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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 22nd, 2023

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  • Definitely not a question of AI sentience, I’d say we’re as close to that as the Wright Brothers were to figuring out the Apollo moon landing. But, it definitely raises questions on whether or not we should be giving everybody access to machines that can fabricate erroneous statements like this at random and what responsibility the companies creating them have if their product pushes someone to commit suicide or radicalizes them into committing an act of terrorism or something. Because them shrugging and saying, “Yeah, it does that sometimes. We can’t and won’t do anything about it, though” isn’t gonna cut it, in my opinion.







  • I think Facebook had an advantage in originally being targeted at college kids (I think you even needed a school ID to make an account originally) before becoming open to everyone. This meant that the userbase was a little older than that of most social media at the time and it worked as a way to stay in touch with people after you graduated. Then, when they opened it up, it became a way to stay in touch with family as well, which got the parents onboard with something that they had just considered a fad before, like MySpace.






  • Interestingly, underground lines aren’t feasible in my hometown because of how close the water table is to the surface. Any trench deep enough to bury cables in would have to worry about flooding with groundwater or saltwater in some places.

    The water table is so high that not only are there many places where basements would flood 100% of the year, but the majority of homes still have septic tanks instead of town sewage lines, and you can find houses where the lawn has been raised up with 3 or 4 feet of concrete to raise the septic tank to comply with modern regulations to avoid contaminating the groundwater supply.




  • The moment you see people who voted for Harris assaulting third-party voters, you let me know. Some of the takes are over the top, but where they’re coming from is completely understandable. Dehumanization is an attempt to rationalize away empathy to prevent guilt and trauma from what people think is the fight to come.

    The moral high road is littered with the corpses of people who tried to fight fair. In self-defense, there are 2 rules: a battle not fought is a battle won, and, if you have to hurt a man, hurt him so bad that you need never fear his vengeance.

    If doxxing a couple of assholes like this is enough to intimidate the bigots who are now emboldened to attack and rape people and save even a few lives, then it’s worth it - we’ve solved things with rule number one. If it doesn’t stop them, then fyi: the back of the eye socket is thin enough to push through with your thumb and into the brain behind it. There’s no such thing as “fighting dirty” when it comes to survival. There’s no room for mercy when somebody is trying to kill you, and these people have tried before and say that they’re going to try again.

    We all hope it doesn’t come to that, but it is better to be prepared and not need it than to wish you had it when the jackboots are stomping on you. And when somebody has told you who they are, you believe them. If it quacks like a Nazi, swims like a Nazi, and goose-steps like a Nazi, then it ain’t a duck.


  • There is an alternative that I wish I could think of the name of that communities have been using for a number of years now to set up cheap, small-scale satellite internet networks. I looked into it once as an alternative for my neighborhood to dealing with the bullshit that is Comcast and Verizon, and ended up getting an ad for milsec strategic level network infrastructure from Boeing or something. Regardless, it’s a known and proven alternative that’s cheaper than the big guys and has hit a point where some places have set it up as a part of local government run infrastructure.


  • I think after 4 years of Trump, if there are still elections in 2028, we’ll see a Democrat elected president simply because of the fact that how bad it is under Trump will be right in people’s faces. In 2032, however, we’ll definitely see the Dems lose to somebody even worse than Trump for exactly why they lost in 2016 and 2024.

    The Dems don’t learn anything and lose, then 4 years later they win because the Republicans made things worse, and then they learn nothing, double down, and lose again, starting the cycle all over again.



  • As somebody who was in middle school when 9/11 happened and was terrified then, and is terrified now, let me tell you why it’s different this time.

    W was a warmonger and a figurehead for Cheney from a family of career politicians, but he was a politician and was limited in what he could do by things like the Supreme Court. Trump is none of those and has no checks or balances. He’s a failed businessman who has bankrupted every company he’s ever owned (except for the real estate empire he inherited from his father) who has no idea what the laws are, nor does he care. He doesn’t know what it takes to run a country, and he sure as hell won’t put anybody who does into a position of power. Those are reserved for his sycophants.

    He’s a self-styled Mussolini who “wants generals like Hitler had,” keeps Hitler’s speeches next to his bed to read before falling asleep (according to one of his ex wives in the book she wrote in the 90s), and has both made loyalty to him the number one priority for the people in his party as well as said party having stacked all positions of power with his supporters. The Supreme Court has said that he cannot be held accountable for any crimes committed as President, and he has talked about imprisoning his political opponents.

    W was a continuation of Reagan politicians. Trump is a fascist who talks the same way that Jim Jones did while praising people like Putin and Kim Jong Un and has already attempted a violent coup without any real repercussions. The Republicans of Bush’s era have been labeled as cowards, traitors, and communists by Trump’s party.

    The only things today’s Republican care about are gaining and keeping power and hurting anybody their bigoted egos demand.