clara

it’s an example of simpson’s paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

a worked example: if england/scotland/wales all use heart ❤️ 49% and use tears of joy 😂 at 51%, and then northern ireland was to use heart ❤️at 100%, you can imagine this would tip the whole uk over

even more freaky, you could make all 4 constituent countries use heart ❤️ at 49%, make each constituent use a different unique emoji 👍😀🥰😼 at 51% each, and then the aggregate would show that heart ❤️ is still the most used across the UK

now consider for each place on this map, they are ranking more than just 2 emojis. the map itself says that tears of joy 😂 is only scoring 5% worldwide, and that’s 1st place. with margins of 5% and under to be deemed winner, it’s no wonder funky effects show up

ok, here’s the context. (click here)

the source of this file, regrettably, is the daily mail. broken clocks and all that. i will link the “article” that the video file was from, but you will need a hazmat suit going in, for both the cookies/trackers and low quality writing

here’s that source now. (click here)

for posters below saying they couldn’t find this, i understand it. we all get different search results, it’s possible you all got hugboxed and were unable to find the clip as a result

also, i don’t care to discuss the topic, i only wanted to link the source, because you were all struggling with it. i like finding sources :)

have a nice day 🥰

here’s one example for you (click here) exploring igbo gender norms

here’s a second report that’s worth reading too (click here)

i don’t have much knowledge about the other cultures suggested, others can provide info for those

yep, you’re entirely right. for your area, it’s more effective to run wells for each person. the frustrating part being that, it implies that the city has been designed so, so badly, that individuals can’t actually share resources, without the per capita price going up if they do so.

even without depopulation, that’s a huge governmental failure. if individuals are having to run all their own utility setups and infrastructure, is that even a “city”? it sounds more like rural living but it’s all vaguely connected. presumably as a result of this low density, you have higher ongoing costs elsewhere? i.e commutes to work, cost of food, etc

if not, then it could be one of those taxpayer-subsidised things, where it feels cheaper for each resident, but the reality is that someone else is paying for it. i’m not good at wording what i mean in this case, but i will pass you to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI) to show it instead, he does a better job of explaining what i’m talking about

anyhow… that’s crazy! it’s entirely the thing i’m worried about seeing replicated large scale as a result of a reduction in population

i do get where you’re coming from, population density was less than it was. as a consequence, people had less access to resources. i would argue as a result of this, they also had less quality of life. the reason that urbanization has been a trend over the past 150 years that shows no sign of stopping, is because population urbanization is a multiplier on the effectiveness of quality of life, because it makes the cost to maintain higher quality of life cheaper per unit of life.¹

for example, yes, you can supply a neighbourhood with individual wells, granted. but surely it would be cheaper for your community to build one massive well, and then everyone in the neighbourhood can collect the water at the well? the community could all pay their share to maintain the well, and then the per unit cost of the well would be cheaper to build and maintain.

whilst you’re at it, since there’s only one well, you can put in a really fancy pump and purifier system. a really high quality rig, with low cost to run. that way, you only need to maintain 1 efficient pump and purifier, rather than 20 or 30 less efficient ones that would cost more fuel to run as an aggregate. the unit cost per person of the pump and purifier setup would be cheaper to run and maintain.

if you wanna go really bougie, you could all chip in to collectively install pipes to every house so that your local community doesn’t have to walk to the well. if you build slightly more pipes than you need, this would act as insurance so that if one pipe breaks, you don’t all lose supply, and the water could flow round… other pipes… and… …wait this just sounds like a municipal supply but with extra steps…

i know i’m being facetious, but the reality is that it is just not measurably cheaper to live out in isolated pockets, through supplying individual infrastructure on a per person basis.² economies of scale dictates this relationship.³ it’s inescapable.⁴. it’s inevitable.⁵ by all means, if it’s the only option someone has to provide utilities for themself, they should use it. but let’s not pretend that it’s more expensive to group up, live closer, and share the cost burden through communal resources.

i will trust you are aware of “economies of scale”, but i have linked a video here for those who are not aware, and also don’t want to read papers like a total nerd. ☝️🤓

[1]. (??? what would the units for quality of life per capita be i wonder? joy/kg? lol)

[2]. “The results indicate that cost savings can be achieved by increases in the scale of production…”, from “Productivity growth, economies of scale and scope in the water and sewerage industry: The Chilean case”, by Molinos-Senante and Maziotis, accessible at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8162666/

[3]. “…more spread out settlement (“Dispersion”) leads to diseconomies in distribution…”, from “Economies of scale, distribution costs and density effects in urban water supply: a spatial analysis of the role of infrastructure in urban agglomeration”, by Hugh B., accessible at https://etheses.lse.ac.uk/285/

[4]. “…agglomeration economies make firms and workers more productive in dense urban environments than in other locations.”, from “The economics of urban density”, by Duranton and Pupa, accssible at https://diegopuga.org/research.html#density

[5]. “Econometric analysis of the data from the Big Mac price survey revealed a significant positive effect of being in a rural area on the increase in prices.”, from “Identifying the size and geographic scope of short-term rural cost-of-living increases in the United States”, by Díaz-Dapena, Loveridge & Paredes, accessible at “https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00168-023-01244-z”

sure, i’ll try to explain briefly

“infrastructure”, i.e utilities, transport, bureacracy etc is built to support a fixed population within a city. when the population increases, you have to build more infrastructure to support this new population. this part is easy, you expand your cities at their edges, extend the utilities, and set up satellite bureacracy offices if needed

the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn’t happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?

it would be nice if we live in a theoretical world where, as population decreases, the cities magically shrink at their edges, and suburban residents move closer in to fill the gaps. this is not how populations deplete from an area though (example: detroit, 1950 - 2020)

you will struggle to convince a suburban homeowner at the edge, to sell up and move to one of the gaps left behind by population loss. if we stop short of rewriting laws to force this population transfer, the end result is that you are left with a “swiss cheese” city. houses and settlements will be spread so thinly that becomes impossible for city goverments to provide “infrastructure” without providing it at a loss. your local goverment will then take debt and bankrupt, the infrastructure will collapse through lack of maintenance, and then the remaining population suffers big time

i want to note that i am not using this as an argument to support population growth. i am only stating the big, big problem that needs to be tackled somehow, concerning population loss. some big-brains are going to have to work this problem through, fast!

side note: interestingly, most NA cities are spread out and sprawled so much that they are suffering unaffordable infrastructure bills already, despite not suffering the effects of population loss. goodness knows how these places will fare when population loss actually hits…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santería

note: this data is from 2015

this chart is really enlightening to showcase to people how the uk is a “two-speed” economy, where london and south-east england basically hog all the resources, and how actually, it’s (in my belief) the underlying factor for why the brexit vote went the way it did

i.e, most places in the uk are at the bottom of the pack of european cities, yet as a whole, were still expected to be the 2nd biggest contributors to the eu, and pony up funds to cities higher on this list

this inequality might be the reason some voters were very, very salty when being pleaded to vote to remain in the eu

i know in practice, the contributions are chump change when compared to national budgets, but it provided a rare source of objective, indisputable ammo that was used to nudge the needle towards leaving. it was absolute loggerheads to try and explain to anyone why i could be okay with “my taxes in birmingham being siphoned off to budapest”

(for avoidance of doubt, i voted remain)

i remember playing pokerstars vr like 5 years ago. i learnt after a few days to pick a neutral avatar and mute mic. it stopped being fun real quick after that, because it ended up effectively as a 3d simulator of regular pokerstars.

haven’t really done multiplayer vr since 😅

op, it’s not just you, i promise. 🙂

i encourage you to watch this in it’s entirety. while it covers a different life story, it explores some avenues of what you are possibly feeling when you ask this question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmI_VBp9QU0

google tries not to kill one of it’s products challenge (impossible)

the current solution for that would be similar to the current “sponsor block” plugins, here’s an example

crowdsourced start and endpoints for embedded sponsorships

something like this tool, but for future embedded google adverts

good bot

the “open source hackers” are always going to win this one, for a simple reason. if the data of the youtube video is handed to a user at any point, then the information it contains can be scrubbed and cleaned of ads. no exceptions.

if google somehow solves all ad-blocking techniques within browser, then new plugins will be developed on the operating system side to put a black square of pixels and selectively mute audio over the advert each time. if they solve that too? then people will hack the display signal going out at the graphics card level so that it is cleaned before it hits the monitor. if they beat that using some stupid encryption trick? well, then people will develop usb plugin tools that physically plug into the monitors at the display end, that artificially add the black boxes and audio mutes at the monitor display side.

if they beat that? someone, someone will jerry rig a literal black square of paper on some servos and wires, and physical audio switch to do the same thing, an actual, physical advert blocker. i’m sure once someone works that out, a mass produced version would be quite popular as a monitor attachment (in a timeline that gets so fucked that we would need this).

if that doesn’t work? like, google starts coding malware to seek and destroy physical adblockers? then close your eyes and mute your headphones for 30 seconds, lol. the only way google is solving that one is with hitsquads and armed drones to make viewers RESUME VIEWING

as long as a youtube video is available to access without restriction, then google cannot dictate how the consumer experiences that video. google cannot win this.

look, all i’m saying is, the public transit and bike infrastructure aren’t the only reasons people wanna move there 😏

this meme can be saved, there are indeed methods…

the OP’s image was originally posted to the internet through twitter on October 21st this year. (nitter link)

source image was posted to twitter handle “GlowFYourSelf”, as part an advertising campaign for a website called “GlowFYourSelf”, which appears to sell… personal toys. based out of portland oregon, no surprises there lol.

source image was part of an album of 4 of images that all look similar. they were likely generated using AI because in the original image, the writing on the box is all borked.

this original, crisp, 2k x 2k image was then stolen 4 days ago by an instagram meme account called “worst.buy”.

from there, it has then received a caption, a bitmoji sticker, and a faint “CV” watermark stamped in the lower left.

through all these saves and re-uploads, it has been deep fried, jpegged, and cut in resolution. for shame.

fortunately for this meme repair, no 'shopping was needed to complete the work - i went straight to the source.

here you go folks. ❤️

gold skin unlocked: escape 1000 cats

yep i found this one out the hard way when applying for a job in the uk at currys (similar to best buy like in the op)

didn’t get the job of course, that’s fine, whatever, move on and go to next application

what i learnt afterwards though was that, they don’t hire for currys/best buy based on your actual understanding of tech. they hire on your ability to sell the items, and help customers engage in excess consumerism.

the main point being, i obviously wouldn’t sell anyone a $99 gold plated hdmi cable. because firstly, that’s unethical profiteering, and secondly, i know that a $5 would do the same job. i would point a customer to the $5 cable, it’s the correct choice. but this is why i am unhireable for this job.

currys, best buy, euronics, mediamarkt etc need to hire people that can sell the $99 cable. to do that, they counterintuitively have to hire people who don’t know enough about tech. reason being, if you don’t actually know about tech yourself, you will think that the gold cable is better, and you can then do a more convincing job of selling it. plausible deniability. apply this to every item in the store. you want someone who can push 8k tvs, beats headphones and smart fridges. not someone who will guide the consumer to what they actually need for their use case.

it’s the reason why you go into these stores and the staff don’t have a fucking clue about actual tech questions. they were hired precisely because they don’t have a clue.

this would be good content for !THE_PACK@lemmy.world

i’m stealing it 😈

you’re right, and i think that the thing that is being called out in the screenshot is not the money making per se, but the doom loop that everyone is forced to experience when trying to perform any basic information lookup using the internet in 2023. it goes something like this.

1. google “enshittification” to find that neat article you read a few months ago to post in a lemmy comment
2. first three or four results aren’t what you wanted, so keep scrolling.
3. click the result you want (beginning of doom loop)
4. “we value your privacy - so please click all the individual opt-outs, because GDPR didn’t say we can’t harass you with opt-outs to beat you into submission”
5. “subcribe to our newsletter! we definitely won’t leak this email to a third party”
6. “do you want to enable desktop notifications for this site?”
7. “this page would like to know your location (so we can serve you geo-targeted adverts)”
8. “get full access to our platform for xxx yyy price!” despite fake discounting being illegal in many countries
9. scroll down to start reading the first paragraph.
10. “…this is your 1st of 3 free articles this month. to receive 10 free articles a month, please register today!”
11. after dismissing all of this, you then scroll 2 paragraphs in, and find out actually, this wasn’t the article you needed.
12. press back on your browser a few times to wade back through all the privacy spam
13. scroll 2 more results down on google, maybe this next one was it?
14. goto 3. (you now repeat the doom loop)

this doom loop has to stop. yes, people and businesses need to make money under the current economic system we live in. but it doesn’t have to be like this.

but you know something? we all know where this is going.

some ““visionary”” san fran tech bro startup will have the “genius” idea of offering an interface between journo websites and customers, by offering a one-stop subscription shop. pay the tech bros once, they grant you access to all sites.

not unlike how uber operates as an interface between taxi drivers and customers, or how airbnb offers an interface between short term lets and customers, or how amazon offers an interface between cheap plastic vendors and customers, or how netflix operates as an interface between media content and customers, or how…

…the wheel turns.