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kava

@ kava @lemmy.world

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419
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy

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  • I think in a time like that I couldn’t be silent.

    Honestly, nobody really knows until they are in such a position. I'd like to think I'd be noble and rebel but honestly I think I'd just try and stay quiet and under the radar. The older I've gotten, the more cynical I've become about positive change.

    I'm more worried with making sure me and my family are in a good position. And if I start posting dissent online and end up in a gulag or just get dissapeared for it.. it's not quite conducive to that goal.

  • Trump administration shuts down White House Spanish-language page and social media

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  • The majority of Trump’s supporters are making a choice.

    I don't think so. I think people like Elon musk are making a conscious and deliberate choice to embrace fascism. He understands exactly what he's doing and is voluntarily taking steps towards it.

    Most Trump supporters are just the Cubans in my previous example. Ignorant and afraid.

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    Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi?

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  • I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile

    Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.

    If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It's simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there's some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there's no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.

    Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.

    Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.

    Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.

    Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it's the illegals and "wokeism".

    All this to say that this shouldn't be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.

  • Trump administration shuts down White House Spanish-language page and social media

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  • If you were born in southern Florida to a set of Cuban parents and told your entire life that communism was the devil and that Trump is the savior against the communist DNC, you'd believe the same thing.

    Doesn't matter if you have the whole of human knowledge accessible to you. The human brain is very good at filtering out things you don't want to see.

  • Trump administration shuts down White House Spanish-language page and social media

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  • This idiot seems to be oblivious to the fact that there is no official language in the US

    It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. "Small government and low taxes" but when you want to triple the size of ICE and institute historic tariffs (aka taxes) it's OK. "Party of law and order" but when you don't let asylum seekers into the country- overtly breaking US law, it's OK. "The constitution is sacred" but when you sign an executive order that explicitly contradicts the 14th amendment- it's OK.

    Nothing matters. There is no consistency whatsoever. There doesn't need to be. The more disjointed, the better. You make people so disoriented that they'll accept anything.

  • It’s Clear Enough What Elon Musk Did. The ADL’s Response Is Pathetic.

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  • The ADL is likely giving a calculated response because of what happened last time Nazis took over a western country

    Israel is far-right. Far-right actors will align itself with other far-right actors. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone that the militaristic society who actively perpetuates the worst apartheid in living memory would naturally align itself with the far-right.

    The next fascism will not be anti-Jew. That's all ADL cares about

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  • he wouldn't be my first choice, or even my 2nd, 3rd, etc. but apparently the American voters appreciate billionaires

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  • makes me wonder in a parallel world where this guy actually won the democratic primary in 2020 what would have happened

    Biden was such an unmitigated disaster, I wonder if people would feel the same way about a theoretical Bloomberg v Trump in 2024. The Dems really shit the bed with the whole Kamala switcharoo

  • Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy

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  • they can’t ban everything, the Internet is too big. people will find a way

    they don't really have to ban everything. for example, the persistent chinese internet-goer has the ability to view things he's not supposed to see even though China bans large swathes of the internet.

    but by making it as difficult as possible for most people and creating strict punishments for breaking the rules, you can effectively ban most things you want for majority of people

    if posting on lemmy makes you an enemy of the state and the state is becoming increasingly harsh with its punishments... would you still be going on and posting regularly? i would certainly think twice.

  • Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy

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  • I have a feeling this place and other decentralized social medias will be banned in the near future. Look at what's happening to TIktok. You either bend the knee or you get axed. It's why the other social media giants bent the knee. They understand the writing on the wall. There's more going on behind the scenes that they don't share with us. I think we're sort of watching a quiet coup.

  • Roseanne Embarrasses Herself With Pro-Trump Rap Video

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  • i see your point too, but i also think you're mistaken.

    engaging is any time of interaction whatsoever. i could go to a ragebait and go into the comments and calmly and politely explain xyz. But

    a) in social media sites where algorithms are used the post I'm commenting on will be more likely to show up on other people's screens. because social media sites want engagement- doesn't have to be positive and

    b) even in social media sites where there is no algorithm (like the one we're speaking on) people are more likely to click on a comment section the larger the number of comments are. no point in clicking on the comment section if there's 0 or 1 comments. every comment is an indirect increase to the visibility and probability of engagement with future users

    while I do agree with you that there are different levels of engagement- either way you are engaging.

  • Roseanne Embarrasses Herself With Pro-Trump Rap Video

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  • it probably does indirectly. users are probably more likely to go into the comment section if they see a larger number of comments. no reason to go there if it's empty

  • Roseanne Embarrasses Herself With Pro-Trump Rap Video

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  • As a Floridian.. trust me when I say Florida is not 50% blonde

    The rapper in question is Canadian and lives in LA. Gotta blame Cali for this one.

  • Roseanne Embarrasses Herself With Pro-Trump Rap Video

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  • engaging with something is perpetuating it. that's how rage-bait works. the more people comment the more it spreads. content doesn't have to be good, it just needs people to engage with it

  • Art Collector Says He Lost Warhols and Harings to L.A. Fire

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  • people with significant money in art assets have it documented and insured. if he had 30 pieces just by warhols and additional, we're likely talking millions of dollars of assets.

    nobody leaves millions of dollars lying around without some sort of insurance

    to be honest, this is a great opportunity for him to cash out of all his expensive art in one fell swoop. i would be elated if I were him

  • Anti-woke: With Trump returning, US firms back off on DEI

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  • Corporations only have one goal. To make as much money as possible.

    There is nothing else. There is no moral obligation. There is no social contract. There is nothing but making as much profit as possible at all costs.

    This is why capitalist democracy will always devolve. If I'm a large corporation that is powerful enough for meaningful political influence- I will always try to manipulate the system into a) eroding the free market so I have less competition and b) influencing the government to enact policies that subsidizes my operations. Eventually you end up with a system like 1930s Germany or modern China- where the state picks and chooses some favored corporations and allow them to dominate the market in exchange for cooperation and subservience. Like Volkswagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H06734,_Grundsteinlegung_f%C3%BCr_Werk_des_KdF-Wagens.jpg

    So when a company says something about how much they love X or Y or Z and inclusion and diversity and whatever other buzz word of the month- they are saying it in order to maximize profits and they will stop saying it the moment the calculus changes.

  • Art Collector Says He Lost Warhols and Harings to L.A. Fire

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  • $$$ insurance payout

  • Meritocracy of Serving Capital

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  • This is why the older I get, the more cynical I become about democracy. People are easily frightened herd animals who often refuse to look past the surface level shiny veneer. It always devolves. Every single democracy in history falls prey to the populist who takes advantage of this human weakness.

    The modern globalist system has left you out of the manufacturing job you expected to have? Are you frightened about your financial future and your children's future? Here, I have a solution for you. We will build a wall and deport the brown people. It's all their fault. Please ignore the man behind the curtain.

    Instead of us having an educated populace that sees through the wool being pulled over their eyes, they instead put their heads in the sand and choose to full-send into whatever right-wing ideology is thrown their way. It happened before, it will happen again.

    The superior system, I think, would look something like the Chinese although they are not perfect by any means.

    What they do is in primary school, they test the children and see who has a strong aptitude. They take these children out of the normal class and groom them to be party leaders. These party leaders then eventually end up as the leaders in the future. China actually is a pseudo-democracy- it's just that only party members get to vote. And there are actually over 2 million party members. But the difference there is that it's more of a meritocracy. There is still nepotism and whatnot, but the leaders slowly rise up over time based on results.

    Look at Xi Jinping for example

    He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi province, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts and worked as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) of the CCP the same year and was the first-ranking secretary of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao's presumed successor as paramount leader.

    The way it works is you start in a lower spot and work your way up slowly over time. And he was actually destined for failure due to his father being a "traitor"

    The son of Chinese communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution.

    But his results ended up pushing him to the top anyway.

    This sort of meritocratic technocratic society will always win out over our populist oligarchy. And to the doubters, consider that our system is not any less elitist.

    Instead of testing children and grooming them for leadership, we do it based on last name and wealth. If your parents went to Harvard, you grow up with tutors and extracurriculars and all the support you could want. Then you are groomed for success by joining an Ivy League school, you join some sort of fraternity that presidents were a part of and you meet the future senators and CEOs.

    It's the same thing except instead of results and meritocracy- it's more influenced by wealth and nepotism.

    Of course I'm not claiming the Chinese system is somehow ideal, but I believe democracy is fatally flawed. Plato wrote about this in "The Republic" already countless years ago. Ironically, in his ideal Republic (which to be fair is sort of a dystopia) they actually groom capable children like the Chinese do for party leadership.

    Maybe we can just develop generalized artificial intelligence and have it run our society for us. I'd have more faith in the AI than I do in our congress.

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  • https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-2-debunked-accounts-of-sexual-violence-on-oct-7-fueled-a-global-dispute-over-israel-hamas-war

    There's a bit by Zizek where he's quoting Lacan. Lacan uses the analogy of a jealous husband who believes his wife is cheating on him.

    Jacques Lacan claimed that, even if a jealous husband’s claim about his wife — that she sleeps around with other men — is true, his jealousy is still pathological. Why? The true question is “not is his jealousy well-grounded?”, but “why does he need jealousy to maintain his self-identity?”.

    The man has a deep-seated psychological need to be a victim. He needs the idea of the cheating wife to maintain this identity. In this case, his obsession with his cheating wife, even if it's true and she's sleeping around with everyone in town, is part of a pathology meant to protect his psyche from breaking.

    That's the Lacanian part. As Zizek often does, he takes this type of individualized psychoanalysis and expands it up to the realm of societal ideology. The example he gives is of the Nazis and their obsession with the Jews.

    Along the same lines, one could say that even if most of the Nazi claims about the Jews were true — they exploit Germans; they seduce German girls — which they were not, of course, their anti-Semitism would still be (and was) pathological, since it represses the true reason why the Nazis needed anti-Semitism in order to sustain their ideological position.

    An example he gives is that Jews were exploiting Germans. And this is, on its face, can be a true statement. Some Jews were bankers and therefore charging interest and profiting from Germans. Some young Jews were going around and seducing young German girls. Etc.

    But the fact is, it doesn't matter if the Jews are doing this or aren't doing that. The Nazi obsession with the Jew has nothing to do with the Jew seducing young German women. The obsession is a necessary prerequisite for the Nazi to maintain their ideological position. A Nazi needs the Jew to be a scapegoat. To be a symbol of the Other- to use as an ambiguous threat; a vague amorphous barbaric enemy.

    The Jews control the world and the global capitalist system. They are devious and scheming and mean to exploit us. On the other hand, the Jew is a stupid primitive animal who has inferior genes. They are everything and they are nothing.

    I would take this and use this article as an example of a pathological ideological obsession on the Israeli side.

    Even if the claims are true, which from what I've read there isn't much evidence at all, that Hamas raped many young women on Oct 7th, I'd argue that it's pathological. The Israelis need the idea of the barbaric and savage Palestinian in order to maintain their ideological position. When they talk about the rapes, it doesn't matter if the rapes really happened or not. It's there for an ideological purpose.

    And just like the Nazi claims about the Jews- using small truths to create a large lie- the Israelis are following line by line with the playbook.