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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I love how he just uncritically and with absolute credulity accepts excerpts from a letter written by Zuck with no supporting evidence, no examples of what “pressure” looked like, etc.

    I can’t believe these people are still so butt hurt about the perfectly reasonable actions taken by the US and State governments and governments worldwide in response to a once in a century global respiratory DEADLY pandemic that killed millions and millions of humans.

    And as far as FB (and other social media) goes, fuck em. And fuck the users. Types of speech can be illegal. Defamation (lying about someone) and false advertising (lying about a product or service) can be illegal even though it’s definitely speech. These have “lying” in common, which to me implies there must be something about lying (specifically misrepresenting reality) that weakens typical 1st Amendment protections.

    But it’s clear what this guy is most sad about is the traffic he got while his article about Woodstock going on during a lull in the comparatively mild pandemic that was “active” at the time (no meaningful H3N2 activity in the US at the time) went away when FB rightly changed the algorithm to not boost his stupid irrelevant “analysis.”

    But people like the writer of this article are either too addled by conspiracy galaxy brain or too committed to lying for money to care that they could really hurt people with their bullshit.

    This guy needs to go to something less harmful like selling homeopathic tinctures or lying about the moon landing or flat earth or something.





  • If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

    I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

    Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

    It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.



  • I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

    I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …







  • Well just for one example, Joe Biden has been aggressively using the powers he has via the department of education to cancel outstanding student loan balances that were completely legal and very profitable for usurious loan servicing companies.

    No Republican would do that.

    He and the Democrats leveraged their control of Congress in 2021 and 2022 to pass legislation that is going to do more to reduce our contribution to climate change than ever before. Not enough, but way more than any Republican would do.

    I feel like that means our democracy is sort of working.

    In so called “blue” states, they’re expanding voting access.

    I agree that campaign contributions are a serious challenge, but for example Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have done great things without contributions from billionaires.

    We can do this, but we need to stand up in the face of fear and push as hard as we can. The only thing to fear is fear itself!

    Vote Save America can help leverage donations to the most effective campaigns possible for progressive causes.

    https://votesaveamerica.com/


  • That’s the mission of the people who are trying to tear apart our democracy: make people think the whole system is broken and beyond repair.

    That’s where all these people arguing against voting for Biden and Democratic majorities are coming from. They don’t actually think the two parties are the same (or they wouldn’t if they were honest about them). But they sure as heck think America would be better if not everyone could participate in it’s governance.

    So it’s up to us to work on defending the democratic power we have and work on repairing and improving our democracy. That means completely redesigning the campaign finance system. That means expanding voting access. That means expanding the Article 3 courts from top to bottom. We need to fix our media. Break up monopolies and oligopolies. On and on.

    We can make our democracy better if we work together to fix it.