I wonder how long it will be before Israelis are pulling the fold fillings out of dead Gazan bodies (if it’s not already happening).

The problem is that most of what was done in Panama was legal. They were avoiding taxes, not evading taxes.

If they were breaking the law, they could be hauled into court. But, if they’re following the law, but using loopholes which should be illegal, then the only solution is to close those loopholes.

Then it’s a case of millions of people who care just a little bit about having these loopholes closed, but have other priorities like gun violence, global warming, abortion rights, government spying, affordable groceries, not to mention their jobs, their families, their kids, etc. On the other side, there are a few dozen lawyers and lobbyists who are paid to make keeping those loopholes open, or opening new ones their #1 priority for a minimum of 8 hours a day every day. It’s no surprise that the side with money wins this one.

A smart fridge is the only one that tempts me a bit, but only if I could trust the OS, and there’s no way I’m trusting any of the current major fridge makers.

But, there are some useful ideas. If it has a built-in scanner or camera, it could theoretically keep an inventory of what’s inside, when it was bought, and if it’s something like milk, when it expires. I’d love to get an alert that my milk was expiring soon rather than find out by accidentally drinking sour milk.

In theory, it could also pre-populate a grocery list for me, based on what I’m lacking.

I have a recipe app that I like called Paprika, that has the concept of a “pantry”. If I’m looking at a recipe in there I can click a button to add all the ingredients in the recipe to a shopping list. When it does that, it checks what you have in your pantry, and doesn’t add those items to the list. That way, you only buy the items you need for the recipe but don’t currently have. But, the “pantry” in the app is something you have to add things to yourself. It doesn’t know if that list is accurate, or if it was accurate but you recently ran out of something.

It would be great if Paprika could talk to the fridge and figure out “hmm, this recipe calls for butter, which is normally in your pantry, but you’re currently low on butter, so I’ll add it to the list” or “this recipe calls for milk, but your milk has expired, so I’ll add it to the list”. Or, the reverse, when you come home from shopping, you throw a bunch of things in the fridge and it updates what you currently have in your “pantry”. Similarly, a smart “pantry” would also be useful for those same reasons. Probably even more than a fridge, because I see what’s in my fridge (except the stuff at the back) nearly every day. I really forget what’s at the back of the pantry.

It would also be nice if my fridge was “leftover aware”. Like, if I put the rest of my casserole in the fridge on Monday, it would know about it. If it knew that casserole leftovers typically lasted 3 days it could alert me if I was about to lose those leftovers.

Really what I’d want though is a fridge that came with sensors (cameras, barcode scanners, spoilage smell sensors, temperature sensors, etc.) and and API for them. But, from that point on, it was an open platform where you could install your own apps. That way I’m not stuck with say Samsung’s fridge software, which would no doubt be full of surveillance and ads. I’d want to run open source KFridge or something that might be a bit janky but that I could trust wasn’t trying to gouge me for money, or show me ads, or sell my data, or whatever.

A lot of my replies have edits because I’ll notice I used the wrong word

Good, keep at it. I pointed out one you missed. You’re welcome.

Ooh, an attempt to turn around and pretend you’re not butthurt! Not only did you leave that long comment, I can even see you edited it. How long did you stew on that reply?!

You think most of the artists that made famous art got paid??

Yes, I do. Have you heard of Patreon? Do you know the word it’s based on, “patron”?

Plus you think people don’t care if artwork that is claimed to be authentic is actually fraudulent??

People care about all kinds of things. Maybe instead of worrying about whether or not something is authentic, they should just think about whether they like it.

Thank you for demonstrating that you don’t actually like art for art’s sake, you care more about knowing your art comes from a famous person.

I think the one who needs to grow up is the one who left this butthurt comment.

Hmm, ok. I thought there was some trick to learn. A brake almost feels like it’s cheating. You’re right though, it looks cool.

If a museum advertises a Picasso but it is fraudulent most people would consider that a bad thing.

Who cares?

I care about artists getting paid. Sure, hate collectors all you want, but getting rid of them reduces the purchases artists do get.

You don’t need NFTs to ensure artists get paid. You don’t need intellectual property laws to ensure that artists get paid. Most of the best art in history was made before intellectual property was a thing, and the artists who made that art generally were paid.

Of course provenance matters in appreciation of art.

Of course it doesn’t. Do you need to know who painted something, and who owned it, to know whether you like it or not?

People who buy art absolutely care if the artwork they paid for is genuine. Collectors absolutely care if they can prove they own something that others don’t.

Yes, and fuck those people.

Grow so big that a local town council has meetings where they argue about your size, and how much pollution you cause.

Or is that yo mamma?

I saw someone yesterday with a big wheel who I was sure was about to bail. He was unicycling down a pretty steep street. He managed to make it down the street and turn the corner, but it looked like a real struggle.

I know from riding a fixie that for streets that aren’t too steep it’s not hard, you just have to effectively “pedal backwards”, allowing slowing the pedals down as they come up behind you. But, I don’t know what a unicyclist can do on a very steep street. What I would do on a fixie doesn’t work because it requires small skid-stops, which means you need a front wheel.

What would you do on a steep hill? I assume that by the time you realize it’s too steep you’re already going pretty fast, so just bailing would be difficult.

its

NFTs are stupid. Provenance only matters when it comes to the ownership of art. For the real purpose of art, the viewing and appreciation of art, it doesn’t matter at all.

For digital art, provenance only matters if someone wants to create artificial scarcity by applying intellectual property laws to art. Trying to make digital things artificially scarce is stupid.

Getting out appropriately would have been reversing to the place where it entered the flex-posted area, not simply smashing through them.

Remove Teslas from that and now what are the stats?

As usual, anything Musk touches turns to shit, including self-driving cars.

You want to know about the big money? Look into cutting down trees on other people’s property.

Cut down a mature hardwood tree on your neighbour’s lawn and it might cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There’s got to be a way to monetize that.

Yeah, that’s another part of it. Plus the magic of trying to reverse engineer the recommendation algorithms to know what it is that will get your video in front of people.

To a certain extent, a lot of streamers do a lot more stuff than actors.

Actors book a job, so some acting, maybe do a promo tour for their movie, that’s it.

Most “influencers” or streamers at least start out doing everything themselves. They need to understand the streaming tech, know how to configure OBS studio, how to edit video, understand the camera, the lighting, if they’re using make up they’re doing it themselves, they need to know how to do their own marketing, etc. And, if they’re live-streaming they need to develop the skill of interacting with their audience while they’re doing something else. Without that parasocial relationship with the audience, they don’t get big, so they need to stay on top of what their chat is saying. Sometimes that’s on top of doing something else like playing a demanding video game.

So, I think streamers / influencers are often doing a more impressive job than actors. For many streamers / influencers I’m much less interested in them. I often have less respect for the way they make money, since it’s so vapid and consumerist. On the other hand, I do admit that it can be a lot of work to master all those domains.

I’ve always hated the “blue, indigo, violet” end of the English words for the rainbow. I only recently found out that the 7 colours of the rainbow in English is especially BS.

At the beginning of Newton’s time, there were thought to be 5 colours in the rainbow: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Newton added Orange and Indigo because he thought (for spiritual reasons) there should be 7 colours. There were 7 days of the week, 7 planets (known at that time), 7 notes in the (western) musical scale, etc.

But, Newton’s blue isn’t our blue today. For newton, the colour “blue” is what we currently call “cyan”, so the 7 colours of the rainbow were really red, orange, yellow, green, cyan (blue), blue (indigo) and violet. That makes a lot more sense.

But, there really could be arbitrarily many colours in the rainbow. We could have “rust” as a colour, in between red and orange, or “gold” in between orange and yellow. We could even have a spectrum that didn’t include “green” but included “lime” which is between today’s yellow and green, and cyan on the other side, and no “green” at all.