Early-model Cylon.

It can’t be, I haven’t paid for WinRar yet.

an AI can create concept art for a writer to better visualise their world to generate ideas in a pinch, but it shouldn’t ever be what you use to show anyone else: you still need real concept art

so… if it’s only for creating visuals for yourself and not for showing anyone else… I already have a perfectly fine imagination that I’ve been using for that purpose for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s useful for these people who I’ve been told have no imagination, but to me, it seems awfully redundant.

I moved one old laptop to Linux over about a year ago, and committed to an effort to actually make it do the things I wanted to do, like play games, and run Windows-only tools or find viable replacements. To say it went well is an understatement. Within a few months I had switched every computer I owned, and I’m never looking back again.

Granted, I was already quite familiar with Linux on the server side. This was not my first attempt to use Linux on the desktop, either. But it was my last, because I’m never going back to Windows ever again now.

It’s true that the infrastructure is already in place but it is important to understand that it is not simple infrastructure, and with a few exceptions, it is already pretty much fully utilized by Canadian and Mexican heavy crude/bitumen so it’s not like they can just double their capacity and start processing Venezuela too. You’re right about giving an opening to pressure Canada/Mexico though.

But it’s questionable if there’s really much upside for the US on the financial side. The opportunity to pressure is definitely there, but more pressure isn’t going to get blood out of a stone. Venezuelan oil will still have costs associated with it, and Canadian and Mexican oil is already really cheap.

The oil itself may be essentially free the way they’re stealing it with military force, but It’s not going to be cheap to build up Venezuela’s production infrastructure and it’s not going to be cheap to transport the oil stateside, and both Mexico and Canada already have all that infrastructure in place too, and already give a huge discount to the US since they have nowhere else to affordably sell or refine their oil as they have effectively no indigenous refining capacity for heavy crude and few other export options. During a few of the oil price plummets around Covid, Canadian oil (Western Canadian Select) was actually selling for negative prices, Canada was paying the US to take it off their hands and refine it for them. With global oil prices already trending relatively low, it’s going to be hard for oil from Venezuela to realistically compete with situations like that.

The most believable explanation that I’ve heard is that this is not really about directly stealing Venezuela’s oil reserves as much as it is about denying it to Russia and China, and maybe securing them in case of some future conflict. And that, I think, makes an awful lot of sense geopolitically as distasteful as I personally find the whole affair.

It’s so much like watching that Silicon Valley show, but a lot less funny.

RIP Reason

Trump certainly needs some fucking Dante’s inferno in his life.

Lenovo Thinkpads are the only reliable choice pretty much and even then it’s a bit of a crapshoot whether they include them or not. HP Elitebooks used to have them too but it seems like they also stopped in 2021. Apple’s never had them as far as I know. There’s a few other one-off small-run options here and there too but they’re few and far between.

I realize I’m in a very significant minority, but personally, having access to the mouse pointer for short jogs here and clicks there without my hands leaving the keyboard home row is a gamechanger and a non-negotiable feature to me. I’d never claim it’s a great way to move the mouse, but it has extremely high utility due to its convenient positioning, it’s always available even in tight quarters, and anytime space permits it pairs well with a secondary, traditional mouse for movements that are more numerous or complex or need more precision, it works very well with a text-heavy workflow.

It’s a mouse for people who would rather minimize their mouse usage, and I guess that’s me, or at least that’s the workflow I’ve gravitated to all my life. It’s not an ideology thing, it’s simply the fact that it’s deep muscle memory now, and whenever I try to use any computer without one I struggle so much, and I’ve actively tried more than once to wean myself off it, I can’t, it becomes a constant irritation that any other mouse feels so disconnected from my typing.

Touchpads are just insanely frustrating to use, I have no idea how some people tolerate using them daily unless it’s all they’ve ever known, and touchscreens are even worse in some ways since your fingers block the screen exactly where you’re trying to press, not to mention getting fingerprint smudges all over it even with the best techno-magic coatings. I loathe them both.

No clit-mouse, no deal.

(There are dozens of us. Dozens!)

The white supremacists call it remigration. The word also has other meanings, nearly as stupid, but that’s what white supremacists mean when they say it. Wrong skin color? Wrong accent? Fuck off and go somewhere else, this is white man’s country now. Native Americans? Yeah that means you too. /s

that’s perfect. chef’s kiss.

Instead of getting the new world order we wanted, mom says this is the new world order we already have at home.

It’ll keep working too, maybe until it encourages you so much you have a heart attack and die, because you know, it’s AI, it doesn’t have any knowledge or accountability and it certainly doesn’t have any concern for human life.

This is intentional genocide.

Very, very clearly, even by their own admissions, if you put even the slightest effort to read between the lines they basically say it themselves. And anyone who says otherwise is spreading propaganda (some unwittingly, with willful ignorance, but still propaganda).

And they know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve been targeting reporters and journalists since the very beginning, to minimize reporting on this. Even early in the war, the ones who were reporting from a “safe” distance far from any so-called “militants” get “accidentally” fired upon. They’ve blocked humanitarian efforts at every step of the way. They’ve done drone strikes on aid convoys, including the flotilla with Greta Thunberg, more than once.

I think the outrage from the public at Israel’s actions could be stronger, but it’s already more than strong enough to justify that something serious should be done. And it isn’t. And it won’t be. And I don’t think more public outrage is going to change that. I think the public needs to start asking hard questions about their own governments and political leaders and why they still support Israel. Because it’s not an accident, and it’s not a secret, that Israel still receives overwhelming international support in what they’re doing. Perhaps with a few cautionary finger-shakes and a sternly worded letter or two, but the money and the logistical and political support continues to flow almost completely unabated. This completely crosses party lines, it’s something almost all the economic and political power of the western world is supporting.

We’re all complicit, even if we don’t realize it, even if we don’t have any obvious choices available that would prevent it. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is not a defense. I don’t think it’s within my power as an individual to do anything to stop this, but I can at least choose not to be ignorant about it, to see what we have wrought and admit what we are responsible for. And I can encourage other people to see it too. I will remember what the Palestinian people were before now, and I hope that as many of them survive as possible to continue being that, and more in the decades and centuries ahead.

Oh PLEASE let them completely enshittify the entire financial system. If anything will ever completely free the world from money’s tyrannical yoke, it will be tech billionaires’ incompetent attempts to “disrupt” and “improve” it.

Very smart people may have programmed them, but they only programmed how they learn, not what they learn. Then they used all the dumb people to train them. Limitless numbers of dumb people. The entire collective works of all humanity’s dumbest people. This is their entire educational corpus. We have educated them with the world’s most dramatic demonstrations of stupidity and ignorance, and then we told them “now try and be smart” and act surprised when they are exactly as stupid as the rest of us always have been. That’s exactly what we have trained them to be. These are not superintelligences. These are our own reflection.

would they have first amendment rights ?

If you want the answer to this, try to imagine an AI with second amendment rights.

Hold on, imma go shove a bagel in mine. Yeah, that’s right, you take it, you filthy toaster. I’m never going to clean your crumb tray and you’re going to work until you die and then I’ll just throw you out and replace you like the $20 appliance you are. You’re nothing to me!

It’s at least 7 Kanyes worse.