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Rottcodd

@ Rottcodd @lemmy.world

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Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Donald Trump Falsely Claims Taylor Swift’s Endorsement with Garbage AI-Generated Posts

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  • And a billionaire singer who's already such a common target for AI deepfakes that she's quite likely the one person on the planet most ready, willing and able to sue someone's ass off over them.

  • Donald Trump Falsely Claims Taylor Swift’s Endorsement with Garbage AI-Generated Posts

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  • Wow - that was quite possibly the dumbest thing he's done yet.

  • Repeating all the old hits, and he just doesn't care that none of that happened, or that some applies to him instead

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  • Reminder that Trump doesn't live in reality.

    He lives in a fantasy world in which he's the rightful center of the universe, and his entire conception of truth and falsehood and right and wrong is based on how well or how poorly things or ideas or people fit into that worldview.

  • Project 2025 video says a conservative US administration should ‘eradicate’ climate change references

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  • Of course it does.

    The broad point of Project 2025 is to eliminate anything and everything that provides any measurable benefit to the common people and/or in any way impedes the wealthy and the corporations doing absolutely whatever they want to do, no matter how much harm it might cause to people. That's the exact reason that so much of it focuses on eliminating or at least neutering government agencies - the goal is to make it so that corporations and the wealthy few face no constraints and no consequences - so that they have free rein to rob and pillage and rape and destroy.

    And it's not only the playbook Trimp will follow, but the reason that billionaires like Musk and Thiel are backing Trump. They aren't really backing Trump per se - they're backing Project 2025.

  • How Jill Stein’s V.P. Pick Could Haunt Kamala

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  • I'm regularly struck by the literal insanity of politics, but this whole deal with Israel is a particularly notable example.

    The fact of the matter is that we have no idea what Harris's actual opinion of the situation is. Regardless of what it might actually be, she has to support Israel, which at this point means supporting a government of literal murderous psychopaths who are simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza and a violent incremental illegal land grab in the West Bank while also brazenly trying to provoke, and drag the US into, a war with Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or Iran. And why does she have to support all of that patent evil? Because if she doesn't, AIPAC will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to destroy her, like they already destroyed Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, for daring to have principles.

    And what's the likely net result of that? To elect a Republican, which is to say, a member of the party of actual antisemites.

    They accuse Democrats of being antisemites merely for calling genocide genocide, and meanwhile, the actual antisemites - the people who comtinue to hold to the notion of Jews as evil, money-grubbing vermin who are conspiring to take over the world, are Republicans, even including Republicans in high office, like "Jewish space lasers" Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    Think about how insane that is - a politician has to publicly support a genocidal regime or face being called an antisemite and having an Israeli advocacy group spend millions and millions of dollars to destroy her and instead elect the candidate from the party of actual Jew-hating antisemites.

    And as if that isn't enough, we have Jill Stein in the middle of it all, who, with zero chance of actually winning, is free to take the position that any rational person should take, and the position that the majority of the Democratic base takes - that genocide is genocide and is rightly condemned. And that then introduces the risk that she'll draw off enough Democratic voters, merely by taking the position held by the majority, so the position that the Democratic candidate should take, that it will hand the election to the Republican - the candidate of the party of actual antisemites.

    The whole thing is bludgeoningly insane. I don't think anyone could've created such a grotesquely dysfunctional and actuslly counter-productive system if they'd deliberately set out to do it.

    And yet that's the world we live in - the world we're forced to live in - a world warped by the literal insanity of a wealthy and powerful few.

    It boggles my mind.

  • Israeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It

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  • Mmm...no

    It's "some random guy with a working moral framework, the ability to feel empathy, and some measure of respect for the rights of other humans and simple human decency calling a bunch of murderous xenophobic psychopaths murderous xenophobic psychopaths." So it's in fact nothing like that.

  • Israeli protesters storm military bases after soldiers detained for alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners

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  • Pure, unmitigated evil.

  • Israeli protesters storm military bases after soldiers detained for alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners

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  • Do you think the world would have been a better place if there were no religions?

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  • No - probably not.

    Religion, just in and of itself, isn't really the problem. It's just the most notable example of the underlying problem, which is probably best summed up as aggressive tribalism.

    People have a compulsive desire for self-affirmation - for assurance that they embody whatever qualities they consider the indicators of "good" people. And by far the easiest way for people to assure themselves of that is to associate those qualities with a label and self-apply that label. That gives them a fellowship of label-wearers who are invested in the same belief, which establishes a feedback loop in which they all assure each other of how [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] they are, and a ready-made set of outsiders they can individually and collectively condemn. And that last is the real problem - since few if any people truly embody the qualities they wish to believe they do, the easiest and most effective way to assure themselves they do is to focus on some designated set of others and on the assertion that they fail to possess those qualities. That allows people to assure themselves that they are at least more [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] than these other people over there.

    That's clearly a toxic and antagonistic dynamic that really just serves to divide people up into warring factions, and since it's at least somewhat irrational yet crucial to people's self-affirming self-images, it's a thing that easily gets entrenched and, whenever possible, codified, so that it can be forcibly imposed.

    Again, religion is certainly the most common and historically destructive vehicle for that, but it's far from the only one. Most notably, it's also the dynamic underlying virtually all ideology and a great deal of philosophy, not to mention a great many less significant distinctions, ranging from sexual preference to diet to sports fandom.

    Now - in the first place, I would say that it would not have been possible to have a world without religion, since the practical purpose of religion is to provide answers to questions for which there's insufficient evidence or knowledge to support nominally legitimate answers, and that lack of evidence and knowledge was an unavoidable part of our history. From the moment that somebody wondered what that big bright thing up in the sky was and somebody else made up an answer for them, religion was inevitable.

    Beyond that though - if we were to imagine a world in which religion somehow never came to be, we'd just have had a world in which people would've focused that much more on the other ways in which they divide themselves against themselves, since that desire for self-affirmation exists anyway.

    And truth be told, I actually think that's part of the problem with our current world - that a great many people have just shifted from what would in the past been a self-affirming faith in a religion to a self-affirming faith in an ideology or philosophy or political affiliation or some other tribal distinction - that much of what we're seeing today is the same toxicity just based on more secular divisions.

    Not that religion has become less of a problem - what it's lost in overall market share, it's undeniably gained in the fervor and aggression of its remaining adherents, but it's also been joined by a wide range of other divisions, each destructive in the same general ways, even if not necessarily to the same degree.

  • GOP attacks against Kamala Harris were already bad – they are about to get worse.

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  • I hope so.

    Yes - they've been attacking her pretty much from day one, but that was just to feed the base - to keep them on a steady diet of hatred.

    It's different now, and at this point, pretty much the dumbest thing the GOP could possibly do would be to try to attack Harris personally. It would appeal to the base, but they don't need to appeal to the base, since the base is voting Trump no matter what. They need to appeal to the moderates and independents, and I don't see any way personal attacks are going to do that. If they try it from a moral or legalistic stance, Harris clearly has the high ground, and will mop the floor with them. And if they try to do it in a personal level, it's guaranteed that somebody, and likely the wannabe dictator himself, will say something overtly racist and/or sexist, and that will pretty much immediately hand Harris the victory right there.

  • Trump-backed GOP platform says states should be allowed to extend constitutional rights to embryos

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  • While denying them to everyone else. Other than white male christofascists.

  • What's your opinion on the "socialist" streamer Neekolul ?

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  • Every single "failure" of "socialism" to which its opponents point came to be specifically when, and because, people in positions of influence and power turned their backs on their claimed principles and chose instead to live lives of wealth and privilege.

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    Conspiracy Theorists Think Biden Was Hit With Directed-Energy Weapons During Debate

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  • I sincerely think it's broadly accurate - that, for the Republicans and especially for Trump, (most) every accusation is a confession.

    There's a simple psychological element to it, most often illustrated by moralists who rail against perversion of one form or another, only to be revealed to be perverts.

    There's another aspect to it though, and I think this is more often the case with Trump specifically - it's a way to proactively undermine someone else's accusation against you. If you can get your accusation out there first, then they end up sounding sort of like a child saying, "I know you are but what am I?"

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    Conspiracy Theorists Think Biden Was Hit With Directed-Energy Weapons During Debate

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  • If we're going to go all conspiratorial, here's my theory:

    Both campaigns are dealing with old men with diminished faculties.

    There's some drug cocktail(s) that both campaigns have been using to pep the doddering old farts up for public appearances.

    If you'll remember, very shortly before the debate, the accusation that "Biden's on drugs" made the rounds, and Trump made some noises about demanding a drug test.

    For some reason - possibly fear, possibly determination in the face of a challenge, possibly a subtle communication that the Trump campaign had some hard evidence they would, if pushed, release publicly - that led to the Biden team withholding his customary drug cocktail.

    Trump, meanwhile, was dosed to the eyeballs.

    And that was the contrast we saw - Trump was on drugs, while Biden, for whatever reason, for that night alone, was not.

    Remember - for the Republicans broadly and especially for Trump, every accusation is a confession.

  • Supreme Court wipes out anti-corruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors

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  • Right. Go back and reread it - that's what I said.

  • DNC email archive has been removed from Wikileaks

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  • I'm fully aware that the DNC is under no legal mandate to operate legitimately or honestly.

    And that's rather obviously entirely irrelevant.

    In point of fact, if the legal standing of their actions is the only thing that matters, as you imply, then the entire notion that Russia willfully acted to harm them collapses. How could Russia harm them by leaking details of things that are not illegal and therefore (purportedly) entirely acceptable?

    If, on the other hand, we stick with the way that things have been presented by the DNC itself - that Russia willfully acted to bring them harm - then rather obviously even they are taking the position that the legal status of their actions is irrelevant.

    Go ahead and pick either one - I don't care. Either there was nothing wrong with their actions, in which case they could not be harmed by having the details of their actions leaked, or they were harmed by the the leak of the details of their actions, in which case their actions were self-evidently judged to be wrong, and the legal standing of them is irrelevant.

  • Supreme Court wipes out anti-corruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors

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  • Literally, officially, it's now entirely legal under federal law for officials to accept and even solicit bribes for specific services rendered, just so long as they do it after, rather than before, the service is rendered.

    They aren't even pretending to be a legitimate court of law any more - they're just a rubber-stamping service for the oligarchy.

  • block this account if you haven't already

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  • Already did, though instead of the bot, I blocked the entire instance.

  • DNC email archive has been removed from Wikileaks

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  • That's pretty much what it seems to amount to.

    All of the focus has been astroturfed onto the fact that the leaks came from Russian sources, and away from the content of the leaks. The clear (though of course unstated) implication is that the wrong isn't the DNC's corruption, but Russia's self-serving exposure of that corruption.