Do you know what I’d like to see?

Instead of banning them, ban the extraction of profit on producing and selling them. Turn them into an entirely recreational market. I’d love to see the outcome of trying that.

I’m not sure what the point of this is.

I didn’t know who this specific woman is, but it doesn’t sound like any of this is a secret. For instance, it is public knowledge that Qatar has provided financial aid to Hamas, and serves as a go-between for Israel and the US. Netanyanu famously defended his practice of facilitating these cash transfers.

Also, this all seems sort of secondary when Israel – the US’s close ally – is beginning an extermination campaign in northern Gaza. It’s hard to really discuss any other issue in the midst of what has become a macabre genocide in full view of the international community.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, because over the last year I was writing the world guide for a solarpunk setting to be used with a tabletop RPG or as a writing guide. And while I was working on this, OpenAI came along and put the Turing test out to pasture.

Several existential crises later, the result looked remarkably like I hadn’t thought about it at all: in the game setting, there are robots and they are treated like people. Like Bender on Futurama.

I think @TootSweet@Lemmy.world (love the username, btw!) is absolutely right that our concerns are all largely shaped by the presumption that today, everything someone builds is built to benefit the creator and manipulate the end user. If that isn’t the case, than a convincing android could just be… your neighbor Hassan.

Most machines probably wouldn’t have a reason to pretend to be human. But if one wanted to, that’s basically transorganicism. No disrespect to OP, but if a machine is sentient, trying to restrict it from presenting as organic seems pretty similar to restrictions on trans people using the restroom that matches their presentation.

And if they are trying to deceive you maliciously, well… I currently know everyone I meet is organic, and I already know not to trust all of them.

This is the shoddiest “good-cop-bad-cop” routine I’ve ever seen.

I think his intense commitment to getting Trump elected makes more sense when you consider this article.

His enormous wealth is largely stored in the form of Tesla stock, and that stock has been valued based on the belief that it isn’t a car company, it’s a robotaxi service currently selling the hardware to finance the software development. The value – and his wealth – can persist indefinitely as long as investors continue to accept that premise, no matter how long delayed. But if something tangibly undermines that premise, Musk could conceivably lose the majority of his wealth overnight.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Agency is probably the greatest threat to his wealth. He doesn’t worry about competitors or protestors or Twitter users or advertisers. They’re all just petty nuisances. But the federal regulator over roads… that is his proverbial killer snail. And I think fully capturing the entire federal regulatory state is his strategy to permanently confine that snail.

More than anything else, I think that’s what is motivating his radical embrace of fascism.

I feel like if you think about this for even a minute this seems like the worst possible idea ever.

I mean, sure it’s an achievement. But so is smashing the moon into the Earth.

At least 13, likely less than 19. Where you land is contextual to neighborhood and costume. And any age of you’re with someone under 10.

DAMN! That’s fucking hilarious.

And also… you know. Sad. But boy: it’s wild how well that aged.

That doesn’t sound at all like the point he was making, but I haven’t read the book so I’ll withhold further opinions.

There’s a lot in there I agree with and a lot I find unconvincing, but the thing that really jumped out to me was this line:

Elites seek to concentrate profits. In our book Why Nations Fail, we compare Bill Gates and Carlos Slim. In the book, we point out that while Gates made his fortune through innovation, Slim did so by forming a telecommunications monopoly thanks to his close relationship with the government. It is an example of the link between monopolies and clientelism that has been seen throughout history in Latin America since colonial times.

I’m sorry, what? Does he not remember Microsoft losing perhaps the most famous successful American antitrust case of the last fifty years?

I don’t think this guy is dumb, but I don’t know how to fully take him seriously when he says something like this in passing.

Yeah, which I think is a real weakness in the reporting.

40k dead is bad, but it’s a rounding error of the total population.

A tenth of the total population dead, a fifth or a quarter of the population subjected to severe permanent disabilities, and nearly the entire population displaced, homeless, and presently starving to death is a clear genocide. They really are trying to exterminate them. It strains my ability to comprehend. In any case, “40,000” does not begin to capture the current scale of what has become a pretty standard, unambiguous genocide.

Respectfully, as a resident of Oakland CA, I kinda hate this, even as a joke.

Nationally, we’re the stand in for conservative fearmongering. But Oakland has big dreams. We’re a town with incredible culture and community trying to do the best we can with limited resources in the face of so many oligarchs who just see endless opportunities to kick us while we’re down.

Oakland wants to be Wakanda. But most residents feel like we’re getting mugged by landlords, then having our shoes swiped while we’re bleeding on the concrete by thieves.

I mean… Isn’t the elephant in the room that this is not going to happen if Trump wins?

It’s like speculating over whether either candidate might push for am arms embargo against Israel after the election.

I don’t really see any ambiguity here. If Trump wins, Zelensky should probably prepare for a complete end to support from the US, right?

Am I missing anything?

Honestly, that’s the main thing I was thinking.

It sounds like there’s no fundamental disagreement between us. It sounds like the only difference is one of attitude.

I worry sometimes that people express frustration with the state of things as though articulating what people should do might serve as a road map to getting them to do it. But getting people to do it requires understanding why they don’t.

This is true. But it’s incomplete.

We do not have a functioning democracy. Most people feel that. Voting works when there are candidates with voting for, and votes translate into change, but when the system has been hollowed out by money and judicial capture and voting rules designed to prevent actual change, we are in a bind.

Will voting fix this? No, not singularly. So voting doesn’t make a difference? Absolutely not! It’s still one of our most powerful tools, even as weakend as it is!

Vote … and March. Vote… and boycott. Vote… and disrupt. Vote… and organize your neighbors.

We can’t stop voting, but that can’t be our biggest or only tool. And everyone needs to understand this.

Okay. I don’t really have anything to add to that. Good luck though.

I’m not disputing this, I’m just asking for clarity so I can understand key facts. Are there soldiers actively serving in Israel? How many? Since when?

That article didn’t actually provide much clarity. I tried searching for more, and found a bit in this article:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/

The main thing this says is that US military presence in Israel is deliberately ambiguous. For instance, the day after the commemoration in the article you shared, US European Command actually denied that this was a us military base, insisting that it was actually a “living facility”.

I don’t doubt that we have troops there. But historically the army doesn’t seem to acknowledge them. So announcing sending people does seem significant.

These are good questions. I don’t know. First, what state are you in? Second, does she have any coworkers? Also, does she know anyone in a similar field? If she went to school, does she know any classmates or teachers who might have advice?

Also: can this be automated? Nowadays, you can have a large language model code a lot of things. Could she instruct one to write a python or bash script to reduce since of the work?

Ultimately, I think she should keep looking for better work. But I know that can be challenging.

If it makes you feel any better, I remind myself that I myself am subject to the same irrationalities and motivated reasoning as anyone else. We’re all just people, and people aren’t logic machines. We’re bundles of impulses and habits that live within whatever stories our minds have to create to make sense of all of this.

In this context, if you’re looking for some kind of remedy, the best I can offer is that instead of trying to bother disputing with myths and superstitions, recognize that anyone who grows out of them usually does so because they find some other way to the same fundamental bedrock notions. Your friend wants to adhere to the rules laid out by the creator. They want to be worthy of Christ’s love.

I think if you were inclined to change their mind – which I’m not recommending – it would be when this comes up to remind him how many people have been seduced into supporting ungodly things thinking they were following God’s will. That’s Satan’s number one tactic. So all we can do is stay humble and listen to our hearts. If seeing kids living in Bethlehem struggling to survive under an oppressive king just as Jesus and his parents did seems wrong, it’s okay to not have a confident stance. Maybe your pastor says it’s God’s plan, but no one – not even the disciples – could ever no God’s plan for sure. You don’t have to have a stance. You can say “God’s will will be done. He does not require my involvement.”