Notices by Bike Shed (bikeshed@503junk.house)

the vast gulf between "Donald Trump is a fascist" and "in 2 years we'll whip him in the midterms" is appalling. the options that follow are that the center left never believed the first statement to be true, that they are delusional, or that they're strategic insights are completely worthless

"punish your reliable voters to win over others" is such obviously bad political advice that anyone peddling it should take a step and think about why someone might want them to think that.

Democrats are master political strategists. that's why voting for them at rates that seem like a one party system, as queer/trans people do, is rewarded by immediate capitulation to right wing, reactionary framing and demands on our struggles and issues.

Democrats in 1933: Wow! Voters sure are concerned about the purity of the Aryan race. We better move on this issue to capture Strasserist NSDAP votes :)

the thing is that I think things are going to be markedly worse this time. 1. liberalism appears increasingly exhausted 2. many of the institutions within the state that opposed trumpism have been weakened, captured, or removed. 3 trump has continued to significantly shift the Republican party into one with overt white nationalist and fascist members (of course ghouls like Stephen Miller are still there too). 4. patriarchal fascism has proven popular amongst young men as a whole

fascinating discussions of punk happening on tumblr.com by maoists

Cis women who don't conform wholesale to the regressive terfist/GC redefinition of womanhood are the collateral damage of terfs desire to eliminate trans women and trans people generally

relb: if Israel has lost Germany then it's really over for them

the Lavender AI, and AI military tech in general is the latest way to try to absolve the soldier of guilt or culpability for mass killing. "We were just following orders" becomes "we were just trusting the statistical model/algorithm/AI"

Vegan food culture is so funny because for decades you have this conception that vegan food isn't very good or can't replicate meat-based foods but it turns out that the actual problem was that too many of the vegan cooks were into health food

@evan agree to disagree, but I struggle to read "They have many of the hallmarks of what we call intelligence. They have more such characteristics than, say, dolphins or chimps" in another way than a kind of ranking.

@evan additionally, why is language use a more defining characteristic of intelligence than tool use? Chimps, bonobos, dolphins, octopi, corvids etc all can use tools and solve complex tasks but aren't good at language (to our definition of language). Does this matter?

@evan but again, this is anthropocentric. You're defining language as language that is intelligible to humans and then saying that the tool designed by humans to output human language is better at human language than chimps! It's a silly game that plays into this very stratified view of what constitutes intelligence.

I certainly think that ranking LLMs over dolphins, who we have little understanding of their communication, seems very bizarre.

@evan ranking LLMs over dolphins or chimps for "intelligence" is pure anthropocentrism.

The FINA swimming ban on trans athletes really is gonna be the template for all of them, huh. Junk science as a veneer for a policy with no basis in anything but transmisogyny.

(For context one of the major boxing federations banned trans women)

Ancient sumerian fedi:

@gilgameshliker@bullofheav.en

Need me a hung bro to wrestle with. Nothing sexual

@templeeunuch69@ziggur.at

@gilgameshliker@bullofheav.en

You're always thirstposting and yet i never see you at the temple. Incel behavior tbh

@eanasir@sumer.social

Defending myself against Nanni's copper slander: what really happened🧵 (1/78)

Why do oats that take 20 minutes to cook even exist? Who has the time to make these in the morning?

It's so funny that I can open a yt link in their app, copy the URL and then paste it into newpipe all before the yt ad has finished 🫠

Which do we prefer for communiques, writing the state name for things in quotes, as so-called _____, or as "occupied (indigenous tribe) land"

LB: I highly recommend you read that Jewish Currents piece. It's long been one of the most thoughtful Jewish outlets, especially with respect to Israel/Palestine.