• 13 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • The “meaning of life” is dependent on the scale.

    On an intergalactic scale, practically nothing, unless you’re someone involved in some way in intergalactic travel (like Musk, potentially). On a planetary scale, your life as a political or corporate leader or humanitarian could impact generations of others. If you’re a doctor or lawyer, your life may impact tens of thousands or even generations of people. These are scales based mostly on space.

    You could also look at a scale based on time. If / when the planet explodes, maybe someone like a Musk will be the only one alive today who genuinely has an impact on the human race long into the future. If you want to look at the time span of a country’s existence, someone like a Julius Cesar, a George Washington, or Adolf Hitler will have certain meaning for hundreds of years.

    Your life’s meaning may yet to be realized. The point is to live your life day to day in a manner that has a positive impact on the lives that surround you. If you don’t have the impact of someone like political or corporate leader or someone like a Greta Thunberg, maybe the point of your life is to be a supporting player for someone else.

    It gets difficult to find meaning if you live an isolated life. Without a family of your own, a fulfilling career, without traveling to engage with others outside your regular week’s schedule, it’s easy to say your life is meaningless. Because you haven’t made an attempt to give it meaning.

    Your life doesn’t have to have meaning. But if you’re asking this kind of question and expecting someone to tell you there’s some inherit “meaning” bestowed upon you at birth, you’re not going to get a hopeful answer. That’s not to say you need to go out and look for it. It’s to say that “meaning” comes from the impact have on something, by choice or otherwise.





  • Awesome. I appreciate this perspective.

    Can you dig a bit deeper into the benefits for normal people that an irreversible transaction offers? To me, this seems like a detriment. Like, if I sell something on eBay and it turns out to be broken or fraudulent, PayPal can reverse the charges for me. Actually, I have a real world example of buying sneakers online that never arrived and had my credit card reverse the charges for me.


  • Thank you for being one of the few to take me seriously and offer a thoughtful response.

    I can understand now the value of a token that represent some amount of effort that is limited in its supply. As “promised”, no other bitcoins will ever be made. So this alone makes it worth something. The fact that it represents some amount of effort achieved does seem to give it some validity. Although, IMO, certainly not $100k worth.

    I’ll need to think this over some more and maybe update this post with some more thoughts on the future of the coin.


  • oxjox@lemmy.mlOPtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlIs Bitcoin actually worth anything?
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    6 days ago

    Thank you for a real answer like I specifically asked for.

    The fact that Bitcoin does represent some amount of effort and that there’s a limited supply does seem to give it some value. While there is a theoretical finite resource of gold, it’s still being discovered. Which, theoretically, makes it less valuable than a predetermined finite resource. And, the US dollar continues to decline - almost by design during this administration.

    How BTC is used today and in the future can continue to be debated but I’m satisfied in understanding it’s a limited supply of something that represents some amount of effort.



  • oxjox@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlLemmy, do you condone violence?
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    26 days ago

    Violence is stupid. In some situations, it’s just an output for one’s rage. In other situations, it’s a battle of who is best equipped (hardware + intelligence). Neither of these address the core of the disagreement. Violence only beats the loser into submission. It does not change their stance on the matter.

    Negotiation, on the other hand, ideally, at least gives all parties some gains and losses. It may not be the end of the matter but it’s generally a positive step and should promote some degree of respect.

    Maybe we never had it, but I think we’ve largely lost the ability to be respectful and empathetic to others. Even though we find to be of the greatest evil, I think, should be given some initial respect to try to understand the emotional reality of their intent.

    I won’t write it out, but imagine the worse crime an adult male could do to someone. Something so revolting that the only “logical” recourse is violence. This is an emotional response that does not address the problems that brought this person to such an evil act. By ignoring the problem and beating the person down, we are not able to understand how they got to this place or how we can recognize this path in others. This is a brief example for the sake of time. If you look at something like genocide, I think the process does scale up but too complex to write out for now.

    I condone empathy for all because we all as a species benefit from it.

    Edit: on second thought - violence used to preserve life may generally be acceptable.





  • oxjox@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml[Deleted]
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    1 month ago

    Rich people don’t care about their privacy as much as they have their own IT department to do the work for them (source: I’ve been their IT department).

    Their devices are just as secure as you would imagine any high profile CEO. Their home networks can cost up to $100k and are super secure with constant monitoring. They all have “normal” devices but they’ll usually have a VPN tunnel.

    But, stuff like their Facebook logins, etc they’re still pretty bad with passwords, from my experience. I’d say less than percent of the people I’ve worked with have asked serious questions about their cyber security.


  • For what would they hold the administration in contempt and what does this do to block, stop, or reverse illegal actions?

    It seems like you’re lacking a basic understanding of how law and government work and it doesn’t seem like you know what contempt means. And, to make up for that, you throw out witless insults in an attempt to derail the conversation.

    You, “the internet”, are far too emotional to consider the reality of these situations. Just because something makes you angry or someone does something you think should be illegal does not mean someone is not permitted to do that action.

    There are absolutely actions that Trump has done that are illegal and many of those actions have been decided on while other cases are in court now. “The Democrats”, I presume we’re addressing Congress, are not explicitly the group responsible for holding the administration accountable for everything he does. Congress only has authority over a handful of things (mostly, but not limited to, money) with few options to do anything about them.

    The point I am trying to make is; (1) what actions does OP suggest are illegal, (2) a court has to determined that action to be illegal, (3) Congress is not responsible for suing the president nor responsible for determining what is legal nor responsibly for jailing an executive officer, (4) this Republican Congress is not going to pass legislation (the main power they have) to block, stop, or reverse actions taken by this administration. And, finally, what the Trump administration is doing, legal or not, is largely what the United States voters voted for. So, the best way to stop these quote unquote illegal actions is to vote for Democrats in two years.



  • They can… sue in court (like Dems did to block Trump’s border wall funding)

    Yes. That’s exactly my entire point. And this only works if the courts determine the act to not be legal. This is why, as I said, there are over 250 cases against the administration right now.

    There’s a lot going on right now which the public dislikes but that doesn’t necessarily make an act illegal. If nothing else, Trump knows how to work the courts. He also disregards the courts and we’re still waiting to see if there’s any repercussions to that.

    Trump is not Obama. Obama fucked up by caving to McConnell. Trump would not do the same. There is no comparison of this administration and any other. History is irrelevant at this point.





  • This bill is about denouncing the antisemitic attack in Boulder with a single line at the literal bottom reading,

    expresses gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.

    I won’t stop you from holding politicians accountable for every line of every bill they vote for but you’re distorting reality to fit your narrative. There is nothing wrong with supporting this bill and I question why anyone would reject it.