kibiz0r

@kibiz0r@midwest.social

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kibiz0r ,

For some reason people in art believe they don't have to compete like every other individual creating a business

If you think art is about selling a product, what’s the point of being alive?

kibiz0r ,

Interacting with people whose tone doesn’t match their words may induce anxiety as well.

Have they actually proven this is a good idea, or is this a “so preoccupied with whether or not they could” scenario?

kibiz0r ,

I think part of the problem is that when you read about the horrors of the Holocaust as a kid, you can't help but think of Nazi Germany as a cartoonishly, outlandishly evil place full of people who spend every waking second thinking about how much they hate impure bloodlines.

You come away with an impression that it should be obvious when genocide is happening.

Then you go home after school and you see something about genocide in the Middle East, and you ask your parents about it and they say "Well... it's complicated." And if it's complicated -- if it's not cartoonishly, outlandishly evil -- then it must not be genocide.

kibiz0r ,

He was also depicted as the villain in the Robin Hood tales.

Feels about right.

kibiz0r ,

After watching Finding The Money, terms like “raise” and “revenue” applied to taxes seem deliberately misleading.

kibiz0r ,

I'm not sure. I'm not a wordsmith or an economist. But I would expect it to be something that conveys a sense that the money is being decommissioned rather than mobilized, or annihilated rather than gathered.

But the sense of deactivation or destruction is usually a negative feeling, so I would want to find a word that puts a slight positive spin on it. This is a happy conclusion to the money's journey. Its task is done and the inflationary pressure associated with its work is now relieved.

kibiz0r ,

I, uh... think we got off on the wrong foot. I don't see spending or taxation as a bad thing.

I mean, peep the @midwest.social, for a hint. And I did specifically say that I wouldn't recommend any terms to replace "raise" and "revenue" that have a negative connotation, such as "deactivation" or "destruction".

I'm also aware of the multiplier effect. The benefits of government spending are actually why I'm so interested in reframing the conversation about spending and taxation.

I will quibble with this:

The spending of a tax dollar is the beginning, not the end, of the benefit.

The spending is the beginning, yes -- but not a tax dollar.

Governments don't need to tax first, in order to spend second. It's the opposite. That's why "raise" and "revenue" are such terrible terms. Because they prime you to think that taxes are how we pay for things. We pay for things by just paying for them. The government spends dollars into existence. Taxation is just there to incentivize economic activity to chase those new dollars and keep a stable value.

If you view taxation as necessary to gather the funds to do something, you can have a bunch of resources just sitting around doing nothing and never be able to utilize them because you can't gather the funds without destabilizing the economy. But if you can just spend the money into existence, you can go ahead and increase the utilization without taxing first and then adjust taxation as needed from there on out.

And it turns out, this is how money has always worked. Taxation has always been a cleanup step to keep the spending productive, not a prerequisite to enable the spending in the first place. The myth of tax as revenue is relatively new.

kibiz0r ,

I'm gonna do the most annoying thing in the world here, and just tell you to go watch Finding The Money. I feel like that's a dick move in 99% of circumstances, but I did explicitly start this thread with the notion that after watching that documentary... I felt like these were misleading terms. So if you wanna discuss whether they are misleading terms given that context, it might be useful to share that same context.

I'm down to talk more afterwards. You've been a good pen pal.

kibiz0r ,

Meanwhile…

https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/2c95bd42-34f0-4f7a-b890-bd039dc85bfb.png

'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement ( www.theatlantic.com )

As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in...

kibiz0r ,

So, literally the story of the actual Luddites. Or what they attempted to do before capitalists poured a few hundred bullets into them.

kibiz0r ,

ACAB indeed.

kibiz0r ,

Anti-zionism is not antisemitism.

kibiz0r ,

From the river to the sea doesn't mean "lets share the land" in case you didn't know.

Likud Party knows!

kibiz0r ,

Solid attempt at pretending to miss the point.

kibiz0r ,

If you really wanna play out that conversation, here's how that goes:

I say "The vicious Nazi graffiti doesn't belong in the same category as the anti-zionist protest signs"

And you say "Those protest signs aren't just anti-zionist, they're antisemitic. If you're calling for the end of the state of Israel, you're calling for the extermination of Jews everywhere."

And I say "So if you really just wanted to say that anti-zionism is antisemitism, why did you pretend to agree in your first reply?"

--

But we don't need to bother with that tedious BS, because I can use my super hacker skills to... view your comment history.

You're trying to replicate OP's original sleight-of-hand.

Placing unequivocal Nazi shit in the same category as people calling for international law to finally be applied against a decades-long genocidal regime, and then saying "You gotta tolerate or detest 100% of these things in one fell swoop. It's a bundle deal. And remember, I put some Nazi shit in there!"

If you've watched just 2-3 hours of news coverage in the past 8 months, you've seen this play before. It doesn't -- or it shouldn't -- fool anyone anymore, and you should be embarrassed to even try it.

Israel Bombs Gaza After UN Security Council Passes Binding Ceasefire Resolution ( truthout.org )

As the UN Security Council passed a binding U.S.-sponsored resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday, Israel continued to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza — despite U.S. officials’ insistence that the ceasefire is backed by Israeli officials....

kibiz0r ,

What if the US had to deploy troops to enforce this?

I mean, could you imagine?

US troops, in the Middle East, fighting against a regime that we propped up, using weapons we gave them?

I mean, what a strange and unprecedented turn of events!

kibiz0r ,

It is the cost of doing business. They just wanna make the rest of us pay it.

kibiz0r ,

It’s only hacking if it’s in a CVE.

Anything else is just sparkling unauthorized access.

kibiz0r ,

Work on projects that I think are important instead of just profitable.

kibiz0r ,

I tried to be accurate instead of specific.

If I didn't have to work anymore, I'd have more time to explore potential things to work on, so whatever project I'd pick right now would probably not be my main focus after 3 months of settling into my new life.

From where I am right now, I think it would be something to do with language-level features for distributed computing (but not that web3 nonsense). There's a lot of potential to weaken the monopoly power of cloud providers by working on something like that, which is why it's an under-explored area.

But I'd need more people to work with, and some specific use cases to go after. So I would expect the effort to change a lot by the time I actually found the right group of people to work with.

kibiz0r ,

The lack of punctuation killed my brain.

kibiz0r ,

Shipbreaking

kibiz0r ,

Economic reporting in 2024: “People report feeling ‘homeless’ and ‘starving’ despite plenty of spreadsheets with big numbers in them”

kibiz0r ,

“”Why are there so many extra quotes?””

kibiz0r ,

TAKES THE GLOVES OFF and TEARS INTO HIM before SLAMMING HIM

kibiz0r ,

Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?

Shared interests have pretty much moved online, free/cheap places for physical meetups are disappearing, and in a car-dependent world you’re not gonna meet someone randomly in-between your planned out destinations.

Fraud trial juror reports getting bag of $120,000 and promise of more if she'll acquit ( apnews.com )

A juror was dismissed Monday after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and offered her more money if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic....

kibiz0r ,

120k is insulting.

If you steal 40mil, you’re staring down the barrel of losing 40mil plus your freedom.

Just breaking even (losing the 40mil) but keeping your freedom would be an amazing deal for you, but what’s your freedom worth?

I figure the overall payment has got to be something like 50mil to be fair. With at least a 5% down payment to show you’re serious, that’s 2.5mil.

kibiz0r ,

Cardboard derivative operations are extremely dangerous. They increase the risk of wind spills by 2008%.

Search “CDOs 2008 disaster” for more info.

kibiz0r ,

1992 animated series will always be the canonical version for me

kibiz0r ,

You would have to define “real” first.

If we use Cory Doctorow’s concept of “moneylike”, then the only thing that makes crypto “real” is ransomware.

So yeah, I’d say “fake money for criminals” is pretty accurate.

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

kibiz0r ,

I think it’s more absurdist than cynical, but is cynical really a problem here?

We’re running 21st-century technology on a 13th-century economic operating system. It’s bound to produce some outlandishly antisocial results.

As a developer and tech enjoyer, there are some inventions in the past 30 years that I can’t imagine living without.

But there are also some horrific economic systems and social dynamics that have taken hold in large part due to inventions of the past 30 years. Some effects that are so bad I’d gladly hit the snooze button on some of the tech to delay it until we figure out the social/economic side first.

kibiz0r ,

You keep using that word…

kibiz0r ,

You’re out of your element, 3PO.

kibiz0r ,

Current Setting: Breed Groot

kibiz0r ,

JOOOOOOOSH

JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates ( www.theguardian.com )

When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy....

kibiz0r ,

We do what we can, because we must.

kibiz0r ,

You ask someone “How’s life?” they’re likely to say “Alright” or “Not bad”.

You ask “How’s the knee doing?” or “You still saving for that cruise?” and you’ll get a much more detailed answer which may completely contradict the original “Not bad”.

kibiz0r ,

You can like a riff from their #1 hit without liking their whole discography, or even the rest of the song.

kibiz0r ,

Unironically a good comparison.

Nitrogen synthesis? Arguably one of the most life-saving inventions of all time. But also the basis for gas chambers.

I can celebrate the invention of synthetic fertilizer while also condemning Fritz Haber and Nazis in general.

A Red Sea blockade in protest of the Gaza genocide is a great idea. It’s a shame that the only group willing to do it is doing it recklessly and doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on otherwise either.

kibiz0r ,

Kirby was earlier seen telling Netanyahu: “I’m gonna count to 3, young man! 1… 2… 2.5… 2.75… 2.8…”

kibiz0r ,

There needs to be prison time.

If you can personally cash in today, and leave the consequences for the company to handle 30 years later, there’s a massive incentive to be reckless.

kibiz0r ,

The secret of AI is that it’s really exploited humans all the way down.

The unpaid people who produce the training data, the underpaid people who categorize it, the underpaid people who rate the model’s responses, and the underpaid (and t r a u m a t i z e d) people who review flagged user interactions.

kibiz0r ,

I expected any operation involving origin/foobar to be an online operation and work against the latest server-side version of the branch.

I didn’t expect it to keep a local copy of the remote branch instead.

kibiz0r ,

Private equity strikes again: https://youtu.be/z5PLEZiSZVw

kibiz0r ,

Wage growth, spending behavior, sentiment surveys…

It’s all a pretty half-hearted way to address the obvious:

We printed something like 7 trillion dollars, which is about 28k per adult.

If you and everyone you know are not 28k richer than you were before COVID, then someone has your money.

It’s probably someone rich. And you know what the rich do with more money? They don’t spend it on goods and services. They buy assets, to make them even more money — money that comes from you.

kibiz0r ,

President Strugg…

kibiz0r ,

My new favorite game is:

When the news says “high prices”, replace it with “low wages”; “inflation” with “paycuts”.

The whole economy starts to make a lot more sense.

kibiz0r ,

It’s so wild that tycoons will be like “central planning doesn’t work, we gotta leave everything up to the market”, but then the market just looks like 5-10 mega-conglomerates centrally planning everything.

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