Also at what point is an image altered? Every camera has an ISP that improves image quality, so that shouldn't be counted as an alteration, even if it can impact the image quite significantly. Then there's manual tools like photoshop, which can do things like the ISP, but also a lot more and then you got some "AI" tools that blur the lines even more. At least CNNs are just filter banks with learned kernels (to be very reductive).
The cut is a bit clearer with diffusion image generation and similar tech, as that stuff is just clearly fake, but what about img-to-img diffusion?
True, but only when you expect it. I've seen real pictures with weird lighting before and if I didn't know they were real, I would've thought of Photoshop. With some experience you know what to look for, but there have already been plenty of studies showing that AI persons can not properly be distinguished from real people in pictures.
A lack of options isn't really the same as a dictatorship. The day to day choices are sometimes hard to abstract into an intelligent vote every 2 or 4 years. The US suffers from a lack of trust in public institutions, so they aren't given enough funding or the right leadership to take a step back, take a good look and make tough choices that goes against reactionary NIMBYs.
The sprawl may very well be part of the culture. I just don't like to call everything a culture, including commuting. Commuting just seems a necessity and the choice of how and how far you commute is a function of infrastructure and land value. Sounds almost too boring to organize around, but it would be important to find a solution that works for everyone, instead of just single individuals.
How do you prevent misinformation in a free market that misleads your customers? Every problem can be greenwashed away by corporations. Even independent investigative organisations won't have the resources to really drill down and figure stuff out. Without tax funded government entities I can't see how they are made responsible.
Every free market will concentrate capital, with that power and with that information and the customers' ability to make good choices.
The car lobby thing is true for LA, but I'm not sure you can apply this to every city. What is evident, is that cities that existed before cars were invented or introduced are still more pedestrian friendly (see east coast cities or European ones for example) and the ones founded after are more grid like and car friendly.
Public transportation is only worth it if there is a high enough density of people (yeah, this sub may not like to hear it), so if you have huge sprawling suburbs it's not obvious where to even put your bus/train stations. Usually it's great to connect centers of some sort.
So yeah, if there had been more incentive to connect centers and dense clusters of population with each other, they may have planned according to that.
"Culture" is probably an overstatement. Isn't it just horrifying zoning laws that lead to sprawl and people didn't have a choice as there is a lack of public transportation?
The problem is that better wages, better working conditions and fewer hours were never a result of technology freeing up workers, but strong labor movements. The technology only allows capitalists to keep increasing productivity without letting it cost them more.
So tech isn't bad. Farmers produce more food, which is good as we need that. But yeah, as a farmer you're not looking at a growing labor market.
Agriculture and land use currently have some of the best potential to capture CO2 from the atmosphere as well as improve ecosystems that may bring back pollinators and other helpful and stabilizing organisms. Let alone the fact that we are poisoning our own water.
Yet we tend to be most conservative on that front.
You know why it's slow though, right? Specifically the meat industry is highly subsidized and they can undersell any vegan substitute to destroy their margin in the still small and slowly growing market. Even though meat production should clearly be more expensive than some vegan substitute.
Look: Consumer can either buy a product or they don't. I can't make producers stop using plastic for packaging. I can only not buy their products until some producer may think of a plastic free packaging. Change always comes from the top, not from the bottom.
What you're asking for is that consumer somehow know the details of how the products are produced. For example whether the chocolate they buy is from child slaves or not. Sure, you can read about it, but is it clearly declared in the store whether that specific chocolate is child slave free or not? The only action they can take is not buy the chocolate. Or they ask. The store clerk doesn't know better either. The producer doesn't have to disclose this, responds with a canned response that doesn't say yes or no.
Chocolate is one thing. That's not a necessity for every day life. But cars in the US. Smart phones almost everywhere. If you don't have them, you cannot participate in life. And we need to eat too.
The point is that neither employees nor consumer can be responsible for the decisions of capitalists. And they aren't held responsible by anybody, not even by normal people like you. Come on.. connecting points here with you.
Misinformation is also out there unfortunately. Can't believe for instance people are still debating whether plant-based diets are better for the climate or not.
I already don't use a car and I eat vegetarian. I've got the "individual choices" covered. The problem is that at some point you're standing in the store googling every single product and their producer to find some kind of issue with it so you can't buy it. That's not a sustainable way to live.
A recent one I watched started with 10minutes bad, fake reality TV scenes of an employee stealing from his company. It was hilarious and fun. I also appreciated the exact details about how he stole money. I did get confused however when 250k apparently got him a house, a ship and a new car.
How do I know which shop is the best? I don't. Neoliberal fantasies only work with an informed consumer, just like democracies only work with educated voters.
That's why you can't make consumers responsible for the emissions the suppliers emit.
I work at a corporation. We don't do environmentally the right thing because leadership doesn't care and operation needs to be cheap. Whenever I suggest something it falls on deaf ears.
It's very obvious who can decide to change something in a company.
The point is that the decision can't be good because no company discloses the environmental impact of a single product. So even if I had choices, I can only choose based on price. My only hope is that efficient logistics are also cheaper and better for the environment.
Also at what point is an image altered? Every camera has an ISP that improves image quality, so that shouldn't be counted as an alteration, even if it can impact the image quite significantly. Then there's manual tools like photoshop, which can do things like the ISP, but also a lot more and then you got some "AI" tools that blur the lines even more. At least CNNs are just filter banks with learned kernels (to be very reductive). The cut is a bit clearer with diffusion image generation and similar tech, as that stuff is just clearly fake, but what about img-to-img diffusion?