This piece of shit is going to kill lots of innocent people before he’s done.

If Harris doesn’t forcefully break from the Biden administration on this genocide now, I fear that she will lose to her fascist opponent. It just cannot get clearer that Biden is ideologically invested in prosecuting these atrocities and appears to be unable or unwilling to bow even a little bit for political expediency. I don’t know if Harris supports the genocide ideologically, and it doesn’t really matter. She is a political opportunist and should wake up to the electoral implications of continuing to bind herself to Biden on this. She is perilously close to not only going down in infamy as one of the historical architects of a genocide, but also the person who lost US democracy.

At the height of digg, I thought Rose was kind of cool. One of those Silicon Valley success stories that used to inspire tech enthusiasts like me. I watched diggnation and bought in to the culture being presented. But I’ll never forget that when digg 4 released, and bombed, Kevin threw his own employees and developers under the bus instead of taking responsibility for strategic mistakes. It was really eye opening to me about him and many of the other frauds that Silicon Valley hoists up as role models. Since then, he’s done nothing to dissuade me that he’s just another talentless tech-bro asshole that got way more attention and money than he deserved.

I feel so bad for the people being deployed and their families. These people are being positioned to be triggers for a war against Iran. They believe it will be easier to manufacture consent for that war if the administration (whichever one we have) can point to dead Americans. Sick shit.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/iSF0KGsFuI8?si=ZF7KAiSOFYnADzzk

And just think, President Biden is just sorta okay with this.

I should also point out that invoking “secularism” in defense of Israeli brutality is absurd. Religious exceptionalism is a foundational characteristic of that state. The fanatical zealots that run their current government invoke religious providence all the time when rationalizing their own brutal policies. Lastly, the root of US patronage for Israel, the thing that allows the state to persist at all, is evangelical Christians who hope to usher in the end times described by their religion.

Every single rationalization that I’ve heard Israel and the US use for the inhuman violence they are inflicting, if applied consistently, would also justify both October 7 and the behavior of Hezbollah. “We have a right to defend ourselves.” “They deserve it because they are terrorists that target innocent civilians.” “This is our land.” “They hide behind civilians.” “We support our Allies without condition”. Secondly, “secularism” is worthless if it is employed in the the service of racism and fascism. Thirdly, please examine history and realize that all of this brutality always, always sows the seeds of more violence that will be visited upon you later. Israelis are sacrificing their own long term security for the sake of wanton short term bloodlust. It’s sick, self destructive and short sighted.

There is no depth to which Joe Biden will not sink to prop up, arm, cover for, pay, or deflect accountability from Israel. He is a zealot, devoted to a racist, un-democratic state and its culture of ethnic purity and regional domination. He is a monster who would be undeserving of his role as president, if the country he presided over wasn’t itself a violent, racist stain on humanity. Harris should be given an opportunity to course correct, but we all know that she won’t. She has no actual ideology other than self promotion. Her party has been captured monetarily by the Israeli lobby, as has most of congress. Despite a lot of flowery rhetoric, the only consistent US principle is a willingness to ignore US principles if there is profit or power to be had. As a US citizen, I hope our allies realize how duplicitous we are, and how shallow our calls for unity, peace and order are. The US should not be trusted, and our demon child Israel should never, ever be legitimized as anything other than the cancer it keeps choosing to be.

Israel is a cancer.

Why should it feel a need to respond? This administration and congress have shown nothing but breathless support for every illegal and inhuman action they’ve taken and imposed exactly zero meaningful consequences for violating the few feckless ‘red lines’ Biden has feigned to impose. They have nearly complete ideological and/or monetary capture of the administration and congress, and the US professional media is salivating about having more wars to cover. Both presidential candidates have promised no change in policy. Furthermore, the international community seems to be largely unwilling to meaningfully intervene and challenge US hegemony.

I really cannot fully express how much I have grown to hate all these motherfuckers and their awful work - and I work in Silicon Valley.

Apartheid. Ethnic cleansing. Genocide. Terrorism. Israel and its benefactor are just awful.

Well, that’s terrorism right there. Wish I lived in a country that had a problem with such awfulness.

This is part of Obama’s legacy.

This take is correct although I would make one addition. It is true that copyright violation doesn’t happen when copyrighted material is inputted or when models are trained. While the outputs of these models are not necessarily copyright violations, it is possible for them to violate copyright. The same standards for violation that apply to humans should apply to these models.

I entirely reject the claims that there should be one standard for humans and another for these models. Every time this debate pops up, people claim some province based on ‘intelligence’ or ‘conscience’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘awareness’. This is a meaningless argument because we have no clear understanding about what those things are. I’m not claiming anything about the nature of these models. I’m just pointing out that people love to apply an undefined standard to them.

We should apply the same copyright standards to people, models, corporations, and old-school algorithms.

Biden is ideologically committed to Israeli apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, via genocide if necessary. trump, most Republicans, and most Democrats support or at least tolerate it for political expediency. It’s so gross. Because Biden has faced very few political consequences for all this, the Harris campaign, and presumably a Harris administration will just continue on with the hypocrisy, injustice, and violence. I cannot over emphasize that, given the distribution of power in the region, this is a US endeavor.

People will downvote this comment because it is uncomfortable to accept, not because it’s untrue.

Rich idiots failing upward, unite!

The problem with what creeps like Mann are claiming comes down to the difference between “art” and buying an “interest” in art as a speculative investment. Mann conflates these two ideas, trying to bestow the wholesomeness of artistic expression with his investment business venture. I’m all in favor of getting artists paid, and structuring society in a way that encourages the production of art, but Mann wants to weaken securities regulations and consumer protections to do that. That’s a terrible idea because it will lead to many more people being conned and defrauded.

If investors were merely trying to support an artist’s work, and not seeking to profit from their investment, they wouldn’t need a securities mechanism like NFTs to do it. We already have money for that.

If a side effect of regulating NFTs as securities is to somehow damage the regular fine art marketplace, as I think Mann’s suit is warning, that is no great loss for society. The fine art market is a blight, a fraud-riddled playground for ultra wealthy douchebags to sequester wealth and does nothing to advance art or promote the creation of artworks writ large.

Mann has ridden the crypto speculative bubble and has an inflated impression of the value of his work. He’s carved out a niche as a sort of court jester for billionaires like Mark Andreesen who want to rebuild financial systems in a way that would dismantle the regulatory state and enshrine an elite class as technologically empowered feudal lords. He thinks the money is compensation for his songs, but it’s largely just a side effect of crypto bros forever trying to find a greater fool to hold the bag in a pyramid scheme. In that effort, his lawsuit is basically a marketing campaign for his investment business. I hope the court puts an end to this once and for all, but I’m not optimistic.

Joe Biden did this.