When I was in highschool, a student I was sat next to found out I was an athiest. He rotated a full 90 degrees in his chair at me, and with an excitement shared only by inventors and engineers finally getting to see their ideas actually working in the real world, he asked me: “Where did dirt come from?”

I told him, “I don’t know what dirt is.”

Quizzically, “Dirt. Like, in the ground.”

I tapped my shoes on the floor. “Home Depot.”

This was, apparently, as far as his anime-villain machinations could take him. He quietly rotated back to the table and drew a school bus or something—I don’t remember what we were doing in art class.

Far from the worst encounter a person could have, but I think about it all the time.

Would ‘it’ be Asahi? I’ll check it out. I’m not quite sure what my needs are yet; I have a gifted work laptop that needs some purpose other than the paperweight it is now, but Asahi might do it.

What if that pedestrian was Donald Trump?

Drunk driving, like, as a rule, is really, really bad. It’s incredibly very awful. … But I’m still gonna pop the shampaign.

Wait, there’s a distro for macs? I need one of those.

Last I looked months ago, all I remember seeing was “you can load linux, but it’s hard and you might lose the mac forever.”

The LLM still produces what its user intends it to produce.

The lot of you people always front this idea, figuratively, that the way the robot works is it connects to the user’s brain and then downloads the picture they want to produce, and then simply displays it for them. The act of writing a prompt is merely the interface by which this brain-to-brain connection happens.

I don’t know how else to say this: that is fucking ridiculous. It’s so mind meltingly stupid, I think you’re lying to me.

I have to ask: is AI not supposed to revolutionize the working world? You don’t have to bother yourself with the particulars of writing a good text summary anymore, but also, you’re somehow in full control of what it does? You no longer need to be a trained artist with a good understanding of color theory to produce great works—this is the great democratization of art—but also, the colors chosen were naturally the ones you would have chosen anyway; you are a big, smart boy, after all.

just like one doesn’t think about ever single filler word that’s only there for grammatical purposes in writing

If you had ever written anything worth talking about, you’d recognize that your filler words, or their absense, add a lot of color to your writing.

I think you let the robot write filler words for you because you don’t actually know what they mean. You’ve never thought about them.

This is a phenomenal example because, when I write comments, this one even, I reread them 4, 5, 6, 7 times checking for syntax and grammar errors, brevity, tone, voice, whether I’m being too aggressive, whether I’m not being aggressive enough; but you imagine the filler is just busy work keeping you from jerking off a seventh time.

You seem not to understand that, if you think this filler is so beneath caring about, I’d prefer you just cut it out entirely. Speak like a caveman for all I care. Why would I want you to generate a bunch of filler words when neither you nor I have any idea what they’re doing there?

I’m not even really talking about AI anymore: why are you writing filler words in your responses? Stop. Like, seriously. Cut that shit out. I’ll slap you with the ruler, I swear.

I think it makes sense to compare image genAI to photography.

As a photographer, nope.

Legit, I’m not even reading the rest of what you said. This photography point is so mind numbingly boring at this point.

• people taken w/o violating any actual crimes - the detention facility is for those suspected of immigration crimes

Wow.

You know, it’s no wonder you live in a red state; you’re still bought into the republican propoganda. I believe you that the “immigrants” rounded up into unmarked ICE vans will be tried fairly, and only the vile criminals among them will be deported to an El Salvador slave camp.

• the intent was genocide - intent for detention facility is temporary holding until people can be tried or deported

Deporting people en masse is genocide.

even the conservative Supreme Court would very likely strike this down.

The conservative justices are loyal to the Republican party. The Republican party does not want to be held accountable. What on earth gives you the idea they’ll want to strike this down?

Look at Trump’s approval rating.

His approval rating is only down among Republicans because his tariffs have been hurting them and not the brown people they voted to kill.

They thought the white ethnostate Trump would usher in would make them lions among sheep, and they are only upset that they are among the sheep.

—Not to mention, listen to any on-the-streets interviews with republican voters about their disapproval, fucking all of them say they’d vote for him again.

it could get very spicy indeed.

Absolutely beside myself at your cavalier attitude. I do hope your state gets everything it voted for.

“Russians do X,”

*Russia.

You keep making this mistake. I’m starting to think you’re doing it deliberately.

Because propaganda associated the terrible actions of the Japanese government with the Japanese people

Are you not reinforcing the idea that a country’s name refers to its people by insisting that everyone else and not you are the ones nefariously conflating the two?

The idea that a people are the same as their country is nationalism. How are you battling nationalism by preventing people from saying a country’s name?

If you said “Netanyahu did this,” and fair, he does a lot of things, would the racist not assume that the Isreali people elected him and thus agree with him anyway? Because they’re “of the same kind.”

You seem to think that their racism is derived from a simple misconception and not, like, a deep-seated fear and paranoia.

If you see someone say “Isreal does this,” then assume they mean the state. If you see someone say “let’s bomb Isreal into the shadow realm,” then politely snap their neck. It’s not that hard.

You think that caging brown people “for no reason” is a disgusting comparison to the Holocaust?

This is unreal. I didn’t see this conversation coming at all. You’re actually doing nazi apologia. You’re refusing to acknowledge the pressure building in your pipes only because the pipes haven’t burst yet. How many brown people do you want to die before you’re willing to concede this? Do we need to wait until the full 6 million?

they do have to follow US law in how they treat people

No. They don’t.

• Neither Democrat congress members nor journalists are allowed to see what’s happening inside that camp. Rather, they are, legally, but they’re being prevented from doing so anyway.
• The Democrats are weak and refuse to punish Republicans for anything. If there is no threat of punishment, they can just do whatever they want. Republicans have abused this weakness of Democrats like 5 billion times.
• The Big Beautiful Bill includes a provision that judicial funds cannot be used to pursue rulings. This passed, so, if it can’t be repealed, this means it is illegal to use funds intended to punish criminals to seek punishment for Republicans breaking the law. This kills the law.

Call them out on actual policy issues

Call them out for being evil. Their policies are evil.

If the majority of Republicans are not evil, as you say, then they should have no problem dropping the line. They can form a new party, and the current one can be dropped into a wastebin in hell.

I said it shouldn’t only be easy.

and glamorising the fact that things had to be fought over more than a lifetime.

Those people are stronger than you, so sure, yeah.

I can just call the US government support number to voice my disapproval, can’t I?

Let me lay out a strategy for you:

VISA has decided conservative authoritarianism is cool.

We bully them into rescinding this.

Later, VISA decides again that conservative authoritarianism is cool.

We bully them into rescinding this.

Later, when we have the means, we take their processor from them.

Now, we don’t need to bully them. We own the processor. We decide what it does.

The above plan is, literally, all I’m arguing for. You’re with everything until that final step. Why are you so against taking power?

If you don’t trust the people in government, you should be in government then. Join your own country’s, pressure the US.

If you would like “we” to be International, by all means. Go for it. I won’t stop you. I don’t need our PayPal to be owned by the US. Maybe all countries have their own PayPal. Maybe the UN governs one.

None of these problems get solved whatsoever, though, if you refuse to be in power. One day, VISA will just stop taking your calls. You’ll get an answering machine that says, “We won the game for control of the world. Eat shit.”

where people attribute problems to the people of a nation rather than its leaders.

But you’re the one doing this. I’m not conflating people with country here. OP isn’t either.

Yet we get hate crimes against the people that come from a region just because their government did something stupid.

Are you proposing that racists, when they hear “Russian government” instead of “Russia,” will stop being racist? I don’t really know what to say to that.

The problem is people wanting to force others into their worldview,

No, I will force nazis into my worldview, actually. They can come willingly, or we can beat them into submission like we did 80 years ago.

What, actually, is wrong with you? Building alligator auschwitz does, in fact, make you a bad person—if you seriously disagree with this, then you and I are enemies.

“Americans do X”

*America. Look at the title again.

I gotta be honest, I don’t understand what you’re fighting for here. That people in Finland will have a slightly better opinion of you? Mexico will know you’re one of the good ones?

Russia has done a lot of disagreeable things, I’ve got to imagine its people are pretty upset about it.

anyone affiliated w/ him

Well, this is what I’m asking for, so I sure hope so.

but it’s probably somewhere between Trump and Bush.

So, keep in mind, republican voters are not upset with Trump because they’ve decided they no longer want a border wall. The architects of Project 2025 don’t need anything from Trump but political power, which they already have.

The next election cycle, if it’s real, I do imagine will swing back, but it cannot just “swing back,” it needs to deal with the sickness plaguing the US. That sickness is the republican party. That sickness is the republican voter.

What if they said employees of your company all support a thing? That would include you.

But no one is doing this. America is a state.

shouldn’t

Shouldn’t?

because that’s better?

It is better.

I don’t trust the US government to not immediately misuse their power

Sounds like you should be involved, then. To keep them in check.

Why not enforce these standards through legislation, then? Doesn’t the world’s payment processor, a political body you can’t appeal to when it fucks up, seem a bit heavy-handed?

There should just be a nationalized payment option.

I realize this sounds ridiculous given Trump’s government, but do keep in mind that Trump is the private sector. Ultimately, he represents credit card companies in this fight.

Is it a good thing that conservatives want to dismantle USPS? I don’t think so.

Only in the sense that crypto is an alternative payment method in the same way that pulling out is an alternative to condoms.

If Trump comes out and says some dumb shit, you can’t just say “AMERICA WANTS THIS”, because that is obviously untrue.

You need to realize how insanely defensive you’re being. Why? For what?

Think about what you’re arguing for for a second: America doesn’t want AI, only Trump’s administration does. Is this not all of politics?

“America doesn’t want free health care, only some of its democrats do.”

“America doesn’t want ranked choice voting, lots of people in Wyoming hate ranking things. And math.”

“America doesn’t want gay marriage, there are still lots of people really upset about that supreme court ruling.”

You’re drawing a scenario in which “America” can’t actually “want” anything because no one ever agrees on who America is.

I’m being competely serious: you need to unwrap your ego from all this. This isn’t about you. ICE raids aren’t your—you specifically—your fault. No one is saying it is.

America is a really, really big machine, and sometimes it does things I don’t like. Sometimes it does things I do. You know what I mean?