2
submitted 6 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@lemmy.world

The Idaho Legislature’s first initiative of the year blasts same-sex marriage, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to let states once again regulate the relationship.

...

Reps. Todd Achilles (D-Boise) and Brooke Green (D-Boise) said they supported the resolution's introduction in the hopes that Republicans would support introducing their legislation in the future — a strategy that's had mixed results over the past several years.

112
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@lemmy.world

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a long interview with Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who Googled an online definition of fascism before saying of his former boss:

Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.

Also on Tuesday, the Atlantic published a report that Trump allegedly said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

The revelations have dominated discussions on Fox News, and prompted two-dozen GOP senators to call for Tr—haha, just kidding.

Instead, Democrats and their supporters once again contend with a muted reaction from the media, the public, and politicians, who seem unmoved by Trump’s association with the F-word, no matter how many times Kamala Harris says “January sixth.”

One exception was Matt Drudge, the archconservative linkmonger who has been hard on Trump, who ran a photo of the Führer himself. This proved the rule, argued Times (and former Slate) columnist Jamelle Bouie: “genuinely wild world where, on trump at least, matt drudge has better news judgment than most of the mainstream media.”

Debates about Trump and fascism have been underway for a decade now, and applying the label seems unlikely to convince or motivate anyone. But the lack of alarm underlines a deeper question that doesn’t require a dictionary to engage in: Why do so few Americans, including many on the left, seem to take seriously the idea that Trump would use a second presidency to abuse the law to hurt his enemies?

Maybe it’s because Democrats have studiously avoided confronting Trump about some of the most controversial, damning policy choices of his first term, or the most radical campaign promise for his second. You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration. Immigration was the key to Trump’s rise and the source of two of his most notorious presidential debacles, the Muslim ban and the child separation policy. Blaming immigrants for national decline is a classic trope of fascist rhetoric; rounding our neighbors up by the millions for expulsion is a proposal with few historical precedents, and none of them are good...

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 41 points 9 months ago

Looks like the U.S. is going to vote in an oppressive dictatorship to own the libs.

1
submitted 10 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/texas@lemmy.world

"Judge shopping for me, not for thee"

1
submitted 10 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/texas@lemmy.world
145
submitted 10 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/climate@slrpnk.net

"Fossil-fuel billionaire Kelcy Warren is about to land a knockout punch on Greenpeace..."

-23
submitted 10 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@lemmy.world
32

AI firms propose 'personhood credentials' to combat online deception, offering a cryptographically authenticated way to verify real people without sacrificing privacy—though critics warn it may empower governments to control who speaks online.

22
submitted 10 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

I use Google Shopping (the “Shopping” tab on Google) to see if local stores carry certain products, what they cost, how far away each store is, etc. It seems to mostly search national or large regional chains, but it was still pretty useful.

Is there any alternative to this (in the US)? The “nearby” function has unfortunately got shittier and shittier over the past year or so. It's gotten less “deterministic," just mixing results from local stores with e-commerce stores, further reducing usefulness.

20

I don’t remember how I heard of it, but just binged-watched it over the past few days. Ratings seem a little bit above average, but I found it very enjoyable. I liked that the mood oscillates between modern comedy and tragic comedy; and that it seems to implicitely critique modern society. The series almost feels like an allegory (or perhaps I’m reading too much in to it).

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 43 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I mean helping seniors is important too. 1/3 have income below 200% of the poverty level, and the average SSI is $600/month.

But yeah, universal healthcare is a no-brainer.

102
[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 67 points 11 months ago

It's the same, "enemy is simultaneously weak and strong" rhetoric characteristic of fascism.

219

I've recently noticed this opinion seems unpopular, at least on Lemmy.

There is nothing wrong with downloading public data and doing statistical analysis on it, which is pretty much what these ML models do. They are not redistributing other peoples' works (well, sometimes they do, unintentionally, and safeguards to prevent this are usually built-in). The training data is generally much, much larger than the model sizes, so it is generally not possible for the models to reconstruct random specific works. They are not creating derivative works, in the legal sense, because they do not copy and modify the original works; they generate "new" content based on probabilities.

My opinion on the subject is pretty much in agreement with this document from the EFF: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-two-pager-ai

I understand the hate for companies using data you would reasonably expect would be private. I understand hate for purposely over-fitting the model on data to reproduce people's "likeness." I understand the hate for AI generated shit (because it is shit). I really don't understand where all this hate for using public data for building a "statistical" model to "learn" general patterns is coming from.

I can also understand the anxiety people may feel, if they believe all the AI hype, that it will eliminate jobs. I don't think AI is going to be able to directly replace people any time soon. It will probably improve productivity (with stuff like background-removers, better autocomplete, etc), which might eliminate some jobs, but that's really just a problem with capitalism, and productivity increases are generally considered good.

136
submitted 11 months ago by 31337@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@lemmy.world
[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 40 points 11 months ago

Maybe being biased against rape and torture is a good thing ¯\(ツ)/¯. Many newspapers used neutral and "objective" language in the 1800s when covering the lynching of black people, and it's hypothesized that this helped normalize the practice. There are many valid criticisms against "journalistic objectivity."

Also, be mindful that ChatGPT is intentionally biased through training data selection, RLHF, and many guardrails.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think Trump thought he would win, so he was unprepared, and he had some of the most incompetent people possible around him. He and the people around him will be prepared this time. A plan has already been drafted (Project 2025) by, presumably, intelligent people at right-wing think-tanks. Also, his rhetoric has changed, becoming similar to other historical and current dictators, and his "policies" have become more fascist (e.g. rounding up 11 million people in the U.S. for detention and forcible relocation).

Furthermore, while he was president, he did do some pretty dictator-like things. He had federal officers in unmarked vans abduct protestors with bags over their heads. He had the US Marshals assassinate Michael Reinoehl. He tried to get election results changed. And he tried a coup.

I think his, and his future administration's goal will be to establish a one-party-rule, similar to Russia's, with a more christofascist flavor. His and his family's personal goals will be to enrich themselves by selling-out the state, and the christofascist stuff just provides them with the coalition they need to do so.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 year ago

If they ever flip back to a Democrat majority, it's going to take decades to undo all the damage this court has done (and they'll still have the incentive to not undo stuff like this).

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 55 points 2 years ago

Meta could've done a lot of things to prevent this. Internal documents show Zuckerberg repeatedly rejected suggestions to improve child safety. Meta lobbies congress to prevent any regulation. Meta controls the algorithms and knows they promote bad behavior such as dog piling, but this bad behavior increases "engagement" and revenue, so they refuse to change it. (Meta briefly changed its algorithms for a few months during the 2020 election to decrease the promotion of disinformation and hate speech, because they were under more scrutiny, but then changed it back after the election).

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 53 points 2 years ago

Layoffs make no sense when companies can afford to retain their workers. Layoffs typically hurt companies for 3 years after they happen: https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

46% of Texans voted for Biden. Before the election, there were (wishful) talks of Texas becoming purple. It's much more blue than Florida, for example. But, the gerrymandering is pretty egregious.

Here's one district that contains black neighborhoods in both San Antonio and Austin, which are about 100 miles apart.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 44 points 2 years ago

The tech of CRTs seems almost futuristic to me. Bending electron beams with magnets to travel through a vacuum so they hit exotic materials at precisely the right locations seems much cooler than just miniaturizing LED arrays.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 79 points 2 years ago

I mean technically, you could have a farm if you worked the entire farm by yourself (personal vs private property).

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 years ago

Yeah, it seems a bit strange. At least he's not a grifter (yet). Or, maybe he's just really bad at grifting.

His politics and messaging is inconsistent. He's got Reagan-era tax and welfare talking points mixed in with qanon pedophile conspiracy lines. Then makes a video where it sounds like he thinks he's a centrist. I guess the Overton window really has shifted, lol.

view more: next ›

31337

joined 2 years ago