I keep seeing stories about new places these gross glasses are being banned, including some minor laws about things like preventing them from being used in schools. It seems like most people don’t like these things. I think we should just start advocating for laws to completely ban the sale and ownership of these things. Their legitimate uses are so few compared to all the ways they can be abused.

A well known propaganda technique is to simply keep repeating something, even if it’s false. If you hear it enough it starts to be taken more seriously and seems more true.

The first time I heard about this theory about China was on Lemmy. I do see the original image says it’s from NPR, which I’ll just assume is true since I don’t want to look it up. That said, Im a regular donator to my local NPR station and use it as one of my main news sources. Maybe it was a story they mentioned once, but I missed it.

But I’ve seen this posted several times on Lemmy. This time I even checked the OPs post history to see if I could notice any patterns. Nothing jumped out at me.

At this point, I think Lemmy is helping spread this rumor more than the rich elites seem to be. Maybe it’s better to let this story die instead of reporting it over and over. For that reason I’m downvoting this post.

There’s all kinds of FIRE (early retirement) calculators you can find online. They’ll take into account inflation and withdrawal strategy and help you understand what is realistic.

As for your assumed interest rate of 9.6%. That’s the biggest concern I see. Maybe that’s what the plan has gotten in recent years but the stock market has seen higher growth than usual in recent years. Historical averages are closer to 7%. You’ll likely want to assume less than 7% to keep your numbers conservative.

Either way, early and frequent investments are the keys to building wealth and an early retirement. So start doing those things and as time goes on you’ll build a more accurate picture of when you can retire.

It’s on the agenda to get a dedicated audio device this summer. I’ve been building up a collection of FLAC music to prepare. There’s 3 reasons for this.

1. I bought a Remarkable device a few years ago. Yes, they’re over priced compared to a Kindle, but I wanted to avoid Amazon lock-in. As an aside, they’re fairly Linux friendly, you can even ssh into them. Anyway, before that I would read physical books or use a cheap tablet, but the tablet fell out of favor because it was too distracting. Constant notifications, request for updates, etc. I’m so happy with my current ereader. I use it all the time, and when I read, I don’t have any apps trying to grab my attention. I’m hoping an audio player can give me that same experience back for music. I hate mowing the yard and having Siri interrupt my music to tell me about some message.

2. My AirPod pros were nice for the two years they worked. I’d probably grab another pair if I was still in so many Zoom meetings. Eventually though they started making a nasty buzzing noise and are now useless. I want to use my nice pair of headphones I’ve owned for a decade to listen to music.

3. I’m sick of paying a monthly fee to listen to the same 500 songs (if that) over and over. I’m old. I don’t listen to a lot of new music. The new music I do listen to usually comes from an article I read on NPR, not from the algorithms. I want to depend less on streaming services and have more control over what I consume, and how I consume it.

Yeah, I could probably find workarounds to all these problems on my phone by fiddling with notification settings and buying a cheap headphone adapter, but why should I have to? Why do I have to go out of my way to make something as expensive as my phone less distracting and more capable? I’m just choosing to slowly opt-out of that battle.

The direction I’m moving, and other teachers as well is to only consider in class work for assessment. Specifically pencil and paper work.

If you had asked me to predict what a high-quality education would look like post-Covid I would have said high quality videos made with great production value with rock star teachers and domain experts involved. Combined with local teachers offering a more personal tutoring like experience to clarify the videos.

If you asked me now what a high-quality education would look like in the post-AI future. I would say boarding schools that don’t allow phones, with almost all assessments being done in person with pencil and paper.

There’s no denying that technologies can make certain topics unnecessary to learn. Calculators can do basic calculus with ease these days and AI can summarize a text or write a bland essay or implement a simple intro to HTML assignment. But if the goal for education is to learn we have to limit the use of technologies that limit learning.

I suppose there’s another debate to be had about vocational learning and taking advantage of modern tools. That’s usually why I say “high-quality” education when discussing these things. For the average family AI is here to stay in education. For the schools for the elite, AI is an experiment which is slowly being kicked out.

I watched this video yesterday. What struck me was just how bad most of the suggestions were. Without the hype surrounding AI it’s hard to imagine a company thinking this feature was ready to ship.

I also found it interesting how many of the recommendations were for DankPods to make videos trashing on the MacBook Neo, including inaccurate statements about the product. If I was Apple I would be considering legal options for one of the world’s biggest media platforms recommending content creators falsely trash Apple's products.

I’ve been a daily Linux user for sometime between 25-30 years. I’ve used most major distros and the BSDs. For the last several years I’ve used vanilla Fedora Workstation. After a while you just want to use your computer instead of tinker with it.

I’ve noticed I spend less time on Lemmy than I did on Reddit. Some of that may have to do with content, but I think it’s mostly Lemmy isn’t manipulating what I’m looking at to keep the dopamine hits coming. It definitely feels like withdrawal at times.

I am learning to appreciate the joy of opening Lemmy after I checked it a few hours ago and not seeing anything new and having the freedom to close the app again.

It’s been a minute so I could be misremembering, but you’re not far off. Another word for public relations (the shaping of public opinion) is propaganda.

Edward Bearnays wrote a book titled Propaganda, where he talks about the need to rebrand the work of Propagandist after it became associated with negative influence during WW2. From what I recall he used the term public relations, but seemed to prefer the term propaganda.

He’s also the person infamous for convincing Americans that we should eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Another interesting story is about how he advertised to make music rooms in homes trendy, so he could help sell more pianos.

He talks about some of the early manipulation tactics advertisers use. Such as trying to sell you an experience instead of a product. Think of how modern car commercials show a lifestyle more than they show you the car.

It’s an enlightening book that shows that before the war, calling an advertiser a propagandist wouldn’t be out of place. Those propagandist manipulated us into calling the PR now.

Oh, and if I recall correctly propaganda comes from Latin and means “to propagate.”

I have a NAS with four 8TB Western Digital Red drives that are getting up there in age. I have been looking for a good deal to upgrade then with higher capacity drives for the last few years. Now I’m thinking when they fail I’ll probably have to buy lower capacity drives and be more picky with what data I keep around.

Maybe I’ll look into burning Blu-rays and CDs. I’m definitely not going back to cloud storage.

I’m already there. It’s peaceful.

Yes, cookbooks are the way to go. SEO and AI slop have made finding recipes on the Internet a frustrating experience. I've slowly built up a collection of about five to seven cookbooks. Those books offer me plenty of choices. For example, just a few days ago, I made buttermilk biscuits and ended up having four different recipes to compare. I also find myself flipping through them to discover new recipes. It's offline, peaceful, and I'm not bombarded with ads.