Notices by Stanley Black-Decker (pleaseclap@urbanists.social)

The core assumption of the technocrats is that oligarchs will be able to leverage the planet's population to save themselves as the biosphere collapses

The reason that's a shitty assumption is they've built their entire house of cards on leverage and the one thing under-pinning all of that leverage is sales projections. That's why the pandemic scared the hell out of them: debt and equity are extremely fragile.

The subsistence farmer will outlast them - a Starship will only be good for shelter

The argument that LLMs are stealing is a crap argument

The internet has always been radio: unless you take special measures to exclude categories of observers, you are broadcasting publicly. If you don't want to share some information publicly, you don't broadcast or you make the effort to discriminate who can and can't see and learn from content.*

However, the argument that LLMs require far too much energy and water relative to their utility is extremely good. Cancerous software will kill us

* Furthermore, copyrights are bullshit

I'm not going to pretend intellectual property rights aren't an elaborate legal hoax akin to enclosing the commons. The original sin is using authority of law to empower wealthy capitalists to build moats around their factories with other people's land

And I don't have to

Because there's plenty of evidence we'll starve to death if we accommodate the exponential growth of bullshit generators. Unmitigated emissions leading to global warming leading to global ecocide is elementary school science

@mekkaokereke @Orlaya I'm not saying there aren't any progressives, I'm saying "tech people not fascists" is a logical construction that assumes fashy tech people are the exception, when they're actually closer to the norm (especially at Burning Man, like you say)

@mekkaokereke @Orlaya

I agree with your main point that he hasn't changed

However, "BM is full of tech people ... not fascists" doesn't seem to parse

The tech industry is more defined by its right-wingers than it is by progressives. Management tells it differently, but pretending to be the victim is a feature of authoritarian cultures.

So if it's full of tech people (like Elon) that's the same as saying it's full of fascists and fash-adjacent/fash-apologist/etc (like Elon)

Mastodon's feelings about AI: "boooo stop stealing, copyright good"

Mastodon's feelings about IA:
"boooo let them keep stealing, copyright bad"

Speaking of cargobikes, I'm working on a new/old project

#biketooter

I'm gonna keep ranting about the New Deal

80 years later the historical record is clear that pumping the working class with money works really well and has basically no downsides

the crazy thing is it doesn't have to be an emergency measure you can just fund a healthy working class, it's just policy.

The main reason they portray these policies as emergency measures is so they don't have to, because they don't want to. They want you as poor as you'll tolerate without burning their estates

The big red flag that the Supreme Court was going to be aggressive and lawless - and people pointed it out at the time - was the student debt relief ruling

Without thinking too deeply about the ruling itself: the glaring flaw in that case is that the state who filed suit against the federal government did not have legal standing to sue a third party. When the claimant doesn't have standing, the court doesn't have cause or jurisdiction to hear the case and write a ruling

If, after that debate, you find yourself thinking "I can't believe these are our best two options"

You're right, they're not. By running these guys, both parties are demonstrating their inability to govern and their commitment to private agendas over the national interest.

@HistoPol @campuscodi The movie, same as you

@simon_brooke @SallyStrange I think this is basically it

There are "serious economists", there are politically-motivated economists, and there are bankers and fund managers and financial advisors who call themselves economists in order to give their recommendations credibility

@mwt @violetmadder @simon_brooke @SallyStrange

"You can't suddenly stop all emissions in one day"

That's an ideological constraint: the difference climate activists take with the dominant policy approach is that yes, we can just shut down militaries and planes

Yes, we can change how we live, in ways that diminish state power and destroy capital (while preserving homes, food, and people)

What Nordhaus is struggling to do is convince people we need to make steep sacrifices to preserve capital

AI isn't replacing jobs: employers are firing people.

@notroot @cstross @exception

That's your incentive: you're just saying you wouldn't make art if you couldn't monetize it. Lots of artists make art they can't or don't ever intend to monetize

Actually that's the way art existed in society for most of human history

@notroot @KevinCarson1 @cstross @exception This is deliriously egomaniacal

@notroot @KevinCarson1 @cstross @exception You're even cackling like a movie villain.

Are you familiar with Homer? Euripides?

@futurebird @tofugolem @mike805 @sphinx

I just don't agree with that phrasing, because the DNC isn't at all maintaining "the entire democratic experiment". That's rhetoric - it's spin. The outcomes speak for themselves: the government's agenda isn't driven by voter representation - it's dictated by donor representation. The donors get what they want, the voters don't, and being connected to the party means you can act with impunity. It's not the DNC's mission to change that