Making Art in 2026 (alt link)

Indiana is at the far end of a very large (too large) time zone, so the clocks always felt a bit off. I would have had the same problem when I was in western Michigan, but it was cloudy 6 months out of the year so who knew when noon really was. I always just assumed the noon whistle was noon and let the Sun do its own thing.

Great. I wonder how many members of Congress think this means we get more daylight.

I'm more of a Baby Ruth fan, but they renamed it and changes the recipe so it is basically extinct.

What's the point of blaming the previous administration when they can no longer do anything about it? I could blame Nixon for not doing something about climate change, for all the good it would do.

As for AGI and worse, ASI, the risk to human civilization is very real. The rest of us are in peril right now without regulation and an international framework to inspect and confiscate materials for dangerous AI projects. A failure of leadership to lead. A failure of governments to protect its citizenry. Treating AI as just another business is a massive blunder.

Change the laws and tax AI. Perhaps a per token fee, or a flat annual tax based on computational side. All on the assumption that copyright violation is just going to happen. Not unlike how some countries charge a tax on blank media.

Ideally it should be done by treaty and cut through every major economy in the world.

Some of us still cynically hang onto our Cold War experiences. Once we started realizing that border agents can search your phone if you travel within 100 miles of a border, we got a little paranoid about what the government would find in our profiles and on our devices.
With my text messages, there are quite a few conversations that end with "hang on, let's talk voice" or "let's meet up later". I'm not the only person that is distrustful of the power that the federal government has. And of course, anyone with a half a brain distrusts what private corporations are going to do with your data once they get their claws on it.

How are we supposed to sell ad space in children's loot box games if the government takes away all of our users?

Half my salary at my old job was paid in stock. I assure you, both the federal and state government consider it income. I pay taxes on the cost basis, same rate as any ordinary income on a W-2. The I pay taxes again when I have realized gains.

I'm wondering where the free services come rolling in from all this socialism. Everytime there's a petition to do something about rent, there are a bunch of ads put up to say "No on proposition __". It is almost like the landlords run our cities instead of socialists

Bingo. Seriously, how much of a worm does a person need to be to want a master?

Ancient Romans used do it. And we have done property tax for a very long time in America, which was the main pool of wealth for the rich until the late 19th century, and still is the main one for the middle class today.

Need a better example? The Wealth Tax of 1935

Need something more recent? Currently France, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland have a wealth tax.

MS Office doesn't run that great in wine either. WPWin runs pretty very well on Wine, which is just as well, I'm not terribly comfortable in Word. There isn't a satisfactory CAD for Linux or one you can run in Wine. In school (long ago) I used AutoCAD on SGI and then Windows, had to reserve time in the computer lab since I was a student and I could not afford any SGI hardware.

While app support in Wine is not as good as we'd like to see, many (most?) games work well. And some of the old games I have that don't run well on Windows 7 (sorry, I don't have access to anything more resent) are running fine for me on Wine. So in a very real sense the compatibility is better than the real thing. (just kidding, the reality is more complicated)

The media tells me I live in some kind of socialist welfare state, yet I'm surrounded by anarcho-capitalist in every corner of the (SF) Bay Area. But I guess I should not believe my own lying eyes and trust the right wing pundits and media on this.

Government will buy people food and healthcare if they are poor enough. Saves businesses a lot of money!