it’d be fun to have LLMs trained only on works from particular eras, so we could talk to the zeitgeist of the sixties or the 1890s or whatever.

@nayele18maybe boo!

"We used to have slack, and productive capacity, but then came private equity and mergers. And now we don’t. The government can’t actually solicit bids from multiple players for most major weapons systems, because there’s just one or two possible bidders. So that means there’s little incentive for firms to expand output, even if there’s more spending. Why not just raise price?" @matthewstoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition

"There is no exit for dictators" by Branko Milanovic https://glineq.blogspot.com/2023/10/there-is-no-exit-for-dictators.html

right-wing politicians have this trick of governing badly, then using the catastrophes that result to do what they always wanted to do but could not have done absent the grave crises they cause and do not let go to waste.

the darkness is always there, just waiting for light to ebb.

it is much easier to know what to condemn than what to support.

@dpp (i can’t find the link?)

@22 this may seem naive, but i think in the 90s we weren’t in denial, we were making progress. these problems were getting better, slowly but surely, without major social ruptures.

the social peace that made that possible has ended. we are more acutely aware of problems we’ve regressed, rather than progressed on. you can take that more overt and conflictual awareness as a sort of progress too. but i think we’d basically all be better off if we cld have maintained the path of peace and progress.

@mike_kraft yes. rotten-cherry picking is a common and very effective tactic. which is why Elon's surfacing of rotten cherries is so helpful to those who would discredit civilized ideas by associating them with unrepresentative less civilized proponents.

@soc i don't think that's the case with cartoonish Twitter left-wing. it's often a performative (however sometimes sincere) radicalism recognizable as such almost everywhere. we're not talking about what might be described as well-considered policy ideas outside of US norms, like national health care.

@mike_kraft it's worth remembering that, in a genuinely representative house of representatives, there will be 4-5 congresspeople belonging to any 1% fringe. representation doesn't imply mainstream. ascertaining power depends upon judgement calls on who else is persuaded or skill at leveraging not-always-democratic institutional levers.

every one who speaks publicly fair game! but taking a side with a caricature in a polarizing conversation may not be a useful way to advance civilized goals.

People expect Elon-Twitter to amplify crazy right wing views. And it does.

But it also amplifies views coded as left-wing, especially in their most extreme, dogmatic, and cartoonish variants.

I think the latter does at least as much of Musk's work as the former.

parasociability has really thrown a monkey wrench into how the humans organize ourselves around trust.

we trust people we feel like we have a relationship with but whom we don't have a relationship with. the stakes we expect to discipline those we trust simply don't apply, but we too often update our beliefs based on what they say anyway, as if surely they'd be careful and have our best interests at heart.

“Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/ ht @a32

“In the 1990s, we believed — nearly every one of us — that we could and would make the world better, that this was achievable, and furthermore that we were well on the way to doing so. That core optimism pervaded everything… This extended yawp of unrecognized grief is what we see now, and not just from those who were alive then and conscious of the zeitgeist. No — we all feel it. It pervades our bones, our minds.” http://www.technologyasnature.com/mourning-in-america/

#ViaRSS

they are straining at their leashes, these idiot dogs of war.

just wait until they poop, then drag them back into the house and slam the door shut.

@djc (i’d have to go back and see! but that’s not the part that appealed to me.)

short-sightedness works better than far-sightedness, for a while.