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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 25th, 2023

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  • oh yeah, it’s surely a privilege to be allowed to participate in society.

    the argument “driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege” falls entirely flat on its face when there exist no alternatives for a large majority of people and their lives. hardcore boomer energy that blatantly ignores the reality on the ground.

    i agree, there are people who shouldn’t drive. i wish i didn’t have to drive.

    that simply isn’t feasible in the current reality, tho.

    driving can once again be a privilege only after it returns to no longer being a necessity. it is the natural right of all peoples to participate in their society. i agree with the sentiment, driving is a privilege that should be earned. but we should do ground work to make that true, we can’t just ignore the real world and indignantly say whatever we feel like; real life isn’t harry potter and the symbols and words we create bare no direct power over reality. driving is not a privilege in todays america, you don’t get to be the arbiter of decision here. in a practical sense, driving is necessary. the right to transportation and movement evolves with the age, man; it doesn’t get narrower as time goes on in the way a lot of western law seems to want to imply nowadays.


  • “… get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place…”

    i get the sentiment but i think this is problematic.

    who deserves the right to drive then?

    i hear you, “people who are capable”. but real life isn’t so cut and dry. the way it works in america now is awful fs, you can back this up with death statistics fairly easily; however, i think this tribalistic “us vs them” attitude drivers get is emblematic of deeper problems in our culture.

    everyone is all for the animal farm until they’re the other. cliche, i know, but it’s true.



  • jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.comtome_irl@lemmy.worldme_irl
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    12 days ago

    h3 is an incredibly interesting part of internet fandom/history. my phones about to die but if anyone is into it, i’ve “personally been there” since the very early days of their channel and think i have a decent perspective on the entire dynamic here, i might do a little actual, extensive write up in an edit here when i get home later.

    i find h3 is fun to discuss as throughout his history on the internet he’s unique in of that he has entirely abandoned his audience multiple times. on the outside he’s a hypocrite (which is definitely true don’t get me wrong), but i think “inside” it’s a more machievallian and sinister sort of thing. frankly ethan and hila not only do alt-right dogwhistling better than anyone else; they invented a whole new technique. idk what to call it. but their snake-y nature lets them subvert typical premonitions and community norms time and time again and infiltrate way further into communities any other alt-righter would get nowhere near as close into the spheres of.



  • jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.comto196@lemmy.blahaj.zone11 years ago
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    26 days ago

    i like this comment but i feel the need to reply because it touches upon a pet peeve of mine in linguistics: there is a persistent myth in the modern period that grammatical gender is useless, pointless, or somehow arbitrary and is just some sort of vestigial, rotting, lexical limb that made it to the 21st century by fluke.

    this is simply not true. just because grammatical gender often appears arbitrary or illogical doesn’t mean it actually is. and just because grammatical gender follows many, many rules does not mean there are no rules. grammatical gender is just a fairly common form of noun class system. as with most forms of noun classing, what the rules are in a given dialect can be a little wishy-washy but they are certainly not arbitrary.

    for example, you point out the german Mädchen as an example of illogical noun gendering. this is an opinion often expressed by foreigners learning the language, and even by linguistically-ignorant germans. it makes sense on the face of it, this word has a similar meaning to the english phrase “little girl,” so it is strange the germans decided to sort this word into the neuter gender, no?

    well, no. it isn’t strange and it isn’t illogical, in actuality. -chen is a diminutive in german. for those who are unaware, diminutives are suffixes/prefixes in languages that serve to make nouns feel smaller or more cute in a language. think booklet vs book or dog vs doggie for some english examples.

    what are some examples of more german diminutives?

    das Kätzchen - kitten

    das Hündchen - puppy

    das Plätzchen - a cookie (depends on dialect exactly what this refers to afaik but generally is always some sort of cookie)

    das Ohrläppchen - earlobe

    noticing a trend? these are all neuter! and thus we uncover a little grammatical rule that grammatical gender was trying to tell us. all diminutives are neuter.

    most every “arbitrary” example of grammatical gender people provide has some sort of similar reasoning or rule behind it, some story or information it is trying to give you that makes speaking the language that much easier.

    just because what it is encoding doesn’t seem useful or logical to (rhetorical) you doesn’t mean it is not. grammatical gender is much more than just gender-washing everyday speech for kicks and does carry useful meaning, if you can be bothered to puzzle it out. attempts i’ve seen to “de-gender” spanish (this is just what is local to me) all fundamentally misunderstand what it is they’re even trying to do and often opt for rotely tearing out the entire gendered case system without offering proper lexical and linguistic infrastructure for the language to actually effectively function without it. these attempts sound clunky because they are clunky! and to be perfectly clear i’m not dogging on the premise, just the serious attempts i’ve seen implemented in real life speech and their implementation. i think it’s relevant bc it showcases how modern misunderstanding of what grammatical gender is can realize as actual, negative manifestations in the non-conceptual world. why this is important to think about more than passingly!

    edit:formatting


  • jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.comtome_irl@lemmy.worldMe_irl
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    1 month ago

    oh no the art was made with *gasp* DIGITAL TOOLS THAT ARE NOT ALREADY TRADITIONAL.

    I AM GOING TO FUCKING SEETH AT THE MOUTH

    I AM GOING TO EXPLODE

    EEEEEaaaAAAAAUUUUURGH

    seriously lmao the “AI” hate, as someone working in this field, gets more and more annoying everyday.

    half these people making plagiarism machine jokes probably can’t even tell you what chatGPT and similar models’ tech stacks LOOK like beyond “huuuurrrr it’s an -L. -L. -M. riiight?”

    not to point the finger at you specifically ekZepp, just the general zeitgeist. yes there are ethical issues with the current tools coming out. as someone who doesn’t really believe in the premise of intellectual property, the “copyright” problem is the absolute least problematic thing about these tools.

    what will you do when megacorps sift through their dragon’s hoarde of data in previously impossible sums of time that then enables them to implement actual, dystopic surveillance and policy? do we just sit there and continue throwing tantrums like big babies about “ai took mah jab” and how it’s a garbage worthless excuse for technology? do people like you not realize that regardless of how much emotion juice you put towards the “vibe” of current tools being worthless hacks, that doesn’t synthesize that into reality? these tools are here, they’re real, and people better fucking grow up and learn to live with them rather than complaining endlessly about tenuous ethics issues. seriously. wise up, learn about the cutting edge and where it is today; and then learn how we can use modern innovations to stay ahead in the eternal game of proletarian cat-n-mouse.

    being a stupid, stubborn, bull-headed reactionary about things gets us nowhere and i’m fucking tired of seeing this attitude ALL across the web. you people should grow up. do something instead of puking hate online to make yourself feel better.

    sorry rant over thx for coming to my tedtalk



  • i think the original commenter is just reaffirming the idea presented in the meme by sharing their own conceptions of iran. this highlights how westerners generally seem to view the region.

    i wouldn’t use the word mediterranean here myself but i see where they’re coming from saying that, especially with regards to cultural perception versus the real, lived culture.

    westerners traditionally associate the stylings of like, Parthia or maybe the Sassanids with iran/persia. those cultures are also inextricably linked with a wider western image of the bronze age and greece. i think the more interesting part of note here is that westerners tend to conflate classical cultures as all having a general “vibe” that might be described as mediterranean, and both in the case of modern iran or greece it seems that this lasting cultural image is heavily impressed in the social consciousness


  • i made my comment pretty early before getting up to go vote in our election. i’ll admit i was premature on having an opinion as i just skimmed the content here and didn’t look into things much.

    this project is definitely interesting. i suppose my sentiment initially was less that i don’t trust the cryptography, and more a general weariness of new open source projects. after reading more about the implementation there isn’t anything that jumps out at me as particularly egregious.

    i support FOSS and the related philosophies a whole lot, i believe it to be one of the only ways to take our lives and communities back these days.

    however, with that said, i have to disagree with this sentiment:

    Nobody will be justifying their existence in front of a random internet user.

    random internet users are the open source movement. new projects must justify their existence and trustworthy nature to the community. not that these people haven’t, obviously they haven’t had the chance yet.

    an open mind, absolutely. but history has shown bad actors are abound, as well. i’m not sure what the proper solution here is, and i don’t think anyone else is absolutely 100% certain either. removing trust from the equation isn’t easy.

    idk i’m kind of just babbling at this point tho. thanks for the civil discussion


  • that still isn’t an explanation of how the server supposedly “does not have the means to decrypt them [the messages]”, which isn’t me saying it’s impossible. i’m well aware of possible cryptographic solutions here. but, it isn’t wrong to be sus of this application until the organization/developers have demonstrated a degree of trustworthiness. i honestly don’t see why you would use this over just encrypting and transfering the data yourself using more traditional methods that involve the minimum number of parties. i might just be ignorant of this project, but i’m weary of it until i have a chance for further investigation





  • frankly the amount of downvotes i’m getting combined with the way you immediately begin arguing against me? missing the point.

    after your first rebuttal: can you come up with a way to justify this that doesnt have to do with what doctors are already deciding? i know i might seem like an asshole right now, but i genuinely want to find rhetoric here that works in justifying this point to all people, the place it would be most useful in, not just circlejerking the people who already think this. we can circlejerk all day. doesn’t accomplish anything. you completely are missing the point that arguing against the made point is futile because no true advocates of that point are actually here. does nothing interest you in why the midwest seems to hold that sentiment so dear? or are they just racist yokels to you? are you so blindingly upset by the idea of what they think that you can do nothing but tirade in response to it? jesus fucking christ there will be one singular issue in my life i “both sides” it for, and it’s this. zero fucking empathy from anyone these days.

    second: that’s a valid point, this crowd would likely respond in turn with that exact argument. i guess my response in turn would be i know their argument is invalid, and you in turn giving me the proper rebuttal accomplishes nothing. it would be more conducive to explore why these people respond this way. is it not interesting to you why these people draw an equivalence between “animals” and “man” in the way they do? or are we just going to bookmark them as stupid and forget about it? jesus fucking christ.

    the response here is my exact problem with rhetoric in the spaces i occupy. i don’t want to be binned in with the same right wing dumbasses i detest, obviously, but blindly lashing out against anything that looks like the enemy? despicable. there’s no thought or reason to it


  • i mean this isn’t really my stance but i’d be willing to play devil’s advocate: a human fetus is a child at conception, i just believe in a utilitarian way that allowing for abortion is more optimal for society than not; in the same way we are all okay with regularly performing castration on pets and animals, a practice typically viewed as horrible and gauche but that we accept for a utilitarian reason (i.e, we have all decided that getting your cat/dog “fixed” is acceptable because it makes the pet significantly easier to deal with behaviorally.) this is still castration tho, they suffer many of the same health problems that human beings do when getting prematurely castrated. remember when the whole internet was outraged over castratos from the 1800s and how terrible a practice it was? we allow that to happen daily to millions of pets, and no one bats an eye. why? because we decided it was simply better, more utilitarian. the same applies to being pro choice in this way, if that was your belief system. you can acknowledge that there do exist similarities between murder and abortion, it is intrinsic to the act. you can also hone your rhetoric beyond stupid regurgitation and realize there are more concise and precise reasons to think the “correct” things, and that in spite of you not walking the world this way yourself these rhetorical paths are still incredibly important for the means of outreach. you suffer from a metaphorical head up the ass, friend, at least that’s what it seems. people are so quick to dismiss and judge anything they’re not immediately aligned with now… the divisive nature of the commons will be the death of us


  • it’s very synchronous rather than causal. i don’t think the rhetoric and messaging of the original star wars was for you. if you’re familiar with the concepts and ideas that went into star wars in the first place then, at least imo, it’s a very natural plot turn that threepio was himself built by vader. yes, the story revolves around anakin in this grandiose and cosmic way. that’s a feature, not a bug.