Thunder is the only one I’ve used so far. No complaints at all, I just wish I could, instead of building a large list of subbed communities, just filter out certain communites from my feed. Maybe it’s coming, maybe we already can 🤷‍♂️

I’m a US army infantry, I don’t have a great overall picture of geopolitics, but I’m generally a pretty anti-war kind of guy. My personal take is that while we’ve mixed ourselves up in a lot of deplorable wars, we also get utilized a LOT to prevent large threats from brewing in the first place. I just spent the last year on a NATO peacekeeping mission, and my job was 100% “be visible so Russian backed actors can’t operate openly”

So no, we haven’t fought wars that directly expelled hostile armies from our territory. But we do project a strong presence in dark corners that further the goals of stability for the US and Western Europe. By the way, NATO is mostly the US armed forces, other countries supply token, under equipped forces. That’s changing recently due to Russia’s aggression, but most of Western Europe was completely dependent on US NATO forces to maintain peace.

I was just thinking about my 16 hour flight back to CONUS from a deployment a few weeks back. We flew in uniform, uncomfortable as fuck, all I did was put one headphone in and listen to an audiobook while staring at the in-flight map. Even after a few weeks back in the states I don’t think I could do that again, but I was still riding the deployment mindset of “sit and stare at the wall til I have to do something”

The concept of non-human emotions is interesting! I’m my head I see is programming them to model human emotion, and also they learn from humans. But considering they won’t have any hormonal substrates, it’s completely possible they develop an entirely different emotional system than us. I’d think they’d be fairly logical and in control of their emotions, considering again, no hormones or instincts to battle.

I almost hope some of the major existential threats like global warming will push humanity in the direction of harmony and teamwork. I probably won’t live to see the day, but I’m a huge fan of sci-fi and love thinking about asperations of humanity finally throwing off the shackles of tribalism and becoming truly amazing.

I’d love a blade runner esque AI companion. I think a lot of people point out issues with developing emotional attachments to things that aren’t “people” but with a sufficient level of intelligence it’s almost fair to call these AI’s people themselves. If they have desires and complex emotional pallettes, along with enough conscious awareness to crave self-determinism, I’d call that a new, evolved type of person. They weren’t created biologically through sex, but they were created by humanity.

With all that comes the question of “why would they serve me as an assistant” and frankly I don’t have an answer that satisfies my moral objections. Is it wrong to program them to crave the job? Does that remove the qualities that make them people?

At the end of the day, it might just be easier to leave the self awareness out. Sorry for the rant, Lemmy has made me much more willing to word-vomit 😂

I wish I could share your optimism, I just see it getting worse before it gets better. Like, bloody revolution worse.

As of now, the majority of people still see billionaires as hard working geniuses who deserve the immeasurable wealth they have. There’s strong movements online that challenge these ways of thinking, but from all the people I know IRL, my wife is the only one who doesn’t call me crazy for thinking that level of wealth is only accessible through exploitation of “normal” people’s productivity.

An android Lemmy app, still trying it out to see if it’s “the one” for me

I think it would take a major restructuring to society to work, one that… Can’t pass anytime soon. Think Star Trek’s “post scarcity” environment. Everything we’d ever need is so easily and cheaply available from the result of automated manufacturing, mining, farming. In my mind, we’d have to hit this critical mass where such a small portion of the population is necessary to run the maintenance and development of these automated systems that it’s impossible for most people to have a job that “contributes” to society. There’s no way, in that situation, we could just… Let the population starve because they have no money, even though the infrastructure exists to support all their needs and more for free.

UBI, in that case, would just be “spending money” to supplant the free food, power, housing, and clothing everybody already receives. Society would be more focused on socializing, exploring hobbies, art, etc. Only the people who really want more money or something else to fill their time with would get jobs, be STEM or government or something. I don’t see capitalism happily coexisting with UBI. Capitalism inherently depends on people needing to pay their bills to stay alive.

*claw, shit. Anybody know how to edit comments on thunder?

The grabbing close coming in for the attack

I’m on thunder for Lemmy, I see this! Super cool 😎

Dang it, I didn’t see the “celebs” part.

Anybody got more of her? Does she… You know… Take penis on camera?

It depends how you define reality working consistently. Dark matter was first theorized by observing how galaxies and star clusters etc don’t seem to have enough mass to produce the gravitational footprint that holds them together. So dark matter was theorized to account for it. Invisible, intangible matter that only interacts with “normal” matter through gravity. Kinda strange 🤔

Super interesting read. Points out that the main strategy for gobbling up open source protocols is to adopt the standard, then expand on it, creating a “better” version for those using their ecosystem (and driving out those who aren’t)

I just wonder, hope, that this ecosystem stays innovative and big enough to always be better than corporate alternatives. We’ve sorta hit the point in my mind where the major players in social media have made all their products… Awful. Just terrible to be on. The tracking, the ridiculous amounts and types of ads, the constant censorship and rule > changes, all in pursuit of monetization. I just hope they continue to shoot themselves in the foot too much to draw people back in even if they’re federated. Reddit sucks now, Twitter is failing, everything of Meta has sucked for a long time. Hopefully people agree moving forward that open source replacements are good enough and being enough benefits to push these turds out. I’m sick of the internet being controlled by massive corporations.

Thunder gives the option, a switch in the settings!

I like to think myself open-minded, but I’m also a meat eater. It really is just a matter of self control and convenience. I know humans eating meat in most developed countries is completely unnecessary. I know farming methods are cruel and environmentally damaging. It’s just tough to shake off the habit of craving a nice chicken breast or steak, especially since I lean towards a very high protein a diet.

I’d go far enough to say it used to not be murder, but now we only kill animals for luxury.