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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

    I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

    Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

    It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.










  • This genie is probably impossible to get back in the bottle.

    People are going to just direct the imitative so called AI program to make the face just different enough to have plausible deniability that it’s a fake of this person or that person. Or use existing tech to age them to 18+ (or 30+ or whatever). Or darken or lighten their skin or change their eye or hair color. Or add tattoos or piercings or scars…

    I’m not saying we should be happy about it, but it is here and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Like, if you tell your so called AI to give you a completely fictional nude image or animation of someone that looks similar to Taylor Swift but isn’t Taylor Swift, what’s the privacy (or other) violation, exactly?

    Does Taylor Swift own every likeness that looks somewhat like hers?


  • Well just for one example, Joe Biden has been aggressively using the powers he has via the department of education to cancel outstanding student loan balances that were completely legal and very profitable for usurious loan servicing companies.

    No Republican would do that.

    He and the Democrats leveraged their control of Congress in 2021 and 2022 to pass legislation that is going to do more to reduce our contribution to climate change than ever before. Not enough, but way more than any Republican would do.

    I feel like that means our democracy is sort of working.

    In so called “blue” states, they’re expanding voting access.

    I agree that campaign contributions are a serious challenge, but for example Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have done great things without contributions from billionaires.

    We can do this, but we need to stand up in the face of fear and push as hard as we can. The only thing to fear is fear itself!

    Vote Save America can help leverage donations to the most effective campaigns possible for progressive causes.

    https://votesaveamerica.com/


  • That’s the mission of the people who are trying to tear apart our democracy: make people think the whole system is broken and beyond repair.

    That’s where all these people arguing against voting for Biden and Democratic majorities are coming from. They don’t actually think the two parties are the same (or they wouldn’t if they were honest about them). But they sure as heck think America would be better if not everyone could participate in it’s governance.

    So it’s up to us to work on defending the democratic power we have and work on repairing and improving our democracy. That means completely redesigning the campaign finance system. That means expanding voting access. That means expanding the Article 3 courts from top to bottom. We need to fix our media. Break up monopolies and oligopolies. On and on.

    We can make our democracy better if we work together to fix it.



  • Probably just need some screenwriter to come up with a good idea, shop it around to a bunch of studios who all say “no” then go to their staff writers to write up a knock off that won’t get them sued. (“What if there’s a stoner who starts out good for nothing but has a redemption arc? That’s genius!!”)

    So then instead of the originally written good version you get 5 campy hack versions that all get cranked out in 6 to 12 months. If the screenwriter can pull it off she’ll develop hers independently and get it out in 18 months but be accused of being unoriginal.

    If you ever notice a bunch of similar movies coming out within 6 months of each other, this is pretty much why that happens.


  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.ziptoPrivacy@lemmy.mlI did not know the origin of the quote
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    3 months ago

    I think what Snowden did was fundamentally good.

    My only problem is that he could have chosen to violate the bad law in the way King and others have violated bad laws in an effort to shed light on their badness: break the bad law in the open where everyone can see, then get arrested, then put the bad law and the system behind it on trial.

    By running away, he’s given the people who are doing bad things a line of attack against him. It’s bullshit, and doesn’t change the fact that widespread warrantless surveillance is wrong. But some people will take the attacks against Snowden seriously. If he had turned himself in and gone to trial, that line of attack would be gone.