haha thanks, I appreciate it.

Surely there’s some reward or motivation, whether it’s rational or not. Would you feel any different if you didn’t do it?

Serious question, why? Stress relief of button-pushing? Thinking it might work and that it can’t be slower than doing nothing?

I just don’t feel any urge to push the button.

I don’t have evidence, but I have heard there are also times of day when it’s automated and when it’s manual. So you might need to press it at midnight but not during rush hour. Interesting if true.

Good call, I’ll start looking out for these!

Huh, these are all common sense statements I would have assumed true. Four our of four, good work!

but they never seem to consider that it’s them that keeps electing those people.

How so?

If one doesn’t vote, a slimy politician still gets elected.

If one does vote, in most elections they can only choose from a small group of people who probably fail to represent them, and even if there is a reasonable option, they probably won’t win the vote anyway.

The system is rigged, when it comes to voting there usually* isn’t a correct option. Our political voice must exist outside of elections.

(I say usually, because a few elections are better than other, but generally speaking at a federal level, it’s slime no matter how you vote)

A key aspect is that it doesn’t even require confirmation.

Private against who?

Privacy communities need to really drill in the idea of threat models instead of pretending privacy is some linear scale and the ultimate goal is to bury your phone and computer in a lead-lined concrete block underground. Privacy and security are meaningless concepts unless you know who your are protecting it from and what their capabilities might be. I don’t need to hide from NSA Tailored Access Operations because I’m not trying to x the y of the USA. I do need to protect myself from basic scam attackers, copyright trolls and neo-nazi stalkers. And Matrix, along with certain basic opsec guidelines, does that and more for me.

Anyone who doesn’t know how to (safely!) pirate books, articles, films, games and software, please read, use and share the resources over at !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

This skill is increasingly useful.

You wouldn’t, because you are (presumably) knowledgeable about the current AI trend and somewhat aware of political biases of the creators of these products.

Well, more because I’m knowledgeable enough about machine learning to know it’s only as good as its dataset, and knowledgeable enough about mass media and the internet to know how atrocious ‘common sense’ often is. But yes, you’re right about me speaking from a level of familiarity which I shouldn’t consider typical.

People have been strangely trusting of chat bots since ELIZA in the 1960s. My country is lucky enough to teach a small amount of bias and media literacy skills through education and some of the state broadcaster’s programs (it’s not how it sounds, I swear!), and when I look over to places like large chunks of the US, I’m reminded that basic media literacy isn’t even very common, let alone universal.

Well, it would require more than just legislation change. Truth be told, in the US, a working democracy requires some form of revolution since the people holding all the power benefit from the broken system. But on the other hand, organizations and communities (including territories of hundreds of thousands) practicing direct democracy on a smaller scale have seen success with these strategies.

Try buying Monero, it is very hard to buy.

• Acquire BTC (there are even ATMs for this in many countries)
• Trade for XMR using one of the many non-KYC services like WizardSwap or exch

I haven’t looked into whether that’s illegal in some jurisdictions but it’s really really easy, once you know that’s an option.

Or you could even just trade directly with anyone who owns XMR. Obviously easier for some people than others but it’s a real option.

Both of these methods don’t even require personal details like ID/name/phone number.

How do you solve the problem that half the country can’t even be bothered to participate once every four years?

I assume you’re talking about the US electoral system?? That’s very different.

but how would we get people to engage with such a system?

By empowering them.

Consider how the current electoral system disempowers people:

1. Some people literally cannot vote or risk jeopardizing their job taking the day off, others face voter suppression tactics

2. The FPTP system (esp. spoiler effect) and the present political circumstances mean that there are really only two viable options for political parties for most people, so many feel that neither option represents them, let alone their individual positions on policy

3. Politics is widely considered to be corrupt and break electoral promises regularly. There is little faith in either party to represent voters

But, in a system where you are able to represent yourself at will, engagement is actually rewarding and meaningful. It won’t magically make everyone care, but direct democracy alongside voter rights reform would likely make more people think it’s worth polling.

No it doesn’t. It requires imperialism. The genocides are simply efficient for the imperial machine creating settlements, but it’s not a requirement. They’re evidently avoidable and capitalists just repeatedly decide not to avoid it because they consider it cheaper to commit genocide rather than integrate more passively.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t ask any chatbot about politics at all.

JPEG-XL (someone already mentioned it as .jxl below) image files.

• competitive with AVIF compression levels
• not recycling video compression, so you get benefits like progressive loading
• JPEG transcoding - can take existing JPEG files (so much of the existing images online) and shrink their size by ~20% with literally no change to the presented image, and this is easily reverable. The amount of data this would shrink without risk of altering the data is HUGE.

There are a ton of other benefits but those are the three I’m most excited about.

Well, I tried looking up videos of this and found one more reason not to: someone brought a bucket of hot water to their car and slipped on the icy driveway, spilling it on their face.

Is it because of pedestrians, or just heavy car traffic? [edit: just read the road details, looks like it’s a one-way ‘living street’ with pedestrians, capped at 20 mph]

(just posting OSM link for anyone else like me avoiding Google) https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/13526138

For what it’s worth: something I haven’t seen come up (so while this is a pragmatic perspective, don’t pretend I’m dismissing the importance of your relationship and your values! I’m only adding this for variety and discussion)

People can change. Many won’t, but some do. [vid: former white supremacists describing their process of leaving] Whether you think your brother is willing or able to change is your call, and whether it’s worth the emotional and mental strain is your call. You aren’t obliged, but it’s worth considering.

People who have left these ideologies, from what I’ve heard, often come back to two main points - they had someone in their life who cared about them, but was also unwilling to tolerate their bullshit, and they had to want to leave it by themselves. Honestly, I see parallels with people recovering from serious drug addictions and cults like QAnon.

But, again, this isn’t easy and there’s no guarantee of them changing, so do not feel obliged to even try. Your health is more important, and there are plenty of other ways you can help change the world.