase.
The position is weaker in the sense that an effective SWE union probably has to span national boundaries, and will likely be a short-term loss for SWEs in high-cost geographies.
As interest rates go up, investor owned utilities increase their rate of return on equity ask, pushing up consumer electricity prices. A baseline of consumer electric demand is inelastic, and required for life.
We live in a country founded by colonial aristocrats who viciously sniped at each other in the local paper. The constraints on speech control and proclamations about guilt are for the government, not the governed.
It is strange though that you are lamenting this state of affairs for Jared Kushner, of all people. He will be pardoned, and will not lack for invites to New York soirees just because he took bribes from blood-soaked US allies.
I mean this sincerely, what prompted you to comment on this case?
> It is strange though that you are lamenting this state of affairs for Jared Kushner, of all people.
100% not the case at all. Honestly, my comment is more an expression that I've lost all faith in the "Justice" system entirely. I have zero hopes that any truth or justice will come out of this situation, as I firmly believe that at this point that humans are far more anti-social than social creatures, and we've allowed the system of "civilized" society to break down to a dangerous degree. We're basically "cooked" as a species. Just haven't admitted it to ourselves because we're too busy playin' the game our overlords have set by the rules they made up. They want us divided and at each other's throats so that we aren't laser focused on them and the problems they created for us all.
> He will be pardoned, and will not lack for invites to New York soirees just because he took bribes from blood-soaked US allies.
Sadly, I'm just about 100% sure you're right about that.
> I mean this sincerely, what prompted you to comment on this case?
Honestly, what prompts me to comment on anything anymore. It's not as if my one voice has ever held any power. I've seen this mess coming for years and been ridiculed every time I try to say anything about any of it. It's wasted energy to even bother trying to talk about anything to anyone these days, yet for some stupid reason I keep opening my mouth. Guess I'm just an idiot. Bought into the whole "humans are social creatures" BS and now I'm pretty much broken, having discovered the hard way that "the law of the jungle" is the only law humans actually believe in.
> humans are far more anti-social than social creatures
We are social!
Violent Individualism, Solipsism, Alienation are (primarily) socially constructed and we can choose to live another way.
You can build solidarity and community in the US, despite the odds. But if your social skills and belief in others have atrophied; You'll have to be the change you want to see.
Strike up conversations with your neighbors, pick up new hobbies, volunteer, say yes to things, go outside your home every day, host events, even when it's weird and awkward. Set good boundaries, there will be setbacks, but decent people will stick around.
This kind of thing is harder around wealthy, workaholic adults, but it's still possible, and people are desperate for genuine connection, but their social habituation is atrophied too (COVID made everything worse).
> I keep opening my mouth.
You also might need to practice communicating differently if everyone misunderstands/rejects? you when you try to reach out. This might be something to work out in a safe environment. Also, if you are expecting another rejection, it can be easy to assume other people hate you when they don't think that (or don't think about you at all).
As to the justice system... well, it can be repaired or reformed, but that will take a sociopolitical movement. I recommend joining something.
The CFTC was created to hedge real risk. Onions iirc?
Kalshi creates risk where there was none before. The 'future' on the 'commodity' of 'number of dunks by an aging shaq at a halftime show'.
Courts have taken the dimmest possible view of this legal fabrication and I expect their losses in courts to continue without direct intervention by the Trump scions.
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