At the least, some considerable part of the problem is that angry, stupid bigots who used to be mostly limited to cringey drunken solo rants are now able to network with each other and cheer on each other's anger and stupidity and bigotry.

I was with you right up until the end.

Hillary's gender is a weak excuse that the DNC and the establishment Dems trot out to try to duck the blame for sabotaging a sincere progressive in order to run a neolib weasel who gives paid speeches to international bankers and idolizes Kissinger.

That thread is creepy.

Trump not only promised to bring down prices, but promised to do so "on day one." In fact, in the final days of the campaign, that was likely the promise he repeated the most.

So not only is he somewhere between delusional and dishonest (which I already knew), but every single person who responded to insist rising prices is indeed what they signed up for is also somewhere between delusional and dishonest.

Why? What compels them? What do they expect to gain?

I'm beginning to suspect that there's some environmental factor or something in the US that makes people delusional, angry and stupid, because this has gone way beyond anything that can be explained by political partisanship alone.

This is a dumbass article.

First, it self-evidently doesn't understand what the laws of robotics actually are and how they interrelate. You can't just tack on an unrelated fourth one - the current three are a mutually dependent set.

And second, it self-evidently doesn't understand that current "AI" isn't actually intelligence in any way, shape or form and possesses no self-awareness of any form, and therefore cannot be made subject to laws at all.

Laws can only meaningfully be applied to the people who use the current "AIs," since they're the ones who actually possess agency and self-awareness.

If you want to argue for something to stem the tide of deepfakes, that's the thing to argue for - straightforward criminal penalties for the people who employ "AIs" to make them.

Oh look - more anti-vaping horseshit propaganda.

i can only conclude, quite seriously, that there's a lobbying group out there somewhere that actuslly wants people to smoke and die of lung cancer.

Discworld, no contest.

It's particularly cynically amusing when Trump and the Republicans apoarently go out of their way to grant themselves abuses of power directly reminiscent of the Nazis.

And still the people who most pride themselves on their patriotism line right up to cheer it on.

This is the era of the angry, stupid American. and their King Donald.

Waaah! Wikipedia won't let people include lies! They're censoring the right!

such as failure to address foreign influence operations.

lol

When historical analyses are written of the era in which a raving lunatic with orange makeup and a bad combover conned millions of gung-ho pro-American credulous morons on the right into supporting him as he brazenly destroyed everything that ever made America great, much attention is going to be paid specifically to his penchant for projection.

Republicans are primed to believe misinformation, since much of their ideology is founded on it.

That's also the reason that they take issue with Wikipedia, much of the mainstream media, universities and most forums - because in an environment in which truth matters and falsehood is generally exposed and/or stifled, they necessarily see and can repeat fewer of the comforting lies that form the basis for their ideology.

In fact the central pillar of conservatism is inevitably a lie - they wish to maintain some present or recreate some past that does not and never did actuslly exist. Then they just pile on the lies from there.

So necessarily, already, all that's relevant to them is whether or not a claim fits into the web of lies they already believe. So all anyone so inclined has to do is present them with something that fits with the lies they already believe, and they'll not only believe it, but accuse anyone who treats it as a lie of trying to censor them.

And present it with enough all-caps EMPHASIS and EXCLAMATION POINTS that they KNOW that it's the TRUTH!!

He probably meant to.

Broadly, yeah. I suspect that more or less what it boils down to is that the US, even before Trump, was and is so warped by greed and corruption and built around so many lies that it's effectively insane, and that's reflected in its political leadership.

This is the thing that most astonishes me about this timeline.

Even setting aside all the other issues - politics, ideology, constitutionality, the rule of law, integrity, whatever - Trump is so obviously a raving lunatic that I sincerely have no idea how anyone can possibly fail to see it. There's nothing at all aubtle or obscure about it - he's bludgeoningly obviously unhinged.

Do people actually not see that? How? Or do they see it and ignore it? Again, how?

if people are not taught media ecology and the menace of unreality / alternate reality thinking.

At least this is an improvement on condemning them for not automaticallyvalready knowing what it is or how to deal with it.

But you're srill neatly avoiding mention of the individual actors who are responsible for the social conditions in whic this menace thrives.

Confident, contented people don't buy snake oil - only unhappy, frightened, desperate people do.

So you're not faulting the overt and deliberate destruction of American integrity, liberty, democracy and justice, but the responses to that deliberate destruction?

So essentially victim-blaming on a national scale?

Imagine that - an office dedicated to countering foreign disinformation somehow ends up being accused of censoring conservative views.

That reminds me of when I saw a mouse in my kitchen, so I set a trap snd caught it, snd somehow that also stopped the ragged holes that were inexplicably appearing in food packages in the cupboards.

Just one of life's mysteries I guess...

Sorry Mike, but one of the good things that's come out of the internet is that it's made people far more aware of just how much of the value their labor creates goes to paying for the privileged lives of worthless shitheels like you.

A notable intrinsic dodge bonus.

Decent but not great healing, blessing, persuasion, rally, calm, etc.

More or less neitral disposition with virtually everyone, save only the most extreme pro- or anti-religious.

Surprisingly good hand-to-hand combat, but only under duress and/or drunk.

I don't simply "feel" like we are - I think it's an undeniable fact that we are.

Virtually everyone lives under one or another hierarchical system of control.

There are two main avenues of control - wealth and political authority - and they're inevitably interconnected, with individual systems set up broadly either so that wealth is rewarded with political authority or political authority is rewarded with wealth.

Individuals compete for positions in hierarchical systems of control, and those who constrain themselves - who have choices or courses of action they will not take due to morality, ethics, integrity, empathy or the like - are at a disadvantage to those who do not have such constraints - who will not alter their behavior to accord for morals, ethics, integrity, empathy or the like, and who therefore are willing to do absoluely whatever it takes to win.

So effectively, hierarchical systems reward and thus select for sociopathy/psychopathy.

That becomes a self-reinforcing loop over time too, as individuals who gain power undermine the aspects of the system that might check sociopathy/psychopathy - government ethics laws, checks and balances, investigative journalism, the right to criticize, etc.

So hierarchical systems tend to sociopathy/psychopathy, and ever more so over time.

So Trump and Musk et al aren't aberrations - they're just the most extreme manifestations of a system that's been heading inevitably toward them all along - a system that has been so warped by the actions of past sociopaths and psychopaths that it is, for all intents and purposes, insane.

So yes - we live in an insane asylum.

yUgh. That sounds even worse. You have my sympathy.

It's a weird thing about this era. In the past, I would've tried to argue with them about their views, but at this point, it's effectively impossible, since we don't even share a reality. They live in a world in which, for instance, Kamala Harris is a DEI hire who got appointed as the candidate by Biden, who' in turn is still working for the Obamas, and she lost because she's a socialist.

Where do you even start with something like that?