Replying to
@reece how can you not love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPHXmKieqxg
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ikesau
@ikesau@micro.ikesau.co
drunk with hope for the better things
he/him
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Joined January 17, 2025
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@MrLee do you think this video makes its argument well?
I feel like if you're arguing in favour of government-run groceries, you should probably spend more than 15 seconds on the municipal case studies (that all failed!) instead of talking about military commissaries.
This part was interesting: "So maybe you take all this to mean that it's true: the secret to all this is that taxpayers foot the bill for some giant subsidy. But actually, the subsidy is quite small. The defense budget is almost $1 trillion, and the subsidy for DeCA is roughly 0.2% for the whole defense budget. This is for almost 250 stores serving 8.8 million households"
Saying that the subsidy is small compared to the whole defense budget is a sloppy rhetorical move. What matters is is it cost-effective, how does it scale, etc.
Running the numbers: 1.5B subsidy for 8.8M households = $170 per household. If they're delivering on their mandate of 23.7% annual savings for households' grocery budgets (which tracks with the video's Walmart basket of goods comparison), that seems like quite a good deal!
I wonder though, will that be possible for Toronto to replicate with four pilot stores. Seems like a really different dynamic:
- No subsidy (beyond eliminating the typical 3-5% grocery profit margin)
- Fewer economies of scale
- More competition
- Highly visible if it starts to fail
- Not a sacred cow in the way that military benefits are in the US
Best of luck to them! But I would imagine the odds of this pilot succeeding and growing over the next 5 years to be quite low.
Replying to
@tmcw yeah, i really like AT Proto's core idea of "your stuff is public JSON, and your JSON can be incorporated into anything" but also don't actually have a need for it right now.
i'm curious about https://rocksky.app - but i also maybe kinda just want to scrobble to a DB on my own homeserver because the main value i get from last.fm is being able to find songs stuck in my head from 10 years ago
Replying to
@tmcw i don't know my exact percentages, but i think a lot depends on the passage of time. i like my things more as time passes
Replying to
@molly0xfff hey molly - maybe a dumb question but where does this money actually go? I don't really understand how money gets spent to put an ad on TV and who takes a cut. does it go from the PACs to local TV networks? big broadcasting conglomerates?
I'm aware i could google this, but maybe you have a post on it you could recommend?
extreme sympathies to all the devs named claude out there
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Replying to
@res260@infosec.exchange do you mind elaborating? this is the kind of misalignment that keeps AI safety people up at night
Replying to
@kini@maro.xyz @res260@infosec.exchange have either of you guys read the letter or plan A? I feel like you're having a conversation that's interesting but quite oblique to the biggest worries at hand (except for in the ways it relates to open source models, I suppose)
I'm concerned about an ASI that's not aligned nor understandable to us; war between the US and China; US global dictatorship, etc.
Based on the way you're talking, it seems like maybe you don't think those outcomes are credible or worth prioritising?