@kalin5

2 Followers
49 Following
40 Posts
I build stuff, mostly from code
Tech billionaires when they invent AGI and ask it how to solve humanity’s problems and it says embrace diversity and billionaires shouldn’t exist.

Trump is working on regime change in Europe — fact, not conspiracy theory

The US State Department published a memo urging Washington to back far-right parties in EU elections to build obedient “civilizational allies,” branding mainstream Europe as anti-democratic and making threats against governments that resist—effectively exporting Trump’s culture war to erode European sovereignty.

https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar0ec480cc

(https://archive.ph/bYVVj)

Trump is working on regime change in Europe — fact, not conspiracy theory

On 27 May, an official document, The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe, calling for regime change in European countries was published, written by a senior adviser for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the US State Department, writes Caroline de Gruyter.

EUobserver

Pixelfed will never introduce ads. Ever.

Multiple acquisition offers this year? All declined. Another one last week? Also declined.

I built Pixelfed for the people, not shareholders.

That's why we're exploring Web Monetization - direct creator payments with zero privacy compromise.

I won't sell out now, or ever.

I love you too much, and am forever grateful for you helping me come out and become the dev I always dreamed of ❤️

It's not an ethical dilemma. If a HUMAN driver got into a situation where they had to choose between hitting and killing a granny or baby, we'd rightly jail them for many years for reckless/dangerous driving.

A self-driving vehicle should be incapable of operating in a manner equivalent to a reckless human driver.

If a self-driving vehicle is capable of getting into such a situation, the car manufacturer is responsible for a crime of homicide and should be punished.

https://front-end.social/@heydon/114516790497714657

Large Heydon Collider (@heydon@front-end.social)

Attached: 1 image It's concerning to me that this """ethical dilemma""" comes up so frequently regarding self-driving cars. Does self-driving mean *never slows or stops*? Are self-driving cars all designed after the bus in Speed?

Front-End Social

You just know you're doing something right when #Meta 's data protection officer talks about your ‘power’ and how she wants the #EU to ban you from doing your work.🤡

Want to help us become even more ‘powerful‘? Click here to find out how: https://noyb.eu/en/support-us

Source: https://www.mlex.com/mlex/artificial-intelligence/articles/2339824/noyb-seeks-cease-and-desist-order-against-meta-s-ai-training-in-europe

Original Art: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/55975367

https://noyb.eu/en/support-us

noyb.eu
the fact that duckduckgo has an AI thing at the top of the search results which DOESN’T answer in character as a duck, or even quack several times between each sentence, is, i think, a shocking betrayal and a demonstration of utmost cowardice
I get that the algorithm throttles certain words. But replacing “Nazi” with “Notzee” or “Notsee” or “N@zi” isn’t OK. That word must be remembered exactly as it is. Sanitizing it helps the next wave blend in. Say it. Spell it. Face it.
We're 2.5 years into this gold rush, and I still haven't seen any gold. I've seen people selling picks & shovels. I've seen "gold experts" selling maps to the gold. I've seen CEOs announce they're going "gold-first". I've seen people selling land where they claim there's gold. But no actual gold.

I'm heartened by seeing more people catch on to my political philosophy:

1. Don't take the black pill. People are Good, and we can fix this.
2. Don't virtue signal. Everybody is welcome in the tent.
3. The people who vote in exacerbation of the problem are confused, not evil. They are not only our allies, they are us.

All we need to do is recycle enough money throughout the economy, so that it doesn't pool at the top. Such a simple, easy fix, if we could stop bickering about other crap.

A reminder that France brought out the guillotines right about now.
×
A reminder that France brought out the guillotines right about now.

This post was intended as food for thought, grist for the mill. The author was not advocating for literal guillotines and a rerun of the French Revolution! There are plenty of other ways we can challenge and even topple the oligarchy without dragging them out into the streets and murdering them.

As others have pointed out, it only takes around 3.5% of a population to overturn a government using civil disobedience and non-compliance.

@ApostateEnglishman
*puts blade polishing rag back in pocket*

Of course, I knew that.

@ApostateEnglishman Right, but I think 3.5% are much harder now than in typical examples. When the goal is to topple a dictator and establish democracy, it is enough if 3.5% refuse orders to stay at home and demonstrate in the streets. When the goal is unclear but probably some kind of abolish representative democracy, capitalism, economic growth and the American nightmare, you'd need 3.5% to organize, agree on a common vision and refuse to work.
Against the Logic of the Guillotine

Fetishizing the guillotine is like fetishizing the state: it means celebrating an instrument of murder that will always be used chiefly against us.

CrimethInc.
@CyberSaloperie @aral Oh please. 😆
@ApostateEnglishman @CyberSaloperie @aral “Between June 1793 and the end of July 1794, 16,594 people were officially sentenced to death in France, including 2639 people in Paris. Of the formal death sentences passed under the Terror, only 8 percent were doled out to aristocrats and 6 percent to members of the clergy; the rest were divided between the middle class and the poor, with the vast majority of the victims coming from the lower classes.”
@ApostateEnglishman @CyberSaloperie @aral The guillotine was used to enact capital punishment in an autocratic state and like all forms of capital punishment it was used overwhelmingly on the poor.
@CyberSaloperie @ApostateEnglishman I have that article pinned on my profile. It’s excellent. At the same time, facts are facts.
@aral ahah I didn’t saw it was pinned on your profile!
Yeah it’s certainly facts, but it was also exactly what the article was criticizing 🥲
(Also I got blocked by the OP)

@CyberSaloperie @aral I unblocked you. My apologies, that was rash. I was just being bombarded from all sides and it got a little overwhelming. 🤷‍♂️

I should probably have anticipated that some folks would take me literally! It's not as if I made it clear in the original post that I *wasn't* saying we should murder billionaires in the streets.

@aral @CyberSaloperie @ApostateEnglishman I always saw it as a symbol, not a literal intention. I don't think anyone thinks literally cutting off heads is the solution; if we could get far enough to apprehend the people who need to be removed from power, that would suffice.

I see it as more a reminder of how the current situation has been handled historically, a resetting of the Overton Window around discussions of extreme wealth disparity (which, of course, Important People want us to accept as perfectly fine and just How Things Are ).

@woozle maybe you should read the article, it's criticizing the symbolism too
@CyberSaloperie I skimmed it; will give it a more thorough read. ✅
@CyberSaloperie (Looking through the article again...) Which section is that in? It's a long article...
@woozle i don't remember a specific section, i think it was a large part of the article that was about that
sorry, i've read it some months ago and i have memory issues
@CyberSaloperie Mood! Hopefully I'll have time to read it in detail later today.

@woozle @aral @CyberSaloperie@woof.tech That's why I issued my "Oh please!" response, above.

I'm not literally advocating for capital punishment and a rerun of the French Revolution in the United States.

I'm just reminding people that extreme inequality has caused societal breakdown in other countries, and that we should be doing more to prevent it.

The guillotine is indeed a symbol. I would oppose the actual building of real guillotines and the murdering of American oligarchs in the streets!

@ApostateEnglishman @aral This is one of those things where I can really see both sides of it.

Like...

[point] I know I would never support capital punishment for anyone, no matter how horrible, and thus the guillotine to me is purely an abstract symbol of the ability of the masses to take down the powerful, no matter how powerful they get -- while in reality being very careful only to damage property, not lives.

But...

[counterpoint] ...a lot of people, especially people who are the most susceptible to influence by symbols and rhetoric, may not get that. We may have every intention of discarding the symbolism when it's no longer needed -- but they may see it as the real goal, an endorsement of brutal and lethal retaliation and rule-by-violence.

cc @CyberSaloperie

@woozle @aral @CyberSaloperie Yes, everything you said.

My "Oh please!" response was perhaps a little glib. Yours is far more apropos and I wish I'd written it myself!

Thank you.

@aral @CyberSaloperie It remains to be seen how many people they will "disappear" before the people decide to disappear them.

We're only three months in.

I'm absolutely not saying we *should* murder all the billionaires, only that history shows this extreme level of political, social and economic inequality will result in a backlash eventually. And those on the sidelines shouting, "No! Don't murder them!" may well also be killed.

Avoiding this state of affairs should be our priority.

@CyberSaloperie @ApostateEnglishman @aral I think it's more symbolism than actual intentions (exception-1/6 maniacs). Today we have click click boom. No guillotine required.
@Ponygirl the article is criticizing the symbolism aspect too
@CyberSaloperie This is definitely a test case for not reading the article. My bad. As I finally read it, I was reminded of "A Tale of Two Cities" where the word Patriot was bastardized and used to exclude citizens who didn't tow the line, and probably led said citizens to the guillotine. Thank you for your patience with my folly (and the lesson).
@ApostateEnglishman Did you just read Peter Turchin? hahha - I was reading yesterday. The time has come... huh... i'm not rich!
@ApostateEnglishman ....would it be appropriate to yell "FORE" if, you know.....deployed....?
@ApostateEnglishman i think i hear them starting to humm À la volonté du peuple
@ApostateEnglishman don't think 50% of the French population at the time was MAGA though
@vegard
plus we cut heads to put the almighty bourgeoisie in place... which was kinda very wrong (and brought us back to the same inequality state today)
French too have to do their homework, again
@ApostateEnglishman
@ApostateEnglishman They want 1939 Germany, but let's give them 1789 France!
@ApostateEnglishman so I did some digging on the numbers here. The Gini coefficient for France was 0.59 ish. Some error bars there because it was centuries ago, but almost every country on earth has much greater wealth inequality than revolutionary France today. USA is currently 25th place at 0.85, behind many developing countries but substantially ahead of the rest of the west.
@ApostateEnglishman for anyone not familiar, Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality. 0 is total communism, 1 is where a single person has all the wealth. The only countries I can see below revolutionary France level inequality are Belgium, Qatar and Slovakia, going by 2021 figures.
@ApostateEnglishman Pls don't forget to implement metric calendar once the pesky imperialists are taken care of...
@ApostateEnglishman Scotland stopped using The Maiden in 1716 as we decided that hanging was more humane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_(guillotine)
Maiden (guillotine) - Wikipedia

@ApostateEnglishman I made this a couple of years ago, as I was fed up with capitalism and it's bullshit. So to fight capitalism i made a website to sell anticapitalist merch on my capitalist website. The irony is palpable.

https://thedudeabides.shop/products/wont-you-think-of-the-ceos-anti-capitalism-bubble-free-stickers?_pos=2&_psq=Ceo&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Won't You Think Of The CEOs Anti-capitalism Bubble-free stickers

@ApostateEnglishman With great inequality comes great social volatility and extremism. The Gini coefficient strikes again
@ApostateEnglishman yeah, that panned out great...
@ApostateEnglishman
This time not the Liberty Statue but the Guillotine as gift to the US people.