Yeah, because everything was fine and everyone got soft and complacent.
Like it or not, we're coming to the end of that, we've not even scratched the surface of how bad it's actually going to get. The people and communities that smarten up will (sometimes) survive, and more and more, the ones that do not will not.
Elon Musk: We're gonna need the goon AI, get to work on that
Also Elon Musk: WTF it would never! Fake news
Sam Altman:
Pro tip for anyone in this situation: Squaring up on someone that close to them is assault (as distinct from battery which is if you make contact with them), and the woman not getting back when they told her to is obstruction. He's guilty of a felony and she can be arrested for a misdemeanor, if they really want to push either or both of those issues.
If you're going into it to maybe get arrested to make a point then fine. It's possible that the charges will be dropped or the grand jury won't indict, and giving resistance to these guys is absolutely a good thing to do. But, it's also possible that the legal consequences will be severe (even if they're following the normal rules instead of just snatching you to ICE detention). Honestly, they should be getting this type of stuff everywhere they show up. I'm just saying this so that people know what the deal is if they do decide to do this. There are a lot of TikTok lawyers who think that "not even doing anything" is in the statute, but it isn't.
Yeah. It's a big problem. I was alarmed seeing people that I knew to be bad-faith political trolls starting to make new political communities to "compete" in the discourse space with places like !politics@lemmy.world (which itself is pretty much a pile of ass for different reasons, but that's a separate conversation). And, since then, those innocent looking communities been steadily growing in power and influence.
They now have themselves a whole new instance, too: https://altmedia.house/. One fun exercise is to pick one of the names at random out of that "this community likes" list in the sidebar, and see what that person thinks about Russia or the Ukraine war. Except for people like Noam Chomsky who are out of circulation currently, in every single one of the people I tried that with just to investigate, I found some bullshit.
I hope that wherever Joe Dever is now, he sees this video now with all that effort he put into making something genuinely unique and wildly creative just to have it go into a little 75c trade paperback for kids during a car ride, finally being recognized. Like "YES IT WAS INNOVATIVE AND GREAT I FUCKING TOLD YOU WHERE IS MY BOOK AWARD"
The second frog turns to the first and says “you’re being alarmist, things aren’t that bad.”
This sounds like the second frog.‡
You gotta read what I wrote again then lol
You definitely have way more faith in our (metaphorical) neighbors and the system than I do.
Absolutely not. Actually one of the really alarming things to me is that I don't think this country has the structures and traditions in its society anymore that would enable it to build and maintain a working technological society (let alone a working democracy). I hope I am wrong, but I actually don't even think that the current fascism crisis is the worst thing that we're facing. I think it is a symptom of a much deeper disease which is a lot harder to get rid of than any one leader or political faction no matter how fascistic.
It would help if you included resources that prove that that book was the pretext for double digit successful revolutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Dictatorship_to_Democracy
It's known to have been directly involved in Burma, the Arab Spring, Serbia, and Angola. It's been translated by local activists into Amharic, Arabic, Azeri, Bahasa, Belarusian, Burmese, Chin, Chinese (simplified and traditional Mandarin), Dhivehi, Farsi, French, Georgian, German, Jing Paw, Karen, Khmer, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Pashto, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Tibetan, Tigrinya, Ukrainian, Uzbek, and Vietnamese. I have no idea how many of those led to it later being involved in a revolutionary attempt (let alone a successful one) in a "proof" sense. I was just telling you what I think about it.
Here's a story: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/23/world/gene-sharp-revolutionary/index.html
The author is the real deal. He's spent time in federal detention in the US, he's spent a lot of time with people in resistance movements in these places.
I want to call your attention to this part specifically:
The Burmese were amazed by Sharp’s theories. They couldn’t believe they had been fighting and killing for 20 years when there was an alternative.
I don't know if you can really call modern Myanmar a "success story" but to me they seem like they're making more progress now than in 30 years of bloody armed confrontation with the military, which of course is more capable at military things.
You likely have no idea who you just killed and who’s coming to investigate it
I saw a bodycam video once where some cops were attempting to speak with a woman who had signs of mental illness who was alone in the house with a small child. One of her relatives was alarmed by this situation, called the cops, and a couple cops were now trying to retrieve the child from the house calmly, without success.
The sergeant showed up, said maybe it was a fake custody situation, said maybe someone was in the country illegally, yelled at the woman who had called the police, and had everyone leave.
Once the cops left, the woman he had yelled at tried to go in the house and resolve things herself, the mentally ill woman physically attacked her, and the cops came back and long story short it all got sorted out. The sergeant actually apologized to the woman for being an "asshole" in his words. Sure. But also, the situation could easily have ended with a dead kid or the woman who called the cops getting shot or something.
Bottom line: Yes. There are plenty of good cops out there, don't listen to Lemmy about it. But there are also plenty who are incompetent or it's just not a good day for them. Don't just give a goddamned statement.
Which he is
Fuck 'em up Mr. Zohran
fascism does not care about legality, and it doesn’t care about pretext
Very very true. However, most of the country does. If they were already "doing it themselves" and this stuff didn't matter, they would have arrested Pritzger, kicked Jimmy Kimmel off the air, that CBP commander in Chicago wouldn't be showing up to court every morning, things like that. There is a reason they're starting by focusing on vulnerable communities without much support from the rest of society, and obeying this elaborate pretense that they're "enforcing immigration law" and pretending to stay inside those boundaries so elaborately.
I can pretty much guarantee you that if the citizens of Chicago had been obeying your advice here so far, Pritzger would have been arrested by some sort of federal agents already.
All I can really say is read the book. I know you have your way of looking at it and I'm honestly not trying to disrespect it, because I get it, but also, how many successful revolutions have you written the guidebook for? I think for Sharp that number is close to double digits now.
Friends,
Tesla’s profit fell 37 percent in the third quarter. Yet Elon Musk is demanding a pay package of $1 trillion.
A trillion dollars is hard to envision. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a million million. It’s almost the entire GDP of Indonesia, a country of 284 million people. It’s the annual output of North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia put together. It’s close to Tesla’s entire current market value.
Elon is demanding $1 trillion even as the legal battle continues over his 2018 pay package, then valued at a relatively paltry $56 billion. (He’s now seeking a package that’s roughly 18 times the size of that contested plan.)
Tesla’s shareholders will be voting on this absurd pay package next week, but it’s not just other Tesla shareholders who’ll be shafted if Elon gets what he’s seeking. Musk is moving the national goal posts for CEO pay all the way to Mars, at a time when American CEOs are already getting paid far more than they’re worth by any reasonable accounting of their contributions to the U.S. economy.
Tesla’s board — handpicked by Elon — is telling Tesla shareholders that the trillion-dollar pay package is necessary to keep Musk “focused and incentivized.” The board’s words in proposing the $1 trillion package are worth repeating:
“Musk also raised the possibility that he may pursue other interests that may afford him greater influence. Simply put, retaining and incentivizing Elon is fundamental to Tesla … becoming the most valuable company in history.”
But he’s already Tesla’s largest shareholder. He’s raking in billions. He’s the richest person on the planet. If he’s not already adequately motivated to stay focused on Tesla, why the hell does his board believe a trillion dollars will do the trick?
What are the “other interests” that could possibly “afford him greater influence?” He might devote more time to supporting authoritarian movements around the world, such as his favored far-right AfD party in Germany. Or the right-wing leaders in Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Argentina who he’s been pushing for. Or to his makeover of X into a cesspool of right-wing bigotry.
If not adequately paid to stay focused on Tesla, his attention might drift to one of his other businesses, such as the Boring Company, which is now digging a tunnel under Nashville for a Tesla-powered “people mover.”
That tunnel, by the way, doesn’t have the approval of Nashville officials, who are worried about it with good reason. Boring has dug one such tunnel under Las Vegas, where Nevada officials have charged the company with violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times over the last two years for such things as releasing untreated water onto city streets, spilling muck from its trucks, and flooding. Nashville officials worry that flooding there could be far worse because Nashville gets 10 times the amount of rainfall as Vegas.
Musk’s Boring Company says it will eventually do an environmental impact study, but excavation is already underway. Sort of like taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing after promising you’ll leave it intact.
Or Musk could be distracted by his SpaceX business, which is so behind on its moon landing contract that Trump is reopening bidding on it, causing Musk to go on an epithet-laden social media tirade.
I naively assumed that once he stopped running Trump’s DOGE and went back to the private sector, Musk would pose less of a hazard to humanity. I was wrong.
Some say that even with his faults — his greed, his support for right-wing regimes, his public-be-damned approach to everything he does, the mess he made at DOGE, the cesspool he’s made of X — Musk is so innovative that he’s still a net positive for humanity. What do you think?
What if your coworkers were AI? What if AI agents, not humans, monitored security camera feeds? What if you had an AI tech recruiter to find motivated candidates, or an entirely autonomous recruiting firm? What if UPS, but AI, or finance, but DeepMind?
Does that sound like absolute hell on Earth? Well, too bad, because the giant Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is giving companies up to $1 million each to develop every single one of these ideas as part of its Speedrun program.
Speedrun is an accelerator program startups can apply to in order to receive funding from a16z as well as a “fast‐paced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth,” according to Speedrun’s site. “It kicks off with an orientation to introduce the cohort, then dives into rapid product development—helping founders think through MVP while addressing key topics like customer acquisition and design partnerships.”
The program covers brand building, customer acquisition and launch, fundraising, team building, and more. The selected startups and founders meet each other, and receive the curriculum via workshops and keynote sections from “luminary speakers” such as Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Figma co-founder Dylan Field, a16z’s namesakes Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and others.
Silicon Valley incubators and accelerators are common, but I’ve rarely seen such an unappetizing buffet of bad ideas as Speedrun’s AI-centric 2025 cohort.
Last week, I wrote about Doublespeed, essentially a click farm that sells “synthetic influencers” to astroturf whatever product or service you want across social media, despite it being a clear violation of every social media platform's policy on inauthentic behavior. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
a16z’s Speedrun is also backing:
Creed: An AI company “rooted in Christian Values” which produces Lenny, a “Bible-based AI buddy who's always got your back with wise words, scripture-inspired guidance, and a listening ear whenever you need it.”Zingroll: The “world’s largest Netflix-quality AI streaming platform,” which is another way of saying it’s a Netflix populated exclusively with AI Slop.Vega: which is building “AI-powered social orbits.” What does that mean? Not entirely clear, but the company has produced one of the most beautiful Mad Libs paragraphs I’ve ever seen: “We’re building the largest textual data moat on human relationships by gamifying the way people leave notes for each other. For the first time, LLMs can analyze millions of raw, human-written notes at scale and turn them into structured meaning, powering the most annotated social graph ever created.”Moona Health: an AI-powered Sleep care app the company says is covered by insurance. “Our AI-powered platform automates insurance claims and scheduling and analyzes sleep data – providing personalized session guidelines to therapists,” Moona says.Jooba: “The world’s first autonomous recruiting firm.”Margin: “The World’s first AI powered credit card.” Margin says “Customers earn points, with dynamic rewards that adapt to their preferences in real time.”First Voyage: A wellness app that gives you AI “mythological pets that turn wellness into play.”Axon Capital: billed as “DeepMind for Finance,” Axon says it has “pioneered brain-inspired, low-latency AI for financial markets.”
Part of the strategy for these types of accelerators and Silicon Valley venture capital firms more broadly is to place a lot of bets on a lot of startups with the knowledge that most of them are not going to make it. A million dollars is not a lot of money to a16z, especially when it only needs one of these companies to 100x its investment in order to make the whole endeavor profitable. What makes this Speedrun and the current moment we’re in with generative AI different is that a lot of AI implementations are going to be shoved down our throats before investors realize what AI is and isn’t good for.
Are Doublespeed’s AI-generated social media accounts actually going to convince people to use whatever products they’re promoting? The accounts I’ve seen lead me to believe that the answer is no, but until then, they will continue to flood social media with garbage. Is Jooba going to entirely replace HR professionals and recruiters? I don’t know, but a whole bunch of people who are trying to get a job to pay rent are going to get caught up in a dehumanizing process until we find out.
So the next time you find yourself asking why you're being inundated with AI wherever you go, remember that the answer is that someone with millions of dollars to spare paid for it on the off chance that it will yield a nice return.
Yeah, it is excellent. He put it in the public domain, it's on the internet:
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf
He wrote a bunch more that are a little more in depth (there are references in the appendix for some specific details about particular tactics), but that one is the pamphlet condensed version which is still pretty comprehensive.