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masquenox

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TIL about Roko's Basilisk, a thought experiment considered by some to be an "information hazard" - a concept or idea that can cause you harm by you simply knowing/understanding it (en.wikipedia.org)

Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to...

masquenox ,

The prospective AI punishment would be to have your consciousness ‘moved’ to an artificial environment and tortured for ever.

No, it wouldn’t, because that’s never going to happen. Consciousness isn’t software - it doesn’t matter how much people want to buy into such fantasies.

masquenox ,

torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development,

And the point of this would be… what, exactly?

masquenox ,

Just because we don’t have the ability now doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

Yeah… no. It’s about as likely as humanity “colonizing” space - it’s not going to happen.

Consciousness isn’t fully understood,

True… and conflating consciousness with the trappings of digital technology is doing the exact opposite of getting us closer to any understanding of it.

masquenox ,

Fair enough.

masquenox ,

This is why I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who calls any human society, past or present, “primitive.”

YSK: Using dairy milk after being tear gassed or pepper sprayed doesn't provide more relief and has slightly increased infection risk. Use water or saline instead

Generally medical professionals do not vouch for using milk for tear gas despite it often being touted. The research seems to suggest they are largely the same in providing relief...

masquenox , (edited )

The capsacin is dissolved in an oil,

That only counts for OC gas (pepper spray) - most anti-dissent chemical weaponry doesn’t contain capsaicin. Milk won’t do shit for CS gas, for instance. For CS gas, water is the only thing that works.

Considering how many different types of this shit there actually is and the fact that they can mix them up pretty easily regardless of what the law actually says makes a one-size-fits-all solution pretty difficult.

edit: did I just say a one-size-fits-all solution to this is difficult? Silly me.

masquenox ,

If we can recycle single use plastic into this, then great.

They won’t - they’ll just use “Recycling!” as a pretext to continue business as usual… which was the whole point of “Recycling!” in the first place.

I was explaining to my daughter about the differences between Gimp and Photoshop and saw that Adobe had a page that claimed to compare the two. It never compares the two. It barely mentions Gimp. (www.adobe.com)

I expected ridiculous propaganda from Adobe, but they give absolutely no reasons why Photoshop is better than Gimp and list a bunch of things that Gimp can do too....

masquenox ,

It’s just standard corporatese - if it’s not insulting your intelligence they’re not doing it right.

masquenox ,

I have to admit that GIMP has me beat - I’ve taught myself plenty of progs (usually in a panic because I told the interviewer I could use it and therefore had to learn it real fast - that’s how I learned Illustrator, CorelDRAW and QuarkXpress), but I just can’t seem to get the hang of GIMP.

masquenox ,

The people that are desperately clinging onto the hope that this is any kind of victory needs a reality check.

In the extremely unlikely scenario that he actually gets jail time they’ll be high-fiving him all the way in - and you better know that any parole hearing he’s going to get (which will probably be sooner rather than later) will be staffed by people who think exactly the same way he does.

Hierarchy is the bedrock of reactionary politics - and it doesn’t get any more hierarchical than the (so-called) “justice system.”

masquenox ,

Activists don’t need the personal information of people they disagree with.

Speak for yourself. If you believe that intelligence work is beneath you, the other side has already won.

masquenox ,

That is not what they’re saying.

This is what they said:

Activists don’t need the personal information of people they disagree with. Terrorists do,

This is not a case of somebody saying something smart but just wording it terribly. It’s no different than idots who spout “only cowards wear masks!” It’s something only somebody that has no familiarity with actual activism - ie, no familiarity with the actual stakes and risks involved in real activism work - would say.

masquenox ,

What you are alluding to is no longer activism

The libs on here are really good at demonstrating that they know absolutely nothing about activism in any shape, way or form whatsoever - but are still willing to feign expertise on the matter.

I guess heckling antifa from the sidelines back in 2016 gave you lots of practice in that, eh?

masquenox ,

Her Majesty’s Penitentiary inmate Devon Fitzpatrick says early one morning in mid-May Her Majesty’s Penitentiary inmate Devon Fitzpatrick woke up and felt something moving in Her Majesty’s Penitentiary’s crotch of Her Majesty’s Penitentiary’s pants. When he reached in, he discovered Her Majesty’s Penitentiary’s rat had given birth there.

FTFT.

If they want to make it clear how thoroughly Her Majesty’s (or whatever mutant inbred blue-blooded critter they’ve got on the throne now) ownership of this person is, I say they shouldn’t be allowed to stop half-way.

masquenox ,

A bad union is still worse than no union - though I wouldn’t want to be quoted on that.

masquenox ,

stuff is just worse blatantly reverse engineered copies

The reason they only had reverse-engineered copies is because the bigwigs at the CPSU decided that the workers didn’t need personal computers, despite the fact that all the computer research facilities in the USSR (of which there were plenty) recommended that they do.

If the USSR had thrown it’s weight behind personal computing we could have had some interesting shit.

masquenox ,

Sure, when you can force the workforce to do a thing,

Yeah… turns out that homelessness is a great motivator.

But they’ll probably do it slower than if they chose to do it.

Soooo… just like wage slaves, eh?

food production, basic manufacturing

After 1947 there was no great problems with food production in the USSR. Still… you’re not really wrong. The capitalist mode of production does offer a feedback system for consumer goods - even though it’s a pretty terrible one that only works as long as the capitalists have to compete for a well-paid populace’s buying power.

masquenox ,

It’s not just that… thanks to the USSR we have technologies that wouldn’t have even existed if it was left up to the capitalists. Such as synthetic diamonds and… you know - anything and everything to do with space.

masquenox ,

As far as I’m aware, the USSR started importing grain in the 60s - primarily to feed livestock as meat became a regular thing for Soviet citizens.

masquenox ,

but they were bad at building fundamental tech.

Yeah, they were so bad at it that they ended up in space first. Just absolutely terrible.

Their space program was callous towards both human and animal life.

Show us your proof, PragerU fan.

It wasn’t built in a way where successes could be leveraged for more successes.

So the Soviet Union launching Sputnik had absolutely nothing to do with them successfully landing Venera 7 on the surface of Venus?

Absolutely nothing at all, eh?

Strange how your right-wing friends at the RAND corporation didn’t share your Ben Shapiro-level shittakes about the Soviet space program.

capitalism was able use space technology to improve the lives of the working class capitalist parasites better than a supposedly communist system did.

FTFY.

Also, learn what the word “irony” means.

masquenox ,

It’s well known that horrible things happened to animals during the Russian space program.

Yes… “everybody” knows that the “Jewish-Bolshevist horde” couldn’t possibly have an ounce of human compassion for animals, isn’t it?

But hold on there before you start calling for another go at “lebensraum,” Clyde - let’s first check who it is that you are actually comparing them to, shall we?

You sound like a liberal

Stop projecting, liberal - I’m not the one jerking off Cold War propaganda here. You are.

masquenox ,

And rushed it so bad they didn’t have fundamental tech that was applicable to a wider economy

I hate to break it to you, Clyde - but the central technologies developed by the space race was “applicable to a wider economy” on both sides of the Cold War. The USSR had weather and communications satellites, too - unless you want to argue that those served no economic purpose to the USSR, perhaps?. Perhaps you are a bit too dazzled by all the anciliary stuff that dominates your consumerist fantasies? I’m sure you believe NASA’s handheld vacuum cleaners made capitalism better for all the people that didn’t get to live the middle-class WASP dream thanks to the New Deal… but it really didn’t.

Handing off publicly-funded research and development to be used as a means of private profiteering for the capitalist class at the expense of everyone else (including you) is simply the way the US has always done technology - pretending that the USSR not doing the same is somehow a “flaw” is peak neoliberalism.

Their space program was callous towards both human and animal life.

I guess it’s a good thing that NASA wasn’t very forthcoming with their animal experimentation, eh? I wonder if the outcry would have been the same?

Yeah… sounds like Tuesday to me.

Khrushchev also ordered Leonid Brezhnev to head an investigation commission and go to the site.[11] Among other things, the commission found that many more people were present on the launch pad than should have been—most were supposed to be safely offsite in bunkers.

When Brezhnev arrived at the firing range on 25 October 1960, he said: “Comrades! We do not intend to put anyone on trial; we are going to investigate the causes and take actions to recover from the disaster and continue operations”

Afterwards, when Nikita Khrushchev asked Yangel, “But why have you remained alive?”, Yangel answered in a trembling voice, “Walked away for a smoke. It’s all my fault”. Yangel later suffered a heart attack and was off work for months.

After all… we can’t pretend thay the “Jewish-Bolshevist horde” would actually value human life now, can we? What would Reagan say?

Nah, I like my version better.

Yeah, you do, because you’re an edgy liberal self-applying the term “socialist” without understanding what it means because you desperately want to distance yourself from your capitalist and fascist brethren while still buying into the same beliefs they hold on to.

masquenox ,

Nor did I ever mention NASA nor make a judgment on which group was morally superior.

Oh, you didn’t have to - you just stepped in to help on of your fellow libs do a bog-standard and thinly-veiled “Jewish-Bolshevism” jig - that is all.

Aaaaaand…

It’s not terribly surprising that both NASA and the USSR space program did awful things to animals.

…the backpedalling begins.

Not very unpredictable, methinks.

When a magazine goes out of print and/or out of business, do the original 'master files' for each issue still exist somewhere?

Thinking about the gaming magazines I used to read as a kid in the ‘90s. Some of them have found their way online thanks to preservationist efforts, but most are seemingly gone forever. (I’m talking about the particular magazine I read as a kid, many others have complete or near-complete collections available online in the...

masquenox ,

Thinking about the gaming magazines I used to read as a kid in the '90s.

I remember those fondly.

It would be an insanely short-sighted practice to not keep masters of these publications forever, no?

You’re talking about capitalist organisations here… there’s nothing about them that isn’t short-sighted.

The raw files probably take up a few CDs’ worth of space for the entire run of the magazine.

Nope… just one cover page probably takes something around 300mbs at a minimum and could be a whole lot larger depending on the quality of the imagery used (if I remember my time in the printing/publishing industry correctly) Storage of already printed material in those days was always an afterthought.

Do they retain the files forever?

Highly unlikely - a lot of the storage just got dumped at one point or the other since there was really little reason (profit wise) to return to anything at all. There might still be an old Mac sitting around somebody’s garage or backyard which still contains the stuff, but I won’t be holding any hope out for that. There’s always the chance that some employee still has the disks somewhere (you’d be amazed at how necessary it could be have proof that you actually did work somewhere and actually did work on this or that specific thing - the bosses were notoriously petty), and I suspect that’s how a lot of stuff ends up on places like archive.org.

The corporates themselves don’t give a shit - as soon as the profits roll in, it’s all expendable as far as the overpaid geniuses in the fancy offices are concerned.

masquenox ,

If you really want to give your cat dairy as a treat, give them yoghurt - actual yoghurt, not the sugary garbage masquerading as yoghurt.

Just warm it up to room temperature before you do, and don’t overdo it.

masquenox ,

Blasphemer!

masquenox ,

They vote too you know.

Yeah… with “donations.”

masquenox ,

Has anyone thought of maybe getting Biden to open a dialogue with protestors?

And the protestors are just supposed to fall for that?

masquenox ,

Probably not, but it would help him beat Trump.

I doubt that… Biden in up against more than just Trump. He’s basically been painted into a realpolitik corner - and, to be fair to Biden, it isn’t even really Biden’s fault.

masquenox ,

Direct democracy would literally be a popularity contest.

Democracy is not a popularity contest - if that’s what you’ve got, the people organizing the popularity contest have already neutralized democracy a long time ago.

The concept of democracy is compatible with any consensus-based decision-making process that happens from below - once it’s dictated from above… well, you get the picture.

masquenox ,

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve typed here.

But if you call any of what you described democratic, I will say that your bar for what qualifies as democratic or not is so low you’d need a bathyscape to see it.

masquenox ,

See, this is why you don’t get your politics from a dictionary.

a: government by the people especially : rule of the majority

If a was true, where is your universal healthcare?

I could ask a book’s worth of, “If a was true, (insert blatantly obvious contradiction here)” questions that this worse-than-useless dictionary description doesn’t provide answers to.

And that’s just a… it just gets worse from there on in.

Let’s rather try this - why do you think labor unions have been historically necessary? After all… if it wasn’t for labor unions, you wouldn’t even have the week-end - or anything resembling safety regulations. Labour unions are a democratic force (in theory - and sometimes in practice) acting on an anti-democratic power structure (ie, a for-profit, privately owned corporation - in this instance)

If you lived in a democratic society, such a force wouldn’t be necessary, no?

masquenox ,

Oh look… the hasbara has shown up.

masquenox ,

AND Hamas.

And who is going to put up a finger of resistance against your precious genocidal white supremacist settler colonialist project, liberal?

You?

masquenox ,

Why do they always send the poor?

Because we are expendable.

masquenox ,

Something tells me fragging (the original kind) might have a chance of becoming de rigueur again.

masquenox ,

Considering the routine fake heroics ascribed to pig both in games and in movies, you’d really have to go out of your fascist bootlicking way to get your game called “most reactionary.”

masquenox ,

The thing that amuses me about a ‘secret’ society like this is that they are entirely made up of people whose political positions are worn on their red hats- and their cars- and their lawns- etc.

It’s not so much secrecy as just plausible deniability - the same way we know nine out of every ten old white guys in the US political establishment are white supremacists but are given the benefit of the doubt by the media because they don’t use the n-word in public.

masquenox ,

Man, I am so glad I didn’t turn into that - my extended family actually like having me around.

masquenox ,

Nothing shocking, nothing surprising.

We here in South Africa had our turn with US psyop shitfuckery last year.

masquenox ,

A Russian ship docked in Cape Town last year carrying armaments destined for the “War On Terror - Mozambique Edition.” The US embassy pretended it didn’t have access to that intelligence, and accused the SA government of (supposedly) supplying Putin with weaponry. The rapidity with which these accusations was championed by white supremacist political organisations (including the second largest political party) made it all even more suspicious. We literally had people here (you can imagine which kind) calling for the US to regime change us.

The incident raised more questions than anything - but the white liberal media here in South Africa didn’t bother with those… it merely seemed interested in using the entire affair to attack the ANC. It was pretty clear to people here that there was something bigger going on than merely one measly little Russian ship - and, personally, I suspect that the ANC’s “sudden” concern over what is going on in Gaza is a retaliation against the US for this. They sure as hell didn’t have these concerns when they allowed Israel to buy up South African corporations left, right and centre…

masquenox ,

Our government’s grievances are of their government. Not the people.

Have you noticed how all those nukes the US government maintains don’t target governments but population centres instead? The mass-slaughter of civilians have always been the US way - this time, they just did it with misinformation.

masquenox ,

Didn’t say you were… that’s not the point. The point is that the US has always treated civilian populations as perfectly expendable - to be kind of honest, I’m not even sure they don’t see the US population in the same way, either.

masquenox ,

They don’t target population centers, they target military bases that always happen to be near a population center.

That’s exactly the excuse they used to justify every aerially-delivered atrocity from Hamburg to Hanoi. Britain was routinely doing it in the middle-east nearly a decade before the Nazis did it at Guernica.

If you don’t want to believe me, you can believe Curtiss Le May himself.

There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.

The mass-slaughter of civilians was the point then, it’s the point now - the nuclear ballistic missile is simply the logical conclusion to this. It literally allows for mass-murder at the push of a button.

You need to stop confusing the propaganda with the actual reasons.

masquenox ,

So… instead of a conman cosplaying as a fascist, you might be getting a pig - someone well-versed in the business of fascism.

This just keeps getting better and better.

masquenox ,

Aaaaaaand… the word “terrorist” doesn’t appear once in that article.

I guess NBC didn’t think him brown enough.

masquenox ,

Nope. In a hundred years, bog-standard trains will still be a far superior idea.

Capitalism is essentially alive

I think capitalism can be understood as a living entity, a being composed of billions of smaller beings (people), essentially cells. It evolves (legally and through market innovations), has an immune response (police), and grows and reproduces itself (imperialism). The cells are independent life in their own right, but they...

masquenox ,

I’d say it’s more apt to think of capitalism as a parasite that turns all the functions (as you described them) of an organism into something that induces self-destructive behavior that only serves the short-term goals of the parasite - you know, like Cordyceps fungi.

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