OMG this is the cutest thing ever (okay I am sure there are cuter things somewhere in the universe, but while looking at this I could legit not think of any, so this seems to be it, in this moment!:-D)
I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers
Learning about the philosophy of the Stoics (which frankly was not enough for me), plus this quote (which also was not, but the two together... that did help!:-D), something to the effect of: "Strong societies beget weak children, who then grow up to create weak societies, which then beget strong children, who then grow up to create strong societies" - and the cycle continues. i.e., Boomers mainly did not fight in the wars, just grew up hearing how Great America was, without having to experience first-hand the blood, sweat, and tears that made it that way (to the extent that it ever was that way ofc). Well, now things are changing in the direction that they were ALWAYS going to have to changed in - b/c evil people gonna evil it up, no doubts about that - and eventually, sheeple will get sick & tired of being sick & tired and rise up, to change things. Until then, we suffer, but not needlessly.
In other words, we've gone through the stages of denial (climate change / economic downturn / wage slavery / cultural insensitivity / whatever is NOT happening), anger (okay so it's happening but what are you going to do about it), bargaining (he tells it like it is and big daddy will fix everything & make it all great again! ironically this holds true for both Obama and Trump, loathe as I am to have ever uttered such a sentence), and now we are into the depression era.
Next comes acceptance, and that's when the healing - and the beginning of lasting change - can truly start.
FYI, people are saying DO NOT PULL FOR WENEFICA right now, if you are on Steam. It is bugged and even if you get dupes, she will not get Stellar Awakened.
The special efx haven’t gotten more expensive, cameras haven’t risen in price, writers don’t seem to be demanding particular high prices, netflix takes anything that you can pitch without saying the word disney....
I think a lot of shows are AWESOME, but then late-stage capitalistic enshittification happens and they become... far less so, and often quite TERRIBLE even, though ostensibly still have the same title, even though nowhere near being an identical show.
One super-good example is Stranger Things, where the first season was really quite good! So many homages to nerd culture like E.T. and D&D - it was fantastic!:-) As I read though, the pair of creators had 2 rules: never use CGI, and absolutely do not "sell out", i.e. a story should want to be told, not sold merely for the sake of cash. So after the first season where they made it b/c of their love for the craft, you can guess how the subsequent seasons played out (I believe one of the pair even quit over it).
Arguably a better example is The Walking Dead - it started off REALLY good, but then... well... it too "sold out". Actually I keep trying to force myself to get through it, I even started watching it over again from the start (a couple times now) thinking that would help, but have yet to accomplish this feat.
Another is Designated Survivor. It had some big-name actors, most of whom quit (I think the show was sold to a different network... or something?), and the last season was just terrible, limping along before they finally put it out of its misery and ended it.
The really fantastic shows - like Star Trek - had to prove themselves, then the creators were given leeway to subsequently make great sequels and spin-offs and even entirely unrelated titles. Fun story: Gene Roddenberry even created shows after his death, as his wife took his unfinished notes and lead their creation under his vision, like Earth: Final Conflict.
TLDR: why offer you a good show when they can offer you a crappy show that they made for a tenth of the price, yet charge you the full amount?
(though stupidly enough, they also seem to be trying to offer us even more terrible shows that cost 50x the price to make, and yet somehow suck all the more for that!? anyway it all seems to be based on greed + arrogance - they want to make money, but they do not want to put in the effort to actually earn it, e.g. by paying the actors a decent wage)
Previous studies say patients of private-equity-owned health care entities pay higher costs, experience reduced staffing levels and have higher death rates in nursing homes....
First and most especially the single most important factor: b/c I thought it sounded cool. 😎
Second, I googled "what does Zaddy mean" - oh wait that was earlier in the day, cough, I mean I googled "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", found that it was first aired in 1939, and so put that.
Welcome to late-stage capitalism, where companies sell what you do not want to buy. e.g., no wired connection has ever once had this problem, but they had to sell more thingies, so now everything is bluetooth, whether it should be or not, plus it seems like nobody ever bothered to finish implementing bluetooth - e.g., this exact issue you are having, which surely could be fixed except... why bother, when you (& your neighbors) have already bought all the thingies?
There’s plenty of video evidence to support the claim including one which emerged yesterday showing Russian soldiers rallying against their “lying commanders.”
More than 1/5 (22%) of your country’s population is considered extremist?
That's not quite what I said - I said they lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum. If there was a graph of people who like vanilla, chocolate, or a swirly mixture of both, the two "extreme" ends could be the pure vanilla on the one end and the pure chocolate on the other - i.e., "extreme" does not (always) imply a magnitude, only direction; whereas the word "extremist" does imply a very high magnitude.
That said however, many people in the USA do indicate that they would be okay to see violent overthrow and upheaval of the entire system of government. I do not know precisely how many, nor is there likely to be an accurate count b/c few may be willing to admit it in an official poll, unless it were anonymous and then people would abuse it (e.g. the same person could vote many times to inflate their particular viewpoint). It makes sense to me b/c:
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities
Voltaire
At some point, it becomes a moral imperative to act, and violent overthrow becomes the correct action, IF the facts in question were accurate, e.g. to prevent an even greater harm to innocents.
But mostly my point was that the matters involved are quite complex - including some outright Sophie's choice material. If someone handed you a gun and told you to shoot a random stranger with it, and meanwhile they had people pointing guns at both your wife & child and said that they would kill both if you did not pull the trigger, would you do it? The trolly problem through and through: do you act against your conscience to murder someone you do not know, in order to potentially save some people that you are very close to? I say potentially b/c in the calm of this theoretical discussion we both can realize that it might be unlikely that any of your loved ones and/or you would be allowed to remain alive - why leave witnesses that could potentially come back to harm you in some way? So really you are likely dead no matter what you do... and yet, can you take that chance!? There may be a slim possibility of hope that this is some kind of "power demonstration" where they decide to let you live as an example to others that they can do as they please, and your story would strengthen their position by generating fear. On the other hand, they could just be having fun the whole time, your gun isn't even loaded, and when you pull the trigger they'll just laugh... and then kill your whole family anyway, and then you too.
This is EXTREMELY sick stuff to contemplate, and yet... Russia shows no sign of leaving the Ukraine anytime soon, i.e. they offer the latter populace no chance to avoid thinking along these lines, nor Russian troops either who are just as caught up in this as are the innocent victims of Russia's neighboring country, EXCEPT that the troops on the front-lines are not entirely as innocent as are the infants & children being raped & slaughtered in Ukraine. Some might even go so far as to argue that by remaining in Russia, propping up its economy and such - e.g. making the food that soldiers will eat, clothing that soldiers will wear etc. - that normal Russian civilians are all but actively participating in the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian ones? That is undoubtedly true, and yet does that mean that counter-attacks upon Russian civilian infrastructure should be allowed? The Bible does say that justice should be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth... so wouldn't raping Russian 5-year-olds and razing entire cities to ashes be tit-for-tat? Or are there better ways of resolving conflicts, like at the very least Russia ceasing to actively conquer Ukraine, as well as beginning to make reparations to restore what was lost? But since that is not going to happen, what then will... or even should happen?
Anyway, how it relates to the USA (where I am from) is that one day very soon, we may have our second Civil War and face these issues inside of our own borders. In fact, that war has already started, though it is currently in its cold phase and has not yet erupted into a continuously blazing "hot" phase, except for the tragic (but blessedly brief) events on January 6, where one police officer was brutally crushed and others injured by the angry mob who were invited to storm the capital, after first being told to "prepare to fight like hell". The likelihood of the affairs in Ukraine and those in the USA being entirely unrelated seem about as likely as a prominent Russian official falling down a flight of stairs, and then shooting themselves in the back of the head, twice. And thus, they do not seem likely to merely go away with time, for at least as long as Putin remains alive, and likely much longer beyond that.
there is an increasing discrepancy between what we think the information and general situation, for example, the people in rural Russia where most people live, is like versus what it actually is
Absolutely I believe that, and similar in the USA too. If you've ever seen those pictures where they say like "find the predator", and you scan it for a LONG time even zoomed in but cannot find it, then you get a good understanding that death awaits prey at every moment, and that real predators do not announce themselves like dogs barking, but rather stalk silently until they make their move. For people that are not paying attention, a civil war in any country could spring up "unexpectedly" and seemingly at a moment's notice.
Then again, as you say, perhaps it's too much to expect of people to be wary all the time, and to act to prevent being eaten alive. Actually though, I don't expect that of the common man, but I do expect it of leaders. 1 Timothy 3:1-7. That said, "expectations" aside, the common man will be the ones suffering the most, from the decisions of those leaders. e.g., if a Russian rapes & kills a Ukrainian family, even though we know that the military commander encouraged him to do it and in fact would shoot him in the back if he did not do at least the latter act, and then lets say that another Ukrainian catches him in the act and does the same to him in return, who do we blame there? The Ukrainian for "murdering" the Russian? No b/c it was self-defense, on Ukrainian soil (though the latter fact would be called "contested" I am sure). The Russian soldier? That is the question but yes, how could we not, even if he was a simple farmer back home, a mere month prior and had never raped or killed anyone in his entire life...before that day anyway? The Russian commander certainly, though it's worth pointing out that he in turn has commanders behind him, and so on up the chain. And on and on up to Putin, who we are tempted to blame most of all and yet... Putin too has bosses. Those behind the scenes, and also the entire populace of Russia that promoted him to that position of authority, and continued electing him, over and over and over again, even after he kept invading Ukraine inch by inch (Crimea, the area west of Crimea, and then... this has been happening for a DECADE! and the Georgian pipeline stuff before that!) - and even knowing all of that, they continued to elect him. How are they not "responsible" then? Anyway, regardless, they will suffer from the results in any case - e.g. the sanctions impact the entire nation, guilty and entirely innocent alike. i.e., there are varying degrees of guilt, even if only by association, though the consequences will not be apportioned out according to guilt, but rather the poorest & least powerful will suffer the most and vice versa, as always.
And ofc the same is true of the USA as well, I do not mean to place blame one-sided there while not accepting any for my own. Similarly the UK has been known to be quite expansionistic too... plundering treasures from around the world, as too has pretty much every country that has ever existed for any length of time. It is not exclusively a "Russian" problem - it is a human one.
As for what can be done about it: if Russia were to elect someone other than Putin in the next election, then same as the USA that elected someone other than Donald Trump, it would undoubtedly change the course of each nation's future, as well as the future of the other impacted nations. Maybe (likely?) that is not possible, or maybe it is possible but will not be done, but I mention it as an option. I do not really know what could actually be done though - I merely enjoyed musing over the situation with you, as an exercise trying to think about the various issues involved.
As for how the USA got here... I have little idea about that, only that those outside agents seem to fund both sides of an area that is already contentious, thereby getting them to fight one another and therefore become less capable of working together against a common enemy from the outside. Also, to be clear, I do not even blame Russia for doing it (predators predate, it's just what they do, getting mad will not help one tiny bit): ofc it is strategic for them to do so, and we have been trying to do exactly the same to them and many other nations around the globe for decades now. What blows my mind is how easily it was done, especially on the side of the USA being receptive to it. I can only conclude that the obstruction of virtually all workings in the law-making (Congress) and judicial (Supreme Court) branches bodies of the government is serving the ends of the most powerful people not only in Russia, but inside the USA as well. Once upon a time, powerful corporations needed an educated populace in order to continue to exist, but with the advent of globalism and mechanization, that is no longer true.
I dunno... I've heard that argument, but when something gives you >1000 answers, among which the correct answer might be buried somewhere, and a human is paid to dig through it and return something that looks vaguely presentable, is that really "intelligence", of any sort?
Aka, 1 + 1 = 13, which is a real result that AI can and almost certainly has recently offer(ed).
People are right to be excited about the potential that generative AI offers in the future, but we are far from that atm. Also it is vulnerable to misinformation presented in the training data - though some say that that process might even affect humans too (I know, you are shocked, right? well, hopefully not that shocked:-P).
Oh wait, nevermind I take it all back: I forgot that Steven Huffman / Elon Musk / etc. exist, and if that is considered intelligence, then AI has definitely passed that level of Turing equivalence, so you're absolutely right, erstatz it is, apparently!?
ChatGPT was caught, and I think later admitted, to not actually using fully automated processes to determine those answers, iirc. Instead, a real human would curate the answers first before they went out. That human might reject answers to a question like "Computer: what is 1+1?" ten times before finally accepting one of the given answers ("you're mother", hehe with improper apostrophe intact:-P). So really, when you were asking for an "AI answer", what you were asking was another human on the other end of that conversation!!!
Then again, I think that was a feature for an earlier version of the program, that might no longer be necessary? On the other hand, if they SAY that they aren't using human curation, but that is also what they said earlier before they admitted that they had lied, do we really believe it? Watch any video of these "tech Bros" and it's obvious in less than a minute - these people are slimy.
And to some extent it doesn't matter bc you can download some open source AI programs and run them yourself, but in general from what I understand, when people say things nowadays like "this was made from an AI", it seems like it is always a hand-picked item from among the set of answers returned. So like, "oooh" and "aaaahhhhh" and all that, that such a thing could come from AI, but it's not quite the same thing as simply asking a computer for an answer and it returning the correct answer right away! "1+1=?" giving the correct answer of 13 is MUCH less impressive when you find that out of a thousand attempts at asking, it was only returned a couple times. And the situation gets even worse(-r) when you find out that ChatGPT has been getting stupider(-est?) for awhile now - https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/07/ai-supposed-become-smarter-over-time-chatgpt-can-become-dumber/388826/.
Yes, and the fact that the quality suddenly declined awhile back - e.g. that article I linked to explained more - tracks along with those lines as well: when humans were curating the answers it took longer, whereas now the algorithm is unchained, hence able to move faster, and yet with far less accuracy than before.
People have been evil since practically the dawn of mankind, but that seems no excuse to act that way ourselves? Also, many people from that continent may be shitty human beings (especially a hundred or so years ago, though also in modern times), yet I can think of a few shitty people from my own continent... past and present, and all of the other ones too? (in fact, several people that Donald Trump seems to be quoting from lately top the list)
Also, I never said that white people invented slavery - I only implied that slavery was bad, and tried to imply further that it doesn't matter who started it, only that we chose to do it, and that in that decision, we were wrong. More importantly, since some people are unironically suggesting that we return to allowing slaves to exist, that we would be wrong if we were to start up the practice of slavery anew.
And no, your entire last paragraph I must vehemently deny: the likes of petty crime come NOWHERE CLOSE to the evils of slavery, ffs. Violence is likewise a form of evil, but the magnitude and the differing psychological impacts on the brain are nowhere close.
As for making progress, remember that time does nothing to change things, only effort does, e.g. the first law of thermodynamics: an object at rest will sit there for all of eternity, unless acted upon by a force strong enough to get it to shift. An analogy: imagine a car driving for 1,000 miles over the course of a very very long day's drive... (I've done almost that actually - it's exhausting!:-D) except now imagine that the car is up on cinder blocks, or like held up in a car lift in sth like a mechanic's shop. You can run the engine at the same intensity for the same duration of time, point the car in the same direction, maybe use up a similar amount of gas, but until that rubber of the tire hits the asphalt of the road, that car is not going anywhere, not even 1 mile much less 1000.
The slaves were uprooted from their homeland(s, plural), brought to a new country with an entirely different ecosystem - different plants, different trees, different animals - and then further, children were ripped from their mothers' arms ASAP, and often forbidden to be taught any knowledge whatsoever, except what their masters wanted them to know. They did not know how to hunt, fish, trap, or anything anymore - even if that knowledge would have transferred from Africa to the new place (somewhere in the Americas or whatever), it is not genetic and would have needed to have been taught, but largely b/c of concerns that the children be taught a particular subset of Christianity without being tainted by the old religions of their homeland, any kind of teaching of old knowledge was expressly forbidden. Those multi-generational slaves certainly did not know how to read, write, balance finances, perform maintenance/upkeep of a home or farm - except those activities that they used to perform as slaves, and even those were often so highly narrow & specialized as to be almost useless on their own - e.g. if you knew how to hammer nails into wood, then how would you learn where do you get the nails from in the first place? (or the hammer? and why/when would you even do it in the first place?). It is no wonder that starving people turned to crime, in order to eat! And yes, depression, and even drug use (though "drug addiction" is by no means in the sole purview of former slaves: one look at how many middle-class white people who have fallen prey to it in recent years is enough to show us that!).
Especially since slavery was only one, admittedly large, part of the overall problem. Driving while black, walking while black, running while black, buying while black, selling while black - it's almost like doing ANYTHING while being black is enough to get someone killed! - and not just by a criminal, BY THE POLICE, WHO HAVE LEGALLY GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT, for centuries now!! (the number of black people who manage to shoot themselves in the back, then subsequently also in the head, is staggering...; and just so we do not gloss over that too quickly, keep in mind that it is medically, physically impossible for someone to shoot themselves in the back, and then also the head - i.e., it is 100% more likely that the policeman shot the person in the back, and then the head, but then the friendly coroner ruled it as a "suicide" for...reasons) The persecution of black people, often for no reason whatsoever but yes, sometimes b/c they did not act conciliatory enough (though again I direct your attention to sometimes it happening for no reason whatsoever, so even being 100% conciliatory, 100% of the time is insufficient to avoid incurring the wrath of an angry young white person who just felt like raping/killing/stealing from a former slave, AT ANY TIME), has continued ever since slavery ended.
I have heard that the younger generations are the opposite actually - b/c of having access to the internet and reading, they are being exposed at a younger age than ever before to things such as the fact that USA killed off the native Americans (genocidally murdering/raping/thieving/etc.), and also owned human beings. The parents ofc are freaking out, and trying to stop this "knowledge", or at least they say that they want to slow, and not expose little Timmy to things that he doesn't need to know about until he is older.
The odd part is that children are extremely resilient - they can accept death as natural, and the fact that this nation in its past has made some questionable (okay so fine: downright EVIL) choices - but it is the PARENTS that are the ones who cannot accept that.
The Baby Boomer generation in particular, I've noticed, seems to prefer this "let's pretend" attitude, perhaps as a result of growing up emotionally scarred from all the wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam), they just want to pretend that everything is fine, even as the world burns (in some cases, literally) around them.
I do not know if humans are innately (always) evil or not... but we most definitely CAN be, and that's enough to worry about right there. Oddly enough, corporations seem to be inheriting those traits of ours despite not even being humans! And there is enough sci-fi to convince us that if we ever truly create an AI, then it will have the same feature as well. The same would go for any genetically-modified sentient creatures that we may make as well, or whatever else that could rise to the capability to do either good or evil.
Where I end up is this: at the end of the day all we can do is control ourselves. I cannot control the world, only me. So I will do that much, at least:-).
Absolutely. Though as we were discussing elsewhere in this post, humans can be evil, and selfish, and greedy, and people can literally help bring back slavery rather than force themselves to truly look at it, call it out as "bad", and do something about it.
I somewhat understand the other side of the argument as well - like, if someone was old and just wanted to lie back and enjoy life for awhile (as we all will be someday, unless we die first), then who am I to take action or even desire to stop such a one from doing exactly that? On the other hand, someone who ACTUALLY does that causes little to no harm, whereas someone who does the OPPOSITE of that, e.g. by taking the action to vote - whether at a local school board, or on the state or especially federal level - that is when such a person's rights end, the very moment that they begin to infringe upon the rights of others.
And like, if a child were to take a book out of the library and burn it, wouldn't that child get in trouble? Maybe they would have to pay a fine, perhaps have disciplinary action taken against them such as being suspended, or if mitigating circumstances coexist then at least be sent to counseling? So how much more in trouble should an adult get into, if they likewise burn a book, or maybe... oh... let's say that they lead a violent attempt to overthrow the democratically-elected government, shitting on the constitution and in the process, cause at least one police officer to be killed, brutally, with his screams of agony caught on video - how much should such a person be punished? (That is a trick question obviously, b/c it presumes that "justice" is what is dispensed at all.) Let us call this "individual 1", but moving past that, how much responsibility would a new person hold, let's call them "individual 2" if even AFTER all of that occurred, and I mean it is not secret but rather came to light and was publicly condemned by people in positions of authority everywhere (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, in the Executive, Legislative - both House and Senate - Judicial, as in Supreme Court, DOJ, federal lower courts, etc.), this person (individual 2) actually votes for individual 1?
When we step up to become leaders, then we take on additional responsibility beyond the common man. Voting is similarly a position of responsibility, in determining what will be done in the USA. As people vote - again, whether in small, local matters such as school board issues, or even more so at the larger levels that affect so many more people besides one's own self + family + even neighbors - I would hope that they would remember the lessons of history, so that we do not have to repeat them. However, since that turns out not to be true, it seems that slavery will be coming back... it is here already in fact, in many areas in the south where there are more incarcerated black people than there ever were as slaves, and I am not entirely convinced that everyone in there is fully a "criminal" (maybe, but the systems that push for convictions based on quotas, in those for-profit institutions, lends credence to the thought that not ALL of them are that way...); plus in any case employment seems to be becoming more slave-like all the time, as the "American dream" of potentially owning a home and thereby becoming financially independent is increasingly being taken away from so very many. We are already re-walking those paths, that so long ago we turned away from in disgust, but like a dog returning to its vomit... we cannot seem to help ourselves. Finally, I want to add that many people, e.g. in WWI and WWII both, literally gave their lives to fight against fascism spreading in other countries - however, fast-forward to today and a goodly fraction of people in America are indicating that they want to fight on the side for fascism, rather than against it. We are moving backwards, and not slowly either, but practically at a run:-( (though precisely how fast nobody seems to know, and I for one do not trust any media source anymore, nor do I see that changing anytime soon, which in itself should be an extremely troubling warning sign of things yet to come).
[Fanart] I saw Feinne kissing Santa Claus
Happy Holidays!...
How do you guys cope with the fact that the world isn't getting any better?
I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers
Update Notice - Wenefica (api-ap.another-eden.games)
(whoops, got eaten by work, so pretend I posted this 20 mins earlier)...
Hobbits Discover the Electric Sandwich Press (lemmy.world)
Why'd they stopped making tv shows as good as x-files? (lemmy.world)
The special efx haven’t gotten more expensive, cameras haven’t risen in price, writers don’t seem to be demanding particular high prices, netflix takes anything that you can pitch without saying the word disney....
Patients at private equity-owned hospitals get more infections and fall more, says a new JAMA study (www.nbcnews.com)
Previous studies say patients of private-equity-owned health care entities pay higher costs, experience reduced staffing levels and have higher death rates in nursing homes....
Yes (lemmy.world)
How was this a feel good story?! (lemmy.ml)
So, who or what ruined Christmas this year?
Dad Waiting for Lull at Christmas Dinner to Rant About Woke Mind Virus (thehardtimes.net)
stupid smart TVs
Why are there such idiotic smart TVs that can’t even turn off bluetooth?!...
By 2030, nearly half of all U.S. adults will be obese, experts predict (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
How does ears work? (literature.cafe)
Russian Troops Surrendering in 'Whole Groups’ Because of ‘Inhumane Commanders’ (www.kyivpost.com)
There’s plenty of video evidence to support the claim including one which emerged yesterday showing Russian soldiers rallying against their “lying commanders.”
The dream (lemmy.world)
Red State Public School in 2024 (lemmy.world)
Anxiety tip! (lemmy.world)