idk. If western governments had any ability to learn or care, WWII surely would have been that moment. But after beating the endpoint of imperialism, they without irony or self awareness, just kept doing imperialism. I’m not holding my breath.

Even if it would, how would it ever get passed when the people who would need to pass it are the ones who are only in office because the system works the way it currently does?

This is just a recurring theme I’ve found when talking with liberals. They like to think about and suggest all sorts of policy ideas as though all we’re missing are some smart ideas nobody has thought of. It’s one thing to say we should have this, but it’s another to have any idea of how it’d be possible to do. Since they have no actual analysis of the system, they’ll just turn around and tell you to vote or call your representative. “We should get money out of politics!” “Yeah, well we checked with the people giving us money and they said no. So…”

idk, for me Apple has been kind of hit or miss. There’s some good stuff on there, but I’ve run into plenty of boring generic shows/movies too.

Also I’ve noticed that the shows all kind of look… similar in a way that’s hard to pin down. I think it has something to do with lighting or saturation or whatever, but they all kind of have this grayish feeling to them.

We live in a country that was stolen then we stole some other people so they could do the work for us. Then conquering half a continent wasn’t good enough for us, so we went around ruining other places if they didn’t want to give us all their stuff. If people think we only recently crossed a line, I’d generously hope they were just ignorant because the alternative is horrific. Every piece of the past is a step that got us to where we are.

True, but also don’t allow perfection to be the enemy of good.

I think this logic fundamentally misses the point. This isn’t me not starting a project because I don’t think I could do it perfectly so why bother. It’s someone else showing me their outline for the project and telling me that I don’t need to do anything, they’ll get it done on time. Then it doesn’t get done because they never intended to do anything, they just didn’t want anyone else completing anything.

If we were just doing small things because that’s all we could feasibly do for now and we’re working our way up to big things, that’d be fine. It might not be enough, but it’d be what we’re working with. But the small actions being taken by capitalist governments aren’t designed to chip away at the problem slowly. Their purpose is to give the appearance that the current system is capable of solving the problem and someone is working on it, so we don’t need to think about more radical solutions. The goal is to block progress, not merely to work on it in some slow and responsible way. “Look, the government joined a non-binding agreement saying that we’re working on climate change! We should totally keep voting for them because it’s better than nothing!”

It’s even worse than that though. They’re not just doing things for show to dampen political will for greater change. These are the same people that keep giving the military, surveillance, and police state more and more money and power. We are allowing them to build the tools they need to keep us in our place. By continuing along this path we’re making it harder and harder for us to eventually do what needs to be done.

The reality is that we’re not going to be able to save ourselves while capitalists are in charge. Capitalism fundamentally demands endless growth and a concentration of wealth and power. Efforts to curtail that growth will be stopped and the costs of that growth is distributed to those with less power.

As for the science/science communication part of this: I think it should be pretty clear that that isn’t the problem. The science is well known at this point. The problem is that the people who have the power to fix things don’t care and are so invested in the status quo that they’d sooner ratchet up violent repression before they’d actually try to solve the problem.

I think this message has good and bad uses. As a way to stop people from being doomers and not taking any action? Great. But I’ve also seen this kind of argument be used to justify an incrementalist approach to an issue that we absolutely cannot afford to go slow on or half ass. If we take 1 step forward and 2 steps back we’re going to lose. And that’s if the problem was linear. The fact that feedback loops accelerate the problem means we lose more and more ground the longer we wait to rip the bandaid off.

If the best allowable solution is to keep electing liberals who take money from capitalists to promote symbolic progress or “market based solutions” while continuing to approve new fossil fuel projects, then we really are doomed.

Actual greatest thing you could do for climate change: destroy the US military industrial complex. Not only is it a massive polluter, it also enables the capitalists to maintain their ability to extract fossil fuels and other resources around the world.

Quit it with the anti-human shit. If we’re not saving the environment for us what’s the point?

Same. I was also talking with some friends that have it and they also think I might. I already got a mess of other issues. I guess I’ll ask at my next psych appointment and see if I need to add that to the pile.

You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard for publishers with billions of dollars to hire enough competent devs for enough time to make a halfway decent storefront, especially when they don’t even have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of UX and marketing research that’s already been done for them by Steam existing as long as it’s had.

That none of them have even come close to that is a monument to their incompetence.

Yeah wouldn’t it be crazy if we created a super weapon which destroys entire cities planets and then demonstrated it on a civilian population? That sure would be a step too far for this beacon of peace, freedom, and democracy!

That’s fair, but I think it comes down to what the actual power dynamics of the space is. If you’re in a group that’s systemically discriminated against, just ignoring it means putting up with discrimination. Not getting good jobs, getting harassed by police, etc. you have to actively fight back against that.

Some dipshit online complaining about seeing a black person in a movie? They only have power proportionate to the attention they get. Let them scream into the void. If they get a comment, it validates what they were saying and gives them another opportunity to respond with even more bullshit that they know will have an engaged audience. If they get nothing, what are they gonna do? Reply to themselves? Keep making posts that get no attention? At some point they’ll just get bored or demotivated. If they do keep being a nuisance you block and/or ban them silently. EDIT: Oh, also, besides the personal validation, there is the algorithmic aspect to consider. Algorithms direct people to things that will hold their attention and get more engagement. The more you talk to these people the more people will get them shoved in their faces.

People talk about not platforming these people, well, every comment interaction they get is a new tiny stage for them to stand on.

What’s Britain’s excuse then?

I feel like we should have just ignored these people. Deal with the ones who become problems, but otherwise not dignify their nonsense with a response. “Why is this movie so WOKE?” … “So anyway the CGI in this movie was pretty bad right? lol.”

We spent the last 2 decades feeding the trolls. Making them think they mattered even if it was to be hated or ridiculed by their enemies.

Oh. Yeah. Maybe he just meant “last” as in the one prior and not last as in final? Idk.

Idk if this distinction works for anyone else, but in my mind places like Reddit or Lemmy aren’t the same thing as “social media” because they maintained the anonymous forum structure. The activity on the site isn’t centered around people and personalities, it’s the content being discussed.

I’m sure he would have appreciated some AC though.

There’s a difference between conspiracy theories and having an analysis of incentives and structures.

There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy for profit seeking corporations to decide not to invest their money into something they think won’t return as much profit.

As for everything else staying shitty, why would corporations spend money on lobbying and campaign contributions if they didn’t expect it to make them a profit? Obviously those corporations want less taxes, less regulations that might cost them money to comply with, and the more of the economy that is privatized, the more opportunities capitalists have for making more profits.

That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s a basic understanding of economics and political economy plus some history.

I think what’s interesting about the conflicts that do arise in Star Trek is that while they often mirror issues we have today in some way, it’s being grappled with by people and a system that has purposefully turned away from greed and cruelty. They might not always get things right, but it’s not because of some special interests making it that way, it’s just because even in the future humans are humans and they make mistakes and have blind spots.

For example, I was thinking about that episode of DS9 that dealt with Bashir being genetically modified. Obviously it’s some mix of discussions about GMOs, steroids, and one of those imperfect fantasy/sci-fi racism analogies. You’d kind of hope we have stuff like that sorted by the future, but it’s kind of understandable why they have this quandary. The reasons for keeping genetically modified people out of star fleet isn’t entirely without reason and is clearly not coming from a place of cruelty, but it’s also hard to get around the fact that this is still discrimination based on something someone was born with. But nobody really specifically stands to benefit from the status quo. So you just have the matter at hand with no clearly perfect answer getting discussed honestly by well intentioned people.

Section 31 definitely doesn’t fit that mold. It’s some last vestige of a system that prioritized a self-serving order held up by force. I think to the extent that it has any place in ST, it’s something like how it was handled in DS9 where our characters were actively trying to uncover a rogue organization instead of it just kind of being a part of Starfleet like in Discovery.

My parents have the longest, most obnoxious ring tones for texts on their phones.

Do I think it’ll happen? Yes, even if it’s not good, because AAA companies are cheap and have no taste. They thrive on just spewing out more content than a smaller studio could make, quality be damned.

That said, whether or not it COULD be useful in the future I think depends on the context and how well you could tune the models.

I think it has absolutely no place in a narrative game where intentional authorship is what people come for. Even if it’s passable, I want to know that what I’m hearing or reading was something SOMEONE wanted to say.

But I think it could be interesting in more open ended, replayable sim games where you want to be able to try a wide variety of approaches and have different experiences each time, but it would be impractical for a dev to implement all those possibilities to the point where players would feel like the game adequately responds to their actions. However, I don’t think you could just drop a copy of chat gpt in there and call it a day. You want different NPCs to be different and you want some consistent reality that they all exist in and respond to. So you’d probably need to put in some constraints based on some hidden file describing a particular world gen’s state. A basic example would be the NPC knowing that the town you asked about is to their north or perhaps an existing relationship between 2 characters.

Idk how technically feasible this would be, but it’d be a cool tool in the right context if done right. I think the key here is it can be good when it enhances what you want to do and you put in the effort to make it work vs just using it as a lazy shortcut.