zephorah
@zephorah@lemm.ee
- Comment on Trump's claim about "control of the skies over Iran" raises questions about U.S. involvement in conflict 6 days ago:
After that first attack by Israel, my thought was the act was a “trade” with the US.
We’ll be entirely hands off re Gaza & keep funding you, but you need to deal with some things in Iran for us.
This fits that theory.
- Comment on What are some good places/activities where a middle-aged man can new make friends? 1 week ago:
I came here to say Dungeons & Dragons. People of all ages and walks of life play.
- Comment on All this AI nonsense is an attempt to capitalize on the mere act of human thinking 2 weeks ago:
Yes. That is the Theil model for social engineering. To do it via suggestion in AI.
Bot responses so trends are assumed where there are none. Movements even.
Suggest one answer or idea over another with ChatBots.
No longer do you have to search through enshittified Google, just tap the AI at the top to find the answer for you.
But why did the AI choose that answer, for you?
- Comment on TIL: UnitedHealthcare Caught Paying Off Nursing Homes to Let Seniors Die Because Hospital Transfers were “Too Expensive” 3 weeks ago:
Corporate has already bought up most of your doctor’s clinics. This is why you get 15min, no more, your appointment is gone if you’re 5min late, and may even have a fee charged for missing/not being on time for an appointment. It’s leading to doctor burnout.
- Comment on T-Mobile secretly records iPhone screens and claims it's being helpful. 3 weeks ago:
AI. Probably.
- Comment on T-Mobile secretly records iPhone screens and claims it's being helpful. 3 weeks ago:
I admit, my skepticism regarding these companies has me leaving a black sticker on my selfie cam for a couple years now.
- Comment on Why does (human) organ trafficking exist? 4 weeks ago:
Medically, 51 isn’t old.
- Comment on Why does (human) organ trafficking exist? 4 weeks ago:
Not me. That’s is above my pay grade.
The main point is someone has to decide.
- Comment on Why does (human) organ trafficking exist? 4 weeks ago:
Organ transplant.
There’s a board who decides which patients qualify for the top of the list. If you are someone who sat in a chair gaming, from teens to 30s, pickling your liver with alcohol for the duration, thus killing it, you won’t make that waiting list. Two reasons. You can’t be trusted to care for the new liver. You’re not a useful member of society.
Organ transplants happen when someone young and healthy dies, is in a position that those organs can be preserved, and the family, in the midst of their horror, shock, and grief, both allows the conversation and then agrees to the donation.
As such, if that sit in a chair gaming and pickling themself individual has a billionaire dad, maybe they go black market? Otherwise it’s hospice care.
- Comment on Most of us will leave behind a large ‘digital legacy’ when we die. Here’s how to plan what happens to it 4 weeks ago:
Books, games, music should be willable, but they are not. That we allowed ourselves to reach this particular spot is just sad.
- Comment on I just came across an AI called Sesame that appears to have been explicitly trained to deny and lie about the Palestinian genocide 4 weeks ago:
That is the idea behind Theil and company, to render politicians obsolete by fueling influence through social media manipulation.
To further this end via personal data such that they personally tweek you during your screen time.
AI is already influenced to bias answers on various topics per owner preference. That’s currently being mass tested now.
Social science data on retractions of bad or erroneous headlines, going back decades, shows retractions don’t work. The initial information blast holds sway. It sticks, for better or worse. Outliers exist, we’re talking middle of the bell curve.
You may already have an opinion, but many more do not and will thus be swayed.
- Comment on Spotify caught hosting hundreds of fake podcasts that advertise selling drugs 5 weeks ago:
Isn’t 1/3 of their music fake? How is this surprising?
- Comment on Paul McCartney and Dua Lipa among artists urging British Prime Minister Starmer to rethink his AI copyright plans 1 month ago:
It’s like the goal is to bleed culture from humanity. Corporate is so keep on the $$$ they’re willing to sacrifice culture to it.
I’ll bet corporate gets to keep their copyrights.
- Comment on Why do we tolerate it that Luigi Mangione is being held in prison. We know its absolutely the least safe place he can be? 1 month ago:
True. I think even if he gets off, they’ll kill him. Remember all the whistleblower deaths in 2024? Like that.
- Comment on NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones 1 month ago:
Most of it was psychological, not unlike lines painted on a road acting like a divider. The only barrier, most places, is a mental one. Even when a road is empty, most people obey out of a sense of safety and respect for 3 ton bullets.
Windows on houses, also a psychological barrier to entry. They’re glass, anyone can break them with little effort. Take away the mental restraint and you have every zombie movie ever made.
Belief in the constitution, the democratic republic of America, and the rule of law does not exist with MAGA. As such, there are no mental guardrails to hold anything dictatorial or destructive back.
- Comment on NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones 1 month ago:
As a nation we already have to import degrees. Now, I anticipate bleeding the homegrown degrees out to other countries.
I’m a little shocked the money makers and corporate haven’t pushed Trump out to pasture via the 25th amendment to save the dollar and future innovation/$$$$.
- Comment on The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business 1 month ago:
Terrifying.
I wonder how much our car insurance will go up due to this.
- Comment on Mark Zuckerberg Thinks You Don't Have Enough Friends and His Chatbots Are the Answer 1 month ago:
Until you listen to the Behind the Bastards on him and realize FB started out as a women hotness rating system local to his college. There was no benign origin here.
- Comment on All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding | by Dan Fabulich | Apr, 2025 1 month ago:
This is another bullet point on the list of MAGA stopping or confusing the flow and accessibility of information.
We are to know nothing about what they are doing in the world, ideally.
- Comment on Amazon says displaying tariff cost 'not going to happen' after White House blowback 1 month ago:
MAGA attacked the largest law firms first. Then the news. Then research and universities. Now Wikipedia. Google kissed the ring before he won. META is eager to toe his line, per leaked staff meetings. The White House press secretary routinely ignores reality in favor of cluster B personality disorder false reality.
This is all about blocking true and correct information. There can be no opposition if everyone’s in doubt regarding truth and what is actually happening.
So of course he is vehemently opposed to something like Amazon spelling out how tariffs really work.
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 2 months ago:
I think they’re talking about people you may have lost contact with. Where do find anyone for a quick text? Facebook. What is the substitute platform for finding just about anyone?
- Comment on Cops are deploying AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protesters” 2 months ago:
Wait. Events are moving too fast to keep up with, now free speech is illegal. Great.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Unless you live inside a major city in America, you can’t get to work without a vehicle. It’s either have a car or be homeless.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
They were manufacturing original Volkswagen beetles in Brazil and Mexico up until 2003?. Illegal to sell in the USA.
- Comment on FCC head Brendan Carr tells Europe to get on board with Starlink 2 months ago:
So our government is now doubling as advertising executives?
- Comment on Fund managers worry about Trump’s mental state amid tariff debacle 2 months ago:
He’s 80 years old and has lived his life in erratic impulsivity. That’s the background structure of the inertia he is experiencing during dementia, allegedly.
- Comment on Bots increase online user engagement but stifle meaningful discussion, study shows 2 months ago:
If “engagement” is a tap in, which this article is not clear on, then it’s a piss poor measurement of engagement.
I think bots are “good” for making an item appear viral through artificial amplification of visibility. Of note, the headlines in Gaza and Israel pre 2024 election were a deluge. Multiples every day. Post election, that deluge of posts dropped abruptly, to 0-1 a day.
There also needs to be a distinction between passive and active engagement.
- Comment on Switch 2 preorders delayed over Trump tariff uncertainty 2 months ago:
What’s uncertain? He’s solidifying income for the executive branch sans congress. And thus gutting congressional power over the executive branch before midterms.
- Comment on What phones are the government people using that are supposedly secure enough to discuss war plans? iPhone? Android? Some special custom-made phone specifically for the government? 2 months ago:
They’re using Signal so nothing is recorded.
Basically there’s a government transparency mandate by We The People. It’s why info gets released to the press and eventually things like the JFK assassination are released years later. It’s why everything the president writes or says is recorded. Because, in theory, they work for We The People and have to answer to us. They can’t do that if no one knows what they’re up to.
Trump admin says, fuck that, fuck We The People, we will now use an end to end encrypted service that cannot be effectively subpoenaed. What we do is our secret, so no one knows what we are up to.
As a messaging service Signsl is as secure and private as the people using it. You want privacy you use WIRE or Signal. Your stuff isn’t recorded on a database like Facebook Messenger, for later subpoenas, it’s just poof, gone, as you delete it. You can even time delete it for everyone in chat after a few minutes, an hour, a week, etc.
As for the phones themselves, I don’t know. In general terms, out of the box, Apple is more secure than android but neither is private, unless the feds get a telemetry removal package or some such which would make sense. GrapheneOS on an Android device (strips all telemetry including that map app) is how we laymen do it.
- Comment on Trump supporter Rick Fuze was arrested in CA for using a stun gun on peaceful protesters outside a Tesla dealership. The woman kicking this guy’s ass is a retired professor with 16,000 citations. 2 months ago:
She’s medically trained, so she knows where to hit him. In addition, there’s a lack of barrier to entering the physical space of strangers and physically touching them just in general. That barrier almost doesn’t exist for medical. The rest of the world, middle of the bell curve, hesitates.
And if she’s done direct patient care at any point in her career, there’s a good chance she has no patience left for shenanigans.