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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • If something is possible, and this simply indeed is, someone is going to develop it regardless of how we feel about it, so it’s important for non-malicious actors to make people aware of the potential negative impacts so we can start to develop ways to handle them before actively malicious actors start deploying it.

    Critical businesses and governments need to know that identity verification via video and voice is much less trustworthy than it used to be, and so if you’re currently doing that, you need to mitigate these risks. There are tools, namely public-private key cryptography, that can be used to verify identity in a much tighter way, and we’re probably going to need to start implementing them in more places.






  • Are you suggesting that hundreds of dead Israeli citizens would be a better state of affairs?

    If your position is that we should not support military action that blatantly violates standard rules of engagement, that would apply to the Iranian military just as much as it applies to the IDF. There’s no contradiction in criticizing IDF action in Gaza for not trying to minimize civilian casualties while also working to minimize civilian casualties in Israel as a result of Iranian action.








  • He’d be gone by lunchtime.

    Why?

    There’s this narrative that Israel is completely dependent on US aid and would be powerless without it, but I don’t think that’s obviously true. What military is going to meaningfully threaten them? Jordan has no interest in another giant wave of Palestinian migrants (given that the last one led to a coup attempt), nor does it have a significant military. Lebanon hardly has a genuine government. Syria is a mess. Egypt does have some legitimate power, but also has no interest in a massive war right next to them.

    The only regional power capable of meaningfully threatening Israel is Iran, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Sunni coalition do not want massive expansion of Iranian influence.

    Not to mention, Israel has already defeated all of its neighbors, simultaneously, twice. I’m fairly confident that the only thing that would actually happen if the US stopped sending aid is a bit of a dent in the Israeli economy.


  • This is just exposing that you don’t actually read the New York Times.

    Here’s an article on the plight of Gazans in Rafah in the face of a potential Israeli invasion.

    Here’s an overview on the gang situation in Haiti as the government is functionally collapsing.

    And here’s an article discussing the increasingly common practice of restaurants charging significant cancellation fees.

    Meanwhile, the NY Post has such great stories as:

    • Kate Middleton officially hits rock bottom
    • Rudy Giuliani’s ex engaged to Palm Beach energy exec after six months of dating in ‘whirlwind romance’ (Exclusive!)
    • Unions want full control of schools and our kids — we can’t let Albany allow it
    • Activists lobbying to ‘morally’ allow trans kids to change their bodies are only doing more harm

  • If the people in charge have the ability to end democracy, how can democracy be claimed to exist in the first place? Democracy is supposed to be our capability as individual citizens to regulate the people in power, but if they can turn that switch on or off, we don’t actually have that capability except as they choose to allow us to.

    The simple answer to your question is by the people taking a person who very overtly says that he has no desire to preserve democracy and in fact has already sought to overturn it once before and then proceeding to return that person to office in order to do just that.

    We do have the ability to regulate the people in power by not voting for them in the first place. If we take the ability and use it to give power to someone who wants to do away with democracy, that’s pretty much on us.

    Ultimately, any frustration with Biden - and I acknowledge that valid ones absolutely do exist - must be squared against the fact that we have to put a candidate up against Trump. Whether Biden is the person with the best odds against him is an objective and empirical one, though also one that’s hard to accurately study and answer. Disapproval polls are certainly one source of info, but they do not necessarily mean that any other potential alternative would do better. It is very possible for large amounts of people to disapprove of Biden but ultimately disapprove of Trump even more. We can’t actually personify “broadly generic and popular Democrat” into a real human, and even if we could, that’s basically Biden, so unless there exists an actual specific person who is both broadly popular and with more political clout than Biden who’s also interested in running, the practical choice is Biden against Trump, no matter how much ink people want to spill on the matter.

    Edit: On a more pragmatic matter, I absolutely agree that telling progressives to shut up, stop complaining, and vote for Biden is not a particularly effective style of messaging.




  • This conversation is specifically about the Uyghur genocide conspiracy theory.

    Weird, I thought it was about Iraq!

    The fact that the Iraqi invasion was deeply controversial at the time, and this controversy was able to be loudly expressed, stands in very stark contrast to how controversial topics in China’s recent history can be discussed. This is the main point I’m trying to make. I see you follow the lead of the Chinese government by simply refusing to discuss it, and I understand that talking about things that challenge your world view can be uncomfortable, so I’ll do you a favor by allowing this conversation to end.

    I would just point out, though, that if I had responded to your initial comment about WMDs in Iraq with “Nope, not doing it,” you’d probably call me a coward or something.


  • I mean, yes, Bush lied to the American public. This is not particularly controversial.

    And given that the original point was the difference between the ability and willingness of liberals to criticize our own governments relative to tankies, Tiananmen is a perfectly relevant topic, though I’m hardly surprised that you’d clearly like to avoid it. And if randomly bringing up supposedly unrelated topics is something to avoid, might I ask why you brought up WMDs in Iraq in a thread about the Uyghers in the first place?