theneverfox

It looks like dirt. Or, depending on your perspective, a forest

How does it work? Imagine nanobots created to control nature. It connects to all the plants, creating little tubes to exchange nutrients and electrical messages between them, in exchange for a nutrient "tax". Split the network in half, and now you have two. Put them back together, sometimes even entirely different species of mycelium, and you have one.

How do they reproduce? All the ways. They range from 2-8 distinct stages of lifecycle. Sometimes they have haploid reproduction, sometimes they recombine their own genetics, sometimes they clone themselves. Sometimes they have more than 2 parents.

Sometimes they have extra special forms like truffles that only come out in certain conditions. Sometimes they have multiple variants of mushrooms with the same genetics. Sometimes they possess multiple distinct sets of genetics

Mushrooms are just the sexual organs of the mycelium... Sometimes they spread based on time, or based on moisture, or just when they feel like it. Sometimes they don't have mushrooms at all

Mycillium does everything in every way, their spores can literally call down rain and they choose what plants live and die. It looks like they have language based on analysis of the electrical signals running through them.

The more you talk about them, the more insane you sound

I think this is just whitewashing history... Even if you look to the ancient Western world, they had goddesses like Artemis

Generally, men fought wars. Like a lion pride - the males are the defenders because they're bigger and stronger. Hunting doesn't require raw strength - it requires diligence, patience, and/or endurance

But they all hunt. Lionesses are known for it, but lions do it too. Complete division of responsibilities is an insect thing

Lets tax them harder in exchange for legal status

I feel awkward being in public without interaction. It's like my brain goes into overdrive, trying to predict a sudden interaction incoming like a quick time event

I'd comment on something slightly more relevant than the weather, because the conversation can then fade to comfortable silence (for me at least) knowing no more conversation is likely, or I'd do what I always do when someone engages - everyone has something interesting about them, I'll throw the conversation in random directions until I find a topic worth speaking about

The problem is artists... They don't generally have the wiggle room a developer has, a handful of devs can take a sabbatical for 6 months easy, but the artists that can pump out assets are either in crazy high demand or need another job to eat. Even supporting another person living in a studio and eating ramen drastically changes the situation

It's actually something I've put thought into recently, i have a friend very passionate about artist exploitation but I haven't figured out the structure to make it work. Artists aren't rare, but they're very in demand... There's got to be some way to help them bind together to take chances like this

Of course it's different, and economies of scale are generally more efficient. 50 Independent Burger joints would likely be healthier and higher quality, they would do more to keep money flowing around the community rather than funneled away to corporate, and their ice cream machines wouldn't break

But you wouldn't have 50 - you'd have more like a dozen. Most local restaurants find the best place they can, because they want the store to succeed

Franchises want coverage - they want as many locations as possible. They want a new McDonalds next to the Wendy's, even if there's three other fast food restaurants all within sight already. They'll dictate every detail of it, because they win even if the store barely breaks even

Such as the famous McDonald's always broken ice cream machines. Billionaire shareholders in both companies mandate these machines, which must be repaired frequently by licensed technicians. They even shut down a couple that built a $40 device that was able to fix the glitch that causes the problem

And that's how it works from top to bottom. At every stage, the billionaires must get their hidden taxes. Like the ice cream machines, it generally costs more in every way to society - we would not be using decades old ice cream machines known for breaking down all the time, we wouldn't oversaturate towns with competing fast food franchises, we probably wouldn't be subsiding the food itself

I keep joining discord rooms because I just want to search for something specific real quick... I don't want to dig up my real account or join, I just want to take a peek inside and dig up the answer to my question

Almost every time I sign up with a username and get just enough time to start looking for what I need before it decides to kick me out for "suspicious activity"

At this point I just search the project name when it happens... I'm usually there to evaluate a project, and if that's not enough I just drop it

But again, it's all for their personal benefit. A human Their money is managed to grow by any means, and that has a lot of knock on effects

They generally either put their money in funds with the highest returns (which often use unethical and illegal but accepted practices, and the best ones require large minimum deposits), or they directly own large percentages of a company and use that influence when it suits them

I see where you're coming from, but I think the line is blurry. Their direct personal actions don't capture the full extent of their actions, but this also assumes full responsibility for their ownership, where honestly it's impossible to know what level of emissions the companies would have if the billionaire's wealth machine wasn't involved

I wouldn't say this is totally unfair to say though - at the end of the day they own what they own, and letting others do your dirty work doesn't absolve you of responsibility

The fact that their life would barely be affected if they added emissions to their criteria for investment makes this worse - these are the figures the billionaires should be looking at to make decisions

A billionaire is a business themselves. One person can't even passively possess a billion dollars without tons of support staff

If you separate the direct actions of the person from the actions of the staff required to maintain and grow their wealth, you're missing most of the reason why billionaires are so harmful to society

For me it was a mix of that, plus "great, so you're going to close everything maybe was using, sometimes restart some of it, and everything is going to be on the wrong screen and virtual desktop. Now that I've spent several minutes getting back to where I was yesterday, let's see what garbage I don't want that you've added"

Linux has its own inconveniences, but I don't regret the switch... It gets better every day while windows gets worse

No, I also made the switch and honestly it's pretty much worked out of the box for me. I've got the integrated graphics with a discrete card too - I was worried initially, but it seems to handle it fine

I've had some sound issues, and a few games run worse or need some tweaking to run, but after dual booting for a while I'm considering wiping windows for extra storage

There's inconveniences, but with windows getting worse and Linux getting better I'm feeling pretty good about the deal

Let me tell you a few secrets

First, anger uses up social energy. They get it back from your response to them... If you don't let them read any emotion from you, they'll tire themselves out very quickly.

You just have to control your body language, keep your tone calm, and let them talk. Make it clear you're paying attention to them, but otherwise give them nothing

You don't have to listen to what they say, they're just making angry human noises. Just listen to their tone, it'll rise and fall in energy cyclically until they run out of energy

When they stop talking, just give them a few moments of silence so they can feel embarrassed, then disregard their little temper tantrum and progress the conversation like it never happened, focusing on solutions

And that's the second secret - you can prompt-break a human. In every interaction, humans take on roles. Customer-employee, public official-citizen, manager-worker... Humans naturally fall into roles

You can pull a human out of their role by not playing your part, and in that moment of confusion you can recontectualize the interaction

In this case, you change the conversation roles from "you being mad at me" to "I'm the expert helping you fix your problem"

Obviously, if you just say that, people will generally just get more upset. But if you pull them off balance and start acting a new role, they'll take on the counterpart role

It's all third path conflict resolution, it's honestly harder to explain then it is to do it