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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)S

stickly

@ stickly @lemmy.world

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Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Xi Jinping vows to reunify China and Taiwan in New Year’s Eve speech

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  • The only invasion I'm seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.

    I must be going colorblind because those ships are flying a very red American flag...

    repeat the crimes of Vietnam on Chinese civilians, much like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Venezuela and Nigeria

    Lol wtf? Unless you really bought dubya's WMD bullshit, one of these countries is not like the others... I really doubt that any Chinese civilian on Chinese soil is going to get so much as a dirty look from any US armed forces...

  • Xi Jinping vows to reunify China and Taiwan in New Year’s Eve speech

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  • Their president reneged it like 30+ years ago but that doesn't mean much because it's basically baked into their constitution. Changing the constitution to reflect their real borders would require triggering a vote and a bunch of formal processes that would absolutely instigate a conflict with the PRC.

    Nobody wants that, including the voting population. Thus you see a milquetoast shuffling between independence and reunification parties in order to maintain the status quo (independence for all practical purposes) without being too radical for Beijing. In terms of polling:

    • 48.9% are pro-[eventual]-independence
    • 11.8% are pro-unification
    • 26.9% want status quo

    And when forced out of status quo, independence support jumps to out 60%. But for now they're caught in a Catch-22 that allows the PRC to spit out this propoganda that people gobble up.

  • Trump’s Mystery Bruise Spreads to His Other Hand

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  • A few things:

    • There's a Venn diagram of "getting older" and "forgetting what year it is, referencing people that have been dead for decades, nodding off mid meeting, 2 a.m. tweet tirades, mood swings, TIA symptoms, recurring MRIs & cognitive tests, etc..." and the overlap is pretty slim
    • Having access to world class healthcare doesn't guarantee anything when the patient is a powerful narcissist. Steve Jobs died from a very curable cancer because he thought he was too smart to die. If Trump's doctors tell him to cut out cheese burgers and diet cokes do you think he'll listen?
    • Unlike a simple [death/remission] cancer prognosis, dying isn't the only ending for the potential systemic issues he could be suffering from. He could deteriorate in any number of ways that can't be smoothed over with PR and leave him unable to hold office. Think paralyzed, nonverbal, coma, etc...
    • The man clearly doesn't have the drive and ambition to care about his longevity. His goal is to siphon money while continuing to live an opulent lifestyle and die in office (however long that may be). Fear of death isn't the same thing as will to live, especially as the decades add up.

    Just look at the guy, his healthiest attributes are golfing and not smoking/drinking. Assuming he's just obese and in otherwise perfect health and golfs 40 hours a week (without a cart), a calculator still puts his life expectancy in the mid 80s. Are you really betting that there's some medical dark arts that will keep him functioning indefinitely? Plenty of richer and more powerful men have died in the same situation with comparable healthcare.

  • Vesuvius owo

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  • It's easier to notice if you exaggerate it. A word starting with V always has the bottom lip touching the top teeth. A word with W has the bottom lip pushed as far forward as possible and never touches teeth.

    Just pushing the bottom lip around you can hear the difference from Wine <-> Vine

  • China stages record drills designed to encircle Taiwan

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  • miltary conflict or economic blockade of China

    So we're just lying now?

    And the concept of China even being bothered by a blockade? Lmfao what year do you think this is? You think this is some WWII Pacific Theater where aircraft carriers and islands and air strips matter? China has about 9000 miles of mainland coast and all the technology and expertise to defend or strike from any part of it. Taiwan, as they've demonstrated, could be locked down (or glassed) at whim.

    If they didn't have the annexation ambition, they could wave goodbye to an independent Taiwan today and be close allies in a decade. You accuse the USA of buying Taiwan as a puppet but there is literally nothing stopping China from doing the same thing (with better leverage). Hell, they've already shown they can take that route in other small countries but pride and greed prevents them from doing it in Taiwan.

    The fact is that they want hostility and instability in the region in the same way that Russia wants instability in Europe and the USA wants it in the Middle East. Little islands waving guns is a great excuse to step in and start "liberating" resources people.

  • China stages record drills designed to encircle Taiwan

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  • In the case of any superpower actually being invaded, nukes would start flying everywhere. It wouldn't make a lick of difference if any island has 5 or 500 airbases.

    Are you really this dense?

  • Trump’s Mystery Bruise Spreads to His Other Hand

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  • I'm not a firm believer of any terminal diagnosis from armchair experts but pinning everything to "just a liar" is also off the mark. You can just look at his behavior and speech patterns over the past decade: he has good and bad days but the bad days are definitely getting worse.

    There's also other verifiable symptoms like his facial droop episodes, leg fluid swelling, these bruises, incontinence, etc... It all adds up to a pretty bleak outlook. High quality healthcare can do a lot for a relatively fit middle aged man, it does less when you're trying to prop up an obese octogenarian already showing bad symptoms.

  • How to reduce the crime rate to 0

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  • Reminds me of this galaxy brain ben moment

  • Russia opposes Taiwan independence in any form, FM Lavrov says

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  • There are mechanisms by which nations are defined

    Hate to break it to you but there literally are none. The concept of legal statehood is a fantasy; your existence is determined by what land you hold and who agrees to work with you on the international stage.

    Taiwan in 2025 fits basically any state definitions (geographic location, population, government, election sovereignty, etc...), but the only thing holding them back from ratifying their current independence and gaining formal international recognition is the 1.43 billion lb gorilla across the strait. By the PRCs own stance, a declaration of independence would provoke an invasion and cut diplomatic relations with any country that supports Taiwan independence. This is how you get phrasing like the USA acknowledging (not recognizing) the PRCs claims and not supporting Taiwan independence (vs opposing).

    Only 51 countries outright endorse the PRCs claims with the rest staying far away from an official position, so it's not difficult at all to see Taiwan's de facto independence. But the PRC has a knife to their throat preventing that from being formal, which is great for internet propoganda warriors like yourself.

    China has held the line on peaceful reunification since the 1950s

    Lmao PRC has nearly been guns hot with their saber rattling brinkmanship multiple times. If they stopped doing that for a few decades then maybe they'd get more support for a "peaceful reunification", but it's far more likely that Taiwan would want to remain independent.

    national security implications

    They're a fucking nuclear power, that alone is such an obvious deterrent that any Taiwan threat is negligible from a national defense standpoint. We've lived in a world with ICBMs since 1957 for fucks sake. It doesn't matter if a rival superpower decides to attack you from 50 miles or 5000 miles, it's not going to end well (for anyone most likely)...

    But the war games and rockets and patrols serve a much more important purpose than national defense: keep Taiwan hostile and use that hostility to preserve your casus belli. The moment that the USA (or whatever superpower) decides to withdraw their support you can hop right over and clean house. A peaceful annexation is much more risky and politically messy [see Hong Kong].

    Spouting "peaceful reunification" is such a laughable farce when their posture is so obviously counter productive.

  • the truth wears a toque, eh?

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  • Lol what kind of masturbatory logic is this? Aside from silly blacklist things like swearing, FCC is run by discretionary power when it comes to actual freedom of speech. It has only turned into a major censorship cudgel because of the shitbags appointed to run it. The CRTC has the exact same discretionary power, and would sure as shit be used the same way if Maple MAGA got ahold of it.

  • sometimes we get lost in the sauce

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  • Unless they had a governing body it's probably more natural to see a diverse set of sizes and constructions. When you're shooting dice in the street it's more fun to have (or make) your own for luck/cheating

  • Spanish archeologist with an ancient Greek-style ('Corinthian') helmet, Spain, 1938

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  • Archeologists in media: be careful with this precious artifact, its truly a relic of our human legacy 😷

    Archeologists for the past 2500 years: bro you're not gonna believe what I just dug up check this shit out 🤴

  • Bro, you didn't read the book.

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  • My bad, wrong comment chain. Fully agree tho

  • Bro, you didn't read the book.

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  • No no no you just don't get it: a rational dialect-materialist examination of civilization proves that our social and economic development is constantly evolving due to unshakable opposing forces.

    But if we throw all that away and install a Red Proletariat© government then everything somehow collapses into a happy representative system that is totally stable and can never change. Don't ask any more questions or you're a counter-revolutionary.

  • Rare footage from trial of Chinese general who defied Tiananmen crackdown order leaked online

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  • Nice deflection!

    But I do agree, seems like you hit your own nerve reading these comments. Having trouble stomaching the fact that blind support for "AES" means cheering for the jack boots running over hunger striking students? Keep digging up conspiracies and excuses, you'll beat that cognitive dissonance eventually.

  • Rare footage from trial of Chinese general who defied Tiananmen crackdown order leaked online

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  • Rare footage from trial of Chinese general who defied Tiananmen crackdown order leaked online

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  • If you listen carefully you can hear the entire .ml instance buffering while they wait on marching orders to spin this

  • me_irl

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  • paid to do it as in these companies get massive returns

    Ai companies are famously revenue negative. Their value is entirely speculative and it's doubtful they'll get any real returns due to the plain physical economics of training and running these models. Money currently being made is pocket change by grifters (eg: Ai YouTube videos, low effort articles), and that will dry up as water finds its level because it's just so easy to do.

    Looking at it from another perspective, the training of Ai and open sourcing of the initial models might be the greatest intellectual property transfer to the public in ~200 years. The strangle hold of Disney (and all litigious artist estates) on works that should be in the public domain has been strongly undermined.

    That is like 30% of what a human will experience

    Visual processing alone takes up about half of our brain. Between that and language you've covered most of it, I doubt Ai quality would be much improved by giving it taste or smell.

    not restricted in their dataset to experiences and things that have already happened, and the experiences are not reflected in just words and images

    Not sure what exactly you mean here. I can imagine a purple polka-dot parrot only because I have experienced those words in the context of color and pattern and animal. I can't imagine an ibcid kcajjd kpal outside of maybe vaguely attaching the concept of nonsense words to Dr Seuss. And I suppose an experience could be reflected in, say, a tantric massage but I'm not judging Gen Ai content on its ability to rub my genitals.

    Everything I've read has said the opposite

    Losing semantic coherence is exactly what I mean by hallucination. Even as you lose the ability to use input to derive a sane output, the resulting image could still be aesthetically pleasing or interesting. It could also be garbage, but the same problem happens with artists on hallucinogens.

    And I agree, Ai is "bad" because of what terrible people think they can do with it and by extension the economic and environmental damage done by trying to apply it everywhere. But I think people losing sleep over individual pieces of Ai content and artistic purity are a bit silly.

  • me_irl

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  • If you trace someone's art

    Not how AI works

    copy their style and were paid to do it

    All artists copy, iterate or regurgitate existing work. What does pay have to do with anything? It's clearly not a deciding factor for anti ai critics; the original post doesn't mention payment at all.

    they are capable of making something new as they improve, possibly a style no one has seen or a unique take on an existing style

    This just isn't how humans create. There's also nothing stopping a human artist from taking inspiration from AI output ("wow, the combination of X subject in Y style is interesting. How can I improve it"), is there no value in that? Is that line of creativity forever tainted?

    always be generating in the confines of its training data, and getting WORSE as it is trained

    Categorically false for art. Ai output quality does get worse when you inbreed it on facts or data based in the real world. The only thing it's really truly good at is hallucinating, which is a fine way of making art because the quality is entirely subjective.

    A model with 60B parameters has something like ~60B^16 possible outputs. Just because humans currently lack the creativity to do anything interesting with it doesn't mean the tool is slop.

    There are real, ethical reasons to dislike our current AI usage. But saying all AI content is bad ipso facto is just reactionary nonsense.