The problem is that welfare systems, such as those that provide housing, that distinguish who is eligible by how much they can afford it, to a certain degree, inevitably depress higher levels of economic activity, and good saving behavior, through the very nature by which they’re operated.

If we say that someone is no longer eligible for free housing if they earn, say, $2,000+ a month, and housing would otherwise cost $500 a month, then if they’re currently earning $1,500 a month (the same they’d effectively have if they had to pay $500 a month for housing on a $2,000 a month salary) they have a direct incentive to not make over $2,000, unless they can guarantee they’ll make at least that much plus $500 more to compensate for the difference. If they earned $1,800 a month, they’d be making $300 more than someone making $2,000, but paying $500 a month for housing after hitting the cutoff.

This isn’t just a hypothetical either. While this 2021 study does mention some benefits of means testing, such as more targeted expenditure, it ultimately shows that…

“An asset means-test incentivizes low-income households to hold few financial assets making them vulnerable to predictable and unpredictable income changes.”

…and sees that, in the end, while it can marginally increase the cost of these social programs to the taxpayer, it ultimately does more to benefit the individuals receiving the assistance.

Or how about this research done by the Cleveland branch of the Federal Reserve that states:

“the elimination of testing limits, such as in policies similar to a UBI, could present a welfare-improving alternative to the current system, though not without large economic trade-offs.” (They effectively mean worse targeting of funds, but better overall results)

Means-testing directly reduces the incentives that lead to higher overall household wealth, and quality of life.

Not having means-testing increases total income, which also means increased tax revenue. That same tax revenue can then go to funding the housing system as a whole, but it won’t directly, substantively punish people for an increase in income past an arbitrary threshold.

Not to mention the increased administrative cost of performing means testing, as opposed to doing unconditional support, which could reduce the amount of money actually going to funding housing, in favor of funding jobs for people that audit income levels of housing applicants.

Anything we humans need for fundamental existence in today’s society should be free to the individual, and be a cost we all pay as a society to respect the existence of other human beings. Anything above that is up to the individual to either provide for themselves, or receive as a result of the value they contribute to society through labor.

That’s my broader belief system, and thus, housing falls under that for me. The better we meet individual’s needs, the easier it becomes for them to contribute back to society, and experience upward class mobility.

I believe that if we are to make housing a right, we can’t even just say it’s a right “unless you have no job,” or “unless you’re unable to fork over $500 a month,” because employment is ultimately up to the discretion of employers, who, even today, don’t even consider most unhoused people for jobs, because they don’t have stable housing, but to get stable housing, those people need jobs. (this even applies to many shelters, which will require unhoused people to either be employed, or be constantly seeking employment)

We know that adding hoops to jump through to get welfare assistance only harms those who need to depend on it the most, without providing any significant socioeconomic benefit, so why should we apply that same logic to housing, if we determine that it should be a right of all human beings?

I’m not saying the housing has to be great. It doesn’t need to be spacious, have all the amenities, or even have things like good quality lighting or good soundproofing from adjacent housing units, but at a bare minimum, everyone deserves somewhere to live.

I’m 100% in favor of requiring models to be open source. That’s been my belief for a while now, because clearly, if someone wants to make an AI model off the backs of other people’s work, they shouldn’t be allowed to restrict or charge access to those models to the same people who had their work used, let alone other people more broadly.

It’s mildly effective in the sense that it will decimate click-through rates, but if enough people did it, they would start filtering by IP, and you’d need to change how many ads it clicks on so it looks more human.

It also still gives advertisers your data, since it still has to load the ads on your system to click them, so it’s not as privacy-preserving as a full-on adblocker that outright blocks every advertisement and tracker related network request in the first place.

Your daily reminder that basic housing should be absolutely zero fucking dollars because housing should be a human right, and anything above 0% should be criminal.

This can actually be true, depending on how the system is configured.

For instance, if you and someone else use the same locally-hosted Stable Diffusion UI, both put the exact same prompt, and are using the same seed, # of steps, and dimensions, you’ll get an identical result.

The only reason outputs are different between prompts is because of the noise from the seed, normally randomly set between generations, which can be easily set to the same value as someone else’s generation, and will yield an identical result unless the prompt is changed.

I’m glad about this, honestly.

If you want to use an AI model trained on vast sums of publicly posted work, go for it, but be ready for the result to be made into a truly public work that you don’t own at the end of it all.

Conservatism is a death cult.

They don’t care if you’re healthy, if your community survives, if your kids get a good education, or if the national debt goes up, down, or sideways.

They only do what gives them immediate gratification based on their own faulty morals.

its just a way for the school to squeeze some more money into their pockets

It’s not even necessarily that, it’s usually just that the entire funding structure for the school doesn’t allow them to re-allocate city/state funds to paying for lunches, and even if they did have excess funds they could switch over, it would then result in key programs needed for kids to graduate being cut, because they’re so underfunded as is.

This is coming from someone who actively managed my prior high school’s yearly budget, and had numerous instances of district officials willfully ignoring emails and calls until being contacted by a higher-up dispute resolution office because they, in the end, didn’t have the resources to even stop serving illegally prepared (undercooked, not meeting nutritious standards, still frozen, etc) food.

That was even with nearly every student paying for lunch out of their own pocket. Our entire model for funding schools in this country is a disgrace from top to bottom.

Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.

As Cory Doctorow put it, “An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.”

Our voting system fundamentally doesn’t allow for third parties to win the vote.

Even if we said “vote for a third party, there’s a statistically significant chance they might win!” this wouldn’t fix the issue, because Jill Stein doesn’t take votes from both sides equally.

Jill Stein leans left, which means people who are otherwise Democrat voters are going to be the largest demographic voting for her.

Our voting system is first past the post, which means this will actually decrease the chance of a left-leaning victory.

Let’s say Dems get 55% of the vote without Jill Stein, and Reps get 45%. Democrats win.

Then, we add in Jill Stein. A significant amount of voters switch over, even some Republicans. (which, in reality, would probably not at all, because Jill Stein’s policies are even further from their beliefs than even the Democrats are)

Dems get 35% of the vote. Reps get 40% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 25%. Democrats & Jill Stein lose, Republicans win.

If Jill Stein were entirely impartial, and took votes equally from each side, then we could have a vote like…

Dems get 45% of the vote. Reps get 35% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 20% of the vote. Democrats win in the same way they would have whether or not there was a third party.

The issue is that, obviously, Jill Stein isn’t taking equal parts of the vote, so this inevitably just reduces votes for Democrats, without reducing votes for Republicans.

It’s not an ideal system, (which is why we should advocate for Instant-Runoff or Rated voting) but it’s the option that will lead to the most left-leaning outcome, as opposed to a heavily fascist one.

It’s a bit more nuanced than that, because a human can still develop artistic skills by observing non-artistic creations beforehand.

For instance, the world’s very first artist probably didn’t have any paintings or sculptures to build off.

I’m not saying I necessarily agree that the person isn’t an artist because they rely on external training data, but generative AI models most certainly need to observe other works to ‘learn’ how to make art, whereas humans don’t necessarily have to. (Although if someone were to make a reinforcement learning model based on user feedback as a way to entirely generate better and better images starting from random variation, that would make the original training data point moot)

Just keep in mind the possible cons of using AdNauseam.

With traditional adblockers like uBO, the ad content never gets loaded. With AdNauseam, it does, it’s just not shown to you.

That means the ad network is likely to get:

• Your IP
• Your Browser Header
• Possibly the site you’re on

And it also makes you heavily identifiable, because to any ad server, a single user mass-clicking their advertisements by the thousands is going to make you very easy to track across sites, just by behavior alone.

So while it’s good if you just want no ads and to do a little monetary harm to surveillance advertising, it’s not good if you want privacy. (Unless you set it to show ads, but still click on all of them, and you’re the type that does sometimes click on ads, then it does become good for obfuscation)

I’d definitely recommend the same team’s other work: TrackMeNot, as it does a decent job of obfuscating your search queries. (Just make sure that if you use a privacy-focused search engine like DuckDuckGo, you disable any auto-searching on Google, since that just gives them your IP, without obfuscating the searches you aren’t making there anyways)

Yet another case of “AI” becoming a meaningless word to describe generalized computing techniques that have been in place for years

“Why sex?”

10/10 starter question, no notes.

The website on there is ridiculous 😂

Didn’t know that Solar Radiation Management and Carbon Dioxide Removal were ideologies.

Why are skies now so often filled with the lingering, expanding, and sky covering remnants of jet aircraft dispersions?

More… more planes, perhaps?

You’re welcome.

The most asinine, self-centered thing I’ve seen today has got to be you assuming that the emotional state of your employees, which the goods and services you offer depend on for sales, is something that they should simply magically suppress for the sake of customers.

Do you think this employee is going to check the mood of each customer?

Buddy, if every customer going through the checkout line at the grocery store I work for had this pin on, it would make judging how much small talk people want loads easier, and would save me, and them, a huge mental headache. That said, if only I were to choose to wear that pin, I don’t think indicating to customers how up I am for small talk would make me an asshole.

If you were my boss, and wanted to deliberately disregard my mental state because you felt it would make you a few more bucks, that would make you the asshole.

Get your priorities straight.