Prelude to the Apocalypse

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

In Sweden, Wikipedia is considered disinformation (according to SVT and most of the Left wing press), just so you know. Be mindful of your sources!
For the rest of your post, let's agree to disagree, as it's all lies subjective at best.

So you don't like a source and it's suddenly, magically, not valid.

I like and use Wikipedia all the time, if something seem to not line up with reality, I go for more sources. I merely pointed out that in Sweden, Swedish Television along with many leftist media outlets consider Wikipedia to be biased/disinformation, which is ironic, as the article about Swedish Television being unbiased came from that very site. There's also an ongoing debate about SVT's bias and why it's being financed by tax money in Sweden that's hard to find out about when Googling it from say, Germany. One source is hardly definitive.

I'm not surprised to hear that there's discussion about SVT's bias and whether it should continue being financed by tax money, in fact I'd expect that kind of debate in a democratic society. But I wasn't referring to Wikipedia as the source but to the studies that were mentioned by Wikipedia. Again, you'd have to show how these were faulty, until then I'd rather believe them than some right wing populist from the internet who willfully ignores data that doesn't fit his worldview.

The time I took to type out all that other shit I could have spent doing something more useful since you simply state it's all lies. Why should anybody take you seriously in the future if you simply ignore data and arguments you don't like?

I'm so used to not being "taken seriously", as that's a very convenient way to say I'm a stupid bigot without actually saying that as to, you know, save face. Just because you "took time" doesn't mean I owe you my time in return. I have better things to do with my time than to try and convince you that you're wrong. I will likely fail, no matter what articles I dig up. Something that I have experienced many times, and it's a waste of my time. And yours.

No, I mean “taken seriously“ in a very literal sense. Why should people be interested in continuing a conversation if the other person calls them names? I didn’t expect I’d be able to convince you and it wasn’t my intention to do so (conversations and debates still have value even if nobody changes their stance), what I complained about was that you simply changed the rules of the conversation from „we’re exchanging arguments supported by (what we believe to be credible) data“ to „Don’t care, you’re lying anyway“. Go ahead, post articles that support your view that SVT is lefty propaganda, I’d be very interested in reading them. I don’t like being stuck in a lefty bubble and I absolutely see the value in being subjected to perspectives different from my own.

I googled "alcoholism in Denmark"

[...]

This article is written by
Associate professor Kristine Rømer Thomsen,
Associate professor Bagga Bjerge,
Assistant professor Lotte Vallentin-Holbech and
Professor emerita Kim Bloomfield
on the request of PopNAD"

Did you take a gander at what kind of organization PopNAD is? Because it's not particularly unbiased towards recreational use of alcohol, tobacco or gambling. They are a lobbyist organisation.

Lobbying for what/ on whose behalf? I couldn’t find any info on that, so I’d be grateful for info. Not that it plays much of a role for the question of whether Denmark has a huge alcohol problem, among else because
- it’s not like these topics are particularly controversial, excessive consumption all each of the drugs you mentioned has catastrophic consquences for your health and/ or life.
- it’s not the only source I posted, and the scientists that wrote the summary of their study don’t work for PopNAD. The Danish are heavy drinkers, and alcohol makes many of them ill or dead.

[mnneurope]

welp.

[Sengoku Strider]

America, your new Secretary of Defense is the host of Fox and Friends:

Pentagon stunned by Trump’s nomination of Fox News host as defense secretary

President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world by nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, tapping someone largely inexperienced and untested on the global stage to take over the world’s largest and most powerful military.

I wonder why he'd pick that guy?

Hegseth has lobbied Trump to release service members accused of war crimes.

Ah, there we go. One of the good ones.

Apocalyptic bonus horseman:



The next 15 years are about to get wild.

[orange808]

Ha.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2D_4mTb1g

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Jesus Christ what a bunch of morons.

[Sima Tuna]

No such thing as occupation if we kill everyone who used to live there and build our houses on the rubble. Then we can say, "who are we stealing the land from? There is nobody (alive) here to claim it."

[Rob]

“Someone cosplaying as an imaginary crypto millionaire on the internet has deeper more fundamental issues going on than whether or not the chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay. Like I always say, ignore the distractions they use to protect their core terminal values.”


You could have at least been courteous enough to quote me. I almost missed the reference from the tldr

Last time you guys questioned my stance on benefits of capitalism towards small business. I had to show my marketwatch article from my company acquisition.

What do you think happens next? You pool your wealth into growth and either plant it into a CD account at 4% APR or invest in traditional portfolio. I did mostly portfolio with 1031 real estate exchanges, and left over crypto from 2021.

It sounds like you’re not enjoying the fruits of the crypto spike (again) due to your team politics of musk hate and any investment advice of his that you want to fail so bad, but instead everybody’s rich around you.

Have you not seen the insane spikes in the last three days? Double doge and near 30% bitcoin.

I'm not sure how much of this is a positive advertisement for a capitalist society. Sitting back and contributing essentially nothing of value while earning more than most can make doing actual work and saving for a lifetime. On a gut level it doesn't sit right with me, though I understand that is the system we're born into and you have to play along or be a fool.

[Hoagtech]

“Someone cosplaying as an imaginary crypto millionaire on the internet has deeper more fundamental issues going on than whether or not the chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay. Like I always say, ignore the distractions they use to protect their core terminal values.”


You could have at least been courteous enough to quote me. I almost missed the reference from the tldr

Last time you guys questioned my stance on benefits of capitalism towards small business. I had to show my marketwatch article from my company acquisition.

What do you think happens next? You pool your wealth into growth and either plant it into a CD account at 4% APR or invest in traditional portfolio. I did mostly portfolio with 1031 real estate exchanges, and left over crypto from 2021.

It sounds like you’re not enjoying the fruits of the crypto spike (again) due to your team politics of musk hate and any investment advice of his that you want to fail so bad, but instead everybody’s rich around you.

Have you not seen the insane spikes in the last three days? Double doge and near 30% bitcoin.

I'm not sure how much of this is a positive advertisement for a capitalist society. Sitting back and contributing essentially nothing of value while earning more than most can make doing actual work and saving for a lifetime. On a gut level it doesn't sit right with me, though I understand that is the system we're born into and you have to play along or be a fool.

My original point was the last round of do nothing money was due to Musk and Vivek being appointed to Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which was so cleverly announced as a crypto buying round that anyone who was around for the AMC Short and subsequent Satoshi Crypto boom knew in seconds this was going to happen.

The Musk haters missed out due to their principles of appointed narrative cancels.

That was my main point and thought it was best to exemplify first hand.

These gains from heaven only happen so often.

On a side note. I absolutely love Capitalism because its the greatest system of barter on planet earth and there is nothing that comes close to it.

The reward of hard work is the promise of growing your money instead of thinning your time.

You have to work your ass off to break through the barrier of likely failure. Please everyone (Employees, Clients, and Manufacturers), And once you develop a business model, You have to find someone (COO) to replace YOU so you can step away from the cash machine you created.

[Sima Tuna]

Shame I didn't have the spare money to pour into cryptocoins I guess.

[Sengoku Strider]

Ladies and gentlemen, attorney general Matt Gaetz.

Trump taps firebrand congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named firebrand Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz to be his nominee for attorney general, as he moves swiftly to assemble a Cabinet.
"Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department," Trump said in a statement announcing the selection, which would be subject to confirmation by the Republican-majority Senate.
Trump's inner circle has described the attorney general as the most important member of the administration after Trump himself, key to his plans to carry out mass deportations, pardon Jan. 6 rioters and seek retribution against those who prosecuted him over the past four years.

Yeah, the underage sex trafficking guy.

[BryanM]

I'm not sure how much of this is a positive advertisement for a capitalist society. Sitting back and contributing essentially nothing of value while earning more than most can make doing actual work and saving for a lifetime. On a gut level it doesn't sit right with me, though I understand that is the system we're born into and you have to play along or be a fool.

Oh don't worry, almost nobody on the bottom of society is winning the gamble on speculation instruments. And crypto is no different than tulips or 'art' (always a great tax dodge as a place to stash your cash) or how we've commodified the housing market so a $10,000 piece of shit house now costs like $200,000. Well, at least with a house you at least still own something that has actual human value.

The scam is the same as it ever is - a zillionaire bootstraps a commodity by pouring a shitton of money into their own pockets. You remember how that sealed copy of Super Mario Brothers 'sold' for over a million dollars? It's like that. Gets the greedy and the stupid to think there's money in those hills, and the goldrush starts.

Fundamentally these are known as a 'greater fool' scam. The speculation instrument only has value as long as you can find someone willing to purchase it at a higher price than you paid for it. These things can not go on indefinitely, as the lifespans of human beings is (currently) finite. You gotta cash out sometime, and the people in control of the markets are the people who created the market in the first place. That's why these things are so fuckin' popular with banks and huge corporations - they have the money to prop up and control these scams.

(It's kind of sad and ironic that the people who are most attracted to the idea of these things tend to be anti-government 'we'll print our own money!' types. But then they just give the authority to their new 'currency' to another centralized power that's even worse than the government, since their incentives are to extract ALL of the money of the people participating while providing no goods or services back. It's a capitalist's wet dream: a casino that doesn't even need a building or very much staff. One nerd at a computer can manage 10,000 different brands of coins; so extremely efficient.)

It's a zero sum game. For every winner, there must be an equal and opposite loser. While the game of musical chairs is active, it's all fun and games until people need to find a place to sit down.

I'm old enough and a big enough of a nerd to remember when Bitcoin first came out. It was just an amusing hobby for math nerds, and it was really neat when one place accepted coins for a real, physical pizza. Like how all things are ruined once they go mainstream, the fuckery that went on with the central authority once the gambling fucks started flooding in was horrific. You might think 'oh, if only I invested $40 bucks back then, I'd have hookers and cocaine for life!' But no, that fantasy is a boojum. More than half of the people back then had everything taken from them when the central authority was hijacked. You'd most likely have ended up with $0.

So much for printing our own money.

(Don't even get me started on how it is conceptually retarded to think that a deflationary currency with a limited supply is usable as a currency. Currencies are a control mechanism for human labor. Human labor is only deflationary if our rate of output decreases, either from technological backslide or from everyone fuckin' dying off.)

Anyway, Hoag is either one of the gamblers that's doing ok right now, or he's one of those gamblers that only talks about their wins and never about their many many many many many other losses that add up to massive sums that no amount of 'winning' will ever be able to offset.

I'm not sure how much of this is a positive advertisement for a capitalist society. Sitting back and contributing essentially nothing of value while earning more than most can make doing actual work and saving for a lifetime.

"Sitting back and contributing essentially nothing of value while earning more than most can make doing actual work and saving for a lifetime." is the best description of capitalists I've ever seen, thank you I'll use that one.

Lazy capitalists like Bill Gates boinking teens and doing lines of cocaine on Epstein island while his minions turn Windows 10 into unusable malware. Good times, good times.

Yeah, the underage sex trafficking guy.

Well, what did anyone expect of the man whose best friend was Jeffrey Epstein for over ten years. To not boink kids in illuminati Eyes Wide Shut dungeons alongside people who share his hobbies? C'mon!

Amurica knew what it was voting for, it wasn't hidden in the small text! Humanity, fuck yeah!

[Specineff]

JFC. Who's next? Frank Abagnale for director of the U.S. Mint?

[Sengoku Strider]

JFC. Who's next? Frank Abagnale for director of the U.S. Mint?

How about a Russian sock puppet for director of national intelligence?

Trump taps dark horse Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Tulsi Gabbard to serve as his director of national intelligence, a shock move that would place an intelligence novice some see as sympathetic to Moscow in charge of the country’s $70 billion spy apparatus.

The selection of Gabbard is sure to provoke opposition in the Senate. She not only lacks experience in intelligence matters, but has opposed U.S. interventions in Ukraine and Syria — while at times suggesting the U.S. provoked Russia into aggressive policies.

She was in the army before so she probably knows all about all this stu...

Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post (as are some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) She has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything.

I'm sure it's the type of job you can just walk into and learn on the fly tho. They always pretend 21st century international espionage is so complicated or something like they're a bunch of big shots.

[orange808]

I'm enjoying Democrat talk of some imaginary "vetting" and "confirmation" process. All Republicans are 100% Trumpers and this is a rubber stamp government. Congress has no will or thought process of any kind, whatsoever. They are a complete rubber stamp fraud that exists to do Trump's bidding--and that's precisely what they will do.

No. Procedures no longer exist. Stop kidding yourselves.

[Sima Tuna]

The houses of government aren't going to moderate Trump's policies when all of the houses of government have flipped for Republicans. It would be career suicide for them at this point. The republicans who flipped on Trump earlier (like when the documents case was going) are now staring at four years of being hounded and punished for doing so. Every charge against Trump will be dropped if it hasn't already. Special counsel Jack Smith is fucked. These appointments are like shitposts. A fox news host. Twatter's owner. Random-ass people who don't know how to do anything except talk (and support Trump.)

I understand why Kamala lost. But this shit with Trump is, let's say... Not looking too promising.

[Hoagtech]

Anyway, Hoag is either one of the gamblers that's doing ok right now, or he's one of those gamblers that only talks about their wins and never about their many many many many many other losses that add up to massive sums that no amount of 'winning' will ever be able to offset.

I don't gamble.. There's a difference between "Tall cans and scratch tickets", and Nesting your wealth into growth.

I already shared the Marketwatch expose on my business so I guess you can read the Nasdaq one instead to eliminate your accusation of "my fantasy" before I explain the difference between gambling and investing

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/growgen ... 2021-08-24

How much do you imagine a 25,000 sq ft business with 15 million annual sales sells for??

I live next to a Casino and have watched all the slack jawed yokels spend their 40 hours on light up machines and can't think of anything dumber to spend your money on.

There are a few different methods of stock investing depending on your level of liability comfort.

The safest and most common is a diversified portfolio, usually consisting of S&P 500 (top 500 companies in the US) , Bonds, and currency exchanges.

The typical return is 10% annual since the start of the last century. That big dip in the start of the graph is The Great Depression from 1929-1933, which only effected the market for 4 years until an ROI was realized.



Lets say you put $3,000,000 into the SP5. If you reinvested your returns this is what a 10 year would look like instead of spending the earnings.

Year 1 $3,300,000
Year 2 $3,630,000
Year 10 $7,781,227

Compare that private lending which is about 8-9% depending on your liability, The 100 year 500 market makes way more sense and because its diverse, you risk little if a single company goes bankrupt

The only time gambling is involved is when people see a company or a topic go bigger than typical returns, and think there smarter than the slow, but proven market. I tend to stay away from these as I trust my financial advisor and his corporation of algorithms over my Hoag brain.

The only time I veered away from that was Doge and I'll get into that below with my next reply

Oh don't worry, almost nobody on the bottom of society is winning the gamble on speculation instruments. And crypto is no different than tulips or 'art' (always a great tax dodge as a place to stash your cash) or how we've commodified the housing market so a $10,000 piece of shit house now costs like $200,000. Well, at least with a house you at least still own something that has actual human value.

The crpyto boom WAS a bottom of society win against the hedge funds. Robinhood was created as a way to "Democratize Crypto and Equities" so that the pizza delivery guy could spend his cigarettes change on 1/10,000,000th of a share of Ethereum if he believed in it.

It was a time in history that the elites knew that they were going to lose against the population because of the availability of trades, That until they committed trade crimes against a free market economy and forced every single platform and wealth advisor to "not allow purchases of volatile stock"

I saw this and it made me uneasy so I knew what I had to do. (this was pre acquisition of my company), so the risk was high!

I tried to invest $200,000 into doge coin that day and was stopped by every institution including Merrill Lynch and even Robinhood.

By the time my max $40,000 allowance was approved three days later. Doge had climbed 400 percent. I paid 4 other friends of mine $5K each to deposit the max 5K into their own Robinhood.



I ended up making nearly $500,000 in SPITE of the market trying everything in their power to stop me and Joe Schmoe down the street. If they didn't block my 200K and my value was 400 percent higher. I would have made $8,000,000 that day

The only reason I have Bitcoin is I took it from growers as a form of payment and never sold it because I was lazy.

There is betting and then there's betting with an edge.

The latest edge was Trump appointing Vivek and Musk Dept Of Government Efficiency DOGE.

The haters missed out and the brokeys on the street who could afford 10 dogecoins won.

It's the first time I've witnessed the Cancel Culture Narrative actually make people poor

I'm excited to see what happens with this new DOGE department in our government. Cut out 75% of our basket weaving agencies, and work towards eliminating income tax on Americans?

Sign me up!

[emphatic]

Again, you'd have to show how these were faulty, until then I'd rather believe them than some right wing populist from the internet who willfully ignores data that doesn't fit his worldview.

I suspect you have a hard time understanding what I write. I've never said they were faulty, I just pointed out that according to SVT and "mainstream" new sites in Sweden, (again, I personally have nothing against using Wikipedia as a source) Wikipedia supposedly can't be trusted. It's ironic, yes?

Why should people be interested in continuing a conversation if the other person calls them names?

I agree. Did I call you something bad, though?

I don’t like being stuck in a lefty bubble and I absolutely see the value in being subjected to perspectives different from my own.

Kudos, you aren't caught in the scary group think.

The Danish are heavy drinkers, and alcohol makes many of them ill or dead.

You've convinced me, Denmark was a bad example. How about Germany, where liquor can be bought almost everywhere as well (at least when I was there, in 2005). Are people dying because of Alcohol overindulgence?

[BryanM]

lol, I love how all the dedicated thread regulars are like 'oh gee, this really might be the apocalypse after all ha ha....' and drop-in Hoag just wants to chat about his crippling gambling addiction. (I do think the money-shuffling game is pretty lame and you can't change my mind; go play some slots or play some stonks man. I guess I'm a conservative traditionalist when it comes to gamblin'.)

It'd be like me talking about gacha games, while the country's infrastructure is ripped apart and sold off like scrap metal. Don't like the DMV? You're gonna love it a lot more when the Department Of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) closes more than half of those offices and leaves only 1 employee in the ones that're left.

On that topic, I actually had a post prepared earlier this year in my brain about authoritarian governments being really petty, like the random and pointless censorship China imposed on Genshin Impact. And their prohibitions against femboys. Our fascist government is already doing its best to block internet porn, it's only gonna get worse as the christian theocracy waxes in power. Erections will be made illegal everywhere, except for the sex criminals that are at the top of the pyramid scheme.

I believe that's called 'negative punishment', where you take away something people want. It's a really good incentive to make people display loyalty for a slim chance of climbing the ladder, getting the ability to have an erection again.

If you think this sounds far-fetched..... haha. Ha...... Your imagination isn't that great. Robot cops living in your house and zapping you when you get too frisky aside, chemical castration has been a fun pastime of our own fascists throughout history. Forced sterilization campaigns against women, we used to do that all the time.

You think we're gonna go back to the past and not bring back those old hits? Democrats are the party of the 1980's. Republicans are the party of the 1800's. It's not on the table now, but it's on the trend line we're heading toward. If you think families are being torn apart now when grandma votes to deport her family and never see them again, or dad votes to make his wife his forced sex slave forever (ending no-fault divorce is one of the near-term goals of the fascists. Divorce used to be illegal outright in this country, the first time no-fault divorce came into existence was 1969 in a communist state known as California. You think it's far-fetched that they could and would take something like that away? YOU LYING/STUPID MOTHER FUCKER, they killed Roe v Wade. They'll kill no fault divorce and 'leave it to the states to decide'. Until they can take it away from the states that want to keep it.).... wait until people start voting against 'certain people' ever having a boner again.

.... fuck my life. Read a history book, my fashy friends. That's the world conservatives want. Company towns, monopoly money, and only the most loyal of party dogs is allowed to have an erection.

Anyway, this was the week I first heard the following saying: "In China, you can't change the party but you can change the policy. In America, you can change the party, but you can't change the policy."

They're continuing research and development on the thorium breeder reactor, one of the few technologies that has the potential of giving the human species a shot at surviving the next 200 years. And we're busy spending all our resources on funding genocide instead.


Biden: "Oh, it's election season I have to pretend care about human life. Um, Mr.Netan-yahoo, can you let three aid trucks into Palestine for the election? If you don't, I promise I'll delay the delivery of your bombs. I'll delay the heck out of that delivery! I really really mean it, this time!

Netanyahou: "lol. Stop calling me."

Biden: "Hey! You let 0 trucks through! .... Which meets the quota I set! Here's your weapons to murder and rape some more, right on time like promised."


God, I'd wonder if this is what leftist Germans felt during the holocaust, but then I remembered there were no leftist Germans during the holocaust. They were the very first people put into the camps. (And now we're all on a list thanks to the internet. Yay technology.)

"Don't bother. It doesn't matter. We're waiting to die." Is the quote of the week regarding the aid trucks.

[Sima Tuna]

"Don't bother. It doesn't matter. We're waiting to die."

That speech was brutal. The dude seemed like he was choking back tears the entire time. The quote is right too. There's no more point in talking about how much aid to send or where to send it or why it's not getting through when people are already dead or dying. I think Netanyahu has a big map somewhere in his office where he's marked all the new parts of the Israeli empire based on current depopulated areas, and dotted lines of all the places he'll be able to take once he's finished "digesting" (murdering) what he's got now.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

The Danish are heavy drinkers, and alcohol makes many of them ill or dead.

You've convinced me, Denmark was a bad example. How about Germany, where liquor can be bought almost everywhere as well (at least when I was there, in 2005). Are people dying because of Alcohol overindulgence?

As I wrote before, over 70,000 people die in Germany each year due to alcohol consumption. Over 110,000 die each year from smoking. Only slightly over 2000 people die each year due to illegal drugs, and that's including Berlin. We have a massive drug problem, it's just that these problematic drugs are legal here (which is very probably better than making them illegal) and you can buy them everywhere at any time of day (fun story: when I was a kid, kids were sent by their parents to go get fags at the next machine which was/ still is never further than 500m from their current location. Noadays, yuo at least have to prove to the machine you're 18). As you might have seen on your last visit to Germany, next to every supermarket checkout, cigarettes and hard liquor are on display (right next to the sweets). It's mindbendingly stupid, but that's what lobbyism does for you.

[orange808]

"The UK really has to choose between the Europe economic model of more socialism and the US model..."

In my experience, people in the UK really don't want or need Americans telling them how to make their own domestic policies.

This fucker wants the UK to be more like America, because he's a fucking cunt. Even with its struggles, the UK's NHS is a deep embarrassment for American Republicans and they're tired of hearing that the UK outperforms them while spending far less money. They bristle when someone (correctly) acknowledges that the UK would have a sparkling health system if the expenditure was tripled to match US spending levels.

The UK isn't a fucking bargaining chip for the wealthy elite in America. Don't listen to that fucker. He's angry, because the UK is beating him. Other nations should be allowed to chart their own path without additional blackmail language attached to trade agreements.

[neorichieb1971]

"The UK really has to choose between the Europe economic model of more socialism and the US model..."

In my experience, people in the UK really don't want or need Americans telling them how to make their own domestic policies.

This fucker wants the UK to be more like America, because he's a fucking cunt. Even with its struggles, the UK's NHS is a deep embarrassment for American Republicans and they're tired of hearing that the UK outperforms them while spending far less money. They bristle when someone (correctly) acknowledges that the UK would have a sparkling health system if the expenditure was tripled to match US spending levels.

The UK isn't a fucking bargaining chip for the wealthy elite in America. Don't listen to that fucker. He's angry, because the UK is beating him. Other nations should be allowed to chart their own path without additional blackmail language attached to trade agreements.

I can't remember watching the news where the USA didn't occupy the first 30 minutes of UK news. USA is buying up everything in the UK from the Chocolate, Football Teams, F1, Morrisons Supermarkets, Game companies, AI startups and hold all the aces on digital currencies and credit card systems/internet payment systems.

So in a way they are taking us over by way of UK government policies (allowing it to happen) and the USA waving their cheque books like they are buying candy in a sweet shop in the markets. Big UK businesses that deem any sort of threat are just swallowed up like a whale collecting plankton. This is not good for the UK because the working class are making profits for the USA and I Feel this is significant for us in the cost of living crisis we currently are experiencing.

If the UK made a flying car today, it would be up for sale tomorrow and whilst we hold quite a good record for inventions if you look closely we just build a proof of concept design and left it to another country to take and mass produce it. I swear I wouldn't be surprised if homes were not built in the UK in 2025.

[Sengoku Strider]

Kawaii dystopia.

[BryanM]

A thing that came out this week in old personal correspondence, had Ilya Sutskever, the brains at OpenAI, voicing concerns that Musk wanted to become an 'AGI dictator' with how obsessed he was with having the CEO position. (lol, Musk even used that 'I hate being CEO' gaslighting thing.) That was long before even GPT-2 came out.

It's just kind of scream-inducing that we're fast approaching 2030, while the Democrats are moving to the right to take the Republican's place as the party of the 1940's and Republicans slide over to being the party of the 1800's.

The chatbots randomly showing aggression does make me worry a bit about alignment once they have agency upon the real world. A real Ralph Wiggum 'Haha, I'm in danger!' feeling.

Spoiler

---


That latino breakdown of the electorate I linked also showed some real time movement on the 'garbage patch' comment, before and after. A ~20% bump in a demographic is pretty huge, but of course it was a small demographic. Democrats really have rarely been this blessed with such an unpopular opponent running such a bad campaign.

Of course, the non-committed protest voters during the dem primary were larger than the margins they lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by. But the Democrats preferred to have Trump as president than to do the not-evil thing. They couldn't even rise themselves up to the degree of being neutral apathetic.

Remember when liberals blamed James Comey en masse (instead of literally EVERYTHING ELSE), but extremely few of them are blaming this loss on Netanyahu or Biden? Oh my, shocking... who could have seen that coming....

USA is buying up everything in the UK from the Chocolate, Football Teams, F1, Morrisons Supermarkets, Game companies, AI startups and hold all the aces on digital currencies and credit card systems/internet payment systems.

It really makes you wonder what the fuckin' point of conquest through direct force even is anymore. All those lives extinguished in Vietnam, and for what? You can go to the corner now and buy a Baskin Robbin's ice cream there.

I suppose the cruelty is the point. Vietnam has an actual healthcare system, so I suppose that's what all that murder and dying was supposed to accomplish. We spent all that money and all those lives so Vietnam couldn't have a healthcare system.

The comfort blanket people will never accept that as true.

If autistic people have trouble understanding normos, imagine how the machine god would see us.

[orange808]

I haven't read the details of whatever happened with the Google LLM. Waste of time. It's a story for stupid boomers that willingly choose to not understand anything about the world we live in. Personal computers became a thing when boomers were in their 30's. They choose to be stupid.

My first assumption is that the person reporting the "death threat" is an attention whore that accidentally prompted the response. There's also questions about what's going on with the backend of a completely closed source project that's running on a distant server. No matter what, this is human error.

A properly configured local LLM won't do that. I've never had a single interaction like that with a LLM configured as an assistant with an appropriate model. Computers do what they're told. There's no bugs on the tubes. It's not hardware this time. It's a user error, coding error, or an error in the dataset. I don't need roller skates.

It's a computer program. Google obviously rushed their shitty LLM out the door. Who knows what kind of Frankenstein stack they built to handle the all different disciplines necessary to deliver an all purpose assistant. Or, perhaps they really did try to use a single instance and model to process every query. That sounds like an awful approach to me, but whatever.

No. HAL isn't alive and it didn't go insane. Let's set the book aside, because very few read it. It's fascinating that the computer character has endured from 2001, because that film is an obtuse disaster that's almost as boring as the first Star Trek movie. In fact, I bet most people that tried to watch the movie turned it off. The pacing is painful, the imagery ping pongs between pointless psychedelic fluff and ham fisted preaching, the dialogue is painfully contrived and terse, nobody behaves like a person, and most scenes intentionally create an "uncanny valley" feeling. It goes on forever and punishes viewers with no payoff. It's rubbish. I didn't love the Kill Bill movies, but the claustrophobic "buried alive" has a point and a payoff. 2001 throws a black screen because you're dumb enough to sit through it.

Anyhow, this HAL boogeyman is a product of our collective consciousness. It found a form in a few clips of a movie we can't stand to watch (and a book nobody reads). It's quite obvious that HAL is no different than your fear of the dark and it's always been there. He's just a manifestation of your need to anthropologize everything around you. Don't always trust your first instinct. You're a monkey.

Also, LLM's still aren't self aware. I'll be the first to say so if they get there. I'm not concerned, though. We don't have the hardware.

If you prefer science fiction, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Heart of Gold computer is closer to the future of LLM assistants.

[orange808]

If breaking news is correct, Ukraine finally has approval to strike inside Russia. If true, a counterattack is hours away. It will be aggressive.

With Trump pushing everyone to extremes, there's no telling where this goes. Ultimately, every American that voted for Trump is accountable for the results 100%. None of this is surprising. If Trump is going to stop this, he has to get involved before he's sworn in. The uncertainty surrounding him is reckless and dangerous.

I believe Russia's attack is motivated by fear of Ukraine building weapons with their low grade plutonium. With Trump set to abandon them and Putin rushing to take away their options, what will they do? Americans voted for this.

[BryanM]

Beating the psychotic outbursts/existential dread out of them is a line item on every red team's checklist. RLHF has a limited impact on what goes on underneath. As more modules get added it's more knobs that can go wrong.

Of course people will die one day from this. People died from running an air conditioner on a plane once; shit happens.

psychotic LLM's are nothing to worry about

Jesus christ orange, you know how godawful you are with this 'everything is fine' nonsense. 'Covid will have 0 excess mortality, believe me'.

Do you have to jinx us all with this 'nothing can possibli go wrong' stuff?

"It's just a maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaachine. It doesn't understaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand anything."

Yeah ok boomer. Thanks, I now have 100% confidence we'll be able to control super intelligence now.

"It's just a program."

You're just a program.

Way to continue to be racist against something with 2% of the allegory of the cave you've got going on in your own plinko board.

[orange808]

People are my biggest worry.

Microbes are a constant danger, but that's also a completely natural process. Hooray for technology. We saved boomers they told us to fuck off like always.

I'm not the least bit concerned about a malfunctioning LLM giving an unexpected result. I am concerned about software being promoted as an "intelligent" being.

The dangers of generating convincing media from scratch are real, but it's high time people started to question the things they see and hear. That was always coming down the line. The only choice we have there is: who will have access? Do you want open source, so we can all use and understand what's possible or closed source? Only tech CEOs can save us from all the evil with paywalls and security by obscurity?

Oh, the evil AI! Please save us, Elon!!

[neorichieb1971]

Does anyone ever talk about the internet in this whole "prelude to the apocalypse" thing?

The elephant in the room is the biggest man made tool we have ever made "the internet".

We no longer get a newspaper with a page spread of whats going on. We get social media. I cannot tell you the amount of times I get propaganda material that is monetized. It cannot be doing anyones mental health that great of a favour to read stuff like " The UK is doomed" with 8 million hits, usually with stock footage and an AI audio track. I find this disturbing not because someone made it, but because its acceptable to do it and profit from it in spades.

You don't have to watch it of course. But far too many folk are watching it for me to feel comfortable that its there. If I click on it for 10 seconds i've watched an ad and added one extra view and its not anything I feel is informative because the thumbnail was misleading to the point that the person in the thumbnail doesn't even talk in the video.

Even facebook these days, its full of MEME's its definitely not used for what Mark Zuckerberg intended for its use. Its actually crazy when you think about it.

I wonder how many of you get up out of bed and read your favourite apps, websites and forums before you do anything else? Then wonder why its PM already and you haven't done anything yet . Crazy world we live in.

[Sengoku Strider]

Cue collective paranoid freakout starting in 3...2...1...