fear

True. Back when I rented it was a good situation because my rent was dirt cheap and I was able to save money. Seems those days are long gone with rentals sometimes being double or triple what a mortgage payment would be.

Renting isn’t the greatest decision, either. You’re throwing money at a landlord and gaining zero equity. People often do it because it’s that or homelessness. These systems are in place to take advantage of people who aren’t the best decision makers. Just because they can be taken advantage of… should they be? Or should we be better than this and revamp how we house people so that it isn’t a massive scam with the opportunity for extra side scams like we see here?

If the landlord wasn’t a massive dick, they both could have benefited from this situation. She’d have the renovated bathroom she wanted, and the landlord knew his property was being taken care of without even needing to lift a finger. Instead he got greedy, and rather than blame the greedy jerk people want to jump on the “stupid” victim. Except it’s not her fault her landlord was a prick.

I’m not arguing this point. Even though I disagree with how she chose to spend her money, I can still acknowledge that it’s not her fault the landlord took advantage of her and kicked her out to charge higher rent to the next person.

Except shaming obesity doesn’t solve that problem, either. You’re kind of proving my point here without even realizing it.

Your advice isn’t helpful for people who don’t have the means to own their own home. Being trusting or naive isn’t something that should be shamed. There’s a way to educate people with kindness and compassion. People aren’t born knowing how to best handle the legal end of a renovation. But go on and call her stupid some more, that’ll help the onlookers. You and I and everyone in this comments section will be smart and secure with the claws we have dug into the insides of the pretty housing bubble. Perhaps if we bicker even more, the problem will disappear completely.

A proper comparison here would be more like a leased vehicle than a rental car. It’s not the “stupidest thing ever” for this tenant to believe she would be living there for 1 or more years and wouldn’t suddenly be evicted. Your exaggeration only benefits predators, and your pity is hardly a reward to anyone.

Everyone is so busy insulting the tenant doing the upgrades when it’s the landlord who behaved badly. If all we do is collectively blame victims when they get taken advantage of, society will crumble. This woman wasn’t stupid, she just didn’t have her guard up in preparation for the massive asshole who had power over her. There’s a difference.

When you are trusting, you’re called stupid. When you trust no one, you’re called unreasonably cynical. They’re two sides of the same victim blaming coin. Start blaming the actual problem: predators.

Trump is a full blown cult of personality at this point, no one else will do. Maybe that’s a good thing since he doesn’t seem to have much time left.

Are you really pretending there’s no difference between assisting a country in defending itself from an aggressor, and starting your own war as the aggressor?

欲蓋彌彰

I just can’t with this western bullshit!

I’m sure if someone remarked about “eastern bullshit” that you would cry racism, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Thanks for at least being amusing by calling me a racist and then immediately acting like one yourself. Don’t feel too bad about it, you’re one of countless to prove that wise saying which predates the CCP by 1400 years.

You pointed out how well China will be able to combat their declining birth rates and what they are doing to raise fertility rates. That’s great. You disliked the format of the article and didn’t feel it expressed their point adequately. Awesome. But you’re coming at the comments section with an intensity that seems disproportionate to how banal the article is. Birth rates are plummeting across the world, and every other country has their turn to have attention drawn to it, complete with their own set of uninvited suggestions regarding potential impact and what to do about it. It’s okay for people to disagree on the impact of stats like this. It’s normal and healthy when done in good faith.

Regarding your other post: “Anti-CCP is anti-China” is a tactic to try to deflect away criticism entirely. It is dangerous for a population to be stripped of the right to criticize their government. I criticize my own government all the time, and others as well when I think they’re making poor decisions. The CCP doesn’t get to be above this on an international scale because racism. The old stigmatizing the critic into silence approach is not conducive to open dialogue, and it’s ultimately a way of shooting yourself in the foot. 欲蓋彌彰

Your assessment seems spot on to me. I’m connecting some projected dots to late stage capitalism. Perhaps the AIs will trickle down and such if we hold off on regulations.

Of course it’s possible for the government to impose regulations without sticking their face in and motorboating the AI’s contents. Google, Microsoft et al. would love to prevent this from happening because they actually do have their faces in there.

This is such an important distinction. Current AI is incapable of wanting to cause any of that harm, yet it’s already happening. The danger won’t be skynet, it will be and always has been human greed and ignorance.

A justice system criticised by Iran’s psychiatrists

Thank goodness. Hopefully they all fight against this blatant exploitation of psychiatry to persecute and control women.

Hmm, this makes me think of the tradition on certain parts of the internet where people publicly announce the name and crime of this convicted rapist. They’ll explain where he’s currently living, the name he’s trying to go by, and bars he was seen at. This activity seems to stem from the outrage at the excessive leniency he was shown by the judge, although could also be protecting other potential victims.

I wonder if this kind of vigilante doxxing would fall under the scope of such a law, especially when his name is already in so many publications.

The remarks were made by Qiao Jie, deputy of Peking University Health Science Center and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, at a conference on Tuesday.

The population in the Chinese mainland fell for the first time in 61 years in 2022, decreasing by a total of 850,000, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Doesn’t sound like clickbait at all to me. The viewpoint appears quite honest and genuine, and they go on to give sources for why they believe this matters. If you have contradicting stats, please share.

Not my fault it’s so forgettable.

Something becoming more than the sum of its parts to such a degree would indeed be magic. Are you claiming we’re AI computer programs and that real life is analogous to ChatGPT? Are information and consciousness synonymous? I would say that one of us indeed doesn’t understand the complexity of the situation.

we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn’t a discreet phenomenon

This statement begins with the assumption that the brain produces consciousness, then says that because the thing that produces consciousness has components, that it can’t be fundamental. This is a really really good example of circular logic.

I find emergence to be the least reasonable of the 3 main hypotheses I consider, but I still accept that it’s possible since I can’t disprove it. However, it is illogical to conclude your hypothesis must be true at this stage.

Your comparison proves nothing. It is no different than insisting a radio must be creating the signal it’s picking up, because if you poured alcohol or liquid gabapentin all over it, it will no longer be able to play music. I’m sure you realize that if your radio breaks, that doesn’t mean the radio signal has disappeared. It is possible our brains are simply interfacing with consciousness rather than inexplicably fabricating it from more than the sum of its parts.

Based on everything science has taught me, it seems far more likely to me that consciousness is not magically created by my brain, but rather one of two things are happening:

1. My brain is able to interface with a conscious field

2. Consciousness is a force inherent within the universe, and our brains are able to make use of the force