The basic graphing technology used by AI is the same pioneered by Alta Vista and optimized by Google years later. We’ve added a layer of abstraction through user I/O, such that you get a formalized text response encapsulating results rather than a series of links containing related search terms. But the methodology used to harvest, hash, and sort results is still all rooted in graph theory.

The difference between then and now is that back then you’d search “Horse” in Alta Vista and getting a dozen links ranging from ranches and vet clinics to anime and porn. Now, you get a text blob that tries to synthesize all the information in those sources down to a few paragraphs of relevant text.

what if they all come up with that because it has been publicised

Then I’d ask who published and where they got their analysis from. Very possible that we’ve got an AI that’s built up a backlog of Harvard Business Studies and CalTech economics models to reach the ideal hypothetical tariff regime. But it’s just as likely they’re ingesting 4chan reposts of Ron Paul Newsletters and Michael Savage radio transcripts to build up its economic background.

That’s sort of the problem with AI. There’s no specialist-driven guidance on what data is valuable and what data is crap. No litmus test to separate fact from fiction or serious discussion versus trolling. And these western developed models, in particular, are very bad about including the origins of their graphed logical output (because that would make the process of hashing and graphing more expensive, in a system that’s already inelegant and resource intensive).

I just glanced at it and wouldnt know how something like that is even supposed to be, so I dont really know how unhinged the tariff rate thing is.

The problem is less that we don’t know how bad the tariff rate is and more that the people designing the policies don’t know either. They’re fishing for answers in the answer pond, and they don’t even know if they’ve got a fish or a boot at the end of the line.

How many people have suffered physical harm from ordering food adjacent to a service animal?

Bribes to local governments and police, mostly.

These rules seem arbitrary and capricious. If the dog is well-trained, the owner is able to meet its needs on the go, and nobody else is explicitly being bothered, there’s no compelling reason to block it from any of these establishments.

All of the above hold true for therapy animals, for instance. This isn’t about the animal being well-trained, it is about both the pet and the person to be comfortable and happy, without impinging on the comfort and happiness of others. Locking well-behaved pets out of all of the above establishments does nothing to improve your comfort or happiness. It only serves to inconvenience others.

Several of the apps traced back to Qihoo 360, a firm declared by the Defense Department to be a “Chinese Military Company." Qihoo did not respond to questions about its app-related holdings.

I have to wonder if this headline would be received the same way if it was “US State Department Accuses Chinese Internet Security Company of Conspiring With Chinese Government”, as all this seems to go back to a claim by Trump’s 2020 department that Qihoo leaked info to the Hong Kong police during the protests five years ago.

Still… Qihoo 360 appears to have been an active investor and developer in Silicon Valley since 2014. Chinese investment in the US isn’t new or even undesireable, as of a decade ago.

But consider how the US has also recently attempted to seize the US branch of TikTok and block domestic sale of Huawei phones. Add in the domestic freak out over Chinese AI companies outperforming their US peers. This could easily be American tech companies trying to freeze out their competition on national security grounds rather than Chinese tech companies posing a military threat to US domestic interests.

War + Poverty is a consistent recipe for fascism

Dating apps are rigged to give men and women bad experiences so they (largely men) become desperate enough to pay $25 a month or whatever to have an unfair advantage.

It gets worse, as the engagement mechanic populates the apps with a particular kind of guy who is obnoxiously aggressive, persistent, and convinced that this is a game they can brute force with time/money. So women end up being introduced to a string of guys who believe they’ve “won” a date by “beating” the game while women are left fishing for profiles that don’t look completely gross or insane.

And that’s before you get into end-users who are straight up escorts or pimps or predators, fully internalizing the idea that site participants are just resources to extract.

It isn’t merely about giving people a bad experience, but to give them a cheap thrill that keeps them coming back to the apps without ever finding a fulfilling relationship that would render the website superfluous.

The internet (and other players!) likes to hate the players, not the game, and the only “comfort” many young men have is Tate and Co.

Tate on one side and Estee Williams on the other. Men are told to treat women like a commodity - interchangeable, disposable, and ultimately hostile to your personal interests - that you rent out when you’ve accrued enough surplus wealth. Women are told to embrace submissiveness, obsess over superficial appearance, and pursue men based entirely on their socio-economic status in pursuit of the same kind of passive incomes that Tate is selling.

These conservative icons put men and women into an inherent contradictory position, with the idea of two people coming together as collaborators (much less romantic partners) is fully alien. You’re purchasing a man’s income with your looks. He’s purchasing your looks with his hustle-money. You’re both purchasing the other’s status, with an eye towards a higher rung on the ladder. Neither one of sees the other as a life partner.

A Beautiful Mind - Bar Scene John Nash’s Equilibrium Game Theory

As the Buddha said in the Vasala Sutta, “Not by birth is one an outcast; not by birth is one a brahman. By deed one becomes an outcast, by deed one becomes a brahman.”

Why did the noble Japanese Buddhists boil Portuguese Christians alive? Was this one of those Brahman Deeds?

The Buddha goes on to criticize the various things that brahmins do

Much as Jesus critiqued the Pharasises. And yet modern Christian Dominionists have far more in common with Pharasises - even Roman Pagans - than the fishermen and slaves and prostitutes that were it’s original disciples.

The “liberal” in the USA is not a leftist in the same way a Tankie isn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

Now, the modern day use of the term has shifted much farther to the right. Any form of resistance or dissent - particularly when it comes into conflict with the NATO military apparatus - qualifies, whether you’re a FARC guerilla or a Wikileaks editor of BDS advocate.

Palestinian rights organizers getting dragged of a university campus earn the label. Food Not Bombs charity workers earn the label. Internet slacktivists excited about the latest Deepseek patch earn the label. So, in that sense, sure. You don’t have to be a leftist to get called a Tankie.

Does that mean that the US is perfect?

This appears to be the root of it. America gets some sort of ideological benefit-of-the-doubt, such that My Lai Massacres and engineered famines in Cuba and Korea and blacksite prisons that use genital mutilation to extract confessions are degrees shy of perfection rather than war crimes, atrocities, and holocausts.

Is authoritarian communism better? LOL, no.

Is your problem with the authoritarianism or the communism?

“The very concept of “revolutionary violence” is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like.”

― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

I’m pretty sure this meme is CIA funded.

I mean, you joke. But the number of “If you criticize the American Police State, you’re a violent bully” posts on every corner of the internet from accounts with those procedurally generated 4-digit suffixes is a wee bit sus.

You see the same shit from anti-Luigi memes, anti-piracy memes, and anti-Linux memes. They just aren’t well received.

I gotta ask, what exactly is the difference between the Obama “Dronestrikes On Arabs Is Never Wrong” Dickrider Liberal and the Stalinist “driving over Hungarian fascists with your tank is cool af, aktuly” Leftist?

Because I hear a lot about these Far-Left Tankies. But then I see Western so-called Progressives flood their shorts every time we sodomize leadership in Libya with a rusty knife or carpet bomb hospitals in Gaza or unleash another wave of hack mercenaries on Venezuela. Hell, even MacArthur’s saturation bombing of the Korean Peninsula gets love. Does anyone actually oppose foreign military interventionism? Or is it just taboo when a leftist military leader does it?

P(rice of stock)/E(arnings)

When was the last time a Buddhist knocked on your door and asked you to find Buddha?

Buddhism (and the Hinduism it is rooted in) isn’t intended to accrued disciples as part of an elaborate religiously flavored MLM. It is intended to justify existing, generational, disparities in wealth, power, and property.

You won’t find one knocking on your door. You knock on their doors, and hope to ingratiate yourself to their superiors by adopting their customs in exchange for status and business relations.

It’s not even about banning people, it’s about the fact that Reddit was never a sustainable business model from the start, at least not in the traditional capitalist sense where you’re actively trying to make a profit to please shareholders

If they’d been stalwart about banning automation and keeping original, legit human content pure, they probably could have used it as a fountain of fresh data for AI, for polling, for engagement farming, and for promotion.

The site was still growing even despite the admin induced atrophy. But they just couldn’t resist killing the Golden Goose.

It’s got triple digit p/e. The stock is doing fine.

millennials and generations onward have learned less and less maintainence skills to the point where most of us can’t sow or fix shit if it’s broken because we grew up in a consumer culture where you just buy a new one when the old one breaks

Planned Obselecence means a lot of modern consumer goods are deliberately designed to be difficult to repair.

More cheap plastic used for buckles and clasps. More glue used in place of screws or latches. More electronics soddered or otherwise made irreplaceable/inaccessible to an amateur. Shoes, in particular, leap to mind. Shoe repair used to be a standard dry cleaning service. It’s practically extinct today. Very few good ways to repair a modem sneaker.

My parents generation hold on to old items and they patch up their clothes and know how to fix shit around the house but they didn’t teach me any of that because the culture shifted and it wasn’t really needed.

There’s a time cost to repair and maintenance that’s often frustrating. I don’t blame folks for opting towards convenience. But I feel horrible every time I take out the trash, knowing how much plastic waste I accrue every month.

What about the transition.

It’ll likely be a bloodsoaked mess, given the history of these things.