DomeGuy
@DomeGuy@lemmy.world
- Comment on The only science fiction in 1984 by Orwell is that there is a drug that could make you "Happy" 23 minutes ago:
FWIW, the biggest sci-fi in 1984 wasn’t big brother or the proto-internet. It was a predictive model of human behavior that could perfectly predict individual behavior.
That, and a competent tyrannical regime.
(My personal headcannon is that “Airstrip one” or whatever they called Britain is the North Korea of its world, and everyone else just ignores them.)
- Comment on That time Apple sent everyone a U2 album: 'I DONT WANT YOU.' 5 hours ago:
“if we just made this opt-in” has become the bleakest nonsense in IT.
Be it LLMs or ads or “free” albums, tech companies just can’t accept that “make me say yes” should always be the default.
- Comment on Parents who knowingly send their kid to a place where they get bullied and do nothing about it are at fault and are the worst types of people. 9 hours ago:
“Being bullied can be good; I was bullied and ended it by engaging in violence!” is like “I grew my business from nothing with a small loan of 10 million from my parents”
Yes, teaching kids how to stand up for themselves and interact with unfriendly peers is a good thing. But sending a child into an abusive situation and saying “you figure it out” is still bad parenting.
- Comment on I’m not saying that I agree with right- or center-wing views, and I do condemn transphobia. However, do you think there should be a distinction between critiquing beliefs held by transgender people, and engaging in transphobia? 1 day ago:
Your analogy is more telling than you think it is, and argues rather strongly against the idea that right wing transphobia has worthwhile points.
Yes, the (non) existence of God Almighty is both philosophically and scientifically unfalsifiable. But we don’t as societies use this to assert that every last person who proclaims a faith is telling an intentional lie about belonging to a religion
Gender is not like whether or not God exists, but is instead like what church you attend.
- Comment on Why do Interstate highways exits post the nearby jail/prison/detention center? 4 days ago:
Yes, because you despite not being OP proclaimed that warning off hitchhikers was the “right answer”
- Comment on Croutons are just stale, dry bread with good PR. 4 days ago:
I wouldn’t tease if I didn’t love. :)
Americans think the French mock our food culture in the way that we mock their military resolve – only in jest, or on the lips of the dumbest citizens of our respective countries.
America’s far too obese to not have amazing food, and we would still be part of the British empire (or speaking German!) if the French did not know how to fight.
- Comment on Croutons are just stale, dry bread with good PR. 5 days ago:
Well, good PR and a bunch of recipes that call for them
That we buy croutons in stores is why the French don’t believe Americans can cook
- Comment on Why do Interstate highways exits post the nearby jail/prison/detention center? 5 days ago:
Not a bot, just a guy whose been on the internet for years. Which means that, yes, I presume some people are ignorant of facts. (And that others are fucking stupid.)
@OP posted about “exit signs”, which is not what your sign shows. Which is why I described the ones I did.
Why did you assume that the black-on-white public safety signs like what you posted were what they meant by “exit sign”?
- Comment on Why do Interstate highways exits post the nearby jail/prison/detention center? 5 days ago:
Road signs are like zip codes : they aren’t assigned based on desirability but volume of need.
While more Americans visit a library or courthouse than visit a prison, such places are almost always highly local. If you or your loved ones are sent to prison, it’s probably going to be somewhere you aren’t familiar with.
And don’t discount that a lot of prisons were built as "job providers* in rural communities, so there are a considerable amount of employees that have to locate the place.
(If you want to be depressed about the American prison industrial complex, look up the statewide budgets for the departments of incarceration and contrast them with highway construction or education )
- Comment on Why do Interstate highways exits post the nearby jail/prison/detention center? 5 days ago:
The typically white-on-green signs shown near US interstate exits are navigational aids, not public safety messages.
If the local prison is on the exit, it’s just the single most notable landmark.
- Comment on Firefox Will Ship with an "AI Kill Switch" to Completely Disable all AI Features - 9to5Linux 2 weeks ago:
It’s cute that you think anyone who would co-opt a beloved brand like Firefox to make an “AI browser” would be at all stopped by past habits.
Screen shots are not developed by massive art theft, nor does the creation of such a feature burn so many megawatts of data center energy that it makes Bitcoin farming look efficient.
- Comment on Firefox Will Ship with an "AI Kill Switch" to Completely Disable all AI Features - 9to5Linux 2 weeks ago:
“Opt-out” means on by default. Installed alongside the parts that you use, and quite possibly embedded into the thing so thoroughly that the next automatic update or feature iteration will either switch it back on or remove the option entirely.
LLMs are controversial to say the least, and accomodation to those who are repulsed by their inclusion should not take the form of an option they need to jump through hoops to turn off.
Leaving them in but saying they can be turned off is like shipping pornography in your video game with a filter someone in the options you can enable. It’s a pain in the ass at the least, and means that anyone making a moral or ethical stand against its inclusion has no choice but to go elsewhere.
- Comment on Did Microsoft do anything right in 2025? Wins, fails, and WTF moments 2 weeks ago:
“fake” diversity with an obviously proprietary option is substantially better than a fake “open” environment where the only web browser options are either made by a single for-profit company, a reskinned derivative of that for-profit company’s work, or a semi-not-for-profit whose main funding source is that same for-profit company.
In a very real way, web standards beyond “whatever chrome does” died when Microsoft tossed edge’s HTML engine for chromium.
- Comment on What are some cool infections? 2 weeks ago:
Honestly, WoT balefire scarring would be epic as fuck. You had a foot replaced when you were young by a wizard,.and in the future the jerk gets balefire’d so hard that his entire lifespan back to when you got your foot replaced is undone.
The charactes’s foot appears as a ghostly flicking outline, like the false light if you stare at something too bright for too long. It can make a few marks, but is not solid enough to support the character.
This could just be a clever detail, or it could be a setup for an epic campaign.
- Comment on What unique thing bothers you about politics in general? 2 weeks ago:
This is a consequence of America wanting to pretend that the rest of the government has to be funded in accordance with the constitutional guard against a standing army.
The only thing that Congress does that has a constituonal time limit is fund the army.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Why should abelsim be given latitude that we wouldn’t extend to racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism?
My opinion is that embarrassed bigotry in private is still bigotry. It’s good that those with such feelings recognize the harm that they bring (or at least the public shaming that they can suffer), but it makes for a simpler life to just excise such hatreds whenever you can.
- Comment on Sooo... This is happening on Imgur 3 weeks ago:
The same folks sending “the left are subhuman!” to the right aren’t also sending “the right are Nazis!” to the left. That would be a duplicate signal and inefficient.
Instead, they’re sending “both sides suck” to the middle.
- Comment on Sooo... This is happening on Imgur 3 weeks ago:
Because right-wing propaganda is “become Nazis, the left are all sub-humans” and the left wing propaganda is “what the fuck, the right are all Nazis!?”
It’s hard to spot propaganda when it’s just the truth spoken loudly.
- Comment on America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman 3 weeks ago:
A mere casual endorsement is not an appeal to authority. If you don’t like the guy that’s fine, but it’s not a logical fallacy to, for example, describe a late night comedian as “a kinda funny guy.”. (A logical fallacy would require that someone assume Krugman is RIGHT because of his record, not that he’s merely worth reading )
How is dismissing someone because of where they worked NOT an ad hominem attack?
How is splitting hairs over which awards given by the swedish government are and aren’t “nobel prizes” NOT a distinction without a difference?
- Comment on America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman 3 weeks ago:
You didnt attack any of his actual credentials, though. You just said that he should be dismissed because he wrote for a particular newspaper and the award he was given by the Swiss government was not one of the awards given by the Swiss government funded by the gift of a 19th century arms merchant.
If you want to rebut my statement that Krugman “has a pretty good track record”, please do so! But you didn’t, and haven’t, and instead asserted your own biases as fact.
Which is obviously your right to do but, again, is a really weird response to a “who is this guy” post.
- Comment on Is there a mechanism in the USA to undo presidential pardons years later if political corruption has been proven as motivation to give these pardons? 3 weeks ago:
Go read the actual text of the US Constitution . The answer is a quirky technical “well, theoretically yes but practically no.”
constitution.congress.gov/browse/…/clause-1/
The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
That last emphasized line means that if the US Congress were to impeach and remove a president for bribery or a criminal conspiracy, they could also negate any pardons given to POTUS’s collaborators.
Of course, since no US President has ever been removed from office by congress’s impeachment power, and it’s uncertain if a post-term impeachment and conviction would itself pass the inevitable SCOTUS appeal, this is even less likely than the US Congress awarding a no-majoroty electoral collage vote to the other major party.
- Comment on America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman 3 weeks ago:
An ad hominum attack and a distinction without a difference is a hell of a response to “who is this guy”.
Do you want to show the class where on your wallet the Keynesian model of economics touched you? (Or do you perhaps have a “Krugman sucks and you shouldn’t listen to him” link you’d like to share?)
- Comment on America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman 4 weeks ago:
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times. He has a relatively impressive record of predicting terrible things.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
And while I certainly don’t want to push back on the difference between heroin and other opium derivatives, it’s worth noting that legally speaking they’re both exactly as illegal when not used as prescribed for the treatment of pain or disease.
It’s not a blog post about heroin or opiates, though, so quibbling over the imperfections of his analogy is kinda missing the point. Please give it another read if you have a few minutes; the analogy is fairly apt, though very depressing as an American.
- Comment on How much money's out there? 4 weeks ago:
Value for resources is also highly subjective.
If I have zero water and $50, but you have 50 waters and $0, I would value one of your waters more than one of my dollars and you would value one of my dollars more than one of your waters. And so we would trade, and both be happier for it.
- Comment on Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready 4 weeks ago:
Eww. It’s a LLM travel agent.
- Comment on Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready 4 weeks ago:
So, the people in companies pushing and making this AI slop treat it like toxic waste, and the author thinks that they’re the problem?
I suddenly want to look at his AI map thingy and see how bad it is.
- Comment on YSK negative views about homosexuality remain common in many countries 4 weeks ago:
Is this a graph of “report negative opinions about homosexuality”, or “think homosexuality should be illegal.”
The former is just freedom of speech (“freedom to say something dumb and bigoted”), while the latter is a public policy concern.
- Comment on what would happen? 4 weeks ago:
Excluding clone-troopers and only in live acted Star Wars, Stormtroopers (sometime from off screen) have hit:
- All kinds of rebels on various planets in "Andor"
- A whole bunch of rebels in "rogue one"
- A bunch of rebels on the Tantive IV
- Leia (with a stunner) on the Tantive IV
- All those poor Jaws, plus Luke’s family.
- The hull of the millennium falcon (to no effect)
- A bunch of rebels on Hoth
- C-3P0 in cloud city
- Luke’s lightsaber blade in cloud city
- Leia on endor’s forest moon
- R2D2 on endor’s forest moon
- At least a few ewoks on endor’s forest moon.
- Din Djarin’s beskar armor
- A bunch of other mandaloroans and extras
- Some of those turtle-riding aliens in a distant galaxy in "Asoka"
- A bunch of innocent villagers on Jaku
- Poe’s parked X-wing (to great effect!)
- Poe in the arm
- Rei’s lightsaber blade a bunch of times
- The hull of the millennium falcon (again, to no effect)
I think stormtroopers are more effective than Klingons, federation red-shirts, or the borg.
- Comment on Why do cops and soldiers get more media attention than the average citizen? 5 weeks ago:
Because the killings are targeted actions that are arguably justifiable in the face of tyrannical action.
If a story broke about a criminal gang who all wore identifiable colors and claimed the right to stop anyone you saw and bully them to the point of death, you’d demand that effective (violent) action be taken to stop them. But because the gang is “the police” and nominally controlled by elected officials and the courts, there is a public policy reason to treat both their misbehavior and the public reactions thereto as something categorically different.
(I’d be all in for abolishing police costumes and requiring them to act only within the bounds of permissable behavior for the rest of us, FWIW )
- Comment on The Death of Listening 5 weeks ago:
I got all the way to “as I’ve been writing about for years …” before I clocked this as something I won’t bother to finish.
Humans as a species have never listed as the lead quote implies. We’re a shallow species whose interpersonal communication is far more of a handshake than a learned debate. If you go against someone else’s notions you may, at best, get them to remember a short phrase. (And if you’re really lucky and repeat a phrase a few times, it may even be one that accurately reflects your position!)