The Poles asked for their troops back when they were forming a USSR-based army and were told that thousands had mysteriously escaped. Then when asked for an official investigation, the Soviets broke ties with the Polish government in exile and made their own.
The Soviets themselves later admitted it was the NKVD. Are you defending the USSR from its own slander?
Ah the classic .ml responses: the USSR really wanted to do something but was forced to do the opposite because of those nasty capitalist states and also we'll just reject all sources we don't agree with. It's as iconic as the inverse US claims but you never fail to see the irony.
If you don't want to believe US reports, just look at Germans attacking US ships well before their entry into the war. It's not some secret conspiracy that the Allies were benefitting more from the US's position than the Axis by orders of magnitude.
They saw the Nazis as such a great threat that they needed to give them the materials to fuel Panzers and make the ammunition that killed Allied soldiers? What? If they truly wanted the Nazis gone first and foremost they would not have done that. It doesn't hold up to any logic.
That's true, but what about that requires this?
The numbers OBJECTIVELY show a decrease in German trade to a pitiful amount. In the lead up to the US's entry, quite literally the lowest of any European country (let alone adjusted per-capita). German U-boats were sinking US trade vessels up until the end, strange way to treat your trade parter?
The numbers OBJECTIVELY show USSR-German trade in war materials increasing as the war starts, with no significant support to the Allies right up until they're invaded. There's not any arguing this.
Pointing to post-WWII is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. Either country could (and often does) gesture broadly at the Cold War to justify their actions.
Why is it so hard to admit that Saint Stalin and the USSR engaged in hard geopolitics? Somehow you're trying to push the narrative of the Soviets being weak victims that begged and pleaded and were forced to concede to German demands. But you'll also claim they're the sole reason that the Allies won WWII. Which is it?
There's a counterfactual history where the Soviets remain neutral and the Allies will still almost certainly win (though at a greater cost). The Axis simply didn't have the manpower or resource access to keep up, hence their need to engage the USSR for oil. They certainly sped the war to it's end, but that doesn't change the fact that they could have made many different decisions if snuffing out fascism was their top priority.
I'm by no means arguing for the Democratic™️ ideological purity of the Allies, but it's pretty clear what the universal political thinking was in the lead up to WWII. Everyone (from Hindenburg up to the USSR) thought they could keep the Nazis at arms length and aimed at their rivals. A few fascist atrocities can be overlooked so long as they happen to the right people.
the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact
Putting aside all the usual arguments that get dismissed: What were the complex and mitigating factors that required supplying the Nazi war machine with more raw materials (oil, iron, grain, cotton, rubber, et al.) after the invasion of Poland? At the same time that the famously duplicitous Americans were enacting German tariffs and shifting economic support entirely to the Allies?
I'm not sure I could name 5, period
...and it will be valueless
What are you on about? Who are you to tell people what they can and can't find value in?
You're a hack who wants to pass other's work off as their own
You're making a hell of a leap here.
What is a tire or sheet of paper trying to express?
Could be any number of things. An extreme attention to detail, a production process with a political message, an innovative use of materials, etc... Putting artificial limits on which human creations are allowed to be fulfilling and engaging is foolish.
Also, desirable results require effort
Nothing about the use of AI or any other technology/tool/process precludes effort. A vast majority of pictures taken in the world today are disposal trash, but that doesn't mean you can't make meaningful art with your iPhone.
you don't actually want to be an artist
My eyes are rolling out of my skull 🙄
They never claimed to want to be an artist, much less fit your definition of one. A movie producer might "make art" but they just care about the output and not using their job as a creative outlet.
That makes sense wrt redistribution, but the original comment limited itself to the ethical problem and not the legal problem. I just don't see how it makes sense in that context because it's entirely unclear who owns the work, that's the nature of the technology.
If I train a model on the work of 1000 artists each of them contributes some fractional amount to each weight. When that model generates an image, it's combining a pseudorandom human token input with the weights and some random seed info.
If I provide a prompt of my own making, am I stealing 1/1000 of the content from each artist? Is the result 1/3 mine from my token input? Is the result 100% the property of whoever trained the model? Do we need to trace the traversal of the weights and sum the ownership of each artist based on their contribution to that weight? Is it nobody's due to the sheer number of random steps that convert the input intent to the final result?
What a weird distinction. So if I get a prompt to make a particular scene in a particular artist's distinct style: not stealing. But if I share that prompt (and maybe even some seed info) to a friend, is that stealing? If I take a picture of the generated content, stealing? If someone takes it off my laptop without my knowledge are they stealing from me or the artist?
My viewpoint is that information wants to be free, and trying to restrict it is a losing battle (as shown by Ai training). The concept of IP is tenuous at best but I do recognize that artists need to eat in our capitalist reality. But once you make something and set it free to the world you inherently lose some ownership of it. Getting mad at the tech itself for the economic injustice is silly, there are plenty more important things to worry about in our hell scape.
You could also look into community gardens. Not as convenient or simple as a home garden, but still pretty nice.
Thank God! Because we all know those backward Africans never could have done it on their own 🙄
brit
frenchfryenjoyer
Again, I pointed out and fully admitted to the foreign media bias. However there's a difference between dissecting the validity of reports and wholesale discarding them because of their source. If you do that (like our friend above), you've abandoned your unexamined received wisdom for a different flavor of the same.
The number one thing I see on the .ml instance is a total incomprehension of how China operates and is organized domestically. I know multiple close friends who went through a full childhood education and only left as adults. I also know a few who have split experiences, growing up in America + China. I've also personally been and have talked to people who've lived their whole lives (60+ years) there.
The one common thread: it is truly a different world, especially from a political and media landscape. For the amount of shit Western countries get about whitewashing history and controlling media narrative, the Chinese government has it down to a science.
Here are just a few verifiable examples.
This all builds an environment where the tight domestic control and censorship isn't just common, but expected. Certain subjects just aren't taught in schools (for example, Mao's handling of Tibet). Posts on the Chinese Twitter equivalent dissappear all the time with no fanfare. Current CCP politics isn't deeply discussed online because there's no point.
This leads to the disconnect between outsider expectations and the domestic realities. We're so used to seeing politics, news coverage and debates blasted all over western media that we don't apply the proper lens to our access to Chinese events.
That's what I mean when I say I don't have a dog in the race. You can sometimes make educated deductions between what western media says and the official CCP statements, but completely throwing out all outside sources leaves you in the dark. On a topic like the repression of a minority ethnic group in the obscure outskirts, you'll never find the clear answer.
My point was to rebuff all these comments saying there's no way X Y Z could happen. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence + where there's smoke there's fire.
The problem is you and your strawman will never agree on how much fire there could be when you're citing CCP press releases and he's citing 3rd parties and hearsay.
Going to reply in broad strokes here due to length:
Previously: [...]
[Salafi terrorists]...
[Tibetan immolation]
[border restrictions etc...]
I'm not here with any specific dog in this race, but it's clear that these counter arguments come in with a predetermined conclusion and deflect anything that doesn't fit as a lie. Is there any claim the Chinese government could make that you wouldn't defend?
It's not up for argument that this repression has happened in China's long history, you can check any history book you like (even China's). The modern difference is careful media control and domestic isolation, which is perfect for creating this exact vague deniability.
...a single instance of a Uyghur being killed
Genocide is more than just killing, it's the deliberate destruction of a people including its culture and institutions. In fact, the reason you're so focused on people dying is because imperialist powers felt the need to redefine it to allow their exploitation. Even in its more narrow definition it still includes things like abducting and re-education of children and malicious targeted actions (forced labor, restricted reproduction, relocation, etc...).
China is a massive country, and has always had issues with maintaining control over its more distant and ethnically distinct pockets. This stretches back centuries right up to now. For example: 100+ years of separatism, uprisings and violent incidents in East Turkestan. Or more recently, 160 Tibetans self immolating in protest of government repression since 2009. In this lens, there's plenty of evidence that could support these accusations.
Meanwhile anyone can visit Xinjiang
This sounds like something people parrot only if they haven't actually traveled China. For one, Xinjiang is massive. It's about the size of Iran; 1/6 of China by land area. Saying you can visit it is like saying you could visit somewhere in France + Spain + Germany + Italy.
For two, foreigners require a special permit to visit ~12-15% of China (varying by year). This includes the expected restricted zones (military or government areas), but also the areas along borders (many in Tibet and Xinjiang) and "politically sensitive" areas. There's no official list published for obvious reasons but they'll certainly let you know if you're not welcome.
As a disclaimer for those of you furiously typing whattaboutgaza: Yes that's a genocide. Yes, many countries have engaged in similar kinds of repression. Yes media will amplify stories that paint rivals in a bad light, no that's not unique to western media.
The sales aren't quite apples to apples. Very few WNBA players have the same marketability as a decent NBA player. Clark is a generational talent and the face of the league, but adding up the revenue of a bottom tier NBA roster dwarfs her. For reference, she brings in about 26% (!!!) of all WNBA's $200M revenue, while the lowest revenue NBA team (the Pelicans) brings in $272M.
You are right that the compensation doesn't match up however. Clark's rookie contract is $80k/yr for her $52M contribution compared to (minimum) $1.1M/yr for those Pelicans players contributing $18M.
As did the Soviets, what are we even talking about here?? You just respond to each criticism with "they needed to do it and what about the US", ignoring the multitude of other actions they could have taken if their priorities matched your claims.
Which they did once they had Soviet support. They almost certainly would have received the same support if they joined them in 1939.
It was official USSR foreign policy that the communist revolution should spread to workers of the world in all countries. Regardless of the detriments or merits of that, you can't ignore it when examining their foreign relations. Of course they got a different treatment...
They absolutely did not! One of the main factors that broke down the USSR-German relationship was a refusal to reciprocate military technology and materials.