The reason Afganistan has had so much trouble with superpowers during the last few centuries is that they are an extremely important geographic location which would provide great strategic advantage to the power controlling them. That’s why American media has been trying to push the public to be sympathetic to a re-invasion until recently. Fortunately for Afganistan, they are very difficult to conquer for very long.
With 60-70 Hamas fighters confirmed dead. I am struggling to think of any military action in history whose victims were over 99% civilian. Even the powers they wrote the Geneva conventions over weren’t this ruthless in their pursuit of killing almost exclusively innocent people.
You’re right about the events of 10/7. 60-70 is from since the bombing campaign began. The fog of war keeps things hard to find so I couldn’t find a recording, but here is at least a news report.
Exactly. That’s the only mention of any Hamas fighters killed by the bombing campaign I’ve heard of in a month. Ibwould think the IDF would be more proactive announcing any success they’ve had which they can confirm. It’s just been explaining their suspicions after they bomb a hospital or refugee camp without confirming if their suspicions were correct in most cases.
This meme itself is an example of something LLMs lack the intelligence to understand or produce. LLMs can’t make art. Capitalism will be obsolete before we are.
Mimics are definitely under-utilized. I wrote a story about a hedge knight famous for his wooden and extremely sticky armor. The knight was a mild-mannered timid guy while the mimic was ravenous and hungry, so it was like a little shop of horrors dynamic.
I’m not at risk of losing my job so I’ll be explicit. The group who is committing genocide is the current Israeli government and its supporters throughout the world, including many US politicians who are primarily Christian. The condemnable group is not Jewish people in general by ethnicity or religion throughout Israel or the world, of whom there is no kind collective action or even agreement. People of all ethnicities and faiths throughout the world, including many Jewish people, want to stop the siege and mass killing of primarily civilians currently being performed by the Israeli government.
Depends on how catastrophic the climate change is going to be. If we wipe out 99% of ourselves and the remaining 1% are subject to living and dying according to how we adapt to our new envirionment, probably we’re going to evolve to need less water on a daily basis.
Inspiration strikes! Your muse has finally appeared and blessed you with a story, fully formed! It’s so vivid in your mind. It’s engaging, impactful, expressive, and beautiful. All you need to do now is put pen to paper and move it from nine o’clock to three o’clock....
This is a lie. In the late 70s and early 80s even the PLO was pushing for a two state solution and even removed “Anti-Zionism” from its official goals in the 90s. I’m not going to say everyone in Palestine has always supported one solution or another like you’re saying. I’m not going to say that everyone in Israel wants to eliminate all Palestinians from Israeli territory either, although many do, especially the political powers who blocked the two state solution from the other side during that time. This simplistic reading that Palestinians are nothing more than frothing-mouthed mass-murderers is disgusting especially considering who has had power over whom in recent decades.
War is not a heroic struggle of good vs evil, it is a series of economic and political developments which have been transpiring for decades. There has been a lot of bad behavior generally which lead us to this point. Let’s not offer absurd ideas in times of turmoil like this. That’s not going to help any innocent Palestinian or Isreali civilians getting caught in the crossfire.
I’ve been writing much more consistently over the last few years after a years-long hiatus starting in college. Basically, I dropped all my useless expectations of what my writing should be and started to pay a lot more attention to my own writing sensibilities. I’ve been leaning into the way I like to write without regard...
Freedom has two components: Positive Freedom and Negative Freedom. Negative Freedom is a lack of restriction from doing something, while Positive Freedom is the ability to do something. For example, I am free to go to Mars through the lens of Negative Freedom but not through the lens of Positive Freedom.
Restricting Negative Freedom can enhance Positive Freedom. If a terrorist hate group is not allowed to exist, then those who would have been their victims can be free to live their lives without having them cut short by this disallowed association. This is a pro-freedom move in the direction of greater fairness and safety in Germany.
I can say that I wasn’t born knowing this and was raised in a conservative environment which equipped me with schemas I myself have had to overcome. I agree it’s sad that I had to learn this myself and I want to help out anyone else on a journey similar to mine. What I think is truly sad is when someone is too cowardly to criticize their own beliefs however uncomfortable that process is.
Zionism is one of those political terms that is assumed to have a universal definition agreed upon by all when in reality people are using the same word to argue completely different concepts in many cases. It’s a sensitive and inflammatory topic because of ongoing prejudice and atrocities committed in living memory so there are obstacles to overcome to have a good faith discussion.
Israel’s constituition establishes a secular state which does not privelege one ethnitcity or religion over another. Benjamin Netenyahu represents a far-right contingent of Israeli politics and has enacted policy which does real world harm to Palestinian people. Criticism of his administration can be motivated by anti-semitism, but if we’re seriously talking about geopolitics and apartheid on the left I think we’re more focused on making sure the human rights of Palestinians are respected. Netanyahu’s political opponents in Israel who do not wish to continue expanding settlements into demarked Palestinian territories are most likely not motivated by anti-semitism. Critics abroad making the same arguments against the actions of Israel’s secular government similarly are probably less motivated by anti-semitism and more motivated by some sense of universal human rights. Although there are some imperial-minded people that oppose Israel’s actions because they have some sense of not wanting their most hated group of people to grow more powerful, I honestly don’t think anyone in this comment section or from the linked article has that motivation. Anti-semitism is a very real problem which needs to be taken very seriously, but framing a left-wing political argument in favor of human rights as only possibly motivated by anti-semitism is completely bad faith which does no favors to anyone except the far-right.
Weird article. I’m all for not arresting students in classrooms as happens in my country, but in this case the kid was arrested for a pattern of behavior including explicitly documented terroristic threats which ultimately ended the life of their classmate. Too little too late by the French government since they were aware of the problems and only decided to take any action after it could have helped the victim. Hopefully this at least sends the message they intended to send rather than an unintended message associating vulnerable people with the otherwise oppressive state.
Fresh produce in the grocery store is a marketing gimmick. The reason it’s there in the front of the store is to look nice and give you the psychological cue that you have fufilled your obligation to buy healthy things and may now buy what’s in the aisles with less guilt. Similar to how grocery stores don’t profit on rotisserie chickens which you have to walk through the aisles to get to so you will usually end up buying more than the chicken. They may control costs by displaying what loses them the least money, but direct profit from the fresh produce isn’t why it’s there.
Frozen is cheaper and healthier if we’re talking what to buy for nutrition. Fresh is really only fresh locally. Yes, it’s sad that fresh vegetables from your own locality can be unaffordable. The reason for that goes far deeper than the supply chain disruptions from the past few years.
I definitely prefer the texture of fresh-ish for certain dishes, and there are some which I only buy fresh for preference even though I’m aware of the healthier alternative. That last part is only to advocate for the kind of stuff that’s suited to a global supply chain for nutrition purposes as long as we have to deal with the system we have. Frozen can be convenient, like with soup or other dishes where the produce would be thoroughly cooked. I toss them right in from the freezer. Air Fryers can close the gap on a lot of dishes as well.
That I don’t know other than sodium possibly being an issue. I learned this info a while ago but for this comment I grabbed the first link which featured a credentialed dietician. Since it was high in the search results and from the language used in the article it could very well be an industry advert. Hopefully the dietician didn’t risk their license by making a false claim in service of the industry.
This is an interesting piece. It reminds me of the quote “The reason reality is often stranger than fiction is that fiction has to make sense or it wouldn’t be considered realistic.”
The designer’s concern that the game doesn’t consistently give you all the information to inform consistent expectations from the game world is more of a stylistic decision than an objective flaw I think. One of the core appeals of dnd is that it’s impossible to always know what to expect even down to random dice rolls. The game part is very important in dnd, but the roleplaying and emergent narrative are also very important.
If the player is taking it seriously and not save scumming, they are probably not going to have a perfect run and that’s by design. What they will have is a relatively unique game experience with its own mix of successes, failures, and discoveries. If they want to be a murderhobo or munchkin they can and since it’s one-player no one is going to mind. The game can flex into a tactical rpg or a relatively pure story experience as dnd can, but is not going to be the same experience as a chess game or a novel.
This is a little difficult for me to reconcile. Dialect is the best way to determine an ethnicity, and Southern culture is more than the stereotypes (although they indeed often apply). I have only ever lived in the Southern US, and there are cultural factors here which don’t exist elsewhere. Our cultural heritage is significantly more based in West African tradition than for example the Northeast or the Midwest and the specific mix of influences we have here is different than anywhere else. Even though this is the case, there is also a very real association among white southerners to the Confederacy, and this African influenced dialect of white American English is associated with antebellum white supremacy among southern whites which certainly caused me to avoid speaking like that when I was growing up. I really wish the development would have been in the direction of embracing our entire cultural heritage with pride rather than abandon everything about it to assimilate to a generic white American culture. It’s kind of an improvement, but the improvement could have been keeping the best aspects of what we have here. Reparations and reconciliation could have been a thousand times better, but white supremacy is what it is so here we are.
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
Superman 64 is the only game I tried to return to Blockbuster before the rental window was done. They wouldn’t let me so I had to keep it for the rest of the week.
Very often I would like to abandon my life in reality and become a part of an ideal world which I have imagined. It is surprisingly easy to become part of a rural cult (look up “intentional communities”) so it’s a backup plan I have in mind if necessary, but with people we’re going to be dealing with a different version of the same set of issues. We as a species are nuts.
I used to live in a housing co-op and loved it. That being said you are going to have to deal with people intimately in that kind of living situation, so quality of life is greatly influenced by how well you mesh with the others around and things can change.
I recently went on a trans rights march in a large city in the South through an area heavily trafficked by tourists mainly from the South. We got only demonstrations of support and they were pretty regular. If there were people around who were against us they felt like they didn’t want to manifest that objection around the openly supportive people surrounding them. We did get an objection from a very passionate person when it was suggested someone on city council wasn’t living up to their promises, but his objection was not against trans rights.
To add to this I don’t think under any circumstances a for-profit business should be responsible for this kind of regulation. An ISP as a business has the main goal of maximising profit, and whatever they do would only be in service to that goal. This is aside from the fact that they’re completely unelected which gives the public little recourse. This should be the government’s job.
First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away....
This article strikes me in a way that I’m finding very difficult to put into words. Basically I can’t imagine this is any business of the average Guardian reader who is not going to be able to do anything about it other than to support another invasion or contra-like rebel group. Anyone speaking English as a first language has no credibility to exercise soft power to mitigate this in any way, and that is because for centuries the governments of people who primarily speak English have cemented the idea in the Afghan national identity (maybe the only nationally unifying idea) that Westerners are treacherous and not to be trusted meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. This is especially given that this very meddling there and with other nearby countries is why the Taliban exists in the way it does. However this is addressed our involvement would not help and would likely lead to another exploitative apparatus. Maybe it might soften readers’ attitudes towards accepting refugees, but if they’re already reading The Guardian I’m not sure this is going to change anyone’s mind from one position to the other.
We have groups of people who are massively disproportionately ending their lives out of hopelessness in our nations and our spheres of influence. We may be able to do something about our own cultural flaws or those of our allies with whom we have some credibility.
I’m not bashing the Guardian, and out of widespread publications I would definitely say they are among the best. My criticism is based on their primary and secondary audiences residing in places whose governments’ actions have rendered them incapable of assisting Afghanistan or its people. As a side note my first exposure to The Daily Mail was when it was being distributed for free at the airport, and it made me so angry I threw it in the trash with much more force than I realized. Awful racist rag.
Edit: I’m suggesting in my previous comment that Guardian readers are already likely to support refugees or else they would be reading the Sun or the Daily Mail instead.
Sorry for the sentences, it’s about as much as I can do to keep from writing a single run-on. My concern is specifically with English-language publishing exclusively about issues specifically in Afganistan only now that they are no longer under English-language occupation and have no wish to have us back in any way. For almost two decades you would only hear about Afganistan if we killed someone there and we paid absolutely no mind to any social problems which existed as a consequence of our occupation unless we could credibly blame them on our enemies. Now that the Taliban run things (which are a group originally empowered and radicalized by the US) now we need to pay attention to the social problems when they want nothing to do with us because of literal centuries of bad behavior of specifically the Anglosphere and Russia in their borders. Everything I’ve heard about Afghanistan is that they want us to leave them alone. I think it’s terrible when people face such hopelessness that they feel the need to end their lives, and I’d like to see more reporting on what we can address and less reporting on a part of the world which for very good reason don’t want us involved. I hope this situation can be remediated, but I don’t trust our institutions not to harm them further, and they trust our institutions even less.
I agree with you in general. My concern is specifically with a place which for centuries has asked us to leave them alone and we refuse to. This situation is of course terrible, and our (my country’s) actions in their country is the indirect cause of their dilemma, but I don’t think that we (meaning our institutions) are the ones we can trust to help them. That being the case my view is softened by your appeal just to express support on an individual level because it’s probably the best we can do with the way things are. I really do hope they can find some way to resolve this. My concern is just with encouraging support in our part of the world to go make things worse again, which is all we have been doing to their part of the world for a very long time.
I’m really not sure how that is a valid summary of what I wrote. There were plenty of stories about the issues of US occupation of Afghanistan otherwise I wouldn’t know about them. What I meant was that these particular stories were pretty much absent other than abstractly from mainstream discourse and publication. There is a long history of Western powers causing destruction in Afghanistan. To name a few examples, I blame the imperialist behavior of the English and Russian governments in the 19th century, the Soviet and US government in the 80’s when we were training the Taliban to take their present form to resist Soviet invasion, various western NGOs which shipped weapons to Afghanistan in the guise of providing aide, and I blame the behavior of the American-lead coalition forces whose destruction once again cemented what I understand is the only unifying idea of the various Afghani peoples, which is to resist Western influence in their country. During this period I paid taxes in the United States instead of rebelling, so I am indeed partially to blame for their current state of affairs. For all these reasons I am encouraging people of Western nations, whose governments have done nothing but harm to Afghanistan for centuries despite Afghani objections for the entire period of time, not to support further intervention and therefore destruction in Afghanistan. I would like to see this issue resolved of course but it will have to be through methods which do not involve the West. I also think it’s our responsibility to accept refugees from Afghanistan since we caused the issues which they are fleeing.
Sorry to offend you with my writing style. I’m not proofreading myself and am not encouraged to do so by your framing which is pretty needlessly disrespectful. I mentioned I did read about what was happening in Afghanistan otherwise I wouldn’t know about it. I did know about these events from alternative publications such as Al Jazeera or TYT at the time or else I wouldn’t now be advocating for us not to do exactly that again. What I am saying is that these stories were absent enough in mainstream publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, etc. that I recall the Afghanistan occupation flying under the radar for almost the entire time we occupied their country other than when we killed someone or if designated enemies did something particularly bad. I am seeing far more mainstream news stories about social problems in Afghanistan since the withdrawal than I have seen in those publications for decades which causes me to suspect the idea of continuing to mess with Afghanistan under any pretense is still an issue.
Hopefully you are able to address what it is that’s really bothering you. I’m finished.
If you’re from another country just being exposed to American media and not familiar with why that media is the way it is, it may seem like this hate and racism thing wasn’t around as much before and is around more now. Unfortunately, if you are familiar with American history or have spent any time in a predominately conservative area, none of what you mentioned is anything new or even at higher levels than it has ever been. Almost all these hateful bigots have been that way for their entire lives. Politicians are just directly pandering to them now since Trump proved it wouldn’t destroy your political career when you are totally open about demagoguery rather than dogwhistling like right wingers used to think they had to do.
Everyone has the capacity to behave in a less stupid way, but not everyone has the ability to be aware of and change their behavior or the desire to if they have that ability. That’s given anyone really has a grasp of the optimal epistemological system, which I’m not sure has been established yet. It’s frustrating to see someone who is clearly very intelligent blow their abilities on a highly unlikely and completely baseless hypothesis which could be possible if all their invented variables turn out to be true, but that’s the way many people prefer to live. For myself, I haven’t always been aware of my stupid behaviors and there are probably things I’m doing now which are stupid because my biases have obscured things for me which are clear to others. Many people just assume nothing they do is stupid because if they did it it couldn’t have been stupid no matter what, and if things don’t go their way it must have been a secret conspiracy which foiled them because they couldn’t have been wrong. There’s a lot more going on with stupidity that just “innate intelligence” if that even exists.
I’m pushing half a century in an industry that is not kind to old guys. I try to fend it off but every now and then it hits me. I’m pretty sure this is not unique to my life experience, or it wouldn’t have a term :-)
Very rarely. Cosmic insignificance, radical freedom, the impossibility to establish or confirm ultimate Truth, and the socially constructed nature of most of our subjective realities did feel overwhelming to me when I was younger. As I’ve sat with these inescapable realities over the years they’re as much facts of life to me as my inevitable death. These are things which are completely outside of my control, so I just accept them as aspects of my reality and worry about what my limited self can affect for myself and those around me. By chance, my being is a somewhat self-aware mind in a human body so I’d like to experience being that for as long as I can. I try to help others out when I can as well. I would like to see us move toward a fair and just global society for mankind, but that’s not something any individual knows how to execute or probably is capable of executing. I’m not responsible for the success of that project and really no one can be, but I want that to happen so I try to contribute because that’s literally the most I’m capable of. For my physical self, either I can survive using the resources and skills I’ve accumulated over my lifetime in whatever context my world goes or I can’t. If I can’t survive, then I’m not going to be worried about anything after I’m dead so the prospect of my death doesn’t really bother me and never has.
Faced with new legislation, Iowa’s Mason City Community School District asked ChatGPT if certain books ‘contain a description or depiction of a sex act.’
I finally was able to find leeks at the grocery store for a reasonable price, since nearly every store near me has them in the “organic super food” section at $5 a stalk....
This morning I decided to compete with ChatGPT on who could write the best short story given my original idea. I assume my story idea is original because I have never heard of a story about this before....
I think we agree on the economics of it. If someone is making a living in the art marketplace, it’s an issue if a program can reproduce the thing their customers like to buy thousands of times faster than they can. It can literally impact their ability to survive, and that’s terrible.
I disagree that technology like this wouldn’t exist without capitalism, and I’ve even contended this technology wouldn’t be an issue at all if not for capitalism. Tons of people create software for free for other peoples’ use for a variety of reasons. Software which you can simply ask in human language how to write a complex equation, formula, or program is a generally useful thing which even in an ideal communist society people may still want to use. In that ideal society with no economic incentive to create art, all art would be pure art and the reflections generated by a program would be of some kind of interest since they are not a threat to anyone’s survival as they are in our system. Since living to work wouldn’t be as much of a thing, time and energy for art appreciation and discussion would probably not be as rare as it is in our world considering how much is locked behind pay barriers for many. I can’t imagine the images being a threat to art in that world.
I’m with you in opposition of a private company taking content from the world and claiming it as its own proprietary product in whatever form that takes, especially through the use of data scraping. If the same program existed as Free and Open Source software offered only as a tool for people to use for their own purposes whatever they may be and the art market wasn’t the way it is, I’m not sure it would be as much of an issue.
Whew language is hard when it comes to abstractions like this. The apparatus I’m mistakenly referring to as a database is that code which was automatically created by the program according to set parameters while it was exposed to input which trained it. Even though the code composing the predictive algorithm of the program isn’t a database and doesn’t contain one, it does contain a form of information from which it bases its text predictions. Even though it isn’t literally looking up information from a database and reporting it, it’s still in a way algorithmically drawing from an abstraction of the text it was exposed to in order to interpret user requests and print appropriate and relevant responses. It doesn’t “know” why the words go in the order which they go, it “knows” that they go in the order that they go based on its training. It’s still information in and information out, although in a highly sophisticated way. I’m also impressed by it and wish it was introduced in a context where it wouldn’t be a threat.
It’s all good. You’re not being a jerk about it and I actually appreciate getting the more precise and correct language especially since the words I was using meant different things than I what is actually going on with LLMs.
Israel military reportedly surrounding hospitals in Gaza and shooting at those trying to flee, UN says (feddit.de)
Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/5569400...
"I'm Rick Berman, and I'm a piece of S%^#" (i.imgflip.com)
Over 10,500 Killed in One Month as Israel Continues its War on Palestine (unicornriot.ninja)
OBSOLETE (beehaw.org)
Why did you feed the mimic? My all time favorite writing prompt (startrek.website)
Seeing people realize they cant openly criticize a certain group committing genocide or they may lose their jobs (lemmy.ml)
if youre am*rican its illegal to boycott them.
What do you think will be the next evolutionary step for our species?
My One-Step Guide to Turn Soup from Watery Crap into Something You Would Want to Eat
Step 1: Add a little bit of oil to taste....
Traps We Lay for Ourselves
Inspiration strikes! Your muse has finally appeared and blessed you with a story, fully formed! It’s so vivid in your mind. It’s engaging, impactful, expressive, and beautiful. All you need to do now is put pen to paper and move it from nine o’clock to three o’clock....
[Serious] What are you doing for NaNoWriMo this year?
Israeli death toll passes 600, another 2,048 injured (www.timesofisrael.com)
What have you learned about your own writing style?
I’ve been writing much more consistently over the last few years after a years-long hiatus starting in college. Basically, I dropped all my useless expectations of what my writing should be and started to pay a lot more attention to my own writing sensibilities. I’ve been leaning into the way I like to write without regard...
Germany bans ‘cult-like, deeply racist’ far-right group, carries out raids (www.aljazeera.com)
When Zionists redefine ‘antisemitism’ into a political cudgel (therealnews.com)
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‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit (www.fruitnet.com)
'The Game Just Fundamentally Undermines Itself': Game Designer Breaks Down 'Baldur's Gate 3's Most Fatal Flaws (www.themarysue.com)
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
The drawl is gone, y'all: Research shows classic Southern accent fading fast (www.lemmy.world)
Not counting games that were unfun because of bugs, what’s the most unfun video game that you’ve played and what made it unfun?
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
Anyone else want to just want to abandon society and go live in a commune?
A commune or a cult would be better than this circus lol
Lesbians being anti-trans is a lesbophobic trope (www.gaytimes.co.uk)
ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is. (www.eff.org)
‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan (www.theguardian.com)
First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away....
Looking at America spiraling down into racisme, hate, etc... as a non-american is like reading a Lovecraftian tale: starring into the abyss of contempt, chaos, and bigotry… it also makes me sad. (beehaw.org)
People aren't stupid.
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2313987...
How often do you get existential dread?
I’m pushing half a century in an industry that is not kind to old guys. I try to fend it off but every now and then it hits me. I’m pretty sure this is not unique to my life experience, or it wouldn’t have a term :-)
School district in the U.S. uses ChatGPT to help ban library books (web.archive.org)
Faced with new legislation, Iowa’s Mason City Community School District asked ChatGPT if certain books ‘contain a description or depiction of a sex act.’
What ingredients or dishes lived up to the hype for you?
I finally was able to find leeks at the grocery store for a reasonable price, since nearly every store near me has them in the “organic super food” section at $5 a stalk....
Why I Don't Care if My Ideas are Scraped and Appropriated by LLMs
This morning I decided to compete with ChatGPT on who could write the best short story given my original idea. I assume my story idea is original because I have never heard of a story about this before....