Skip Navigation

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/)AC
Posts
0
Comments
586
Joined
3 mo. ago

  • No need to look for foreign scapegoats when it's obvious that the very much local elites are fully into what's being done.

    Unwittingly (or so I hope) you're repeating the traditional Fascist propaganda element of "Blame the Outside Enemy", similarly to how the MAGAs blame immigrants.

  • Those specific propaganda elements are widespread in the West and widelly repeated in the mass media even outside the US, so it's useful to deconstruct all that for others when I am in a position to do so since that deconstruction of it will also alter their perception of other instances they saw which at the time they did not really spotted for what it really is.

    Hopefully the pointing out the mechanisms used here to construct a highly biased image will even make the readers of the deconstructions of it such as mine be more resilient to other instances of the same techniques being used.

    Further, how can we be sure that this poster is a propagandist sock-puppet and not just a normal person who got deceived by the modern (that relies on framing, qualifying and implying) style of propaganda and hence repeated it?

    I think that all in all, it's better to have these things and then just deconstructing them for all to see, than silencing them. Also on principle I'm very wary of Censorship.

  • EDIT: Wow, the previous poster totally changed their post that pretty much just outright repeated the traditional points of Zionist Propaganda on this as seen in most of the the Western Media (I should've kept a screenshot) into a response to my own post which just outright repeats traditional points of Zionist Propaganda (at least he's consistent) but without the slick framing.

    (Interesting technique to avoid that others are notified of a response and come back to counter it).

    My original benefit of the doubt (that maybe he's not a sock-puppet) seems to have been incorrect. My bad.

    --

    My original post below:

    That shit starts by straight out quoting Zionist propaganda.

    First the double standard:

    Either they're both Terrorist organisations for "attacking and murdering civilians" or one is a Resistance Movement and the other a Nation State. Claiming that the murdering of civilians to terrify the rest into complying with one's political and economical goals is only Terrorism if some do it but not if others do it is absolutely taking a side and doing it quite extremely since "Terrorist" is a heavily loaded word.

    Second:

    The ever repeated Zionist propaganda that being against Israel is being against Jews hence it's antisemitism. Is Hamas anti-semite (I.e. against Jews for being Jews) or is it against an occupier oppressor nation that takes their land and murders their children and is controlled by a subset of Jews? So far all indications are that it's mainly the latter.

    Also the double standard raises its face once again here as the Israelis aren't being said to be anti-Islamic, which is funny give that even the Israeli press is extremely racist nowadays - curious that the alleged Racism of one side just had to be mentioned but not of the other side.

    Third point:

    That Israel responded as if there had been nothing else before. This is pure Zionist framing of this stage of a long ongoing conflict between a colonialist occupier and the native resistance. Israel started this shit, way back when the Zionist colonialists started stealing the land of Palestinians and expelling them or murdering the (the first peak of it being the Nakba).

    If Israel was given the exact same treatment as Hamas in that text, it would have been described as "the Terrorist anti-Islamic colonialist invader"

    Now, I'd like to think you're just naively repeating the Zionist framing and propaganda that they so carefully spread in the West, in which case you might want to actually think about what you read before repeating it, as you're parroting outright propaganda.

  • The very same phenomenon you seen with those whose identity is to be MAGAs of being unable to believe the truth about their "leader" even when pretty much rubbed on their faces, because their tribalism means they're emotionally wedded to the tribe and will always believe the tribe's chief is right and those who say otherwise are liars, is also on display amongst those whose identity is to be Democrats toward their own "tribal chiefs".

    When it comes to Politics there is no greater human character flaw than Tribalism and the selective blindness that goes with it.

  • They were "relaxed about Trump" back in the campaign for President hence didn't even try to appeal to voters left of center (whom they later slandered via their minions and useful idiots as having the blame for the Trump victory because they didn't vote for the very Democrat leaders who didn't even try to appeal to them) and they're still "relaxed about Trump" now that he's using the powers of the Presidency to go full-Fascist.

  • rule

    Jump
  • Gruesomely mass murdering civilians using bombs to get the rest to comply with your will is only "Terrorism" if the bombs were placed on the ground and then exploded, not when they were dropped from the air.

    Hence the smaller per-capita representation of white people in the count of terrorists.

  • One can make the exact same argument by saying Open Source and it would be just as incorrect.

    Ultimately, the actual time and effort of the artist is not being used when a Gen AI trained on his or her work generates an output, just like when an Open Source library is used in a program the time and effort of the programmers who made that library is not being used.

    (As for the rest, that grand statement that users of Gen AI are "taking the energy the artist spent honing their craft" is just laughably exaggerated and detached from objective reality)

    The problem with Gen AI as it's being used now and the main difference to Open Source, is that with Open Source the programmer is in control of how works derived from their own freely distributed code are used, by means of which license they release their Open Source code under (so, for example, some licenses do not allow that code to be part of a commercially used or sold program, no matter how small a part that is, whilst others do), whilst the will of individual artists when it comes to their works being or not part of the training of Gen AI, and what kind of limits and uses are acceptable with the derived-via-Gen AI works based on their own art, is not taken into account much less respected.

    It makes absolute sense that, like for programmers, some artists decide that none of their work or works works derived from it if free to distribute (so, no Gen AI), others decide that works can be derived from their own works but only for non-commercial use (i.e. can be used to train Gen AI as long as the output of that Gen AI is not used for commercial purposes) and yet others are ok with totally free use of automated derivations of their works.

    That it isn't so, is not a problem of Gen AI as a technology (though if the training inputs are hundreds of thousands of works, the equivalent of Free With Attribution licenses might be hard to pull off) but a problem of how Intellectual Property Law is either lacking or being misused.

  • To a large extent that ship has long sailed in the programming world with Open Source and I even vaguely remember from back in the 90s some people claiming that Open Source would cause programmers to lose their jobs (it didn't - software users just started to expect even more complex programs with more features and ultimately that resulted in even more programmers being necessary than before), which is eerily similar to the arguments many are making here about AI Gen.

    Basically, most of the code in everyday software is already out there and freely available to all in the form of Open Source libraries (which in most projects add up to most of the code in the final executable) and there are even code generators for a number of things, since AI Gen isn't needed for generating code (because code is a totally artificial thing not something that has to be designed so that the human perception sees it as real or appealing and in fact AI Gen is actually worse at code generation than procedural algorithms) so one can just craft normal code that generates code.

    In coding the requirement for using humans has mostly moved from the making of the base parts in a program into the figuring out of how to put the freely available parts together to make a desired greater whole, tough granted the art creation part in game making (some of which I do, since I had to learn 3D modelling for my project and spend a lot of time in it, and the same for Graphical Design which I do for things like icons and UI elements) seems to still rely on a lot of grunt work in low-level shitty shit (and, curiously, the artists in the bigger game-companies are now using expensive AI tools to speed that up).

    Let me turn the tables around too: would it be fair if artists and musicians weren't allowed to use any software which is in full, contains or relies on Open Source code (for example, in the form of libraries), basically the tech level of the 1980s and earlier since almost every software now relies on Open Source code in some way?

    Even better, would it be fair for artists who are trying to make it on their own and aren't superstars?

    "By using software which has not been lovingly crafted as whole by a programmer, you're taking jobs away from programmers."

    (PS: I don't really want that limitation for anybody)

    That said, as I wrote elsewhere, just like programmers are empowered to chose what can be done with the code they make free for everybody as Open Source by choosing the License they ship with it (so, for example, if a programmer wants to force people who make software that contains some of their Open Source code to also release that new software as Open Source, they chose the GPL license, but if they want to give others more freedom to do what they want with it except just sell that freely available code as if it was theirs, the programmer chooses a different license such as the LGPL), so should artists be fully empowered to decide if what they put out there available for all can be used or not in training Generative AI and if they allow it also restrict it to only Generative AI with certain kinds of licensing (say, not for profit, or whose output carries a license that forbids commercial use).

    Whilst I would like to use Gen AI for some things in my project, I don't want to be even indirectly using the works of artists who do not want their stuff used to train Gen AI whose output can be used comercially in any way (so, even as a small part of a greater work).

    I don't want to directly or indirectly take the work of others, I only want to use directly or indirectly the work of willing artists and if there is none, then, well, though luck for me.

    In the ideal I would be able to use artwork derived only from the art of artists who would be ok with me using it so, same as you can only use Open Source code (including the tiniest most obscure piece of a library) in the way the programmers are willing for you to use it (so, for example, I cannot distribute commercially a program containing Open Source code - no matter how small - which has been made freely available by the creator under a GPL license, but I can if the license was the Apache one).

  • Oh yeah, we won't really know until we see it.

    I hope Europe does rise up to the challenge and replaces the US part of the military help to Ukraine (and I hope to they don't have strings attached to it which was an American inspired things), not just for Ukrainians but also because strategically its the smart move (as if Europe chickens out and Russia succeeds now, they will sooner or later act militarily against EU countries) but we can't really know for sure either way until they do.

  • Murica

    Jump
  • Well, my bicycles have always been 2nd hand (or 3rd, 4th or 5th) or very cheap brand new ones because something I was going to leave tied to a post in the middle of the street whilst at work or shopping isn't going to be something that when it eventually gets stolen it would really hurt my wallet (a Bicycle Philosophy I learned whilst living in The Netherlands) - so, run-of-the-mill bicycles with run-of-the-mill parts which I just regularly used, treated with no special care and just did some basic maintenance on.

    They all lasted years being used and abused like that, all up until each was stolen (I kid you not!), except the last one which hasn't been stolen yet.

    So my point is that for one's everyday cheap bicycle that one doesn't really have any special emotional attachment to, olive oil on the chain is fine if one can't be arsed to buy the proper materials ;)

  • Whilst for my project AI Gen was only ever an idea for a nice to have which is not important for game-play, I'm pretty sure that there will be projects out there being done by tiny Indies which aren't financially feasible without AI Gen because those operations are not well funded and can't afford to pay for lots of manpower.

    In game-making, generation tools (not necessarily AI) even the field between Indies and AAA game makers (which is why so many Indie titles in this latest blossoming of Indie Game-Making have procedurally generated worlds/levels whilst the AAA titles almost invariably have massive hand-crafted worlds/levels) but until AI Gen the unassailable advantage in favor of the AAA makers was in the finishing touches - for example, it has long been possible to use procedural voice generation, it just doesn't sound as good as the stuff done with ML (unless you're making a game about robots were a robotic voice does sound great) - since one can only go so far with procedural generation so in more real-world-related domains (voice being a great example) procedural generation is usually shy of "good enough" whilst both AI Gen and professional human crafted content is beyond it even if the former is IMHO generally not as good as the latter.

    In gatekeeping a certain level of quality to only things that can be done by those who can afford to hire large teams, because you refuse to accept games made with the kind of tools that most benefit the smaller game makers, you're basically supporting what's best for the bigger companies, unless the only kind of games you buy are "text-only dialog and limited art assets" games made by Indies with small budgets (in which case I'll take my hat off to you for being Principled in a consistent way) and not the more glitzy stuff that only bigger operations can afford to make without AI Gen.

    Merely being against the kind of tools that most benefit small operations and then turning around and mostly buying the work from the most massive of operations because it has a better quality (since they have the economies of scale and revenues to afford real human craftsmanship) wouldn't actually be a consistent principled stand IMHO.

    In the game making world, gatekeeping AI Gen use outright "just because" is a great way to keep the playing field tilted in favor of the likes of EA.

  • True.

    That said, British days as an Empire were almost a century ago whilst the US has been entering that phase for a decade or two at most.

    IMHO, the closer a country's past as top dog is, the more wealth is still floating around from the old days and the less the local elites tend to squeeze the local peons to maintain their status, and the riches from the gold old days are a lot more depleted in Britain than in the US, whose currency is still the main reserve currency of the World (though less and less so since maybe 2 decades ago), which would explain why impoverishment of the average person was faster and deeper in Britain.

  • That is the big question since the start of the Invasion, as they didn't went all in from the start and were only increasing military support and decreasing the limitations on its use (such as not being able to use it against Russian Territory) in a drip-drip away.

    Same question could be posed to Biden's America.

    My guess is a mix of trying to avoid the whole thing turning into a nuclear conflict and the edging their bets (no point in giving all kinds of kit up front to Ukrained and then they were overwhelmed for other reasons such as lack of manpower and Russia just got a whole lot of Western kit on their hands). Also if there is one thing most European politicians are definitelly guilty of, is being hesitant and over-cautious.

    There's also the possibility that they were following the Machiavelic strategy of drawing Russia further into that War by keeping the Ukranian military power around the level that defeating them was just barelly outside the reach of Russia. The purpose would be to drain Russian military assets and power to reduce its danger to everybody else and to give time for European nations to grow their own military power back to the level it was at before Russia started to be seen as a peaceful partner which no longer held imperialist dreams. If that was the intention, it seems to have worked wonderfully on the first part and so far so good on the second part, though the Ukranians would have been sacrificed beyond what they need to for it (hence why I called it a "Machiavelic strategy")

    Independently of that, at this stage going back on all of that sunk investment is a completelly difference level of changing their actions than the slow, step by step increase in supportting Ukraine of the last 2 years, and somebody having a history of hesitation and step by step change does not in any way form or shape support a thesis that they desire a sudden large scale change in exactly the opposite direction of the one they have been following for two years in a step by step way, quite the opposite (people who are extra cautious in increasing their investment into something don't just dump 2 years of increasingly investing and accept failure just because one of the "partners" wants to quit)

  • More likely it will lose superpower status and just become a run-of-the-mill large size developed country like Britain or Germany.

    Living in a run-of-the-mill developed country isn't actually bad - in fact the best places to live in the World in terms of median quality of life are all pretty run-of-the-mill places.

    Granted, judging by what I saw living in Britain, the whole post-Imperial hangover does screw things up significantly for a century or two compared to similar countries that were never top dog.