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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I agree, though I am super disdainful of any argument that is sort of reskinning “other people are really stupid”.

    On the other hand, participation in a congressional primary is pretty low and should weed out the casuals. Nobody who is going to the polls without much info is probably going to show up for these right?

    Further, when you have “safe” districts for your party, you sort of invite people from the entire political spectrum to participate in your primary. The parts of the American electorate that WANT muscular support for Israeli military operations are on the right. If those folks skip this primary, they have no influence over their representative at all. Activating conservative voters is probably easier than changing minds.



  • This comes from a memory of a digression during a lecture in an ecology class I was in 20yrs ago… so you know, grain of salt.

    From this particular professors point of view. Symbiotic was the term to describe mutualism until recently. And then. A few papers started using symbiosis as an umbrella term for all relationships with sub-terms to describe the “benefits math”. This, to him, was annoying pedantry. But eventually all the textbooks adopted the new hierarchy of terms and the world moved on.

    If you took a biology class with a text published pre-2000s, it’s very possible that your book described symbiosis as a mutually beneficial relationship between species.

    Long story short: the language is fluid and ever changing, even in science fields.


  • Pohl@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldAre We in an AI Bubble?
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    29 days ago

    Nvidia is making a thing and selling it. No matter what happens with AI tech, they are going to keep their winnings.

    Everybody else… well they borrowed/raised and spent a FORTUNE on R&D, chips, and electricity to make a product that has no realized commercial value (yet?). They are either going to figure out where the money comes from soon or the bills gonna come due. The next 12 months are going to be popcorn worthy if you like watching the tech industry.





  • People’s take on this stuff always seems so naive to me. All war ever can be viewed as an attempt to arrest the leader of another group for “crimes”. When you get arrested… that means you lost the war. Winning a war means you didn’t get arrested.

    The ICC is such a silly stupid waste of human attention. It’s like an idea that children came up with after watching Star Trek. It has no utility whatsoever for our species. We fight, we have winners and losers. If you start a fight with somebody stronger than you, you are gonna have a bad time. If you start a fight with someone weaker than you, others will think you are dishonorable. That doesn’t mean you get arrested.



  • “Privacy” means two different things depending on the audience. For me privacy means that my information is not being used to advance some organizations commercial interest. For others it means that my information will never be shared with a government.

    Don’t advertise to me

    Or

    Don’t narc on me

    I guess I don’t really expect a company to resist pressure from government agencies on my behalf. Especially if I have been using their service to commit crimes in my country. If you are doing things your government would prefer you didn’t, hire a good lawyer and consult with them about what should be sent via email (spoiler, it’s nothing). The mafia doesn’t send emails, or put anything in writing, if you do crimes, you shouldn’t either.



  • There is no world where a 3rd party ticketing company should be able to own, or develop exclusive relationships with a venue operator.

    The promoter, act, and venue operator should negotiate how tickets will be distributed when they draw up contracts. In this fucked up reality, the ticketing company owns the venues and controls all access to tickets and their distribution.

    TM would still do tons of business in that world. They actually offer a compelling product to acts, venues and promoters, but they should always be in competition with the act and the venue box office.

    TM and live-nation should be competitors but they have been allowed to form a vertically integrated monopoly. THIS is the actual shit the FTC was built to combat.


  • It’s the same thing the right does with government. It is a truism that there is all sorts of “inefficiencies” where the money is going to the wrong people for the wrong stuff.

    In both cases, it’s sort of correct and sort of wrong. Corporations, governments, and any human institution beyond a certain scale (a few hundred people), will leak wealth into places it shouldn’t. It’s an unavoidable feature of our species as best I can tell.

    It’s fine to accept it, it’s fine to be angry about it. It’s silly to blind yourself to it in some places and whinge about it in others.


  • Sending weapons to Israel is part of a very old US strategy to check Iranian power. You can argue that we should stop trying to check Iranian power, I could probably be convinced of that. Being an enemy of Iran has led us to some of our shittiest “allies”. Remember when US presidents shook hands with Sadam Hussein? That shit happened!

    We can stop sending them weapons and money. We should. We should try to make those shipments conditional on changes to the Gaza war strategy. But letting Iran run wild is not going to be super great for US interests and is going to be VERY unpopular with US citizens. It’s not that I like the way everything is happening, it’s that it isn’t simple. Iranian troops in Israel, SA and Iraq isn’t an outcome we can handle so taking our foot off the pedal almost certainly leads to a hot war with Iran. That sucks a lot.


  • I have no diagnosed neurodivergence and I’m looking at that list with surprise. Like, you know how fucking hard I’m working to pretend I can do that stuff?

    A person who can do all that shit looks like a superhero to me. No talent… fuck… if that list had telekinesis on it’d feel about the same to me.



  • This is pretty interesting. Americans seem to be convinced that their president is the king of earth and they can, with a wave of their finger change anything. This is total bullshit

    Presidential power inside the country is extremely limited by the constitution and they rarely have an opportunity to “just do what they said they were going to do”.

    Outside our borders… it’s so fucking complicated that no one person really understands the global web of power and influence. At the bottom of the pyramid though, always force of arms. If America is willing to fight you, then you do what they say.

    So… should we start a war in every place on earth that genocide is occurring? Really channel our inner dick Cheney and waste life and treasure in regime changes? Should we really cede all power in the Middle East to Iran so that we can stop our (fucking asshole of an) ally Israel from using those weapons on a highly immoral war? Should we start WWIII with china to save the Uighurs? How many African nations should we currently be bombing?

    Which of those wars do you want to fight? Have you enlisted yet? What are you waiting for?