If You're Upset That Elon Musk Threw Up A Nazi Salute Today, But Have Spent The Last 15 Months Harassing

I found this and I love this picture so much.

It hurt so many butts.

But like...

The Circleville Herald, Ohio, April 2, 1928

Why did “be critical of your media” turn into “find all its flaws and hate it” why did people become allergic to FUN

(Link to post)

Gee, maybe filling social media with far-right neo-Nazi content with Elon and the GOP's open white supremacy, and filling it with far-left neo-Nazi content with celebrations over Jews being slaughtered, promoting blood libel and conspiracy theories, and presenting antisemitism as social justice, have rotted young people's brains.

By the way, you know how sometimes on this site we talk about right to repair and preventing excessive e-waste? If you're a visual learner, I have an example for you.

I replaced my computer fans today. Technically only one needed replaced, but I wasn't sure if it was one or both when I ordered parts, so I replaced both and the older-but-still-working fan will be stored in case I need a backup.

Here's what capitalism would have liked me to throw out.

Here's what's actually going away.

Oh, and also it cost $19 and an hour of my time instead of $900 and many hours doing setup and import.

Fix your stuff. I used a combination of my roommate's IT knowledge and a YouTube tutorial and now have a functioning fan (and my computer's guts are much cleaner). If it's a thing you can't do--for example, you have an iPhone and need a new screen--there are professionals out there who would be delighted to have your business and it'll still be cheaper than buying new most of the time. Sometimes you may have to convince them that yes, you really do want the $250 repair on the five-year-old laptop because you're not interested in shelling out a grand for a new one. Do it. It's worth it.

"There are no [insert hated nationality or ethnicity here] cilvilians/noncombatants" is standard genocidal rhetoric, by the way. If you are saying this, you are giving a standard justification for genocide. It's right up there with the related tactic of insisting that all members of [insert hated nationality or ethnicity here] are guilty of some collective crime. I want to be clear here. These are both always very wrong, very bad, and very dangerous. It does not matter if you think you are right this time, and the people you are fighting are really evil and deserve it. Everyone who has ever said these things has believed that too.

ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:

if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?

what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.

the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?

people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...

all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads