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WatDabney

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WatDabney ,

A gratuity is just a postdated bribe, and everybody including the Supreme Court knows it.

WatDabney ,

There’s another whole aspect to the recurring pushes to remove the dams that’s pretty much always left out too.

Likely the biggest beneficiaries if the dams were removed would be power companies, who, even with the dams generally operating at a tiny fraction of capacity, are stuck having to sell cheap hydroelectric power at low rates.

If the dams were removed, they’d be able to justify contracting (often with their own subsidiaries) for the construction of expensive new power plants with lower capacity and higher operating costs and would then be able to convince the PUCs to grant them massive rate increases.

Ah, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with the mysteriously well-funded campaigns to remove the dams that get a new round of publicity every few years…

WatDabney ,

No - I don’t agree that they’re completely different.

“Made by AI” would be completely different.

“Made with AI” actually means pretty much the exact same thing as “AI was used in this image” - it’s just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.

I can certainly see how “photographers” who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can’t handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can’t manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.

WatDabney ,

I’m roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.

It’s a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.

WatDabney ,

Dredge.

A very simple concept and gameplay loop that expands out into the bizarre and fantastic.

Honorable mention: Ronin.

Bullet time, effectively turn-based ninja combat. Simple, regularly autosaved “go until you die, then try something different” gameplay loop and just a helluva lot of fun.

Honorable mention: Valley.

Smooth and thrilling first-person mechanically-enhanced parkouring along the way to investigating the mysteries - both ancient and more recent - of a unique and very picturesque valley.

Coke—and Dozens of Others—Pledged to Quit Russia. They’re Still There. (www.bloomberg.com)

After Vladimir Putin’s troops surged over the Ukrainian border in February 2022, the Coca-Cola Co. was among the first multinationals to pledge it would quit Russia in protest. Aiming to avoid the inevitable headaches of complying with expected Western sanctions on the Kremlin, Coke asked its partners there to pull its cans...

WatDabney ,

No surprise there. Trump and his acolytes and sycophants have clearly signaled that they’re eager to be Putin’s lap dogs, so if Trump wins, Coke and the rest will have pulled out of Russia for nothing.

WatDabney ,

Even “the pot calling the kettle black” isn’t enough to sum this up.

It’s more like “the pot calling the salad bowl a pot.”

WatDabney ,

In a somewhat metaphorical but nonetheless very real sense - most politics is effectively snake oil.

There’s a set of people who exhibit a particular combination of mental illness and natural charisma, such that they feel an irrational urge to impose their wills on others, a lack of the necessary empathy to recognize the harm they do and the personal appeal necessary to convince others to let them do it.

There’s another set of people who feel an irrational sense of helplessness - who want to turn control of their lives and their decisions over to others, so they can just go along with a preordained set of values and beliefs and choices rather expending effort on, and taking the risk of, making their own.

And just as in any more standard “snake oil” dynamic, the first group, exclusively for its own benefit, preys upon the weakness and hope of the second. Just as in any other such dynamic, the people of the first group make promises they have no intention of keeping ultimately just so that they can benefit, and the people of the second group continue, irratiomally, to believe those promises, even as all of the available evidence demonstrates that the promises are empty.

WatDabney ,

Candidates for public office should be required to undergo a mental health assessment as part of the process of getting on the ballot, and those who score beyond (above or below, as may be relevant) particular thresholds are barred from seeking office.

I sincerely believe that there’s no single thing we could do that would provide more benefit to the world than to get sociopaths and narcissists and megalomaniacs out of positions of power. Each and every one of the most notable and contentious politicians in the world today is, if you just take a step back and look at them honestly, blatantly profoundly mentally ill. Enough is enough.

WatDabney ,

Funny thing:

The idea that protesting the slaughter of Palestinians equals antisemitism requires starting from the position that slaughtering Palestinians is a fundamental part of the Jewish identity.

There’s really no alternative way to interpret that. If slaughtering Palestinians is not a fundamental part of the Jewish identity, then protesting such slaughter has nothing to do with Judaism, and thus cannot be antisemitic. It’d be like trying to claim that protesting cars is anti-Amish.

So all these people quoted here are essentially saying that slaughtering Palestinians is not just fundamental to being Jewish, but so deeply and uniquely fundamental - so much a part of Jewishness - that opposing such slaughter automatically equals opposing Jews.

Doesn’t that sound sort of… antisemitic?

WatDabney ,

just because they’re Jewish

Actually, a bit of quick research reveals that Brooklyn Museum, and Anne Pasternak specifically, have been the targets of protests since at least 2016, when the museum, under her directorship, put on a show called “This Place” that purported to be an unbiased look at Israel and Palestine, but was backed by pro-occupation funders.

In fact, the group that was organized in response to that show, called “Decolonize This Place,” still exists and is still active.

So it’s exceedingly safe to assume that she wasn’t targeted “just because (she’s) Jewish” but because for at least the past eight years, she, and the museum more broadly, have been seen to be sympathetic to colonialism broadly, and zionism specifically - so much so that at least one organization was formed and still exists specifically to protest them.

Here’s the most concise source for that - an interview with Pasternak from 2018

WatDabney ,

Perhaps there is some context this article doesn’t touch on

There is.

This is the most concise and complete summation I could find of the (early) history of the protests against Brooklyn Museum and Anne Pasternak.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anne-pasternak-brooklyn-museum-interview-part-2-1409434

Note too that there’s another controversy - regarding the hiring of a white curator for African art - that likely provides the context for the “white supremacist” part of the graffito.

WatDabney , (edited )

That said, it’s difficult to see people’s homes targeted by protests like this with the rise of the Neo-Nazi right as it is in America.

That sentence neatly sums up a whole raft of issues.

First - yes - this sort of protest is and always will be problematic at best. I understand the impetus (intellectually at least - I’n far too old and cynical to feel that sort of fervor, and I was never that reckless), but even though the cause is just, there’s a point beyond which protest becomes counter-productive, since it alienates people who would otherwise support it.

And there is a very real looming spectre of antisemitism in the US.

But the thing is that protesting the war in Gaza or zionism broadly is NOT part of that threat, and every bit of (self-serving) effort expended on that is diverted from the real threat, which comes from an ever-growing subculture of stock-standard (neo) nazi antisemites - people who are specifically targeting Jews, collectively and individually and even using much of the same rhetoric and stereotypes that the Third Reich used. And notably, that threat doesn’t come from the left, but from the right.

That said though there is a potential threat inherent in the (almost entirely left-wing) protests against the war - the risk that it could expand to a broader condemnation of Israelis in general, or even Jews in general. I’ve actually been sort of half-expecting to see someone try to make a case similar to ACAB regarding Israelis or even Jews - that they’re all [pejoratives] because they’re all, necessarily, either murderous xenophobes or at best enablers of the murderous xenophobes in their midst.

And that then leads back to where you started. That was actually part of the impetus for my first response, though I ended up spinning it a bit different way.

The ongoing efforts to conflate opposition to the war or to zionism with antisemitism are, and I would say rather obviously, not only simply dishonest, but actually a threat to Jews. They invite antisemitism, and to some degree actually are antisemitic, insofar as they assign a particular set of beliefs that many find noxious and worthy of hatred to Jews collectively and individually, entirely regardless of and in many cases directly contrary to the actual beliefs and preferences of individual Jews.

And… I’m yet again, as I am on pretty much a daily basis, reminded of the purported old Chinese curse - “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly do.

Thanks for the response.

WatDabney ,

Just another step toward making used-to-be-Twitter a safe space for cowardly fascists.

WatDabney ,

In all seriousness, I sort of pity conservatives.

They’re sort of like the one kid in kindergarten who could never manage to figure out which plastic peg went in which hole and would just get frustrated and throw things. Except that they never grew out of it. Here they are, twenty or thirty or sixty years later, still unable to grasp the simple fact that the world just is what it is and the round peg isn’t going to go in the square hole no matter how much you pound on it, and still angry over it, as if it’s some sort of vast conspiracy rather than just the fact that they’re fucking morons.

That has to be an unpleasant way to live.

Of course, they’re such vile and loathsome and destructive assholes that my pity is short-lived, but still…

WatDabney ,

Well damn.

No - I very deliberately used round peg in the square hole, initially just to avoid the cliche, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Conservatives pound on round/natural/organic/smooth pegs to try to force them into square/artificial/contrived/rigid holes.

I liked it anyway…

WatDabney ,

How is anybody even surprised by this?

This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.

They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.

And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.

Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…

WatDabney ,

“People’s Army” = the violent thugs in the employ of the new state, to replace the violent thugs in the employ of the old one.

“Support of the Proletariat” = the alternating oppression and indoctrination of the people will continue, under new management.

And all in support of:

“Vanguard Party” = the new ruling class.

WatDabney ,

Who said anything about the “owner class?”

The oppression I’m talking about is that which the “vanguard party” (the new owner class) will direct against those of the people who don’t submit to their claimed authority.

WatDabney ,

For myself, other people’s anger makes me really uncomfortable, and I avoid it as much as possible, in part specifically because if I don’t, I end up sharing in it, but without a reason or a target. It’s really unpleasant because in a sense, it’s not real.

Real anger - my own anger - feels complete. Not that it’s pleasant or anything - it’s still anger. But in a way, it’s a sort of relief to feel it, since it at least makes sense. I have a reason for it and a target for it, so it fits. Empathetic anger is weird and unsettling, since it’s just there, but it’s not a complete, sensible thing.

And you’re right about targeted emotions, at least in my experience, and while anger is a good example, it’s not the worst.

Grief is awful, because it’s such a horrible, desolate feeling, and just that much worse when it doesn’t even really mean anything.

Jealousy is another bad one - in fact, thinking about it, I’m tempted to say it’s the worst of them all, because it’s so unpleasant, and in multiple ways, and it’s so entirely pointless without an actual reason or target (it’s arguably fairly pointless even with both).

On a somewhat different note, just because I’m thinking about the trials and tribulations of affective empathy - embarrassment is weirdly bad. Partly it’s that it’s unpleasant, but more it’s that it’s such a common aspect of other people’s enjoyment - there’s a great deal of comedy that hinges on laughing at other people’s embarrassment, and it’s all completely lost on me, because I’m stuck just feeling pointlessly vicariously embarrassed.

Broadly, the way I have to deal with all of it is to try to avoid situations in which I’m going to be subjected to other people’s unpleasant emotions, and if I find myself in one, to try to shut myself off from whatever they’re feeling. I’m okay up to a point, but I can feel it coming if I’m getting to the point that it’s going to suck me in, and pretty much all I can do then is resign myself to it or throw up a barricade and just shut it out. Which sort of ironically makes me come across as aloof - as if I’m insensitive rather than overly sensitive. That gnaws at me, but there really isn’t much I can do about it, since I already have enough to deal with with my own emotions, and just don’t have the fortitude to deal with everyone else’s as well.

WatDabney , (edited )

It strikes me that I went on at great length but didn’t directly answer your main question.

Targeted emotions felt via affective empathy (at least for me and presumably for others) aee generally either directed at the same target as they are for the source or untargeted. Though sometimes, they can end up being directed at the wrong target.

I think the way it generally works is that if I both feel affective empathy and experience cognitive empathy, then the emotion ends up aimed at the same target, since the cognitive empathy provides a framework for it. For instance, I feel someone else’s anger and understand who they’re angry at and why and agree that it’s justified, so I end up angry at that target too.

And yes - if I’m the target and I grasp the idea behind it, so experience cognitive empathy, then I do become my own target.

If I don’t have the context for cognitive empathy though, the emotion is just sort of there. I’m just aware that being in this place or around these people or whatever is putting me on edge. I don’t quite feel the full sense of the emotion then, presumably because it needs context and a target to fully manifest. Instead, I feel a vaguer, less directed form of it - like being around angry people without really focusing on it, so not getting cognitive empathy, just leaves me feeling unaccountably stressed and cranky. Or being around sad people makes me feel unaccountably melancholy.

And along with that, one thing it definitely does is prime me to find something to direct it at. It’s not just that I feel unaccountably cranky or melancholy or whatever, but that I’m likely going to (over)react to the first thing that happens that provides something like justification for the full-blown emotion. Like once it starts, it has to find a way to fully manifest.

WatDabney ,

That’s so perfectly Turkeyish.

It’s a funny place - so obviously a result of its geographical location. It had its era of power-struggling against other Mediterranean civilizations, but as soon as the known world expanded out to include Asia, Turkey, stuck literally at the crossroads between the two, started playing both sides against the middle. And that’s what it’s done ever since.

WatDabney ,

Israel has been trying to provoke Lebanon into a war for decades now. They’re not going to stop.

WatDabney ,

I sure hope so.

There’s a significant number of Trumpers who are just itching to put on their brown shirts red hats and start wreaking violence.

At this point, it’s not really a question of if they do it, but just of when. On that point at least, Trump is right. He just doesnt acknowledge the fact that the reason those people are reaching a breaking point is that he’s self-servingly fed them a steady diet of propaganda and hatred.

So they’re going to go off the rails - they’re vtoo ignorant and too angry and too misled to do anything else.

The worst-case scenario would be that they do it after Trump has (god forbid) been elected. Because then they’re going to get official sanction. They really will be the new brownshirts.

The best-case scenario is that they do it soon, and in response to Trump being rightfully sentenced for the crimes of which he has been rightfully convicted. In that case, they’re going to have neither the illusion of legitimacy nor official sanction, and they’ll just reveal themselves as the lawless, petulant, violent asshats they are.

WatDabney ,

If he’s elected, they’ll have free rein to do whatever they want to whoever they want, and they will.

Him being sent to prison would just be a trigger to release the hatred and urge to violence that’s already festering inside them. That hatred and urge to violence is still going to be there if he’s elected - it’ll just manifest a bit differently.

WatDabney ,

That’s no surprise, and entirely irrelevant.

The US political system is broken. It doesn’t legislate according to what is thought to be best for the country or its people - it legislates according to what will bring the most money from wealthy individuals, corporations and interest groups.

Fossil fuel corporations and industry groups have very deep pockets and have well-established channels by which to funnel that money into the hands of politicians, party officials, and assorted powermongers, so the government is going to generally legislate in their favor, entirely regardless of any other considerations.

WatDabney ,

That Was the Day by The The

WatDabney ,

And yet again it cynically amuses me that AI has become “artificial” intelligence in the sense of “fake.”

It’s a shabby substitute for real intelligence, used by people who don’t possess any of their own to impress other people who don’t possess any of their own.

WatDabney ,

This is actually true.

Most notably to me, the ability to sift through and collate enormous amounts of data has led to surprising things like diagnosing diabetes through retinal scans.

But those sorts of things, beneficial and impressive though they might be, remain at the fringe of AI research for the simple reason that those sorts of uses are too niche to provide the revenue stream that all of the bubble-building corporate parasites demand. Their focus is on the AI-as-a-substitute-for-real-intelligence aspect (and increasingly “AI” as just a meaningless marketing buzzword), since that’s where the money is. And unfortunately but not coincidentally, that’s where most of the public attention is too.

WatDabney ,

Imagine how much better the world would be if there was just a simple process of psychological screening for would-be politicians, and psychopaths were barred from holding office.

WatDabney ,

So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.

WatDabney ,

I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

WatDabney ,

Imagine Israel, of all countries, crying to the UN, of all organizations, about a purported “flagrant violation of narional sovereignty, international law and Security Council resolutions.”

I laughed out loud when I read that. As if that isn’t exactly what Israel does virtually on a daily basis, and has done for decades now, and while thumbing their nose at the UN the entire time.

WatDabney ,

And again I find myself wondering by what purported authority it is that Israel “approves” the construction of settlements on someone else’s land.

That’d be like reading that the Mexican government had “approved” the construction of Mexican settlements in Texas.

WatDabney ,

If consciousness is an illusion, then what is it that’s experiencing that illusion?

WatDabney ,

No.

I self-evidently have a consciousness (cogito ergo sum), but logic, reason and the available evidence all point to that consciousness being a manifestation of brain activity and shaped by my genetics, environment and experiences, as opposed to an entity unto itself.

WatDabney ,

Many think that cogito ergo sum somehow says or at least implies something about the nature of existence, when it in fact does not. So in that sense, it’s not the “big hitter it’s made out to be,” but that’s not a failure of the principle, but a failure of people to understand what it in fact says, or more precisely, does not say.

I suspect that the problem is that when people consider “I think, therefore I am,” they think that that “I” refers to the entirety of their self-image, and therefore says that the entirety of their self-image, in all its details, objectively exists.

That’s very much not what it means or even implies. It never did and was never intended to stipulate anything at all about the nature of this entity I call “I.” Not one single thing. All it ever said or intended to say was simply that whatever it is that “I” am, “I” self evidently exist, as demonstrated by the fact that “I” - whatever “I” might be - think I do.

It’s not a coincidence that Descartes himself formulated the original version of the brain-in-a-vat - the “evil demon.” He was not simply aware of the sorts of possibilities you mention - of the ramifications of the fact that we exist behind a veil of perception - he actually originated much of the thinking on that very topic. He was a pioneer in that exact field.

Cogito ergo sum doesn’t fail to account for those sorts of possibilities - it was explicitly formulated with those sorts of possibilities not only in mind, but at the forefront. And that’s exactly why it only stipulates the one and only thing that an individual can know for certain - that some entity that I think of as “I” self evidently exists, as demonstrated by the simple fact that “I” think I do, since if “I” didn’t exist, there would be no “I” thinking I do.

And more to the point, that’s exactly why it very deliberately says absolutely nothing about the nature of that existence.

WatDabney ,

Electric kettle for the water, poured over a bag of strong black tea in a glass, with a bit of sugar. As far as brand goes, I’m not all that picky, just so long as it’s black and plain and relatively strong. Mostly it’s Tetley or Twining’s English Breakfast.

I drank coffee pretty much exclusively for years. I’d drink tea occasionally, and I always liked it well enough, but it just couldn’t hold my interest. The thing that made the difference was drinking it out of a glass.

One day, some years ago, I noticed a scene of Russians drinking tea in a restaurant in a movie and started thinking about it. I was aware that they drank hot tea in glasses, but I’d never really considered it before. I had a nice set of institutional quality highball glasses that I’d gotten from a restaurant that went out of business, so I decided to give it a try. And I’ve never looked back.

As near as I can figure it out, using a glass just made it a complete and satisfying experience. I think that’s part of the reason that tea had never held my interest before - I didn’t have a satisfying way to drink it, day in and day out. I never liked teacups - they’re just too small and dainty to be satisfying. And trying to drink it out of a mug was sort of weird - as if my mouth was expecting coffee and was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to get tea instead. But the glass makes it its own thing, and makes it satisfying in and of itself.

WatDabney ,

Pol Pot would be pleased.

WatDabney ,

Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.

WatDabney ,

that argument stops working when it’s a large portion of a society.

Not the person you responded to, but I’d disagree with that. I’d say that if a large portion of a society can be said to be insane, then that doesn’t change the standard for sanity - it just means that the society itself is insane.

Our understandings of right and wrong are somewhat a social construct, and so subject to social change.

Only reasonably within a particular range. There are points beyond which societal notions of right and wrong become self-defeating, and thus irrational at best.

For instance, if one holds that the killing of innocents is such an egregious wrong that it justifies the killing of innocents, then one has created a closed loop in which every purportedly justified killing in turn becomes a wrong that purportedly justifies the next killing, which in turn becomes a wrong that purportedly justifies the next killing, and so on, endlessly.

That’s rather obviously irrational at best, and arguably insane, since it justifies that which it condemns and condemns that which it justifies. And that’s the case entirely regardless of how many or how few people believe it.

WatDabney ,

No - piracy, since it always carries at least some amount of difficulty and risk, is easy to compete against. And in fact, paid services, including Netflix, have proven that over and over. All it takes is to offer dependable convenience and quality and to treat customers well. People are always willing to pay a reasonable price for that.

The problem is that piracy becomes difficult to compete against when, as Netflix is currently doing, you shift from a business model of providing good service under fair terms for a reasonable price to a business model of providing crappy service under onerous terms for too much money, because the greedy, selfish, short-sighted sacks of shit at the top want to make even more obscene amounts of money. That’s the point at which piracy gains enough of an advantage to outweigh its difficulties and risks.

And when that’s the case, it’s pretty obvious what the real problem is.

WatDabney ,

No surprise there.

There was never even the slightest chance that that balloon could pass through US airspace unobserved, and China possesses FAR more effective, secure and difficult-at-best methods with which to spy. So very obviously, it was intended to be discovered. And presuming that to be the case, the important bit then was the reaction its discovery would trigger.

So it was safe to presume from the start (as I did) that some significant part of the social media noise about it was simple astroturfing explicitly intended solely to further whatever response whoever wanted.

WatDabney ,

Oh look - more intellectually dishonest anti-vaping propaganda…

I smoked for thirty years before I discovered vaping and switched. My lungs feel better now than they have at any other point within my memory.

But if whichever lying shitstains are responsible for this clearly deliberate propaganda campaign had their way about it, I would’ve never gotten that chance, and I’d still be smoking, and dying or dead.

And why? What’s their goal? Why are they trying so hard, and so brazeny dishonestly, to undermine a thing that can save lives? What’s their interest in making it impossible for people like me to have an alternative that’s undeniably at the very least MUCH less of a health risk? Why do they want smokers to keep smoking, and keep dying?

WatDabney ,

I’m GenX. I’ve spent my entire life watching the Boomers fuck things up, then having to wade through the debris they leave in their wake.

I’m not expecting that to change now.

WatDabney ,

Just makes me wonder how many Palestinians they’ve murdered in similar circumstances, and we just didn’t hear about it because they weren’t Israelis, so it was treated as if it didn’t matter.

WatDabney ,

And tomorrow, they’re going to drop a bomb on her.

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