I don’t know that I’d agree that the EU and the articles of confederation are comparable. There were a few big differences, including states printing their own currency without a common exchange medium (as opposed to the Euro), and that the mechanism for funding the federal government was (IIRC) entirely voluntary. States could just choose to not send money without consequences, and most or all made the obvious choice of not funding the federal government. The articles of confederation also had a few things about it that were more progressive than the constitution; for example, if I’m remembering right, it offered automatic citizenship to all native Americans, which pissed a lot of the farmer-settlers right off.

This is how nations destabilize. States perpetuate themselves through maintaining the exclusive monopoly on violence and using that monopoly to secure certain guarantees for or against its people. The Roman empire saw a similar decline of administrative willpower and rises in both vigilantism and shitty little civil wars between the wealthy elite who really ran the show (spoiler alert). I’m convinced that Balkanization of the US is, at this point, inevitable. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good or bad thing in its own right. On one hand, it might be better for both the states and the world if we went to more of an EU type structure. On the other hand, a nuclear armed independent Texas.

This is really cool, but it would have been cooler if they’d named their scouting missions Hugin and Mugin, since they’re Odin’s ravens that scour the earth for secrets to give to Odin.

Is this ceasefire deal in the room with us now?

Not to mention everyone buried under rubble.

Good point. I think a bigger problem than the customer facing AIs is going to be the internal ones that make shit up. Someone on here claimed to be working somewhere where they gutted their HR department and replaced them almost completely with an LLM that was fed their documents. They claimed the AI had already told them several blatantly illegal things. Any company that does that is just begging to get sued to death, and I’m sure the investors will be reeeeeaaaaal happy with the, what, 1% they saved by killing HR? I mean, HR aren’t the good guys here, but just imagine a company being brain dead enough to say “hey, let’s get rid of the people that keep us from getting sued to death and replace it with a chatbot lmao”.

It’s got to be more than that. This is a little like saying that there are at least two stars in the sky.

If I was a Cisco investor, I’d be looking to move my money elsewhere. All these companies laying people off, shuttering whole ass teams, and replacing them with non-proprietary and, frankly, unproven LLMs are going to blow their own legs off here pretty soon. I have a feeling that a pretty dramatic change is AI pricing models is coming soon, since all of these companies are providing access to their models for a fraction of the cost to run them, and the VCs are going to want their money back. Is chatGPT good enough at, what is it, 0.004 cents a token? Maybe, I guess, if the ghost of quality control doesn’t haunt you at night. Is chatGPT still good enough at 0.1 cents a token or more, or with surge pricing models? I sincerely doubt it. If openAI implements surge pricing, stay on the lookout for articles about some company or user getting a surprise bill for a million dollars, AWS-style. Given the current quality of LLMs, I don’t think that the cost shakes out for what you get.

Yep, that’s me. You could probably find a few more good examples of me stepping in shit on Hexbear, that’s hardly the first.

I was wondering if this was a legit tribe or one of those shitty “white people desperate to open an Indian casino” tribes with two registered members that are like 1/24000 native American or some shit. I kind of looked them on Wikipedia, they seem legit.

You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it’s exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.

Maybe on paper. IRL, they want that land, and they’ve determined that they’re done killing a little at a time to get it. There are already plans to redevelop the newly occupied parts of Gaza. I wonder if they’ll even bother digging the bodies out of the rubble or just pave over it all and have done. There’s a reason why Nettanyahu funneled millions to HAMAS. The worst outcome for him, politically, is a two-state solution. He needs an excuse to commit genocide and get the rest of the land. That’s partly why they weren’t interested in HAMAS laying down arms; it’s counter to their goals.

Thank you for the correction

Israel hasn’t even bothered showing up to these ceasefire talks, while HAMAS offered to permanently disband. Why bother negotiating against yourself when the other party doesn’t even show up?

The narrative is already being set that he agreed to the ABC debate. So, regardless of conditions, what will be remembered is that he said he would be there, and then wasn’t. I don’t think there’s a way he could safely back out of ABC at this point, regardless of what Kamala does.

It’s not often you find a comment that’s both pedantic and well executed. Good job!

Not sure if you’re trying to disagree with me, but yeah, I said that asystole isn’t among the shockable rhythms.

Idk. I live in a food desert, I’ve thought about trying to scrape up the capital to start a grocery bus to serve my area, but I’m pretty worried about whether I’d be able to pay my bills if I made it my full time job. I’ve pretty consistently heard that grocery is a sector that operates on thin margins, and I wonder if the notable disappearance of small neighborhood grocers over the course of my lifetime isn’t evidence to that end.

It’s my understanding that grocers themselves tend to operate is miserably thin margins, especially when they don’t have the kind of leverage of large, national chains. I know someone whose family operated a community grocery and they were actually relieved when the building caught fire. They didn’t depend on the income, it was just something they took over to serve the community, and it ended up feeling like an anchor around their neck. Seems likely that this is largely an issue that lies with the food producers.

100% agreed. I’m more on the anarcho-commie/left libertarian side of things myself, so I recognize money and markets as being forces that are just as coercive and abusive as any government.