Lacci

The idea that you through markets can magically make the world a better place through your enlightened self interest is a lie that exists to prop up capitalism. You can absolutely make the world a better place through small actions, but not like that and generally not alone.

Unpopular Fact: Your personal consumption choices only have significant impact when used strategically in active coordination with others as part of a larger strategy. You aren't voting with your dollars and you cannot effect positive change in the world by making personal purchasing choices.

It is far more likely that in your lifetime you will be put into suspended animation, be loaded on a starship, and wake up centuries later on a habitable planet around another star than that your consciousness will be uploaded to a computer simulation. Don't expect either to happen.

Bush was systematically falsifying a legal justification for a war and Trump is killing real people in a war he's making up without any legal justification or intention of creating a falsified one. One led to the other but our dictator slaughtering random innocents in a fantasy war is not the same.

I mean they're kinda doing what the Bush administration did before Iraq but they're also just slaughtering random civilians without much if any pretense of having a military target.

Yeah some of the same techniques might apply to both. There might be a slippery slope from the first one that could lead to the second. But this fight over the use of "precision bombing" is one the US has been having and waffling on since the 1930s. And this Trump thing is really something else.

Killing literally any random person who happens to be in a smallish boat and accuse them of being drug smuggling militants fighting an imaginary insurgent war against you so you can flex your military might and create a propaganda war is a different kind of crime and a whole other level of bad.

Having a military target (or thinking you do) and killing a bunch of civilians around them and then saying every male over the age of 15 might possibly have been a legitimate target even though you have no idea who they were is a war crime.

The Obama era drone strikes were really awful and shouldn't have been done, but there is a pretty big difference between bombing and deciding unacceptable civilian collateral damage is fine and fudging the numbers by classifying civilians as potential militants and just blowing up random people.

I love that humanity made stories about jinn and faeries and demons and how you shouldn't trust anything that claims to fulfil your wildest wishes without understanding the costs thousands of years ago. At least we've always known how fucking stupid we are.

Sam's Club is part of Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart workers are among the largest recipients of SNAP in this country. Apparently, some Wal-Marts will help employees fill out SNAP applications as part of their HR paperwork. When people start going hungry on Nov 1 part of the reason is companies underpay them

It is far more likely that in your lifetime you will be put into suspended animation, be loaded on a starship, and wake up centuries later on a habitable planet around another star than that your consciousness will be uploaded to a computer simulation. Don't expect either to happen.

We don't even know what in the physical state of a human brain would be necessary to know to read out the important contents let alone how to do it. We don't know enough about how or all the ways and places brains store information.

I wouldn't say reading out the important contents of a brain or simulating human consciousness in a computer a thing that is necessarily impossible but they could be impossible and we're certainly not close to either.

Reading a brain and simulating a brain are separately each far more speculative than a crewed interstellar spaceship. We do not have a clear idea of what needs to be done to make it happen. Technically each looks incredibly difficult and we have not demonstrated that it technically is possible.

And while an uncrewed interstellar spaceship is definitely possible it's still not 100% clear that we could successfully send people without killing them. It's pretty likely that we could but we're not even to the really sure it's possible point.

On a sci-fi scale a slower than light space ship to visit another star is something that is well understood and we could go through in detail the process needed to develop and build one but it's still something that we can't do and would require a colossal amount of time and work.

Brain uploading is way more technically difficult and implausible than something like a telepathy hat and yet people treat the idea of someone releasing a telepathy hat as silly and implausible (which it is) and brain uploading as a technical achievement we're definitely going to make soon.

Three bunnies sit at a round table at a fancy restaurant, each holding menus. A waiter bunny asks them their orders, none of them have been served yet. The place probably does not serve fries

Daily bunny no.3118 would like fries for the table

example number 654762 that all GenAI "tools" are garbage

In this case not only does it have no value, but they think fares should be hiked for people using it while it would be unfair and counterproductive for the service intended for affluent people to charge a fare. I am in favor of not having fares on anything but that logic was breathtaking.

And like they're not crazy to look for that kind of person. I mean Alexandria Occasio Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are both legitimately people like that. But maybe that means they need to talk to those people about how to be more insightful and not fall for people who are basically scamming them.

I'm not even like saying someone like Bernie Sanders is a fool or not well meaning. This is just clearly a really serious blind spot that they have trouble realizing is there and they need to deal with it.

And unfortunately among the people who can't make that distinction is clearly Bernie Sanders who's fallen for it more than once. I think there really needs to be some intense soul searching among those politicians about why that is and how they remedy the problem. And there likely won't be.

It's really clear that even on very close examination a lot of members of the political class can't tell the difference between someone who's a hardscrabble come from poverty to find success person and someone who is playing at being that.

But there's something deeply wrong with seeing your working on a ranch or running an oyster farm as a valuable springboard to being a prominent member of the American elite that you feel you're entitled to be a part of but you were unable to find a place in through conventional means.

And there's nothing wrong with being a rich kid and working on a ranch while your parents partially support you or farming oysters for your mom. Even like for your whole life. But you need to respect the people around you and pull your weight.

These aren't working class people drawn to politics, they're cut much more from the mold of a George W Bush who struggled a lot and had difficulty finding a place and identity and found it by superficially emulating working people but never really shedding privileged elements of their upbringing.

Fetterman was supported by his parents (no shade intended on anyone who is) basically until he entered politics and Platner runs an oyster farm established with substantial aid of charitable grants for veterans starting businesses who's primary (perhaps sole) client is his mom's restaurants.

Both Fetterman and Platner are kind of failsons who get by on the largess of their wealthy and successful relatives.