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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • A place can have a barren atmosphere and aesthtic while also having content to find, even if that content is more sparse or minimal, suited to that lonely environment

    That’s exactly what they’ve done.

    A “barren” planet still has stuff. In the 5 minutes or so that I did random exploration I found a colonist hut that was razed by pirates with a hidden chest with like 3k credits, and a random vendor who was going a little nuts for being alone so long. Nothing incredible, but enough to make the place not feel dead on a random frozen moon.








  • From a (US) financial perspective, a phone charger takes about 5 watts of electricity. At $0.010/kWh that’s $0.0005/hr (or ¢0.05/hr) of charging. This is utterly negligible.

    For reference, a worker at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr would be paid that much after 0.25 seconds of working. It’s not even worth paying an employee to tell you to not plug in, which would probably take at least 15 seconds.

    Naturally, some businesses may want to discourage people from loitering, but more often than not, they probably want your business (library, grocery store, coffee shop &c) or understand that reality happens.



  • You can be ousted with a lot of popular support if you really piss off a small number of people. A leader has more wiggle room with high popular support and a strong military and police force, but if those institutions weaken, then the possibility of a violent overthrow increases.

    Russia’s population is ~143 million. If even 1 in 1000 people take up arms, that’s a 143,000 strong army. If 1% participate in a general revolt, that’s 1.4 million people, which could easily overwhelm institutions and bring an already weakened economy down.




  • And that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. Instance wars and eventual defederation and fragmentation are important moderation tools, and will progress the culture and feel of instances and regions of the Fediverse. Many instances will form federated cliques that are highly connected and have similar vibes and cultures, and some will be federated with multiple cliques, showing users a variety of cultures and situations.

    If the Fediverse reaches a large enough number of people, it can support multiple independant cliques, and enable users see entire mini-universes with different communities and vibes.




  • So I googled around, and found this conviction: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2008/February/08_crm_145.html

    Justin Eric King, 27, of Chipley, Fla., has been sentenced to 41 months in prison followed by three years supervised release resulting from his conviction on charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and United States Attorney Gregory R. Miller of the Northern District of Florida announced today. The defendant and his co-conspirators brought illegal aliens, mostly from Bulgaria and Romania, to work in the hotel industry in and around Destin, Fla. King was sentenced by Senior District Court Judge Lacey A. Collier of Pensacola, Fla.

    This isn’t usually what we think of as “human trafficking.” It seems that the people he smuggled understood what they were doing, and not being forced or coerced it. If that were the case, additional charges of exploitation would have been filed.