Platypus

Per the article:

On Instagram White wrote: “Don’t even think about using my music you fascists. Law suit coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others.) Have a great day at work today Margo Martin.’

It looks like “threatens a lawsuit” is being used here because “sues” would be inaccurate (since the suit has not been filed).

At a super rough gloss:

Pure Marxism encompasses two basic theories: Marx’s critique of capitalist economics, which he argues are predicated on unjust material distributions which are employed by the owning class to steal value from the working class by controlling the means of production; and his proposed alternative, wherein the workers own the means of production and exist in a stateless, classless worker’s paradise (“communism”).

Notably lacking in Marx’s work is a compelling plan for how to move from capitalism to communism. Enter Leninism: to transition, the so-called “vanguard party” will seize control and establish a total dictatorship to wholly quash capitalism and bring the society into alignment towards communism; when this is achieved, the vanguard party is supposed to relinquish control and the worker’s utopia may commence.

This school of thought, deemed Marxism-Leninism, is the nominal philosophy underpinning many modern states that bill themselves as communist, including the USSR and the CCP. While on paper it provides a feasible path to the worker’s utopia, critics argue that in practice the vanguard party fails to relinquish control, establish themselves as the new owning class, and operate a fundamentally capitalist regime under the trappings of communism.

That’s dedication to the craft

This whole meme looks AI generated. What’s with the face behind Picard? Or Data’s eyes? Or any of it, really, once you look closely?

Edit: the original meme has since been replaced. This comment is obsolete.

People being convinced that something is conscious is a long, long way from a compelling argument that something is conscious. People naturally anthropomorphize, and a reasonably accurate human speech predictor is a prime example of something that can be very easily anthropomorphized. It is also unsurprising that LLMs have developed such conceptual nodes; these concepts are fundamental to the human experience, thus undergird most human speech, and it is therefore not only unsurprising but expected that a system built to detect statistical patterns in human speech would identify these foundational concepts.

“So rocks are conscious” isn’t, at least in my opinion, the classic counter to panpsychism; it’s an attempt at reductio ad absurdum, but not a very good one, as the panpsychist can very easily fall back on the credible argument that consciousness comes in degrees, perhaps informed by systematic complexity, and so the consciousness of a rock is to the consciousness of a person as the mass of an atom is to the mass of a brain.

The problem with panpsychism is, and has always been, that there’s absolutely no reason to think that it’s true. It’s a pleasingly neat solution to Chalmers’ “hard problem” of neuroscience, but ultimately just as baseless as positing the existence of an all-powerful God through whose grace we are granted consciousness; that is, it rests on a premise that, while sufficiently explanatory, is neither provable nor disprovable.

We ultimately have absolutely no idea how consciousness arises from physical matter. It is possible that we cannot know, and that the mechanism is hidden in facets of reality that the human experience is not equipped to parse. It is also possible that, given sufficiently advanced neuroscience, we will be able to offer a compelling account of how human consciousness arises. Then—and only then—will we be in a position to credibly offer arguments about machine intelligence. Until then, it is simply a matter of faith. The believers will see a sufficiently advanced language model and convince themselves that there is no way such a thing is not conscious, and the disbelievers will repeat the same tired arguments resting on the notion that a lack of proof is tantamount to a disproof.

That’s a remarkable number of words to dodge a very simple question lmao

Just to be entirely clear–are you taking the position that given the choice between (a) the world where you don’t vote and Trump wins and (b) the world where you vote Biden and Trump loses, you would take (a)?

Because the stakes of this election are so very, very high. Trump genuinely and explicitly wants to create a fascist state; it’s borderline incomprehensible that somebody would choose to sit out and let that happen just because they don’t like Biden.

That’s most definitely not “ceasing all road construction,” and actually sounds like a feasible (ignoring realities of modern politics) plan that I would get behind.

OK so… demonstrate it? Explain how, with absolutely 0 maintenance for 20 years (or whatever you consider a reasonable time to bring every single road up to bicycle and pedestrian usability standards), the roads would be able to support the flow of commuters, emergency vehicles, and deliveries. You can appeal to your own authority all you want, but it’s worth just about jack if you don’t back it up.

Given that it takes a long time to bring a street up to standard (budgeting, design, contracting, and constructing), that would probably be 10-20 years at an optimistic estimate to get every street up. In that time, under your proposal, the roads would become undrivable, and therefore:

• Emergency vehicles would be unable to operate. Thousands die.
• Traffic increases exponentially as the usable roads become increasingly infrequent and commuters flock to the few good ones. The above problem is made worse; gas usage increases dramatically as more and more cars sit idle for hours a day.
• Highway safety plummets. Thousands die in avoidable crashes.
• Roads become impassible to trucks. Deliveries of food and goods grind to a halt. Starvation, food riots, economic collapse follow.

I’m all for increasing walkability and bikability; I’m fortunate enough to live in a city that is both, and it’s great. Proposals like this, however, do nothing but make it look like the movement is a bunch of “fuck cars” knee-jerkers who know nothing about infrastructure and can thus be safely disregarded.

Don’t forget that Cleveland team! Not as bad as Washington, but disgraceful that it lasted so long.

does adding the copyright/license information do anything?

Not a lawyer, but I’d be sore amazed if “your honor, he copy/pasted my Lemmy comment” flies in court, regardless of your copyright status. The same goes for those AI use notices–they’re a nice feel-good statement, but the scrapers won’t care, and good luck (a) proving they scraped your comment, (b) proving they made money on it, and © getting a single red dime for your troubles.

Gentrification and weed. When I was growing up, there were large swathes of town where you just didn’t go after dark. Now they’re all brand new office and lab space punctuated with dispensaries every couple of blocks.

I guess so lmao

Where tf do you live that a banana is $10?

Ok but O&S is a miserable fight

Sick of boring old Earth Tribalism? Try the all new Space Tribalism!

My car gets about 250 miles on a charge, so I’m only ever at a public charger if I’m taking a trip longer than that. At that point my day is pretty much fucked by traveling, and it’s actually really nice get off the road for an hour. Usually I find a nearby coffee shop and work on the same stuff I would at home, and when I get back on the road I can feel that I’m alert and focused.

But supplies are limited!