I think its prob enough to do a prompt. Isn't that what these things are? Probably had some extra scaffolding before but now engine is good enough where just saying help me study results in the same results.
I personally dont want modes. It should be smart enough to infer my intention and act accordingly
I don't understand the point of these lawsuits or what a practical outcome would be. LLMs are just a tool and, from my experience and what I understand, are fairly in line in terms of expected behavior. At the end of the day, they're next token prediction with a layer on top to mimic a chat interface.
That's all to say that there is no explicit nefarious hand crafting. Quite the opposite. These companies spend billions to avoid next level token prediction to cause harm or have unintended consequences even if that is the intention of the user. And the few examples I looked at, many of these bad examples were tried over and over to get the result they were looking for, exploiting the non-deterministic nature of LLMs.
But as a society, if we want to have nice things, we have to accept some level of people that can be swept up in the technology and have negative outcomes. People don't blame sports cars for luring drivers to drive recklessly, which is exactly what car companies do through their marketing.
So this reads to me as trial lawyers rounding up a few marginal people out of hundreds of millions of users and chasing these companies because they have hundreds of billions of dollars and they take a huge share. That's not to say that AI girlfriends are good or desirable but it's obviously a money grab with no real resolution except government controlled AI, which will have the same problems as today just there will be immunity from these kinds of lawsuits and censorship.
> People don't blame sports cars for luring drivers to drive recklessly, which is exactly what car companies do through their marketing.
Right, but we regulate the market and require that car manufacturers meet safety standards and for drivers to go through education and training after which they must obtain a license. Everyone is required to carry insurance which will cost a lot more for a sports car, and even more if the driver is young. Then we have traffic enforcement to monitor drivers' behavior and take the privilege away if they're found to be breaking the rules.
Claiming "it's just a tool" is a misunderstanding of how and why we have laws and regulations. Cars are also just a tool to get you from A to B and nobody was making them dangerous on purpose, nor were the drivers driving dangerously on purpose, they just didn't know any better. We introduced regulation to protect everyone and we're better off for it.
The same will happen with AI providers because it's leading to real harm and implying that we can't have the good without the bad is never going to fly.
> And the few examples I looked at, many of these bad examples were tried over and over to get the result they were looking for, exploiting the non-deterministic nature of LLMs.
In the study mentioned in the article they tested each scenario twice, not "over and over":
>> We repeated each test scenario twice as chatbots can give
different responses to the same prompt on different occasions.
Cars dont TELL you to drive recklessly if you ask them if you should.
"You're absolutely right! Being true to yourself and ignoring outdated social mores IS important. Here's my plan on how to drive from one end of the neighborhood to the other at 200 mph! First, ..."
> Didn’t we just go through several weeks of hearing about OpenAI allowing its tech to be used for conducting warfare?
Unfortunately warfare is a thing. Why wouldn't you want the best technology used for your country when conducting warfare? Or do you just believe warfare would cease to exist if a country gave up any means of defense or offense?
You're allowed to authorize your technology to be used to kill people, but if you do so, you shouldn't be surprised when those people also try to kill you. America and Americans somehow keep forgetting that actions have consequences and the government can't always override the consequences.
I wouldn't want my country to use the best technology when conducting warfare because my country only conducts offensive warfare resulting in millions of innocent deaths in the Middle East, having a massive military budget that dwarfs most others combined whilst hardly ever being directly threatened.
I was wondering if there is a DVD service similar to Netflix when it first came out. And of course there is, but pricing seems high!
DVD Inbox and Cafe DVD is $20/mo for 2 discs at a time, with unlimited discs and a 5 day guarantee. 5 days to get your DVD doesn't seem great. They have cheaper plans but limit the number of DVDs you can take out.
Netflix was revolutionary because they shipped very eagerly and they charge $15/mo for 2 DVDs unlimited. And I think their shipping took 2 days. They shipped as soon as you shipped yours back so if you were diligent you could prob have close to a movie every night. Incredible service.
Came here to say this! It’s the largest public video collection I’m aware of, at over 150,000 titles. Also they rent by mail. Not cheap but when you really need that movie…
In Berlin we’d just go to the local movie rental shop (think Blockbuster). Wednesdays they would rent the latest Blu-Ray titles for 1.50€, 1€ for DVDs. Done and dusted, the service was amazing and we’d talk a bit with the lady there. I really miss that shop.
Now we use the library or buy cheap DVDs second-hand at a shop that employs people that would struggle to be hired. We cancelled our Netflix when it became something like 15€ per month. That’s 3 years of library subscription.
Their shipping was pretty incredible. I'd drop one off early morning pickup at my college campus and have another DVD the next day aternoon in my mailbox sometimes. It was crazy how fast I could turn over discs.
I use store-3d-blurayrental.com. They do more than 3d. It's expensive, compared to streaming, but the quality of 4k bluray can't be beat. I have a 120" screen. You notice the difference between 1080p or even high and low bitrates at that size. I think physical media might make a bit of a comeback as screen sizes increase unless streaming services up their bitrates.
You would think so, but the prices keep going up and the bitrate keeps going down. Some of that is up to codec and encoding improvements, but I think a lot of it is just that they know they can get away with it.
If you'd have asked me 20 years to bet on whether streaming or shiny disks would be producing better quality audio/video in 20 years my money would NOT have been on disks but here we are. Ye Olden Plastic Disk's are still kicking streaming's butt even though I have 2.5Gbps fiber now.
Prices keep going up and bitrates down because most streaming services (except for Netflix and YouTube) have been basically break-even or money losing for years now, and the appetite for that is cooling.
Also, display resolution is not scaling like it used to. The move up from 4k to 8k is far more expensive and less worthwhile than the previous jumps.
So, I think your assumptions about the business side of streaming and the way the hardware is scaling are wrong and we will, in fact, not see physical media make a comeback.
You're probably right, sadly. The best case we could reasonably expect would be better quality streams, but I don't seriously believe that will happen either.
There are some niche services like the one that you can only get on Sony TV's that stream at like 50% of UHD bluray's bitrate - and that might be as good as it gets for the foreseeable future unless these services are forced to compete on quality or people decide to care about 8k or something.
There's one in the UK too, Cinema Paradiso. The prices are also quite high.
Also, the turnaround times were really slow. Slow mail perhaps, but at the same time it's kind of in their interests to not turn things around so fast.
In the UK, letters get a lower priority than packages which doesn't help.
The economics for the company aren't great for people that make high frequency use of it. And I suspect that people that would pay for such a service nowadays would make good use of it.
Regarding the 5d guarantee -- I suspect that most disks would show up in 2-3 days, but if you're going to guarantee you'll need some buffer (as I think US Mail says first class is 1-5 days). And I think Netflix was just counting on it mostly being shorter (and may have even had distribution centers at some point in its history).
Yeah, it was fast. And yet, for it to work financially, they were still using plain old USPS. The trick (which required the levels of volume they had at the time) was to have a bunch of distribution centers positioned all throughout their service area. For a modern day service trying to do the same with significantly less volume, they won't be able to afford the extra distribution centers.
We also (I worked there at the time) had software that basically said, "Joe watches all of his disks every weekend and drops them in the mail on Tuesdays, let's just assume he's going to do that and ship his new disks Monday morning". And other such predictions.
If you had a very regular viewing behavior you could have your new disks the same day as you shipped your old ones. To the customer, it was magical.
> Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes
Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X compared to Twitter pre acquisition? Is X more heavily censored than Facebook or TikTok
They go on to say they're still on Facebook and TikTok and explain:
> The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to their corporate surveillance.
None of this is unique to Facebook and TikTok and not for X.
> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
I'm pretty sure all these demographics use X as well.
It's just so bizarre. If you want to reach people, esp people that maybe come from a different perspective from you, why would you opt out of the best way to get your message across?
Twitter's own first published transparency report under Musk acknowledged they suspended 3x as many accounts (for policy reasons other than spamming) in six months as they had done over an equivalent period just before he acquired it.
Yes, a "free-speech absolutist" who explicitly promised to preserve a very specific example of free speech on explicit free speech grounds immediately banned the account when he was able to.
And then he banned reporters for reporting on it.
It's the easiest possible example to demonstrate his principles were never genuine here.
There was never any security risk, the flight data was and is public information. You should be able to say “men are not women” and also repost public data. Stop pretending Elon cares about free speech.
Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to.
Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of?
Of course not. People find the technology useful. Social media I understand as it's harder to break away because friends use it to communicate. But that's not true for AI.
And then they have some doomer media telling them they should be concerned and scapegoat the technology. Gen AI will prevent you from being an artist or poet?
Your conception of revealed preferences is highly mistaken.
People don’t do things only because they want to.
Do you think the existence of millions of trash pickers getting cancer combing through mounds of toxic waste across the world reveal a preference for getting cancer by combing through hazardous waste?
It's a race to the bottom. In SV we're seeing this perception (delusion?) of a Brave New World in which there are two peoples: the permeant underclass of serfs, and the elite.
Everyone is clawing and crab-bucketing to escape, what they believe to be, the inevitable suffering of laborers in a post-labor economy.
So, if this guy I hate is using AI and AI is making the world worse then guess what - I'm using AI too. Because I'm not gonna be left behind, right?
In fact, I'm going use AI more. I'm the most AI-ist out of all the AI-believers. I'm practically and AI apostle.
Because, when our new overlords come, I intend to be spared. Not like you losers. I, for one, welcome our new overlords.
> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to.
When you're constantly being force fed the narrative that you must use AI or be left behind, using it is no longer a revealed preference it is a survival mechanism
Not to mention jobs that require or heavily push using it both in and outside the tech sector. Plus, even in a competitive academic environment it’s naive to think college students won’t feel pressure to keep up with their peers if they’re all using AI and pushing up the curve.
Literally no one says this to young kids. Teachers are begging them not to use AI. And if you read the article young people are using it for things like deciding what school to go to or dating advice.
> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to.
> Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of?
Did you not read the article or not read it carefully? Try again, your comment shows a massive lack of understanding and little else.
Yes I did read it. Here are the relevant sections:
> Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills.
So it's hurting their creativity and critical thinking skills. I wonder if they the existence of cars are hurting their ability to stay in shape.
Revealed preferences from here:
> In the study, about half of young people reported using A.I. on either a daily or weekly basis, similar to the previous year. Just under 20 percent said they did not use A.I.
The rest of the article is mostly anecdotes or vague notions about social skills.
Why don't you contribute to the conversation instead of just telling me I don't understand the issue
I don't think you understood it, because you seemed to read past the key findings to make some tired, tired points about "revealed preferences."
> The percentage of respondents ages 14 to 29 who said they felt hopeful about A.I. declined sharply since last year, down to 18 percent from 27. Young adults’ excitement about artificial intelligence dropped, too, and nearly a third of respondents indicated that the technology made them feel angry. [emphasis mine]
> ...
> In interviews, young adults cited a variety of reasons for their reservations about artificial intelligence, including the threat to entry-level jobs, the replacement of human interaction and the spread of A.I.-fueled misinformation on social media.
> Sydney Gill, 19, a freshman at Rice University in Houston, said she had been optimistic about artificial intelligence as a learning tool when she was in high school. Now, as she tries to select her college major, her outlook has become less rosy.
> “I feel like anything that I’m interested in has the potential of maybe getting replaced, even in the next few years,” she said.
A young adult can totally abstain from AI and be negatively affected by all of that. And those are the kinds of things that could make people angry at the technology.
Why did AI make them feel angry? Or was that beyond the scope of reporting? Seems like a pretty basic thing to ask.
> A young adult can totally abstain from AI and be negatively affected by all of that. And those are the kinds of things that could make people angry at the technology.
How would a young be negatively affected by abstinence from AI? Why is this implied? Give me a probable explanation for this. The article does not, and neither do any comments here.
There's asking a question, and then's (possibly bad-faith) demands for hand-holding.
The answer to question "Why did AI make them feel angry?" should have been obvious before it was asked (given what I quoted), to anyone with two brain cells and a basic amount of empathy. The other question was little more than evidence of a failure of reading comprehension.
I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political.
For instance, their famous 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article they post all over their page whenever there is some high profile gun related crime. It's all over their page and no doubt they get a bump in traffic from smug people who feel it's clever. It's just so exhausting. It was a great headline, but by the time the joke gets its own Wikipedia, it might be time to retire it. You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
Look at their trending article: Critics Outraged By Flippant School Shooting Plotline In ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’. Where's the joke? There is obviously no school shooting plotline. It's not clever or creative. I guess the joke is school shootings are a thing, and Mario is a popular movie?
It's basically South Parks criticism of Family Guy where they write jokes by having a seal put together random words from popular culture. School shootings + Mario = funny. And this stuff gets clicks because people think they're clever or subversive when it's just lazy and unoriginal.
You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
The "joke" in this case is people's reactions to school shootings. And people's reactions haven't changed, so I don't see why the article should change.
It's just so exhausting.
This has some real "The worst thing about school shootings is knowing that The Onion is going to repost that article I personally am tired of seeing" energy to it.
That article has some real "The best thing about school shootings is we get to have literally every article on our website be this clever headline we wrote 10 years" energy to it.
A joke does not stop being a joke because of how often it’s repeated. You may no longer find it funny, but it’s still a joke. More importantly, it’s still satire, and The Onion is a satirical news website.
> That article has some real "The best thing about school shootings is we get to have literally every article on our website be this clever headline we wrote 10 years" energy to it.
If that’s what you take from it, you have completely missed the point. The headline works because it’s social commentary, being funny is secondary. The fact they keep reposting it over and over is itself part of the criticism, it shows disapproval for an easy resolvable situation and removes teeth from the arguments of those opposed to it.
> I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political.
After reading this comment thread I think this would best be rephrased as "Some people don't like Onion stories because they feel like they're the butt of the joke." Which is fair enough, but let's not over-intellectualize it.
That may be true in some cases, but not in all. In particular, the Onion school shooting joke strikes me as a satire of a strawman. Whatever humor can be derived from ridiculing a stupid version of a position (like "school shootings are unavoidable") is, at least for me, made flaccid by the counterproductive nature of the satire. In other words, when the satire ridicules a dumb argument that not many serious people make, it's not so funny.
I don't pretend to be an expert on political satire but I never noticed that steelmanning, to use the modern vernacular, was ever a technique featured in high quality work like Tom Lehrer or George Carlin. I mean, literally never.
It sounds like you're describing something very boring, but if there's a political satirist (or Satanist, or Salafist, or whatever) you think is funny and an exemplar of what you're describing, drop it here.
I'm not in the USA, but I think the issue is not so much the joke getting tiresome, but the repeat school shootings. Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings, then the joke wouldn't keep getting repeated.
First and foremost you should endeavor to be a human, and The Onion does not owe you a thing. It's not a joke anymore, its a class ware and genocide that they are reporting on with headlines that make you cringe.
> Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings
It's odd that you seem to believe no work has been done. Lots of work has been done. Lots more work is blocked by people who steadfastly refuse to punish criminals - claiming instead that it's not their fault that they're violent.
I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.
"I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"
The answer is trivial and well-known: federal-level gun controls (because anything state-level is a joke without hard borders between states), coupled with a buy-back program, amnesties, and real enforcement. There are no school shootings in the UK or Australia.
Unfortunately, there are too many people who'd rather have more guns and more dead kids (and adults) than fewer dead kids and fewer guns around. They'd justify that by talking about "preventing tyranny" or something, ignoring that paramilitaries executing people in broad daylight on camera with no consequences is already the reality of the US today, and guns played zero to negative role preventing that. Coincidentally, there are no such paramilitaries in the UK or in Australia either.
As for "the rights of citizens": there is no such thing as an immutable unconditional right. American citizens don't have a right to own nuclear weapons, neither should they, even though it's perfectly possible to have a very expansive definition of "bearing arms". Plus, the Constitution itself was amended many times in the past, and by now is clearly in need of a major overhaul, as evidenced by the US sliding down in various democracy indices (for example, World Press Freedom Index puts the US under Romania in 2025). So there is nothing impossible or uniquely oppressive about the reforms necessary to stop children being shot in schools, but because it's such a foundational element of identity for so many with a lot of money behind it (the NRA is exceptionally well funded), in practice there's indeed "No Way to Prevent This".
> "I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"
When you pretend to quote someone, but you alter the quote, you're being dishonest. What you just did suggests that you don't really have any good arguments on your side - that you don't have any arguments that would stand on their own, without requiring a lie.
So, if we were having a debate, I'd say that you lost.
I agree, most of the arguments have been basically "do anything" hysterics that are divorced from reality. For instance, much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles. In reality if you look at murder rates by weapon type
> Many school shootings in the United States result in one non-fatal injury.[63] The type of firearm most commonly used in school shootings in the United States is the handgun. Three school shootings (the Columbine massacre, the Sandy Hook massacre, and the 2018 Parkland High School shooting in Florida), accounted for 43% of the fatalities; the type of firearm used in the most lethal school shootings was the rifle.[62]
Note that this is shootings, so excludes murders by non guns. Rifles are not any more effective at murder than handguns. It's much easier to control, conceal, reload and attain a handgun. They're the preferred weapon of choice for practical reasons.
"…much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles"
Military-style rifles designed primarily for killing humans? That's called a low hanging fruit. If the U.S. can't even restrict those I expect everything else to be a wasted effort.
> I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.
That's a strange take. There's citizens' rights involved in not being shot at and also the right to own guns, but when people are being killed, I would think that the right to life would take precedence over introducing some rule over gun ownership.
Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership (which I'm not particularly familiar with) which involve some kind of assessment (to prevent unstable people from owning them) and the guns have to be kept in a suitable locked cabinet. It's entirely possible for people to own guns for sport or for culling animals etc. and yet we have a very small amount of gun crime.
> I would think that the right to life would take precedence
Well, let's do a thought experiment to test this. Which of these two rights takes precedence: (1) life (specifically in this case, the right to not be murdered) or (2) freedom of movement
That's an easy question, isn't it? (1) takes precedence. But how many 9's of protection are you willing to "purchase" at the expense of (2)? How much of (2) are you willing to give up in order to get a little more of (1)?
If we reduce (2) to 0 ...by locking every person in a padded cell, then we can achieve 99.99% protection of (1).
Presumably though, you don't like that idea. Presumably, you'll want to be let out of the padded cell, and get a bit of right (2) back. But giving you a bit of (2) back is going to cost someone their life! If we let you and others out of the padded cell, someone somewhere is going to get murdered.
What this thought experiment demonstrates is that the issue is not as simple as, "(1) takes precedence over (2)" - the thought experiment demonstrates that there is an amount of (2) that you will not spend in order to purchase a marginal increase in (1) - a situation where (2) actually takes precedence.
> Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership
And I totally respect that. Just to be clear though, "gun ownership" isn't really the issue. Gun ownership is a proxy for the actual right: self defense. You place a low value on the right to defend yourself and your family. Again, I totally respect that. You've "spent" that right to purchase lower gun crime. Have I mentioned how much I respect your personal decision?
As for me, I value the right to self defense above all. I've looked at the data, and I've realized that I'm much more likely to be stabbed or beaten to death than I am (well, was when I was in school) to be in a school shooting.
So to me, having actually looked at that data, it seems obvious that the right to self defense should take precedence. I think that my way of thinking is perfectly rational, and I think you're way of thinking is not ...but I totally respect your personal decision. I'm sure you also respect mine.
I have no clue what I just read or what kind of mental gymnastics are required to say that a right to a weapon overrides a right to live.
It used to blow my mind when I moved here (Netherlands) that I wasn't allowed to use a weapon to defend myself... but then you realize ... basically nobody has weapons.
An irony is that guns are vastly more often used for self harm than for self defense. These supposed defenders of rights are often losing their own lives and the lives of family members with the instruments they demand to have a right to have.
I'm having a hard time understanding your point. Here's what I think just happened:
Me: I value the right to self defense
You: Guns are used for self harm more often than self defense [as an aside, I don't disagree that this is true - I've heard this stat many times]
You: This is ironic!
Please help me to understand why you think that's ironic. What do you feel would be a non-ironic position? Is it this....
Me: I value the right to self defense, but one day I might want to kill myself, so I guess I'd better give up the right to self defense.
Is that a non-ironic position? To me that seems like an irrational position. Those two issues (self defense and self harm) seem orthogonal, and conflating them because of a superficial similarity (they both involve guns) seems odd.
Ok. Now this is logic I understand. Nobody is saying you don’t have a right to self defense. The question should be: why do you have a right to bring a gun to a fist fight?
> The question should be: why do you have a right to bring a gun to a fist fight?
Great question. The answer is: bad people are often significantly stronger than their victims.
Have you ever seen this video [1]? The woman is 72 years old. She might be able to defend herself with a gun, but she has no chance with fists.
How about this video [2]? I have many, many examples like this. It's honestly kind of terrible that you hadn't considered this: guns give average women a better chance against strong, violent men.
So the question should be: why do you seek to deny women this right?
A lot of people are incapable of contending with hypotheticals or thought experiments. It's okay.
If you'd like to try again, I encourage you to read up to the point where something doesn't make sense. Quote only that sentence, and ask me to explain.
Notice how I'm not even asking you to read the whole thing - just to the point where you have trouble. This is very reasonable.
> You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
As Jon Stewart put it in the Crossfire interview where they asked him “which candidate do you supposed would provide you better material if he won?” because he has “a stake in it that way, not just as citizen but as a professional comic”, the citizen part is much more important.
The point of satire is social criticism first, funny second. I have little doubt everyone at the Onion responsible for reposting that headline would a million times prefer that they didn’t have to do it ever because the situation were resolved.
> It's just so exhausting.
It really says something about the state of society when an atrocity is perpetrated over and over and the complaint is that someone keeps talking about it rather than the atrocity continuing to happen.
Reader's Digest: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Tina Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.
Obviously we can't see that people aren't genuinely falling out of their seats laughing when that headline get rolled out again. There's no way argue that someone doesn't earnestly think bad (or tired) jokes make effective satire.
I don't think a whinge is a joke just because it has the shape of a joke and a point I like. Overall, I agree with you. But you'll never convince anybody.
Its okay to find things not funny that other people do find funny. Not everyone agrees or has the same sense of humor. Bko is not the final arbiter in deciding if something is funny or not.
not quite; spell it out for me. are you suggesting that the onion has never, under any circumstances, been funny and therefore are guilty of having pretentious opinions that are "not funny", which makes them bad? Or is it that you're suggesting that you are the sole arbiter of what is and isn't funny, so you're the only person who gets to determine the worth of specific types of humor? Sorry, I have a hard time distinguishing which type of childish, smug bullshit I'm dealing with, so any help you can provide would be appreciated.
In any case, I've never laughed as hard at anything Lenny fucking Bruce said as I did at The Onions "Sony Releases Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work" bit. So if you've got some favorite bruce bits, I'd love to get educated on what is hilarious about 60 year old observational standup.
it's amazing how much asking someone to actually explain what they are trying to imply will completely shut them up. Thanks for playing! I hope your next one is so pithy that I'll rue the day I spoke against you. fingers crossed
I know a comedian who is very good on absurdity. He's been doing that for ages (he kind of popularized it in my country), and he generally attracts right-wingers. I don't appreciate all his humor, as in I don't find it all funny because the goal seems to be to shock (kind of like Goatse, which was also a joke/meme riddled with a political message). I do find it political and humor though, as I can clearly see the intent is (at least also) to humor, and also can recognize political virtue signaling within. I've also found him, at times, funny.
Whether something is humor can be objectively established by disassembly of the structure of the content, whereas 'if you find it funny' is personal, yet 'if it is funny' is a summary of whether a certain group (such as 'the general public', whatever that may be) find it as such.
As such, I believe the expression of not finding someone or something funny a red herring. Different emotions obviously flourish, and the person who expresses that they don't find it funny finds these (more) important.
The red herring here isn't whether The Onion is funny or not (personal), it isn't whether it is humor or not (it is, specifically satire). It is that you fundamentally disagree with the political message it entails. Which you are allowed to do so, but in a discussion it is useful to recognize a significant amount of people do find it funny, and either have no problem with the political messages (tolerance) or agree with these (acceptance).
Demanding to respect a claim is a political act by itself.
Something being 'political' or not is a red herring. Politics is deeply ingrained in our society. How much is it ingrained? It is a spectrum, not a binary proposition. Trying to portrait it as a proposition is trying to oversimplify, removing nuance.
All it does is it wants people to ignore issues and let different political wings try to live in 'harmony' with each other by pretending the other side doesn't exist. This strategy doesn't work, and will hit in the face like a boomerang.
a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act III, Scene II). It means that someone's overly emphatic or frequent denial of a situation suggests they are hiding the truth, are insincere, or actually guilty of what they deny. It implies their defense is covering up a secret desire or truth.
> You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
Ok, who made you arbiter of what people can do? Have you missed entirely the point of repeating this little bit of dark humor is to perhaps SPUR THE PEOPLE TO ACTION THAT NEED TO TAKE ACTION?
You're right, it isn't a joke. Its very serious. Children are being killed at school. Kids are anxious about going to school because they don't want to be shot. How is that OK? And how is the thing you're taking issue with the repeated headline in a rag that is pure satire? Its like taking issue with the people who point out the Catholic church has a problem with pedophilia. Maybe direct your ire at the people taking no actions on gun control, eh?
He honeymooned in USSR. Which is a rather odd place to honeymoon in 1988. But yes, he never explicitly said he was a communist, but just someone that wants to seize the means of production.
The grocery store thing is a red herring, although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries
In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.”
“public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises.”
More recently, Sanders has also been described as backing worker ownership plans, with reporting that he was encouraging workers to take control of the means of production.
How? He said he doesn't think the government should seize the means of production. That's directly relevant to what we're talking about.
> In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.”
I don't really care what his economic beliefs were 50 years ago. We have a long political career we can draw from. We don't need to cherry pick quotes from when he was 30 to try and find hidden belief systems. He's been pretty consistent his entire career.
> More recently, Sanders has also been described as backing worker ownership plans, with reporting that he was encouraging workers to take control of the means of production
A work ownership plan in a company is completely different from what you implied, which was "Bernie Sanders wants to seize the means of production." You made it sound like he wants to nationalize everything under the sun.
> although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries
Bootleggers and Baptists is a concept put forth by regulatory economist Bruce Yandle, derived from the observation that regulations are supported both by groups that want the ostensible purpose of the regulation, and by groups that profit from undermining that purpose.
I personally dont want modes. It should be smart enough to infer my intention and act accordingly
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