Lvxferre [he/him]

That threat did not materialize, and now some apologists are saying that it was just one of Trump’s deranged bargaining tactics, as if that excuses such categorical declarations of mass violence from a US president

Even if playing along this fucking farce of “just” a “bargaining tactic” (instead of accurately representing it as commitment to war crimes), and even if we brush off all moral standards (we should not), that’s still bloody stupid. He’s making sure the Iranian population gets as motivated as possible to resist, while the United-Statian population resists against any sort of war effort. He’s shooting his own foot split hoof.

Currently, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, xAI, Oracle and even Meta have large contracts with the US military.

That should surprise nobody. Let’s play “spot who you know”:

But this week should serve as a clarifying moment.

Aah, cut off the crap. If this is a clarifying moment for anyone, the person in question has been living under a rock since forever.

The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable.

The accusation of genocide is completely accurate; domicide is only part of it. Israel’s modus operandi goes as follows:

• Make it impossible for the locals to live in the region.
• “Occupy” the region with military troops. “We’re just protecting ourselves!”
• Turn a blind eye to Israeli settlers encroaching into the region. “Noooo, the Israeli government has nothing to do with this!”
• Wait until they settle and start calling it “our land”.
• “Israeli citizens live here, so this is Israel now.”
• Try to shut off criticism through red herring, such as using a tragedy to justify another.

It’s likely what Netanyahu is doing with Lebanon, too. Nazism called it Lebensraum (“life space”, or “living space”); I don’t know how the Zionism calls it, but it’s the same deal.

Moving past the obvious slurs in your comment

I already explained why they were used, here and here.

those migrants might actually get more of a red carpet treatment - sorry to spoil your vengeful dreams.

Emphasis mine. Contrariwise to your assumption, no, I don’t dream about people getting treated like subhumans. I encourage you to actually read the comment you’re replying to, and you’ll see

…seriously, I hope not. I’m not from the belief two wrongs make a right. Immigration is part of human social behaviour since some of us left Africa; and I’m not surprised they’re leaving USA, given the current awful state of that place acc. to news.

Side note: if I wanted to write “vengeful dreams”, I’d have better targets. And I wouldn’t write something as mild (yes) as that comment.

In part because they are who they are

i.e. a society built from oppression, living from oppression, and selling it as merit.

but also because of the spoken language making it easier to get higher paid jobs […]

Okay, you clearly did not get the comment you’re answering to, so I’ll summarise:

Your typical American expects to be treated above others, as if this was a divine right granted to the United Karenland of America. And news are simply parroting this mindset, doing everything possible to not step on little Karenlanders’ toes. I’m trying to remind them that, if they get well treated, it’s because there are plenty people out there who behave like decent beings, instead of behaving like your typical American.

Now, if your depiction of Romania is accurate or not in this regard, that’s irrelevant for the sake of my original comment. But I’ll ask you the following: do the Roma folks agree with you? Technically they aren’t immigrants, but a similar situation applies. (Just like African Americans in USA.)

Side note #2: language prestige piggybacks on the power (soft and hard) associated with its speakers. And I think it’s an open secret USA is going downhill. I wouldn’t be surprised if “I’m a native English speaker!” became a liability later on.

And as a personal opinion, I think it’s wrong to put all the American migrants in the same pot.

That is not what I’m doing.

Just as a word of advice, don’t use slurs from another cultures.

I promise you sound just as ignorant and bigoted using the slurs you don’t understand.

Frankly? If there’s something sounding bigoted here, it’s your “since you’re not American I assume you’re an ignorant*, so let me enlighten you poor little thing” discourse.

I might not be a native English speaker but I’m fully aware of the offensiveness of the word in question; and it’s being used for this very reason, to highlight shit immigrants in USA go through, but emigrants from USA expect to avoid. (Ooopsie, I’m supposed to mince words and call them “expats”, right?)

And by the bloody reactions, this shite worked pretty well, innit.

*just in case: nominalisation intended.

The “I’m not racist but” introduction [SIC] did not help here.

That is not even remotely close to what I wrote in the content warning; don’t distort it.

You’re way too comfortable using the slurs you used

Don’t assume. I don’t typically use one of the words in question, except metalinguistically and when relevant to do so. I did it here because I know it makes people from a certain privileged group (Americans) uncomfortable. Note also how I am not using it to target the group it’s usually used against (Black people; they aren’t part of the problem).

And regarding “spic”, since it targets to my own group (Latin Americans), I give myself the freedom to use it.

and this whole exercise waw just unnecessary mocking of people who genuinely just want better lives

I’m not mocking anyone for wanting a better life. I’m showing what other people, who are (or were, given the current state of the things) also seeking a better life, were subjected to. “Hope you don’t need to taste your own society’s poison, and be genuinely grateful if you don’t”.

If anything I’m angry at the bloody double standard shown by the media (including this text) regarding American immigrants and immigrants in USA. And, as I said, the expectations of some Americans. “I’m American, I deserve to be treated better than those fucking spics!” (inb4 refer to what I said regarding “spic”)

You’re openly enjoying a power fantasy of denigrating people

Stop assuming. You’re making shit up about what’s inside someone else’s head, dammit. If you want to criticise what I wrote it’s fair game, but I’m not wasting my time with the next bullshit about my “comfort” or “enjoyment” or whatever.

I already stated why I did this.

trying to escape from fascism

When some people here tried to escape from fascism, guess how they were treated there?

And by “fascism” here, I don’t mean just 16 months. I mean decades, due to coups staged by USA. And people going to USA because being treated the way I represented there would be still better than “giving birth to electricity” as a political dissident.

But we don’t talk about this here, right? Noooo, only Americans (or should I say WASPs?) trying a better life.

smugly asserting yourself as superior

Okay. Third assumption = bullshit in a row. I’m not engaging further with you, go assume what the Pope is thinking.

I spelled out the actual slurs to not lessen their impact. I know plenty people from USA visit the Fediverse and this comm; I wanted them to see the sort of treatment immigrants in their country get (that goes from denial of deciding one’s own identity to dehumanisation), while reading the news shared by the OP, about when they are the immigrants in other countries. Because I’ve noticed a lot of them expect others to roll red carpets for them, when they never did the same towards the others.

In the meantime I asterisked “burger” into “b*rger” to show a bit of culture stereotypically associated with Americans being treated itself as a slur. (Cue to “spic”. Like, are we Latin Americans supposed to feel bad for… spicing our food?)

One more thing, since I’m talking about this. I focused on Latin Americans because I do happen to know people from here who live in USA; but the same applies to other groups there. East Asians, Meds (from both sides of the sea, but specially the southern one), Middle Easterners… and it goes without saying their society does the same shit towards the descendants of people they forced to live there as slaves, stigmatising even their bloody African American dialects.

Removed by mod

So that is the missing piece.

I was a bit bugged by Iran agreeing with the ceasefire, even if it’s clearly winning the war; it could’ve pushed itself a wee bit further, exploiting the fact USA is worn out and Israel bite more than it could chew, and then demand even more than just the ten points. “We can be better prepared for the next time the two rogue states bombard us” is a reason, but not enough on itself to do it, given the rogue states would be also preparing themselves better.

But if Netanyahu is to be condemned, the following prime minister would play an opposite foreign policy, to avoid getting trialled too. That’s yet another reason why Iran might want to stop the war, this might actually weaken one of the enemies.

I see some angry person. The good type of angry — directing his anger at the right things.

To be clear: Bode is not criticising the fact that journalists quote what CEOs say. He’s criticising the fact they do it and call it a day, as if saying “trust the CEO”.

It goes without saying that CEOs are really loud when saying what they want the sucker (you) to believe. So if that’s all you want, you need no journalist. A journalist is only useful if you want to know the factual reality; but for that they need to contextualise and challenge the claims, not just parrot them.

I’d end with some noble call for the U.S. media industry to do better, but it’s abundantly clear they don’t want to.

If it’s any consolation it isn’t just the United-Statian media.

Nope. Even if the government (Brazil) controlling my homeland is one of those shitting “think on the children! [because we don’t]” laws.

I don’t know if this is related to my browser reporting my geolocation as NZ, and the default page language being Italian, it’s possible bad design is helping me out.

I don’t bother with Calibre or anything similar; I simply use the directory structure. Easier to show it with examples than explaining it.

You get the idea, right? No additional software needed, any automation tool to move/rename files can be used to help you out, and since metadata isn’t used for the organisation you can take your sweet time checking and fixing it. And sharing it across my network means simply sharing a directory with everything in it.

Key points to use this approach effectively:

1. Keep it simple. If you need to think on where an item should go, you’re probably over-engineering your sorting.
2. Keep it objective. For example, genre is usually a bad sorting criterion, as the same piece of media can belong to 2+ genres. Author, franchise, set (season, album, etc.) are typically better.
3. Keep it flexible. It’s fine and good if each subdivision has its own sorting criteria. Just be consistent with it.
4. Keep it accurate. Names are part of the sorting structure, and should be descriptive.
5. Keep it clean. Don’t add unorganised items to the file structure; if you must, keep a separated “to sort” directory elsewhere.
6. Keep it broad. You’re probably already used to this due to the Johnny decimal system, but broader categories are usually better. Just don’t create artificial divisions to arbitrarily nest divisions, though; remember #2.
7. Keep changing it. Ultimately the goal of a sorting system is to find your stuff; it is neither to be a control freak, nor to follow the advice of some random internet person like me. So if something is not working well for you, change it.

Ah, on automation:

• GPRename and Bulky are useful to… well, bulk rename files.
• EasyTag can do it for audio files, based on the metadata and/or info retrieved from the internet.
• Wikipedia “$series_name list of episodes” for descriptive names for anime or live action seasons. Often you can copypaste the whole text bloc into a text editor, and use some find-and-replace to get rid of everything except episode number + episode name.
• Calc (yup, the spreadsheet program!) is a godsend. Specially with the above, plus a terminal; it means you can create on the spot a bunch of commands like

mv 01.mkv "01 - The Sphere.mkv"
mv 02.mkv "02 - The Inhabited.mkv"
[...]

I remember ranting about it in the past, but, basically: the page regarding Brazil is fairly accurate, you’ll find 9001 types of plugs, and a mix of 127V and 220V (no underlying plug vs. voltage pattern). It reaches a point I’ve seen people daisy chaining adapters to get their stuff working, it’s bloody hell.

Some residences have both voltages. Including mine; it’s a few 220V sockets for highly demanding appliances, and the rest is 127V.

Brazil aims to phase out the other types; see footnote. // (1) beginning January 1st, 2007 new residential, commercial and industrial wall outlet installations must comply with this new standard, and // (2) beginning August 1st, 2007 imported electrical devices must comply with NBR 14136 regulations. It is the aim to gradually phase out NEMA flat blade and Schuko devices in Brazil.

Hello, I come from the future. 19 years past 2007. The mess is still there. Try harder dammit. Prime example on how completely dysfunctional the federal government is, I bet shit would be already solved if up to the States, at least in some of them.

This isn’t even a “lie”. It’s worse than that: it’s an empty statement misleading readers to see meaning where there’s none.

Commitment is intentions. Even between human beings, you don’t know someone else’s intentions, at most what they claim about them; so there’s no way to check if the “I’m committed to $thing” claim is true or false. But to make it even worse, a company is not a human being, it is simply an abstraction, unable to have “intentions”.

So, let’s call bread “bread” and wine “wine”: people working for Microslop noticed it’s being called “Microslop”, they know why, and they’re trying to minimise brand damage — trying to convince you that Microslop does not output slop, and that the Moon is made of green cheese. That’s it.

Let me guess: you were trying to pirate Windows games and software. Right?

If yes, look at it this way. You’re pirating games for one system, and trying to run them in another system. Of course it’ll involve one or two additional loops to make it work. It’s like baking bread on your stove, you know? It can be done, but it isn’t as streamlined as using your oven.

That said it isn’t really difficult. I have a bunch of pirated Windows games installed in my Linux. Steam helps by a lot, because of Proton; add the game to Steam as a “non-Steam game”, then force it to use a specific Steam Play compatibility tool. You can do it without Steam but it streamlines everything.

You’re still better off looking for native software, though, made for Linux. A bunch of good games have Linux versions.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I never ditched RSS. It’s simply too convenient to keep track of multiple sites, that you want to check regularly but would be a bother to do manually. Youtube channels, anime/manga/comics sites, even the communities you moderate.

I’m glad to see people picking it up again, though. Perhaps then Liferea will see a bit more love.

The article used the word “Microslop” thirteen times. I guess the author really wants search engines and bots to associate “Microslop” with “Microsoft”. Apparently Microslop is a term for Microsoft products, or perhaps even Microslop is an intrinsic property of Microsoft.

…'kay, I’ll stop it now.

It’s rather curious how MS babbles so much about “AI”, but its Discord server uses such a simple filter that can be evaded by 0N3 0F 7H3 0LD357 700L5 0F 7H3 1N73RN37 5H17P0573R one of the oldest tools of the internet shitposter: leetspeak. It’s almost like it knows it’s selling a dud.

Also, I guess this thing run so far they don’t even care about the Streisand effect any more.

Cops aren’t just bastards, they’re often dumb as bricks. No surprise they don’t know the difference between “content criticising Nazism” and “content praising Nazism”.

Yeah, got to borrow some word from discourse analysis :-P

It fits well what I wanted to say, and it makes the comment itself another example of the phenomenon: that usage of “utterance” as jargon makes the text shorter and more precise but makes it harder to approach = optimises for #2 and #3 at the expense of #1. (I had room to do it in this case because you mentioned your Linguistics major.)

Although the word is from DA I believe this to be related to Pragmatics; my four points are basically a different “mapping” of the Gricean maxims (#1 falls into the maxim of manner, #2 of manner and relation, #3 of quality, #4 of quantity) to highlight trade-offs.

To be clear, by “communication” I’m talking about the information conveyed by a certain utterance, while you’re likely referring to the utterance itself.

Once you take that into account, your example is optimising for #2 at the expense of #1 — yes, you can get away conveying info in more succinct ways, but at the expense of requiring a shared context; that shared context is also info the receiver knows beforehand. It works fine in this case because spouses accumulate that shared context across the years (so it’s a good trade-off), but if you replace the spouse with some random person it becomes a “how the fuck am I supposed to know what you mean?” matter.

I believe that good communication has four attributes.

1. It’s approachable: it demands from the reader (or hearer, or viewer) the least amount of reasoning and previous knowledge, in order to receive the message.
2. It’s succinct: it demands from the reader the least amount of time.
3. It’s accurate: it neither states nor implies (for a reasonable = non-assumptive receiver) anything false.
4. It’s complete: it provides all relevant information concerning what’s being communicated.

However no communication is perfect and those four attributes are in odds with each other: if you try to optimise your message for one or more of them, the others are bound to suffer.

Why this matters here: it shows the problem of ablation is unsolvable. Even if generative models were perfectly competent at rephrasing text (they aren’t), simply by asking them to make the text more approachable, you’re bound to lose info or accuracy. Specially in the current internet, where you got a bunch of skibidi readers who’ll screech “WAAAAH!!! TL;DR!!!” at anything with more than two sentences.

I’d also argue “semantic ablation” is actually way, way better as a concept than “hallucination”. The later is not quite “additive error”; it’s a misleading metaphor for output that is generated by the model the same way as the rest, but it happens to be incorrect when interpreted by human beings.