I was abused by my christian parents.

I would like to live long enough to see humanity mature out of superstition and free the world from human greed.

  • 0 Posts
  • 101 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
Cake day: July 9th, 2026
  • SnoopSqueak@lemmy.todaytoNews@lemmy.world•Trump says ‘nobody will’ build monuments for him once he’s gone
    1·
    21 days ago

    you responded in discussion that Newsom wasn’t conservative enough.

    That was not my intention. I should have used different sources. I can try again.

    I can agree that the pandemic was a challenge, but he’s taking money from people who can’t afford it instead of from his fellow rich people.

    Newsom’s opposition to the ballot measure – which would levy a one-time 5% tax on any residents of the state worth more than $1bn – comes amid an uproar from some of California’s most prominent billionaires.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/gavin-newsom-california-billionaire-tax

    The loudest reactions came from advocates for the poor and elderly. They decried Newsom’s plan to scale back an expansion of Medi-Cal health care to undocumented immigrants that he had championed last year, as well as his imposition of $100 monthly premiums, elimination of some benefits, limits on at-home care and tighter qualifications for benefits.

    “The 2025–26 budget proposal fails to marshal the resources needed to help vulnerable Californians meet basic needs like health care, housing, and food assistance,” the left-leaning California Budget and Policy Center said.

    …

    there were also adverse reactions from public employee unions over Newsom’s intention to hold down state worker raises and from city and county officials over a lack of grants for homelessness.

    …

    Medical care providers dislike both Newsom’s Medi-Cal restrictions and his diversion of funds from a special tax on health care approved by voters last year meant to increase payments for treatment.

    Environmentalists are angered by Newsom’s declared intention to fast-track a tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to increase water deliveries to Southern California.

    Advocates of Proposition 36, a voter-approved measure to crack down on some crimes that Newsom opposed, decry his failure to include funds for implementation.

    https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/05/newsom-budget-chronic-deficit-unresolved/

    https://calbudgetcenter.org/news/statement-on-governor-newsoms-2026-27-budget-proposal/

    Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 682 (Allen) which was approved by the legislature last month and which would have banned PFAS or “forever chemicals” in six product categories - cookware, dental floss, children’s products not covered by previous legislation, non-paper based food packaging, ski wax, and cleaning products.

    …

    the Governor’s veto message cited industry’s unsupportable arguments about costs and ignored data provided by the bill sponsors showing the argument to be specious.

    …

    He also vetoed another Clean Water Action sponsored bill, AB 823 (Boehner), which would simply have banned plastic microbeads used as cosmetic glitter or in cleaning products. The bill had no recorded opposition, yet the Governor’s veto message stated that a to “ban specific ingredients, such as glitter, … may incidentally result in a prohibition on biodegradable or natural alternatives”. In fact the intent of the bill was to drive companies to use those safer alternatives.

    https://cleanwater.org/releases/governors-environmental-vetoes-are-missed-leadership-opportunity

    Gavin Newsom vetoed a widely discussed bill that would have provided unemployment insurance to striking workers

    https://capitalandmain.com/newsom-said-cost-made-him-veto-unemployment-pay-for-strikers-unions-say-it-was-disrespect

    Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that was intended to protect farmworkers injured when their employers violated state outdoor heat safety regulations — dealing a setback to farmworkers and their advocates.

    https://capitalandmain.com/newsom-vetoes-farmworker-heat-safety-bill-as-state-enforcement-has-fallen

    Gavin Newsom’s choice of guests – a parade of rightwingers – on his new podcast might seem baffling.

    …

    Still in its infancy, This Is Gavin Newsom has hosted several rightwing media figures including Michael Savage, Charlie Kirk and – almost unbelievably – Steve Bannon, one of the most regrettable people to emerge into public life in decades.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/17/gavin-newsom-steve-bannon-podcast

    I’m not saying he’s done nothing good, but I stand by the claim that he is a corporate shill and I do not want him as my president. I may vote for him if it comes down to it; I voted for Harris in 2024. But I would much rather see what AOC or Khanna can do, considering they seemingly will not compromise with billionaires and Israel.

  • SnoopSqueak@lemmy.todaytoTechnology@lemmy.world•Linus Torvalds used AI to fix a Linux bug, and now LLM critics on Linux face an uncomfortable choiceEnglish
    1·
    27 days ago

    Again, we are stuck in a semantics debate. What I call reasoning you don’t, it seems.

    It is a pattern matcher. It does not reason.

    But all I know, as someone that has worked in software engineering for 25+ years, is that the output of whatever it does, and whatever you call it, is incredibly useful.

    I have a degree in computer science. Irrelevant. Anyone can see that the “AI” is not intelligence.

    Saying “it just generates text” is a reflexive reaction that attempts to flatten the nuance.

    It’s a large language model. It generates text.

    All Columbus did was sail west.

    And killed indigenous people. Datacenters and shitty chatbots are killing people today, good point.

    All America did was throw some fuel into a tube and put Neil Armstrong on the top.

    Scientists did that, not America.

    All Picasso did was to throw some paint onto a cloth.

    At least he did it himself instead of prompting an image generator.

    All this PhD student did was generate text.

    Correct. And you seem to have learned nothing useful.

    Surely we’ve got to have some more nuance in there.

    LLMs can sometimes be useful. AI does not yet exist. It’s a scam.

    If there’s a difference between 10000 monkeys hacking on a typewriter and a human writing their doctoral thesis, the quality of their act isn’t in whether text was generated but WHAT text was generated.

    You don’t understand the metaphor. It’s about the nature of infinity, not the competency of monkeys as authors.

    If you run an AI prompt infinite times, it will inevitably generate a correct answer somewhere in there. The rest of the time, it will be wrong, potentially with lethal consequences.

  • SnoopSqueak@lemmy.todaytoNot The Onion@lemmy.world•Florida Catholics slap down state AG by rejecting religious vaccine exemptionsEnglish
    41·
    1 month ago

    Several things to note here.

    There is no evidence that Stephen Hawking participated in any child abuse.

    Yes—Stephen Hawking visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island in 2006 and was photographed there [2] [3], but there is no substantiated, court-filed evidence in the released documents proving he participated in an underage sexual orgy or committed sexual crimes; references to such a claim appear as an allegation Epstein sought to rebut in a 2015 email, not as proof or a charge against Hawking [7] [4] [8].

    https://factually.co/fact-checks/science/did-stephen-hawking-visit-jeffrey-epstein-island-e24a6e

    If he did participate, it was despite his scientific inclinations, not because of them. We have endless evidence that sexually abusing children causes short- and long-term harm. A study by Rind et al tried to claim that the harm caused by childhood sexual abuse is overstated, but the study was ripped apart by other scientists. It is not considered to be scientifically valid because it failed empirical verification.

    If Hawking abused children, he had no one to blame but himself. Conversely, when religious people do it, they may claim that satan tempted them to sin, or that god is actually fine with child abuse (which is supported by multiple bible verses). The bible also fails empirical verification, obviously, but religious people are more interested in claims that comfort them regardless of veracity. Hawking did not believe in divine forgiveness or an afterlife. Religious abusers may think that prayer and repentance is sufficient to put them back on track to go to heaven, regardless of how much the victim was harmed or whether the offender harms more victims in the future.

    Many catholic abusers are actively, intentionally protected instead of reported:

    Dioceses across the United States and beyond faced accusations of mishandling cases of abuse, often prioritizing institutional reputation over victim safety. Instead of reporting allegations to law enforcement, some bishops reassigned accused priests to new parishes, where they sometimes continued to abuse. These transfers were often undocumented or vaguely recorded to avoid scrutiny.

    https://www.catholicshare.com/what-are-the-little-known-diocese-cover-ups-involving-local-cases-of-transfers-and-hush-deals-and-how-did-reporters-uncover-them/

    Can self-professed scientists do wrong? Yes. But I would argue they are not applying science in those instances, and we can determine the difference by examining empirical evidence.