lsiebert

Examples of Misinformation:

scientifically debunked ideas like the idea vaccines cause autism

Ideas with zero basis in reality like the idea that most or all mass shootings are actually faked using "crisis actors"

Political conspiracy theories like the idea that Bernie Sanders would have been the democratic candidate for president, but was cheated by Hillary Clinton.

Misrepresented ideas, like how certain people on the right wing just ignore what critical race theory actually is by redefining it into a farcical straw man argument and then see it everywhere (This is a repeated pattern, see sharia law, migrant carvans, covid safety, etc)

In 2008 Myspace had 110 million monthly active users worldwide, 74 million in the US.

https://venturebeat.com/2008/04/24/one-small-step-for-myspac...

There are airbnb investors as well, people buying properties in order to rent them out.

I think you can sign up for a google account with any android device with google apps on it. Presumably that can be without a phone number if it's just a tablet.

This isn't mental telepathy, this is using voluntary attempts to activate the vocal cords to produce text using an implanted device.

Not exactly. Comas just indicate prolonged unconsciousness and inability to react (in terms of body movement) to stimuli, not minimal brain activity.

https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/brain-activity-...

A complete lack of brain activity is brain death. Brain activity is often slowed in comatose patients, but that varies from patient to patient.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/traumatic-bra...

A Coma is prolonged unconsciousness. These patients are awake, aware, and yet trapped in their bodies, unable to communicate.

Most previous brain signal translation has been adaptions of typing in some form. This is directly translating signals intended for vocal cords, IE for vocal speech, into text.

Science fiction has always been the literature of the possible, the imagined. And just as we can imagine horrors worse then things are now, a monstrous AI intelligence torturing the last surviving humans, boots forever stamping on faces in a world defined by doublethink, we can also imagine what things might look like if the world was better.

That isn't panglossian optimism that things will all work out, anymore than dystopias are a prediction of certain doom. It's a vision of a better world that is, perhaps, possible, and exploration of how such a world might be achieved.

I don't see how you can have political confrontation without optimism, or at least a desire for change to circumstances that allows optimism.

You know how invested money can make money through investment in businesses or property which is then operated to produce profitable goods and services by employees, contractors, renters, leasees, slaves etc, rather than you having to make money from your property and business through your own labor or as an equal partner?

That's capitalism.

A free tier that didn't allow third party integrations might work if that's really your sticking point.

But honestly nothing wrong with charging money for a service.

AFAIK pay transparency doesn't require them to say who gets paid what specifically. In a large company, how would you even know?

That would only work as proof if you believe that salary is a perfect metric for job performance, and that nobody is paid less than they could get elsewhere (IE that the labor market operates with perfect efficiency).

I imagine we both know neither of those is the case.

Since those are not the case, you can ask yourself, are bills requiring equal pay for equivalent work and pay transparency each likely to improve salary as a metric for job performance, and labor market efficiency?

I suspect they do both, but if you believe otherwise, feel free to explain.

Nothing, but there's no need for that, because there's nothing stopping them from paying her 2x for the same position, based on the actual skills and experience someone has.

You can totally pay people different wages under these laws for the same position, if they are better at their job, you just have to show that that's why.

yeah, as best I can tell you absolutely can pay someone more if they are better at their job under equal pay laws.

In California for example, the equal pay act requires 'equal pay for employees who perform “substantially similar work,” when viewed as a composite of skill, effort, and responsibility.'

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/California_Equal_Pay_Act.htm

Someone who contributes more inherently must have greater skills and/or put in greater effort, and likely greater responsibility, given they are accomplishing more tasks.

You can pay differently based on a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production, or another bonafide factor such as education, training or experience.

Here's a copy of that law, it's pretty short.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

And gini coefficient for 12 countries with a higher gini coefficient than the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

That experiment from her perspective.

https://nickyknacks.medium.com/working-while-female-59a5de3a...

I think China is happy to let in physical products like Apple, but it wants the internet stuff under it's control.

Ah, you are reasoning from your own anecdotal experience to say that something is unlikely because you haven't yourself observed it.

Maybe you should try an experiment?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-sign...

> Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned.

No, it's not, many workers I know face repeated and regular stressful abuse, which is almost always worse if they are visibly part of a marginalized group of people, who also get racial and misogynistic slurs thrown in their face. There are dramatic differences in treatment, and many managers don't step in to protect their employees. That's not to say the other stuff you mention doesn't also occur.

It's not even necessarily retail, I know a really sweet Latina woman, she manages and runs multiple bicycle rental places in SF. People will be incredibly rude to her, but when she says, "Hold on, let me get someone else to help you" and gets a white male employee of hers, they are suddenly all smiles and apologetic and understanding.

I honestly would encourage folks here to remember to be good customers, to treat workers as you would want people to treat you, because workers in the US are almost always underpaid and dealing with work related stress.

Try to know what you want by looking online, understand that workers don't owe you happy smiles and social interaction beyond the goods and services you pay for, listen to and ask for suggestions and consider them as expert advice if you are having trouble making a decision, and if possible be polite and say thank you.

Doing this for HN asks you to login as an administrator.

See my answer above. As for my argument above that about comparative morality, it's more complex and nuanced, but it boils down to the idea of agency and praxis, and the responsibility of those who have everything they need.

Also a large number of people receiving food aid are neither homeless nor vagrants, but the working poor.

No, I was responding to the idea that the existence at food banks means nobody needs to go hungry.

But I do think folks here have a lot of illusions about the nature of poverty and who is poor that they've gathered mostly by vague cultural osmosis and conservative propagated myths, not by working with or for poor folks, talking to those who do, academic studies (either doing, or reading), or even watching documentaries.

And yet people still go hungry. It's a lot easier to feed yourself if you have money. Also not everybody has 5 and a half hours to wait in line.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/S-F-hunge...

Yes? as I understand it the general correlation between income inequality and crime is fairly well known, and the debate is on why it occurs and what can be done despite it. That said crime rates themselves are often more to do with reporting than with prevalence... IE if crime happens regularly people don't bother reporting it.

Okay, here's international correlations between income inequality and property crime .https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86...

The best thing I could find for the time ranges you discussed suggests you are wrong about San Francisco, at least in terms of the last ~50 years and violent crime rates, which dropped 43% from 1975 to 2015. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-conte...

The nationwide crime rate also went down during the same period, so I'm not sure that is really fair to your argument.

That said, more broadly here's evidence of a correlation between crime rate and income inequality, including property crime, using US cities that isn't time based. https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/

Here's one showing that income inequality by neighborhood correlates to property crime rate. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004209801664391...

Here's a study about people on probation in San Francisco that shows that housing insecurity drive recidivism, and that that's particularly strong correlation for low level offenses like property crimes https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publicati...

Anyway, This paper suggests that increasing wages among low income workers decreases crime https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf

Hungry people will try to eat whatever they can. Tired people will try to sleep wherever they can. Unhappy people will try to feel better however they can.

Criminalizing these activities is incredibly costly and doesn't truly solve anything.

People are quick to question the morality of desperate unhappy poor people when they break the law when they don't have enough resources or options, and yet we rarely consider the immorality of those who hoard incredible wealth they don't need, when there are desperate unhappy poor people in need.

Shouldn't those with great power have the greater responsibility?

TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically.

Here we are on HN, once again debating criminalizing poor people for not having opportunities, about if it's better to fine poor people or imprison them, treating those as solutions, instead of something just making the problem worse.

The problem is poverty. How come when we try to incentivize the rich, we give them stuff like tax breaks, but when we want to incentivize the poor, we punish them and take their money or freedom away?

People are so focused on if it's wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, they don't ask if it's wrong to have something and not give it away to someone who needs it more than you do.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-...

Because it's not comfortably middle class Americans who have good paying jobs who are repeatedly shoplifting, it's poor people who don't have a significantly better options.

Treating their crimes as the most salient aspect of them by calling them thieves and criminals ignores their poverty, instead of treating it as a systemic societal problem which harms us all.

This wasn't a natural experiment in any case, pre/post the law, you can't blame the law for shoplifting, other variables weren't fixed and thus confound the results. I expect rent increases, increases in the prices of food and other consumer goods and so on have a much bigger impact on shoplifting. Even if you could, if it wasn't shoplifting it would be some other means of making ends meet.

Poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, these are problems our country absolutely has the means to address, and investing in stopping them pays dividends not just in higher tax revenues but in decreased crime.

And with that in mind, isn't it smarter to take some of the money dedicated housing prisoners, policing the poor, managing them through the criminal justice system, and using it to help them so they don't have to steal?

I want both a repairability index and a recyclability index, with increased taxes on sales of items that are less repairable or recyclable. Those items are more costly to repair or recycle, and thus more wasteful and inefficient.

I think it's better to align financial incentives.