It’s not really falling for conspiracies, it’s more like conforming to cult beliefs. Conservatives don’t really understand the things they say or why they believe what they do.

“A land without a people for a people without a land”

I am getting very, very sick of the trend of Democrats spending more time trying to appeal to bigoted conservatives than trying to actually represent their own constituents or help the people they ostensibly care about.

Clinton made it ok, Obama made it cool, and since 2016 it’s been tradition for the Democrats. Citizens United made our elections into a bidding war and the Democrats are often pretty frank that courting billionaires is about not getting outspent by Republicans. As long as they represent the cause of the problem most leftists are concerned about by accepting bribes, they figure they might as well go for conservatives since they seem easier to convince of things.

The mistake they’re making of course is that conservatives don’t get convinced by rhetoric or appeals, they get convinced by the strong looking one who promises to defend them from all the scapegoats. They can’t out scapegoat the Republicans about the border wall and it’s a little insulting that they thought they could, but it’s better to them than risking their funding by being ethical in our hopelessly corrupt system.

Terminally online is an improvement for plutocrats. It used to be that they could never possibly glimpse beyond their limited social circles. Good for regular people to be exposed to just how infantile and narcissistic these “job creators” they used to worship are.

My conservative dad told me about how China was trying to propagandize Americans by opening Confucian education centers in Universities. I explained to him some Confucian concepts and I have to say he got propagandized quick. He especially liked the concept of everyone staying in their place to promote social harmony. I didn’t risk talking about filial piety because he’s a narcissist who doesn’t need that concept. Chinese traditionalism and social conservatism is very appealing to people who like Trump.

I just tested out the classic “She working” vs “She be working,” and the machine got it backwards. It can’t translate to AAVE, but it probably can appear to be well enough for people who wouldn’t know the difference. In terms of available written materials just by population and historical access it seems like there would be way more incorrect white imitations of AAVE to draw from than its correct usage. Like a lot of LLM issues, it’s been a problem for a loooong time but is now being put into overdrive by being automated.

It’s a classic trolley problem. For many American voters it’s a choice between their family members being murdered or more of their family members being murdered. Pull the lever to set the trolley on track to kill fewer of your family members.

The thing about the trolley problem is that it is far from unanimous how people react to being put in that position. There are many people who will not pull the lever to deliberately endorse the murder of their family members even if it means that more of their family will be killed. It is more for politicians to react to the sensibilities of their constituents than it is for constituents to conform to the desires of their politicians. It’s Kamala’s election to lose. Fortunately and unfortunately she’s very flexible and reacts to pressure. Never let up.

You know, Hamas is coming after the US next, and once they start attacking Americans, there’s no turning back.

This is a scary comment. The comment this was in response to indicated it was wrong to commit genocide on Palestinians. Instead of even making an attempt to redefine or minimize the genocide, this comment instead argued that the genocide would be functional. It is functional to commit genocide on Palestinian people to prevent “Hamas is coming after the US next.” Nevermind that this doesn’t even make sense to argue at all, just the fact that it was offered as a justification for genocide should create a moment of pause for anyone following along.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is one of the best tactical rpgs I’ve ever played. I was shocked how short it was when I finished only to find I had been playing for over 40 hours.

Is it voters’ fault for not voting correctly, or is it Democrats’ fault for directly spiting voters and asking for their vote anyway? Democrats may never know…

If there’s an impasse, spending millions of dollars trying to get conservatives to vote for Democrats has proven to be a losing strategy. Even the series of hints the Kamala campaign is dropping at wanting to do the right thing is getting voters riled up especially among younger people. It’s worth taking the risk of being less corrupt.

For no particular reason I’ll leave a parody of one of my favorite poems here:

Trump’s presidential campaign wasn’t racist.
And if it was, it hardy had any effect on the election.
And if it did, it was really more about class than racism anyway.
And if it was actually about race, I wouldn’t obfuscate that.
And if I did, I’m not racist.
And if I am, it’s only because you talk about racism so much.

Donald Trump sure did in 2016.

Never forget that when you are speaking to someone who strongly identifies with American Conservatism, you are speaking to a child in an adult body. You can’t have the same expectations that you would have of a mature adult. The fact that anyone would see this as an effective “attack” who is over the age of 8 is embarrassing.

I am feeling the Kamala campaign like I was feeling the Biden presidency up until October 2023. A series of pleasant surprises.

OP, from this reception you may feel at least a little misunderstood. This is because you are being deliberately misunderstood because whiteness protects itself. Notice that no one commenting thus far has responded to you in good faith, but have only been dismissive or even reject the premise that this even could be a problem outright.

Whiteness is interested in terminating any curiosity that challenges white supremacy. Exclusive white habitus is the expectation of those who identify with whiteness, and deviation is actively resisted. If white people didn’t do this there literally wouldn’t be white people and racism would be over. It persists because the people who maintain it are cultured to protect it by any means, especially by rejecting all challenges to it outside of an historical context.

The reason I say all this is because I’ve attempted the same conversation you are attempting now and this has been what’s happened every single time. You can’t have a good faith conversation with anyone answering in bad faith. I think this effort is worthwhile and support it, but I advise not to waste too much time with anyone here who is more interesting in refuting you than the problem of racism.

The only thing capital C Conservatives are trying to conserve are prejudices.

She is still saying that and probably will continue to. Kamala is not someone to ever support uncritically. She’s a politician who is thinking strategically and has been known to publicly suspend her ostensible personal morals in the interests of the state (such as when she legally defended the death penalty while stating she personally opposed it at the same time). This is not a person to put faith in, this is a politician who just indicated she is willing to give on this position in return for political support. It’s not enough yet but this is significant progress in my opinion.

It’s a major rhetorical shift for sure and Biden would certainly never have done this. I want to see a lot more progress so hopefully they get the attention they need from this feeler to take some next steps.

Bethesda has needed a lot more humanity for a long time.

I had a Switch for a few years before the Steamdeck came out. If all the games you want to play are available to play on Steamdeck, stick with Steamdeck. It’s more powerful, has way more games, you probably already have plenty of games to play on it, the games are way cheaper, and the degree which you can modify the software and hardware is pretty unique for a “console.”

The Switch has an edge in form factor and is more convenient for me to use. Although Switch emulation on the Steamdeck is pretty decent, I still prefer the original hardware to play Animal Crossing or Zelda.

The Supreme Court members who made this decision are in official act range right now at this moment. Donald Trump is in official act range at this moment as well. Not to draw conclusions but I’m not sure how serious the Democrats are about staying in power.

I would like to see this poll again with “no one” as an option. No one won anything at this debate. Anyone pleased by Trump’s performance would have been pleased no matter what, and everyone else is horrified.

This could be this decade’s Citizen’s United. Neo-liberalism especially among the court has been whittling away at the economy of regular people and the ability of the government to regulate business since at least the 70’s. Privatization never stopped or even abated, regulatory capture has been common, and businesses themselves write the bills for the congresspeople whose campaign they bankrolled to pass quid pro quo. We already have a severe lack of regulation and now we’re going to have no regulation. We just handed the entire country over to a class of gangsters whose morals are exactly the same as Donald Trump’s but wield a much greater degree of violence domestically and worldwide.

The Luddites should have been dismantling capitalists if they wanted to solve their problem.

Good for Goldman Sachs

The GDP is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of people. The difference between perception of economic barometers like this one is that people used to have more faith in capitalism and it has become so painfully clear that this faith is unwarranted. In the past, people in desperate financial situations could easily delude themselves that they were temporarily embarassed while everyone else in the same situation was probably just lazy. Now people are starting to realize the system is causing it and are much less willing to eat the table scraps thrown to them during times of “economic prosperity.”

I have been reflecting recently that I was not learning the same lessons about the Holocaust as some of my classmates. I got the impression nothing like it should ever be allowed again and we should do everything we can to stop it when we see the signs. I assumed everyone got that impression but I’m realizing that was not the case.

Tabletop in person. I miss it. Secondly, in-person co-op. These are two mediums are being extinguished because of how difficult it is to profit from humans relating to one another in person and giving each other things for free.

Satirical, fake AI-generated clips show Rishi Sunak declaring, “Please don’t vote us out, we would be proper gutted!” and making unevidenced claims about how the Conservative leader is spending public money - including how he will send his “mates loads of dosh”.

I thought this article would be making a case against TikTok.

And shockingly, no central command compound just beneath it. Another “mistake” by the idf resulting in the deaths of men, women, and children.

I thought it was moral dissonance. I’m at least glad that in youger generations mass murder is coming to be seen more universally as evil even when committed against groups who are not white. I’m sorry about whatever happened to you to make you this way.

From your initial comment it seems like the main misunderstanding is that nation states unilaterally declared by European powers in Africa and Western Asia from the nineteenth century until around the middle of the 20th century have been utterly disastrous to those places rather than being the only source of order in those places. Although these nation states are seen as legitimate by the powers which established them, in the opinion of many of the victims of these European powers whose population is much larger and much more relevant since they are physically present for the consequences of this establishment, tend not to consider them as legitimate and more of an encroachment. Colonization is not a neutral or natural process but an act of aggression by parties with superior military might on parties vulnerable to that might. If your view is that might makes right, then the issue here isn’t in historical misunderstanding but more of a moral dissonance. If that isn’t your view I’d be willing to entertain a more detailed conversation.

In 2016 Hillary Clinton funded the Donald Trump campaign in hopes to bolster elements of the Republican Party so dangerous that voters would be forced to vote for Democrats under duress. This is the culmination of the DNC strategy since now under duress we must materially support genocide to prevent immediate physical danger from a lawless rogue government who would also continue that genocide.

In 2010 the ability for the United States to exist democratically was ended through the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision. Democracy can’t withstand the full unimpeded force of capital determining the potential candidates for the people to vote for and writing the bills those candidates vote on. This is aside from the fact that the better funded congressional candidate wins election over 90% of the time, and while this correlation does not prove causation, a different correlation is that congressional voting behavior strongly correlates with the desires of campaign funders and correlates not at all with the polling of their constituents.

Voting for Biden under duress at this time is probably necessary (at this point it seems clear losing the election to Trump is not their greatest fear), but unfortunately if we hope to salvage this system more is required of people than voting. I’m not sure if actual non-fictional human beings are capable of what is required right now, so hopefully whatever this system turns into can eventually be overcome and not replaced by something even worse.

All this to say Trump being a king bastard doesn’t negate Biden also being a king bastard who has probably done more damage to peoples’ lives and the health of our society just with the Crime Bill than anything Trump did. Trump has promised to do worse than any president of the last few decades has done and since the ever increasing stress levels in our culture are causing more of us to lose our minds, explicit fascism (Christian Nationalism is our openly fascist movement) is now a possibility in addition to our existing issues of racism and capitalism. Preventing the worse case is not saving anything and also won’t prevent the possibility of a worse worse case in the future. Everyone voting for Biden is doing so against their will. Trump, having cult charisma, has a number of delusional sociopaths who support him. Winning this election means winning the prize of more of our humanity being commodified and a continuation of old fashioned school of “do it or I’ll kill you” in international relations with countries with a non-white majority. With the internet, information is freer than ever and that appears to be having some effect, so if I have any hope it’s that we will hit a tipping point which causes the majority of us to peacefully transition into a system less vulnerable to corruption.

The only thing crazier than this idiot inventing a master race of republican-aligned tech bros whose destiny is to conquer Silicon Valley through police banquets is that an entire audience of people took it seriously. The article promised a crackpot’s raving and Balaji sure delivered.

This is a living nightmare. There’s not much more I can say about this.

So many times I wanted to know the name of an actor who played a character after the first episode and the top result was something like “[Character Name] (deceased)” or " Villain: [Character Name]."

Some of my common uses are:

1. Asking extremely niche scientific questions: I don’t depend on these answers but in the answer is usually the specific terminology I can then search and find the answers I was looking for. I have learned a lot about the properties of metals and alloys this way and what the planet could look like with different compositions.

2. Re-phrasing things: At work when I’m drained and out of patience I can tell that what I’m writing in my emails is not really appropriate, so I have GPT re-phrase it. GPT’s version is typically unusable of course but it kicks my brain in the direction of re-phrasing my email myself.

3. Brainstorming: The program has endless patience for my random story-related questions and gives me instant stupid or cliche answers. This is great for me because part of my creative process since I was a kid has been seeing in media something that was less than satisfying and my brain flying into all the ways I could have done it better. I ask the program for its opinion on my story question, say “no idiot, instead:” and what comes after is the idea I was looking for from my own mind. Sometimes by total chance it has a good suggestion, and I can work with that too.

Fun uses which are less common:

1. Comedy use: I once had it generating tweets from Karl Marx about smoking weed every day. The program mixed marxist philosophy and language with contemporary party music to endlessly amusing results. Having historical figures with plenty of reference material from their writings opining on various silly things is very funny to me, especially when the program makes obvious mistakes.

2. Language Manipulation: If some philosophical text which was written to be deliberately impenetrable is getting too annoying to read, the program is decent at translating. If I plug in a block of text written by Immanual Kant and have the program re-write it in the style of Mark Twain, the material instantly becomes significantly easier to understand. Re-writing it in the style of stereotypical gen-z is hilarious.

The majority of Zionists are not Jewish, and the majority of Jewish people aren’t Zionists. These protestors are the latest in a long tradition of Jewish activists opposing oppression and genocide. To take police action against Jewish people protesting genocide, something Jewish people tend to know something about, exposes this imperialist fascist-aligned grift for what it is: anti-semitism.

I think most Westerners would be shocked how right-wing the Chinese political environment is for most social issues.

Welcome to the field of Economics