Can you fight them as hard as they fought you
Nope
Filibuster maybe?
Only when there’s nothing pending
Procedural moves that slow them down
Nah
Could you at least not vote to enable them
Votes to enable them silently with intense eye contact
What the fuck can you do?
Pulls out phone, texts you for $20 for their battle fund
Jesus fucking christ
Well that makes more sense than LLMs I suppose. Doesn’t really make a lot of sense why musk would want that given the one thing he doesn’t run is an ad network.
As someone that works in the tech sector though, this idea doesn’t really seem super compelling. The advertisers already have this data, so it just seems like a weird kind of heist to go pull off.
Advertisers already know how much money you make, what illnesses your suffering from (based on things you search for), I mean we live in an unprecedented surveillance states.
Maybe musk wanted his own version of that to sell to people, that’s a somewhat plausible scenario. This just sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory and the rule for a conspiracy theory is “someone has to make money” for the theory to be true.
Is musk a piece of shit, sure. Does the government have data, yep. Does taking the data from the government make musk money, maybe? I guess in the world where it’s a play for him to close the gap on a bunch of demographic information people can already buy from google or X, which he owns.
So I suppose if we see X or xAI offering significantly improved ad targeting or data brokerage that would make this all hang together.
I’m open to the idea it’s for something else. Data to feed into AI is the thing people are willing to pay heaps of money for right now. And musk has an AI company so I thought the thinking was “musk is taking data for his stupid ai company”
If that’s not what he’s doing, then what data and for what purpose?
I loathe musk, but having some trouble connecting the dots.
So if not for feeding into xAI, what data do people think he’s taking and what’s he doing with it?
The thing I’ve never really understood about this is what kind of data would the government have that would be any use to an LLM?
I’m sure that musk wanted that government data, but you all ever work with the government? Every data set is some weird pile of forms encoded in fixed width field, wrapped in json, plopped into the cdata of an xml node. Fucking enjoy parsing that shit and when you do you realize you have a form some guy filled out in 1972 to register a trailer.
Is the government sitting on some treasure trove of data that you could feed into an LLM as training data? Because that’s what would actually be valuable.
But musk is a fucking moron so I wouldn’t put it past him to break into an empty bank vault and then scuttle away like the fucking roach he is.
We investigated, seems like a lot of people fucking loathe you. Hope that helps!
Universities have often played a role in being where protest movements begin and grow.
There’s a lot of reasons for this, you have a lot of students in one place, most students on scholarships and with loans have time on their hands to discuss issues of the day, most students aren’t constrained by work and family and property that would give others pause from participating in protest.
From the anti war movement in the 60s to the communist overthrow of China, mass political movements get their starts in universities.
So if you can set a precedent of criminalizing speech and make the punishments as cruel as possible, you make students think twice about protesting.
That’s what this is about, sure America is happy to do Israel’s bidding, but don’t think for one moment they actually give one flying fuck about that. They found a brown person with a foreign enough name that they could destroy for stepping out of line as a not so subtle way to say to every student, “shut up, keep your head down, and we won’t come after you”
It’s the same thing they are doing with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They don’t care about these two individuals, they don’t have any special interest in harming them (though I’m sure they delight in it) they want to send a message to everyone else.
We have the power, shut up
That’s the message, step out of line and find out. Due process, free speech, that shit is over. You are welcome to pretend it still exists but challenge us and we are one clerical error from you enjoying a lifetime of free room and board at CECOT.
For this to work it has to be punishing, it has to be dehumanizing, it has to be spectacular. The goal is to make you think when you go to resist, “I don’t want to end up like that one guy…”
The point is to make this as visible and memorable as possible so when your personal breaking point is hit and you think to resist there’s a voice in your head that says “no I better not”
Project 2025 architects after handing over the fascist paint by numbers guide book to trump only to watch him destroy capitalism anyways
Shocked pikachu
There is a death penalty you can actually execute against a corporation, you can dissolve their charter. For some reason this is seen as more extreme than putting a human being to death.
This is why putting money hoarders in charge doesn’t make sense.
They fetishize just building a gigantic pile of money. Governments should be using the taxes they raise to do things.
Democracy is not a given.
The framers of the constitution were always concerned about a new autocrat taking root in America. Their solution was to divide power up into 3 co-equal branches. The idea being that if any one branch attempted to subvert the constitution, the other two branches could check their power.
The executive branch is saying loudly “we will not abide by the rulings of the judicial branch, they can not check our power.”
Here are some contemporary examples
The executive branch is also ignoring the legislative branch (not that the current office holders seem to mind much)
The US Institute of Peace is established by black letter law, passed the democratically elected congress. It has been dissolved, not because the law our representatives passed has been rescinded by the legislative branch, not because it was found unconstitutional by the judicial branch, but because the executive branch just said “we are doing this and we have the guns.”
It existing is the democratic will of the people made manifest through our representatives, and now because trump signed an executive order, it’s gone.
They broke into private property and removed people that do not work for the executive branch because the president said so.
The article is worth a read. A lot of Americans don’t realize how much of Nazi Germany ideas had inspiration from and solid support in America.
WW2 provided two incredibly powerful antidotes.
For a few generations this carried us. But we shouldn’t forget history, Hitler looked to our eugenics programs for inspiration, not the other way round.
I was gonna put an /s on it but I thought it was more fun to leave it ambiguous.
The quotes are not real (except the “we won’t be held hostage by small dollar donors” is a paraphrasing of something that recently came out of some dnc think tank about what to do going forward)
Democratic leadership is coming out swinging on this one, telling their caucus that any member of the party that attempts to block this bill will be primaried.
In these unprecedented times it is an absolute necessity that democrats join with republicans to ensure their agenda moves forward. Americans want a congress that works again. Any member that dares to hold this great nation hostage to score cheap political points will meet with the full fury of the DNC.
When asked if they were at all concerned about the policies they would be enabling they responded
Our donors don’t pay us to worry about policies. We will not be held hostage by small dollar donors any longer. The only thing more dangerous to our democracy than the specter of fascism would be us breaking a single norm or polite convention.
When told that trump recently threatened to round up democratic lawmakers and execute them for the good of the nation leadership had this to say.
While we certainly disagree with their plans, we will hold our heads up high knowing that we had the integrity to pass the spending necessary to keep the gears of government turning.
At that point democratic leadership had to leave with one senior leader saying “I need to get back to dialing for dollars” and another stating that they “had to pressure more members to censure Al Greene for his despicable display of barbarism, shouting out the president, is there no decency anymore”
Why tariffs are stupid in three acts
Act 1
American producers: I can’t compete with that $10 foreign product, I have to sell my product at $12 to turn a razor thin profit.
Politician: ok I’ll slap a $5 tariff on the foreign product to protect you.
Act 2
American producer: awesome so now the foreign product costs $15! I can compete
American consumer: oh well I guess I can spend $12 instead of $10… sucks but America first I guess
Act 3
American producer: no need to leave $3 on the table, let’s sell ours for $14.99, I need more profits because everything I want to buy with my profits is now more expensive for some reason.
American consumer: the foreign one used to cost $10 and the domestic one cost $12… now they cost $15 and $14.99. I guess I’ll buy the American one and skip dinner tonight.
The headline here is kinda absurd. From the article
The case, brought by Marlean Ames, a former Ohio Department of Youth Services (the state’s juvenile justice department) employee, challenges a rule the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals applies, requiring majority-group plaintiffs to demonstrate additional “background circumstances” to establish a discrimination claim.
This case is about whether or not the sixth circuit rule that a majority group plaintiff has to demonstrate additional background circumstances is constitutional.
“Because Ames is heterosexual, she must make a showing in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima facie case,” Kagan read from the ruling, emphasizing that the opinion itself makes clear that different rules are being applied.
That’s liberal justice Elana Kagan making an argument reading the sixth circuits ruling.
A prima facie case is the first step in proving employment discrimination. Under the McDonnell Douglas framework, a plaintiff must show they belong to a protected class, were qualified for the job, suffered an adverse employment action, and occurred under circumstances suggesting discrimination. If these criteria are met, the burden shifts to the employer to provide a non-discriminatory reason for their decision.
So this case boils down to, “do members of the majority group have to jump over a higher bar to require that employers provide a non-discriminatory reason for their adverse employment action.”
The working class should be shoulder to shoulder in solidarity here.
I’m sure he will keep his word on every concession he’s gotten from the US without the US getting anything at all.
Ok what did they do in those 4 months.
You see what republicans do the moment they get any kind of power? They have shit ready to go. New tax plan, sure half of it is scribbles in the margins, but push it through. No child left behind? Why not, let’s just overhaul the education system, no need to know what we are doing.
They just signed a bunch of executive orders reclassifying everyone as female and turning the government off. They just had them ready to go.
If I were locked out of power in a deeply broken nation, what else do I have to do but get together with the rest of my party and hammer out the shit we want to get passed when we get some power back.
What were they doing for the other months in that 40 years?! Sitting around dialing for dollars begging for plutocrats to give them enough money that they could do fuck all when they finally got power? Yea, that’s it. That’s what they did.
Why didn’t they have ANYTHING ready for when they had power? Why do they always act like “well now that the voters have given us a mandate, you know government is slow going, we don’t even have drafts ready to go to solve any of these problems. Gotta go get my thinking cap and a big cup of cocoa and noodle this… fuck we lost power again. Jimminy jillickers, I can’t believe our rotten luck”
Either they are the most incompetent gaggle of idiots ever assembled under one banner. Or the people that bought their seats for them would rather they talk a big game on msnbc and sit around and not threaten the broken system that has made them incredibly wealthy.
I’ll let you consider which is better.
The republicans are bringing back fascism but they are at least doing awful things their constituents want.
I disagree with these things, but they deliver on their stupid backwards promises.
I’ve voted for the democrats for my entire adult life, the very first vote I cast was for John Kerry.
Here’s the thing though. Are you a liberal, you wonder why the party is hated, have you ever seen Last Week Tonight?
Jon Oliver gets on tv every week and talks about some horrible problem that started with Reagan or Nixon and has just been going strong ever since. There are so many of these. And which ones can I look at and go “well the democrats sure did fix X when they finally had the levers of power”
I can’t think of a single thing. The most important project they’ve undertaken was the ACA, and I don’t know if entrenching health insurance companies permanently and legally into the fabric of our nation is all that much to celebrate.
Do they do some good things from time to time, sure. You can point to a policy here or there that are nice. But it’s a party of not-even-half-measures.
Can we have single payer? No How about a public option? No What can you do? Romneycare… great
Can we have immigration reform? No What can you do? DACA and that’ll be rescinded the moment we lose power.
Can we reign in the banking sector? Nah
Can we close Guantanamo? Too difficult
Can we enshrine the right to abortion in law? No, but we will ask justices to pinky swear… oh they just removed it, nevermind
Can we do anything to help the common man? Let me check with the donors, nah they don’t like that, but if you like some tweets about how trump is bad, I’ve got those for you.
A party that refuses to use the power you give it is not much use.
And before you type up your essay about how Ackshually! There was only one weekend in 2009 when they could have passed any kind of legislation at all. Fucking stuff it. Then they should have sat there all goddamn weekend and passed bill after bill fixing this shit box nation. Their lack of any kind of foresight and planning and doing anything but building a better and better donation collection machine has led us to fascism.
They can collect a billion goddamn dollars but have to text me to see if I can give them just $27 more dollars before they can pass a bill. We need a new party to represent the people.
His plan seems as obvious as it is simplistic.
Make honking sounds in public about how only he can end the war.
In private tell Bibi to hurry up and finish killing / imprisoning the Palestinians.
At some point Bibi will have killed and subjugated the lot of them and then trump can make additional honking noises about how he ended the war (just no one look for any of those pesky Palestinians, don’t know where they went, war is chaotic and it wasn’t even our war and he ended it bigly)
Bibi gets his genocide, trump gets to take credit as a peace maker, and all it will take is the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.
Pretty hard form trump to physically kneel and kiss Xi’s ass over the phone.
Fart of the deal