The chapters I said to skip are the religious stuff.

The rest is mostly about AI and why we maybe shouldn’t.

Have you read his Encyclical?

There are many things that I disagree with the pope about, but it’s well reasoned and argued, you can mostly skip the first two chapters, but three through five are worth a read.

Except for the huge pile in front of Musk.

Also, his slop meme is portraying Leninism fairly accurately. The man was a monster who wasn’t happy with his first secret police force, so he made three in the years he held totalitarian power.

Marxist socialism is almost never portrayed by authoritarians, because of how obviously better it is

Yet another reminder that cypto is not secret, or secure.

Cash, physical cash, is the only way to move money without governments spying on you.

There are patterns that these cameras cannot parse.

They either discard the image or flag it for a human, depending on the configuration.

The reason this works is that these AI bots are trained on solid color cars and car shapes.

Eventually this might stop working, if only because these models are constantly being trained in more and more of our data.

ignoring all the evil shit, Christianity was created with prohibitions on greed and pride and such.

Then in the early 20th century, rich assholes paid for a radio “preacher” to basically say that greed and pride and shit were fine and dandy. And thus was born Prosperity Gospel.

Fun fact, Hephaestus was not a blacksmith, he was a bronze smith.

The god was created before the Iron Age started.

There are several ways to make bronze, but one of the most common was arsenic bronze. It was much stronger than tin bronze, but also meant that you had to melt arsenic.

So yeah, bronze age smiths had short lifespans and crippling neurologic issues from toxic metal inhalation.

Well, the Iliad has a line from Poseidon talks about it.

They shook and drew lots. But it’s often interpreted as a game of dice. Single throw for each.

There are other sources, but all kind of say the same thing. It was a game of chance and the three brothers were happy with what they won.

They also shared the dominion over the earth, which is why Poseidon was also the god of earthquakes and Hades was the god of wealth dug from the ground.

Someone hasn’t read any mythology.

Zeus was the only child of Chronos that Chronos didn’t eat alive.

Zeus grew up, killed Chronos, and freed his siblings from Chonos’ stomach.

Now, just because Zeus saved the other gods didn’t mean he got to be in charge. No. He and his brothers played dice to decide.

Zeus won rulership of the air, Poseidon won the seas, and Hades got the underworld.

Is there much difference between the North American and English badgers?

I used to play a game with North American badgers.

Badger tag, first carry a baseball bat then find a badger. Badgers are aggressive enough that they will chase you, but if you spin around and scream while waving the bat, the badger will turn and run, and you can chase it. The badger will then realize that it has teeth and claws and an attitude problem, and it will turn around and start chasing you again.

Keep this up as long as you want, or until you have to hit it with the bat so you can really run away.

In 2023, China had over 700 million cameras tracking the population.

That’s one camera for every two citizens.

But yes the UK is also building a surveillance state.

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

Lenin wasn’t just “guided by the forces of his time”

His first act after couping the provisional government was the creation of the Checka, a secret police force that he used to arrest all the Socialist Revolutionaries, the people responsible for the February Revolution. Also the winners of Russia’s only free and fair election.

He then wrote about how “vanguard parties” and totalitarian dictatorship were somehow part of communism.

No, Lenin was a power hungry monster who shit on Marx’s dream.

The special election thing was Republicans trying to limit the power of the incoming Democratic Governor.

It’s likely unconstitutional, and Bashear has indicated that he’ll ignore it when the time comes. Also the Republicans are terrified of any election at this point.

They delay now to barely “hold” the seat, hoping that Trump somehow becomes competent before November.

I’m one of the people who always says that Lenin was a fucking monster, and that no authoritarian can ever be communist. Which includes China.

I’m 100% sure that if I ever found myself going to China, I’d be arrested for calling Xi a fascist poo bear playing pretend at communism.

I’m also quite certain that come November Trump will start working up to arresting people for things said online. I’m sure I’ll be at risk for calling him a pedo and posting this link; https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/6/1578544/-The-Untold-Story-of-Trump-Model-Management-A-Daily-Kos-Exclusive-Part-1

How does that matter?

Both are fucking horrible.

But also, China does both. In 2023 they had over 700 million cameras tracking people.

Didn’t forget them, they’re not sending masked thugs to vanish people from the street.

The NSA is a spy org, but not full of Trump loyalists.

Trump is focusing on ICE, because it is full of specifically Trump loyalists.

Nope. Proud Boys are the brown shirts. Non-governmental paramilitary fighters.

FBI was an actual law enforcement organization, but has been gutted.

The CIA isn’t a boogie man inside the US. They’ve fucked up enough times that very few people respect them. Also they don’t really do domestic spying.

No, the NSA is the one who does domestic spying.

And finally ICE, an agency that is 100% filled with diehard Trump supporters. They’re already abducting innocent people off the street and vanishing them. Masked thugs working for the state vanishing people without warrants is sort of the basic definition of secret police.

That’s only true if you only do and say things online that China approves of.

China has secret police, and has for decades.

ICE is Trump’s attempt at creating a secret police.