I envy you. They are the bane of my existence. I have 4 neighbors that use them for landscaping once a week, most of the year. As for the appeal: you ever see a kid use a straw to blow stuff around? My theory is leaf blowers are on extension of that curiosity. A toy, really. When I hear someone rationalizing their use of a leaf blower, I hear someone talking about a toy they like. nevermind all the times i hear folks revving them like they’re on a motorcycle.

The Podcast, “Tech Won’t Save Us” did an excellent 4 episode series called Data Vampires about the problems with these companies and their data centers (episode 1) for those unfamiliar. Highly recommend.

Now here’s a guy I could have a book club with!

Confirmation bias and anecdotal information, but hey, feel free to speak in absolute terms. If you read the article you’d realize you’re making a claim that not even Mark Zuckerberg, one month ago, is making.

Gives new meaning to hard mode.

Scammers about to try a new angle instead of the tired, old: “Hey (some random name)”

I don’t doubt it’s normalized in big companies. I imagine the bigger the company, the more ai they use. Big companies have the most to gain from the reduced-workforce ai sales pitch, and the biggest (meta, google, microsoft, etc) need a return on their ai investment (I’ve yet to hear of any demonstrable roi).

It makes sense that anyone in those companies would see it as normal, but it strikes me as an observer bias or frequency illusion. There’s so much ai hype. That is, after all, where the ad money and investments are flowing, but I also see a ton of skepticism, fatigue, and general disenchantment with it, which aligns with my experiences: that it doesn’t compare to a good system of books, notes, and bookmarks-- and that’s not even considering the costs (monetary, environmental, social, and political) which seem completely oversized. So that’s why I remain skeptical of the claim that normal people use ai.

quietly used AI like a normal person

Is ai use normal though? Maybe for you and many others but the existence of these communities, articles, and folks who just don’t get much out of it despite industry cramming it down everyone’s throat would suggest it’s anything but normal.

Hank’s the only one not occupied with [relatively] new tech.

And the big fleas themselves, in turn, have bigger fleas to go on; While these again have bigger still, and bigger still, and so on.

Didn’t noticed till you mentioned it. Hilarious touch.

You CANT split sport into “performance classes”, at least not in a way where it would help - men would on average still be in the higher “performance class” and nothing would change.

Don’t we already? In high school you have freshmen, jv, and varsity sports. There’s recreational, amateur, and professional leagues in about every sport. There’s weight classes in wrestling and boxing. Just to name a few examples of where we have no problem breaking sport into performance classes.

Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible.

• A history of the world in seven cheap things (p.21)

Dang. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll fully commit like bitwarden did, but I think I’ll pause my donations till this ones settles.

Substantially improved Affinity Designer files (.afdesign) import

The feature i didn’t know I wanted till now.

You’re scapegoating ai’s misleading sales tactics on “dumb people who have always existed.” Many people use ai and chatbots because they believe the ai hype and are unaware of how faulty it is. If that’s dumb, it seems there’s a lot of dumb ai users.

100%

World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.

- Marshall McLuhan, Culture is Our Business (1972)

Bill Gates the farmer?

Just trying to find a decent link led me past so many deceptive headlines like Bill Gates owns a lot of American farmland, but not the majority.

So… he’s the largest private owner of US farmland , but he doesn’t own a majority-- What a relief /s

For most of the US, true. Though I think it’s fuzzier if you work it into a commute or other errands. I’ve moved a lot and favor places that have grocery stores, libraries, parks, etc within walking distance. Get groceries and a brisk walk. Win win.

Plus delivery usually takes less than an hour when you do it yourself.