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Cake day: March 4th, 2024

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  • Welcome to Trump’s ‘flooding the zone with shit’ strategy.

    Not invented by, but brought to your attention by Steve Bannon. Trump’s advisor in the 2016 campaign. He understood very clearly that winning elections don’t happen by winning from the opposition, but by winning in the voting booth. His strategy was particularly aimed at the media. Where there is one channel that just continues a stream of populist propaganda in fox, while flooding the media landscape with scandals, lies, distractions, outrage, conspiracy, fantasies, etc. He created a safe haven for conservatives, whilst keeping the general left extremely busy.

    Everything that has happened is a distraction from establishing a fascist state. Everything is theatre, everything is meant for tv. Nobody cares about the real life consequences, as long as the theatre keeps people engaged, enraged and not looking behind the screens.


  • We have a similar discussion in vegan circles. Where we argue against buying second hand leather, down, and wool. The reason is that the second hand market continues to give value to the exploitation of animals. I.e. It normalizes these products. It keeps those products desirable.

    The same argument absolutely applies to child labour. Why would you want to keep those products desirable? Is your image, your way of presenting yourself, really more important than child labour? You really do not have to participate in this, nobody who values you as a human will think less of you. In fact, it’s the morally upstanding way to live.

    The responsibility of wearing and using a product doesn’t start and end at the first purchase. It continues and changes over time. Fur coats are now generally frowned upon. And who feels comfortable wearing crocodile leather, or ivory beads. These things are out of fashion, for a reason.

    And I understand the ecological argument, that it’s a waste of resources. I really do sympathise with this argument. But in the end it’s just saying no to buying something you never really needed in the first place. It’s never an actual decision. Your life doesn’t depends on a piece of designer clothing, or whatever product. And if it does, none of these arguments matter.

    So, no it’s a choice and in the end the ethical choice is the one that’s most closely related to being a human being in this world.




  • More than 5 drinks a week.

    To me that’s kind of the cut off point. Because more than 5 you’re either drinking daily or binge drinking in your days off. If you’re an occasional drinker, 5 drinks is a lot and you’ll be drunk. Which is not something occasional drinkers are after. But leaves enough room to have a wine with dinner in the weekends or a drink with friends.

    Also, any amount of alcohol is bad for you. Carcinogenic at any amount, there is no lower limit. It should be extremely simple to not drink. And if you are in any situation where you feel it isn’t extremely simple to not drink, you’re not in a good place and you need to fix that. I’m not saying to not drink, I’m saying that it’s not smart to drink when you can’t say no.





  • A couple of things happened. First of all, there are a lot more people on the internet. Like a lot more. And that means different preferences, age groups, nationalities, etc. While previously you could pretty much guess, nowadays that’s impossible.

    Second. It has become a central part of people’s day to day lives in ways that it wasn’t in the early tens and earlier. The bulk of people’s engagement shifted towards mobile apps. That meant a lot less talking and a lot more scrolling. Consuming a lot more content.

    Third. Content has become the means to earn money. That meant a large shift in the way content creators thought about what they made. People started to go for safety, copying what worked, experimenting less.

    Lastly, we lost a lot of curators. Most of the curateing is now done by algorithms. Blogs and curated sites have died. Back in those days most of the content you went through on the internet was lists of what other people had found. There were few alternatives.



  • It lives and dies by consumer demands? That hasn’t been the case since we started this fucking race. It has pretty much been an Investment run enterprise since the very start. Name a single LLM derived product that is consciously being bought by consumers. It’s all subscription based models that don’t deliver on their promises. Nothing is living up to its promise.

    Where is the AI that I can say: plan an appointment with my dad. And it links our agendas, sets the alarm, orders a bottle of wine, asks me to order an uber because im out of gas, and otherwise i should leave a bit earlier. Where are the actually smart intelligent assistants?



  • Alsjemenou@lemy.nltoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 month ago

    Also, but not just, if we consider classical theism (pantheism), then there would be nothing that God isn’t. As God, if we would think of God as the foundation of all being, could not be anything that isn’t. Since what isn’t is without foundation.

    Also, but not just, if we accept panentheism, where God is everything that is and isn’t.

    Not at all in the dualistic theistic view where there is a distinction between what God has put in motion, the physical world, and the heavenly realm where the souls/angels/God resides. In base a distinction between the subjective and the physical.

    Basically the only time that anybody would accept God as ‘made out of atoms’ is if that person accepts the inherently and mostly explicitly atheistic view of metaphysical physicalism. Arguing for God from physicalism is like arguing for social healthcare as a (US) republican. There is an inherent disconnect between the two.







  • I find this the weirdest part of reading old travel accounts, like from the 16th century or something. When travel really was a completely different beast. They never talk about getting lost or language barriers as being the big problems. The biggest problem is always getting sick or accidents.

    And looking at my own life and traveling before smart or even mobile phones existed. I feel exactly the same. I always knew where I had to go, even if I had to search for it. And I was always able to get around and buy things without speaking a word. Just gestures and an attempt at learning a few simple words.

    But I always had something to fall back on. A landline. A travel agency. A random person that shared a language. I always was curious how travel went before those things existed. And now to see a next generation being curious about how travel was before another thing to fall back on.

    The thing to fall back on just gets more and more competent. From having to use a post system that took weeks to get an answer back. To being able to call anyone anywhere anytime. I think every step has made travel easier, less intimidating, and cheaper.