Spiritually I get it. Though I do invite people over to my apartment a lot and have anxiety so I’m a “bare minimum to not get comments about lack of furnishing and decor” kind of minimalist.

I still need a proper TV stand and couch though. And I do get comments for having the big screen tv on the floor and just a bunch of chairs instead of a couch, only two cushioned chairs too. Foam mattress on the floor though with plenty of pillows and blankets. I need a rug too, basic linoleum flooring gets kinda chilly.

Balancing that versus maintaining a healthy bank account is difficult though with the amount I make and the location making my rent kinda steep (I like being able to bar hop via walking)

Silicon Valley people who wanted Trump are so fucking stupid its absurd.

I mean, I’ve interacted with someone with active anti-semitic beliefs in a dedicated debate space who eventually changed his views to “Well, its not the Jews fault that they got into finance. They just kind of got funneled into that.” So absolutely people with shitty views can evolve in the right direction. I respect that a million times more than someone who is morally lucky and never budges.

And example of the opposite would be someone who adopts progressive stances of their time and never evolved from there or have selective self serving progressive blinders. “LGB w/o the T”, rainbow capitalists, Red-brown alliance types, etc.

The only good people are people who are brave enough to actively test their beliefs and earnestly question their own ideology (and accept that they even have one).

Almost no one does this. People often even say they “don’t have an ideology”. Its convenient, if you have no belief system there is nothing to question.

While no doubt it may be that most users of DuckDuckGo are anti-AI given the nature of the service and who it attracts, the 90% metric makes me believe that the people who ambivalently use DuckDuckGo’s AI (and are not pro or anti) did not vote in this at all and may find themselves using DuckDuckGo less if they see the surface-level convenience randomly disappear from the service.

So I assume they’ll get rid of the AI and they’ll see a drop in users overtime as a percentage of minimum effort types get confused or annoyed. And then they’ll bring it back as they see a drop in users, annoy the users that hate AI and they’ll leave as well. And neither group will end up ever returning.

This whole poll was a terrible idea.

The key is to set rules so you aren’t just “saving forever”. Have a savings goal so you have some liquidity (usually 10k, but maybe aim for more or less depending on your situation), and then after that equally split any surplus after essential monthly purchases for “Fun” and “Long Term Saving/Investments/Paying Debts”.

Buying something you need OR want is not mindless consumerism. Buying something you don’t actually want at all is mindless consumerism.

I don’t need my food to taste good, I just need calories and nutrients. Am I a consumerist whore if I buy tasty food instead of some kind of dirt cheap nutrient gruel?

The savings will also lead to the corporation’s profits to decline in the mid term, and then the savings will actually go to private equity and hedge funds, not the shareholders.