• 2 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I started reading your comment and thought “please be about Wave” haha. The funniest part about Wave is how they learned no lessons from it.

    The invite-only model worked great for Gmail because it was an actual service with real utility and people wanted in (1GB storage was huuuuge). But with social networks, the courting ritual is reversed, because without a critical mass of users the product has no utility.

    So what do they do with G+? Invite only 🤦‍♂️

    And by then they had something like half the world running Android, with Google accounts… and didn’t just let them in. Youtube should have been a simple “if you want to check out G+, your Youtube account will get you in, otherwise carry on.” Instead they make it invite only and then bully youtubers into registering.

    It’s just mind-boggling how little they understood about social networks after building such a wonderful piece of software for it.


  • Especially because for most of history magic was accepted as reality by most people. So any aspect of the elevator that didn’t make sense to them, like the buttons and power, could be attributed to magic without much consternation.

    Nowadays most (non-religious) people think “well there must be an explanation, I wonder how they achieved that, I’ll get to the bottom of this.” But before public schools, the scientific method, and an understanding of the natural laws, regular folk would just accept the unexplainable as magic, ghosts, demons, etc. People accepted that Hermes’ shoes just worked, or that Jesus could turn water into wine.

    Humans are inquisitive creatures sure, but we’re also superstitious creatures who would often rather invent an explanation than admit we can’t explain it. And when you live in a world where even a rainbow or the stars are unexplainable, you get used to mythical explanations. You grow up with the people you love and trust giving you these explanations.

    It’s the outliers who had the time and disposition — Aristotle, Newton, etc — that we celebrate today for bucking that trend. But they were the exception, not the rule. Archimedes may have spent the rest of his days studying that elevator, but 99% of his contemporaries would have said “By Zeus what a marvelous gift from the gods”, stared at it for a while, and then returned to toiling in the fields and quarries.








  • Seriously I don’t understand all the mental gymnastics on an anonymous internet forum, just admit it was easy to steal and you didn’t feel like paying for it lol

    People will feel more guilty about piracy than speeding, even though the latter kills thousands of people every year.

    But also, are you absolutely sure it’s theft for me to walk into a Hertz and take a vehicle? Like if they’re not in the business of selling vehicles then surely it can’t be theft to take one…