Right, just like Mark Rutte left politics to become a full-time secondary school teacher after his last cabinet

I am a scientist with a PhD in AI and I’m tired of hearing about it. It’s like how I imagine microbiologists would feel if their field was suddenly in the spotlight 24/7 purely because people with something to gain bombard the public with the benefits of biological weapons, which is claimed to be what microbiology is all about. All they wanted to do was learn about how the world works and maybe use that to prevent diseases or something.

The scientific field I love has been hijacked by people who don’t understand it and try to use one specific niche of the field to the detriment of the world. I can’t blame others for hating my field when all they see of it is this nonsense, I myself hate what is presented as AI just as much.

It feels unfair that we should be the ones to change, but sometimes I really wish we could rebrand the scientific field from the commercial products sharing its name. The problem is that they keep stealing our terms (like “agent”) for at best tangentially related concepts too (or present it as their specific product being what a general term means), so there’d be no end to it.

I’m never sure how to answer this because the concept of universal healthcare being a debate is strange to me, often it seems to coincide with “free” healthcare debates but the two seem quite different to me. Isn’t healthcare universal in countries like the US too? The problem being rather that it will bankrupt your family for 3 generations if you have to actually use it unless your employer values you staying alive instead of using the threat of death and disease as leverage to make you work harder for less pay. But that’s more a problem of universal insurance rather than universal healthcare itself, right? Anyone could still get treated if they accept the financial consequences. The system sucks, but still seems universal to me (again, universal insurance is the problem).

It’s not free over here, but everyone needs to have health insurance, and you get some subsidies to pay for it if you have a very low income. After a few decades of neoliberalism the subsidies are not sufficient, there’s an amount each year that you have to pay yourself, and hospitals are permanently nearly overwhelmed. But the financial amounts are much smaller compared to what someone in the US would be faced with (150-200 euros/month insurance, max 450 euros/year you have to pay yourself). There are waiting lists but despite memes I’ve seen of “yeah it’s more affordable in Europe but they never get treatment due to waiting lists”, I’ve never had to wait for actually urgent care, stuff I could do any time had some wait time but nothing crazy (few weeks, rarely 1-2 months for very in-demand optional stuff), and I believe overworked hospitals with crazy waiting lists are still much worse in (some) American hospitals compared to here. But I’m basing that off tv shows and movies where people have to wait for hours in the emergency department, not sure how realistic that is. By the way visits to the GP are free and I’ve never had to wait more than a day for an appointment. When I had something more serious I could stop by the GP instantly regardless of the appointment schedule.

Basically if you compare it to the situation a few decades before it’s worse, and some other European countries have better systems IMO. Compared to the US, which is the only country I know of where universal VS non-universal health care is a topic of debate, i can’t think of a single dimension in which it is not an upgrade, perhaps with the exception of shareholder profits (but even then a full economic argument wouldn’t work based on that, because sick or dead citizens don’t work very well).

Netherlands

I miss being able to make embarrassing mistakes without the risk of it being recorded and shared with the world. It’s not even that I make a lot of them, or that anyone would care, I just hate the principle that anything could potentially be used against you. It’s more that the threat itself takes the enjoyment out of being outside, like everyone has to be so guarded and fake all the time.

The first time I saw this was in the early days of YouTube and smart phones, some kids had found a video of a teacher who was peer pressured by some people into very shyly singing a popular song, which they put on YouTube. After that nobody took him seriously anymore.

Note: this is for actual small silly things only, the kind that can happen to anyone. I absolutely do not support people who try to excuse their crimes, harassment or bigotry as “it was just an embarrassing mistake when I was young haha”, that sort of thing absolutely should be used against them later.

That was my first reaction too. I usually try to stop myself from falling into conspiracy thinking, but in this case it’s hard to do when a few days prior the Internet has been full with an alleged memo with plans to stage something dramatic for the press at this specific event.

Can’t rule out a real attack but at this point I wouldn’t exactly say it’s the option with the highest probability for this government filled with tv personalities at record low popularity…

The American government and their supporters hate modern day Europe, and yet they’re so obsessed with gaudy replication of old European stuff. You see it also with all the kitchy Roman-like pillars and replicas of the statue of David randomly plonked in some room. It’s just so… weird. I guess they like the idea of “old” Europe, the good old days when they still spent half their time killing each other, and the other half killing people in far-away places. They probably see it as their own origin story, so they resent that the modern versions of these countries, after all the devastating wars, have evolved into modern, peaceful countries. Maybe they see themselves as defenders against modern debauchery like freedom, peace and happiness?

From my perspective it just seems kind of hollow and desperate, can’t think of your own stuff to do so you decide to copy the megalomania of dysfunctional old empires that got crushed by their own ego and inability to peacefully coexist in prosperity. There’s a reason they’re not around anymore, and copying them, aside from being vaguely pitiful, just means you’re headed to the same end. Let’s hope it won’t take two world wars for America to catch on.

Kind of niche but Guitar Pro. Not sure what the newer versions are like but the one I have is great for composing and arrangement.

I don’t use Lemmy much anymore nowadays because of this. While it’s important an alternative to Reddit exists, so I try to support it, it ironically feels more like a hivemind than Reddit does (ironic because you’d expect the opposite for federated services). I think it’s because switching to Lemmy from Reddit requires either idealism or a Reddit ban, both of which disproportionately attract people who feel good when they verbally attack internet strangers for disagreeing with them on 1% of the implicitly agreed upon joint viewpoints. It also strangely reminds me of the feeling I got being part of an old gaming community that was slowly dying out, where eventually only the unpleasant ones who defined their identity based on it were left.

I’m always happy to see there are also people here who dislike this attitude, though, or even to see neutral posts. There is still hope!