I imagine that Twitter being blocked in Europe might actually lead to some of those sources moving elsewhere to continue to reach their audience. I’m not a big fan of blocking websites either in a general sense, but a I can see why countries would want to avoid having what’s happening to the US be repeated within their own borders, and that seems to be a distinct danger with Twitter. There’s a pretty good argument to be made that that’s literally its purpose at this point.

Dismantling legitimate governments with disinformation seems like a pretty viable power grab strategy for billionaires trying to create a megacorp hellscape where they get to do whatever they want until the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans some time after their own deaths.

So, step 1, substantially reduce agricultural migrant labor; step 2, create gulags for the neurodivergent to try to make up the difference? Lovely.

Honestly? Why should states that actually can get it together to take active measures to try to take care of their constituents have to be limited by what the most ignorant and backward parts of the country decide on? How many times do we have to see some court in Texas shoot down a measure that would help people before we land on no longer caring what Texas thinks about anything?

I get that there are people in these states who don’t want this stuff and they can’t all easily relocate, but we don’t want it either and we actually manage to organize and vote in accordance with that. Why should every state in the US be held back by every state in the US that just went out and voted to tear apart all the collective good that we have?

Maybe we’d be better off separating power down to the state level or just straight up breaking up the US. Funneling money into red payee states so they can have things like roads and health care clearly isn’t helping to drag them any further to the left, but maybe if they didn’t actually have access to those funds it might incentivize policies that don’t just hand everything to the worst people they can find. Or at the very least, maybe they couldn’t afford to fuck things up so badly.

They voted for this. We didn’t.

A few weeks back I got a parking ticket because I believed a google search result. Parking is free on Sundays and holidays, but the city’s website doesn’t specify which holidays. Google insisted that Halloween is a holiday and thus parking is free, but it isn’t actually federally recognized, which I found out the hard way.

I was watching a talk debate on consciousness yesterday where they briefly touched on this topic. One of the speakers was contending that attempting to create AI that is even convincing to humans is a terrible idea ethically.

On the one hand, if we do eventually accidentally create something with awareness, we have no idea what degree of suffering we’d be causing it; we could end up regularly creating and snuffing out terrified sentient beings just to monitor our toasters or perform web searches. On the other hand, though, and this was the concern he seemed to find more realistic, we may end up training ourselves to be less empathetic by learning to ignore the potential suffering of convincingly feeling ‘beings’ that aren’t actually aware of anything at all.

That second bit seems rather likely. We already personify completely inanimate objects all the time as a normal matter of course, without really trying to. What will happen to our empathy and consideration when we routinely interact with self-proclaimed sentient systems while callously using them to our own ends and then simply turning them off or erasing their memories?

Amazon Graveyard sounds like a subscription service for apps that have been discontinued. Not like, a service that lets you keep using them, but you just get to have defunct apps that don’t work and pay Amazon for the pleasure.

Only $14.99 per month! One IP per subscription!

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether it’d be better, as a blueberry bush, to be relocated from harm’s way or to hold out hope that the path of destructive changes will be routed around the ground they grow in. Those making the changes to the soil probably won’t prioritize them, even if those who are stewards of their particular patch of soil do.

Transplanting can be a shock, and it’s hard to know what the situation is beneath the surface before it’s time to put down roots and see how they grow. It’s probably a good strategy for many of these plants, but it leaves uncertainty for each individual patch.

It’s definitely a lot to think about. For blueberries.

I mean, it looks more like a Jeep or a Bronco if you ask me.

Yeah, maybe. I hope so. I feel like they could just have rat races, throw it on youtube, and make a bit of money for more funding if they really wanted to. I’d watch.

Interesting article! A bit weird that they felt the need to plug the ugliest vehicle ever created, but the findings are certainly interesting! It’s hard not to read enthusiasm into that little rat scooting along in its rat car!

It’s disheartening to think that at the end of the experiment they’ll just kill the poor thing, though. Like, I get not wanting to use the same rats from study to study so that you have a proper control, but there has to be a less heartless way of doing that.

Don’t drag the rest of us into her shit. Being trans has nothing to do with why she’s a shitty person. We’re not here to beg for your approval before we get to be who we are, and we don’t need it. Pick another hill.

As much as I’d love for more progressive states to be able to bring our ideals and innovations to the rest of the country, at the end of the day I’d much rather we do our thing and they do theirs than they dictate to us that we have to move backward. I can think of much worse things than Massachusetts getting to be Massachusetts and Texas getting to be Texas. Maybe we could even stop giving so much money to red payee states that drag us down collectively with their authoritarian reactionary bullshit.

Well if a professional condescending hate-monger says it, it must be true!

Oh fuck off, Sam.

404 demanding my private information to access their article about how I shouldn’t give my private information to companies.

How about we start with a third party that’s actually serious about being a third party rather than just showing up every 4 years to syphon votes? Like, you know, a party that actually runs at the local level and participates in Democracy. One of the big differences between our “third parties” and minority political parties in Europe, for instance, is that theirs actually participate in government. They work at smaller levels of government rather than just expecting to somehow get a prime minister. They build coalitions. They foster voter confidence by actually doing something.

The closest thing we have to that is literally just Bernie Sanders on his own. One guy does a better job at being something resembling a third party than any existing third party in the United States. That’s impressive for Bernie and absolutely pathetic for “third parties”.

Second? Once those third parties build up some actual participation in government and develop coalitions, use that growing power to give themselves a mathematical chance of actually winning.

Third? Don’t run a candidate until the first two are done. Because anything short of that is literally just enabling the Republicans to push both parties further and further to the right.

Do that and actually run on a platform I’d like to see more than Democratic neoliberalism and I’ll put them in the first slot in my runoff or ranked choice or whatever vote. Until then? Not a chance in the world. I don’t care how many times the DNC shoots themselves in the foot. Until the math is there and a party shows they’re actually willing to participate in all levels of government I’m not interested in propping up one of two egotists and their “party”.

I’d vote for Bernie in a ranked choice election in a second, though. I don’t care if he’s literally 100 years old.

Good to hear! Thanks!

Good riddance. I hope they succeed.

Does this extend to not discussing plans, posting information about which states may be taking measures to protect their citizens or how effective those measures might be, or discussing things like resistance or mutual aid? Those seem like pretty important topics to be able to discuss.

Spam G in support.

Meow meow meow.