Nope! You don’t have to pay a cent to the Catholic Church to receive communion.

One author did this, but as a rebuttal to several 1-star reviews claiming he lied in the book. He made it a 1 star review so it would show up on the same page as the people he was arguing against.

To be fair, the sidebar says this is for open-ended and thought-provoking questions. But I can see this place becoming Debate Bro Central if the mods don’t add a rule like “Don’t ask a question if you just want to argue with people over it.”

Capitalism isn’t the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.

My point is that the described scenario - “all money not absolutely required for existence is in the hands of the bourgeoisie” - hasn’t happened under free market systems as often as it has in communist/“state capitalist” countries like the Soviet Union.

I’m sorry I got you mixed up with the other person. But I find it interesting they haven’t answered that question yet.

Here’s the article. According to the story, there were two people panhandling and using drugs; they were asked to leave. One threw a rock at the employee’s car window, shattering it, and then threatened to shoot him. The video also says the person was shot because he lunged at the employee. I hope the truth comes out and the situation is handled appropriately.

That sounds an awful lot like an authoritarian state seizing control of the economy (for example, the Soviet Union). That most certainly didn’t happen through free market forces.

And I notice you still haven’t answered my question. Why is that? I think it would be pretty simple to answer, wouldn’t it? (Edit: got the wrong username)

We’re competing for people’s cash. If we do a good job at getting it, we get more of it. But how do you define “win”?

Also, please answer my question. If there is no competition, then how do you have anything other than a monopoly?

Preface: If all you want is to get a simple script/program going that will more or less work for your purposes, then I understand using AI to make it. But doing much more than this with it will not help you.

If you want to actually learn to code, then using AI to write code for you is a crutch. It’s like trying to learn how to write an essay by having ChatGPT write the essays for you. If you want to use an API in your code, then you’re setting yourself up for greater failure the more you depend on AI.

Case in point: if you want to make a module or script for Foundry VTT, then they explicitly tell you not to use AI, partly because the models available online have outdated information. In fact, training AI on their documentation is explicitly against the terms of service.

Even if you do this and avoid losing your license, you run a significant risk of getting unusable code because the AI hallucinated a function or method that doesn’t actually exist. You will likely wind up spending more time scouting the documents for what you actually want to do than if you’d just done it yourself to begin with.

And if the code works perfectly now, there’s no guarantee that it will work forever, or even in the medium term. The software and API receive updates regularly. If you don’t know how to read the docs and write the code you need, you’re screwed when something inevitably gets deprecated and removed. The more you depend on AI to write it for you, the less capable you’ll be of debugging it down the line.

This begs the question: why would you do any of this if you wanted to make something using an API?

If we don’t have competition, how will that be anything other than monopoly?

Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of “kill everyone else” will fall apart. And that’s aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.

The APRS website hasn’t even started using HTTPS yet.

The irony in the “prepping” movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you’re still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.

It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.

It’s supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it’s far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.

One of my closest friends nearly committed suicide because of how miserable Walmart made his life.

I highly doubt JD Vance’s mother is responsible for the fentanyl crisis. /s

When I actually need to concentrate, I usually stop listening to music. When I want to get into a flow state and it isn’t 100% critical I focus, it could be just about anything. This remix of the Call of Duty World at War Black Cats theme is awesome for that purpose.

I mean, if a guy posted the same stuff about Joe Biden, tried to break into the White House with a pistol, but was stopped before he could pull the trigger, would you call that an assassination attempt? I sure would - he wanted to kill the guy so he went there to do the deed. What other reason would someone have to hide in the bushes on someone else’s property with a gun for 12 hours?

Dude was apparently waiting in the bushes for 12 hours. You don’t do that if you’re not waiting for someone or something. The Second Amendment doesn’t give you the right to camp out on someone else’s property with a gun.

AOC’s original tweet is replying to one about Jill Stein.

I mean, capitalism is silent on the matter as well.