• 1 Post
  • 38 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
cake
Cake day: September 6th, 2024

help-circle
  • Even the identity politics is pretty shallow. They talk a big game about LGBT rights or the black community. But what do they really do? They didn’t manage to pass an updated Civil Rights act to fix the most egregious Supreme Court rulings. They put Senate decorum and preserving the filibuster ahead of protecting our democracy. Or how about codifying Roe v Wade? Did that happen? Or how about something that was proposed that wasn’t implemented - allowing doctors to set up abortion clinics on US government property in red states. That wouldn’t have required any Congressional approval. Did that happen? No. Nothing. Using the full force of the Justice Department to come down on states that restrict trans rights? No, didn’t do that either. Hell, Biden hasn’t even managed to reschedule marijuana yet. His geriatric ass couldn’t even get that done.

    They talk a big game, but they deliver little. Ultimately they will always fall back to the idea that any serious attempt to help minorities will require 60 votes in the Senate, because the filibuster is just too sacred to let go, even if it’s to help people. And even if they got 60 votes, just as with things that require only 51 votes, there will always be a rotating villain of the week ready to throw a wrench in the works. Republicans police their caucus and whip up their votes when needed on big issues. Democrats wring their hands and say, “well, he/she is from a conservative state, and we’re lucky to have the seat at all!” This type of thing never seems to prevent Republicans from passing the legislation they want to. They always find a creative way to do it with a 50 vote majority, or they inevitably find a few dems willing to support some horrible bill in the name of “bipartisanship.”

    We are likely to see bills pass the Senate this term explicitly restricting trans rights. Sports and childhood access to medication will be the likely targets for first federal legislation. And you can be damn sure that there will be a good portion of the Democratic caucus voting for such measures. The centrist dems will quietly remove the pronouns from their email signatures, and they’ll happily vote to restrict trans rights.


  • Oh, you want to change topics and talk about the environment now? OK. Let’s talk about the environment.

    Biden oversaw the largest expansion of oil drilling in American history. Have US CO2 emissions declined under Biden’s term? He also put up huge tariffs on Chinese EVs, batteries, and solar panels. He chose to put American business interests ahead of helping the environment. A few days ago, as a lame duck, he grabbed headlines by barring oil drilling in a bunch of US waters. But he only banned drilling in areas that the oil industry has no interest in operating in anyway. The coastal areas that actually have a potential for future drilling expansion? He left those alone. All style and no substance; it’s the Biden way.

    He’s taken the exact same kind of market-oriented approaches to climate change that have got us where we are. The core idea of his IRA act was that if we just produce a whole lot of solar panels and batteries, that the magic of the market will sort itself out. No need for taxes on carbon. No need for restrictions on new drilling. Just produce enough EVs, and everything will sort itself out. Instead, what’s happening is we’re simply using the solar revolution to increase our total energy use as a species. We’re paving the desert in solar panels while also continuing to burn fossil fuels at a record pace. Neoliberal environmentalists can’t actually help the environment, because they insist on doing everything through market mechanisms. And energy is so useful the market will seek to exploit every energy source possible.

    They can’t even fathom the idea of outlawing new oil or gas expansion. Banning something profitable? To them that’s like trying to visualize a four-dimensional object. They simply cannot comprehend the idea. “Wait, we can just ban something? But what about the corporate donors? What if Republicans use that ban to paint us as liberal extremists?”

    Even on environmentalism, the issue you chose precisely because it puts Biden and the other centrist Dems in the best possible light, they have failed miserably.

    Behold the environmental record of neoliberalism, like the Writing upon the Wall:

    The US chart is less damning. It exhibits a slight downward trend as we’ve outsourced so much of our manufacturing:

    But even looking at that graph, I see zero impact of presidential administration on CO2 emissions. Democrat or Republican in power? It has no impact on CO2 emissions. Industry is mostly left to do as it will.

    The core philosophical promise of neoliberalism is, “forget fairness, justice, or doing what’s ‘right.’ Instead follow whatever pragmatic market-based solutions will produce the best outcome.” And that premise is now its epitaph.

    I don’t give a damn what a politician says. Democrats certainly talk in big flowery language about the environment. But when actually in office, they turn down opportunity after opportunity to actually improve things. As it is in the environment, so in every other issue.


  • A lot of this is short term vs long term thinking. We got into this political situation precisely because Democrats have been running “lesser of two evils” milquetoast centrists for years. Democrats run centrist candidates that are just barely better than the Republican candidate. They don’t offer any real change, just preservation of the status quo. The preservation of the status quo used to be a Republican thing. Since Democrats have taken over that role, that forces Republicans further to the right. And Democrats also willingly adopt Republican framing of policies. Kamala ran on an immigration plan that would have been decried as fascism during Hillary’s campaign.

    The problem with always holding your nose and voting for Democrats, no matter what, is that you eventually end up with an election that’s KKK vs. neo-Nazis, as Democrats slide so far to the right that they’re full on fascists themselves.


  • Wait, is the big “Why,” with a capital W, just us personifying nature? We’re such social animals that we need to personify everything. People looking for a WHY are ultimately just expecting nature to act like a human being! We’ve evolved as social animals. We need to be used to thinking of actions having causes. Nothing just happens in a social community. If your food stores are suddenly and unexpectedly low, someone stole them. Oh, that nice tool/weapon? You got it from your brother-in-law. You owe him. We have evolved in environments where we need to keep social scores and disperse responsibilities. It’s in our literal, social, and cultural DNA to attribute actions in our environment to people.

    But then we also end up applying that to nature. It’s pareidolia at a cultural level. And so we ask Why, with a capital W. Some might make fun of the ancients for personifying forces of nature and raisin them up as Gods. But we’re no different. We do the same damn thing. We’ve just replaced the Gods with “Why.”


  • Ultimately, it is extremely rare in nature for there to be just one of anything. Phenomena rarely occur alone. Why should this not extend to the very existence of Universes, independent Big Bangs? Maybe the Big Bang is some incredibly rare quantum fluctuation in the vacuum that occurs by odd chance once every “ten to the ten to the ten to the ten…” years. Some freakishly long length of time. But who cares? There’s no one around to count the empty years. But once in a very blue moon, in some random patch of the vast infinite, infinitely expanding space time, a Big Bang occurs. It has its course and eventually decays down to nothing, returning to the quantum foam from which it sprung. In time, everything decays down to photons, those photons are stretched beyond the cosmic horizon. A Big Bang happens, a Universe thrives, and it decays to nothing. Awhile later, another Big Bang, etc.

    So while a Universe is a rare thing, it is not unique. But in turn, it does give a sense of meaning. Suddenly we are now a part of a grand infinity of time and space. The concept of the Wheel of Time is made literal! And that is the thing that whole religions are built on. There are ways to find meaning in an infinite circle.



  • _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation

    _______________________________, by autoerotic asphyxiation




  • Unfortunately you need to keep in mind that transfers and donations can be reversed posthumously. If a gunman walks up to a billionaire, forces him to transfer millions to his bank account, and then shoots him dead, the killer doesn’t just get to keep the money after getting caught. Any transfer can be reversed after the fact. And you only have a few minutes of controlling the person before they die, so you can’t have them work for years to do good with their money.

    If just one billionaire died this way, the transfers would likely stand. It can be written off as one man deciding to gain a conscience before taking his own life. But if hundreds of billionaires start doing this all at once? People are reasonably going to conclude that something or someone is controlling these billionaires. Maybe people actually accept the fantastical notion of a Death Note in play. Or maybe they conclude its something strange but more scientific, like some sort of infectious electronic meme that can instantly brainwash people into carrying out some action. Maybe there’s a hereto undiscovered arrangement of pixels on a screen that can hack the human mind and gain control of it temporarily. The sort of thing that, while implausible, is at least within the realm of scientific possibility.

    Regardless of the exact cause, the heirs to these billionaires will go to court and argue that their deceased relatives were clearly not of sound mind at the time they transferred all their holdings. There’s already plenty of legal precedent for this, primarily for elderly people who lose their faculties and are taken advantage of by manipulative caretakers. Even if you can convince some 90 year old woman with Alzheimer’s to sign away her fortune to you, that transfer has a good chance of being reversed in court.

    Really, the most effective way to provide extreme encouragement for the heirs to give away money is by having the billionaire write, in their own blood on the wall, “my heirs should give away my money. Any that don’t will share my fate.”

    This way there are no transfers to fight in court. The legitimate heirs of the billionaire do inherit the money. But after they have it, there’s nothing preventing them from donating it themselves. And the money will be like a curse. They’ll be desperate to get rid of it.

    Done on a large scale, this would encourage most billionaires to give up their wealth voluntarily. You could have each of them write, “I am being killed for the crime of being a billionaire. Any other billionaire will share my fate.” If a few dozen such killings happened, and the police proved utterly unable to prevent it, then the vast majority of billionaires would give up their wealth voluntarily out of pure fear.



  • Maybe with some far future AI we have no idea how to create. But what we have now is just the averaging and amalgam of the work of countless artists. This is why AI art is so bland and soulless; it’s like asking a work of art to be made by a committee of a hundred people. The end result is always bland. Yeah, you can tell it to do it in a certain style, or even the style of a specific artist, but that’s still just copying. It has no original creativity or idea of its own. And that’s before we get into corporate censorship which is the anathema to art. It’s hard to see AI art pushing out any biting criticisms of the rich and powerful.

    Why can’t commercial artists like game writers continue? Again, the market value of any AI-produced game is zero. This stuff is a field of academics, the big AI companies can brute force their way to superior models right now, but the smaller models able to run on individual desktops isn’t far behind. And the hardware is only getting better. A few years after OpenAI can do something, the average person can do something similar on their own hardware.

    The point is, you’re imagining this future where game companies are going to keep making games, and gamers keep buying them, but that the game writers are fired. But why would anyone pay money for that game? If an AI exists that can churn out entire games, the market value of those games becomes zero. I can generate my own AI schlock. I don’t need to pay someone to give me AI slop. So game studios will naturally focus only on those things that can’t be churned out on mass. There will inevitably be some areas that the AI algorithms fail at, and that is what “real gaming” will be.

    AI art will be seen like clipart. Yes, you can use MSWord clipart in your publication. But it’s seen as cheap and tacky. The same will be the case for AI art. It’s market value is zero.


  • They’ll be called artists, script writers, and their other respected titles. The market value of any AI art is zero, as its supply is effectively infinite. If a piece can be churned out for a few pennies of electricity, then the market value of that piece is just a few pennies. Inevitably, the kind of art that can be produced by AI models will, and already is, regarded as cheap worthless schlock. Human artists will instead focus on those things that AI can’t mass produce, and those will retain value.

    The market value of any product or service produced by an AI algorithm is zero.





  • And if those walk out or sit ins were successful, would people not also die? Imagine a vast coordinated effort. Thousands of climate protesters break into various oil processing and refining plants and do everything they can to disrupt operations without killing anyone directly. They throw emergency stop switches. The close valves and epoxy them shut. They drain critical pipe segments and then cut them open with torches. And they chain themselves to equipment. Or maybe they just force everyone out of the facility at gunpoint and set the whole place on fire. Through their efforts, they substantially reduce US oil production for a period of time. That’s what a disruptive protest of the kind you’re suggesting looks like. Direct action against the most offending industries, done in a way that takes no human life.

    And yet, people would still die. What good is an unblocked road if you don’t have fuel? People would lose their jobs because they couldn’t afford the fuel. People in critical condition would die, unable to get to the hospital.

    The point is that any event that actually seriously disrupts the operation of any major company or industry is going to inevitably hurt regular uninvolved people as well. We live in a system and all that.

    And the point of blocking roads is not to “draw attention.” The point of direct actions like that is to cause economic disruption. The key thing to keep in mind is that the truly wealthy are highly diversified in their investments. Those with the real power to change things aren’t moved by a single factory somewhere being inconvenienced. Change in societies like ours really only happen when the reform movement, whether peaceful or violent, grows to such an extent that it risks taking a serious chunk out of nationwide GDP. All the people at the top really care about is money. And there really isn’t any way to hurt them financially without throwing a wrench into the gears of the entire economy.

    That is ultimately what it took for the Civil Rights movement to secure its victories. Black people then were around 12-15% of the population. That number of people is never going to be able to secure their rights on their own through the ballot box. But even 1% of the population working together through direct and indirect action can be enough to grind an entire national economy to a screeching halt. Historically, that is what it has taken for any group to ever secure rights from their oppressors. Asking nicely never works. It always comes down to, “compromise with us, or we will (metaphorically or literally) burn this whole place down.”

    Change and reform are disruptive by nature. There is no such thing as a successful reform movement that only hurts a few narrowly defined perpetrators.



  • That’s what a disruptive protest looks like though. If workers go on a general strike, do you honestly think that won’t cause some people to die from losing access to vital services? Every protest or action that secured the rights you have today resulted in some innocent bystanders dying. Hell, think about how many innocent people had their lives disrupted due to the Civil War. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, do you think that didn’t cause disruption to normal bus operations that day?

    In truth, I think you just want protests that are easy to ignore. You seem the kind of moderate MLK said was the greatest threat to progress. You’re not openly opposed to progress, but you don’t want change to cause any kind of disruption that might conceivably hurt or inconvenience someone. And unfortunately, we live in a society where everything is connected to everything. You can’t disrupt it without putting life and limb on the line somewhere.

    So, I challenge you this. You said you don’t mind disruptive protest, but just not like blocking the roads like that. Can you give a few examples of disruptive protests you would approve of?


  • I’m sure VPNs can be used. You would have to use a VPN, a new email address, and perhaps a different computer even. But honestly, I just don’t care anymore. I’m content leaving reddit to their demons. I have had a few big accounts on there with hundreds of thousands of comment karma, a decade in age or more. I contributed insightful commentary on the site and ended up on r/bestof a dozen or more times. It’s clear that they don’t want people like me, or anyone with a nuanced opinion, to be on the site. They want to focus on tiktok style brain rot, because the MBAs that have taken over Silicon Valley have no original ideas beyond copying each other.

    If you want to have nuanced and deep discussion on a site, you can’t let your most prominent forums be taken over by unaccountable mods with an agenda (like r/worldnews) or operate with zero-thought zero-tolerance policies like r/politics. Your biggest political forum cannot operate on a philosophy of “any mention of violence is a permaban,” when the presence of violence and discussion of it is a key part of our current political landscape.

    They don’t want real discussion anymore, if they ever did. They just want zero-tolerance, zero-thought moderation policies that are easy to enforce algorithmically but stifle real and nuanced discussion. And their site-wide admin an appeal process is completely worthless. They want their site to be a cesspool of teenagers post memes and nothing else. And if that is what they want, so be it. I’m done contributing to their bullshit. Reddit is far from the only discussion forum I’ve used. I was reddit, but before that digg. And before that, slashdot. And there comes a time when sites sometimes just get so up their own assholes chasing quick and easy money that the only correct choice is to just walk away in disgust.

    One of the main reasons quality of content on the site has plummeted so much in recent years is they’ve likely banned or driven away many of their best commenters and posters. They want their site to be clickbait trash, and they simply aren’t willing to put in the effort to make it a place to hold good discussions.