how about next time we let the elves be Jewish and the dwarves can be, I don’t know, Jamaican.
Dwarves => Japanese, all clan honor and axes folded in 1 million layers.
That would be implying that Asians are short. There is no stereotype that Jamaicans are short, just the stereotype that they’re all bobsledders.
There were some errors in my last post! I was unaware of some facts. However, reality is actually even more in my favour than I realised.
I said you could purchase a headphone adapter for $9, but I have since been informed that the iPhone 7 comes with one for free. So if you buy the phone you get a new pair of headphones with a lightning connector, and you get an adapter so that you can use your old headphones too. Win-win!
Yes, if you lose the headphones or the adapter you must purchase new ones. This is how physical objects work in the universe in which we live. I too resent Apple for not having cloning facilities that can replicate matter at zero cost and usher in fully automatic luxury communism, that would indeed be swell.
But you worry that $9 to replace it is “not particularly cheap”! The phone itself costs over $1000 you fucking walnut, so if you have a habit of losing small electronic items you might want to reconsider purchasing one in the first place.
When I said that anyone can make Bluetooth headphones I didn’t mean that you are capable of doing this. But Bluetooth is an open standard and you can buy compatible headphones from wherever you like. Personally not a fan of the wireless, but standards are good.
(The lightning connector being proprietary is bad, and is a genuine knock against Apple, one that I have pointed out in numerous posts, and something actually worth complaining about if you are someone who dislikes capitalism).
But let’s zoom out a little. By myopically focusing on a few trivial inconveniences you are missing the opportunity cost of not making the change, and the future potential for innovation that it unlocks. This attitude will not age well, and the fuss over the headphone jack will seem laughable in the future.
More generally, why so much outrage? No one is obliged to purchase an iPhone and suffer the terrible consequences of having to use wireless headphones or need an adapter for the aux cord. This is an entirely voluntary choice, and as has been pointed out Apple has around 15% market share.
If anything this could be seen as an indirect tax on the wealthy, charging them more for overpriced phones and giving them reduced functionality, while the poor enjoy the benefits of cheap convenient Android devices. How could a leftist possibly oppose soaking the rich?
From a design point of view it is entirely consistent with Apple’s ethos going back to the very founding of the company, so it should not be surprising at all, just Apple being Apple as they have every right to be. One button mice, amirite.
There are ways of reacting to this product announcement that make sense:
“I personally require a 3.5mm headphone jack on my phone, so I will not be purchasing an iPhone 7 for this reason.”
“I would prefer to have a headphone jack but the benefits of owning an iPhone outweigh the disadvantage, so I will simply register my disappointment.”
“Haha by removing the headphone jack Apple has made a foolish decision and will lose ground to their competitors.”
Any of these is a perfectly reasonable reaction! But the sense of aggrieved outrage on behalf of imagined iPhone owners compelled by the Man to upgrade to an expensive new model and then suffering the travails of needing to use an adapter to plug in old audio equipment is just baffling.
Has anyone told you what they’ve done to the home button, btw? You’re going to hate it.
“hey brah, u kno that standard that’s compatible with almost literally every headphone on Earth, as well as indirectly with a variety of hobby, semi-pro, and pro audio equipment?”
“yeah bro?”
“let’s break it in order to sell shtty AirPods that are actively inferior to both wired and wireless headphones, are expensive, get lost easily, and require their own charger lol”
“but brah what r we goin to tell the customers”
“that it takes courage to practice innovation lololol”
Argumate, buddy, pal, the reason they’re pissed off is that 1) the rest of the industry might follow Apple in destroying a valuable, highly-interoperable, non-DRMed standard, and 2) the arguments being made basically everywhere in favor of doing so are transparently bullsht, and as such, insulting. The phone isn’t even too slim for a headphone jack, some lunatic managed to add a functioning one after spending like $1,600 on equipment, and competitors make water-resistant phones with headphone jacks.
As the iPhone is a status object, the way to prevent losing important functionality on other phones and losing the ability to know headphones will be compatible with things without having to think about it, the correct thing to do is lower its, and Apple’s, status by attacking them over this bullsht “lolcourage” decision.
The backlash is therefore quite rational.
Edit: Oh, and keeping track of one small electronic item larger than a dongle is, in fact, much easier than keeping track of two, which is part of *why* smartphones are so popular in the first place.
Anonymous asked:
mitigatedchaos answered:
I mean,
Feelz are important and a key part of our existence as human beings…
It’s just that they exist within the context of the economy, the state, geopolitics, aging, random disease, and so on.
And as such, by pragmatic concerns, there are limits for societies and not just individuals.
Consider this, people’s feelings get hurt when you tell them to take care of old and sickly people all day, so you gotta raise taxes so you can pay them enough so they’ll do it in spite of it, which also hurt (some possible different group of) people’s feelings. Some then decide to move somewhere else, just decide to do ~home production~, or try harder to avoid taxes, and/or try harder to wringe every single cent from customer.
IMO, instead of Social Security, the state should mandate a % savings into one of a reasonably diverse group of state-approved (based on certain requirements) privately-managed (or something) investment funds, until at least $500,000 has been accumulated.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
@neoliberalismnightly
still though, aren’t libraries a thing?
Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.
Does the US have anything equivalent to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau? They can probably help with 2, 3, maybe 4, maybe 5, and 6, and they’re in at least some of the libraries here.
I’ve literally never heard of such a thing. It might be a suitable use of government funds. After all, markets don’t function correctly without information, right?
Anonymous asked:
I’ve never seen anyone fumble typing “We need to create a gay clone ethnostate of Kim Jong Un to ensure the physically perfect instantiation of Juche Ideology” this badly before, and really it’s kind of startling.
Anonymous asked:
Rationalist Tumblr. Don’t let the name fool you - it’s less “YES, WE ARE MORE RATIONAL THAN YOU”, and more a term for a community of people originally congregated at the site Less Wrong, then SlateStarCodex, and then kind of spread out, and the group of people who argue with those people.
@poipoipoi-2016
In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.
I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.
But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?
So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.
@neoliberalismnightly
still though, aren’t libraries a thing?
Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.
I just don’t really know besides having school teach resume building, personal finance and household ed like they do in Asia.
I don’t really think those are partisan issues, and I expect on balance social conservatism actually help with this regard because of church provides outside mentors.
I just don’t really know besides having school teach resume building, personal finance and household ed like they do in Asia.
I do think schools teaching that would be good. It might not have helped in this case, but fewer people falling through the net is good.
Also, it isn’t like this blog is against “let’s do this one thing they do in Asia,” heh.
I don’t really think those are partisan issues, and I expect on balance social conservatism actually help with this regard because of church provides outside mentors.
See, there’s a reason I’m not all hyped about getting rid of the churches. I mean, multiple reasons really, but you get the idea.
Maybe the answer here is in a kind of community action, of organizations to mentor people at this stuff… but I suspect that’s also going to trend a bit communitarian.
Anonymous asked:
mitigatedchaos answered:
Rattumblr… Actually Not Really That Stunned, to Be Honest
Now, to answer this more seriously, my experience has been that a combination of similarity and complementarity is the most successful in relationships.
Anonymous asked:
Rattumblr… Actually Not Really That Stunned, to Be Honest
Anonymous asked:
I mean,
Feelz are important and a key part of our existence as human beings…
It’s just that they exist within the context of the economy, the state, geopolitics, aging, random disease, and so on.
And as such, by pragmatic concerns, there are limits for societies and not just individuals.
