Off the top of my head, scenes in:
Poor Things
Nymphomaniac
Antichrist
Requiem for a Dream
Saltburn
It’s neither okay nor sustainable
Source?
You realize mass deportations would decimate the economy? Some cities are 10% undocumented immigrants; Florida is 5% undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants are a significant part of the U.S. economy and culture.
It would also be a horrific endeavor. Police going door-to-door demanding documentation. Probably social surveillance similar to Nazi Germany (along with all the false accusations). 4 million child U.S. citizens would have their parents hauled away. There will need to be concentration camps to hold all those people before travel (if they would actually get around to doing that).
"Law breakers," isn't a very good argument. Everybody breaks the law (speeding, jay-walking, etc). The system is currently working as intended, and encouraging people to break the law to acquire an easily exploitable workforce. Incidentally, undocumented immigrants commit far less crime than citizens.
Ideally, the Democrats would be unabashedly pro-immigration and advocate for solving the "problem" by making it much easier to immigrate legally and getting those currently undocumented, documented. This would make immigrants harder to exploit, address fears of immigrants under-cutting wages, and paying more taxes and social security. That addresses all the somewhat legitimate worries I can think of; the rest of the "problems" I can think of are just rooted in racism and lies. Immigration has been and is a net-positive for the U.S., and a pro-immigration stance should be an easy argument to sell to voters that's also backed up by many studies and data; including conservative think-tanks like Cato. Pro-immigration sentiments were very popular in the U.S. until this recent bout of anti-immigration propaganda. Even now, Americans hold contradictory opinions, like being pro-mass-deportation while being in favor of expanding pathways to citizenship: https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/polling-around-mass-deportation-far-more-complicated-right-wing-media-let
Also from the article (which I agree with):
To be sure, Democrats are wary of getting stuck talking about an issue where Trump always polls better than Harris. Backlash to a Democratic president and a surge of migrants at the Mexican border have helped make Americans suspicious of immigration at levels not seen since 2001. As Atlantic staff writer Rogé Karma explained to Mary Harris on Wednesday’s What Next, the share of Americans who think immigration should decrease has risen from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent today. And some polls have found that a majority of Americans support mass deportations.
But results like that are an indictment, not a vindication, of Democrats’ reluctance to talk about immigration. Mass deportation would separate 4.4 million U.S. citizen children from their parents. It would require the largest police action in American history, wipe out millions of jobs, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and destabilize the economy. Industries from milk to housing construction would be damaged for years. Los Angeles and Houston would see their populations fall by 10 percent; Florida would lose 1 in 20 residents. A million mortgages could be at risk.
I.e. Democrat's position is unpopular because they offer little-to-no pushback to anti-immigration arguments. In fact, Harris, Biden, and many Democrat politicians, seem to be embracing the anti-immigration narrative. In a sense, they are complicit in aiding fascism, IMO.
Why Fascism Doesn’t Stick to Trump
Forget Trump and the F-word. Harris needs to talk about the I-word.
On Tuesday, the New York Times published a long interview with Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who Googled an online definition of fascism before saying of his former boss:
> Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.
Also on Tuesday, the Atlantic published a report that Trump allegedly said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
The revelations have dominated discussions on Fox News, and prompted two-dozen GOP senators to call for Tr—haha, just kidding.
Instead, Democrats and their supporters once again contend with a muted reaction from the media, the public, and politicians, who seem unmoved by Trump’s association with the F-word, no matter how many times Kamala Harris says “January sixth.”
One exception was Matt Drudge, the archconservative linkmonger who has been hard on Trump, who ran a photo of the Führer himself. This proved the rule, argued Times (and former Slate) columnist Jamelle Bouie: “genuinely wild world where, on trump at least, matt drudge has better news judgment than most of the mainstream media.”
Debates about Trump and fascism have been underway for a decade now, and applying the label seems unlikely to convince or motivate anyone. But the lack of alarm underlines a deeper question that doesn’t require a dictionary to engage in: Why do so few Americans, including many on the left, seem to take seriously the idea that Trump would use a second presidency to abuse the law to hurt his enemies?
Maybe it’s because Democrats have studiously avoided confronting Trump about some of the most controversial, damning policy choices of his first term, or the most radical campaign promise for his second. You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration. Immigration was the key to Trump’s rise and the source of two of his most notorious presidential debacles, the Muslim ban and the child separation policy. Blaming immigrants for national decline is a classic trope of fascist rhetoric; rounding our neighbors up by the millions for expulsion is a proposal with few historical precedents, and none of them are good...
GPL'd clients. Everything is encrypted/decrypted on the client before sending/receiving to/from the server. I may later switch to a self-hosted solution, but don't want to set one up right now (was using BitWarden's cloud before).
I just exported my data from BitWarden and imported into ProtonPass. Was pretty easy. Hate the color palette of the app and browser extension though, lol.
It's just not a very good movie, IMO. Pacing is bad, and they bent over backwards trying to not offend people. Some context or lore would've made the movie more interesting. I understand why they did this, but it doesn't make for a good movie. A ton of other movies have done what they were trying to accomplish much better (albeit, in different settings than the modern U.S.); The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is one of my favorites.
This works well too, and with many different models: https://github.com/guardrails-ai/guardrails
Isn't one of the arguments for raising minimum wage that higher incomes will result in more consumption and social program contribution?
It decreases inhibition as well. IIRC, that's one reason it's hypothesised lead exposure contributed to the crime waves, and why blood lead levels are correlated to incarceration.
Yeah, I used to occasionally use tianeptine to self-medicate on days when I was really depressed (hard to get out of bed depressed). Worked well for that, because regular anti-depressants take about a month to start really working, and tianeptine took about 30 minutes, IIRC. I never found tianeptive very "enjoyable" or intoxicating though. I used to use MXE for a similar purpose; and also recreationally sometimes.
This was hard for me to follow. I think it's targeted toward people steeped in "peak oil" discourse.
His first assumption seems to be that economic growth is primarily caused by fossil fuel consumption (which probably is largely the case for the last couple hundred years or so).
He postulates, based on data trends, we are nearing worldwide "peak oil demand," which will cause worldwide economic stagnation for the foreseeable future. This thinking is kinda of the reverse of how I normally think of it (economic growth drives oil demand), but I suppose it's valid if fossil fuels are consistently too expensive to extract more of (lowering demand).
My takeaway: without growth, capitalism becomes a zero-sum game and cannot function "properly," so this peak-oil-demand will result in world-wide economic collapse or probably something slower (a crumbling?).
However, his analysis states as a fact that renewables aren't as "productive" as fossil fuels, so won't be able to cause future growth, or at least growth at the same pace as the last couple hundred years. I'm not sure I agree with that because I've seen charts that show the levelized cost of renewable electricity production to actually be significantly lower than that of fossil fuels.
Allred came across weak, because he has the same position as Ted Cruz/Republicans on some of their worst policies (immigration and Israel), but he has to slightly "moderate" them a little to avoid turning-off base Democratic voters. This is a problem with the Democratic party as a whole, and it's a losing strategy. Voters who strongly support Israel and being "tough on immigration" will be more swayed by the person that full-throatedly supports these position, and voters that disagree with these policies won't be swayed by inconsequential concessions to them.
I have. My bank did a chargeback like they would if it was a credit card. I was told it would've been a lot harder to get my money back if my PIN was used. But, I've only seen that option available for in-person purchaees.
For some of the ultra-wealthy (Theil, Altman, Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, OpenAI board, etc), a type of accelerationism seems to be in-vogue (e/acc publicly, and probably accelerationist thoughts like The Dark Enlightenment privately). I think some ultra-wealthy are just trying to hedge their bets (Zuckerberg, and news corporations come to mind), because if Trump does win he'll definitely try to use his power to harm companies he doesn't like. I think others, such as Musk, want to be Russian-style oligarchs. I guess all this is kinda related; accelerate into some sort of collapse or chaos, use their positions to maneuver into greater power and become oligarchs or create corporate-city-states, or whatever stupid shit they believe in.
I think finance workers are about as split between the parties as the rest of the population; probably more socially liberal. Small bussiness owners are some of the most ignorant and authoritarian people I've encountered.
Every manufacturer is pretty bad on this front: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
Best bet is probably buying an older used car. I've heard of some people disconnecting their antennas; not sure how hard that is.
I'm not one of the withhold-voting, or vote 3rd party people, but I think it's probably driven by deep moral disgust of both parties preventing people from being able to willingly vote for Hitler 1 over Hitler 2. As an extreme example (which probably is the case for some Americans, but not "significant electorally"), if I was a Palestinian-American, and had many family members killed by weapons supplied under Biden's orders, I probably wouldn't be able to bring myself to vote for his number-2, even if I thought it was the lesser-evil. People have different levels of emotional empathy, and different principles and philosophies. Refusing to participate in an unjust system is a valid stance.
And most major U.S. media outlets are highly biased toward Israel for some reason. I don't know if I've ever seen the U.S. media this biased on an issue; I have to resort to small outlets like The Intercept or foreign media like Al Jazeera (which are biased in their own way), to stay informed. The only things comparable I can think of is the Iraq-WMD thing, and their perpetual bias against labor rights/for capital.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not letting up on efforts to stop the controversial Uplift Harris program.
The Texas Billionaire Who Has Greenpeace USA on the Verge of Bankruptcy - WSJ
"Fossil-fuel billionaire Kelcy Warren is about to land a knockout punch on Greenpeace..."
Charging 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult in Georgia school shooting reveals a nation that has forgotten the purpose of its juvenile justice system.
It's going to take more than CAPTCHA to prove you're real
AI firms propose 'personhood credentials' to combat online deception, offering a cryptographically authenticated way to verify real people without sacrificing privacy—though critics warn it may empower governments to control who speaks online.
Google Shopping "nearby" alternative?
I use Google Shopping (the “Shopping” tab on Google) to see if local stores carry certain products, what they cost, how far away each store is, etc. It seems to mostly search national or large regional chains, but it was still pretty useful.
Is there any alternative to this (in the US)? The “nearby” function has unfortunately got shittier and shittier over the past year or so. It's gotten less “deterministic," just mixing results from local stores with e-commerce stores, further reducing usefulness.
Thoughts on "The Decamarone?"
I don’t remember how I heard of it, but just binged-watched it over the past few days. Ratings seem a little bit above average, but I found it very enjoyable. I liked that the mood oscillates between modern comedy and tragic comedy; and that it seems to implicitely critique modern society. The series almost feels like an allegory (or perhaps I’m reading too much in to it).
EliseAI, a startup developing AI-powered tools for property managers, has raised $75 million in a funding round valuing the company a $1 billion.
Training "AI" On Public Data Is Totally Fine And Not Stealing.
I've recently noticed this opinion seems unpopular, at least on Lemmy.
There is nothing wrong with downloading public data and doing statistical analysis on it, which is pretty much what these ML models do. They are not redistributing other peoples' works (well, sometimes they do, unintentionally, and safeguards to prevent this are usually built-in). The training data is generally much, much larger than the model sizes, so it is generally not possible for the models to reconstruct random specific works. They are not creating derivative works, in the legal sense, because they do not copy and modify the original works; they generate "new" content based on probabilities.
My opinion on the subject is pretty much in agreement with this document from the EFF: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-two-pager-ai
I understand the hate for companies using data you would reasonably expect would be private. I understand hate for purposely over-fitting the model on data to reproduce people's "likeness." I understand the hate for AI generated shit (because it is shit). I really don't understand where all this hate for using public data for building a "statistical" model to "learn" general patterns is coming from.
I can also understand the anxiety people may feel, if they believe all the AI hype, that it will eliminate jobs. I don't think AI is going to be able to directly replace people any time soon. It will probably improve productivity (with stuff like background-removers, better autocomplete, etc), which might eliminate some jobs, but that's really just a problem with capitalism, and productivity increases are generally considered good.
The Georgia State Election Board creates rules for the battleground state's elections, and its Trump-approved majority is trying to make changes.
The Biden administration, facing pushback to its chip crackdown on China, has told allies that it’s considering using the most severe trade restrictions available if companies such as Tokyo Electron Ltd. and ASML Holding NV continue giving the country access to advanced semiconductor technology.
O’Brien acknowledges Biden has been a “great” president for organized labor. But he told the Globe that Biden hasn’t delivered on all his promises and the Teamsters are worried their backing is being taken for granted.
An updated fable for 2017
The ‘Climate Crisis’ Fades Out
As the energy transition inches through the ‘issue attention’ cycle, a wiser approach should emerge.
Growing corn?
Any tips on growing corn in central Texas? Is it even practical? I sowed some corn in February, and they only grew 3ft. and looks like I might have a few very small corn cobs. The last time I tried to grow corn was in Ohio, and used the 3 sisters method, which worked pretty well. But idk wtf to do in central Texas.
Proponents of the Greater Idaho movement have argued Democrats in Portland don’t understand their way of life
A Travis County resident filed a petition to remove District Attorney José Garza from office. The effort comes a little over a month after Garza's landslide victory in March's Democratic primary.
Sometimes experts get it wrong, but not this time.