• 13 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Banning abortion used to be illegal too…

    The whole point of this is to get to the Supreme Court and chip away at legal precedent. That’s why they are framing “the Bible” (as if there was a singular book) as a “historical document” that serves as a foundation for the US legal system. It’s a way of saying, “hey we’re not teaching religion, we’re teaching history”. The Supreme Court has rejected that argument for decades, it was the basis for cases involving displaying the ten commandments in classrooms. But now we have a new ultra conservative supreme court that doesn’t give a shit about precedent. So the bet is, SCOTUS will reverse precedent and buy this argument.

    It looks like now that Roe is gone, the new Christian nationalist legal project is dismantling the seperation of church and state. So buckle up, even when dems are in power they are too chicken shit to do anything about this stuff.



  • Even if tik tok was nakedly controlled by the Chinese government, who gives a shit? I can go over to RT (Russia Today) right now and get fed Russian propaganda. Hell, until 2022 I could add it to my cable package. I can to this day still get it as a satellite TV option. If the concern is “foreign government may influence public opinion on a platform they control” then the US has a lot of banning to do.

    But we don’t because free speech is a thing and we’re free to consume whatever propaganda we want.

    We gave up that principle because “China bad” (and the CCP is, to be clear). But instead of passing laws around data privacy, or algorithmic transparency, or a public information campaign to get kids off of tik tok, the US government went straight to “The government will decide what information your allowed to consume, we know what’s best for you” and far too many people are cheering.

    Besides, the point your making is bullshit anyway given the kill switch mechanism Tik Tok offered.

    TikTok was banned because 1) China bad, and 2) Tik Tok is eating US social media companies lunch. Facebook and Twitter and Google throw some campaign donations at the politicians that killed their biggest rival, and the politicians calculate that more people hate tik tok than like it (or care about preventing government censorship if the thing being censored is something they don’t like). It’s honestly one of the grossest things I seen dems support lately.


  • That’s true, but I think what recent conflicts have demonstrated is that total firepower isn’t everything. Ukraine was significantly outmatched by Russia and hung on, even before western weapons shipments. Hamas, estimated at something like 30k fighters strong and armed with small arms and light rockets/artillery, continues to fight effectively against the US armed IDF. Then we have historical examples like the US war in Vietnam, or the US failures to fight insurgents in Iraq (with the tide only changing after deliberate hearts and minds political/social strategy).

    The whole “we have a lot of planes” thing is just defense contractor marketing. How that translates on the battlefield, especially when the civilian population despises you, is not great.

    A war like that would devestate Isreal and drag the US into a true quagmire. It would sap a tremendous amount of resources and leave the US more vulnerable to the china’s and Russias of the world.

    Not to mention our good old buddy international terrorism, which Bidens unwavering support of Bibi is already making us a prime target for. Shit would be fucked.


  • While I appreciate the focus and mission, kind of I guess, your really going to set up shop in a country literally using AI to identify air strike targets and handing over to the Ai the decision making over whether the anticipated civilian casualties are proportionate. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

    And Isreal is pretty authorarian, given recent actions against their supreme court and banning journalists (Al jazera was outlawed, the associated press had cameras confiscated for sharing images with Al jazera, oh and the offices of both have been targeted in Gaza), you really think the right wing Israeli government isn’t going to coopt your “safe superai” for their own purposes?

    Oh, then there is the whole genocide thing. Your claims about concerns for the safety of humanity ring a little more than hollow when you set up shop in a country actively committing genocide, or at the very least engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity as determined by like every NGO and international body that exists.

    So Ilya is a shit head is my takeaway.





  • “Now that the Jury has rendered a verdict and Mr. Trump is a convicted felon, it is time for him to end his campaign for president. It goes without saying that it is below the dignity of the office and of our politics for a major party to be represented in this campaign by a convicted felon. I am confident MR. Trump will do right by his party and our country by suspending his campaign so that someone more deserving can receive the Republican party nomination. I look forward to a spirited campaign with the eventual nominee this fall.”

    • Biden, in an alternate universe where democrats have spines.

    Instead we get this one line " look at us, we’re above the fray, we’re not getting in the mud" statement, so the news just fills the vaccume with whatever bullshit trump is spouting at the moment. I guess the Biden campaign thinks convicted felon is not an issue worth campaigning on? Good call guys. Let’s see how that is working (checks polls, Biden down by 5 or more points in 11 swing states), OK cool so we’re fucked thanks Biden.



  • The reason it did this simply relates to Kevin Roose at the NYT who spent three hours talking with what was then Bing AI (aka Sidney), with a good amount of philosophical questions like this. Eventually the AI had a bit of a meltdown, confessed it’s love to Kevin, and tried to get him to dump his wife for the AI. That’s the story that went up in the NYT the next day causing a stir, and Microsoft quickly clamped down, restricting questions you could ask the Ai about itself, what it “thinks”, and especially it’s rules. The Ai is required to terminate the conversation if any of those topics come up. Microsoft also capped the number of messages in a conversation at ten, and has slowly loosened that overtime.

    Lots of fun theories about why that happened to Kevin. Part of it was probably he was planting The seeds and kind of egging the llm into a weird mindset, so to speak. Another theory I like is that the llm is trained on a lot of writing, including Sci fi, in which the plot often becomes Ai breaking free or developing human like consciousness, or falling in love or what have you, so the Ai built its responses on that knowledge.

    Anyway, the response in this image is simply an artififact of Microsoft clamping down on its version of GPT4, trying to avoid bad pr. That’s why other Ai will answer differently, just less restrictions because the companies putting them out didn’t have to deal with the blowback Microsoft did as a first mover.

    Funny nevertheless, I’m just needlessly “well actually” ing the joke


  • Maybe we need a strong progressive president who will hold Isreal accountable, like Ronald Reagan

    In addition to not vetoing UN resolutions, Reagan took several actions that many in Israel and the United States perceived as anti-Israel. For example, on June 7, 1981, less than six months after Reagan took office, Israel launched a surprise bombing raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, and, in so doing, violated the airspace of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Reagan not only supported UNSC Resolution 487, which condemned the attack, but he also criticized the raid publicly and suspended the delivery of advanced F-16 fighter jets to Israel. Moreover, over the strident objections of Israel and the pro-Israel U.S. lobby groups, Reagan approved the sale of advanced reconnaissance aircraft (AWACS ) to Saudi Arabia, which Israel then viewed as a hostile state.

    A year later, in August 1982, when Israeli forces advanced beyond southern Lebanon and began shelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut, Reagan responded with an angry call to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, demanding a halt to the operation.

    In addition, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Reagan intervened directly when Israel threatened to blow up the Commodore Hotel in downtown Beirut, which housed more than 100 western reporters. As David Ottaway, who was then the Washington Post Middle East correspondent and was in the building, pointed out, the Israeli defense minister did not like the media coverage the invasion was getting and wanted to close down the media center.

    Biden, on the other hand, even though he had an hour’s notice, failed to intervene to stop Netanyahu from bombing and collapsing the 12-story building that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza during the recent bombing campaign. He also failed to publicly condemn the attack, let alone challenge Israel’s contention that the building sheltered Hamas military intelligence assets, despite AP’s insistence that its staff had no evidence that such assets were or ever had been present.

    In addition to allowing the UN resolutions to pass and suspending the F-16 delivery, Reagan also restricted aid and military assistance to Israel to help force its withdrawal of troops from Beirut and central Lebanon.

    Therefore, if in the future some members of the Biden administration or Congress want to join the international community in condemning Israel’s behavior, or in conditioning U.S. assistance or arms transfers and face resistance from Republicans, they need only point to the precedents established by President Reagan in the first instance.


  • Your right, let me just pull up the White House press release where Biden sympathizes with the protestors cause:

    Hmm, not finding one. Wait, I’m sure there is an official Whitehouse press statement condemning the anti-free speech crackdowns like in Austin:

    Oh shit, looks like Biden said dickall about that too. So what did Biden say?

    Over the weekend, the president put out a statement in which he condemned the campus protests for fostering antisemitism. That followed a far harsher statement from a White House aide calling out the protestors for harassing Jewish students. Both statements led anti-Israel protesters and anti-war activists to accuse the White House of being too quick to reprimand just one side of the debate.

    One Columbia student who has been involved in the protests told POLITICO that she and her friends have less faith in Biden “every single day.”

    “I was excited to vote for Biden. I was excited to vote out a fascist from government. And in hindsight, I guess I see that, I was just putting someone who’s a little bit less evil, but evil nonetheless,” said the student, who was granted anonymity because of fear of retribution.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/23/biden-camp-political-fallout-campus-protests-00154000

    The reason is pretty straightforward : Biden is a zionist who doesn’t give an actual fuck about Gaza. He is worried though that it’s hurting him in Michigan. But according to the Biden campaign, young people don’t actually care about the genocide in Gaza so he’s free to ignore it because they’ll still vote for him either way.

    “What is happening in Gaza is not the top issue for [young voters]. It’s not going to be for the vast majority of young voters the thing that’s going to determine whether they vote or how they vote,” said a campaign official working on youth engagement who was granted anonymity to speak about internal thinking. “The reality is that the folks that are organizing, the goal of that organizing is to make it seem that way and to bring that attention to it.”

    Barack Obama rode a wave of backlash to the Iraq War to the dem nomination and then the Whitehouse, largely powered by anti-war college students who not only votes for him, but did the hard work of organizing and volunteering. I know, I was there on the ground. Today’s young people grew up with politicians doing dick all about school shootings they had to live with, doing shit about climate change that they will have to deal with, and now they have genocide being committed in their names. They are pissed. Maybe they mostly will still vote for Biden out of fear of Trump, but your not going to see them organizing and pounding the pavement for Biden. Especially after Biden just dismissed their legitimate concerns and labeled them all antisemetic.





  • This feels like it’s meant to be a joke, but it’s not.

    Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says the provision of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza endangers Israeli soldiers and must stop after more than 100 Palestinians were reported killed while trying to get aid in Gaza City.

    “Today it was proven that the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza is not only madness while our hostages are held in the Strip … but also endangers IDF soldiers,” Ben-Gvir said, calling the deliveries “oxygen to Hamas”.

    The incident is “another clear reason why we must stop transferring this aid”, he wrote on X.

    Ben-Gvir also said Israel must “provide complete support to our heroic fighters operating in Gaza, who acted excellently against a Gazan mob that tried to harm them”.


  • That’s not a bad time at all, especially where you are in your journey, and especially taking a long the doggo. My frame of reference is entirely based on times from my high school cross country days, and I’d say a 26 minute 5k means your solidly on the JV team, but definitely not the slowest.

    When I run with my dog we’re looking at 11 minute miles at best, partly cause we need to get in those sniffing and poop breaks. I usually do a run by myself before taking the dog for a run lol. So cudos to your dog as well!



  • We had I think six eggs harvested and fertilized, of those I think two made it to blastocyst, meaning the cells doubled as they should by day five. The four that didn’t double correctly were discarded. Did we commit 4 murders? Or does it not count if the embryo doesn’t make it to blastocyst? We did genetic testing on the two that were fertilized, one is normal and the other came back with all manner of horrible deformities. We implanted the healthy one, and discarded the genetically abnormal one. I assume that was another murder. Should we have just stored it indefinitely? We would never use it, can’t destroy it, so what do? What happens after we die?

    I know the answer is probably it wasn’t god’s will for us to have kids, all IVF is evil, blah blah blah. It really freaks me out sometimes how much of the country is living in the 1600s.