While I dislike LLMs as much as the next guy, I actually find the use of the term “clankers” to be the opposite of dehumanizing. Admittedly, I think I may be on the more empathetic side, but when I see/hear it used it feels like you are trying to be discriminatory to a race or group of people. I have never considered LLMs or AI to be sentient but that recognition of a pattern triggers an empathy within me that is missing without its use.

I have lost most of my faith in the Democratic establishment and half expect just enough effort to allow the establishment to think they have performed the bare minimum in performative strongly worded hearing confrontation clips a strongly worded letters of condemnation.

I’m glad to see the fascists lose the majority, assuming a peaceful transfer of power of course. I just won’t be very hopeful until:

• The neoliberal democrats lose their primaries to actual progressives
• A sufficient majority of the progressive candidates stand strong against the pressures of corruption
• Things actually start to change

The most vocal people you can imagine with the most radiant ideas have troubles finding stamps for voting.

I don’t disagree that among those who have strong beliefs and are vocal about them are those know how much effort goes into gerrymandering and other methods of “rigging” the vote. Others might feel like there are no candidates that are worth voting for - none that aren’t controlled by the strings held by the owner class. However, that is not the rule.

I also don’t think that more ordinary people who do actually vote agree with either party’s priorities.

The D and R positions are a reflection of the average opinion of people who bother to vote.

Hard disagree. I know polling is flawed and doesn’t focus on actual voters but it very much contradicts you. Exit polling also doesn’t support you, especially considering issues campaigned on vs. issue driving votes.

The D and R positions are just reflections of different groups of people with money and power.

I don’t trust corporate dems anymore. They will literally give a peer permission to tank mildly progressive efforts and then performatively pretend to be upset by it.

They are better than the fucking Nazis on the other side of the aisle but the Democratic leadership are showing themselves to be just as disingenuous.

I think it depends on which family member and how recently he has taken his meds.

He might endorse his own family if he doesn’t run himself. All the benefits, none of the work.

Probably family.

Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them.

For some, sure. For others I think a good part of it is the fear of doing shit that will negatively impact others like them.

I am in a position of privilege and can afford the inconveniences, but what effective act could I take that wouldn’t result in making the lives of numerous other people tip out of balance and potentially cause them or their dependents to become unhoused or go without food or medicine?

For the average person, living has become more and more precarious. We have fewer and fewer safety nets and the rich are quick to make those they have power over feel the pain of resistance first. We have no guarantee of healthcare, less and less food assistance, unaffordable childcare, poor elder care. All purposely done by the capitalist class. This has created a human shield around them.

It’s like the only options are indirectly accelerationist. Cause unavoidable collateral damage, blame those at the top, and hope it inspires those at the bottom to act instead of turn on you? I don’t like that.

Are you telling me that a human sending form messages is in any way comparable to an LLM sending messages?

What matters is that humans used to be involved. Now they just review the results at some point. You are evaluated, chosen, further evaluated, informed, and given answers to questions you might have about a job and the company offering it all by the LLM. Everything that might theoretically be handled by agents saves the company money and let’s them cast a wider net.

Then you’ll be end up working as a reverse centaur for some rich kid’s startup. Sure, you can spend exponentially more time than the company does verifying things or ignoring, filtering through junk… but if you are desperate, unemployed, hopeful…

Theoretically, at least.

How long has it been since you were recruited? I avoid LinkedIn, but I’ve never needed to look for work because my dad knew a guy and I proved competent when that got my foot in the door.

Still, from what I have heard in the last year or so it has become, at least in part, a cesspool of scams and disingenuous employers wasting your time in their search for cheaper labor… both often powered by LLMs.

Because of the way they our political system is set up, and the laws and regulations that surround political spending, money is everything to a party politician even if it isn’t.

As a politician, your party controls everything. They control what committees you sit on, whether or not the rest of the party will vote for something you work on, whether or not you will receive any financial assistance (or opposition) in your primary or general campaign.

What determines your status in the party? How much money you contribute to them via fundraisers. What’s a great, efficient way to raise funds for your party? Fucking over the population by catering to the rich.

That’s what I’m saying. This is why campaign finance laws and regulations need to change. It’s extremely difficult to do anything, even if you get elected, when you don’t have any power.

My comment is from the perspective of politicians, not the average person.

Because everything is about money.

Demonizing the Chinese is silly. Their move for so much control is, in large part, a response to constant sabotage my capitalist interests.

I’m not saying terrible things haven’t been done or won’t be done by them. I’m just stating the fact that you can’t be polite or play nice in a room full of violent fascists looking to make you fail. This is what China learned by watching the cold war with the USSR.

Design is absolutely thriving. Things are made, with great care and precision, to more easily manipulate and mislead buyers and to more easily misinform the population. Most importantly, things are made to more easily extract wealth from everyone else.

What you are assuming, incorrectly, is that the general population is the customer. The general population is, in fact, just another resource for the wealthy and powerful (the real customers).

Or consider “the school staff didn’t immediately notify a parent that they should start beating the trans out of their kid” to be sexual abuse.

the idea was that making electricity and phone service universal would benefit the country as a whole and bring everybody on board with the idea of government doing things for people.

Well, a certain type of folk refuse to rely on the gubmint for anything, but they’ll get mad as hell when the gubmint tries to take away something it was already giving them. That didn’t count, you see.

I haven’t played TF2 in a long time so I can’t comment on that specifically. I just wanted to expand on criticisms. There is a lot to be critical of - the lack of proactivity and resistance to change goes far, far beyond whatever is happening with TF2.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish them ill - I want them to be better. I want to shine light on the bad and hope the public will force them to be better.

Also anticompetitive practices and lying about anticompetitive practices. They take a good chunk of every sale unless the game is wildly successful… at which point the developers aren’t in desperate need of that extra income. Neglecting the entire system for extensive periods of time and rarely being proactive about anything that requires they change anything or do actual work. Their servers often break on Tuesdays with no warning or notice or consistent timing. They had forced arbitration for quite a while and only dropped it because some clever lawyers made it extremely expensive for them to keep using it.

In my eyes, they are a bunch of semi-douchy gamer folks who stumbled into being the most successful digital storefront on PC and have dominated by default for literal decades. They are gamers as such and have had a few decent ideas. They also aren’t obsessed with the next quarter and don’t eagerly sacrifice long term for short term gains. I have no problem giving them credit for that. They also occasionally take actions/stances that, whether or not it is their primary motivation, feel pro consumer to their customers. They are mostly just lazy and hesitant to change anything until forced to - they are absolutely fucking rolling in money and don’t want to mess with a good thing.

If there was a well-funded competitor that wasn’t lead by money hungry asshats, I think everyone would feel differently about Valve.

GOG has its own issues, but honestly I’m just happy they both exist, even with their flaws. In this capitalist hellscape full of businesses eager to harvest every cent possible from customers with no regard for anything but their next quarterly profit… I’ll take heavily flawed.