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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • The F-35 would be good if they hadn’t wasted so much time and energy and weight on having a pilot in it. On board pilots are a complete waste.

    (Plus I bet dollars to doughnuts every F-35 we’ve sold to an “ally” has a secret switch somewhere to turn it into a drone.)

    It would be impressive if it didn’t have a meat sack in it that needs climate control and fresh air and not to turn to hard…

    there’s a reason the F-16 and F/A-18 are still the major US workhorses in the skies. (And of course my favorite the A-10 for blowing shit up on the ground.)



  • What I don’t get about this is why in this day and age with all the analytics tools we have do companies continue to just happily pay for simple eyeball exposure?

    The only time they seem to have any pause at all on this model is if people post screenshots of ads for their products next to posts literally praising Nazis.

    These so called AIs (LLMs) can learn to tell the difference between positive/happy/uplifting posts, neutral posts, and angry/sad/disturbing posts. The advertisers should be asking for their products to be featured next to the first and second groups of posts.

    People engage based on anger, sure. They click posts and reply and whatnot. But do they click the ad next to a post that pisses them off and then buy the product?

    Or is this purely a subconscious intrusion effort? Do the advertisers just want their products in front of eyeballs regardless of what’s around the ad? It seems like the answer is “no” when they’re called out. But maybe it’s “yes” if they can get away with it?



  • If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.

    All these other “like Twitter but ______” micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they’re profitable.

    If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they’ll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can’t kill it.

    I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.

    For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a “just do this part for me” option, probably automatically enabled.

    #3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.

    #4 is hard… Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the “early” Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That’s some very strong “lizard brain” stuff.

    So… let’s get going y’all! :)


  • Yeah but we’d have to redo the Senate completely - definitely a Constitutional amendment - and expand the House (I think they can just add seats) to reduce or eliminate the power of land ownership on our government’s composition.

    Or change the Senate to a House Of Lords kind of model. Still an amendment.

    Which means the short term solution is all anti MAGA people have to band together and stick together until MAGA dies off. Then maybe the Republican Party can be reborn to be more like it was in the 70s (but hopefully with less bigotry). This rot started with Reagan, so we have to go back at least that far.

    (This would also free up religious people to find the candidate and party whose policy goals match their most important beliefs instead of the other way around.)






  • I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

    I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …


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