theneverfox

Agreed, but I think it's more than that

I don't think he's offering them plane tickets. That means they have enough wealth to move there - it would instantly be a shot in the arm for the Russian economy. They'd get a captive market, and he's not even inviting them to be Russian

That selector also means they're more likely to have useful skills, and the messaging is targeting people very susceptible to Russia style propaganda - he could censor their connection to the outside world, and they'd thank him for it

Also, if NATO arms hit American civilians, that would be a powerful message to reduce international support for Ukraine or NATO.

They're too valuable. They'd pay off for him immediately, and long term he'd have an isolated community that is just begging to chug the Kool aid

That just sounds dumb

I'd offer great America or former present Doritos, something vague enough everyone reads Trump but I don't have to pay him. They'd taste like a really salty cheeseburger. They'd taste ok, but not good. But they'd smell distinctly of piss.

Then I'd market it totally straight. I'd send a palette to Trump. Especially right now, he couldn't help but mention it - it's just vague enough that his narcissism would take over.

I'd deny the smell, and our policy would be to politely ask anyone who comments on it to remain civil in political discourse.

Every batch would smell slightly worse.

It just makes too much sense... The only way to get past electron is a better electron. Or just fix electron

We've been going after this concept for decades now. That's what java swing was supposed to be, what python gtlk was supposed to be, and I'm sure there were others before that and there's been a hell of a lot since then

It's all trade-offs between flexibility, ease of use, and performance. Also between maintenance cost, portability, and existing library support

Electron is a good compromise. The execution could be better, but it's come a long way. There is no one size fits all solution, but there are some decent options that handle that compromise differently

I mean, they kinda don't. Companies are entities made out of policies guiding how people split up objectives into smaller parts. The more people involved and the more indirect it is, the less coherent it gets

Legal says you need one popup for compliance. Marketing or analytics say you need more users to log in. Elon wants to remind people to call it Twitter.

By the time it filters through managers to the devs, they probably know it'll be a horrible experience, but what are they going to do? It's not their job. They'll get brushed off. There might even be a compelling reason to do it in this way - with this in particular, annoying and intrusive popups are malicious compliance with the EU cookie laws. But everyone seems to be doing it this way - that's probably what legal is going to recommend rather than interpreting the law themselves

So the problem is the structure. If you want a hierarchy of obedient replaceable cogs, you've made sure no one sees the full picture

That's just because you don't understand economics well enough

See, we print extra money when we create debt, which is a great big brain way to scale a very stable and very logical system. It scales with debt, which is basically wealth, right? And as long as everything always grows, ~~people and enterprises are essentially taxed by the banks for everything that produces the underlying things money represents~~ the economy grows. And everyone knows you either grow or die, that's just basic biology... Why do we need a system that makes money after we're dead?

How else would you do it? Have the government print money? How would they know how much to print? Math? Economics are too complex for math, otherwise the economic models I believe in ~~religiously~~ would make accurate predictions.

The solution is obvious - we just have to capitalism harder.

I'm split, but I lean slightly towards no. On one hand, it could be good for discoverability, and it would help my efforts to make a client-side algorithm

On the other hand, it will make one of Lemmy's problems worse - engagement. Some people will vote less, and it's already feeling a little quieter around here as the numbers settled after the Reddit Exodus. I doubt it'll be a massive change, but a .5% decrease in voting, permanently, could make a difference

Ultimately, you can see it on federated platforms, so shrug

This just reminds me of a quote something like "the stories we tell says a lot about our values. The marvel movies are about superheroes who show up to save the world, then go back to their day jobs"

Ironman is at the top of society, and he sometimes uses his enormous influence to change it. Batman works from the outside in parallel to the police

Both of them primarily support the status quo. They aren't the rebellion, they're the guardians of the system. They appear when they are needed and do what they need to do before sliding back into their daily life

I think we're past denial and fear. It's fucking outside

Now what I think we have from former deniers is silence. They know they were wrong. They know they fucked up. They got real quiet

Aside from those bought and paid for by oil lobbies, I don't hear much. Denial isn't met with cheers anymore

Honestly, wouldn't this work? So long as the proteins aren't denatured, they should still work in your stomach

So blended raw liver bombs it is

So this isn't a compelling argument because it sounds outlandish and the implications (while serious) are indirect

Every major power, and some companies, have population simulations. It's not that hard to build one - we've been using them for decades, and they start yielding useful results even when they're pretty simple. Individuals are complex, but populations can be boiled down with statistics pretty easily

Let's say I want to increase stochastic violence in America. I rate the traits of as many people as I can across as many useful criteria as I can measure. I could then tweak an algorithm to show something I think would radicalize people to a test group, and measure again. I then take what I learned, and polish my approach until I'm ready to go live

You can do this to whatever end you like - and browsing habits can only tell a human so much, but this is what big data does. It finds associations humans wouldn't see through math

This probably sounds like I'm wearing a tin foil hat, but this is a real thing. This is how foreign election interference works - astroturfing blindly only does so much, and modeling a population isn't difficult (depending on what you're trying to do)

Now as for browsing habits - like location data or Facebook friends, with enough data points you can find out things about a person they don't know themselves. It may or may not make sense to a human, but big data is all about finding associations through blind math.

If you provide a set of data points, you contribute. It may or may not influence you, but either way it improves the ability to influence those around you.

I don't know how much opera collects, I don't know how much of that data is exfiltrated to China. I know I don't want anyone to have too much of that data, but I also have to live my life.

It's a matter of harm reduction - educate yourself on your choices, listen to people who dive deeper than you're willing to, and do what you can to make the most ethical choice based on where you are right now. There's no perfect choice

My problem with it isn't so much their stance or how far they'll go for it, it's that they don't act to achieve their stated goals.

Factory farming is legitimately horrifying, it's so deeply wrong that one day we'll teach children about it in a somber tone. When you start digging into it, it's almost cartoonishly evil... It just keeps getting worse the more you learn about it

It also is extremely carbon intensive to produce so much meat, and not very healthy to eat so much

But if your problem is essentially torturing animals, why is hunting wrong? The animals live free, the ecosystem requires apex predators (which we've mostly wiped out), and if it doesn't instill a respect for the animals you eat, at least it makes you look them in the eye

If your goal is reducing animal suffering, why are you sitting out there shaming people getting lunch? The problem is production, go after Purdue who forces these conditions as the supplier

If your goal is to reduce consumption, why do you draw a hard line? People in general won't accept cutting out meat, but I think most could be convinced to cut their consumption in half.

You don't have to have meat in every meal, or every day. You can even be mostly vegan, but have a steak occasionally.

But too many people demanding everyone meet you where you are or labeling them murderers has led to a taint on the terms. People can eat a meal with no meat and never really think about it, but then feel attacked if you mention it's actually vegan.

The problem is vegan and vegetarian culture doesn't seem to be about harm reduction or even cultural change - it seems to come from a place of moral superiority. The loudest voices screeching at random individuals is what most people hear. The message is "look at this horrible fact about factory farming, this is why you're a terrible person so stop eating meat right now"

They make the whole movement hardliner and therefore easily defeatable. I genuinely think it might be astroturfing by the meat lobby

What if we go through all the work to make a better world for no reason?