BeautifulMind ♾️ @ BeautifulMind @lemmy.world

Late-diagnosed autistic, special interest-haver, dad, cyclist, software pro

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2 yr. ago

I think they're right to blame SCOTUS and the GOP for the debt forgiveness politics ruling, because that's 100% down to the GOP needing people to feel pain when there's a democrat in the oval office.

And yet, I think it's worth realizing that debt forgiveness is a patch to a prior problem that was also created by gross political fuckery. For example, when the boomers went to college (in the 60s and 70s) public colleges were broadly well-funded and tuition for them was low enough that it was possible to work part-time for minimum wage and get through school without lots of debt. But then, desegregation happened and those schools could no longer discriminate on race- and through magic coincidence (cough cough racist state governors like Reagan) state university systems saw funding cuts and increases to tuition (which effectively discriminated by pricing poor and minority folk largely out). By the 80s and early 90s, when folks like Clinton saw that college financing was the new segregation, the 'solution' was to make college loans effectively universally available (but as a sop to the lenders, make the loans federally backstopped and impossible to discharge in bankruptcy). When lots of easy money suddenly became available to students, universities did things (like hire legions of MBA/Administrators to farm that windfall) that turned higher ed into an evil growth industry built at least in part on debt bondage.

TL/DR; student lending and forgiveness is just a patch on problems created by the last solution to problems caused by racism

LOL if UPS drivers strike I hope fedEx drivers join them and I hope the USPS does too

it's torches and pitchforks for everyone lol

I don't know about anyone else's experience, but I've noticed that any time I click into a post view and then back out, I'm taken to the first page of posts, no matter if I was 2 or 3 pages on. If the redirect respected where it came from instead of going to home, that could reduce the impact of post-order sorting. Also if the list pager had more options than 'prev' and 'next' (maybe a few numbered pages between or beyond) I could get beyond that 3rd page without getting there feeling like an illustration of the schlemiel the painter's problem

AI needs data to train up on. It can't create art without first consuming existing art and spitting out parts of the originals. There's a reasonable claim to be made that AI synthesis of prior art is itself original enough to count as having intrinsic worth, but if the only way to get it is stealing other people's work to train up your model, the whole value proposition of AI art is probably net negative, entirely at the expense of artists whose work was used to feed the model.

Yes, there's the argument that automation of new things is inevitable, but we do have choices about whether the automated violation of copyright to feed the model is tolerable or not. Sure, it's a cool sexy technology and who doesn't love getting on the bandwagon of the future and all, but the ethics of modern AI development are trash and despite promises that automated AI labor will save the owner class money by doing for free what the plebes demand to be paid for, it's really as much a ponzi scheme as all those crypto currencies that don't have intrinsic value unless enough suckers can be convinced to feed the scheme.

And yet, it's a powerful technology that has potential to be a legitimate boon to humanity. I'd like to see it used to do things (like picking crops that are hard to automate with dumb machines, or cleaning trash off of beaches or out of the ocean, or refactoring boilerplate code to not use deprecated packages or to review boilerplate contract text for errors) that aren't just ways for owners to cut labor out of the economy and pocket the differences.

Perhaps, if we are going to allow AI to be a great big machine that steals inputs (like art, or writing, or code) from others and uses them to do for-profit work for their owners, the proceeds attributable to AI ought to be taxed at a 90%+ rate and used to fund a Universal Basic Income as payment for the original work that went into the AI model.

Maybe you don't think you have anything to hide today, but what about the future? Millions of women gave their period-tracking apps that kind of personal/private data when Roe was in effect because at the time, states couldn't use it to prosecute women who miscarry or get abortions. Now that Roe is gone, that data is out there and can't be recalled.

By the same token, everyone who went out and got a 23-and-me genetic test gave their genomes to private companies who can legally sell that information to insurance companies that can use that information to hike their premiums or terminate their policies if they think your genes predispose you to some expensive-to-treat condition. Also those family trees don't lie about whose kids are the product of adultery, hahahahaha

You do have things to hide in the sense that they're nobody else's business.

Also, some countries have established digital privacy as a right (in particular, EU countries) and that's not just about protecting your dirty stinky secrets, it's also about preventing social media being weaponized as political or information warfare vectors based on private information obtained without your consent. (the same profiling used to target relevant commercial ads to you is also usable to target information warfare and propaganda to your susceptible relatives, and they vote in addition to giving racist rants at holiday dinner)

In other words, your privacy is intrinsically valuable- if it wasn't, exploiting your private information wouldn't be a multi-billion-dollar industry

Y'know, it's a crime to obstruct a criminal investigation and somehow in this awful timeline it's perfectly legal when congressmen do it

That's interesting to hear; somehow my algebra 2 skipped sum notation (and it wasn't remedially covered in subsequent math classes) but I've been writing code for decades now and seeing it in code totally explains the sum notation for me

Not everything is newsworthy- after all, there are plenty of other conspiracy-theory-embracing bigots spewing racism at holiday dinners and they'll never be made famous

We now live in a place and time where publishing news that a conservative, dark-money-backed populist politician said racist things isn't going to hurt them politically. In fact, in some circles that's going to be seen as a signal of strength and if we don't learn our lessons from the rise of Trump we are going to get more where that came from, good and hard

I read that in his voice

the kids are all right

Yes. And get rid of that creepy door gap while you're at it

I think the quiet part that needs to be a bit more out loud is that while all the fingers are pointed at trans people over creeping in the ladies' room, the resulting 'bathroom panic' gives cis men cover to go into the ladies' bathroom to police who's trans or not in there and it's totally not creeping when they do that, nosirreebob

It has about the same tone as a typical autistic tech worker with an overdeveloped sense of justice and a loose sense for when it's impolitic to drop truth bombs

(for context, I am an autistic dev that's worked for some big corporations in my career)

...or blackmail. There's evidence that some of the 'missing' private emails from the Bush admin was obtained by Russian intel, and shortly after that a bunch of GOP senators spent a 4th of July being 'briefed' in Moscow on... something, and since then their public positioning vis-a-vis foreign policy has suddenly become dramatically more pro-Russia

If there was blackmail material on that email server it would explain a lot of things

Could we possibly stop appointing neoliberal boomers that haven't had an original political idea since McGovern to nation-leading posts please? That right there might help the US dramatically, especially in terms of restoring balance to economic and climate policy.

If the US was willing to lead an effort to tax polluting industry and direct the funds from that towards clean tech or energy transition, much of the rest of the world that matters would probably be willing to come along, but signals like this one from Kerry just tell the world that the US doesn't have the moral courage to even stop subsidizing fossil energy that hasn't needed subsidies for decades

The kinds of rhetoric CCC uses to influence EU policy bears a striking resemblance to the populist rhetoric that was so successful in getting US voters to demand the privatization/dismantling of the public regulatory state. In essence it boils down to arguing that Brussels, like Washington DC, shouldn't have the power to regulate businesses on behalf of its citizens because it should be left to consumers to make those decisions on their own.

This sort of rhetoric presents itself as being about empowering the individual, but when the individual is then free to choose from options that are harmful to important things like public health or the environment, are they really better-served when consumers making those retail choices in an unregulated business environment causes serious problems? Is that a sufficient reason for non-regulation of polluting industry, or against the right of the EU to regulate business on behalf of its citizenry?

When you consider that populist appeals to rugged individualism and non-regulation have consistently led to markets with glaring externalities and monopolism where they have been applied, it looks very much like when Koch dollars are spent to influence politics it's entirely an exercise in subverting the ability of nations to regulate business that would much rather not be regulated no matter how harmful its externalities might be.

It's so exhausting to live in a timeline where bullcrap like this is elevated, funded, and taken seriously instead of being ignored or discouraged.

Promoting anti-science, anti-reality conspiracy theories as the basis for political popularity just drives another stake into the heart of the faith and trust it takes to maintain democracy. I just wish we were as zealous about defending democracy from corrosive nonsense like this shit as we are about criminalizing the homeless

While this is welcome news, it's also depressing that we live in a timeline stupid enough that bathroom panics are enough of a thing that there are laws on the books like this to be struck down by judges (and of course, the fact that other judges are likely to reverse this ruling).

That's his whole plan. He doesn't have a defense, he's guilty as fuck- he's just going to ask for delays until he's won the presidency and that will get him immunity so long as he stays in office. If the courts allow that and he gets into office, America will deserve what it gets, good and hard

Wow. When they use government as a weapon to threaten people exposing their bullshit and proclaim themselves to be fighting against the weaponizing of government, it's... impressive that they can put up with the dissonance, honestly