johan

Better late than never, right?

So yeah "things" are shittier, because nowadays we have the ability to live in a nearly post-scarcity society but we just don't wanna.

Humankind could have been living in blissful peace for centuries. We've always had the ability to not kill each other or fight for resources. But many people, then and now, don't want that.

The way civilizations/empires/countries have operated has largely been competitive. It's naive to think we'll all just come together and solve these very complicated problems.

Saying that people are stupid or racist... I don't think that barely has anything to do with what prevents all major countries of the world to work together to combat things like disease, climate change, inequality, etc.

How do you define "things"?

On a global scale and on average, life for humans is getting significantly better than, say, a century ago. The number of people dying from preventable diseases, war, natural disasters has been steadily going down for a while now.

Of course there are many more people on earth than there were 100 years ago, so accumulatively there is a lot more suffering now.

Also, the lives of individual people, the state of certain countries and areas are certainly getting worse.

As for non-human animals... For most of them the world is getting increasingly less habitable and for those who are raised in an industrial setting for human consumption, living conditions are largely atrocious.

I think your question is too broad for a single answer. But you might be interested in this now 17 year old (!) TED talk by the late Hans Rosling, which at least partially answers your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Yeah this is basically an ad.

Also to note: all they say about the built-in password manager of Firefox is that it lacks the feature to save credit cards. But I don't care about that and am perfectly happy using Firefox (alongside pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/) on my laptop).

and "killing the baby", you mean like later in life to eat?

At least in the Netherlands, the species of dairy cows are focused on dairy. If a bull is born it is raised for about half a year, then slaughtered and most often the meat is exported since calf meat isn't popular here.

At that point they are basically still babies, or at least the meat is called "calf meat".

I used 'reader mode', or whatever it's called, on Firefox and that worked well.

Jose is not happy

Physical buttons ~~in cars~~

My induction hob, my extractor fan, a light above the countertop... All of these things just in my kitchen don't have physical buttons and I hate it. Physical buttons are so easy to use and in so many ways superior to these "touch" buttons.

Don't know where you live but in the Netherlands you just stay home when you're sick, that's it.

I believe after two weeks you need a doctor's note.

And then you'll get paid for up to two years of illness, after which you can apply with the government for further assistance.

So not unlimited, but quite long still.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/ziekteverzuim-van-het-werk/regels-en-verplichtingen-bij-ziekte

*alley

Scary times for Argentina

1. Just because I have heard of NordVPN doesn't mean I'll necessarily use it (in fact I use ~~arch~~ mullvad, btw.)
2. Let's see some numbers that ads work. You can't just calculate how life would be without ads, but I wonder what would happen if ad expenses for all companies would be capped somehow. When cigarette companies were severely limited in terms of advertising they saved a ton of money. Of course people already knew their brands, but still.

I think ad space sellers wildly overestimate the effectiveness of ads and google has made it far worse with targeted ads. People have gotten used to saying things like "ads work" and "brand recognition" but does anyone know the numbers? Or is this just repeating some phrases you've heard?

I don't know the numbers myself, but I'm quite skeptical.