Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Sengoku Strider]

It shouldn't be surprising if we (the country's discourse, not me personally lmao) sometimes revert back to a previous age in our social politics. I don't think a culture ever outgrows anti-foreigner bigotry. Sadly.

I think there's a difference. Stan Lee was a Brooklyn jew born in 1922, and even he had the Hate Monger needing a Hate Ray to shift (New York) Americans' minds:

That Fantastic Four comic is more a case of art imitating life rather than the reverse. Villains like the Hate-monger are very thinly-veiled references to the KKK and other anti-foreigner groups which were very much still alive at the time of the comic's publication.

Not even veiled. The Hate Monger's secret identity?



LITERALLY HITLER.

[Sima Tuna]

The reveal would have been more powerful if the Hatemonger was really the kindly old grandma who owns the corner store.

[Sengoku Strider]

The reveal would have been more powerful if the Hatemonger was really the kindly old grandma who owns the corner store.

That's just her day job, she is a LICENSED FAITH AND VICTORY COACH.

[BulletMagnet]

I think there's a difference. Stan Lee was a Brooklyn jew born in 1922, and even he had the Hate Monger needing a Hate Ray to shift (New York) Americans' minds

If the character is, Star Trek-style, a none-too-subtle substitution for a real-world someone (or many someones), I think it stands to reason that his weapon is a similar hamfisted stand-in for something just as real and even more consequential.

[Sengoku Strider]

his weapon is a similar hamfisted stand-in for something just as real and even more consequential.

You can't mean...

[orange808]

That's just her day job, she is a LICENSED FAITH AND VICTORY COACH.

You know, every time I think my faith in humanity has bottomed out, you post a screenshot that takes it even lower...

Can these fuckers even find Scotland on an unlabeled world map?

[Sima Tuna]

I couldn't find anything on a map until I started playing age of exploration video games.

I'm aware of how fucking sad that is.

[Sengoku Strider]

Can these fuckers even find Scotland on an unlabeled world map?

Even if it was labelled, they'd be stuck trying to figure out which state it was in.

I couldn't find anything on a map until I started playing age of exploration video games.

I'm aware of how fucking sad that is.

However bad you might have been at geography, there was always someone worse.

[Rastan78]

Shiiiit, gravity isn't even strong enough to stop this 30 pack of bud light from going down into my belly. Let alone stop a small stream going downhill.

[Sima Tuna]

If the earth is round and spinning then why isn't it flinging me off into space right now????

[Vanguard]

Even if you disregard the recent and numerous state-level increases already on the books, assuming that 2024 resembles the past eight years it will be; of course, that doesn't matter at all, because it is not being proposed that we summarily execute every millionaire in the country and rain their ill-gotten wealth from solar-powered airplanes unto the masses.

As such, it stands to reason that supporting the people sponsoring bills like these, as opposed to those who openly advocate for eliminating not only any minimum wage but all workers' rights across the board, is, y'know, just pointlessly choosing whether you prefer to be stabbed or shot.

If 2024 is anything like the past eight years they will pay the bare minimum of lip service towards raising the minimum wage and then do nothing to help and instead worsen the problem through inflation, anti-union activity, and more. Biden would veto the stop the minimum wage act if it reached his desk, as would any candidate either party would allow to win. The democrats barely pretend to offer anything to the working class anymore. Their one and only selling point is "we're not the republicans," and there's not even much truth to that.

[Sima Tuna]

A common talking point in this thread made it to my internet front page:

https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/23/240 ... wtab-en-us

Wow, the economy is doing so well! Because our sample size specifically excludes the waves of poor working class who lost their jobs or quit the workforce entirely during the pandemic. Yay America!

Now we just need a big forklift to pick up all the poors and dump them into the ocean or a large pit.

[BulletMagnet]

Their one and only selling point is "we're not the republicans," and there's not even much truth to that.

Again, less truth than there should be, but the differences do exist, and they do make a significant, positive difference in many people's lives (unless, say, you think people who want to use in vitro fertilization to start a family and would rather those kids not work midnight factory shifts can all just go pound sand for all you care. Oh, and the whole "violently riot when you lose an election" thing): again again, my argument is, if you want more of that to happen, the more effective way to go about it is to support those efforts where they do exist, to keep pressure on the contrarian elements to, at the very least, stay out of the way, as opposed to washing your hands of the whole thing and letting the chips fall where they may because that's easier to self-righteously complain about.

[BryanM]

Wow, the economy is doing so well! Because our sample size specifically excludes the waves of poor working class who lost their jobs or quit the workforce entirely during the pandemic. Yay America!

I've seen people unironically cite the vanishingly small unemployment rate as a reason for why everything is going better than ever. Not from these propaganda pieces (I only ever read those when someone here links one, because I've already learned everything that they have to say. Which is "obey".), but in internet forums full of rando anons.

As every shmup'per knows by now, the unemployment rate is a bullshit metric. If you don't have a job, but you aren't looking for one, congratulations! You're not unemployed. You're a respected member of society.

It's a decent metric to gauge how much faith unemployed people have in the concept of a job making their lives better, though. In inter-war Germany when everyone was starving, it was at ~24%. In the 90's USA when everyone was rich, it was double what it is now. The best/worst scenario is when it hits 0%, because by definition it can never ever get close to 100%.

It's a wonderfully bullshit metric designed to hover perpetually around 8 to 12 percent, in normal times, when people believe in jobism. Just cite its high when your opponent was president, cite its low when you were president, and wow! Look at how you "lowered" it and "created" all these jobs with your policies! Much amaze.

It's one of those stupid ass things about humans that makes me furious. People who uncritically parrot this stuff are textbook shills for the status quo. Authoritarians waving their cargo-cult symbols.

A high point was Trump dismissing this number as "meaningless" during a debate, and knowing full well in that moment: in the future that when he was president, he'd be using it as a reason for why his administration was doing awesome. What an empty circus it all is.

tldr: You never see any of these tools using the participation rate as a metric. Never. You might as well be reading opinion pieces from David Brooks, if you listen to these guys without feeling contempt inside.

--------

Lol, "the ringer". This name is just like the Chapo parody guy, Carl Diggler's "The Dig". These guys are the front line soldiers in the war against the working class. Priests that input words into people's brains, like human-guided reinforcement training runs for chatbots.

[Sengoku Strider]

Lol, "the ringer". This name is just like the Chapo parody guy, Carl Diggler's "The Dig". These guys are the front line soldiers in the war against the working class. Priests that input words into people's brains, like human-guided reinforcement training runs for chatbots.

The Ringer was the site Bill Simmons spun out of Grantland after he'd had enough of ESPN, giving it a broader pop culture and pop-politics (Keepin' it 1600 was their political podcast) reporting mandate. They started with like a 50/50 schlock-to-journalism ratio (regular stories and podcasts on The Bachelorette etc.) , so over time I drifted off it unless they had a really good basketball story. It got bought by Spotify back in 2020 and I haven't looked at it in years, I didn't realize they were doing economic stories now. At least they're still a union shop AFAIK.

As every shmup'per knows by now, the unemployment rate is a bullshit metric. If you don't have a job, but you aren't looking for one, congratulations! You're not unemployed. You're a respected member of society.

It's a decent metric to gauge how much faith unemployed people have in the concept of a job making their lives better, though. In inter-war Germany when everyone was starving, it was at ~24%. In the 90's USA when everyone was rich, it was double what it is now. The best/worst scenario is when it hits 0%, because by definition it can never ever get close to 100%.

Vic Viper was the villain all along.

[Sengoku Strider]

I guess these folks all bribed him with the group rate.

Spoiler

I like that all his copypasta endorsements are both complete and total. I bet with Crooked Joe you only get one.

[BryanM]

That's a cute comic.

Office space jobs are sometimes the most egregious farce - some of them might have an hour or two worth of work, then the rest of the time is spent playing on the internet. I'm extremely aware like 70% of internet forums activity are office workers, and it plummets on the weekends. The whole "bullshit jobs" thing rings truest for those in those kind of places.

It rankles the hell out of the guys shoveling dirt all day. And I suppose not grinding your body into decrepitude and not getting burnt into a prune are indeed massive pluses.

Still, it's one kind of hell or another I suppose..

[neorichieb1971]

That's a cute comic.

Office space jobs are sometimes the most egregious farce - some of them might have an hour or two worth of work, then the rest of the time is spent playing on the internet. I'm extremely aware like 70% of internet forums activity are office workers, and it plummets on the weekends. The whole "bullshit jobs" thing rings truest for those in those kind of places.

It rankles the hell out of the guys shoveling dirt all day. And I suppose not grinding your body into decrepitude and not getting burnt into a prune are indeed massive pluses.

Still, it's one kind of hell or another I suppose..

My hands up. I definitely fit into the IT crowd who sit in offices all day scratching my ass and reading forums. Most gaming forums are blocked but shmups gets through ok. Its by design.

[Sengoku Strider]

Wow. payupdonald.com is hypnotic. It's like one of those cable channels that's just a log fireplace, except for schadenfreude.



Faster than a dollar a second o_O

[Sengoku Strider]

Apparently Trump's $400 golden high tops were designed by AI, and have the wrong number of stripes on the flag:

We are definitely in a new era. The first thing I do when I see a comic image is count fingers and look for extra limbs.

Tsk tsk. You're about six months behind, so it's time to update your world models.

You can still find some temporal wonkiness in video output, but images? Pretty much impossible to tell, or right on the line.

Right on the line.

[BryanM]

Our fash friends are always a few decades behind the times. Like the only Bill Maher joke that was ever funny: "They looked to the future, and found radio."

Haaah.... the dems are dealing with the "supporting a genocide" problem the same predictable ways as always: platitudes and trying to look cute on tiktok. I feel like there should be a unique word for this peculiar kind of dark cringe. If everyone here could workshop it and do my job for me, that'd be great...

... I've updated Trump's odds of winning this year to around 68%. Jesus christ...

[Sengoku Strider]

The totally-on-the-level Constitutional Originalists on the US Supreme Court have decided they need 4 months to figure out whether it says the president is supposed to be an untouchable divine ruler like unto a pre-Cromwell 17th century English king. Curious to see how that goes, I know the question's always been a tossup in the minds of legal scholars.

a unique word for this peculiar kind of dark cringe.

Truly dark cringe is like a rainbow. It can only be felt and experienced, not described.

Pictured: The moment you realize this car pool's gonna suck.

... I've updated Trump's odds of winning this year to around 68%. Jesus christ...

I know I usually argue against this, but TBH the jacked eagles and flaming lightning machine guns are kinda putting me on the fence here.

[BryanM]

Well, I'm glad someone's glad they're going to win again.

I don't understand why so many people are against looking at the situation rationally. Where the line on the map lies, and how far it's been pushed back. Florida and Ohio used to be swing states. Now they're not. Michigan+Pennsylvanian+Wisconsin are the swing states now. Georgia and Arizona are swing states in theory, but in practice the demographic shift probably hasn't had enough time to take root. Biden won them by absolutely meager margins, a third of a percentage point, and it's fair to think he won't be able to hold onto them this year.

So we're starting the election with Trump at 259 electoral votes. He needs 11 votes to win. The Democrats can afford to lose Wisconsin. They cannot afford to lose Michigan or Pennsylvanian. Over 100k people felt it worth their time to register a complaint to the management during the Michigan primary, and Biden won the state by 150k votes last time.

It's not all doom or gloom of course. Eventually the Democrats will totally have Arizona, Texas, and Georgia on lockdown. In about a decade. If voter suppression can be overcome. If we still have elections. If the people of those races and religions survive the purge. If.

These five states I've mentioned here, and how the people within them feel, are the only things that matter to the election's outcome here. The democrats will ring the "trump bad" fear bell and hope to hump the old geezer over the line. They will open a tiktok account. They'll dab on TV with ellen or whoever her replacement is. People's groceries will probably go up another +10% because they can. Maybe it'll all just barely work out again, it's not literally impossible and maybe they really can reactivate just enough of those fear neurons. (Still seems very out of character for the Washington Generals, though...)

It is dire, man. All predictable as hell far back in March of 2016. I wasn't so vehemently against Hillary just because she herself is a monster and everything I hate in people and politics, but for how it impacted people's perception of the party as a whole in the era to come. If one was a liberal, they should have hated her guts for how much damage she did to their team more than any other group on the planet.

Surely people must eventually update their world model to understand the rules were never what they were told they were. Hillary winning the primary in 2016 has far more impact on our world than if Trump gets a bad boy verdict from a judge.

[orange808]

Yep. Bernie would have wiped the floor with Trump. Of course, he would have openly attacked corporate America next. We can't have that.

The masters of the universe would destroy the world before they allowed any reforms.

[Vanguard]

Again, less truth than there should be, but the differences do exist, and they do make a significant, positive difference in many people's lives (unless, say, you think people who want to use in vitro fertilization to start a family and would rather those kids not work midnight factory shifts can all just go pound sand for all you care. Oh, and the whole "violently riot when you lose an election" thing): again again, my argument is, if you want more of that to happen, the more effective way to go about it is to support those efforts where they do exist, to keep pressure on the contrarian elements to, at the very least, stay out of the way, as opposed to washing your hands of the whole thing and letting the chips fall where they may because that's easier to self-righteously complain about.

The dems are slightly less bad on a few issues like abortion and the reps are slightly less bad on issues like free speech, but either way we lose massively on both rights and prosperity every election cycle.

Biden is openly working to destroy the working class in the US while enabling a genocide in Gaza. One of the simplest and most effective ways to end Israel's decades of murder and land theft would be to simply stop sending them free American money and weapons, yet Biden is sending them even more instead. He is also almost certainly a pedophile. He doesn't deserve my support, he deserves to be executed. When Biden is what you consider to be the better of your two options, it's time to admit that your solution, in this case voting under representative democracy, is not working even a little bit. The next democratic president will be a mass murdering enemy of the working class too, don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

[BryanM]

These reports of billionaires trying to make it illegal to run basic income experiments make me optimistic about what life will be like when they replace everyone with robots...

Yep. Bernie would have wiped the floor with Trump. Of course, he would have openly attacked corporate America next.

I'm of the opinion the media would have Corbyn'd him and the libs would have abandoned him enough to the degree to make him lose, because they're not really anti-Trump just pro-decorum and the rules. TV would have been so cartoonishly glowingly pro-Trump in that universe.

It's still better than our real-world alternative. Simply for making things like the idea of giving people healthcare more "normal" in people's minds. Especially in the younger generations. It's a long-term perspective. Beyond a single election cycle, since I actually didn't want to be in an apocalypse.

But, I could be wrong on this one. Like I said up there, only like five states matter, and they might be more receptive to material concerns than "muh borders" and "let's have more women prison guards."

(The whole Google Bard returning images of black founding fathers thing reminded me of Hamilton the musical. Yeah, that's really empowering, slapping the face of victims onto the victimizers. Might as well slap Nancy's face onto Freddy Krueger, since that monster is fictional it's less horrific.)

[orange808]

(The whole Google Bard returning images of black founding fathers thing reminded me of Hamilton the musical. Yeah, that's really empowering, slapping the face of victims onto the victimizers. Might as well slap Nancy's face onto Freddy Krueger, since that monster is fictional it's less horrific.)

I can't understand the outrage on that.

All I heard in the 'outrage' is, "I'm an average idiot person and I don't anything about the technology in question".

That's really the message people sent.

Of course the model has limited context. It's not "intelligent". It's a computer program. Like all computer programs, it does what you tell it to do. Sure, there are gotchas sometimes where you "tell it to do something" and you get an unexpected result, but those are always due to user error (not understanding how the compiler/VM works), a user error designing the compiler/VM, or a problem with the hardware design.

Ultimately, the software and circuits only do what they're designed to do. They are not alive and never will be.

We are also bound by hardware limitations. The model simply cannot store and process enough context to completely understand every situation.

So, Bard did exactly what it was told to do. It incorporated more diversity into the results. People found ways to abuse it.

So? What's your point? It's going to get abused no matter what, because we can't incorporate enough information into the model. It's not intelligent, so it can't process information it may already have to arrive at important conclusions on its own. Because (drum roll please!), it's just a fucking computer program.

Don't they teach that shit in school these days?

[Vanguard]

I'm of the opinion the media would have Corbyn'd him and the libs would have abandoned him enough to the degree to make him lose, because they're not really anti-Trump just pro-decorum and the rules.

Yup and if he managed to win anyway and really intended to go through with improving conditions for the poorest 90%, they would simply kill him.

[Sengoku Strider]

Ultimately, the software and circuits only do what they're designed to do. They are not alive and never will be.

What you're talking about here is true general problem solving, and I don't think too many people in AI research believe it's unachievable or even that far off. In more general terms of being 'alive' there's no reason an artificial being couldn't meet every criterion for being alive in any meaningful sense. Earth Worms and prokaryotes are alive but less complicated or capable of adaptation than a lot of machines. In fact what's most likely is that humans cyborg-out and evolve to meet machines halfway, becoming more like them.

Like Wendy the Asian baby vax conspiracy lady did, when she started having AI rewrite her first drafts:



It's still gobbledygook, but now it's fancy gobbledygook.

[BryanM]

What you're talking about here is true general problem solving, and I don't think too many people in AI research believe it's unachievable or even that far off.

We'd already tread this topic over in the AI thread. It's an attitude that comes from ego, "I am a divine being, there's no way that *I* could be a Chinese room."

I personally don't feel much of a sense of superiority over these word predictors with the processing power of a mouse. In fact, what their capabilities could be trained to be with the power of ten mice makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

Leftists are odd bunch. You see dehumanizing slurs like "techbro" thrown around a lot, "a technological singularity, to any degree, isn't possible it's just a religion for stupid people." They dismiss technology as an agent of change (despite how it has been core to many transformations throughout all of history), and think that change can be brought about through conversations and political means.

But again, it's probably ego. Like how senior guys at a company don't want resources going to another department. That they don't want the company have a success unless they get credit for it. "Better we don't succeed at all, if it doesn't happen the way I want it to." I guess it's monkey tribal brain all the way down.

"Let's believe in the power of humanity, to save humanity!" says the group of people who've had zero power and zero relevancy for the past eighty years, all at the hands of humanity.

(Yes, I'm bitter. I actually bought into the canard that electoral politics could change anything, back in 2015. Corbyn getting Corbyn'd erased any camaraderie I felt with my fellow humans. I still admonish myself with those time-proven words of wisdom: "You fucking idiot, why would something good happen?" That's what I deserve for being tricked into feeling hope: Hope is for the hopeless!)



Anyway, the futures where Bill Gates terraforms the planet into his version of Epstein island or the machine instantiates some kind of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream LARP... It's all dependent on scaling. You can't build a mind without first having a substrate to run a mind. GPU's and TPU's are complete trash for this purpose, analogous to running that electricity-accurate simulation of pong. It's far more efficient to just build a thing, than an abstraction of a thing.

The neuromorphic paradigms capital is finally seriously investing in could be the most important invention. You'd never have human-like androids using GPUs, that requires a datacenter and about ten power planets feeding electricity into the thing.

The uneasy thing is the idea that maybe it could have been possible already. IBM was doing crossover anime ads about their hardware a decade ago. There was just... no incentive for anyone in capital to go all-in on that much risk. No guarantee of revenue anytime soon until you actually build the thing first. Which is far, far from guaranteed. No, like every other capitalist in history the winning move is to let someone else take all the risk, and then you swoop in and pocket all the rewards.

If OpenAI didn't believe in scale and kicked off this race, it'd still probably be forty years away, if ever.