I will say, the longer I look at that, the less confident I am that there is any difference at all, lol.

If I saw this, I think I’d take and eat one? Like, I do love a good raisin…

The gospels were, while written decades after the fact, written by people who were alive at the time. It’s not really a game of telephone.

It turns out that when a guy dies in his early 30s, most of his buddies are still alive 30-50yrs later.

I mean, I think “improperly obtained OpenAI’s data” with reference to China, probably means internal trade secrets were stolen. Wouldn’t be the first time China hacked a US corporation and stole all their IP, lol.

I might grant questionable, but not super.

I think a large part of why it was a 9-0 decision was that it’s not speech to run a social media site. It’s commerce, plain as day. Congress has the authority to regulate commerce full stop. The fact that China is using that platform to spread misinformation, and then claiming that stopping them from doing so is a 1A violation is just a red herring.

“Money is speech” just means rich people can donate all the money they want to a politician. Not that you can run an otherwise unlawful business because “money is speech and free speech is a thing!”

How is it any different than the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected? Or was that something you were fine with as well?

When you let a foreign government run an active psyop campaign against your citizens, you’re just begging for instability and chaos.

I mean, yeah? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press are inalienable rights, sure, but they’re generally intended to extend to citizens. Not foreign governments.

There’s a big difference between a Chinese citizen here on a green card going around saying they love China and a company running an active misinformation campaign on orders from their government.

It’s no different than how the government tried to crack down on Russian election interference. Turns out, hostile nations running psyops campaigns is bad.

Well, the TikTok lawyers kinda said the quiet part out loud during their SCOTUS brief:

Mr. Francisco contended that the government in a free country “has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda” and cannot constitutionally try to keep Americans from being “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” That is targeting the content of speech, which the First Amendment does not permit, he said.

It’s not a great look for your app when your argument before the Supreme Court is “yeah, we’re a propaganda machine for a hostile foreign power, but free speech says you can’t stop us. Neener neener.”

I mean, we’re doing better than basically every other 1st world country, and those that are beating us don’t have big livestock industries.

Sure, but he’ll be replaced by another boss. Then another. How many should be assassinated?

I have. I’ve worked on a campaign for my local congressperson (at the time) whos platform I believed in. I met them through the campaign and got to know them personally. They won and are still serving in Congress today, and have done a good job over the years in my opinion (though I’ve since moved states and lost contact).

It was shockingly easy to get involved. Literally just approached them when they were starting up their campaign and asked to help. I knocked on doors and helped at campaign events, and I like to think that my contributions (and those of people like me) helped to get them elected.

And, as I say, they were someone that I had the personal cell number of and could contact when I had concerns.

First, I think you’re completely underplaying all the huge gains people have made over the years by doing exactly what I’m talking about. Especially at the state and local level.

But yeah, if you think I’m defending the system as perfect and unflawed, of course not. Of course most people don’t want to have to dedicate their life to fixing the system. Of course they have other priorities. Kids, illness, etc.

And of course killing a man in cold blood is easier than spending years or decades fighting for the change you want to see.

But I’ve seen change accomplished by people who believe in the law and civic order. I’ve seen people make the system work. It is possible.

It’s not easy. It requires someone to basically make it their life, and that’s certainly not for everybody. But it can be done. And if you’re at the point where you’re throwing your life away by shooting a man in the middle of a NYC street, there are better ways to use your life than that.

But the NYPD doesn’t control the news? Like, that has nothing to do with how much their spending on the investigation as far as I can tell.

The issue is you’re telling people not to complain in response to someone saying “randomly murdering United Healthcare workers is ineffective and evil.” It’s an implicit approval of the murder, even while acknowledging that it won’t change anything. It’s a pretty rough look, even if that’s not what you intended.

But, for suggestions that might work, get involved. Campaign for stricter regulations on the insurance industry. Call your congressional representatives. Run for office and work your way up the system, or become friends with someone who is and help them on their campaign. There’s any number of ways to make a difference that are better than shooting a man in the middle of the street.

Have I missed something? I feel like the NYPD is investigating this the same way they do every murder.

Sure, the media is covering it like crazy, but I haven’t seen anything to indicate that the NYPD is doing anything different than their norm. And the NYPD can’t exactly control what the news covers.

At worst they’ve been told, “hey, there’s a lot of scrutiny on this one, so give it a little extra attention,” but that’s not “millions of dollars” they they otherwise wouldn’t have spent.

If I don’t have a solution, I have to agree with murdering people?

That’s like if, in order to drive down the price of diapers I just started killing babies, then when you said that was evil and ineffective I just responded with, “oh yeah, well do you have a better idea, or are you just here to crap all over mine?”

All that said, yes, I do have plenty of common sense suggestions for reforms to the healthcare system that don’t involve me murdering someone in cold blood, as it turns out.

I mean, my opening point was that “it depends on what you mean by coexist.”

The “coexist” language has long centered around religious divides, where the intent was literally, “don’t kill each other.”

Yeah, sure, you could say that you’re “refusing to coexist with your racist cousin this year at Thanksgiving,” but it’s not like he ceases to exist. He still lives down the road. His kids still go to the same school your kids go to. It feels like a complete redefinition of the word “coexist” to me.

But I’ll agree, language follows usage. I just feel like I’m the one defending the traditional usage of “coexist” and you’re the one who’s slid the definition to something far softer than it has always been intended.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s, like, the whole idea behind tolerance, right? The idea that you can find someone abhorrent but still accept that they have a right to continue existing?

Tolerance as a concept is pretty central and integral to any functioning society.

I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by coexist?

Unless this is intended as a call to murder all unpleasant people I guess.

In 1962 Phillip K Dick put out a book called “Man in the High Castle.” In it there was a scene that stuck out to me, and seems more and more relevant as this AI wave continues.

In it a man has two identical lighters. Each made in the same year by the same manufacturer. But one was priceless and one was worthless.

The priceless one was owned by Abraham Lincoln and was in his pocket on the night he was assassinated. He had a letter of certification as such, and could trace the ownership all the way back to that night.

And he takes them both and mixes them up and asks which is the one with value. If you can no longer discern the one with “historicity,” then where is it’s value?

And every time I see an article like this I can’t help but think about that. If I tell you about the life and hardship of an artist, and then present you two poems, one that he wrote and one that was spit out by an LLM, and you cannot determine which has the true hardship and emotion tied to it, then which has value? What if I killed the artist before he could reveal which one was the “true” poem? How do you know which is a powerful expression of the artist’s oppression, and which is worthless, randomly generated swill?

I loved FFSend. When it died, I ended up standing up a GOKAPI server, as it was the closest alternative I could find at the time: https://github.com/Forceu/Gokapi

Definitely not as nice as FFSend though. I may have to give that fork a try instead.