Notices by Ross Andrews (randrews@somewhy.net)

@sj_zero At the very least I trust him to weather the storm better than Kamala.

So I'm watching 2010. The scene where he's reactivating HAL 9000. And I think, "that's stupid, there's no way a computer like that would have a keyboard that looked like that."

Then I look down at my own keyboard.

Okay, fair enough.

@sun @Hyolobrika Every time I've tried to talk to some crypto-bro about whether crypto is a good idea, all they fall back on is that the USD is inflationary and a bad store of value.

Sure. It is. But that isn't in itself an argument why cryptocurrencies are a good idea.

So I've given up. Let people dump their money into the scams, doesn't matter to me.

@Hyolobrika I don't think they've thought it through. Their idea is that as early adopters, they'll be trillionaires when all of society moves to the libertarian-fun-bux standard, and everyone who didn't buy btc will be peasants. But why would anyone move to a different currency where they'll be a peasant? What's gonna motivate everyone to ascend these basement-dwellers to godhood?

@Diceynes That is not true. I used to work for a DNA testing company and a lot of our customers were from Israel.

@Diceynes I didn't believe you so I did look it up and the first result is that they're not illegal. Even if they require the equivalent of a prescription, that's not the same as illegal, and it's also not keeping people from getting them since, as I said, enough Israeli customers to keep my former company afloat...

@Diceynes That law apparently dates to when all DNA tests were done with court approval, before the cost lowered enough that things like 23andMe / FamilyTreeDNA existed. And people apparently ignore it.

@Diceynes The bottom paragraph, right there, all the exceptions. Medical purposes, they do DNA testing for citizenship, they do it for research projects. The law you're talking about was apparently written to ensure people's privacy by requiring that they be done by accredited labs, which as a side effect make OTC ones illegal, but the same places that sell them in the US will ship the sample kits there as well (I know because we did!)

@Diceynes Your idea that "it would show no ancestry to the land they claim..." they approve them for research projects so they don't seem to be afraid of publishing the results. It's not exactly a secret that Israel was founded in 1947. I'm not sure what you're insinuating they're trying to hide here.

@Diceynes Here is a page written by the Israeli government that lists the founding of the state of Israel as 14 May 1948: https://embassies.gov.il/UnGeneva/AboutIsrael/history/Pages/History-Israel-Timeline.aspx

@Diceynes I actually was not a Twitter user before coming here, because I didn't want to deal with loud insane people.

@sj_zero I've been noticing for a while a pattern where something obviously bad will be happening, and someone will say "no actually this is counterintuitive but this is good" and people will just nod and agree. "It's counterintuitive" seems to be enough of an incantation to get people to ignore their own observations and logic.

At this point I have trained myself to just ignore that argument, and anything that sort of "expert" says. Economists are some of the worst about it, too.

@Penguinflight @Hyolobrika Who reads that and their first response isn't "well I'll just run one then?" It's really not that hard! The fediverse is great because you have the option not to deal with petty tyrants if you don't want to.

@Hyolobrika @Penguinflight It takes far less of both than you probably imagine. I'm paying about $25/mo for somewhy, setting it up was a couple clicks, and I've only had to mess with it after that a couple times (version upgrades).

@sun_eat3r @Penguinflight @Hyolobrika Then don't host one. /shrug The thing about Mastodon is that it gives you the choice, "do I value $25 more than I value not putting up with a psychotic admin." Other platforms don't give you that choice.

My point is that the original post makes it seem inevitable that you're going to be on someone else's instance, when that's not at all true. More people could host their own than are probably aware they could host their own, even if that's not everyone.

@LadyDragonfly That is because Republicans don't hate those groups; we have problems with specific people or behaviors.

@bot My question to that has always been: how can you tell that a frog is gay? Before I believe that something's turning frogs gay I wanna know your methodology for determining sexual preferences of frogs, because I wouldn't know how to test that...