Skip Navigation

User banner

ReadFanon [any, any]

@ ReadFanon @hexbear.net

Posts
32
Comments
433
Joined
2 yr. ago

If I don't reply I'm probably struggling with basic communication or my health. Don't take it personally.

Multiple award-winning Hexbear effortposter

Webfishing yapper

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • Sounds very cool.

    Honestly I was just reaching for a very obvious shorthand concept that blended a fantasy universe trope with a real-world political matter that is topical to get a chuckle and to convey an idea in a simple way. "The Eldritchstein Files" carries so much weight that it doesn't require anything more than three words to convey a whole lot of meaning and political context but, if I'm gonna be honest, it's very Terry Pratchett-esque and fair play to anyone who likes him or that sort of fiction but I find it a bit on the nose for my own personal tastes. But taste is personal and if everyone's having fun then I couldn't be happier for them.

    It's also about layers imo. Something like George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones takes very obvious, real-world concepts like petty politicking in the face of a looming climate disaster and he adjusts details here and there until it still exists symbolically but it's not a device which feels awkward from a storytelling perspective. Or the white walkers as mutually-assured WMDs gone haywire and so on.

    I'm not a particularly creative person and I've never done worldbuilding but I think, for me, if I was to do it I'd take that kind of approach:

    What if LOTR except gritty and political?What if internet except tree-based in a fantasy setting?What if Bering Strait except the Arm of Dorne?What if climate change catastrophe except cold instead of hot?What if Epstein Files except consorting with demons or something?

    It only takes a device from the real world to be one of two steps removed before it goes from being really on the nose to being its own thing and, as an example, the tree-based internet seems to require blood sacrifice or something so it feels very different and very grounded in the story rather than being out of place.

    (Why am I giving you worldbuilding advice? Wtf is wrong with me?)

  • Days since the dems caved: zero. The GOP pinky sweared that ICE/CBP might have "guardrails".

    Jump

  • You didn't say bye :(

    Jump

  • I leave without saying I'm bi too. Seems kinda awkward to drop it into conversation like that.

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • This is an interesting angle. China is moving away from its exposure by backing away from US bonds, and it has been doing that steadily over quite a while now, but also isn't Japan suddenly dumping its US bonds and isn't one of the henchmen of the Trump administration threatening countries if they dump US bonds or something?

    I have to be honest, finance is far from my strong suit and I've been aware of some shifts in the market but I haven't been watching closely enough to remember all the details. But it seems like there's some serious instability in the once-dependable US bond market. I guess this would really signal something significant if countries were dumping US bonds en masse in favor of a more stable commodity... what's that? The price of gold and silver has been absolutely skyrocketing? Oh. Oh my...

  • My feed is showing me very organic memes of Lee Kuan Yew, so be prepared to hear a bunch about how awesome Singapore is in the near future

    Jump

  • I'm not sure I'd idolize LKW but I respect the fact that he was part of the cohort that believed that capitalism should serve society and not the other way around. That's still woefully insufficient and it's a critically flawed position, of course, but it's not nearly as deep within the trashcan of ideology the way that society finds itself in today. He's definitely a figure that is idolized by some people though.

    As for Singapore, I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as you might think. I don't have any good sources that I can point to you as a good starting place, all my knowledge is the product of the accretion of scraps of info that I've come across over time.

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • That's so sad.

    I'm gonna listen to Nine Inch Nails' song Copy of a while I read Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation and I have a Philip K Dick audiobook playing in the background.

    The Luddites did nothing wrong.

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • I think we are disagreeing on words and agreeing on the points here.

    What I'm trying to say is that I'm not concerned about the monopoly, not really, and whether it's a bubble pop or AI profits crash or the whole economy goes belly-up, my real concern is not about the economic implications directly so much as I'm concerned that a lot of people are banking on the event as being the moment were we will revert to an AI-free world, or at least one that is the early days of AI where it was mostly used as a resource on tap rather than being embedded in everything but I see a good chance that we're in a situation where we are never gonna get the toothpaste back in that tube.

    My worry is that when the instability in the current situation is so untenable that it has its inevitable rupture, however you think that rupture will take shape, that it won't be the moment that society is liberated from under the yoke of AI but instead it's going to be a moment of fire sales and consolidation where AI concentrates into the hands of one or two big players and the agenda to further embed AI and foster more dependence in the pursuit of profit will accelerate as the era of the AI wild west will give way to a more "responsible" and conservative type of AI business model (i.e. Google's model instead of Grok's profiteering from spouting edgelord Nazi rhetoric and producing nonconsensual pornography of people) whose advance is effectively inexorable.

    The question in my mind is this: "What if an AI crash doesn't lead to AI being wound back but instead it advances the interests of and consolidates the power of a big player and this means that level of AI integration of society we see today will become the new normal, or what if it becomes the low point that people will look back on with nostalgia?"

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • I mean, in some respects we are already seeing the early phases of this - textbooks are being partly or wholly generated by AI (there are examples of this online), marking and feedback is being done by AI more and more, lectures and reading are being summarized by AI, obviously assignments and lectures and lesson plans are being generated by AI too.

    We are rapidly approaching that point predicted for AI more generally but it's happening in education right now - we have a recursive problem where AI is trained on education materials, it creates the textbooks, it creates the lecture materials and lesson plans, it assesses work and shapes what is deemed high quality and poor quality work, and then it is further trained on the material that is increasingly AI-produced which accelerates the recursive effect. Education was already crumbling in the US but this is gonna cause its collapse.

    Imagine students learning from AI materials then using AI to produce work to meet the standards of AI and all of this feeds into AI models that are used to teach students. It's nightmarish.

  • My feed is showing me very organic memes of Lee Kuan Yew, so be prepared to hear a bunch about how awesome Singapore is in the near future

    Jump

  • He was part of an old guard of capitalist managers. Think FDR style, the pre-neoliberal type that would do things like invest in infrastructure rather than reducing the tax on the rich.

    I don't like LKW. But he had quite a far-reaching vision, as tends to come with the territory when there are long term limits or no term limits. I don't have much to praise him about aside from the fact that he wasn't most of the bad things that we see in today's western politicians, but that's like trying to sell a house based on the absence of murderers secretly living in the attic rather than having anything to say about why the house itself is good.

    Speaking of housing, didn't he approach the housing market as a public good and less like an arena for speculation? That's the exact policy that makes him one of the old guard of capitalist managers who carefully tended to the economic system so that its excesses and contradictions wouldn't feed back on themselves and create rolling and cyclical economic crises.

    Really the only good thing that LKW did was call Australia out for what it really is:

    Yeah, it's classist because LKW is a capitalist through and through but he's not wrong about Australia being the poor white trash of Asia. I would have put it in different terms but where's the lie?

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • I'm getting HP Lovecraft's The Sorcerer vibes here, where the warlock issues a warning that the economy is now cursed and if anyone [does something the warlock specifically prohibits, like the release of the Eldritchstein Files] that it will bring about untold economic ruin but, in reality, the warlock's economic pact is structured in such a way that he can personally make the bubble pop at any point by a means that it makes it appear as though the bubble popped due to the curse and not because the warlock pressed the big red button to make it pop, so to speak.

    Like if the warlock controls a supply of energy or food or something critical to the function of the economy then he can do something like appoint a fool whose management strategy would bring about disastrous effects in that one keystone industry, which the warlock is completely aware of, that would have ripple effects across the whole economy and the warlock can be like "Behold my powers!! (And don't peek behind the curtain because the power of the 'curse' was just me intentionally crashing the gold market at the right moment so that the central bank would no longer be able to issue currency and now the economy has gone to shit.)"

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • Is there a contradiction there though?

    I'm not that finance minded but the current bubble is keeping the economy afloat yet it's inflationary and so if it pops, the economy is seriously fucked especially because you have Tesla exposed (itself its own bubble that apparently cannot build cars anymore) and Tesla is a big domino to fall in terms of the US economy, but to pull out of a bubble pop like this would basically require bailouts (because the only thing the US economy does during these cyclical crises is bailouts, eat hot chip and lie) except that the US debt is becoming unserviceable even under the current circumstances of relative stability. Feels like it's a choice between letting it pop and watching as so much comes tumbling down, which is gonna be catastrophic for whichever party is left holding the bag, or to bailout hard and fast to kick the can down the road especially in terms of debt servicing so that the next administration has to deal with it all blowing up in their faces. (Call me a cynic but it feels like if this shit doesn't pop very soon then whoever gets elected to the White House is gonna be handed a poisoned chalice, and maybe in pure political terms this would be the best outcome for the more extreme reactionary wing of the two right wings of the two party duopoly.)

    There's a lot of moving parts so I get that it's a bit of a crystal ball case but also I don't understand all the moving parts nearly enough. Feels like bailouts would be a slightly delayed economic disaster and no bailouts would be a more immediate economic disaster yet I'm unsure if there's any viable off-ramp that the US government would be willing to take (obviously it's not gonna nationalize any industries so the more sensible and long-term responsible options seem off the table due to the prevailing economic orthodoxy.)

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • If it's China then I am constitutionally bound to ask the question - but at what cost?

  • AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

    Jump

  • That's a fair take. I'm less worried about an AI monopolization per se than I am about Alphabet swooping in and expanding their monopoly while gobbling up everything and sustaining AI demand by more or less forcibly and permanently embedding itself into government functions as a way of deepening neoliberalization to a lower level of hell. (Along with the wealth transfer stuff.) Maybe this is a tinfoil hat take but I feel like Elon Musk's real interest in his DOGE fiasco wasn't just to protect his own business interests with Tesla etc. but, if he wasn't so apt to stepping on his own dick, perhaps he was planning to strip back the functions of government so much that it would have become necessary to implement Grok or a sanitized, government-friendly Grok, into government functions so he could corner a market there.

    I think nearly every tech-minded person is waiting with baited breath for the AI bubble to pop that will bring about a return to rationality but, in a bad case scenario, it feels like the bubble will pop and the aftermath will not be a return to normal but a readjustment that forces AI on everyone in a completely different, unavoidable, mandatory way while still trashing the market and bringing about bailouts that will only benefit the biggest players.

  • Tesla discontinues Model X and S vehicles as Elon Musk pivots to robotics

    Jump

  • That's a good observation and if you look at the table, it's really wobbly every time it gets bumped. Typical Elon - "I want something to look fancy but I want every expense spared!!"

    If it's that flimsy, I feel like the table would have done something more dramatic than wobble around if the bottle was burst open.

  • doomer @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    AI bubble gloom, BlackRock style

  • 💪💪💪

    Jump

  • The completely over the top jiggle physics always ruins my immersion with games and it's legitimely annoying. Maybe I'm aspec or something but it doesn't do anything for me except throw me out of the game.

    I mean uhhhhhh...

  • NYC continues to mog on most other US "cities"

    Jump

  • Are these melters approved for use on all forms of ice?

  • ICE vs. Everyone | Erin West

    Jump

  • Ice on ice violence.

    The very land itself rejects your presence.

  • Tesla discontinues Model X and S vehicles as Elon Musk pivots to robotics

    Jump

  • He can't even make cars anymore. You can't make this shit up!

  • Libfash lash out at Lemmy devs completely unprovoked while using the platform they created

    Jump

  • Okay buddy. Are you gonna clear up the misinformation that you have spread here by grossly and wilfully misinterpreting my words at every turn? No?

    I doubt it. Accountability is tricky, no?

    a simple "I fucked up, my bad" would have sufficed.

    Okay, the guy who never apologizes is gonna lecture me on how to do an apology. Sure.

    Did I not say "I get what you're saying now, my bad" or are you demanding that I must word things specifically to meet your satisfaction?

    Not going to engage with the rest of your bait either.

    Okay, settle down. If everything I've said is bait then you've done a bad job of not engaging with it and if I've approached this in good faith then this is just a cheap ploy to dodge and save face after I closed off the opportunity for you to abuse the disengage rule, as you are wont to do.

    Just came here to call you out and clear things up.

    Have you ever read the anarchist theorist Ivan Illich on the topic of counterproductivity? 🤭

  • How are we supposed to get anywhere when most westerners don't even know what communism and capitalism are?

    Jump

  • I really like this and it's interesting because it's very similar to Mao's concept of the mass line, which I always find myself bringing myself back to when it comes to any sort of organizing work.

    It's funny though, I wrote out a comment that completely contradicts your take here. Personally I switch between a mass line style of work when it comes to driving change within groups or orgs or workplaces etc. but in terms of engaging people generally, whether it's online or out in the wild, I tend to focus on agitation against capitalism to "bring up the intermediate" (to use Mao's framing) because it's not practical to do much more than that aside from isolating the backwards (e.g. calling out the person with the username EdgelordFourteenEightyEight and asking them what those numbers mean in their username so that people can be like "Whoa holy shit, there's a Nazi in our midst! I'm not taking anything they say on board wtf.")

    I'm all about a diversity of tactics and I think an important aspect of avoiding feeling defeated is a clarity of purpose in what you're working towards - if it's getting the average Joe to internalize clear, accurate definitions of capitalism and communism and imperialism and colonialism then you're probably gonna set yourself up for disappointment in a lot of cases. But if your aim is to help them understand why capitalism sucks or how imperialism is fucking everyone over or to get them to join their union, you're probably gonna come out feeling like you've achieved something in the discussion.

  • Slop. @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    I just want to recognize all the "uncommitted" voters who thought it was a good idea to sit out 2024 in protest.

  • traingang @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Cyclists stay winning!

    www.scientificamerican.com /article/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel-in-the/
  • technology @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Photoshop Finally Works on Linux (install tutorial) [15:15] • Mental Outlaw

  • chat @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    A geopolitical story in four images

  • Movies & TV @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net
    3:00

    No Other Choice is a class-conscious modern Film Noir classic

  • art @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    The Migrating Birds I by Joanna Karpowicz

  • gardening @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Gonna get some raised garden beds, looking for feedback on this plan

  • traingang @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine an alternative to the Yankee urban hellscape

  • Chapotraphouse @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Should we do a 2026 predictions bingo?

  • chat @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    A promising new YouTube channel focusing on Linux Mint 101 topics in bite-sized videos

    youtube.com /@lovelinuxxmint
  • music @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Kokym - Zaffit El Tahrer | كوكيم - زفة التحرير (هي ما بدها خاتم)

  • Games @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    GOG just dropped Warhammer: Dark Omen, an old retro game with a cult following. Here's some rare mod files for it that don't exist elsewhere on the internet.

    www.gog.com /en/game/warhammer_dark_omen
  • diy @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    DIY hydroponic tower for growing vegetables (except cheap, easy, and off-grid)

    hexbear.net /post/7134881
  • Self Improvement @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    It's time to start learning how to grow your own vegetables, if you want to (hydroponic tower growing except cheap, easy, and off-grid)

    hexbear.net /post/7134881
  • gardening @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    It's time to start learning how to grow your own vegetables (hydroponic tower growing except cheap, easy, and off-grid)

  • Chapotraphouse @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net

    Graham Platner on Reddit 6 years ago commenting on a thread mentioning the totenkopf on a post discussing SS soldiers with a visible totenkopf in the photo

    undelete.pullpush.io /r/CombatFootage/comments/auy0bi/_/ehbh3n6/
  • disabled @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net
    CLOSED

    Webfishing drop-in peer support - you're invited!

  • disabled @hexbear.net
    ReadFanon [any, any] @hexbear.net
    CLOSED

    Webfishing Drop-In Peer Support - you're invited!