https://rationallib.substack.com/
Banned from lemmy.ml/c/Palestine for constructive criticism
It’s the 48 Star American flag, thus it’s the German American Bund in the 30s. To be fair to the literal Nazis pictured it’s before the holocaust was discovered. It’s not AI, it appears in this 2017 article: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-the-1930sthe-german-american-bund/529185/
They’re really against anything nice that can be achieved through cooperation, aren’t they?
Nah they would just invent new races. What’s the point of race? What does it mean exactly? Notice that the races in the US at least roughly align with economic classes.
That’s not an accident. Obviously without the concept of races, people would still have different skin color and hair, but the implications would be entirely different. Culture, neighborhoods, etc. wouldn’t be separated. And most importantly, it would be ever so slightly harder for rich people to make the majority feel like they’re in the same group as them as opposed to some “other”.
So if there was only one race, the rich would need to invent new ones.
The Democrats had it during their entire presidency
Specificity is the path to the truth. People call out for “the list”, but don’t seem to know exactly what this is. Given that all this activity is illegal, there’s little point in storing a list of illegal sex clients in QuickBooks.
Instead, the closest thing would probably be a contact list, with people who were in on it and not mixed in. Prosecutors definitely have such a list, as it was shown in court - exhibit “GX52”. This list was partly shown in the Maxwell trial, but also sealed by the judge - not Democrats. Supposedly it contains “many, many, many, many names” including some with “massage at Palm Beach”.
Now you could say, why didn’t Biden tell the DOJ to release that list. Probably for the same reason he didn’t tell them to drop the prosecution of Hunter, which he later pardoned him for. Be cynical as you want about the separation of the DOJ and the president, (which Trump has consistently ignored) Biden did make a show of upholding it. And releasing the list to embarrass Trump would be a pretty blatant violation of that principle. It would also probably violate the seal order, making DOJ attorneys vulnerable to contempt.
To be fair, that grey tree trunk looked a lot like a road
The left is shockingly asleep about how bad this is. X still is the single most important platform for driving narratives about the news and politics. And it’s still important in part because Democrats and the left as a whole have been lethargic in leaving it. The fact that it’s blatantly being used to tilt the national political discussion in whatever direction Elon wants was probably one of many keys to getting Trump elected in 2024, and should be regarded as an ongoing emergency for Democrats and the left.
The most politically incorrect truth is this: People are not good or bad, individual people do a variety of good and bad things. Mister Rogers told his gay friend to stay in the closet and marry a woman. Hitler banned animal cruelty. We don’t like to talk about these things, but it’s a true principle and a useful one to live by.
People create content knowing others are going to get filthy rich off it and they’ll get nothing in return. Except total loss of privacy.
The country was in decline for at least a decade before Trump took office.
Well 4 years of that decade was Trump being in office, and 4 other years was the result of people being willing to vote in literally anyone who wasn’t him. So really 8 years of that decade was Trump’s fault. And the other two years? Not bad.
As for the rest, Trump is cutting funding for research like crazy. That won’t just affect things today, that’s going to make stuff shitty for decades. And that’s exactly the kind of harm that the emotion-laden American news and social media simply won’t cover. So I don’t think there will be a backlash, rather the opposite - politicians will realize bullying scientists, government agencies, immigrants, and other voiceless Trump targets is just good politics, and keep doing it.
Of course future prediction is hard, so who knows what will happen. But I’m not seeing the path for this to turn around anytime soon. The same media that created MAGA, and made it even more popular 4 years after it proved itself to be a horrific disaster is the same media we have today. Democrats will probably win the next two elections because people can see what Trump is doing in real time, but after that I have no hope for America. If I have to predict the future, I’d guess the EU becomes the new global leader, driven by relatively high democracy and pro-science policies compared to the rest of the world. This could even occur in a relatively short time frame, like 5 years.
I’m plenty open to questioning every part of copyright (has the idea ever actually been proven to be worth the enormous costs? It’s like an infinity-percent tariff on anything information related.) but the same copyright should apply to everbody. It sounds like this proposal gives a specific pass to corporations developing AI - anything these corporations can access should be accessible to the general public as well. If you can use a song to train an AI for free, a human artist should also be allowed to use it directly and turn it into a new work.
Not to derail the topic into the lab leak thing. It just annoys me that this is so commonly taken as gospel when the vast majority of disease scientists disagree. I’ll just refer you to: https://youtu.be/EuwpDY5uFNQ
What annoys me is that “doing your own research” actually makes sense in a lot of contexts. Our modern politics driven news is 90% bullshit and you’re better off fact checking everything they say by looking at reliable sources and tracing the origin of dubious claims. But these people have ruined that by acting like “do your own research” means “blindly trust some guy with a podcast who tells you what you want to hear.”
Your position would be more sensible and coherent if you were looking to achieve it through a mechanism outside of voting, but to insist on trying to use the tool you recognize as broken to repair itself is an absurdity, it’s completely irrational.
Your position would be much more sensible if RCV had never been achieved through voting. But it has. And notice the states where it does exist - these are the same places where lots of people vote for Democrats. And the places where it’s banned statewide? Those are the places where lots of people vote for Republicans. We need more of the former, and less of the latter.
I know I’d be a lot cooler, especially around here, if I just put on the Che Guevara shirt and say revolution is the only answer. But it just isn’t. Because every example of that sort of thing just leads to more fascism under a different name. Voting works, it’s the best choice, and I have yet to see any evidence other than wanting to be cool to convince me otherwise.
But as for making it a red line for supporting democrats, sure. I mean honestly, credit to you for proposing something that might actually work. I think if there’s a big enough movement to do that, every Democrat would get behind it.
The two party system is bullshit, and the solution is electoral reform like ranked choice voting.
One party, the Democratic party, usually (but not always) approves of such reform efforts.
The other party, the Republican party, universally opposes such efforts with extreme fervor.
So it makes sense to hate the two party system, but that system is one party’s fault in particular.
Later this year: “I was right, but I actually meant to say ‘into’ instead of ‘to’ and ‘someone’s’ instead of ‘your’”
I’ve played civilization and I’m pretty sure there’s other forms of government besides Communism and Monarchy that have low corruption, albeit lacking the ability to force the citizens into war on the leader’s whim.
Has anyone actually jerked off to AI porn? No shaming but for me there’s this fundamental emptiness to it. Like it can’t impress me because it’s exactly like what you expected it to be.
Reminds me of Blockchain
According to new research from Deloitte, 74 percent of large companies (with sales over $500 million) see a “compelling business case” for blockchain technology.
Indeed, from supply chain management and regulatory monitoring to recruiting and healthcare, organizations are applying blockchain to their business models to revolutionize how they track and verify transactions.
It’s not a fake or fundamentally useless technology, but everyone who doesn’t understand it is rushing to figure out how they’re gonna claim to use it.
Maybe you should blame yourselves for failing to convince the American people to vote for candidates who would cut off aid to Israel. Maybe, just maybe, camping in people’s public spaces, spraypainting people’s neighborhoods with “FUCK ISRAEL”, and oh yeah, helping get a fascist dictator elected wasn’t the best way to make those people want to side with you.
I mean I sympathize with actual Palestinians. Nobody should have to suffer what they’ve suffered. But let’s be honest - Israel gets away with it for a reason. And that reason is globally, no one wants to side with Hamas (which by the way, actually films themselves murdering children. Brilliant.), and in the US, no one wants to side with edgelord protesters who just piss everyone off.
Israel may kill kids, but they actually try not to get it on video, and they spend millions on PR that portrays them as the victim rather than the aggressor (as opposed to being as visibly aggressive as possible like Palestine protesters). Maybe that has something to do with why they keep winning and you keep losing.
Maybe it’s unfair for me to paint all Palestine protesters with a broad brush. I remember one had a sign listing all her dozens of family in Gaza who had been killed. That’s moving - you need more of that, less attacking the people you want to support you.
Here’s how this works: