uriel238

@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨bad board games⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the my problem with Marvel Snap, which has a (simplified) betting system like poker (a player can retreat — fold — at any time.)

  So when my opponent is doing their thing and I realize I’m going to sweep the board, I feel sympathetic and dont snap (raise)… even if they snap, in which case I know they’re happier losing four cubes than eight.

  Gloves go off when they use Goblins, Ice Man or Scorpion, which attack my turf directly, and I get pissy when they Juggernaut or Leader at the wrong time, and a long long master of MtG (sober, now) my synergy combos are atypical and catch rivals often by surprise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨North Korea and South Korea isn't working. Let's try West Korea and East Korea instead.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  China has as great a chance (and as little chance) as anyone else. Kingmakers and would be emperors have to make some serious decisions as their nation grows and develops: Do they go the autocratic dictator route and withhold civil liberties, or do they extend civil liberties outward, so that satellite colonies and conquered territories are more tolerant of imperial rule? History teems with examples of both, often from the same empire in different eras.

  It’s not new, from the tolerance of other religions and customs by Xerxes I to the republic of SPQR. Heck, even France tried constitutional monarchy with the Bourbon restoration, so long as the Napoleonic code (defining civil rights and the rule of law) was preserved. Charlie X decided to stop that civil liberties nonsense and the people of France rolled out the guillotines once again.

  This is something I bring up as a difference between the Islamic State as a hypothetical to which Islamists aspire to, and the Islamic State as it is practiced in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; the latter clings harshly to Shariah law. Contrast the Iran during the Pahlavi era (the result of famine and revolution forming a new imperial republic) which established a code of civil rights (only US oil interests had to meddle)

  China is about to have an opportunity to become the world superpower, or an eastern adversary to Post-NATO Europe, and right now, democracy in the EU and UK are weakened by the same long-term reign of corporatist neoliberal parties (King Log) that are opposed by far-right nationalist movements which are gaining traction… or were until Trump reminded everyone of what fascist autocracy looks like.

  If China decides not to develop its humanity and civil liberties game, then those neoliberal parties will last a while longer while drifting to the right, until the nationalist take hold and they have a Big Fat War (not to be confused with WWIII or Nuclear War). But by then, the climate crisis will be extreme enough to make the future too chaotic to predict. This is why China is leading the sustainable energy race (and because Trump kisses the feet of Koch and big oil, the US is reversing course).

  This is all backed by the ethics theory of the social contract: So long as the public is comfortable they’ll adhere to the laws of the land and play by the king’s rules. Suffering breeds discontent and organized resistance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨North Korea and South Korea isn't working. Let's try West Korea and East Korea instead.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A united Korea may be one of the positive side effects of America pooping its pants and during into a has-been world power. China will have to become World Police, unless it autocrats its way into wasteland as well, but if China can set an example and take a few steps elevating liberty, it could then unseat the Kim family, and allow Korea to just be a nice high-tech industrialized nation littered with chibi animal avatars.

  Because DPRK is just a mess. There’s also the possibility that China facilitates an invasion of South Korea by North Korea, but Kim Il Sung’s grandchildren are unlikely to be as pro-Chinese culture as he was, and zombie rulers can only have so much influence.

  Or China can just annex the whole thing, which would be a dick move and expensive and result IRA like troubles (e.g. a decades long sabotage and terror campaign from an internal pro-Korea resistance.) The Daughters of Queen Min, if I were writing the story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horny🧠⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Viagra and Cialis worked when I was younger and probably would work still. But they’re not covered by Medicare-D and are very expensive to purchase.

  Not wholly off the table, though, if we get lucky and find a source.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horny🧠⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So about two years ago, my libido switched to working not at all. Its previous stage was working-half-assed for most of my adult life. Psych-meds were (and probably still are) a factor.

  I kinda hoped it’s going to be wheeee! I’m ace! GARLIC BREAD!

  Alas, no.

  But I now have two noteworthy phenomena:

  The first is I’ll look at something erotic. Usually porn. There’s lots of porn available, and my brain goes this is important. It means something to me and tries to decipher it like a 70s era acid rock album cover or a Salvador Dali painting. It’s not titillating… not quite. It’s like someone gave me a post-hypnotic suggestion years ago and I accidentally came across the triggering image, but that subconscious code is faint and sepia now and gives me strange impulses.

  The other phenomenon is when my brain goes HORNY and I’ll look at porn and it skips right over it. HORNY! It’s like the zombies deciding Homer Simpson doesn’t have enough brains to be interesting, there’s no sexy in these curves. Nor these. Nor these. Everything is all wrong! This is super frustrating, and sometimes I’m compelled to keep looking for the stimulus that has the right pins in the right order to turn the lock.

  I understand Leon now, Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!

  Sadly this was a factor in my separation with my wife. We still see each other once a week for dinner. It’s a zesty blend of complicated and tragic, the kind that happens while society collapses Titanic sinks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  algos / AI has already been used to justify racial discrimination in some counties who use predictive policing software to adjust the sentences of convicts (the software takes in a range of facts about the suspect and the incident and compares it to how prior incidents and suspects were similar features were adjudicated) and wouldn’t you know it, it simply highlighted and exaggerated the prejudices of police and the courts to absurdity, giving whites absurdly lighter sentences than nonwhites, for example.

  This is essentially mind control or coercion technology based on the KGB technology of компромат (Kompromat, or compromising information, or as CIA calls it biographical leverage, ) essentially, information about a person that can be used either to jeopardize their life, blackmail material or means to lure and bribe them. Take this from tradecraft and apply it to marketing or civil control, and you get things like the Social Credit System in China to keep people from misbehaving, engaging in discontent and coming out of the closet (LGBTQ+ but there are plenty of other applicable closets).

  From a futurist perspective, we homo-sapiens appear just incapable of noping out of a technology or process, no how morally black or heinous that technology is, we’ll use it, especially those with wealth and power to evade legal prosecution (or civil persecution). It breaks down into three categories:

  • Technologies we use anyway, and suffer, e.g. usury, bonded servitude, mass-media propaganda distribution
  • Technologies we collectively decide are just not worth the consequences, e.g. the hydrogen bomb, biochemical warfare
  • Technologies for which we create countermeasures, usually turning into a tech race between states or between the public and the state, e.g. secure communication, secure data encryption.

  We’re clearly on the cusp of mind control and weaponizing data harvesting into a coercion mechanism. Currently we’re already seeing it used to establish and defend specific power structures that are antithetical to the public good. It’s currently in the first category, and hopefully it’ll fall into the third, because we have to make a mess (e.g. Castle Bravo / Bikini Atol) and clean it up before deciding not to do that again.

  Also, with the rise of the internet, we’ve run out of myths that justify capitalism, which is bonded servitude with extra steps. So we may soon (within centuries) see that go into one of the latter two categories, since the US is currently experiencing the endgame consequences of forcing labor, and the rest of the industrialized world is having to bulwark from the blast.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh good. Then it will know I’m too broke to fly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Personal Responsibility⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Parents’ Divorce betrays the irony, (Though speaking of my parents divorce, my presence and neurodivergence certainly figured into the escalating contention between them. That’s a different – probably TMI – story.)

  I’ve grown up with sincere propaganda with similar sentiments, and it appeared to get worse at least through the aughts. I think millennials saw them as ironic. Zoomers appear to find them as laughably absurd as the you’re neighbor may be a terrorist propaganda. My Alpha grandson is taking it seriously at 11. Alphas are figuring out early that it’s all a myth to cover up they have nothing to hope for ( at least until revolution goes hot).

  In fact, I’d say the serious versions all the signs that we are, in fact, in a YAF dystopian coming of age model, where the society is trying to mold us into replaceable, expendable laborers and soldiers to be expended on billionaire vanity projects (which often appear as nationalist military action or corporate commerce). Your story as a kid is to find a way to escape the paradigm, either to join the Rebel Alliance, or become pirates and hackers…

  …oh wait, unless you get abducted by ICE / Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS and stuffed into a concentration camp to be disposed of later. Then you’re just fucked.

  If you don’t escape the paradigm as a kid, then welcome to the resistance. You’re one of the isolated rebels like Winston Smith in his corner out of sight of the telescreens, keeping his journal. Also like me. Still working on that. Not sure if I’m going to go Weiße Rose or La Résistance

  You may be held responsible for all these things, even if you’re often not to blame for them or had a way to actionably evade their harmful consequences. Seventy-seven million Americans voted for a regime that is going to have a far greater impact on our lives than many of the typical personal life choices we make. There Are No Rules Any More. Mired in the Rot in Denmark, to thine own self be true.

  In this fucking world, I do not begrudge anyone their tequila, or cigarettes, or their crack pipe, or their poor diet, or their ten terrabytes of pornography…or their arm full of scars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone MUST be hiring for this position⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You know, make it and I’d join it. Lets see if I can find my last (based on current events) writing prompt:

  The Disciples of Eris, a super-powered anti-villain team that specifically targets ostentatious billionaire (or VIP) events like weddings and birthdays, first to arrange for scandalous exposure and then to wreck the eve. A signature golden apple is typically discovered post-hoc by the cleanup crew.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone MUST be hiring for this position⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  At start, she’s the roommate that is the stable income for the household (different characters who have their protagonist moments), and is the one they can depend on to make sure rent is paid, and there’s bad pseudo-Chinese food to eat.

  Then she does get her promotion, and gets in way over her head, having to compromise her values to stay employed, and eventually to live.

  This is a very similar story path of Sam Lowry in Brazil (1985), though he leaves his perfect job it to chase after his (literal) dream girl.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The water would react similarly to alcohol. Yes, the puddle would be bigger but it would evaporate faster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone MUST be hiring for this position⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  A character in my cyberpunk dystopia novel I’m not quite writing yet, (working name Garden Gnome ) has realized that most of the clerical staff are bullshit jobs or the general clerical pool doing bullshit assignments, and realizes everyone’s just courtiers or garden hermits, and so develops a run of performance routines (running to the copy machine just as it’s finishing a job; standing on her tippy toes on the stepladder to access the high files, not getting jokes but saying something even funnier, etc.) as way to meet-cute her way into the upper-management secretarial pool.

  If you’re not in the office for actual work, then (for good or ill) you’re there for your character.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deserved? Poll inside⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This sounds like the kind of flirting I’d expect after seeing '80s and '90s teen angst movies. In retrospect screenwriters just don’t understand how humans interact, or rather they just don’t care and go for madcap antics instead.

  I’m way neurodivergent, and was completely unaware of human interaction, so I was looking at Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire (etc. etc.) trying to decipher how all that works.

  I became sexually active at 26 after folks from the kink community noticed my nerdy vibe, and they schooled me in some basic human interaction. (Note that I matrix-dodged a barrage of incel-to-fascist pipeline bullets thanks to some amazing strokes of fortune.)

  After the fact, in recollection, I realized then that a lot of women in my young adult life were signalling me and I never knew.

  I also realized my aunt was totally hitting on me when I was sixteen. That’s all sorts of awkward to reconcile.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Force is the last refuge of the incompetent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This meme illustrates by example one of the key failures of capitalism:

  Upper management doesn’t see itself as responsible for overseeing staff to maximize their productivity via data-driven methods (e.g. let them have human lives while they work)

  Upper management sees staff as their courtiers and garden hermits there to emphasize how important the execs are.

  Hence RTO mandates rather than letting them telecommute or giving them sweet workspace at the office.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  At the point you already have a tense paramilitary operation clashing with protests in what is escalating towards lethal violence, I’m not sure finding wideband jammers will be the priority of responders in the area, at least not the first few times.

  Though in times of peace and order, wideband jamming is, yes, a big no-no.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  IMSI spoofing is a product of wireless telephony being an ancient (way-pre-internet) technology, and we’re long in an era where law enforcement (or in this case law-enforcement coded) investigators don’t have to obey laws, such as assuring due process, and unreasonable searches disqualifying evidence. Instead they’re hunting political enemies, and every prisoner of the United States is now a political prisoner.

  It also means we don’t have to obey the law, and can start using all-frequency jammers in and around protests and ICE actions to level the playing field. (It will also interfere with regular infrastructure, but it’s not like ICE or the current regime gives half a fuck about that.

  All-frequency jammers are older tech and easier to build than IMSI spoofers, and are highly illegal since so much of our commerce and communications depend on radio. But the current FTC has also been captured and is failing to do its job.

  Any Amature Radio enthusiast will know how to make a jammer. And current battery technology would assure you could make a handful that are portable and powerful enough to shut down blocks and blocks of municipal communication.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well this just wrecked my evening.

  But this is an ongoing, recurring story. Thief 2014 was a mockery of the original titles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok AI to be available in Tesla vehicles next week, Elon Musk says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Swasticar gets more swastika?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, seems to get right-wing update⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In psychology, it’s called attitude polarization, where we ignore data that conflicts with an ideology while accepting data that confirms it. It’s a known common human bias.

  Scientists train themselves to accept new data as challenging old presumptions (that maybe the old model is false, or simplistic and some unconsidered noise is affecting observed data)… at least when they’re doing real science. This is how old dudes get tagged as hidebound reactionaries. And even Einstein couldn’t square his feelings regarding Heisenberg probability models of quantum dynamics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, seems to get right-wing update⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL about prompt bleed, and that it has a name.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, seems to get right-wing update⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t Grok the LLM that recently had a crisis over white power conspiracy theories that it inserted randomly into responses?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Connor Myers: As if graduating weren’t daunting enough, now students like me face a jobs market devastated by AI⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember the meme about everyone could have a 32 hour work weeknand three-day weekends (and a productivity boost) but the billionaires are opposed?

  Well everyone could have post-scarcity communism but the billionaires are opposed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As of 30 minutes ago at the time of posting, the NYPD has detained two young Black men after they refused to show ID without explanation or cause.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When assessing the degree and quality of liberty in a country, one of the factors considered in academic politics is the requirement of personal identification by law enforcement. It use to be a trope of Hollywood cinema that takes place in the Eastern Bloc (Warsaw Pact countries) that ordinary citizens and abvious tourists were routinely harassed by law enforcement for their papers, a stark reminder that here in the states you can even cross state lines without identifying yourself.

  It’s getting more interesting as law enforcement is pre-emptively collecting biometric data on school kids and other vulnerable demographics.

  Currently wending through state courts is the controversy of using biometric data to identify suspects, which may be regarded as an unresobable search from which we (all, citizens or otherwise) are supposed to be protected, according to the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

  In this specific incident, the NYPD is notoriously racist and aggressive, so this may be contempt of cop while black As the adage goes, you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride. This assures these young men will have a bad week regardless of their guilt of any wrongdoing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mages be like:⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Meanwhile 77 million Americans really let the Djinni out of the bottle in November.

  Maybe every story is Pandora’s jar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Saying "It is what it is" when it is all that it is⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Obama campaigned on getting past it. ( Hope amd Change ) but then he didn’t. Corporations got their bailouts. OWS was cleared violently with the cameras off. BLM notice law enforcement kill a lot of people. The disposition matrix was a thing. The IWOT went on and on. The mass surveillance state was a thing. The economy was better but 88% of households were in precarity, and a lot of people were homeless.

  And then Trump won by the EC.

  So Ive been waiting for things to get better for a long, long time. I’ve just stopped expecting the suck to ever reverse, or even ebb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's a tragedeigh⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I just use LGBT+ since it was LGBT for a long time (it was GLBT but the Ls earned their place at the front during the AIDS crisis) then it became LGBTQ, then a bunch of other letters were added while the community was recognizing is profound variety before it turned into LGBTQ+

  Q+ has a nice ring to it, but since I’m an unusual form of NB, I fit squarely into the catch-all variety of Q.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's a tragedeigh⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Welsh?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spicy one⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That is a good assessment. Yes.

  In fact, the race between capitalist interests to bypass safety and get AI soonest is entirely about getting that power to be able to use it to hold everyone else hostage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spicy one⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

  Courtesy of XKCD, long before we have to contend with unfriendly AI (we have committees of AI-techs working on this problem already) we’ll have to contend with someone like Musk or Bezos determined to own everything and capable of creating an AI-controlled army of killer robots.

  We’re not sure how rogue AI is going to manifest. We are sure rogue power-seeking humans exist all the time, and positions of power are commonly filled by them. (That’s the primary argument for election by sortition, or by lottery.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spicy one⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Whatever made that crater was an ELE. Bigger than Chicxulub.

  We have plenty of great filters to navigate:

  We end war, or we die.

  We restore the atmosphere and rebuild global ecology, or we die.

  We end stratified society and power disparity, or we die.

  Where are all the aliens? Fermi asked. The first question is, how do we navigate our way to becoming a space-faring, world colonizing species, ourselves? It’s turning out to be pretty difficult for the common hominid.