LukeZaz @ LukeZaz @beehaw.org

Posts

5

Comments

233

Joined

1 yr. ago

For those interested, Skip Intro's done a couple of video essays on Jon Stewart that cover very well why he isn't a particularly good person to listen to.

If you're interested in someone similar in category but better in substance, I (and Skip Intro, for that matter) recommend John Oliver. He isn't perfect, but he's generally on the mark.

If there's one thing LLMs are very good at, it's talking about things their creators don't want them to with barely any effort from the end user.

This is what we call "good news."

Lol so what?

He's the President. Him giving the pardons directly contradicts the idea that the pardons are given "in recognition of the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility," rendering that portion of your source irrelevant.

Those who're refusing his pardon are the most respectable and sympathetic of them, because they are choosing to stand up for their principles and own up to their mistakes rather than accept a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card that nobody should've gotten to begin with. There is nothing whatsoever that is selfish about that, and suggesting they deserve to lose their rights as a result is outright cruel.

ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime

Emphasis mine. Trump is not "recognizing acceptance of responsibility," he outright thinks what they did was good. Accepting his help is to all but say "I did nothing wrong." You should know that; the people who refused the pardons sure did.

Maybe they don’t deserve whatever rights they’ve given up on that basis alone.

That sure is one hell of a nasty statement.

Honestly, after the week we've had, these kinds of people are who I want to hear about. They learned, regretted, and became better. They give me hope.

There's a chance that some of this is not as genuine as it seems, sure—Riddle mentions his job prospects here, and one could make an argument for the publicity of doing this. But I've had enough negativity for a while, and I'd like to believe it's honest.

I really don't feel like even that is as different as we think it is. Not because I don't think China is breathing down the necks of its citizenry – I absolutely do – but because I think America is doing it just as much. We just don't realize it because of the immense lengths local media goes through to make it look like it's not happening. Exonerative tense, copaganda, et cetera. Shit, it hasn't been much more than a decade since the Snowden leaks happened, and yet as far as I know we have no good reason to believe any of that has stopped at all.

It's easy not to think so if you've not personally experienced it. But it's important to remember that if you're not privileged, there are a lot of reasons to feel very oppressed in this country.

^{\* Mentioning America here because it's what I have personal experience with, not because I'm assuming that's where you're from.}

Now this would be the dream.

Doesn't really counter anything I said in my comment, so I stand with what I said. I won't complain if war profiteers want to self-sabotage.

Simpler explanation: Trump is a fascist, and wants more power. Having more territory means having more power.

The comment I was replying to insinuated that Russian propaganda was the primary if not only factor. Which is, again, ridiculous. Besides, as far as I'm concerned, Russian propaganda is an excuse used to prevent people from realizing how many of our problems have a domestic source, and that our government is and has been insanely terrible for a long time. Is it there? Sure, but it's far from the biggest issue. Capitalism is an excellent incubator for fascism all by itself, and you don't need an outside push to make the decay hit.

Personally, I'd rather more countries stop fucking around with LLMs generally, thanks!

This is honestly such a stupid goddamn thing to compete over. Maybe I should be thankful in that regard, then, since it keeps the U.S. and China's ridiculous dick-swinging contest more focused on areas that don't actually matter, rather than weapons development programs that are eager to ruin our rights and our lives all the more.

Kill a billionaire, another takes his place. You have to make systemic change in order to actually remove billionaires from the equation. That requires a lot more than a bullet. Organizing will always be more effective.

This is exactly what I do, and I think it's honestly a very healthy way to engage with that kind of content. If you find someone you like, and/or who has a lot of overlap on preferences, then that's a great way to get an idea for how much you'd like a game.

Hell, even if you don't tend to prefer the same things, if the person reviewing is sufficiently passionate or entertaining, you can still develop an appreciation for why someone else likes what they do. I've absolutely struggled trying to get into Fallout: New Vegas for a variety of reasons, but I still respect it a lot because Hbomberguy had a very compelling video on what he liked about it.

Fascist rhetoric does not require Russian propaganda to spread. If you feel this way because right-wing talking points and Russia tend to line up, that's because Russia's government is terribly right-wing and has been for decades. But correlation is not causation. Blaming Russia for its own fascist trending is perfectly correct; blaming the country for everyone's fascism problems is ridiculous.

Personally, I really dislike thinking like this. Blaming Russia for everything distracts us from problems our own countries made all on their own. It's an overly-simplistic answer to a complicated and wide-reaching set of problems, and prevents us from properly thinking about those issues.

Someone being fired and replaced by someone else is not inherently wrong, and that doesn't change at all whether they're an immigrant or not. What you seem to be complaining about is the practice of companies doing so specifically so that they can get a cheaper worker who can be abused more, or doing so when the original employee had done nothing wrong; however, phrasing this as "an H1B visa holder is working a job that should be occupied by a domestic worker" is the absolute wrong way to go about it, because this makes it sound as though an immigrant having a job is fundamentally less worthwhile than a citizen having it.

Why are you singling out one small part of their comment to the exclusion of the rest?

That's the fault of the employer, not immigrants. Immigrants having jobs is never the issue.

A friendly reminder to everybody here that the problem with this is not that "H-1B immigrants have the job instead," but that "H-1B immigrants can be easily abused via deportation threats."

It's an easy thing to forget when you've got headlines like this one that subtly phrase this scenario (intentionally or not) as though it's the "immigrants work here now" part that's the problem. Were it that H-1B workers were properly protected, and citizens were given sufficient social safety nets and welfare programs to thrive despite this, there'd be no issue whatsoever.

The Cybertruck is very much an actual shitty thing that Tesla does. Sure, maybe they don't literally "have a habit of exploding all on their own," but I don't think Gork was exactly trying to play off as an authority on the topic. Just mocking Cybertrucks being shit.

Nobody's attacking EVs writ large, here. Just Elon and his awful ideas.

This has two issues with it that are sourced from the fact that most people here are likely from the States or similar. Namely:

1. How are we supposed to do anything about China or Russia? It's anger for its own sake.
2. Criticism of the U.S. is unlikely to make Americans racist towards themselves. Sinophobia, meanwhile, is a real risk.

This aside, I personally am irritated by the quantity moreso than anything else. As I said elsewhere, it's the same few users, and I find it obsessive. It stops sounding to me like "I want people to be aware of particular issues from China" and starts sounding to me like "I want to bombard people with all possible negativity about China until they hate everything related to the place as much as I do."

Thanks to these folks, Beehaw virtually always has at least one post about China or Russia on its front page. Often several. Credit where it's due; I've seen a pro-Palestine post here and there, which I appreciate. But Christ, I'm sick of the rest. Blocks are fair, but I feel like that just hides the issue rather than solving it. I feel like I'm seeing a propaganda mill in action, and I don't like the idea of just ignoring it.