A tenant moved out a few months ago and left behind a massive bunch of books. They are all beautiful, color, coffee table picture books bound in hard covers. There's more than 60 of them and I want to get rid of the whole lot.
He was a retired industrial designer so the books cover art, architecture, applied design, and commercial graphics. They are all about 20-30 years old. Many of them are full of post-its but are otherwise unmarked.
The local public library won't take them, and nobody I've asked wants them. I simply don't have the heart to toss them in the dumpster. I don't care if they get cut up by school kids for goofy art-class collages, as long as they get used for something other than land fill.
They weigh a couple hundred pounds so you need to come pick them up in West Petaluma. Maybe a maker-space could put them in their library? Anybody? Bueller?
@eldaking Good to know. I just have noticed this being avoided or even denied in political discussions -- like there's this idea that some people are just predisposed to criminality, and it has nothing at all to do with their circumstances; they will always crime if they can, no point in helping them to have better lives because they'll still do the criming, so we might as well just throw more police at the problem etc. etc. etc. etc...
I'm not even seeing the problem.
Actually, I do see one: right-wingers freaking out over people different from them. (Can't we send all the fascists back home to Nazilandia where they came from?)
How about a correlation between violent crime and relative wealth of the perpetrator? I know correlation isn't causation, but it seems like a starting place to look for evidence.
Another possible lead: rates of violence, per capita, vs. level of wealth-inequality (Gini coefficient or simillar), by geographical area
You and Morbius seem to be thinking along the same lines -- yeah, there are definition / policy issues behind a lot of this.
You're not wrong -- but I still feel like there has to be a correlation...
Does anyone even collect statistics on the reasons for homicides?
in 1993-94, i started work at Colgate-Palmolive as an occasional translator for their Consumer Affairs department. ended up writing their whole intranet knowledge-base (in DOS thank you very much).
my title was “tech writer” but, in truth? was the person who would take the bullshit from sales & marketing, discussed the science with R&D then went to legal to massage the message that went into the knowledge-base.
the CEO & VPs were rabidly against the scripts legal wanted the reps to parrot 🧵…
Perhaps not as strongly -- but why would you murder someone if your life is otherwise enjoyable?
@mekkaokereke The thing nobody wants to talk about, it seems to me, is that most crime is driven by major wealth inequality.
I don't immediately have the data to prove that, but it seems kinda intuitively obvious: people* don't steal what they can afford to buy, and people* don't attack others when their lives are rewarding.
(* I mean, aside from entitled rich / white guys, but that should probably go without saying.)
@EveHasWords Sort of a tangent: Ye gods but I am tired of the reality that this sort of gossip-mood-nonsense actually influences enough people to make a difference. Hashtag we are doomed as a species etc. (I try not to actually go there, but instead spend the rage/frustration energy working on solutions. That usually works...)
Addressing the larger point, though: if AI succeeds to the extent that would be necessary for it to truly be better than human coders, everything is going to be different and we will probably have a lot of existential refiguring to do.
(As always, I have thoughts along those lines...)
@sargoth They entered into another world, a world in which you have no choice but to move in a singular direction. That's the signpost up ahead -- your next stop: The Diode Zone.
(with apologies to and/or or in recognition of @scanlime@misc.name because @scanlime@diode.zone (currently on hiatus) because this is how my brain "works")
@BoydStephenSmithJr @meadow at the moment, WWU is not asking for donations, it's asking to show solidarity and spread the word https://wikiworkersunited.org/take-action-community/
@CptSuperlative I've heard of it -- basically a thinly-veiled excuse for giving rich people more money, or something along those lines.
...oh, right, and something something AI overlords Pascal's WAIger Roko's Basilisk repent ye sinners for the AIpocalypse will soon be upon us.
RationalWiki seems to have a good write-up.
@fluffy Anything profit-oriented is going to run into those problems, it seems to me.
I suspect there is a better way. (I have ideas.)
It seems to me a good start might be something like a Discord server (...except maybe Zulip or something, not Discord...) where there can be more... eyeball-accountability?... for deals worked out between artists.
