comfy @ comfy @lemmy.ml

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4 yr. ago

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I don't think other countries care whether Congress calls something a war or not. They didn't even declare the Vietnam War.

Yep. I can't see a reformist answer to the core problems of the US. A US president is still beholden to haute capital who own the mass media, the tech industries, the supermarkets, etc.. A hypothetical socialist president would turn out worse than Allende. In order to solve the core issues of the USA, it would need to cease being the USA and become some other country.

but you’re saying this as an American citizen

What makes you assume we're American citizens?

but this can be resolved by ethical written/animated porn

But animated porn puts both the masturbator AND the artist at risk of wrist injury!

Any specific things? I've seen a lot of broscience floats around about porn's effects, especially around chemicals like dopamine, so it's worth checking further before believing any of it. That isn't to say lots of the claims aren't plausable, but they also might not be reliable.

I'm no expert, but some other concerns I've heard are that porn normalizes unrealistic expectations of sex and promotes misinformation (imagine how someone who only learned from porn might handle issues like consent, preparation and aftercare). I could see those continuing to be an issue with written, rendered and generated porn. But IMO those would still be a huge improvement over the abuse of participants associated with the porn film industry.

When one takes a step back, it's obvious that our own societies have their own ingrained systemic biases. All our journalists and other writers will have biases that they and us might not even notice are biases, since we believe they're just fact.

AI datasets have run into this problem plenty of times, for example when government regulation has told insurance companies not to use factors like ethnicity or races in certain calculations, but it turns out that some ended up indirectly doing it anyway since postal codes approximated race in many regions. There are layers to systemic biases.

Btw this is not an argument against Wikipedia in any way.

I think it's perfectly valid to criticize it for accepting "blatantly false but "verifiable" " edits. I'm aware that the world is complex and perfection is idealistic, especially when it comes to topics where sources are inherently strongly biased, but publishing false information on a site with the format, style and reputation of Wikipedia is a real problem at a scale with far-reaching impact. To shift the onus of fact-checking onto the user is extremely inefficient and negligent.

I'm not even saying that there is a better solution, but it's certainly an argument criticizing Wikipedia.

Just as an anecdotal side note, just this year I found a typo (92 instead of 82) contradicted by a quote attached to the cite reference later in the paragraph, and very easily noticed if one checks.

I only use VPNs so I can't fix it.

private as possible

What are you trying to hide, and who are you hiding it from?

I dislike that some privacy forums, like reddit and therefore here by proxy, have a cultural habit of talking about privacy or security as an abstract value in itself. But when we start getting into more detailed questions, it's all vague and vibes until we make it clear who we're trying to hide from and what we're hiding.

For example, most of the time I'm not hiding from my own government. Sure, I incidentally do make it a bit harder for them to track me, but I'm more focused on hiding from Meta/Alphabet/Amazon/etc. (plus from a small group of deranged online stalkers obsessed with some of my friends) so there are plenty of online services and stores I can buy from without taking inconvenient measures. It's fine for me if some services can guess my name and know where I live and one of my phone numbers. It's not fine if they learn some other details.

It's important to get out of the habit of saying "more private", "less private", "most secure", and talk about what you're specifically concerned with and how tactics and tools specifically address that. What information will Google gain from knowing your investments? Is that a threat to you? Are there acceptable ways to mitigate that threat?

Using google to create an account would mean giving them my real data

I've been surprised how easy it was for me to make a fake Google account with no links to my real identity. I only use it for age-restricted YouTube videos, I wouldn't trust it with money like investments, because the way I set it up is inherently suspicious and I wouldn't be able to verify identity if challenged.

Without the ears and with broad paws, it nicely doubles as a sea lion.

One quickly learns that drawings don't have to be detailed or experienced to be appreciated. Sure, it absolutely helps, learn what techniques make art more beautiful so you can punch above your weight, but I've received compliments from quick minimal doodles just by having fun with it.

In the past 5 years I've only ever had minor issues*, like a power button light not being on. But as a developer, I'm aware my hardware choices are more likely to be popular with other developers who would have already noticed and fixed issues.

excluding on niche distros, like Puppy ones.

What are some things you preferred in KDE over Cinnamon? I haven't explored KDE much.

He also can’t just tear down a third of the White House on a whim, but here we are.

Tearing down the White House doesn't hurt capital. When we say that Trump can't just do anything they want, we're not talking about legality. You're right, it's very clear that Trump's regime disregards legal issues. They have strong institutional power over the writing, judgement and enforcement of law.

We're talking about pleasing those who give Trump power - the upper echelon of the rich, the owning class. Trump's regime needs mass media for messaging (think of social media and news owners like Zuck, Musk, Bezos, Murdoch, ... ), it needs technology (add Thiel, Ellison, ... ), and obviously it needs money.

If Trump and friends turn those supporters against him, that's a very real issue that would lose them material power. They're pressured into compromising or conforming to the wants of those supporters, so that they continue giving power to the regime. This is what people mean by a "dictatorship of capital" - those with huge amounts of capital dictate the country.

Not since 3 October 2002 (81 years after Mongolia's first declaration of independence)

Billionaire-owned mass media is a hell of a drug. It's easy to forget just how much selective news reporting can distort a person's worldview.

That's not whataboutism at all, that's extrapolating the logic of a claim to another case in order to test it.

deus_vult.mp4

[reference to the person who took a sword to counter-attack a BLM event and got beaten until their limbs almost resembled a swastika : CW blood]

Watermarking is great when there is a strong enough community to make original content. I'm sure there are communities like that, but I'm not in many of the hobby communities here.

I've noticed a few of these accounts yelling about wsws.org being "Chinese propaganda".

Now, WSWS is blatantly sectarian garbage and universally disliked (go to their homepage and Ctrl+F "pseudo-left") and the SEP are actively counterproductive, there are a million reasons to critisize WSWS, but they are certainly not pro-China.

Just ask their horrible AI chatbot: https://ai.wsws.org/en/threads/2242e654-e2eb-4a35-9952-2df9476dacc7