The big problem with blocking GA altogether is that GA is usually how people who put together websites find out what browsers people are using to browse those websites.

And if you’re about to say “But they can just look at the user agent in access.log!”, sure they can, but those are in logs that are accessed by sysadmins, not people trying to find out how their websites are used. The first thing someone who’s trying to find out how to optimize their website does is go into GA. If they see no Firefox users in GA, then they don’t care about Firefox compatibility. They may even filter it out to prevent bots.

In order to fix the tracking cookies thing we need to do more than block a popular tool for getting website metrics, we need to understand why it’s used and provide alternatives that respect privacy.

I think the implicit assumptions about the “Police carry insurance” thing are:

1. Non-criminal Qualified immunity protections are replaced by insurance carriage
2. LEOs have to pay their own insurance (presumably with a pay hike that’s the “average” insurance payment

Without QI, LEOs would be liable. Insurance companies can certainly force LEOs to fight court cases, but the costs of doing so will fall on the insurance companies. An LEO that’s constantly a problem will find themselves in court a lot, and will end up costing the insurance company a lot, regardless of whether it’s just legal fees, or massive damages to their victims in addition to legal fees. So the insurer will force them to pay ever increasing premiums, and eventually they won’t be able to afford to be in law enforcement.

Most of what you’re saying would undermine the existing professional insurance requirements for doctors etc. Hell, it’d undermine insurance requirements for driving!

Also remember insurance companies rarely insure just one thing. You may get a carrier that specializes in LEOs, but in practice like most insurers it’ll cover a wide variety of different types of liability insurances, directly or indirectly. So it’s not necessarily in its best interests to defend LEOs regardless of what they’ve done. That just encourages bad law enforcement, pushing up its costs elsewhere.

The only thing I can think of (aside from the remote possibility that someone’s trying to move something very wide along the walkway and their way is blocked by 1") is that it’s very pseudo-OCD triggering, which definitely would put it in the Mildly Infuriating camp, just not in the way that is normally posted here.

While that’s true, the boomers entering the “oldsphere”, to coin a term, are the ones adjacent to Gen X who weren’t scared of personal computers when they started to become a thing during the 1980s. They’re people who have been using computers in offices for the last 30+ years, and they’re very used to how they work. I genuinely think they’re less likely to fall for an online scam.

Older boomers, sure, but those are people who were, as a group (individuals are different! I can name plenty of awesome technically skilled boomers of that age group, I’m just making a generalization which for statistical purposes is reasonable) were more suspicious of computers and which contained a large number who managed to reach retirement age without going into jobs that absolutely required computer knowledge.

Those people are not the majority of people crossing the 60-65 age barrier today.

This may be true. The other thing that’s been bothering me for a while is that Millennials were really the last generation to be given an understanding of how computers worked. The computers they grew up with had hierarchical file systems, file types, programs that understood both, etc.

From iTunes onwards (yes, iTunes, this didn’t even start with the cloud), there’s been an attitude of “Computers are too hard to understand so let’s dumb it down and hide everything” from computer makers. This got ramped up when everything moved to the cloud and/or mobile devices, the latter doing everything practically possible to avoid giving anyone some language in which they could understand what the computer was doing underneath.

Hell yeah, I’d expect people to fall for online scams when they’ve had the ability to understand what they’re looking at ripped away from them by a short-termist industry that’s just, today, looking for ways to charge people for stuff they could do themselves like manage their own data.

And I’ve seen this dumbing down impact other things too. People furious about the idea of using BBSes other than Reddit because… I honestly don’t know, but there’s always massive support for their opinion. People who, likewise, describe Mastodon as “too hard” because they have to pick a server. Even in tech communities, people who you’d assume had no problem picking a mobile phone carrier, or an ISP, or an email provider, have a massive problem with picking a Mastodon node, and when you talk to them, not only are you flamed to hell and back by everyone else, but it becomes clear that actually, no, they didn’t pick a mobile phone carrier, they used their parent’s. They didn’t pick an ISP, they picked Xfinity because Comcast already gave them TV. They didn’t pick an email provider, they didn’t even realize you could, they just signed up to GMail.

Ten years ago, none of this was true. People as a whole, especially those who were discussing tech topics, were not that tech ignorant. Today? We are regressing as a society.

Is there actually an abolish the police movement in the UK? I’m an ex-Brit who lives in the US so I’m familiar with both, and the UK police forces have an entirely different history and reputation to the US LE organizations. I’d be surprised if there’s anything outside of anarchist groups there. But I’m happy to shown I’m wrong (well, “happy” is a relative term, if the UK police have devolved to the same troughs as the US LE orgs then that’s terrible news.)

If I may strike a positive note, at least the UK appears to care about this.

You don’t hear about this happening in the US (OK, now I’m striking a negative note, actually “note” doesn’t even cover it), not because America’s law enforcement organizations aren’t also infested with sexist, homophobic, and racist (which wasn’t even a big enough problem with the Met to note) corrupt assholes, but because nobody with power actually cares about it, so these people will continue to keep their jobs. And unlike the Met Officers, they have even more power and can kill people with impunity.

Bravo to the Met for actually sucking up and doing something about the problem.

While I’m OK with entertaining the proposition he’s also probably a pedophile given his obsession with calling other people that (albeit if he was a practicing one I’d have expected a victim to have spoken out by now, whether he visited Epstein’s island or not), the whole buy out happened very publicly and was very much in keeping with the instability and narcissism we’re increasingly aware he represents.

• He made an offer to buy Twitter and accepted a contract that was very one sided. Doesn’t anyone else’s advice, thinks he can “fix” anything. Largely “hate bought” Twitter, his offer came after months of insulting Twitter’s management and accusing them of various frauds (projection, stupidity, pointless fighting, etc)
• He realized this was a terrible idea after the fact and tried to wiggle out of it.
• He continued insulting Twitter’s management attempting to justify pulling out and managed to break the only terms in the contract that would have allowed him to get out of it because it contained what was essentially a non-disparagement clause. Had he not broken that he could have simply said he was unable to find funding (true or not) and paid a $1B break-up fee.
• Eventually, reluctantly, the buy out went through because he left himself no options.

Basically the Musk we had started to realize existed when he lied about CaHSR and proposed a bad-faith vaporware “technology” as a replacement, when he accused a hero of being a pedophile for stating the obvious about his “help”, when he became estranged from his daughter because he couldn’t accept her having gender dysphoria, when he kept repeating the same claim about the readiness of self driving technology over the space of half a decade, screwed up in exactly the way we’d expect him to.

He didn’t need to be blackmailed. This is who he is.

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This is just the way our natural grammatical structure works.

We’re not having a discussion about grammar, we’re having a discussion about how phrases can be misleading even if technically correct, and how those phrases can end up serving inhuman agendas.

While “Hit by car” the driver is usually at fault. Note news articles will generally go out of their way to avoid “hit by car” on the rare occasion someone jumps in front of one.

Hit by a pitch? Not sure what this means.

Hit by stray bullet is modified to describe an unusual set of circumstances so inappropriate here. That’s the equivalent of “Man hit by derailed train”. We’re not talking about that kind of situation. The nearest equivalent of “Man hit by train” where the direct cause of death is an aimed bullet is “Man shot”, or "Man shot by ", it’s never “Man hit by bullet”

Struck by new knowledge doesn’t really apply here too.

The underlying message of “Hit by train” is that transit was at fault (the train “hit”). Rather than the drunk driver. Rather than the reckless idiot who decided to go around the barrier. Rather than the suicidal cyclist who stepped in front of it. Rather than, in this case, the cop that parked on the tracks and locked a prisoner inside the car.

Words are about communication. And all phrases have subtexts and good writing recognizes those subtexts and avoids misleading ones and uses accurate ones that convey as much information as possible.

"Train hits " is an intentional choice by journalists to focus the blame on transit rather than the person whose actions lead to death. Whether it’s technically correct ignores the fact that there are better phrases that could be used that also focus the blame on the person who caused the situation. "Colorado officer who trapped prisoner in path of train sentenced to " doesn’t have the misleading nuances that the headline does. It’s more accurate and more informative as a result.

You know on a conscious level that the train couldn’t have done anything. But on a subconscious level the author is telling you the train, not the “person that caused something to be in the way of the train” was the cause of the accident. Had there been no pesky train just existing, there’d have been no accident regardless of how avoidable the accident was.

That’s my problem with the language. Just as you know an officer-involved-shooting actually involved the officer shooting someone, but the language is so weak that on some level your subconscious assumes it can’t be a big deal if that kind of vague, woolly, wording is appropriate.

And as I mentioned, it appears to be an intentional word choice. People don’t talk about rivers (non-sentient object) asphyxiating people, they talk about people drowning in rivers. A threshing machine (non-sentient) doesn’t thresh a minion (!), the minion falls into a threshing machine. But a train (non-sentient) hits people, rather than vice-versa. To be fair you occasionally see this language with cars, but cars are driven by people, it’s usually the case the car driver is actually the decision maker that caused a death.

Does that make sense?

Unless they have the exact same standards for hair length for all students, regardless of gender, that’s plainly discriminatory

I would suggest that in almost all cases a unified standard would actually be guaranteed to be discriminatory, in much the same way a unified standard for how tall you’re allowed to be would be. The only thing I can think of that wouldn’t would be if everyone had to have their heads shaved as “the standard”.

Biologically/genetically, and socially, different (protected!) groups have different hair and expectations about how that hair can be styled.

Even the “head shaved” thing, while possible with any hair no matter what the underlying biology and genetics, would be torture for a sizable number of women in a modern society.

They haven’t shifted it to trans people, they’ve added trans people.

I don’t know where Lemmy users are getting it from that the Republicans have reduced their hatred for LGB people over the last 10 years, I’m seeing literally the opposite. Teachers in Florida aren’t even allowed to make statements to target the bullying of gay students without breaching a (probably unconstitutional, but who the f— knows what the current SCOTUS will do?) law passed only a year ago.

Honestly, my observation isn’t that trans people have been picked as an alternative set of victims, it’s that they’ve been swept up as part of the anti-gay agenda.

I hate that phrase “hit by a train”. It’s usually because it’s fodder for NIMBYs. It implies the train did something, like it jumped the tracks or something, whereas the train was just traveling the path it always does. A woman drowns, she’s not “asphyxiated by the river”, a man burns himself on a stove, he’s not “Burnt by the stove.” In the train’s case the conscious action was the “putting something in front of it”. Yet somehow it’s the train’s fault? Suicide? It’s the train’s fault. Drunk idiot? It’s the train’s fault.

I mention this because this is yet another case in which transit is getting blamed for a human action, an action that human knew could leave to the death of someone else, but that the human did anyway. It detracts from the fact the blame is with the officer.

Anyway, I know you all don’t care, but it’s another way in which language serves an establishment, in this case two - the car centric, anti-transit establishment that it usually does, and the officer who all but murdered a suspect. It’s another phrase like “Officer involved shooting”, except maybe even that phrase doesn’t place blame on an inanimate object.

I don’t think it’s that surprising. Both are often linked to a distrust of the establishment, and the pharmaceutical industry is obviously a part of that. Indeed, the fact the government is on the one hand saying “Cannabis is terrible and will turn you into a total monster” while simultaneously saying “Oxycontin is fine, doctors can prescribe it because capitalism”, is a major problem and undermines the government when it is being run by less terrible people who are trying to do the right thing.

(Note, before anyone thinks I have that mentality: I’m taking a vaccine booster whatever that fuck DeSantis says as soon as I’m eligible, and you should wear a mask if you can without people being violent to you, but government corruption on a minor to medium scale such as the War on Drugs and the Oxycontin bullshit is how we end up with conspiracy theorists who’ll believe the UN wants them to eat bugs, scientists invented global warming as a way to increase government power, and that we never go to the moon.)

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No, generally “having sex with someone without their consent” is the standard by which someone is a rapist. And the standard of proof in the public eye (that is, the point at which the public, BUT NOT NECESSARILY THE COURTS, can feel justified in assuming someone is) is generally “Is there a proof that’s pretty unambiguous”, such as several independent people reporting it happened to them, with documentation to show what happened.

The “article” bit is generally what we use to find out that this evidence exists. Articles are documents written by journalists that impart information to a wider audience.

You may want to learn about what makes someone a rapist by looking up “Rape” in a dictionary. You may also want to look up journalism and what it’s function in society is. Finally you may also want to look at the relative standards of proof for convicting someone criminally, and how they differ from the standard of proof needed for you and others to believe something personally and might share on an Internet discussion board.

And, FWIW, I’m sure if it turns out the article was just made up by a journalist who doesn’t care about their reputation being trashed and a libel suit, or alternatively the four women were “in on it” and made it all up, forging text messages and visit to rape crisis centers for LOLZ, Bleeping Lobster will retract what they said.

But at this stage I think everyone would be justified in not leaving their kids with Brand as a babysitter, and women would be justified in giving him a wide berth and bringing something or someone to help them defend themselves if they’re forced to be in close proximity with him. And people should know that.

They set context at the time.

At the time the constitution was passed, the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government. The Second Amendment basically is saying “Hey, if the Feds were to regulate guns, then States couldn’t form militias and the country would be undefended because there’s no standing army. So we recognize a right to own guns at a Federal level. What States do, OTOH, is up to them.”

And this might have been fine, if antiquated quickly given it didn’t take long for everyone to realize State Militias were a dumb idea and the US needed an Army, but for the fact that the States didn’t get on, the South was basically made up of Slavery imposing tyrannies, and the end result was a civil war (which wasn’t very civil, despite the name.)

And in the aftermath of that war, the 14th Amendment imposed the bill of rights on all the states. So now the states also can’t interfere with the “right” to own guns, despite it never being the founder’s intent that the right be recognized on any level other than Federal.

So, that’s why those words are there. It’s a “Hey, this might sound really weird if we don’t give some context, so here’s some context” preamble. And unfortunately, as such, is meaningless, especially since the 14th didn’t make an exception for it (they really should have done.)

Matrix is good, though I’ve been reconsidering it ever since I read this: https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07

Also I’ve considered it less than perfect since they added encryption and managed to make it a hell to set up. If you can’t get people to understand Mastodon because “yOu hAvE To cHoOsE A SeRvEr” how the hell are you going to get them to set up a Matrix account when it involves downloading files and other crap that you need to keep with you when setting up all your clients.

Revolt looks nice but until it’s possible to use one account (and browser tab) to access multiple servers (in the computing sense, not the Discord sense), it’s not going to be ideal as a Discord replacement.

This is probably an unpopular view, but when you look at actual actions in Congress, I’ve barely seen Bernie do anything effective, but I have seen The Squad work fairly effectively to (1) push the agenda in a positive direction (sometimes, usually maybe, they fail, but they do have successes) and (2) hold the right to account (AOC’s questions during the Michael Cohen was a masterclass in using power effectively rather than grandstanding, which is what her colleagues were doing for the most part)

Bernie is obviously in the other place and doesn’t have the same opportunities, but where he has similar opportunities he rarely seems to use them. He’s a good orator, but he doesn’t have to be in Congress to do that. Losing Bernie would be a shame, but losing The Squad would be a disaster.