Transient internet phenomena

Not a single biney to speak of.

✨MAGIC✨

but still

i just can't get behind the idea that you have a right to labor opportunities. that's a really really weird thing to argue. you have a right to food and shelter and all that, "something to keep you from the devilish idle hands" is not really an important thing.

and like, as long as the proposed solutions are actually feasable and narrow enough to address the specific problem (like, idk, some sort of worker to robot ratio, or tariffs or something, like humans are now the fuckin DEI hire), i wouldn't OPPOSE the idea. it is, technically, better than nothing.

but its still stupid to me cause best i can tell, CEOs have been wringing the workforce dry for ages, outsourcing to countries with worse labor standards, hiring one employee to do the work of 3, using rotating schedules that you have to pick out THAT WEEK so that its near impossible for any one person to have much control over their workload.

it turns out human labor IS less expensive than ai, because you can basically get slave labor if you know where to look, and humans will be, depressingly, more disposable to employers.

transhumanism takes off in the worst way possible, and we all need to upgrade ourselves to stay competitive with ai, murderbot diaries style. (i am pro-transhumanism, but i think this is what people are worried about with the rich assholes that promote transhumanist ideas. the problem is more about literally selling pieces of yourself to stay alive, which i think we can all agree would be fucked.)

It was invented by one person for a specific purpose - to have a universalizable way of establishing historical dates, rather than having to deal with dynastically based date systems. And it was a really good idea. This is not surprising, since Bede is basically the father of Historiography. He also is the guy who gave us the notion of Primary Sources. Bede is amazing.

When a guy revolutionizes the entire way calendaring is done, he has the right to set his zero point wherever he pleases.

People have pointed out that one problem with CE notation is that it presents itself as neutral when it is exactly the same system as AD. What exactly is "common" about this era? The zero point doesn't become neutral just by effacing its source.

(Also BCE is nonsense. Just use negative numbers)

It makes sense for scholarly tradition to not want to be tied to a specific religion. But scholarly tradition is very enthusiastic about being tied to earlier scholarly tradition. The convention of AD was established by a scholar for a scholarly purpose. We know his name. We know what he was doing, and why, and how. And he was doing it better than anybody else. That is worth honoring.

Rather than pretending that it's a neutral system, acknowledge that it's not. It's not some naturally occurring "common era," it's the system developed by Bede, centered around dates that were important to him personally (but which he intended to be universally applicable).

I have been informed that Bede notation may in fact have been first devised by Dionysus the Humble of Scythia to calculate the date of Easter more accurately. But my broader point stands.

Just a quickie for now