Whats_your_reasoning @ Whats_your_reasoning @lemmy.world

In case you can't tell, I'm passionate about rationality and critical think

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10 mo. ago

Lucky for you, now’s a great time to snap up cheap, used Teslas without giving a cent to Musk. Plenty of people that already bought them now want to sell them because they are worried about vandals. But if that’s not a concern for you, then good news!

He added that the merger would, “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach."

He already owns and runs Xitter as a propaganda tool. Now he's openly mixing it with his own bots.

Does anyone else get a really bad feeling about this? I see a lot of comments talking about this financially, but I haven't seen any comments talking about the disinformation potential that comes with artificially seeding a social media site with his own AI bots. Granted, Grok's responses have been based (so far), but that's not guaranteed to last.

I don't know exactly what the game plan is here, but the pieces are all laid out for Musk to spread his influence behind AI anonymity. That worries me.

Assassination would just make Trump into a MAGA martyr. They would be riled up and energized.

Yes, then the next question is, whom would they rally behind after Trump? We can see a chain of command for the line of presidency, but without Trump, there'd be a power vacuum at the top of his cult. Either it gets filled with an acceptable substitute, or the obligate-followers in his fandom won't know where to direct their energy.

I wouldn't be surprised if such a power vacuum created drama. Would Musk still be pulling so many strings in the government if Vance were president? Would he find a way to usurp even more unconstitutional government power, like how he controls DOGE? Would Vance tolerate Musk's intrusions at all?

Or would his loyalist followers rally behind someone completely different, like a media personality? They're looking for charisma in a leader, after all, and neither Vance nor Musk have that the way Trump (or someone professionally on TV) does. It's possible some right-wing boner rises up through the crowd. Then, since Trumpsters naturally orient themselves toward the biggest dick around, he (Trump's successor would almost certainly be a "he") would get all their attention.

The way I see it is, fascists are going to paint their opposition as an extreme enemy no matter what, so why not just be real?

I'm reaching back into my heart here, but I see no difference between the fascists in charge and the bullies of my past. The day I stopped giving a rat's ass what bullies thought of me, and decided to be myself despite what they said about me, was the day I first made real friends. People respond strongly to integrity, it's just that we haven't seen that much of it from politicians in the past few decades, so it's easy to forget how powerful it is.

As a country, as voters, and as potential politicians, we need to do the one thing few Democrats have had the guts to do, and make it absolutely crystal clear who we are and what we stand for. People want politicians who aren't the status quo, and who have the strength not to fold just because those in charge don't like it - that's why so many "ordinary" people voted for Trump. Those of us who've stood up to bullies and thrived afterward already know - a lot of people would absolutely agree with us, they're just waiting to hear a strong voice they agree with.

Fuck their fear. We need to stop molding our identity around what old conservatives think. The youth aren’t scared of socialism, and they’re the people we need to reach. We need a party that will stand up for us, and that starts by not neutering ourselves to appease our opposition.

I feel you. I've been thinking a lot about my options lately (as I'm sure we all are.) As appealing as the idea to leave the country is, there's some part of me that's screaming, "No. Our place is here. These is our home. These are our neighbors. This is our fight."

I hope those most vulnerable can find a way to stay safe... But as for myself, this system has kept me too poor to afford having kids, let alone owning a house, or any other assets, without hope of affording retirement, trapped in a system where I'm basically a slave running in a hamster wheel... So what have I got to fear? I'm going to stay here and organize.

You're a good parent.

Meanwhile, my (immigrant) partner and I opened up about our fears to my family last Christmas, and my mom told me not to worry because my partner is "one of the good ones." Ugh.

So yeah, thank you for being rational.

You nailed it with your username.

(I also hate that I agree with everything you said. It's so hard to be hopeful these days.)

My favorite thing about this comment is that your username is ricecake.

Cake appreciates cake.

Wikipedia says a "North American granola bar is similar to a flapjack." It definitely looks like what I'd call a granola bar.

Hey, while we're here and talking dialects, I've got a similar question for UK folks. What the U.S. calls "cookies," you call "biscuits." So then what do you call this kind of biscuit?

(Unrelated side note: I'd just like to express my gratitude that Lemmy can easily handle links to URLs that end in a closed parenthesis. Back on Reddit, that caused a ton of broken links, but on Lemmy it just works.)

If you mean "a loan translation," especially one where the distinct parts of a word are directly translated part-by-part, the English term for that is calque.

That is, if your local language translates pan = pan, and cakes = quecas, then "panquecas" would be a calque.

They also say "the best things in life are free," but then I end up dropping $300 at the dispensary.

Somebody's been lying.

That word goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, making it far older than English itself. In fact, it's older than Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, all of which decended from Proto-Indo-European.

The more you know! 🌠

I am the exact same, friend. My hair becomes a big oil slick after only a day without washing and it's really obvious. Which is part of why this particular myth bothers me so much.

First, as teens, we had uninformed randos without oily skin telling us to heal our acne problems by putting nonsense like toothpaste and silly putty on our faces. Now, those same uninformed, non-oily randos tell us that our greasy hair can be solved by not washing it.

But my dermatologist was right about the acne care they recommended, I'm inclined to trust them about my scalp care too.

My family is like this. All we do is make fun of each other. It’s kept mostly internal (including close family friends) but that’s how we show love.

Oof, my mom is like this. My entire childhood was: bullying at school, bullying on the playground, then coming home to mom making jokes at my expense while telling me to "learn to laugh at myself" when I got upset because her words sounded exactly like what bullies would say.

It's one thing to poke fun at friends and peers who share your humor, but I hope adults recognize that kids are still developing their senses of self, and stuff like this can fuck them (and their relationships with their parents) up for life.

It’s what happens when you’ve been stripping your hair dry for years and your scalp is trying it’s best to fix the problems you’re causing. Stop causing problems and it’ll normalize.

Please do explain how an exocrine gland on the scalp is supposed to know how much oil is on a strand of dead hair cells, located inches away from the skin?

Thank you for the links. I already knew about prions, but I'd never seen the Med Twins before. A channel where an attractive young man talks about medical science in a foreign accent? You just found my catnip.

The revolution will not be televised.

Hair training is a myth, so take their advice with a grain of salt.

I'm sorry to have to say, but the idea of "hair training" is a myth.

The oil glands (which are known as sebaceous glands, and produce an oil called "sebum") are controlled by genetics, hormones, and stress. Sebaceous glands don't have any sort of "sensor" to tell them when to produce more/less oil, so washing or not washing won't make a difference.