So, in the mind of this one anarcho-capitalist, you should only have the right to protest if you have enough money. My surprise is limitless and my jaw has broken the whole floor.
ITT: people who actually have experience with psychedelics arguing against people who’ve only experienced psychedelics by seeing them portrayed in movies.
These aren't mutually exclusive. It can both be true, and Russia could have intentionally boosted the story on social media in order to cause greater general distress.
Not really. Sure there’s bedbugs, but there’s no evidence that there are more bedbugs now than there were say a year ago that I’m aware of. If you start looking for the little fuckers you’re going to find them of course, but that goes for just about every city.
I'd really like it if we stopped blaming the corporation and start blaming the people that make the decisions there and the people that implement those decisions. From the CEO's to the programmers. Put their names everywhere, show the world who actually ruined it. Google was the best resource humanity had to access information. Now, more often than not, I can not find anything related to my search. The search algorithm they used 20 years ago was better than this new junk.
I’d rather we build something better ourselves than hoping that companies turn “good”. A whole lot of the modern Internet’s problems are simply the result of leaving everything up to big companies instead of building our own better stuff. In the software world we have Open Source, Linux, GNU and all that, in the content world we have Creative Commons and for online services we have basically nothing. No licenses, rules or even best practices. Worse yet, whenever there is some effort in that direction, it’s often fundamentally broken (e.g. Signal requiring a phone number, Fediverse giving full control to the server not the user, etc.).
PS: If you want old school Google, try kagi.com. It’s expensive, but the closest thing to good search we have at the moment.
Kagi is fantastic. It’s worth every penny and imo paid search means they are incentivized to provide the best results. Unlike Google, who is an advertising company masquerading as a search engine. When you sell ads, and you make money for displaying them, where do your loyalties lie? The best results, for me, aren’t their goal. It’s the “how can we show this guy an ad he’ll click on?”. Is it the best result, no. Does Google get paid, yes.
I use Kagi and it’s great. But I’d also throw in a big honourable mention for Qwant. Imo it’s better than DDG. Throw in some NextDNS ad blocking and you’ll practically never see ads in your search again.
I agree with most of what you said except I don't expect companies to turn good. They don't do good or evil, they do profit by whatever means. It's intrinsic!
I'd like to help build some shit, got any recommendations? I can do the type type beep boop as long as that neural net is left out. Fuck that black box shit. I think it is the real reason for the shit algorithms these days. Which leads me to my next point. I get the exact same results from Kagi as I do from DDG. They are identical >90% of the time. Kagi does provide features that are worth paying for but I want better results, they existed before.
Once upon a time I could search for something incredibly specific and find an obscure forum with the answer. These days all I get, even with Kagi is the same results from SEO optimized garbage to AI generated dribble.
I really do not understand why Kagi is so promoted here. I really have not found it to be any better.
The problem with DDG is that it is just marketing on top of Bing. It doesn’t improve the Bing search results in any way, adds no new features and has no ambitions to build its own index. Never quite understand why it got popular in the first place when you can just use Bing instead and get literally the exact same thing.
Kagi is much closer to Google, bigger index and more up to date results than Bing, it has a lot of old features Google removed over the years, it removes a lot of the SEO spam that fills up Google and so on. It feels like modern version of Google without the enshittification. And yes, you can find most of the sites in any other search engine just as well, everybody is searching the same Web after all. It’s not magic, it can’t fix everything that is broken with the Web, but Kagi is a much cleaner more user focused experience.
What makes Kagi interesting in the end that going from Google to any of the alternatives always felt like a downgrade, Kagi is the only one I ever tried that felt like an upgrade.
I’d also argue there’s a lot more shit and garbage on the internet that google needs to sift through. Tons of duplicate pages, ad infested websites and whatnot.
SEO optimised webpages are often also ad infested, clickbait webpages.
But yes. I’m using duckduckgo because it actually gives me better search results than google most of the time. So the non-personalized results are better than their personalized results.
Chatgpt has also given me better results when searching for tooling. Looking for wiki alternatives is just page after page of fucking confluence. At least chatgpt manages to list different wiki tools (including confluence ) but I don’t have to go through the first 90 google pages.
I need a “distinct” checkbox in my search engine. And a plugin that rates pages based on ad presence and how clickbaity the article looks. Maybe that’s a good idea for a new fucking search engine all together.
There is nothing better than lazy internet mob attacking individuals for shit they don’t like, while don’t knowing the whole picture.
(For anyone who thinks this is above is a good idea, please think about the guy who created Minecraft, made a huge success and then got depressed by just reading comments from all the kids who didn’t like something about the game)
I read it, but you know many simply go by headlines, which are tailored as clickbait, often irresponsibly. So I’m fine with quoting the guy in context, but it’s poor form to let him get away with ‘coolest dictator’ in the context-free part that 80% of people will see.
Have you ever considered that kind of dichotomy actually helps him rather than hurts him?
Imagine being a Bukele supporter and seeing people like you say he’s bad just because has too much power.
To El Salvador’s population, Bukele is responsible for stopping gangs from freely using rape and murder as means of extortion. They don’t care about your stupid western ideological wars. To them, results are more important.
Compare El Salvador’s gang problem to Mexico’s, and perhaps you can see why dictatorships are not intrinsically bad just like democracies are not intrinsically good.
I don’t expect you to have that level of rationality, though.
Great dismissal of the truth you refuse to look at. The people of El Salvador love the man because he drastically reduced crime. Rape and murder was horrendously common there. People were afraid to leave their homes, even in the middle of the day. When you live like that for years and someone comes in and eliminates 95% of the crime almost overnight, yea, you’re not really gonna give a shit if he followed due process and whatever he calls himself when you can suddenly leave your house in peace. There’s a reason why he’s so popular there.
I hope the attacks by Ukrainians behind enemy lines intensify before the Russian presidential election. The Russians hate them anyway. They could again drop some presents on Moscow without losing any more sympathy that they did not got from russians in the first place. Might as well show some muscles - the only language authoritarian regimes understand. 18 Drones in Kiev? 18 Drones on Moscow. But instead of civilian infrastructure, let it rain down on political targets. No need to get as low as russians.
China is on track to reduce their electricity production from fossil fuel sources by next year. They never bought into the natural gas hype for energy security reasons, and that’s a good thing. Whereas other countries have used the claims of clean natural gas to increase electricity produced from fossil fuel sources at astonishing rates, China does not have the luxury of domestic natural gas sources and so has opted to move towards plateauing fossil fuel use as a whole.
As is fairly well known, fugitive methane emissions from natural gas are a huge and largely underreported source of GHGs. Moreover, methane is somewhere on the order of 80x worse than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period (methane decays more quickly than carbon dioxide, though, so over a 100-year period it’s only about 30x worse). Based on all-in estimates, natural gas might only become emissions-equivalent to coal after 100 years.
The Chinese are also pretty cognizant of their emissions. Might be weird to hear, but I've been working on a painful research project for the last few months and see a lot of very frank discussion of it in the research. Example, which starts with a pretty matter-of-fact statement about the "unsatisfactory" state of recycling and carbon emissions in the Chinese construction industry.
Clearly, this kind of frank writing doesn't get you in trouble with the authorities. They know they have a problem that will need to be addressed. They aren't bullshitting about it. Their officials aren't pretending the problem of climate change is made up woke propaganda they can ignore. And they have a command economy, so they can simply order businesses, labs, and universities to focus efforts on developing solutions.
Lot of bad things to say about China. It's an authoritarian state led by a dictator. They definitely put the economy ahead of addressing climate issues. But the also see the harsh reality -- failing to address climate will destroy their economy. Failing to address climate will result in anyone else who does out-competing them on the global stage. And soon.
I dont know how you could say that out of any place but ignorance? If they are a dictatorship, they are putting on a massive act of civic democratic engagement, and if they were, there would be leaks because you can not keep something like that secret when the scale is a country of 1.4 billion people.
They have a different style of democracy which prioritizes a different set of rights over western bourgeois democracy.
I would encourage you to try to talk to Chinese people about their government without putting assumptions into your questions or asking leading questions. Actual Chinese people, who live in China. Thanks to the internet this is very easily done.
I would also encourage you to research how Chinese theorists have looked at making stronger democratic mechanisms, and to generally learn the differences between proletarian and bourgeois democracy.
Literally a bunch of muslim delegations from governments that don’t like each other all went to investigate and found all was well.
I am guessing you did not actually trying asking them, I am guessing you read some atrocity propaganda from a corporate newspaper whos owner is terrified of the implications of socialist China.
Grade A tankie shit is taking advice on how to respect religious freedom and human rights from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These countries probably care more about the religious freedom of Muslims then the US though, which loves killing Muslims and has killed millions of muslim civilians in recent history in their own “war on terror”
You think Muslim majority countries care less about the right to practice Islam than the US, which routinely spies on mosques in the US and has killed millions of Muslim civilians in recent history? Who are supportive of the client state of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians as we speak? Which media depicts Muslims as brown savages? Who’s soldiers commonly refer to Muslims as Sand N-words?
Are you being literal or is their another meaning you are trying to imply?
Okay, thank you for demonstrating that you unironically believe muslim countries are more bigoted against Muslims than a country which has routinely committed genocide against muslim populations over the last half century and is current involved in supporting one as we speak.
Well that proves it, religion is always peaceful and gets along well with those of different believes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to trust the investigation performed by the international community. Backed up by my own interactions with Uighur refugees in my own country (They were probably hired by le Zenz to personally feed me propaganda). And support the victims of genocide rather than an authie state.
Because taking advice from the country of “don’t say gay”, “oops I invaded Iraq”, “hundreds of thousands murdered in the Middle East”, “oops I couped another democratically-elected government”, “rape on foreign military bases”…
Those countries also have economic and otherwise incentive to agree with the world hegemon, the US.
The anglophone corporate media that is pushing out the atrocity propaganda (well, was, China reopening put a real damper on their stories) also has financial incentive to produce propaganda about the main rival of the US.
Or an economic incentive to agree with china, the major world power challenging the US on its position on the world stage. In fact, even more incentive to side with china over the US, as those specific nations all have multiple direct monetary conflicts with US enterprise and military pursuits. Pursuits they would gladly like to take over, and have reason to do business with whomever sides with them over the US on said enterprises.
Youre being played, and letting people die because of it. Just like whats happening in gaza.
Youre being played, and letting people die because of it.
Even the worse claims say that the “repression” is over, and have never included mass murder, so I dont know what you’re on about.
I guess I should ask, why do you have faith in US affiliated media reporting on this, considering that the US has a vested interest in destabilizing China, and obviously cares very little for the lives of Muslims?
Also, just look at it from a historical basis. Has any anti-terrorism program that revolved around repression ever worked, and not just created more terrorism? Does China have a reality altering device that lets them do repression without creating more terrorism, or have you been lied to, given that terrorism has precipitously declined as China has invested in their counterterrorism program primarily based around improving the material conditions in the region?
The same applies to you? Why do you have faith in chinese affiliated media, who has a vested interest in usurping US footholds and making deals with chinese markets?
Dont act like china doesnt have a history of repression like every other major world power. China isnt special, or new. They arent your friend, theyre the next US. They dont care that some historians say it doesnt work, the same argument applies to the japanese concentration camps in the US during WW2.
Its embarassing to watch you, in the same paragraph, try and mock trusting 1 faceless monoliths propaganda while unquestionably parroting anothers. Calling a historically suppressed minority a terrorist population? Fucking shame on you.
The same applies to you? Why do you have faith in chinese affiliated media, who has a vested interest in usurping US footholds and making deals with chinese markets?
Why do you think I primarily rely on Chinese media? I primarily rely on looking at US media through a critical lense oriented around Marxism and anti-colonial theory. I also talk to Chinese exchange students about their experiences in China.
Dont act like china doesnt have a history of repression like every other major world power. China isnt special, or new.
I’m not arguing that, but that is not an equivalent claim to the claim you are making. You are making much worse claims.
They arent your friend, theyre the next US.
Nah this is just enlightened centrism. China is of course a state and states do repression but they are significantly less economically exploitative than the US. They are also exceeding their climate goals while the US lags behind.
They dont care that some historians say it doesnt work, the same argument applies to the japanese concentration camps in the US during WW2.
They aren’t doing concentration camps though, because if they were, we would see violent resistance increasing. This has always historically been the case. You must learn from history or you’ll believe anything.
Its embarassing to watch you, in the same paragraph, try and mock trusting 1 faceless monoliths propaganda while unquestionably parroting anothers.
I’m not parroting their propaganda. Their propaganda paints a much rosier picture about it. Things are not great but the way they have dealt with extremism has respected their culture, even though there are cases of nonsystemic abuse and their methods toe the line on what we would consider acceptable standards of evidence. (Although detaining someone in school is different than detaining someone in a labor camp like the US does to its prisoners, and the standard of evidence that the US uses also often falls behind our acceptable standard of evidence)
Did you actually read the report? They literally cite CIA front groups like VoCMF.
Also, just look at it from a historical basis. Has any anti-terrorism program that revolved around repression ever worked, and not just created more terrorism? Does China have a reality altering device that lets them do repression without creating more terrorism, or have you been lied to, given that terrorism has precipitously declined as China has invested in their counterterrorism program primarily based around improving the material conditions in the region?
I have, and they use many multiple sources (including their own) to reach their conclusion, of which the ‘Xinjiang Police Files’ are but one part and backed up by other documentation.
I assume your talking point regurgitation is done without you having the foggiest clue about the actual contents of the report.
Also just take a look at historical basis, genocide has happened many times throughout history. Do you assume genocide has never “worked” and only creates more resistance?
Oh my god, the police files that included ai generated mugshots, published by Adrian Zenz, a literal German fascist who says God has given him a mission to destroy China?
Also just take a look at historical basis, genocide has happened many times throughout history. Do you assume genocide has never “worked” and only creates more resistance?
Genocide creates more violent resistance when it is escalating, even if it eventually wipes out most of a population. Can you name an example of a time when this doesn’t hold true?
telegraph.co.uk
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