• 17 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Banning abortion used to be illegal too…

    The whole point of this is to get to the Supreme Court and chip away at legal precedent. That’s why they are framing “the Bible” (as if there was a singular book) as a “historical document” that serves as a foundation for the US legal system. It’s a way of saying, “hey we’re not teaching religion, we’re teaching history”. The Supreme Court has rejected that argument for decades, it was the basis for cases involving displaying the ten commandments in classrooms. But now we have a new ultra conservative supreme court that doesn’t give a shit about precedent. So the bet is, SCOTUS will reverse precedent and buy this argument.

    It looks like now that Roe is gone, the new Christian nationalist legal project is dismantling the seperation of church and state. So buckle up, even when dems are in power they are too chicken shit to do anything about this stuff.



  • Even if tik tok was nakedly controlled by the Chinese government, who gives a shit? I can go over to RT (Russia Today) right now and get fed Russian propaganda. Hell, until 2022 I could add it to my cable package. I can to this day still get it as a satellite TV option. If the concern is “foreign government may influence public opinion on a platform they control” then the US has a lot of banning to do.

    But we don’t because free speech is a thing and we’re free to consume whatever propaganda we want.

    We gave up that principle because “China bad” (and the CCP is, to be clear). But instead of passing laws around data privacy, or algorithmic transparency, or a public information campaign to get kids off of tik tok, the US government went straight to “The government will decide what information your allowed to consume, we know what’s best for you” and far too many people are cheering.

    Besides, the point your making is bullshit anyway given the kill switch mechanism Tik Tok offered.

    TikTok was banned because 1) China bad, and 2) Tik Tok is eating US social media companies lunch. Facebook and Twitter and Google throw some campaign donations at the politicians that killed their biggest rival, and the politicians calculate that more people hate tik tok than like it (or care about preventing government censorship if the thing being censored is something they don’t like). It’s honestly one of the grossest things I seen dems support lately.


  • That’s true, but I think what recent conflicts have demonstrated is that total firepower isn’t everything. Ukraine was significantly outmatched by Russia and hung on, even before western weapons shipments. Hamas, estimated at something like 30k fighters strong and armed with small arms and light rockets/artillery, continues to fight effectively against the US armed IDF. Then we have historical examples like the US war in Vietnam, or the US failures to fight insurgents in Iraq (with the tide only changing after deliberate hearts and minds political/social strategy).

    The whole “we have a lot of planes” thing is just defense contractor marketing. How that translates on the battlefield, especially when the civilian population despises you, is not great.

    A war like that would devestate Isreal and drag the US into a true quagmire. It would sap a tremendous amount of resources and leave the US more vulnerable to the china’s and Russias of the world.

    Not to mention our good old buddy international terrorism, which Bidens unwavering support of Bibi is already making us a prime target for. Shit would be fucked.


  • While I appreciate the focus and mission, kind of I guess, your really going to set up shop in a country literally using AI to identify air strike targets and handing over to the Ai the decision making over whether the anticipated civilian casualties are proportionate. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

    And Isreal is pretty authorarian, given recent actions against their supreme court and banning journalists (Al jazera was outlawed, the associated press had cameras confiscated for sharing images with Al jazera, oh and the offices of both have been targeted in Gaza), you really think the right wing Israeli government isn’t going to coopt your “safe superai” for their own purposes?

    Oh, then there is the whole genocide thing. Your claims about concerns for the safety of humanity ring a little more than hollow when you set up shop in a country actively committing genocide, or at the very least engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity as determined by like every NGO and international body that exists.

    So Ilya is a shit head is my takeaway.





  • “Now that the Jury has rendered a verdict and Mr. Trump is a convicted felon, it is time for him to end his campaign for president. It goes without saying that it is below the dignity of the office and of our politics for a major party to be represented in this campaign by a convicted felon. I am confident MR. Trump will do right by his party and our country by suspending his campaign so that someone more deserving can receive the Republican party nomination. I look forward to a spirited campaign with the eventual nominee this fall.”

    • Biden, in an alternate universe where democrats have spines.

    Instead we get this one line " look at us, we’re above the fray, we’re not getting in the mud" statement, so the news just fills the vaccume with whatever bullshit trump is spouting at the moment. I guess the Biden campaign thinks convicted felon is not an issue worth campaigning on? Good call guys. Let’s see how that is working (checks polls, Biden down by 5 or more points in 11 swing states), OK cool so we’re fucked thanks Biden.



  • Bibi is obviously evil, but also a moron if he does this. Electorally, if Bibi wants Trump back in the Whitehouse, one the better strategies to do that is keep democrats divided on Isreal. In other words, Bibi hugging Biden drives progressives away from Biden, hurts enthusiasm, reduces Dem turnout, all good things for Trump. Bibi coming to speak to the Republican conference (he is already meeting with Republican senators today virtually) only serves to make support for Isreal more partisan by pissing off Dems and aligning them against Isreal. Not to mention pissing off Biden who he needs.

    I guess the strategy is to scare Biden and Dems into supporting Isreal more to stave off attacks from Republicans who would be viewed as more supportive of Isreal by voters? Sounds like a dumb move, public opinion is turning against Isreal, and an invasion of Rafaku isn’t going to make Isreal any more sympathetic to the average non racist and non biblical prophecy believing voter. Again, Republicans attacking Biden for not supporting genocide enough only serves to shore up Bidens base, and independent looking at the chaos and suffering in Gaza aren’t going to ding Biden for not being Bibi’s bitch.

    Would be a dumb move I reckon.





  • To me this just shows how broken Congress is. US social media companies have been collecting our data, building profiles of us, manipulating us with the content they show in various ways, harming teen mental health, and all of that for decades, but Congress did nothing. Facebook in particular was used as a tool to manipulate the 2016 election by Russia in various ways, but apart from some show hearings, Congress did nothing. But TikTok is alleged to do the same thing (remember nobody has actually shown proof that the CCP is like directing TikTok to promote pro-China content for Americans), and we get bipartisanship somehow. That vote was more bipartisan than a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown.

    And the reason is “China bad” is a message that voters agree with, and because Google and Meta are more than happy to reward these people for helping to kill their biggest rival in social media. At the end of the day TikTok users are forced onto less desirable platforms so their data can be harvested by American companies and all that, our brave congresspeople get to pretend to be “tough on China”, and Big Tech rakes the profits they were losing by being outcompeted in the market. So few in Congress, on either side, have integrity.



  • Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn’t bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie’s president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I’m sure it’ll go over just fine with them.

    That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year’s speech.