• 1 Post
  • 22 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Right. You’re talking about specialized AI that are programmed and trained to perform very specific tasks, and are absolutely useless outside of those tasks.

    Llama are generalized AI which can’t do any of those things. The problem is that what it’s good at, really REALLY good at, is giving the appearance of specialized AI. Of course this is only a problem because people keep getting fooled into thinking that generalized AI can do all the same things that specialize AI does.






  • Which is one of those things that sounds great at first but after a few more decades of research we realize it’s actually horrifically bad. Leached chemicals and microplastics are having such profound impacts on life that we’re not even sure how bad it is yet, just that it’s very VERY bad.

    A few hundred years from now, if husband aren’t extinct yet, they’ll look back on this the way we look back on pre-modern societies using lead for everything, except the solution to lead was to simply stop using it while a solution for microplastics doesn’t even exist yet. It’s likely that, even after a solution has been found, microplastics will haunt all life on Earth until they get cycled out by geological processes.


  • The most highly funded police force to ever exist now knows I’m trans. Not that I’m not public about this fact, but sits different when you’re in a searchable dataset accessable to law enforcement.

    This also gives them a pretty solid idea of who is disabled.

    And with the lack of civil rights in the deportation process, all ICE has to do is accuse you of being foreign and being in the US illegally. Bonus, ICE gets to decide on their own if your case requires judicial review or not, meaning you can be deported to CECOT before anyone even knows what happened to you.

    And the public will support it, because they’re being told that trans people are horrible criminals and disabled people are a drain on society. I know this because those are the same reasons they already give for their treatment of immigrants.

    The legislative and judicial branches are already cut out of this process, the only thing the executive branch is waiting for is when they feel it’s the right time.


  • Welfare as just one more method of transferring wealth to corporations, it’s just the money is coming from the government and going through poor people first. Which means it at least generated some economic activity by cycling money from the top to the bottom, but if the tax structure becomes too regressive then that cycle breaks. Both sides acknowledge this problem, it’s just that the neo liberals want to push those limits while keeping the money flowing (so that most of it flows upwards) while the fascists just want to stop the cycle altogether.

    This is evidenced by the fact that SNAP is funded by the Farm Bill. It’s not a handout to poor people, it’s a subsidy for farms and the food industry at large.





  • it’s reasonable to suggest you find another

    If it’s “just a job” like working retail at Target, sure, that’s a respectable take. It’s still blaming the victim, but it’s also advocating for the victim to address the issue themselves.

    But if it’s not “just a job”? If it’s your life’s work, your calling, something you love more than anything else?

    That idea is very likely what drove her to the brink. You really have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.

    I’ve been there and I almost didn’t survive. Choosing to live isn’t always so easy.







  • So there’s this phenomenon where a person can change their mind because of learning new information.

    For example, a person can reasonably say “Our elections are safe and secure” and then, after learning new information, say “Our elections are so insecure.”

    The last four years don’t undermine the current claims because there was no credible evidence that the election was compromised then. But new information contains evidence that this time the election may have been compromised. This new information can and should encourage people to change their minds about how secure our elections are. Changing your mind in the face of new information isn’t hypocrisy, it’s rational thinking.

    As for your last paragraph, confirming the number of people who voted and the number of ballots recorded does nothing to verify that the ballots were recorded correctly. To do that they need to audit the paper ballots against the computerized count, which is a massive undertaking that will require a lot of time and money. There’s nothing simple about that.


  • Look, I don’t completely disagree with you. IMO the only thing that’s going to stop the fascists (without taking us into full blown war) is a general strike. And it’s frustrating to see nothing but planned demonstrations, schedule to a specific day, and only for that day. A protest with a scheduled end time is a protest that’s planned its own failure.

    But that’s not what’s happening in LA, and that’s why the fascists are trying to put it down so hard. This thing is finally, organically, taking on a life of its own. Will it last? Does it have staying power? Who knows, but why discourage it? Why be cynical and reduce the chance that this time is different even further? You’re literally the problem you just complained about.

    All of that said, I genuinely understand why you’re cynical. All I can really say is that you gotta be the change you want to see in the world. I hate using a canned phrase like that but in this case it’s deeply true.