Brutticus
@Brutticus@midwest.social
- Comment on CW: Picture of a severe vaccine injury, NSFL 2 weeks ago:
It’s the confluence of several factor, but essentially, suspicion of the Medical Industrial Complex has been building since the mid 80s. Medical care is so expensive and the MIC so squirrely that it always had people desperately looking for ways around it, which opens the door to con artists. In the mid 90s, discredited now but not at this point in the story British doctor Andrew Wakefield was invested in (and I think part inventor of?) some new vax that targeted one of the components of MMR. In order to market it, he published a paper suggesting (quite softly iirc) that the MMR had some flaws, and advocating for parental choice to vax for each separately.
This is hogwash. The MMR has been safe and in use for something like 100 years (possibly more?). Wakefield was disgraced for this, and when the paper was cherry picked (even after the Lancet retracted it) and misquoted by the then still quite powerful but not yet in their final form anti-vaxxer movement, the disgraced Wakefield had to pivot to a new grift; speaking to Anti vaxxer gatherings, and lending them credibility to those who did not know the story (for which he did have medical license revoked).
So it follows with all of society’s issues in the 2020s; Instead of fixing a severe systemic issues, like say, our broken medical system which bankrupts people or kills them because they cant afford life saving medicine, which might involve curtailing the power of capitalists, blame instead pivots to the products instead, which people can understand. They understand their child is dying and they cant afford it, while maybe not questioning why. This opens the door to con men, which starts a cycle, as conmen want to open the door further. The conmen become the power, and then cheating just becomes business, and an army of marks becomes numerous enough that RFK becomes secretary of health, and your mom dies in a hospital hooked up to a ventilator refusing treatment because a conman said a fucking horse dewormer that he owned shares in would protect her.
- Comment on It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology 2 weeks ago:
Every Cyberpunk setting has a gang of clowns. Jokerz, Halloweeners, Bozos
- Submitted 1 month ago to retrogaming@lemmy.world | 9 comments
- Comment on What are you favourite ROM hacks? 1 month ago:
In 2021, I played through Pokemon Prism and reignited my love for pokemon games. I used to be a Smogon Grinder in the Gen 4 era and coming back to Sword and Shield convinced me the series has nothing for me anymore.
Earlier this year, I played Pokemon Lazarus, and it is immediately my all time GOAT.
- Comment on Why are love potions always romantic in nature? Why hasn't anyone made a non-romantic variant? 4 months ago:
This man is a poet
- Comment on Why are love potions always romantic in nature? Why hasn't anyone made a non-romantic variant? 4 months ago:
My assumption is that friendship is a lot easier to initiate and maintain. Limmerence, especially, is a lot of anxiety about how the person feels and if I could only make them see the depth of my feelings and am I what they want. The kind of thing that a specific kind of person wishes for magic for.
- Comment on Pokémon Lazarus: When a Fan Game Becomes a Conversation 4 months ago:
Lol so I downloaded this and I LOVE it. I’m only on the second gym and I have been doing nothing except grabbing pokemon. Everything seems so well thought out and its beautiful.
There may be some plot elements that people are mad about, but really it just seems to me that people are mad because there is a rainbow flag and a trans flag in some homes. Its just really bland chud rage.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 4 months ago:
Why stop there? Why just banks and hiring firms? why not allow access to Law Enforcement and use the phrenology robot to screen for pre crime?
- Comment on Controversial startup's plan to 'sell sunlight' using giant mirrors in space would be 'catastrophic' and 'horrifying,' astronomers warn 4 months ago:
We do take energy from one place and put it in another. In the form of fossil fuels. And we ship it with what energy now?
- Comment on Square Enix says it wants generative AI to be doing 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027 4 months ago:
Not even from an ethically standpoint. Color me shocked if these games are like, playable
- Comment on Why did Thanos, with the power of all the infinity stones, never think to try doubling the amount of resources in the world? 5 months ago:
I would murder anyone who looked at me cockeyed!
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 5 months ago:
Also, in these cases, get a chicken who can lay eggs (and be prepared to guard that thing, but you should also have eggs to share), or be ready to grow some beans.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 5 months ago:
I used to watch this youtube channel, Depression Cooking, with this old lady who lived through it showing recipes she made during the depression. It was uploaded by her grandchildren. (This was about a decade ago, before she died). Hot dogs do feature into her recipes a lot, as they were made of less choice parts and less choice meats or parts could be mixed in to stretch it. Sausage in general is like that.
It is of course possible that sausages could be too expensive, but you see that more in a war/famine type situation, as the government procures food stores for fighers and trade routes collapse. So like, the Max Miller episodes on food of the Soviet home front.
Im sorry I find historical food so interesting.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 5 months ago:
You could probably mix some frozen broccoli or a diced red onion in there. Its still pretty affordable. I know I do that some Kraft. I also sometimes mix in hotdogs or shredded chicken.
- Comment on Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it 5 months ago:
Honestly, people are rightfully concerned about Microsoft locking down machines, and hackers, and rightfully so, but I think the real insanity is that I do really think LLMs is a tech bubble that I fully expect to burst, and attempting to redesign our lives around it will feel as silly as web3 in 2025.
- Comment on Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it 5 months ago:
Thats almost the same thing. Or like, youtube will play anything as an ad, and people let it run for their kids (and more notably the elderly let it run, and have no idea).
- Comment on Massive Pokemon leak purportedly covers next-gen games, scrapped ideas, and more 5 months ago:
I think it would have been more of a thing if RSE had online support. If you were just playing through by yourself then it was just kind of meaningless, but the main point was when you linked with someone, their secret base was brought into your game, along with their current team. They would occupy that base, and you could battle them. Imagine if the game brought a smattering of bases from the internet? Even a gen later.
I know that GF built pokemon around the link cable, but I feel like they overestimated how many of my friends would be playing.
- Comment on Everything I can't remember 5 months ago:
fuck now Im humming this
- Comment on Is anyone NOT steaming their Music? 5 months ago:
Ive always considered giving money to record companies immoral. When I was young I would download whole albums “for context.” Moving away from tormenting, I just download singles from youtube. I can also download playlists. They just live on my sd chip in my phone
- Comment on No brainer 7 months ago:
I was going to say, 3 is my choice. Subtly powerful and useful. Just have to be creative, even if it isn’t actually that much faster
- Comment on I have this corner in my basement 7 months ago:
my partner doesn’t like dishwashers, he says they engender weakness XD
- Comment on I have this corner in my basement 7 months ago:
Actually it’s too wide, it won’t fit :(
- Comment on I have this corner in my basement 7 months ago:
In my initial post I mentioned it is 20 in wide, with a 60 in clearance. I mean I guess inches are medieval, but I can’t tell if you’re being obtuse, European, or an asshole. Not that I can discern a difference between the latter two.
Cat tree is not a bad idea, except I live down here with my partner and he’s allergic.
- Submitted 7 months ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 18 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 7 months ago:
He’s being kind of a dick, but not unkind. Try it.
- Comment on Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off 8 months ago:
uh yeah, quick question, what the fuck?
- Comment on The elders crave the slop 8 months ago:
Its chromium, my guy.
- Comment on What would happen to the US if it denaturalised and deported all non-whites? 8 months ago:
I want to point out that it is this reason that OP has stumbled on that White Supremacy is a death cult. The answer is that it would start loose and get more and more narrow. A fascist state needs an enemy to rail against. First, in needs to conquer or cannibalize or subjugate; this is the source of its wealth.
You mentioned “the line” but I also want to point out what white privilege is a social construct that has been extended to groups at different times historically. It was extended to the Jews after the Holocaust (Ashkanaz, at least), and I’m fully expecting somewhere down the line the deportation of America’s Jews to Israel (following the forfeiture our property, of course).
- Comment on When the AI bubble bursts 9 months ago:
As far as I am aware, crypto and NFTs are worth nothing. We might see the Federal gov prop it up for a little longer, given how much the industry contributed to Trumps war chest in 2024, but I don’t expect it be actually worth anything.
I was using “Block chain” as a generalized term for what could be called “the NFT” bubble which absolutely was a thing in 2021, kick started by that Beeple auction and continuing until… roughly Dan Olson’s ‘Line Go Up’ video. Bitcoin had obviously existed long before this. But the under tones were that crypto idiots were pitching was that it would replace all regulatory bodies with web3 block chain technology. They wanted to put all records, including Banking and property records (obviously) but also things like medical, employment and educational records as well, including educational and employment accreditation earned. There are a lot of dimensions to this (that are all extremely dystopian), but I feel confident calling that a tech bubble, with the exact same paradigm shift mentality that underpins the thought process underpinning AI right now.
- Comment on When the AI bubble bursts 9 months ago:
I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I do think it will burst. It reminds of the ludicrous claims made about the last two few VC tech bubble trends, like VR and Blockchain. The hype wasn’t that it was a useful technology. It was that these were the new paradigm shifts. These will change how society fundamentally functions. Obviously they didn’t. Obviously those bubbles burst.
Part of the reason, I think, is that the current round of venture capitalists made their fortunes on the internet itself. It was the paradigm shift, and it toppled the way people had done things for a hundred years in a way that can’t really be described to anyone who didn’t live through it. It colonized and conquered every space humans went, and became ubiquitous. Retail stores found themselves under siege by amazon. Video stores found themselves obsoleted by streaming platforms, cable TV and movie theaters fought for relevance. It made some men richer than God. A computer in the palm of your hand, allowing you access to the totality of human knowledge and the collective of human communication. It was like the fucking ansible.
Those structures have calcified now, and the internet is at its limit for integration. So tech bros latch on to ever more destructive technologies named after ever more dystopian sci fi, figuring that throwing a billion at any random project is worth it if pans out once again, and it becomes the next paradigm shift. The problem is that all the projects they try to elevate are mostly just ways to disrupt existing industries and reform them under their control without worker protections. Uber operated at a loss for 15 years just to turn taxi driving into indentured servitude. Mark Zuckerberg was obsessed with VR because his primary competitors owned a hardware platform (so Google owns Android, Apple Iphone etc) and he needed FB to have one too. Being a tech bro, the reason he pitched as meeting software was to undermine commercial real estate. NFTs were an attempt to disrupt central banking. AI is an attempt by Silicon Valley to cut highly paid tech workers from the payroll.
Sorry, this post got away from me. This is the part that has a bubble timer on it, I believe. LLMs produce garbage code, and garbage art. It has inflicted immediate, incalculable harm on people real lives. Eventually, I believe (if the current world order survives anyway) lawmakers will clamp down on it.
I don’t think the VCs care much about the infinite incalculable loss. But there’s this idea that (I think) Robert Evans introduced me to. He noted that Fascists love the infinite lie machine. Fascist governments classically controlled the media, and Russia has demonstrated what a wonderful weapon of war LLMs really are. That alone terrifies me. Its worth something to the worst people, and who knows what might happen if say, Peter Thiel wants to continue underwriting it so that way he can, say, direct fascist uprisings against governments that try to regulate him, or I don’t know, portray striking workers as domestic terrorists.
