I should also point out that invoking “secularism” in defense of Israeli brutality is absurd. Religious exceptionalism is a foundational characteristic of that state. The fanatical zealots that run their current government invoke religious providence all the time when rationalizing their own brutal policies. Lastly, the root of US patronage for Israel, the thing that allows the state to persist at all, is evangelical Christians who hope to usher in the end times described by their religion.

Every single rationalization that I’ve heard Israel and the US use for the inhuman violence they are inflicting, if applied consistently, would also justify both October 7 and the behavior of Hezbollah. “We have a right to defend ourselves.” “They deserve it because they are terrorists that target innocent civilians.” “This is our land.” “They hide behind civilians.” “We support our Allies without condition”. Secondly, “secularism” is worthless if it is employed in the the service of racism and fascism. Thirdly, please examine history and realize that all of this brutality always, always sows the seeds of more violence that will be visited upon you later. Israelis are sacrificing their own long term security for the sake of wanton short term bloodlust. It’s sick, self destructive and short sighted.

There is no depth to which Joe Biden will not sink to prop up, arm, cover for, pay, or deflect accountability from Israel. He is a zealot, devoted to a racist, un-democratic state and its culture of ethnic purity and regional domination. He is a monster who would be undeserving of his role as president, if the country he presided over wasn’t itself a violent, racist stain on humanity. Harris should be given an opportunity to course correct, but we all know that she won’t. She has no actual ideology other than self promotion. Her party has been captured monetarily by the Israeli lobby, as has most of congress. Despite a lot of flowery rhetoric, the only consistent US principle is a willingness to ignore US principles if there is profit or power to be had. As a US citizen, I hope our allies realize how duplicitous we are, and how shallow our calls for unity, peace and order are. The US should not be trusted, and our demon child Israel should never, ever be legitimized as anything other than the cancer it keeps choosing to be.

Netflix, Ford, Tesla, T-Mobile, AIG, NextEra, Darden, MetLife, Duke Energy, First Energy, DISH, Principal Financial, American Electrical Power, Kinder Morgan, Dominion, Oneok, Williams, Xcel Energy, NRG Energy, Salesforce, DTE Energy, Ameren, Sempra Energy, U.S. Steel, Entergy, AmerisourceBergen, PPL, CMS Energy, Evergy, Voya Financial, Atmos Energy, Alliant Energy, Match Group, UGI, Agilent Tech

I really cannot fully express how much I have grown to hate all these motherfuckers and their awful work - and I work in Silicon Valley.

This is part of Obama’s legacy.

“Ethically and follicly challenged” Frank Luntz

This take is correct although I would make one addition. It is true that copyright violation doesn’t happen when copyrighted material is inputted or when models are trained. While the outputs of these models are not necessarily copyright violations, it is possible for them to violate copyright. The same standards for violation that apply to humans should apply to these models.

I entirely reject the claims that there should be one standard for humans and another for these models. Every time this debate pops up, people claim some province based on ‘intelligence’ or ‘conscience’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘awareness’. This is a meaningless argument because we have no clear understanding about what those things are. I’m not claiming anything about the nature of these models. I’m just pointing out that people love to apply an undefined standard to them.

We should apply the same copyright standards to people, models, corporations, and old-school algorithms.

The all-encompassing ethos of malicious self-interest that both trump and the crypto community embody makes them a perfect match for each other.

Maybe she’d have done better if she’d taken the opportunity to distance herself from Biden’s genocide policy.

Rich idiots failing upward, unite!

RFK is basically that brain worm piloting a vaguely human-shaped mecha. Tulsi is literally a cult princess. In these regards, they are perfect additions to the shit gibbon’s rogues gallery.

The problem with what creeps like Mann are claiming comes down to the difference between “art” and buying an “interest” in art as a speculative investment. Mann conflates these two ideas, trying to bestow the wholesomeness of artistic expression with his investment business venture. I’m all in favor of getting artists paid, and structuring society in a way that encourages the production of art, but Mann wants to weaken securities regulations and consumer protections to do that. That’s a terrible idea because it will lead to many more people being conned and defrauded.

If investors were merely trying to support an artist’s work, and not seeking to profit from their investment, they wouldn’t need a securities mechanism like NFTs to do it. We already have money for that.

If a side effect of regulating NFTs as securities is to somehow damage the regular fine art marketplace, as I think Mann’s suit is warning, that is no great loss for society. The fine art market is a blight, a fraud-riddled playground for ultra wealthy douchebags to sequester wealth and does nothing to advance art or promote the creation of artworks writ large.

Mann has ridden the crypto speculative bubble and has an inflated impression of the value of his work. He’s carved out a niche as a sort of court jester for billionaires like Mark Andreesen who want to rebuild financial systems in a way that would dismantle the regulatory state and enshrine an elite class as technologically empowered feudal lords. He thinks the money is compensation for his songs, but it’s largely just a side effect of crypto bros forever trying to find a greater fool to hold the bag in a pyramid scheme. In that effort, his lawsuit is basically a marketing campaign for his investment business. I hope the court puts an end to this once and for all, but I’m not optimistic.

Never once did I ‘bait’ or even suggest that people not vote. I’m calling out a candidate’s policy position which is what people do in healthy democracies, but, uh whatever.

Oh. Advocating for a policy and calling out a candidate for their position is anti democratic. Got it.

The problem is that she then pairs those statements with the exact same rhetoric that Netanyahu and Biden use obfuscate the genocide campaign (“will always defend Israel’s right to defend, yadda yadda yadda”). I appreciate that some of her language is a tiny bit better than Biden, but that just not enough. She has to show some of this ‘leadership’ quality that the DNC keeps bragging about. There must be some policy shift proposed. Otherwise her language is about as meaningless as trump’s empty claims that he’ll end the war in Ukraine as president elect.

Not sure if you are responding to a different comment because this is confusing and not really addressing the point I made. Are you suggesting that every single constituent who has an opinion should run for office?

Honestly, how else do you suggest people exert influence over leadership in a democracy? The ‘campaign’ is an inconvenient time to debate these issues. Then, it will be ‘too early’ in her administration to debate these issues (why don’t we just give her a chance after-all!). Then it will be, ‘the electorate spoke when they voted her in. If you didn’t want this, why did you vote for her?’ Then it will be campaign time again.

If her position is an existential threat to her electability, then she is making a huge political mistake by taking this stance and you should call her out for endangering American democracy. If it isn’t, what are you complaining about?

Biden and Harris might be negotiating, but Israel is not. For Biden and Harris to willfully misrepresent that fact is mostly where I base my claims about negotiations being a stalling tactic.

Biden and Harris have done nothing to distance themselves from Netanyahu. If anything, Harris doubled down on her support for his administration in her DNC speech.

Aid into Gaza has been pathetically inadequate. Given that the US is the power broker in this region, it’s difficult to argue that this isn’t intentional.

trump is a monster. No argument there.

I don’t think that Biden and Harris are ‘psychopathic narcissists’. I do think that Biden is ideologically bound to supporting Israel’s racist apartheid goals. I’ve been hoping for meaningful signs that Harris is different than him, but her DNC speech was a clear attempt to align herself with his policies. So, that’s disheartening.

I agree that voting for Harris is harm reduction and that given the options, that course gives us the possibility of influence whereas the alternative prevents that. However, pressure needs to be applied to Harris or nothing will change. Pressure during the election has more efficacy than afterward. If her stance on this is actually enough to deny her the win, then she is making a huge political mistake by ‘cozying up’ to a genocide policy.

I base my ‘intentional distraction’ claim on almost a year of toothless rhetoric from Biden, preceded by decades of similar obfuscations from administration after administration.

For the record, I strongly suspect that the kind of nihilism that you are describing does in fact mostly describe how the US operates. It’s a very succinct explanation of why we are as awful a nation as we are and why we slide further toward autocracy with each administration.