My favorite example of this is the idea of money and finance.

There are trillions and trillions of dollars worth of imaginary wealth everywhere. None of it can be backed by actual product or material … it all exists because we all collectively believe that it exists.

It’s our modern day religion and we all believe in it and worship it daily … All Hail Money!

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”

• George Carlin.

Cults are built on the power of belief and the more people who believe in a movement the more powerful it becomes.

If ten thousand cult worshipers claimed their leader walked on water, how would you go about convincing them otherwise, even if you had proof.

Look at Islam or Christianity or Judaism, they influence the world but they’re all only built on the power of belief.

And you can equate religions and cults because the only difference between the two is time.

None … but if I had had a relative or friend tell me a story that someone had buried something there 50 years ago, I would have taken the time to dig it up while I was tearing down walls or breaking concrete.

Thanks for the detailed explanation … now I know not to rely on usb for extremely long term storage … never understood how they worked until I read your comment.

It makes me wonder … what long term storage would be the best option for storing digital information … like to store something for 100 or 200 years? Anything beyond that and I would just rely on writing something in stone and burying it.

A time capsule

Place photos and some small objects maybe even a usb key, dvdr or cdr with a video of you explaining everything and telling the viewer who you are, what year it is, what’s going on and what’s important to you right now. Place it all in a water tight container, maybe even an iron case and weld it shut.

If you have small kids, tell them what you’re doing and show them … maybe they or their kids or your descendants might dig it up some day.

Of all the places I’ve renovated, I would have enjoyed finding something from someone else’s life.

My ladder is a broken mess that I’ve had to maintain and nurture for many years … they’re still in my garage and I’ll never let them go.

Dad died about ten years ago tho :(

By remembering and being fully aware of who you are in this world … by being grateful for the good fortune you had by being born in the situation and family you have now.

You could have been born in an African village and lived for a year before dying of something. You could have been born in the slums of Mumbai. You could have been born in Gaza. You could also remove the time constraint and you could have been born a peasant in medieval Europe.

Out of all the billions of human lives that have existed so far, there are many that were born during this time but only a small percentage of them were lucky enough to be born in a family with wealth and privilege enough to enjoy the modern technologies we’ve created so far.

I am lucky, you are lucky and anyone who is able to read this is lucky to have been born at this time to enjoy this online chat.

Remember where you are in this world and this time. As unhappy as you think you might be, there are millions of people that wish they could have the life you have now.

Be happy because you are a winner of the cosmic lottery of existence.

https://www.doubledown.news/

Anything by Jeffrey Sachs - https://www.jeffsachs.org/

Anything with Naomi Klein - https://naomiklein.org/

If we see a street lady collecting a hundred cats to horde, we call her crazy.

When we see someone hording so much wealth that they could never reasonably ever spend all that money in a lifetime … we put them on the cover of a magazine.

Most people (including myself) would like to agree with you on building some sort of system to create credibility or honesty or reliability among people on a social media platform. I think the majority of people that use any social media (including Lemmy) would probably agree and more than likely would participate in it.

Unfortunately, it only takes a small group of people to upset the system, game the system, play with the system or create situations or systems of their own to manipulate everything … either to fight against others, or to generate some sort of power or control of their own. All it would take is this small group to completely change everything and make everything difficult and non functional.

It’s a lot like the democratic system of government. When you think about it the majority of everyone would like to participate in it and make it work … unfortunately, its only a small group of powerful individuals who have gamed the system to give themselves and their friends power over everyone else.

This is what Arch Linux would say

… most just lie there bored out of their mind

More like kinky sex slaves … they’re all either cheap or work for free.

They’ll complain and give you a hard time during the whole experience but they’ll never leave you alone because it’s their kink and it turns them on.

There’s a bunch of these in northern Ontario small towns.

The mysterious unused, non functional, only decorative … front door.

It’s funny because there are some old houses up here where they even just remove the front step and front deck and the front door just lingers in the air doing nothing. Inside, the entire front living room area has been rearranged to the point where the old front door is just permanently shut, sealed and never opened and furniture placed in front of it. This was a lot more common about 20 years ago but lately they seem to be disppearing as people realize that is just too silly.

I think part of it is that because we live in the north and part of the year leaves us with big mounds of snow in the winter, everyone just prefers to use the back door. The back door is easier and more convenient in the winter time. If you used the front door, you blow in cold air (even if you have porch) into the main living area and then you track in snow, which melts and creates puddles of water. Plus a regularly open and closing door in the winter time eventually gets lined with frost and ice from the constant freezing the thawing.

The same thing happens at the back door but the back door is usually next to the kitchen, hallway or storeroom. And the back door usually leads into a big ugly porch, maybe even a second porch where everyone can dump their winter clothes, boots and outdoor gear before walking into the main part of the house.

It’s not so much that it’s AI generated … it’s also AI influenced.

I know so many professional office workers who once wrote some of the most boring sometimes stupid emails because they didn’t know how to write or get their message across or constantly miscommunicated things because they worded things wrong … now all of a sudden they’ve become professional writers and all their emails look like auto generated messages.

I’m guessing that many writers also take the AI shortcut. They get a bunch of content generated from an AI than just rewrite it for themselves. Some content i see is lazily edited and some is heavily. But I get the feeling that just about everyone is using it because it’s an easy way to get a bunch of work done without having to think too much.

Come join our group because when we die we all get to live together forever and ever and ever … join or we’ll wish for you to die.

Yes, I do want Lemmy to grow … but to grow organically and naturally over a very long period of time instead of artificially in a short period of time just to make some idiot or a small group of idiots a bunch of money.

Growing over a long period of time will also allow developers, maintainers and managers to grow with increased size over time. Instead of panicking over sudden exponential growth, they can slowly build stronger more robust systems over time. Also, if something is grown over a long period of time … it will also take a long period of time for it be destroyed, dissolved or disregarded. If you grow something way too fast, chances are the risks increase for it to disappear just as quickly.

I have an old 48" plasma screen at my cottage that weighs about 200lbs. It’s an old hand me down and its been through deep freeze every winter for about 10 years now and its still going. It has a thin vertical streak of a red line on the left side but the picture and sound still look great. I’ve been waiting for it to die so I can replace it but I think at this point it is just the living dead.

Welcome to Lemmy

I just need to find the secret for immortality … during my mortal lifetime.

Beautiful story. I’m happy for you and your family.