Maeve

No you aren’t and you could just respectfully decline for personal reasons.

Wow. I hear stories like this and think “we need socialism.”

Probably taking my health for granted and not taking care of it when younger, combined with societal constructs that make that difficult - nutrition, car culture, climate change, well care/health insurance, etc.

What? Land, surveys, taxes, permits, land-use studies, environmental impact studies, architects, engineers, living wage construction workers, materials, faculty, staff, doctors, pharmaciststs, care providers, business, health, property, other insurances, dieticians, meals, maintenance…I want these things funded for centuries. May as well include uniforms, so parents don’t come out of pocket, lawyers, potential lawsuits…5 bn isn’t going to last long.

I guess I’d better hire someone to help educate me about fundraising, tax and other applicable laws, because establishing a (pre?)k-12 private school with above-standard education, three nutritiously sound meals/day, built-in well/sick/before/after school care, extracurricular activities and free clinic with it’s own free pharmacy, both to be offered to low-income community that will last generations is going to be expensive. Plus I’d imagine a team of attorneys on retainer being necessary is foreseeable, if capitalism is still a thing.

What about soap flakes?

I think we have free agency within various external constraints. Which means we can try to find ways to circumvent external constraints, while also understanding that, as the fictional Ian Malcolm Smith put it, just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean we should do it.

More than that. It’s designed first to enrich insurance, AI, and other business interests, to drive down wages and eventually replace humans with autonomous vehicles. Irobot.

Before any model is released to the public, I want clear evidence that the LLM will tell me if it doesn’t know something, and will never hallucinate or make something up.

Their creators can’t even keep them from deliberately lying.

I said in some other thread: hope + will gets results. They may not look exactly like we imagine, but results.

and it’s up to the working class to make that a positive one.

😬

That’s ok. I’m not sure where you are, but things seem to be getting real real, globally. A lot of us are focused on community, paying bills, family and organization, and I’m okay with it!

Eta, that picture is perfect, I shared it with my friend. I wish I could get them over here, I feel they might appreciate it, but old dogs/new tricks.

Thank you; as always, you’re very generous and informative. I have a friend in the mood to chat here, I will read and probably ask dumb questions later.

Thanks for holding my feet to the fire. I believe current, but I could be mistaken, it’s been a long time since I read it, so forgive my sketchiness, but each region having elections until one person wins a final vote, to represent their constituency. I just checked Wikipedia and didn’t remember the representative voting part, so maybe my bad memory. Is there a post somewhere that compares and contrasts Soviet and Russian models?

You know how a certain faction in the USA keeps screaming about "states rights?”

In my view, central and decentralized authority have their issues. And here come the down votes. The way the Russian voting system was explained to me by the good people of .ml makes a lot of sense and circumvents the worst issues of both.

Huh. Someone I know is trying to start a business with a longer-term aim of a co-op. Business insurance for themselves is going to run 30-40k minimum per year!

I saw it happen with Walmart, Ace Hardware, Pizza Hut, Lowe’s/Home Depot. We used to have independent supermarkets too, who set their own prices based on local conditions. I live in an area where the supermarket in a nearby town (it’s really a village) often has lower prices on produce and meats. The big national brands cost more, and this store doesn’t get bulk discounts like Walmart, HT, and Kroger! The problem is I still have to go a few towns over to get decent coffee because Folgers, Maxwell House and Staryuck isn’t it, so when I get a ride, I have to buy extra and freeze it. The local independent store doesn’t have as good starting pay or benefits, though, but without their store, many of our older population would be in serious trouble. An elderly man kept me for some time in the meat department of our chain store because he said he was ashamed to be looking at low quality beef at those prices, when he used to farm and hunt his own. Years of farming to feed our country left him with hands that don’t work the way they used too. I didn’t buy their overpriced products, and felt bad for someone who destroyed their body for people who largely don’t even consider that nature gives us her body and blood for us to eat and drink, and from showing, weeding, irrigating, harvesting, processing, packaging, shipping, stocking, dusting, sweeping, waxing, checking, the individuals who suffer and destroy their bodies to get it to the table.

I was in another independently owned grocery a few towns over by happenstance to pick up a few things while accessible. In less than 15 minutes, because I didn’t know where items were and asked, three different employees told me to wait, they’d be right back. I guessed they were asking or making sure. Each returned with the specific item I wanted, to save me steps! Again, every item but one was less expensive than the chains, and I am guessing they can’t compete with chain grocery starting pay, either.

Interestingly enough, the employees do get a small profit sharing incentive.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks so much for clearing that up for me.

isn’t that anarchy?

We’re living in a particularly toxic time, and splitting is a reversion