Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)KU
Posts
0
Comments
186
Joined
5 mo. ago

  • Oh trust me, the Danish people find this highly criricisable. It's been debated a lot over the past months - but the government - which is made up of the neoliberal parties who's always had their tongues way up USA's ass - has done everything they can to push it under the rug and to make it as secretive as possible. These people see only profit and the thought of "losing" USA as a partner is worse than the fact that we just invited the enemy in - with a deal where they can do whatever they want to do and we can't even take them to court. Officially it's because of "the Russian threat" but the only country that'd ever invade Denmark or has ever threatened to do so is USA.. Russia has a few other countries to go through and they can't even win their current war.

    We've just always been an American puppet state.

  • The Danish news ran a story as to why Greenland was so important to Trump.

    Apparently the special deal we did with the Americans in 1949 or whatever is tied to NATO membership. The US presence on the island is entirely dependent upon them being a member of NATO. Were the Americans to withdraw they'd have to shut down Pituffik and give up all their interests in the Arctic.

    As to why Greenland is important - apart from the hope that resources can be extracted in a profitabel way - is, as you say, the northern shipping lanes (and theoretically the Russian military threat) as well as various possibilities with the changing climate. And of course it's a classic "mine is bigger than yours" contest

  • I remember the time before everyone and their mother lived chronically online and were constantly bombarded with (fake) news. Terrible stuff - wars, famine, whatnot - has always happened, now we just know about it instantly.

  • Absolutely a nuanced area. But on top of not modelling random people as full individuals it's hard to determine what spying on people might actually mean. I don't really want to defend working for a company as nefarious as Palantir - even if I honestly hardly knew them before Trump #2 - but convincing yourself that gathering people's data isn't problematic is quite easy, and we all inherently accept a wide array of surveillance measures as - willing or unwilling - members of state entities, be it a video camera in a clothing store or governments logging our tax data. Then comes the fact that employees below the level of "board of directors" usually don't know everything going on in the company; I wouldn't fault a junior dev choosing to work for, say, 'cool' Google or Apple in 2017.

    Of course it's relevant that humans are egocentrical animals; I wouldn't give my own life to save five people that I don't know in Moldova. Being too empathetic is a poor trait in a dog eat dog world. Of course we need standards and to hold others up to these standards; I don't know your friend, what he does at Palantir or when he started working there - maybe he's a lazy ass that holds them back haha - and I do think, especially with all that's transpired the past 5 months, that it's a problematic company to be part of - I just wanted to discuss that I don't think it's just lack of empathy

  • Sure he does, intellectually, just like I understand the ramifications of buying a smartphone, clothes "made in Bangladesh", or using a public AI model. Still the human conscience doesn't apply too much significance to something that abstract. It doesn't keep me up at night that my lithium is mined by Congolese children - but if I had to buy it personally from a one-armed indentured labourer I'm sure I'd stop immediately. "Out of sight out of mind" isn't an excuse for committing heinous acts, I'm just saying that it's not simply that he "doesn't care about other people"

  • A couple dozen of Danish municipalities are working on replacing Google and Microsoft entirely in schools with a project called OS2Skole (skole meaning "school"). It's expected to save them around €3 million in yearly and the intention is to de-Googleify and de-Microsoftify children already from an early age and to make it open source.

    https://www.os2.eu/os2skole

    Mind you that the project was started before Trump got re-elected.

  • I think it can be difficult to relate to such abstract concepts and consequences that you don't feel directly. After all, it'd be much easier to press on a button that'd kill 10 000 people living 10 000 km away from you than to stab one person to death. Out of sight out of mind.

    My point being that I don't think he's indifferent to people that he doesn't know, he's simply not able to process all the ramifications of this particular thing. The effects of data collection and manipulation is quite subtle, after all, like the frog in the slow burning pot

  • It's a case of a few opportunists ruining it for the many. As with football celebrations, street parties, or anything. It's a damn shame that their greed ruins the legitimacy of protesting though

  • I'm from one of the countries that the US has consistently threatened and badmouthed. Conceptually, the US is dead to me. I have no doubt that the people - and even our governments - no longer view the US as allies. But the country is too rich and powerful not to be an important factor globally no matter how many bridges they burn during this authoritarian and regarded spell

  • In some ways, yes. American soft power and trust in the country just got fully tanked, but I see it as unrealistic that the country won't still be a superpower trying to insert itself into everything.. it just won't have a lot of allies. But then again they control all of social media (minus Tiktok) so I'll bet they'll sway some assbrains around the world anyway, like with the election in Poland.

    The tech and military industries in USA are too powerful that it'll lose all of its relevance. Of course, the people will live increasingly worse lives - I just hope it'll at least hit Republicans the worst

  • Most of all the Russians simply can't stomach a reality where they're not a feared global superpower, to such a degree that they'd rather shoot themselves in the foot and be a shithole rather than just a regular better functioning nation

  • I'm impressed by how many narratives you're able to tie me to out of the blue. And just for the record my parents are from Iran so take your "Europeans and people of European descent" bla bla narrative somewhere else. Geopolitics is filled with nefarious actors and calling out any of them is never a problem. You're a problem.