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• Post #2436398

  Something that's become clear to me over the last decade is that the systems we have in place - "Justice", NLRB, FDA/EPA, even democracy itself - are all mediating tools created by an imperial ruling class to insulate themselves from the immediate consequences of their own decisions and actions. It's also become clearer and clearer that our current ruling class didn't get the memo; they don't understand the purpose of these institutions isn&...

• Post #2436397

  That's why Elon Musk and his oligarchic ilk agitating to dismantle government is so funny to me. Government is just the mediator that makes sure the CEOs aren't gunned down and the royals aren't dragged into the public square and guillotined. That's all it is: Elon Musk is only alive today because of all the institutions that stand between him and all the families of the people who have been killed by his cars and his politics. But they don't get it. The...

• Post #1195055

  Reading this makes the Socialists seem like adults and the fascists seem like petulant babies and It should help you understand why I consider the Democrats to be merely an aesthetic not a substantive political concern. Folks who are like "the parties are different!" need to internalize what adult, responsible policymaking and communication look like, then actually take a long, hard look at the Democrats. Do they rise to that bar, or fall very, very short? https://www.bbc.c...

• Post #1188034

  In the end, if both Democrats *and* Republicans are perfectly sanguine with eviscerating the Constitutional rights of, say, poor people and minorities (who are overwhelmingly the ones signing these "waivers" lol lmao), they will be perfectly sanguine with eviscerating them for women. I mean, sure: the Democrats will be like "only *criminal* women!!!" and the GOP will be like "all women should be baby factories" but the end result will be the...

• Post #1169426

  Every time I see an announcement of a mass firing as just business-as-usual I remember being a kid in the 80s watching PBS News Hour and seeing CEOs get called before Congress and grilled for firing like 500 people. Straight-up marinated in acid, lambasted, raked across coals, and then served up to be ate. I can literally remember thinking how funny it was that they were sweating so much. Literally everything people think is "just how it is" was *very, substantially different...

• Post #1129908

  Trump's biggest problem now is that the Iran war is a vibe killer and he knows it, but he also knows that if he doesn't fix it, his party will enter the coming election with a 20% unemployment rate, $15 gas, surging houselessness and food insecurity, and mass riots. All the momentum is gone tho. Everyone knows we can't win. Iran survived long enough to teach the world that the US military is an unprepared joke, US leadership is an unpopular puddle of vomit, and defying t...

• Post #1129905

  Modern Western Politicians: "Everyone is getting so angry at me! Am I the problem? [momentary pause for thought] No, the *anger* is the problem."

• Post #1016725

  RE: https://mastodon.nl/@bassjobsen/116365509440113214 Anosmia was the #1 reason I started isolating. Strangely, in late 2019 I read an article in a science magazine that said that "while rare, anosmia leads to suicide in a majority of cases". So, yeah. Don't get COVID, I guess.

• Post #983598

  This whole thing is dredging up the tired argument that "people don't debate" on Mastodon, and you "have to conform or else" But this isn't real. It's like the "cancel culture" fallacy. The reality is that a lot of people on here simply *fight back* when you express a shitty opinion *about them, their community, or an idea they care about*, no matter who you are or where else you have clout. If you knew how many tim...

• Post #976288

  Got my first "AI is going to revolutionize the world" dude to that thread from yesterday. But, I want to be very clear to anyone else thinking "I'll debate this person about AI's value because-" Let me stop you there. If you tried to engage me in a debate about eating my own shit, I'd also tell you to fuck off. *Just* the *extant* externalities of this technology make it, independent of its "value", worthless. A...

• Post #963908

  "You know that Nazi Bar parable? Where the bartender throws out the Nazi because if you let one sit there, his friends will come, and no one else will, and then you run a Nazi bar? Well - and think about this - what if you just let them sit there, invited their friends, and ran a Nazi bar? And then - you invited the Jews to come and *debate* them about doing another Holocaust? Did you ever think about *that*?" 🤦‍♂️

• Post #919300

  The reason UBI won't happen without an actual armed revolution is because Western capitalists rely on the threat of death by starvation and exposure to get people to come to their shitty, dangerous, poorly paid jobs. *AS WE FOUND OUT* when folks were allowed to stay home in 2020 *and rose up*, and Biden very obviously and capriciously sacrificed Democrats' little remaining credibility to reinstitute the old "keep your job or die" status quo.

• Post #855722

  The "AI COULD BE GREAT IF" crowd is getting louder and louder and Listen - if you think that "AI" could be great if, then you probably think that as long as ICE "only arrests criminals" everything will be fine (you know, like most Dem politicians) or that the Iran war would be okay if Trump had gone to Congress and You're also a fucking clown We need to literally destroy all LLM companies and infra looooong before we "tak...

• Post #784421

  I think a phenomenon that defines modern Imperial politics in the US emerges in the early 1970s in the interaction between LBJ and Richard Nixon, candidate for President, when LBJ discovers that Nixon has committed *literal* treason to try to manipulate the election, and chooses, *to protect the FBI and CIA*, to allow it. Essentially, this whiff on holding someone powerful accountable for a major crime to protect State power is the modern era, distilled. 1/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...

• Post #784420

  So, The people who are running around pulling at their hair and clothes screaming about how "everything is crazy" now must sit down and consider That if they're not wearing a mask while they run around screaming that, *they* are the madness they're screaming about. 💁‍♂️

• Post #784419

  All these politicians who are like "these poor people who have to spend all of their salary on energy are suffering because the Strait of Hormuz has been closed!" are fuckfaces. *Within the confines of their IDEOLOGY*, the poor "must" suffer when "energy prices soar", because having food, shelter, and heat is considered a *privilege*. What they're actually complaining about is that if fossil fuels cost more, global capitalists won&...

• Post #784417

  Fines and fees are extraordinarily unjust *by nature*. One is a method by which rich people can commit crimes without consequence. The other is the government *you've already paid for* charging you for the privilege of *existing in the society mandated by said government*. There is no government revenue plan worth anything at all that includes fines and fees. They should all be outlawed.

• Post #780035

  Everyone seems so confused! Is Iran ready to talk? Are they eager? Are they already talking? Have they talked? Are they not talking? If only there were some discipline - a profession, really - whose entire purpose was to take the claims of powerful entities and subject them to scrutiny. You know, to chronicle history in *real time*, but also correct it in real time by seeking out the truth. Creating, like, a "journal" of sorts, to document the search. We could call them &a...

• Post #742812

  All the shit people are doing for immigrants to protect them from ICE they declined to do for vulnerable people to protect them from COVID and Admit it, you just didn't think disabled/chronically ill people were worth it, did you? At least sit with why you're willing to stand in front of a goon with a gun to protect immigrant families but not willing to put on a gotdamn mask to protect a sick person. Sit with that shit. This is not a toot about how immigrant families don&amp...

• Post #738738

  My Kingdom for a social practice of investigating and accepting our own weaknesses and failings.

• Post #691035

  Iran is the US' enemy because they rebelled against being our client State and took back their oil. A lot like Cuba is the US' enemy because they refused to bend the knee to our capitalist owner/operators. And Venezuela. Understanding where the enmity originated highlights how responsibility for the state of its relationships with those nations falls firmly on US shoulders.

• Post #683873

  The fact that Democrats have not taken to calling Trump "the Epstein President" is simply further proof that they're a joke as a political party.

• Post #536624

  Literally every day I wish I was deluded about COVID, about Democrats, about LLMs. Can you imagine the comfort of simply pissing your health away without any self awareness? Actually believing that there's a "good" political party in the United States? Thinking LLMs are actually going to "change everything"? Like smoking cigarettes in the 50s and 60s: pure pleasure! "It's healthy!" they said. Doctors recommend it. I mean, no...

• Post #454037

  FYI Anti-social and anti-immigrant infra can simply be *torn down* and *ripped apart* and *defunded* and *cancelled* Everyone who is lamenting all the horrific things the fascists are building needs to interrogate *why* they feel like those things have to exist for even 5 minutes after the fascists are put in the ground. You can simply: end them. Summarily. Put a stick of dynamite every 10 ft of a border wall and push the lever. Boom. No more border wall. Same with the "ballroom&a...

• Post #454034

  Hyperrealistic art is the art of our age. It's sterile, non-discursive, and a labor-intensive low-meaning copy of a photograph in most instances. One can appreciate the athleticism involved (8,000 hrs!?!) while at the same time recognizing that the subject matter is banal and mundane and without importance. But more importantly, without courage. Creating meaningful art with a personal aesthetic is spiritually and emotionally dangerous. Hyperrealism requires none of that.

• Post #309773

  You know, no one is trying to distinguish between "AI"-related cognitive deficits and COVID-caused cognitive deficits. Basically: are people experiencing severe cognitive problems *because* of using LLMs, or are they using/vulnerable to LLMs because they've had COVID 5-10 times and have brain damage? Disambiguating between these two phenomena seems important. But first they'd have to acknowledge that COVID brain damage is real, so 🤷‍♂️

• Post #309772

  There has never been a group of people so dedicated to *both* "open and free exchange of ideas" and "denigrating, humiliating, and invalidating every idea they personally do not hold" than liberals. Liberals have this thing they do where they reduce "understanding" to one of two things: 1) a medical problem, aka pathology, that requires treatment, or 2) invalidation through infantilizing, flattening, and misrepresenting the people they disa...

• Post #309771

  @dirtwizard666 Well, apart from #3 which I don't think everyone experienced (lots of workers can't do their job remotely) and I doubt has any real long-term impacts outside of what we know about isolation for those who live alone, that describes basically everyone in the United States, and most people in the West.

• Post #309770

  I sometimes do this thing where, during arguments involving data, I will misremember the specifics of a number while accurately conveying the import of that number. Think "Biden killed 1.5 million people with his COVID policies!" when it was actually ~1 million people. Something I find borderline disingenuous is how immediately the debate turns to one about how I am not reliable because I the number was *incorrect*, not about how I'm *right* because *killing 1 million...

• Post #309769

  Vox has an article about GLP-1s causing "apathy", based on the observations of a single psychologist. So, you know, "rigorous science". But you know what's crazy? In a roundabout way, it might cause apathy. But not because of the drug. As a food addict, I often "eat my feelings". Meaning, I get a *very strong* dopamine response from putting food in my face. 1/