Bruce Elrick 🇨🇦

I AM a Luddite.

There are always alternatives, not "there is no alternative".

Believer in the Politics of Care.

Married to a wonderful wife w/ 2 adult sons in Calgary. I like getting out on my bike. I care about social justice.

Unemployed or semi-retired? I would actually love to work (part time? consultation?) w/ purpose on something not destructive.

Ph.D. in physics & nearly 28 year career in IT.

"Debts that cannot be paid will not be paid."
"The purpose of a system is what it does."

Web site: https://bruce.elrick.ca/about/
Location: Calgary (#YYC)
Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/virtuous_sloth
Loops: https://loops.video/@virtuous_sloth

Public Key

npub18rscgz5es6634hpkz8ceytm6ssxct6unrg6n83qk9qddv9w656zqpeqgmz

NIP-05 Address

virtuous_sloth_at_cosocial.ca@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr3cvyp2vcddg6msmpruvj9aaggrv9awf35dfncstzsxkkzhd2dpqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsumkhd4

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub18rscgz5es6634hpkz8ceytm6ssxct6unrg6n83qk9qddv9w656zqpeqgmz

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Last Notes

2026-10-28 21:19:43 UTC

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On a related note, I enjoyed David Graeber’s book Debt, the First 5,000 Years.
He spends a lot of time reviewing the many notions debt, owing, obligation across many cultures across millennia, including the notion that someone brought into this world might not owe anything to anyone and also they might have a debt to society that no one can repay.
It’s a social concept and so no one has the final say on it in any particular case.

2026-10-28 17:45:22 UTC

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This matches my interpretation of the poll... a specific question to an identified individual (or small group). Also, I'm assuming that 'answer' implies good faith and not a non-answer answer.

2026-10-28 16:55:56 UTC

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Yes, that's the way I roll.

2026-10-24 15:28:49 UTC

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Opens the CD tray and leaves it out to hold your coffee mug?
Although that implies locking and a KEY_MEDIA_COFFEE_DONE to unlock and close, lest a different command closes it a dumps unfinished coffee everywhere.

2026-10-21 21:20:22 UTC

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My home and native land

2026-10-21 17:19:44 UTC

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The brain is a Tardis for information.
💥🧠💥
➡️🤯⬅️

2026-10-12 18:22:50 UTC

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Same here, minus one hour.
Plus I'm not sure of the wisdom of choosing permanent daylight time vs permanent standard time. Especially since for Calgary at least we were already west of the nominal western meridian of Mountain Daylight.
Mountain's central meridian is -7 * 15 degrees or 105 degrees west. So the nominal western edge would be 112.5 while Calgary is at 114. That's 36 minutes of time off the solar time. With Alberta time we'll be 96 minutes off solar time.

2026-10-03 15:56:32 UTC

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My 30ish-year old sons are experienced with technology as users, but are in no way what I'd call "power users". My 83-year-old mom used computers in work and uses an Android phone and a Chromebook today, but when I ask her to describe what she sees on the screen when I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem of hers remotely, she does /not/ have the concepts of windows and tabs withing windows, and bars (menu bars, widget bars, scroll bars,...) within both as in her mental model.

2026-10-02 03:38:12 UTC

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I think the implication is whether you want to think about people or servers. Your question is about servers which might not say much about people.

2026-09-26 17:23:01 UTC

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^^^ This is the sort of Simple Sabotage ([@simple_sabotage](https://mastodon.social/@simple_sabotage )) I come to federated social media for.
@npub1qae…xq6d

2026-09-18 14:23:31 UTC

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“tell me this isn’t catch and release” lol

2026-09-17 22:39:34 UTC

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Well put, I agree.

2026-09-17 17:20:46 UTC

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I'm here for it too!

2026-09-16 18:41:59 UTC

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No, but like keep up the informal co-operation so that both sides need to continue to work on the relationship. I do think we could do with looking at harmonizing some standards. For example, elevators cost 3 times as much in North America because we force them to be bigger for good reasons but the overall effect of buildings forgoing elevators may be detrimental to those purposes and generic housing needs.

2026-09-12 17:46:05 UTC

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In Calgary the City sponsors a discounted rain-barrel program every spring which is administered by a charity called Green Calgary (greecalgary.org). The latter uses Plooto for the rebate payment.
I had the same reaction as you. At first I thought it was phishing, then after some research was convinced it was on the up-and-up, but I didn't feel comfortable using them. I opened a ticket with the City to explain how it looks, especially since their website mentioned almost none of it.

2026-09-10 15:56:47 UTC

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Oh cool! Thx for the pointer.

2026-09-10 15:50:54 UTC

Hey @npub1764…nuj0, in reading your thread you speculate about LLMs hitting a wall, I recalled watching a few videos talking with Yann LeCun who is a scientist who used to work for Meta and has left to pursue his own research focusing on a different technique for training called Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA).
You might be interested in this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngBraLDqzdI (from the YT channel Unsupervised Learning: With Jacob Effron)
(re: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/117244306418558978)

2026-09-04 19:18:19 UTC

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From Bunnie Huang working on chip-level trustability to the GNU reproducible compilation tower to double-diverse reproducible build safety techniques maybe someday we'll have a solid base? Before the shit hits the fan? Maybe?

2026-08-31 14:10:23 UTC

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🍀

2026-08-30 19:40:20 UTC

Hey Calgary people, would you be interested in joining a 5-pin bowling league? We (the Fun Bunch) have one on Sunday nights at the Bowling Depot from 6:30 to 9:00-9:30.
Teams are 3-5 people and you can join as a single, couple, whatever. We'll add you to a team if necessary. The league runs September through April.
You bowl against your own average and we are not a serious/competitive league.
Reach out or contact the alley.
#yyc #calgary

2026-08-29 21:18:37 UTC

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Cool, that works for me now.
Thanks for the followup!

2026-08-29 16:55:44 UTC

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That looks like a NYT newsletter that is actually hosted by a 3rd party (the URL redirects; I'm sure it is legit) and it is currently complaining of too many requests (9:55 PDT)

2026-08-28 20:32:38 UTC

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Ok 3 weeks before.

2026-08-28 20:17:59 UTC

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How much of the deal 4 days before the end was different from the deal 4 weeks ago? If what you are saying is true, then why would he not have accepted the same deal 4 weeks earlier?

2026-08-28 18:25:21 UTC

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I agree with your take.
It seems to me the simplest explanation for a lot of his actions is that he's good at hiding his real goals & plans & uses other people's politics to great effect.
Having read (listened to) his book "Value(s)" I & a number of people see the stark difference between what he's accused of being (e.g. climate scofflaw) and what he represented in that book.
But getting a lot of people to force his hand to the exact place he would like to move his hand would be genius.

2026-08-26 19:33:15 UTC

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It's a TARDIS.

2026-08-25 21:36:00 UTC

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The single system.db executable is a bit of a mind-blowing concept.

2026-08-23 20:01:52 UTC

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Hmmm...
What if for us as pets of aliens:
1) our equivalent of coming for pets is asking to be taught or giving us inspiring projects to be united behind
2) the house we have free reign in is the Earth-Moon system
3) we have free reign as long as we don't do stupid stuff like shit in the food dish (pollute and cause climate change)

2026-08-17 22:37:19 UTC

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Given that its big strength is that many disparate servers can be each managed with its own social media policies, the idea of an archive of the 'fediverse' seems incongruous, since it isn't core to the mission.
So I'm a no, but archiving your personal posts (and all replies?), or a particular server having archiving turned on.

2026-08-15 14:35:09 UTC

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and I cannot lie

2026-08-13 15:27:01 UTC

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I was fortunate enough to have moved to Winnipeg in 1978 with my family and got to experience the total eclipse of 1979. Kids at school had to stay indoors watching a TV covering the event, but your parents could give permission to stay home so my dad did.
The sky was perfectly clear. It was amazing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_February_26%2C_1979

2026-08-09 02:26:06 UTC

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Apparently cosocial.can has nothing for that hash tag, so I have no context.

2026-08-07 17:01:32 UTC

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Now that you mention it, it occurs to me now that I recall, in Christine's doc, the pet name being transmitted to a third party when sharing a contact. If I'm remembering correctly. I'll have to re-read.

2026-08-07 16:06:19 UTC

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My assumption would be that the nickname only appears in the user interface of the person assigning the nickname. That would be stored on their server, which means an admin could snoop it if they were not hosting their own personal instance.
In that case, it sounds a lot like the note you can make for someone you follow. Having it there to memorialize the circumstances in which you decided to follow is really useful.
I do not see this as a consent issue at all.

2026-08-06 17:14:42 UTC

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Posing as a mollusc, I think. Not sure if that helps with determining gaze direction.

2026-08-04 04:43:37 UTC

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Getting wider coverage, soon?

2026-08-01 15:03:02 UTC

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I, for one, welcome our new social network star overlords.

2026-07-31 14:40:24 UTC

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Yes, but Oi!

2026-07-31 00:19:22 UTC

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Ginger beef? Not sure it's a signature, but it was invented here in Calgary.

2026-07-30 18:18:38 UTC

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You brain is a race condition deciding whether to accept the rare error in exchange for speed.

2026-07-28 02:47:35 UTC

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The clock on or humour is ticking away!

2026-07-28 02:34:55 UTC

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I chose 57. I turn 58 on Thursday. Ironic?

2026-07-20 17:42:58 UTC

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I wonder if the sheer number of decisions ends up hiding what functionally ends up being less actually agency, mostly in terms of a lack of diversity in the choice options.

2026-07-20 17:16:36 UTC

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Do you have a list of all the things Americans vote on?
Here in Alberta, Canada, we have:
1) federal elections: candidates for Member of Parliament of Canada
2) provincial elections: candidates for Member of the Legislative Assembly or Parliament of a province
3) municipal elections: city councils (not sure what the rural equivalent is), mayors (usually the weak kind that are functionally counsellors at large), & school board trustees
4) occasional referenda

2026-07-20 17:10:11 UTC

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Yes.
It is important to normalize that mistakes are human and that the proper response to a mistake is to learn and adjust oneself or, more importantly, to learn and adjust the surrounding system that did not mitigate the bad impact of the mistake.
The worst response to a mistake is to be embarrassed and cover it up and, moreso, to heap scorn on someone who has made a mistake.
Of course, covering up a mistake is itself a mistake.

2026-07-18 20:39:20 UTC

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I really like Cory Doctorow's centaur/reverse-centaur take (the real Luddite take) because it allows for individual skilled workers to find an AI tool useful while identifying and acknowledging the bad things happening.
So I consider myself neither anti-AI not an AI booster.
I wouldn't characterize this article as anti-AI.
At least not in the fediverse AI scold way, if you get my drift.

2026-07-18 00:38:31 UTC

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There are many, especially on our instance! I'll have to think about making lists. And checking them twice.

2026-07-17 17:44:41 UTC

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Yes, but not all.

2026-07-11 22:00:50 UTC

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"Key concepts in IP multicast include an IP multicast group address,[2] a multicast distribution tree, and receiver-driven tree creation.[3]"
My impression is that the setup time for this is justified with streaming (a live video or audio multicast) but my gut is telling me it wouldn't be efficient for per-message attachment distribution.
Then I think you use it not per message but long-term server-to-server message distribution groups, but don't understand how you handle retransmission

2026-07-11 19:55:53 UTC

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No, that's only a requirement of GoFundThem, not of GoFundMe.
;-)

2026-07-07 18:47:56 UTC

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Not unrelated but I did like the mechanism Google+ used.
Each of your friends could be put into multiple "circles" and circles could contain circles and any post could be published to any circle. There was not direct evidence of your circle names and the indirect evidence was simply who might reply.
Beyond that, you could control visibility of the post and replies to friends (in the post's circle) or friends of friends (all friends of friends in the post's circle).
Something like that.

2026-07-06 01:47:35 UTC

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🍀

2026-07-04 03:45:12 UTC

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lol.
Similar here. Grade 9 cafeteria. I don't recall how it started, but I think I participated. Although I might be fooling myself. A vague recollection of us getting into trouble.

2026-07-04 03:29:05 UTC

Have you ever participated in a food fight?
(boost and discuss)

2026-07-03 21:53:49 UTC

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Here's to hoping.
I keep worrying that I am projecting my best hopes onto what he's doing, including the type of strategy described here. That as opposed to sober analysis.

2026-07-03 03:48:52 UTC

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Would you have the skill to analyze your timeline's last month for what percentage of its posts come from mastodon.social?

2026-06-29 22:39:48 UTC

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Oh no you d'n't!

2026-06-28 18:19:12 UTC

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The goal of neoliberalism is to convince most people that they simply must defer to the market.
As an individual, it obviously makes sense when living in a capitalistic society; it's just practical and pragmatic.
But doing so at a national government level is just insane. We are in control, we decide. That's why the rich are terrified of democratic socialism. That's what happens when we understand our actual power.

2026-06-28 18:04:11 UTC

An epiphany I've had about reconciling MMT (which is simply a description of how fiat money works) and the way most orthodox economists, politicians, the mainstream (corporate) press, and indeed the popular culture view the finances of a sovereign nation's national government....
Finance and money are technical reflections of real world power and control in terms of people's behaviour, collectively. It is useful to powerful people if we only think in terms of finance and not sovereign power.

2026-06-27 04:12:03 UTC

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A year or two before I turned 10 (1978) my sister and I traveled by bus from Ottawa to Toronto then on to Barrie with my Dad to visit his father and stepmother. I remember we took a walk outside the bus station downtown to look at the tower.

2026-06-24 19:31:32 UTC

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At least they are both not, so we can beat them.

2026-06-24 19:27:20 UTC

Switzerland and Canada are definitely not passing teams like, say, Brazil.

2026-06-24 18:45:13 UTC

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TIL that John was Jesus' older second cousin.

2026-06-22 21:54:23 UTC

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Also, if you assume the large servers are atypically more prone to 0/0 accounts, then their stats could provide an upper bound on the total percentage.

2026-06-20 16:55:25 UTC

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Oddly cumbersome to find out what posts are tagged that way.
That is, your post mentions the tags.pub actor and looking at that I could find no way to see the tagged posts. I thought perhaps its profile page would have a boosts button to see.
Instead, you have to manually search for the tag.
But yes, interesting posts!

2026-06-18 18:20:25 UTC

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Sometimes.

2026-06-14 16:11:48 UTC

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"The John Ruskin Question forces us to confront a truth that modern economics has
spent two centuries evading: some supposed wealth makes us poorer. Illth is not a
fringe concept. It is everywhere: in environmental collapse, degraded work, social
fragmentation and rising insecurity, all coexisting with rising monetary output."
-- Richard Murphy summarizing John Ruskin observations about a useful concept called illth, the opposite of wealth that is completely ignored by modern economics

2026-06-13 17:41:19 UTC

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... unless there is actually clear divide. An example of this would be the social science of economics, which has lots of disagreement among economists at fundamental levels.

2026-06-13 17:39:59 UTC

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Much like my rejoinder to my otherwise smart friends who are nevertheless climate skeptics & who trot out "scientists" who bring up all sorts of "flaws" that all other climate scientists have somehow missed, in science it is not for those of us who do not practice the science to be convinced by these rogue scientists, it is the rest of the scientists who practice those rogue scientists need to convince.
As a layperson, I'm going to assume the scientific field is working...

2026-06-13 17:37:08 UTC

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And I'm also pretty sure that most studies of brain function and also development point to almost all brains having plenty of potential for development, the idea that one major environment factor, socioeconomic situation, is somehow not a causal factor beggars belief. You are correct that perhaps a 3rd cause will take ownership of some amount of that 16% is warranted, but that is the type of skepticism I'd reserve for other brain development scientists to point out.

2026-06-13 17:32:33 UTC

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...actually, that's strong on my part... the option of a 3rd cause of both is not that for sure, so I'm sorry for not acknowledging that in my response (no space to edit the above). But my point in the other reply still stands, from the point of view of finding detailed causal mechanics (i.e. not just proving causation over correlation but digging deeper into the mechanics of causation) the function studies *are* hints toward supporting causation.

2026-06-13 17:25:35 UTC

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Careful, that's where eugenicists, classists, racists, ... start from, even though you are not one.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of causal studies linking brain *function* with socioeconomic situations/stressors, so reversing the causal hypothesis is the thing that needs to be proven, absent proper causal tests related to brain *development*, which must be, by definition, long term and, if done ethically, require serendipitous "natural experiments".

2026-06-13 15:27:22 UTC

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I followed, then ready the thread below. Then I unfollowed when I realized the account followed 0 people.

2026-06-10 19:12:57 UTC

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As I was composing my first reply, I had also thought to ask, in a similarly joking way, "Wait, there's an Official Pride Discourse®?" but but was reluctance to learn that you were not joking. Thus the sincere confusion reply.

2026-06-10 17:21:09 UTC

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I'm unsure by the meaning of the capital letter in Discourse. To me that implies a specific instance of discourse that is commonly referred to as Pride Discourse as a proper noun.
But I'm struggling to imagine a quasi-official instance of discourse (either plain English meaning or the discussion software product meaning).
If you just mean 'read public discussions by people who participate in Pride activities in Amy of many public discussion fora', then would think it's ok, generally.

2026-06-08 21:04:49 UTC

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I'm not sure anyone serious would argue that it has no good effects, nor absolutely no bad effects.
So, Yes, but.

2026-06-07 19:21:08 UTC

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"The tragedy is that we have allowed economics to replace ethics, and efficiency to eclipse justice. The task, then, is simple but radical: to rebuild the economy as if fairness mattered.
Behind the veil of ignorance, we would all choose it. In front of it, we have forgotten how."
-- Richard Murphy summarizing the tragedy of John Rawls question about what system you would design behind the veil of ignorance
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/wp-content/uploads/pdf-uploads/Economic-Questions-Published.pdf
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/downloads/
#justice #fairness #economy

2026-06-07 19:07:56 UTC

"If we claim to value liberty, we cannot maintain an economy built on precarity, rent extraction, inherited privilege, and structural insecurity."
-- Richard Murphy paraphrasing Thomas Paine
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/wp-content/uploads/pdf-uploads/Economic-Questions-Published.pdf
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/downloads/
#freedom #economy

2026-06-05 17:25:50 UTC

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I say yes, under my assumption that a relay does not faithfully allow a user the same control of their outbox that their home server does. I might be wrong in that assumption. I also say this in full knowledge that there are also probably many other ways another person could bypass such controls.

2026-06-05 15:52:06 UTC

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Although it is just semantics, it feels to me like we can separate insider trading as a creature of the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission, wherein the the relation to the securities themselves bind the insiders.
Then there's the 1919 Black Sox or Pete Rose. These were sports with rules and leagues with memberships which again bound the participants to the rules.
The Santos example fits none of these.

2026-06-05 03:20:10 UTC

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Heh, busy bowling. Glad you found it!

2026-06-05 02:01:33 UTC

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Plus the Oracle problem.

2026-06-04 03:09:10 UTC

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I'm 3/4 through his audiobook and heems reasonably smart and talks the talk (principles, inclusion, transparency, care), so this makes me wonder if he has trouble dealing with people who are not high-functioning and who are used to having independence within the confines of caucus.

2026-06-01 04:09:26 UTC

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But thats my point, even the vapour is not that dangerous.
When gasoline is spilled on the ground and catches fire, there is a thin layer above it where it burns well, and beyond that, even though you can smell it, it does not burn.

2026-06-01 04:01:12 UTC

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This matches my impression. I mean, I don't smoke so wouldn't be putting myself in such a situation, my impression is it is not not as dangerous as you might think.

2026-05-20 19:24:39 UTC

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Well put.

2026-05-14 21:36:49 UTC

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Do you mean uploaded to a non-Peertube instance, specifically? I get the impression that Peertube uses a Bittorrent-like protocol that helps with simultaneous viewing. But I may be wrong.

2026-05-06 16:19:58 UTC

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In our case, which is predominately city, the EV has the clear advantage.
Regarding the "premium" of the EV, there are many confounding variables in the pricing of any car, but I'd say of the CA$12k difference in base price of the Uncharted to the Crosstrek (both Subaru, similar style, Uncharted is slightly bigger) is, say, a $10k EV premium, but the Subaru has a $5k discount so net $5k premium. So about 3 years max to make up the difference based on +$2k/yr gas

2026-05-06 15:41:49 UTC

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We love our new EV ordered 6 weeks ago and picked up last week.
It's replacing a 20-year-old Jetta TDI that owed us no favours but which cost $110 to fill (almost 58 L at $2.149/L) for the last time when I sold it. The new EV will cost less than $14 in electricity ($0.0899/kWh) for the same distance (filled twice, mind you).

2026-04-16 00:34:34 UTC

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Not to mention what happens when they finally decide to raise the token price to reflect all-in costs, including capital depreciation.

2026-04-05 23:34:46 UTC

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It's almost like he is not socializing. Hmmmm. Curious.

2026-04-05 03:59:57 UTC

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While I appreciate the genuine nuance to his analysis I also sense a palpable fear of being judged by peers who also see the net negative of GenAI, & that saddens me. I say that as someone who is also cognizant of all the negative aspects both inherent to the technology and to the forces that lust after its alleged promise.
I'm also saddened that he accepts at face value that these tools violate copyright. I think he confuses human emotion with legal fact, yet undetermined.

2026-03-24 20:49:16 UTC

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The Potemkin economy.
I'm glad in some ways that I have not managed to get a job in over 2 years. I found regular corporate bulshytte to be soul-sucking, I'm not sure how I would fare today.

2026-03-23 15:47:06 UTC

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I did wonder about that.

2026-03-23 03:51:17 UTC

When I see what appears to be legitimate videos from cell phones in Israel showing ballistic missiles from Iran hitting Israel (often showing defensive missiles missing the incoming ballistic ones), I find them quite striking and disturbing. But I do not simply blame them on Iran.

2026-03-21 00:14:09 UTC

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What are the chances Nash knows "shibboleet"? I think 99%

2026-03-19 19:03:40 UTC

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You may only kill one person per employee per year, not one person more.

2026-03-07 05:26:00 UTC

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The whole nation, huh?

2026-02-15 22:07:13 UTC

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Watching someone come to terms with the brutal fundamentals of capitalism almost in real time is fascinating.

2026-01-25 02:21:33 UTC

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A hundred years ago, bearing witness was filtered through the lens of who would be believed, perpetuating power.
For all the negatives of social media and other information-systems technology, the ubiquity of digital cameras and network connectivity has resulted in a democratization of bearing witness.
I have great hope this will change the world for the better.