Huntn00 @Huntn00@talkedabout.social

As we told you before, the SCOTUS ruling was not just about compelled speech around wedding websites, writings on cakes, photographies for weddings, et cetera, et cetera. It was yet another arrow in the quiver of the Republican Party and the judges they've loaded the federal courts and SCOTUS benches with to unwind same-sex marriage rights and LGBT rights in general. I implore people and the MSM to stop buying their bullshit alread. Thanks. #uspoli #LGBTRights #lgbt
Texas judge still fighting to deny wedding ceremonies to gay couples

The Future of Generative AI in Edtech https://www.techlearning.com/news/the-future-of-generative-ai-in-edtech

** Humid **

Maybe not unusual for many areas, but 71%RH in the central Rio Grande Valley is crazy. Dewpoint over 61ºF.

I was taking photos of flowers in my garden (to be posted tomorrow) when I realized I was dripping in sweat even though it was on 70ºF. Yikes.

Bartiromo ..so sad…cray cray babble…
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/fox-news-gal-luft-james-comer-informant-china

#climate protestors block runway in #Hamburg #Germany, causing #flight delays and cancellations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9FK0vEFRbI

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

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. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-nonprescription-daily-oral-contraceptive #WomensHealth #Healthcare #privacy #contraception #CivilLiberties

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.” https://religionnews.com/2023/07/12/when-christian-nationalism-goes-local-inside-citizens-defending-freedom/

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.

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.

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

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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".

@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.

@Huntn00 I'll say up front, I don't have all the answers. I'm still figuring things out, as we all are for our entire existence.

I believe strongly in equality for all, but I also recognize that we are constrained by practicality and live amongst a sizeable number of people who have no qualms about behaving selfishly. That's the reason I can agree with Marxist ideology without being a communist. Capitalism and the free market serve to motivate those selfish folks to better society in return for selfish gain. We treat them as if they are more deserving because of their abilities, because this serves to help our needs be met at a societal level. A necessary evil, you might say.

But capitalism also results in wealth concentration, as we currently implement it, which is an evil which is *far* from necessary. This is largely due to our economy being centered around for-profit corporations with disparate levels of ownership.

More to follow...

So even though I am not a communist by any stretch of the imagination, I can agree wholeheartedly with Marx in his assessment of what is right regarding abilities and needs. "From each according to [their] ability, to each according to [their] need," is a self-evident truth, derivable from first principles and the sole assumption that human beings have worth in the first place.

@Huntn00 I agree. And I do not let myself forget that more than 50% of white US Christians of all stripes voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. This is a huge indictment of the white iteration of Christianity in the US.