And so many things were just ‘common sense,’ and not enshrined in laws because the thought was that anyone breaking them would be held accountable by the populace. We now have a critical mass of stupid, self absorbed, or malicious people that laws don’t matter, much less norms.
I love this list of oaths we (collectively) take as part of taking office… However, what I think is missing is that we have no oath-breaker laws – to my knowledge – that punish people for breaking their oaths. The military might be an exception, as there seems to be a penalty for ‘false-swearing,’ but I don’t know how that’s enforced and how objective it is.
Theoretically, oath-breaking is a social issue, and so we’re back on the issue where there are tons of guidelines that imply that we should all behave, and we make people “swear” that they will behave certain ways, with the assumption that if they break those oaths, they will be punished socially – by being primaried if elected, voted out, “sanctioned”, or similar – but these punishments require the society to determine the oath was broken. When that contract is broken and there are enough people who agree that ignoring the oath is acceptable, those oath-breakers have no punishment.
Presidents ignoring the constitution, service-members following orders that are unconstitutional, judges failing to be impartial, etc. The solution is supposed to be ostracism, impeachment… social. But when the social penalties are outweighed by the potential gains, then an oath is just empty words to someone with no morals.
The party of law and order, of family values, of tradition and respect certainly appears to have turned a blind eye to anyone disregarding oaths or promises that they find inconvenient.They preach mightily about how to be good, but are seldom good when they think no one is looking.
I find it funny how most of these oaths end with ‘so help me god.’ Maybe at one time, the rich and powerful feared god’s wrath. They certainly don’t now. As an atheist, I don’t fear it either, but that doesn’t stop me from being kind to others and striving to make the world a better place.
sadly. I don’t have enough money to turn this shit-hose off.
Gen AI is neat, and I use it for personal processes including code, image gen, llm/chat; but it is sooooo faaaar awaaaay from being a real game changer - while all the people poised to profit off it claim it is - that it’s just insane to claim it’s the next wave. evidence: all the creative (photo/art/code/etc) people who are adamantly against it and have espoused reasoning.
There’s another story on my feed about a 10-year-old refactoring a code base with a LLM. Go look at the comments from actual experts that take into account things like unit tests, readability, manageability, security. Humans have more context than any AI will.
LLMs are not intelligent. They are patently not. They make shit up constantly, since that is exactly what they do. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, the shit they make up is mostly accurate… but do you want to rely on them?
When a doctor prescribes you the wrong drug, you can sue them as a recourse. When a software company has a data breach, there is often a class-action (better than nothing) as a recourse. When an AI tells you to put glue on your pizza to hold the toppings, there is no recourse, since the AI is not a legal thing and the company disclaims all liability for its output. When an AI denies your health insurance claim because of inscrutable reasons, there is no recourse.
In the first two, there is a penalty for being wrong, which is in effect an incentive to be correct – to be accurate, to be responsible.
In the last, as an AI llm/agent/fuckingbuzzword, there is no penalty and no incentive. The AI just is as good as its input, and half the world is fucking stupid, so if we average out all the world’s input, we get “barely getting by” as a result. A coding AI is at least partially trained on random stackoverflow posts asking for help. The original code there is wrong!
Sadly, it’s not going anywhere. But people who rely on it will find short-term success for long-term failure. And a society relying on it is doomed. AI relies on the creative works that already exist. If we don’t make any new things, AI will stagnate and die. Where will we be then?
There are places AI/LLM/Machine-Learning can be used successfully and helpfully, but they are niche. The AI bros need to be figuring out how to quickly meet a specific need instead of trying to meet all needs at the same time. Think the early 2000-s Folding at Home, how to convince republicans to wear a fucking mask during covid, why we shouldn’t just eat the billionaires*.
*Hermes-3 says cannibalism is “barbaric” in most cultures, but otherwise doesn’t give convincing arguments.
Become more involved. Do you know your mayor?
If you are not helping pick the candidates on the ballot, then you just need to pick the lesser evil. If you want to do more than that, then be part of the decision of WHO ends up on the ballot, because that process has already started.
There’s a significant hurdle to run for even the mayoral office: it doesn’t pay well relative to a corporate job, and doesn’t have the same job security. People can only run for the decision-making positions when they already have enough wealth to be comfortable without a “real job.” Help find or select people with your values and we can take this back.
If you are mad at your options, the solution is not to give up, but to make better options.
It’s almost like you read Lucid’s message, decided to type up a reply, but then missed the fucking point. These establishment dems are only ‘allies on some issues’ because we keep fighting amongst ourselves on what the top priority is instead of getting anything useful done.
Yes, we have “dems” that are not solid on issues we/you/I think are important, but the result is that when we don’t vote for them, the much worse regressive party wins and makes things shittier for everyone.
I do agree that the solution is to get involved. Start local and engage with your local democratic org. Help support or find people to run for office with your opinions, but - and this is crucial - when someone better than a republican is on the ticket, fucking vote for them, even if they are not your perfect politician.
If you are not involved in local org politics, you can use our favorite mantra: vote blue no matter who. By doing so, you are ceding your opinion to the people who have more at stake or are more invested, but at least you are not letting evil win by default.
Fully agreed. On the service-provider side, we have ‘safe harbor’ laws: A site isn’t liable for copyrighted user-generated content as long as they have mechanisms to take down items when notified.
Liability-wise: The payment processors should have no fucking insight into what is being sold, only that they handle the transactions. Therefore, they should have no liability, similar to “safe harbor”.
Reputation-wise: I can almost see a history where Visa, for example, used a statement like “we don’t handle transactions for X” as a marketing ploy… but that is way past where we are. There’s no chance of reputational damage to a payment processor for the items for which they handled a payment. Combined with the above, if I say I’m giving $20 to Tim, you give $20 to Tim and take it from me. Done. Not your problem.
As another commenter stated, the payment processor should be a dumb pipe, and anything illegal being sold should be a liability for the seller or buyer. The idea of a moral judgement of the processor is as stupid as a water pipe to your house cutting off the flow if your shower runs too long.
The real problem is the politicians, or lobbyists/influencers, who are sending bribes to each other to gain advantage… but visa doesn’t have a problem handling a venmo transaction for ‘tuition’.
Let me buy horny games until after you block world superpower corruption first. But honestly, don’t even do that. Just handle moving the money when someone send it. That’s your only job.
This look to be amazing. I live by a CLI, but most browsers have some keyboard shortcuts at best. This one seems to have the capability to be fully KB using a VIM-like command line, which is awesome.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Another thing you can do is to separate the grease from any residual solids.
If you have a jar of bacon grease with brown bits floating around in it, you can put it in a pot with a similar amount of water and bring it all up to a boil or just near it for just a moment. The grease will sit on top of the hot water, but anything else will fall down. Then let the pot cool and put it in the fridge to solidify the grease. You can then scoop the now-solid grease in big chunks and put it back in the jar and discard any bits in the water.
I learned this from people who do at-home soap-making from their rendered fats. They would repeat it a few times before adding lye, as it will leach impurities such as salt, aromatic and favor compounds from the fat, but I find doing it once or twice leaves me with a nice cooking fat that still has bacon-y aroma.
Hey… They have a public contact page that looks like it would be taken somewhat seriously, as it feels legal in nature. I’ll be letting them know that their leadership is engaging in unfair deals shortly. Anyone want to join in?
Speakup@krafton.com Via https://krafton.com/en/speakup
Worst case, we get ignored. Best is that they take notice that the audience they bought isn’t theirs blindly.
Same. Fuck greedy publishers/IP holders. I want to see more Subnautica, but also want to ignore anything krafton touches.
Apropos the setting, I think the high seas is the way to accomplish both, but i fear that will just result in the studio going dark altogether.
Unknown Worlds has done good work, but will probably be yet another casualty of greedy leadership.
I get the thrust of the song, but I have a question for you and/or anyone else who has insight:
I make small aggressions, like OP, where I assume I’m costing a corpo and giving to an artist through it, even if minuscule.
Examples:
Similar to OP, I have a streaming service ‘downloaded’ playlist of songs I like. I tend to leave my PC playing them in shuffle/repeat during my workday. I might have my volume on or off depending on my level of focus, but I can’t see how that “engagement” doesn’t benefit the artist without costing me anything – maybe a smidge more electricity.
Since I saw The Spiffing Brit’s runtime video, I no longer close a youtube tab if I decide I want something else. I mute the tab, set the speed to .25 and ignore it for a while. Costs me electricity, not that much bandwidth, and presumably pays the channel more than usual. Maybe fucks with analytics per-video, but probably not enough to bother the creator, and if it fucks with ‘the algorithm’ and pushes people to channels I already like, then that’s a google problem.
I also have an Epic Games account, where I “buy” every single free game. I assume these have either already paid the developer a fixed fee for supporting development, or are paying based on sales volume. Either way, they presumably paid money to be able to offer these as a loss-leader. Most are games I would not have bought anyway, so I’m not costing the developer a potential sale and I will never buy anything through Epic games, so it should be just a loss. I actually want insight on this one, in case there are devs/publishers here. If this costs you when I buy your free game, there might be others like me who just need to know we’re not helping.
Aside from the fact that my engagement with these platforms could be used as leverage (’ we have X million active users…'), I can’t see any negative to my attacks on them. It’s possible the artists can’t perceive it, but if the corpos love it, they wouldn’t make me pass a CAPTCHA to buy a game.
The question, then, is: Am I hurting the artists, or helping them?
This. We’ve seen what republicans want to do. We need to stop them and vote ‘not-republican’ when we can before the ability to do so is gone. The problem is we cannot stop there and only vote every 2-4 years for the least-bad option, we need to make better options. “Both sides” is reductive and hides the problem.
Get involved: find and support people who have your views for all offices: city, county, state, federal, maybe even HOA. Most of these are important. If the incumbent is not working for us, we need to fight them and suggest someone better. If the incumbent is unchallenged, then that’s a travesty and they need a primary, if the same party, or an opponent.
For the a while now we’ve seen the ‘left’ chase the ‘center’ and people like OP are mad at this. The solution is not ‘vote blue no matter who’, but that is a bandage to slow the bleeding and will resonate with the less-involved allies we have. The solution is to prove that we are the majority and push our own into leadership roles where they can make things better.
If you’re angry right now, run for office or canvas for someone who is. Being mad, depressed or just bitching online isn’t fixing anything. You can make things better, and it starts with finding a ‘blue’ worth voting for.
That looks great!
Growing up, I despised eggs except the ones that were thoroughly disguised(as in leavening)… I had a bad egg-salad experience as a kid and it stuck with me. In the last few years, though, I’ve come around and can enjoy them.
I’ll have to give them a shot as a pizza topping. I imagine they vaguely fit the same texture/umami role that a slice of mozzarella does for a margherita pizza.
Thanks for the suggestion and enjoy yours tomorrow!
Everything except the eggs sounds great – and I’m not judging the egg, just curious:
I don’t think of egg as a topping that would survive being baked. Does that go on before or after cooking? sliced or diced?
I just tried to open a soda can with my somewhat modern can opener (try them, btw, no sharp can edges) but it doesn’t fit the lid of my can. My day is ruined.
Like many things, a tool is only as smart as the wielder. There’s still a ton of critical thinking that needs to happen as you do something as simple as bake bread. Using an AI tool to suggest ingredients can be useful from a creative perspective, but should not be assumed accurate at face value. Raisins and Dill? maybe ¯\(ツ)/¯, haven’t tried that one myself.
I like AI, for being able to add detail to things or act as a muse, but it cannot be trusted for anything important. This is why I’m ‘anti-AI’. Too many people (especially in leadership roles) see this tool as a solution for replacing expensive humans with something that ‘does the thinking’; but as we’ve seen elsewhere in this thread, AI CANT THINK. It only suggests items that are statistically likely to be next/near based on its input.
In the Security Operations space, we have a phrase “trust but verify”. For anything AI, I would use 'doubt, then verify" instead. That all said. AI might very well give you a pointer to the place to ask how much motrin an infant should get. Hopefully, that’s your local pediatrician.
Brother is the other secret, though it seem like maybe even they have turned… the problem with making a solid piece of equipment that will last for a decade is you consume your customer base and can’t show ‘growth’ constantly.
My Brother color laser (model 3170, bought in 2016) doesn’t print the perfect photos, but that’s not what I use it for. I print coloring sheets and camp forms for my kiddos and random forms for adult life. It ran on the original toner carts for around 5 years, with black being replaced first on its own. There’s no inkjet in the world that will have 5 year-old carts work, but laser toner doesn’t dry out.
Real talk. Ubisoft in general have made some great games. Their current business model is to pump out repeats of things that worked, and so earn our scorn for them ‘as of right now’.
Who played AC 1 and didn’t want more. That we’re now up to AC 76 doesn’t diminish that they made something fun before they beat it to death.
Even their primary accomplishment of making every open-world game follow their formula of ‘1000 sidequests, item hunts and mini-puzzles’ doesn’t detract from the fact that those were really fun the first few times.
I wish the best to all the ex-Ubisoft developers. Go make cool shit without the $business oversight$. In an ideal world, the publisher should be there to cover the gaps when a new concept falls flat, not to force developers to keep doing the same profitable thing and otherwise stifle innovation.
As a description of the levels of power I personally have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
I’m still at ballot box myself.
“Yelling at strangers [on the internet]” is the Soap Box, and while we’re pretty well past that as a country due to social media echo chambers and the like, it’s still useful. If there’s enough social pressure on a given topic, we can change policy. At the very least, being vocal (including online) lets other people know they are not alone.
I believe that we have effectively lost the jury box at this time. The supreme court seems to have abandoned rationality in a variety of cases to-date, and even in a best case, the judicial system works far too slowly compared to how fast new bullshit gets thrown at them by the current executive. Not to mention the cost to an individual average voter to try and sue would be prohibitive. Groups like SPLC and ACLU are helping here, but see point 2 (too slow).
I don’t need to defend myself, but I have voted in every municipal election I’ve been able to since my early twenties in 2004. About the only way I haven’t used my power here is by running myself, but I don’t think I’m qualified for public office and would only siphon money from someone better who might win.
That leaves us with the ammo box. For progressives in solidly blue states, whose votes were counted, but ultimately found irrelevant, this is the next step, hence firebombing tesla dealerships (Can’t find a recent walmart news article, but the idea is still there). In my purple state, I’m in my local precinct org and canvassing, but that doesn’t really help when the margin of victory for your party is like 20%.
I will acknowledge the point that Americans – in general – are apathetic. I have a significant amount of distaste for anyone who says they are ‘not political’ or who didn’t vote in 2024 or earlier. Sometimes though, you get a wake-up call after the fact. Anyone who didn’t vote or voted for trump in 2024, but is now pissed off has been awakened (dare I say, “woke”) and that should be celebrated, not derided. I love the leopards-eating-faces memes, but we really need to be reaching out to these people instead of mocking them. There is now a chink in their ignorance-armor.
You got a lot of anger in responses to your posts in this thread. The ‘in general’ phrase carries a lot of weight, but isn’t all that applicable here. This community is likely to be like me and very involved or at least informed. Phrases like “You are all at fault…” is going to raise hackles, even when clarified by ‘proportional to your share of power that you didn’t use.’
As well as describing MTG as a jezebel, as explained by uid0gid0, the sentence structure is interesting:
“I may be X, but at least I’m not Y” would imply that both X and Y are negative traits, but that Y is worse. The sentence doesn’t really make sense if the X is to be seen as positive: “I may be nice, but at least I’m not a jerk.” Thus, Loomer is implying that being Jewish is already a strike against her in her own eyes.