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when you seek the guru on the night of the full moon and their staff hoists them up to deliver your prophecy

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Today #FDA approved #Opill #norgestrel tablet for #nonprescription use to #prevent #pregnancy— the first #daily #OralContraceptive approved for use in the U.S. without a prescription. Approval of this progestin-only oral contraceptive pill provides an option for consumers to purchase oral contraceptive medicine without a prescription at #drugstores, #conveniencestores and #grocerystores, as well as #online. fda.gov/news-events/press-anno #WomensHealth #Healthcare #privacy #contraception #CivilLiberties

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1. So, you've heard of Moms for Liberty.

But you may NOT have heard of the OTHER county-based org removing books from schools & opposing pride declarations while invoking “Judeo-Christian values.”

That's Citizens Defending Freedom — or what critics call "Moms for Liberty in suits.” religionnews.com/2023/07/12/wh

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2. The reason you likely haven't heard of CDF, or Citizens Defending Freedom, is because they keep their work hyper-local — they used to go by County Citizens Defending Freedom.

But activists say they've been especially influential in Florida, and are expanding into GA and TX.

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A short compilation of astronauts falling over on the Moon during the Apollo missions, showcasing their challenges with balance and movement caused by the Moon's low gravity, bulky spacesuits, and navigating the loose, dry lunar regolith.

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@Huntn00 @DrewStephenson Add people into the mix and the situation gets even hairier.

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@Huntn00 @DrewStephenson I've considered the possibility, but I'd be hesitant to make such a foundational change without a lot of research and testing to support it. You learn very quickly in the field of reinforcement learning (and other optimization algorithms) that it's *very* easy to mess up a reward function, with no obvious sign that there are flaws until it's too late and the whole system is completely off the rails.

@hosford42 @DrewStephenson@mastodon.social Do you have a nice place to live? Material conveniences? Ability to travel to desired locations? As long we rely on a $ currency standard, or maintain a capitalist system those would be manifestations of payment in $ or maybe credits in the future. If we can transform to a different system, there could be other options for rewards

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@DrewStephenson @Huntn00 That said, I still believe people are reward-motivated. It just doesn't always come from external sources like paychecks. Reward is the subjective manifestation of dopamine. (Very fascinating stuff... There are direct neural equivalents to the "reward function" used in reinforcement learning algorithms.)

My personal research into ML is a clear example. I've been working on this kindof stuff since I was 12, long before I got paid to do it. But if people want me to use my skills for their company, rather than pursuing my own goals, there needs to be pay involved. Pay is how they coopt my goal-driven behavior to fall in line with their own when I am not otherwise meaningfully invested in what they are doing.

@hosford42 @DrewStephenson@mastodon.social What are the rewards for actions we encourage?

@hosford42 Value is measured not just because you exist, which has some value, but what you bring to the table, as a species what you can do for the group besides what you do for yourself. Btw I like the idea of co-ops, as far as ownership vs today’s corporations. 👍

@hosford42 Humans beings respond to reward, are motivated by reward. Until we can change our nature to WE>ME instead of ME>WE the system most likely needs to continue to be reward based on effort and value. I’m open to counters and to what those rewards should be.

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@Huntn00 I like the idea of wealth caps. But I hesitate when you say smart people "should" be at the top, for the very same reason. Differences in pay are a useful means to an end, nothing more. They serve to motivate folks who won the birth lottery to share what they can do with everyone around them. We don't need arbitrary pay differences to do that. It can be done with a smaller range of variation. But even when we pay someone more than someone else, it doesn't mean they *deserve* it.

@hosford42 For decades I’ve asked, how much money does it take to live a good life, say annually-$100k, $300k, $1m, $10m?I’m believe in caps on wealth and income, which is a hostile notion to today’s capitalism. As the smartest person on the block and most valuable, you should be at the top. We just need to redefine what the top is. Post WWII, the top tax bracket was in the 90% range for less than $1m annual. With consensus and bigger numbers, we could do something similar today.

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@Huntn00 If I had my way, this is how our economy would be structured: Startups and privately owned companies could exist, but selling or "exiting" a company would always take the form of converting it to a cooperative. Allowing startups would still incentivize founders to invest their time and resources into creating value. But the created value would take the form of an organization that works to benefit to the broader community, to the extent that they are willing to purchase shares in it even with no expectation of profits extracted from other people's pockets.

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@Huntn00 Another thing I would do, to further answer your question, is to establish a UBI. This addresses the social safety net you mention. I also think education and medical care should be "free" -- meaning taxpayer funded, for anybody who feels the urge to jump in and point that out. We live in a wealthy society that can easily afford these things, and all of them directly benefit society as a whole without damaging the mechanisms that got us that wealth in the first place, specifically market incentives. Even UBI leaves that intact, only reducing the urgency of being unemployed from "I am about to be homeless and starve" to "I can't have this bonus stuff that I want".

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@Huntn00 There is nothing special about for-profit corporations, that they should be enshrined in our legal system and receive the special treatment they get. We can accomplish the same things through cooperatives. There are a few aspects of cooperatives that make them a much better organizational method, from a societal perspective. They prevent the concentration of wealth, since they are equally co-owned by the workers and/or customers instead of wealthy investors. For the same reason, they prevent the concentration of power, since they operate democratically. They are also more stable and robust to economic impacts. And if all publicly traded corporations were instead cooperatives, we could do away with the stock market and its inherent volatility altogether.

@hosford42 I’m no economic expert either. I think it is important to take that Marx statement and determine what it means when actually applied to a society. Equality, equal opportunity? It kind of sounds like “know your place” as a means of control, which would not give me warm and fuzzies living under Capitalism. I don’t think C will be able to best serve millions in the up and coming age of automation and AI. Socialism might be better if we can get our heads on straight. 🤔

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