gAlienLifeform
@gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
- Comment on It's all connected 1 week ago:
And what does some random painter have to do with anything
- Comment on Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content 1 week ago:
Kind of off topic, but this just activated one of my trap card rants,
The problem is not that we’re a litigious society, the problem is we make litigation artificially costly and time consuming by restricting the number of lawyers and judges we create and only trying to address the bottleneck that creates by making courts harder to access (e.g. increasing filing fees, giving defendants more ability to force things into arbitration kangaroo courts, etc.).
Especially in light of how our courts have been just making up bullshit to let cops/soldiers/Republicans do whatever the fuck they since circa 1968/2001/2025, you can’t tell me that people need as many years of education to practice law as we require in this country.
Also, private bar associations are fucking weird, feudal era anti-democratic bullshit that ought to get replaced with proper public licensing agencies that are accountable to democratic systems and accessible to the public
/end rant
- Comment on Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects 2 weeks ago:
en masse
That sounds wonderful to me, I just want that mass of righteous people to write down all of their ideas so future generations can continue their work even after the fervor has died down. I call those ideas laws and regulations and the ongoing spirit of that mass of righteous people a government, but I’m not too attached to semantics.
- Comment on Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects 2 weeks ago:
Until they monopolize their industry, which is something they’re always going to be trying to do by their very nature as for profits and which has already essentially happened here
A government can be influenced if it is transparent and democratic, which can be ensured if they’ve got good bylaws that are being scrupulously enforced. Like, if you have decisionmakers a) accountable to free and fair elections (whether they’re elected directly or appointed by elected people) holding b) regular and public meetings where c) outside organizations can raise disputes and get them decided under d) neutral procedures that are published in advance and that every party has equal opportunity to understand and take advantage of, and e) if those decisions and the reasoning behind them are also published and cited as precedent to be reinforced or overturned in subsequent decisions, then I really think the rest takes care of itself.
And I think we had a lot of this figured out when we got done fighting totalitarian regimes in the 1940s and turned around and passed the Administrative Procedure Act, but conservatives keep adding loopholes and trying to drag all of us back to feudalism and monarchies.
- Comment on Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects 2 weeks ago:
I think it is possible to have a government that functions in this way on a long term basis. I don’t think the same can be said of for profit companies.
- Comment on Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, payment processing is among the many many many industries that ought to be nationalized so they can be administered in a transparent and democratic manner (see also, healthcare education housing electricity internet etc.)
There’s just too much opportunity to use it to manipulate markets and oppress minority viewpoints for it to remain in private hands imo
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 2 comments
- Comment on Gallium 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, like Andrea Manafort said, they just keep showing up and eating the lobster
- Comment on Gallium 3 weeks ago:
That guy looks like he just had a rush of blood to the head
- Comment on Disturbed 5 weeks ago:
Its gratingly bad.
Completely agreed
people today do not understand good music anymore.
I don’t think that’s anymore true than it’s always been, we just have a biased impression of the past because the best stuff from that period stays in rotation, but there was plenty of chart topping crap back then too
- Comment on Disturbed 5 weeks ago:
Bad covers are frustrating, but I love a good cover where an artist is able to highlight what’s different about their approach to music and also pay a bit of respect to a songwriter they like
- Comment on Disturbed 5 weeks ago:
Because it’s the best written song they’ve ever performed (because they didn’t write it)
- Two Days Talking to People Looking for Jobs at ICE - The motivating force behind American career fascism would appear to be wanderlustwww.nplusonemag.com ↗Submitted 1 month ago to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world | 9 comments
- Comment on Basically 1 month ago:
Fair enough, but, like, 100 archers against 1000 people ends poorly for the archers if the people are willing to take some casualties, and a keep wall is only good so long as nobody inside decides to unlock a door or people outside can’t get a ladder set up somewhere for a few minutes
Yes, there have been successful revolutions since the 1850s, but they’re definitely a lot harder than they used to be, and I think they now really do require some sort of defection from the ruling classes or military over to the opposition in a way that you didn’t really need for, say, the French revolution, where an angry mob of peasant women could just force their way into the kings castle and tell him how things were gonna be going forward
I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I’m definitely not saying people should give up protesting all the bullshit going on right now, but I do think meta social contract between the rulers and the ruled has changed a lot since the 18th century because of technological progress
- Comment on Basically 1 month ago:
why people aren’t gathering in mobs
Well, it happened about a hundred years after your time, but there’s this thing called the Gatling gun that got invented that really became a hard counter to angry mobs trying to storm things, and once that stopped being an option they just kinda stopped listening to us
- Comment on lemmy.blahaj.zone has setup a piefed instance. 2 months ago:
I asked that question recently and got some helpful responses,
tl;dr PieFed has different people behind it, a few more features, and is written in Python instead of Rust (I’m not a coder or an instance host, so don’t ask me what that distinction means, but I’ve anecdotally seen more people saying python is easier to work with than rust than the other way around),
PieFed communities federate with Lemmy communities, tho, so no matter which kind of instance you’re going through as a user you should be able to interact with all the communities (assuming your instance admins haven’t decided to defederate with the other instance for some reason)
- Comment on When New Jersey Switches Prison Tablet Companies, I’ll Lose 10 Years of Family Memories 2 months ago:
Also, it’s arbitrary and capricious - this is hitting everyone in the prison, regardless of their sentence, just because they happen to be incarcerated at the wrong place and time
- When New Jersey Switches Prison Tablet Companies, I’ll Lose 10 Years of Family Memorieswww.themarshallproject.org ↗Submitted 2 months ago to technology@lemmy.world | 15 comments
- 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” 3 months ago:
If they spend weeks convincing you that you should do it, give you money or other resources to do it, or so on, then it can be entrapment.
Things like that should theoretically help you make an argument for entrapment, but it’s no sure thing
- 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”www.wired.com ↗Submitted 3 months ago to technology@lemmy.world | 35 comments
- Comment on Listening to some old albums while reviewing my retirement savings 4 months ago:
I love the concept and these song choices, I’m too lazy to make my own playlist but here are a few things you might dig
open.spotify.com/track/1mCAo03iRVykBr1HObOePI?con…
open.spotify.com/track/56CDeVdoVjGbxfAddAnAPh?con…
- Comment on The other shoe drops, and this time it is covered in dog shit 4 months ago:
- Comment on Its so joever 5 months ago:
And, like, is taking good media hosted on shitty sites and rehosting it on a better one supposed to be a bad thing?
- Comment on Coca-Cola accused of quietly dropping its 25% reusable packaging target 8 months ago:
Additionally, never ever believe lawmakers saying they’ve reached an agreement with a business to do x by y (and therefore they don’t need to pass any new regulations to actually force that business to do what they agreed to)
- Comment on Astronauts tight-lipped about reason for hospital visit after 235 days in space 8 months ago:
Boeing’s incompetence may have hurt our astronauts, we are not good
- Comment on Louisiana schools use Artificial Intelligence to help young children learn to read 9 months ago:
Do you think the department of education writes the textbooks, standardized tests (SAT, ACT, etc.), grading and student management software, learning management systems (Google Classroom, Canvas), or manufactures its own classroom tech (Chromebooks, tablets)?
Each one of those has a bunch of particular nuances, but in general - yeah, I think they could and should in a lot of those cases
The education system is full of for-profit businesses that can jack up the prices, and they do.
Yeah, it’s a big problem with a lot of little parts to be tackled
The DOE simply doesn’t have the resources to create these things themselves
Then government should give them the resources (actually, I think a whole separate agency that develops open source software for any government agency or anyone else who wants to use them should be established, but that’s kind of besides the point).
and would cost them far more if they tried
I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were I think we should be willing to pay premium to make sure essential systems that support the public good are being administered in democratic ways (e.g. by public agencies that are required to give public reports to elected lawmakers and be subject to citizens’ FOIA requests).
the business model has existed forever
A lot of stupid ideas hang on for a really long time. Like, we still have monarchies in the 21st century world.
Personally, I’m more concerned with the use of Google products in schools. A company that’s sole business is harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers should have no place in schools or children’s products. But they’ve embedded themselves into everything so people just accept it at the cost of privacy
I 100% agree this is a significant problem too, I just haven’t come across any good articles about it recently
- Comment on Louisiana schools use Artificial Intelligence to help young children learn to read 9 months ago:
Exactly, they’re a captive audience, and moreover they are legally incompetent to consent to a contracted business relationship like this
If this was a department of education AI or even some kind of transparently administered non-profit organization I’d be fine with this, but the fact that this is being developed for some for profit company that can just jack their rates and cut off public schools whenever they want to is bullshit. Like, I’m not opposed to the technology of LLMs at all, I think they’re actually pretty neat, but our social and economic systems have a lot of exploitative trash in them that can end up making cool technologies forces for evil.
- Submitted 9 months ago to technology@lemmy.world | 8 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 9 months ago:
An American security contractor and a Chinese embassy employee are at a bar. The American says, “I gotta say, your propaganda is impressive. You sure know how to keep your people in line.”
“Oh, you’re too gracious,” the embassy worker says. “And besides, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda.”
The contractor chokes on his drink and gives his friend a bewildered look.
“What are you talking about? There’s no propaganda in America.”
- Privacy advocates demo Babel Street's "Locate X" software, which can track people at abortion clinics without a warrant and has been bought by multiple law enforcement agencieswww.404media.co ↗Submitted 9 months ago to technology@lemmy.world | 19 comments