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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • No, I think the comic is making you think about the system at large. It’s not the anchors that are the problem. Anybody in any position can be where she is.

    You could be getting tons of money… not to produce anything or to improve the world, but to maintain power for an upper echelon. It could be a lawyer, it could be an influencer, it could be a pundit, a politician, a programmer, a security guard, a military contractor. There’s this idea that a large paycheck is because you deserve it, because you are providing what’s needed. In reality a high paycheck can be given to you because you’re part of a problem that someone wants you to maintain.


  • I sincerely doubt they give a shit about it.

    I mean, they definitely won’t give a shit if you don’t vote. If anything it simplifies their math. If you don’t show up if you’re mad or sad you sure as hell won’t show up if you’re glad. So you can be safely ignored.

    Biden already gives a shit about ~20% uncommitted in Minnesota, ~10% uncommitted in Michigan in the last primaries. nope, uncommitted didn’t win but they’re freaking out high ranking Democrats. There are more uncommitted than the percentage he won by in some of these states. They didn’t win but now a LOT more politicians are struggling to dismiss Palestine. Hell Pelosi was out and out accusing protestors of being shills for China and Russia last week.

    Democrats are currently avoiding college campuses for appearances because they realize how unpopular this war in Gaza is.

    showing that there is a voting population that is unhappy carries weight, and it sticks around for years to come. It’s a record just like the census.


  • I respect that, but you can still make that known at the polls with write-in, with third party, or just scrawling “fuck all y’all” over the ballot.

    Even if it doesn’t lead to someone winning, every one of the above does get recorded. Every year mickey mouse gets a fraction of the vote, and lets be real, if Mickey ever got 5% of the vote, every candidate would be announcing their runs at Disney World with the hope they could attract just half that group.

    If you do nothing at the polls, everyone will assume you don’t care and don’t care back.

    If you do something at the polls, that doesn’t help either party, then the two other parties might actually be incentivized to get your vote doing things you DO care about. You at least show up, so you are someone they should care about.

    If for no other reason, it’s a record of someone flipping the bird to everyone in power, a small act of defiance that can’t make it back to you because voting is anonymous. If you’re really that powerless the process should only take 5 minutes because the lines to the polls will be short.

    vote vote vote. even if it’s “none of the above”


  • Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.

    However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.

    … Are you suggesting that we increase inequality to make the world better? Like we need an overlord, be it robot or human, and the rest of the population needs to be placated, worked to the bone, and easily replaced?

    I gotta assume I am just vastly misunderstanding something in this argument, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Is it just sarcastic?








  • It’s because a person can crank out a deep fake in 3 hours, and a crappy one in one. It never cropped up because… well lets be real it was a couple of weirdos that were doing it, unless it bubbles up from the dark corners of the internet you risk the Streisand effect by bringing attention to it.

    AI can crank out 40 in a minute. 7200 in three hours. That’s an entirely different beast. The sheer mass and volume ramps up the odds of any image bubbling up from the dark corners of the web falling into the limelight and now this problem that wasn’t big enough to merit thought is rearing up it’s ugly head right in front of us.

    You can generate unique pictures of Taylor Swift faster than even Taylor swift can generate pictures of Taylor Swift. Within one hour of Taylor swift being seen with a man (and you have enough images of the man) you can create a dozen images of her on a date with that man and attempt to sell them to paparazzi.

    The problem is volume. Just like how email made everyone connected and allowed the Nigerian Prince scandal to occur.


  • Yeah, there is a large fixation on whether he did or did not pull the trigger and I genuinely feel like that’s not the straw that breaks the camel’s back, because ultimately he was told it was a clear gun.

    What matters is:

    • Did he know that there were serious concerns about gun safety on set?

    • Did he use his star power/producer role to silence those concerns?

    • Did he retaliate against people who raised those concerns?

    If he did any of those three things, then you have a rapidly strengthening case that he knowingly endangered the crew, and he should have known NOT to have aimed that gun at anybody. You made that gun unsafe and then the gun went off in your hands because you reaped what you sowed.


  • look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It’s a good solid argument.

    However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:

    • The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.

    • They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.

    • They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they’re the one for the job.

    • They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.

    • Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.

    Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.

    At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they’re “supposed to vote for”? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him “even if he were to shoot someone in the street”?


  • It’s not just whether or not Biden would win.

    It’s “Can Biden and Trump stay coherent standing for 3 hours in an unscripted environment”? Does it matter if Biden wins if the match was predominantly two elders bickering over whether or not we should pull out of Iraq? Both of their ages are a point of concern and the complete lack of live, unscripted, hardball interviews does little to quell that fear.

    Polls have never been this bad for a returning president in decades. Historically support for third party candidates have decreased as election cycles get closer but at the same time, you’ve never had candidates this hated. Third parties are absolutely going to eat up votes from both parties this election year, and a horrid debate performance, even if a win, will make the issue worse.