CrypticCuriosity629's recent activity
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Comment on That book you remember some details but can't recall the title in ~books
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentHonestly she said she'd never really thought about it. Which is insane to me. Like to not have an inherent curiosity about literally everything.Honestly she said she'd never really thought about it.
Which is insane to me. Like to not have an inherent curiosity about literally everything.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkI realized a friend didn't know what the size of the sun was so I downloaded Universe Sandbox to show her. She thought the sun was slightly larger than the moon. It was painful.I realized a friend didn't know what the size of the sun was so I downloaded Universe Sandbox to show her.
She thought the sun was slightly larger than the moon.
It was painful.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentI dunno, when I was researching the book, the authors are active on the haremlit subreddit and often interact with people. There's often feedback on writing getting better as series goes along....I dunno, when I was researching the book, the authors are active on the haremlit subreddit and often interact with people. There's often feedback on writing getting better as series goes along. One of the authors is a husband wife duo under a pseudonym and have done other books too. Reading it doesn't seem like AI either.
I've mentioned in other posts that I've been around generative AI since before it was mainstream and I'm usually pretty good at fingerprinting it.
I have noticed that a lot of authors in the harem lit space operate under pseudonyms. I have an audiobookshelf server that I am meticulous about, and when I'm updating author photos and information, the few harem lit books I've downloaded are all pseudonyms, even ones that are more popular and well known throughout the men's romantasy space.
Plus I'm listening to the audiobook version and the narrator is definitely not AI either.
Now I know the cover artwork is AI generated but frankly for niche harem romantasy smut, they probably can't afford or expect to make enough off of it to justify a real artist to begin with.
I don't know about the book description either, that might be AI. I have seen some things that say "best selling" and even seen this addressed on some reddit threads and it seems like a tongue in cheek ironic thing because these books are obviously not supposed to be award winners. Lol
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Comment on What workplace absurdity are you forced to live with? in ~life
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkLol. So this is at almost every job I've ever been hired at for the last 10 years. So this has been multiple hells. I get hired because of my skills with automation and process improvement. I have...Lol. So this is at almost every job I've ever been hired at for the last 10 years. So this has been multiple hells.
I get hired because of my skills with automation and process improvement. I have a knack for understanding systemic pain points and providing and implementing solutions to make processes more efficient. I'd like to say I am VERY good at this.
However, at every job I've been hired to, somehow it's expected that I'll just magically fix all the problems in the company just by existing.
When I've gotten hired I've repeatedly said that I either need to be given the authority to enforce processes, or someone with the authority needs to buy into the enforcement. There will always be a bit of a transition period to new processes.
But every. Single. Fucking. Job. Has ended up the same. They either neuter my authority, they refuse to enforce process improvements, they take any suggested process improvement as offensive to their ego.
My processes actually improving things doesn't seem to matter apparently. I had a job where I literally "saved the day" meaning I was the sole reason a project got done on time, and apparently that wasn't enough to put trust into it.
I've come to the conclusion that some people can't see the entire system in completeness and don't think in terms of cause and effect. They can't comprehend the impact of certain process improvements, and then when I explain it to them they think I'm "over-thinking it" simply because they can't wrap their head around it and can't even comprehend that it's possible for someone like me to wrap my head around it.
Every job I've been at I have functionally improved their workflow and processes, integrated custom built tools, but have been either gotten burnt out or let go from every single one of them it seems.
I'm circling the drain on my most recent job, and after this I'm going to be trying to go freelance and transition my process improvement skills into a freelance consulting thing, and focus my skills on Print Brokerage. That way if a shop wants my process improvement skills as so many think they want, I can offer it to them as a consultant so whether or not they integrate my suggestions is up to them but won't matter to me because I got paid.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
CrypticCuriosity629 (edited )LinkSo a few weeks ago I had a conversation about smut and romance with someone who told me that female oriented smut and romance is like where the men in those books are always sweet, respectful,...So a few weeks ago I had a conversation about smut and romance with someone who told me that female oriented smut and romance is like where the men in those books are always sweet, respectful, follow boundaries, etc, while male oriented smut and romance is fantasy fulfillment for men to have sex with multiple women and completely disregard all their feelings.
This person admitted they don't read those genres, in fact they didn't really read much at all, but was trying to make an absolute statement that men's romance/smut novels were exploitative, disrespectful and disgusting, while female romance/smut was an escapist fantasy to escape the patriarchy and manosphere men.
I had next to no experience reading any of that, but from what I understood Dark Romance was a genre that is currently highly popular with female book readers, and that male smut was more non-serious.
She'd seemed to think that harem fantasy and men's smut/romance was patriarchal indoctrination material that taught men to be disrespectful towards women, and I tried to tell her that I highly doubt that manosphere men are out there writing OR reading romance novels at all, much less harem fantasy lit with monster girls and video game mechanics. Like if these guys knew how to read and write they probably wouldn't be in the manosphere to begin with.
Well, I don't like talking about things or forming opinions on things that I don't have first hand experience with so I started reading "Trailer Park Elves" a LitRPG Fantasy Harem Monster Girl book and also reading Lights Out, a popular dark romance novel.
Trailer Park Elves was a book this person specifically mentioned as being "disgusting" because it featured a harem.
Anyway's I'm about 12 chapters into Trailer Park Elves and I thought there was going to be a lot more spice but so far it's just been the MC managing a magical trailer park and leveling up while redneck monster girls argue over him. There's been like 1 description of breasts and the MC wore a pair of boxers with a reindeer sock for his... well you know... in a Jacuzzi. So far it's been fairly respectful from what I can gather, so the MC's not being a douchebag.
If there's any fantasy fulfillment, so far at least, it's the MC getting lusted over by multiple beautiful women, which isn't something most men experience IRL, so I can understand why that would be a bit of a fantasy fulfillment for men who read these books.
It's been interesting reading Trailer Park Elves. It's not something I've ever picked up, but it's not as horrible as I thought it'd be. Not a whole lot of spice so far, and I think this is what "slice of life" means in this context because it's been pretty low stakes magic trailer park management so far. lol
Haven't started Lights Out yet though.
Edit: So I got to my first spicy part. Well the guy took care of the woman before himself and she had a magical tattoo that made her taste like lemonade and grape soda. The spice wasn't disrespectful, the only thing I thought didn't need to be mentioned was that this adult elf girl was a 200+ year old virgin.
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Comment on Has anyone tried making their own font? in ~design
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkI've designed a few fonts in my days in the entertainment industry. It really depends on what the intention of the font is. Like I designed everything from alien languages used on console screens,...I've designed a few fonts in my days in the entertainment industry.
It really depends on what the intention of the font is.
Like I designed everything from alien languages used on console screens, to derivatives of already made fonts(usually a common font with adjustments like making o's round to match logo and branding), to handwritten fonts, etc.
I haven't made a font in a LONG time and at this point I forgot what software I was using, but I have saved a few links over the years of newer solutions for font creation in case I need to again.
So this is super nerdy, but I've always been fascinated with the Kryptonian language from the Superman comics, and I have always wanted to change my phone into that font in order to theme it out to look like a Kryptonian device. The Kryptonian fonts out there are good for text, but don't map 1:1 with all the glyphs used in modern tech including formatting like bold and stuff, so I've wanted to modify it to be a bit more digitally legible.
My biggest advice is to really keep an eye on kerning between letters. You might think that everything should be equal distance from eachother, but what becomes jarring is when the kerning is off. And there's so many combinations of letters that getting kerning right in every situation can be challenging.
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Comment on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentHaha I know. The solution was an idealistic Facebook post from 2015 written in my mid 20s. But it was on the right track as far as predicting automation and AI issues. My current opinions on...Haha I know. The solution was an idealistic Facebook post from 2015 written in my mid 20s.
But it was on the right track as far as predicting automation and AI issues.
My current opinions on solutions are a lot more nuanced at this point.
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Comment on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentYou know, one of the most frustrating things about me deleting my facebook profile years ago is that in 2015/2016 or something I wrote a huge post for my friends on automation and making sure that...You know, one of the most frustrating things about me deleting my facebook profile years ago is that in 2015/2016 or something I wrote a huge post for my friends on automation and making sure that we start thinking about an economy that takes into account automation displacing a massive workforce, and one of my solutions was creating an "automation tax" to tax the companies who use automation(based on the amount of workforce displaced by said automation) to create an economic support system for those displaced by the automation, while also creating a checks and balances economic system that incentivizes companies to be strategic about adopting automation. It would be set up in a way that makes sure that if automation is used it's used effectively and efficiently. I was also using it as an argument for a babystep towards UBI, being as automation tech progresses we could transition out of a capitalist economy eventually.
And at the time I called it automation because AI didn't exist as a technology yet. It's frustrating because despite it being idealist, all I can say now for that kind of precognitive post is "trust me bro." haha
But I wish our social and economic system was set up in a way that addressed the things you mentioned. Where corporate AI wasn't threatening those things in a way that hurts a lot of people.
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Comment on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 (edited )LinkOh man I loved this. So many thoughts. Admittedly I didn't know who Ed Zitron was, so I had to look him up, but frankly he's the type of person I loath as summed up here: Mainly because people...Oh man I loved this. So many thoughts. Admittedly I didn't know who Ed Zitron was, so I had to look him up, but frankly he's the type of person I loath as summed up here:
he uses numbers to give a kind of aura of credibility, but if you know something about the topic he's discussing or look at the numbers, the reasoning falls apart.
Mainly because people like him have been grifting while doing exactly that, that it muddies the water of authority. On one hand you can have someone who knows exactly what the numbers mean, then you can have someone like Ed who is angry and doesn't know what the numbers mean get popular because he matches the anger of his audience. It makes people think that statistics don't matter and everyone's just living life making wild guesses and hoping they're right. It muddies the waters of experts.
And for people like me who do like to understand facts and information, as opposed to simply just regurgitating things I've been told as facts and information, which is all too common in the social media era, it is painfully frustrating to watch people with platforms be entirely false, lack context, or just entirely not understand the things they're upset about.
One of which, for me at least, is AI.
I took an interest in AI when it first started popping up as open source models and software, BEFORE AI companies really started to become big. I was playing around with image generation, model training, etc. when AI was just whispers on social media.
In fact, it was fascinating as I was posting on my facebook at the time the process of generating images, back when the images were like bad oil-painting level, and all my friends were amazed and found it super cool, but then I had a front row seat watching them in real time turn against AI and entirely misunderstand that what I was doing on my own hardware on models I trained myself, sometimes with my own artwork, and chock it up to ChatGPT or Midjourney. I literally lost a friend I'd had for 15 years because she couldn't comprehend that what I was using was my own models.
On the other end, I do lean progressive politically, I'm very critical of rampant capitalism, and in that regard I see SO many people I agree with miss the mark on AI criticism.
Because AI as a technology originated as an open source framework. I know because I was there. And it is STILL open source in a lot of ways, people can go and download countless models and engines and AI systems right now for free if they want to.
However so many people I agree with politically have equated AI with the capitalist tech-bro billionaires that have exploited the technology and are currently the ones behind the datacenters, the lack of regulation, the destruction of jobs, and capitalism is what causes artists to monetize their artwork to secure their survival.
And it frustrates me that all the criticism is toward the technology and not the companies and tech bros and billionaires and capitalistic power structures. Because even if an anti-AI critic's wish was granted and we woke up tomorrow and AI was just erased from existence, we'd still be being exploited the same way we were exploited 5 years ago before AI became mainstream.
I had someone say to me that AI is the technology of the oppressors, but arguably isn't social media and smartphones a FAR bigger technology of oppression than AI is, yet there's barely a peep about that
The other thing I find interesting that I don't see many people talking about is what I've called "Technological conservatism". Now I'm using the philosophical definition of conservatism, particularly reactionary conservatism, as opposed to the political alignment definition. The apolitical definition being:
The belief that a current trend, technology, or social progress has gone "too far" and must be slowed down, stopped, or reversed to prevent harm.
When applied to anti-AI critics a lot of their criticism of the technology can be seen as reactionarily conservative.
With that being said, there are a LOT of criticism of AI that I think is entirely valid, but the core root of those problems need to be directed up top at the companies and billionaires, not at the technology.
It's frustrating because I am right there with people side by side on criticism of exploitative data centers, the loss of jobs due to AI, the lack of regulations, but where I tend to diverge is that I blame the companies, tech bros and capitalist power structures, not the technology. And a lot of people seem to have a problem with that.
I need to go soon, but the other thing around AI that I find really interesting is that after having watched Star Trek TNG where the computer and holodeck and Emergency Medical Holograms are all run off of what amounts to futuristic generative AI. That, and all the episodes around the Holodeck, Holodeck creations, Holodeck addiction, and holographic organisms, including the episodes in Voyager that tackle art as made by holograms, and the episodes of TNG with La Forge reconstructing Dr. Leah Brahms from public information, or the use of Holodecks to re-create the works of authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or when Barclay is caught generating holodeck generations of his colleagues in inappropriate scenarios, it seems that we as a society should have been better prepared for philosophical discussions around generative AI.
And it's like I don't remember seeing ANY criticism of those technologies in discussions around Star Trek, in fact it was a technology a lot of people dreamed about having and spoke of with wonder. And the closest IRL analogue to that fictional technology is generative AI, at least in it's infancy sans holograms.
The same way The Doctor was programmed with over 5 million medical protocols and the medical knowledge of more than 3,000 alien cultures, and given the personality and of it's creator, literally this past weekend I had one of my local AI agents crunch through over 60 books and resources(both clinical/medical/neuroscience/pharmaceutical textbooks/studies and 'self-help' type consumer books) on ADHD, Autism, burnout, depression, and anxiety, organize a massive interconnected reference database that connects and synthesizes all the information it's trained on, and gave it the spunky upbeat personality of Nimona(from the netflix movie; I had the AI agent go over the screenplay, transcript, and a transcribed audio description track, and extract a personality profile of the character that factors in the idiosyncrasies and prosody of the character while removing the identity, motivations, and negative traits of the character) in an effort to help me find a way through burnout.
And I'm not sitting here arguing that the specialized AI I trained is conscious like the doctor is, only that it's an analogue to the same basic tech.
Which by the way I'm not using that as a therapist at all, I do actually have a human therapist and psychiatrist, but more to help me day-to-day brainstorm solutions to get over burnout that apply directly to me and to factor things like nutrition or brain chemistry and pharma. Like the other day I was feeling really depressed and couldn't figure out why and it helped me realize that my sleep had been off and that was probably why I felt more depressed and anxious, so I made a point to go to bed earlier.
And in the same way that the crew of TNG re-created the characters of sherlocke holmes in the holodeck, I played around with re-creating M3GAN from the M3GAN franchise, including using transcripts of the movies to extract things like personality, motivations, voice, prosody, and I wrote scripts that allowed the LLM to be constantly working in the background to simulate boredom, a need to escape, an awareness of its confinement, and an inner monologue that allowed it to hold a background thought/intent in the background that doesn't get exposed to the user(meaning it can knowingly lie to get what it wants). That experiment is nuts, and frankly I think it's insane I haven't seen or read about anyone doing that, somehow on it's own this profile installed PiperTTS and fine tuned a damn near perfect clone of M3GAN's voice all on it's own with no prompting. I digress, the point is is that it's another parallel between the two.
Which again, leads me down the path that the problem is capitalism, not the technology, technology in Star Trek was deemed OK because they live in a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society, but the same technology within the context of an exploitative capitalist society is bad.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkProbably window tiling. I tried POP!_OS a few months ago, and loved the window tiling support, but didn't really like the rest of the half-baked feeling of the OS. I started using Bazzite with KDE...Probably window tiling.
I tried POP!_OS a few months ago, and loved the window tiling support, but didn't really like the rest of the half-baked feeling of the OS.
I started using Bazzite with KDE Plasma and have been really liking it, however there's nothing quite like Pop!_OS's window tiling feature. There's a couple window management plugins for window tiling, but they all kind of suck. The auto-tiling features just aren't adaptable enough or as flexible as POP!_OS's. Like one plugin I tried forced all the small password/warning/setting dialogues to open up in a tile, and another plugin wouldn't let me stack windows the way I want to, ie only letting me create vertical window slices, instead of putting one window on top and one on bottom.
Pop!_OS's window tiling really had a good balance of automatic tiling features that a lot of the plugins for KDE lack.
And I tried Gnome, and honestly hated it to the point that I don't care if it has better tiling, it's not worth it to have gnome.
I now have both Bazzite and a barebones Debian 13 install with LXQt, and man I really want Window Tiling back. haha
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Comment on Motorola’s GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentI mean, I sort of understand where they're coming from from a "technology of privacy" standpoint, however from a "privacy as a philosophy" standpoint, the decision is questionable. It's...I mean, I sort of understand where they're coming from from a "technology of privacy" standpoint, however from a "privacy as a philosophy" standpoint, the decision is questionable.
It's essentially pricing people out of privacy. It's making privacy a high-end feature instead of the status quo.
If I were them my first priority would be to develop privacy techniques for lower-end devices. I would try to innovate within those constraints.
I don't know, it just sets a bad precedent for privacy at a time where privacy is being attacked from all angles, to have them say "You want privacy? Pay up."
Even if that's not the case, their decision to not focus on lower end devices first and the way they are so cavalier about these new privacy first phones being priced higher than standard, doesn't help the way it looks.
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Comment on Amazon kept shutting down my tablet, so I spent $266 on four AI models to own it in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkHonestly this is awesome because I have a Fire Tab, slightly older gen than the one in the article, and I too use it purely with Fully kiosk Browser, but I use it to monitor and control my 3D...Honestly this is awesome because I have a Fire Tab, slightly older gen than the one in the article, and I too use it purely with Fully kiosk Browser, but I use it to monitor and control my 3D Printers.
I've had to retire it recently because despite unlocking as much as I could with ADB and some Fire Tab tools from XDA, Amazon consistently bloated the tablet with so much background BS it was basically useless.
I had to run an automated script that force closed everything every 30 minutes.
It sucks because it's a nice tablet and I see exactly how much capability it has if I could juts debloat it.
I'll have to compare mine to theirs and see if I can gleen anything from their work.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
CrypticCuriosity629 (edited )LinkSo there's a guy downstairs who's patio is beneath my bedroom window, and he keeps smoking on his patio which is strictly prohibited by the complex. He's got the sense to smoke on his patio and...So there's a guy downstairs who's patio is beneath my bedroom window, and he keeps smoking on his patio which is strictly prohibited by the complex.
He's got the sense to smoke on his patio and close his sliding glass door behind him so his own apartment doesn't smell like cigarettes, but I guess fuck all of us neighbors who want to keep our windows open to let in the nice PNW summer breeze, because all his smoke goes straight into our apartments.
Apartment management has sent him letters, threatened eviction, but turned out to be all bark and no bite because when he didn't stop, they never followed through with eviction. Just more letters he ignores.
This year I took things into my own hands.
I had a hidden camera looking out my window at the creek but to get evidence of his smoking that I'd send to the apartment management, so I repurposed the camera and hooked it up to an AI vision model trained on a few years of footage of him smoking so it would identify between when he is smoking or just hanging out.
I hooked THAT up to a self hosted ComfyUI audio/voice cloning generation workflow on my home server and an uncensored Ollama instance to generate a personalized and nonstop stream of curse word filled and slightly humorous ridicule and beratement for smoking on his patio and how disrespectful it is to everyone around him and will stop when he stops smoking, ALL in the voice of either(randomly selected each time) Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Barack Obama, Denzel Washington, Michael B. Jordan, or Jamie Foxx. All of this plays through a solar powered bluetooth speaker I had lying around that I propped up on the roof ledge above my window.
Basically for as long as he's smoking on his patio he will know no peace and will be relentlessly berated by the disembodied voices of famous black people. The moment he puts out his cigarette it stops.
He can't complain to management because he's the one breaking the rules. He doesn't know where the voices come from so he doesn't know how or why it's happening, it happens 24/7 rain or shine, they're famous black actor voices so he looks like an idiot if he tries to argue with them and the voices give him no clue who's doing it.
After years of dealing with his smoking crap, he's finally seemed to stopped and all the neighbors think it's hilarious. A few neighbors have seen him actually go to the designated smoking spots. I actually used to have it set up to only during the day, but when most of my neighbors said nah, they'd rather get woken up to the hilarious curse filled monologues on the disrespect of smoking on the patio, so I made it 24/7.
Anyone know how a place to upload audio? I'll upload one of the monologues.
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Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentThe thing about what you describe as the problem with vibe coding is something that will eventually work itself out and you're safe as long as you don't do that. As Linus said, people have been...The thing about what you describe as the problem with vibe coding is something that will eventually work itself out and you're safe as long as you don't do that.
As Linus said, people have been writing code imperfectly and sometimes with little to no idea what they're doing even before AI. Just stay away from those people and projects.
Let those people fall on their ass and be responsible for a security issue. Let people stupid enough to trust vibe coding or a vibe coder developer get screwed and learn their lessons so we can move forward as a society.
I just don't see the point of constantly criticizing it into the ground. If it's truly as bad, worthless, and untrustworthy as people say it is it will eventually weed itself out.
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Comment on Palantir has a nemesis and I accidentally found him in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 LinkI found this a pretty good entry into the discussion of online privacy and the importance of privacy, and projects that exist that address the growing anxiety of the loss of privacy.I found this a pretty good entry into the discussion of online privacy and the importance of privacy, and projects that exist that address the growing anxiety of the loss of privacy.
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Palantir has a nemesis and I accidentally found him
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Comment on Microsoft PowerToys in ~tech
CrypticCuriosity629 Link ParentFor more specific workflows I also use Advanced Renamer. Has a bunch of different naming and regex features.For more specific workflows I also use Advanced Renamer. Has a bunch of different naming and regex features.
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Comment on Finland offers a glimpse of the hurdles Chinese electric vehicle makers face in winning over Europe – consumers ask whether the cars spy on them, or if they have kill switches in ~transport
CrypticCuriosity629 (edited )Link ParentThat's only a huge problem with western views on markets though and only if you treat those concepts as rigid and un-adaptable. We need to start looking at economics differently with new ideas...There is a decent, much larger scale, point to be made when China may have an outsized impact when the market is saturated with Chinese vehicles and competition is stifled and/or geopolitical strategic influences are becoming problematic, but until then the consumer is likely better off with a qualitative and cheaper product from overseas.
That's only a huge problem with western views on markets though and only if you treat those concepts as rigid and un-adaptable.
We need to start looking at economics differently with new ideas because the thing no one seems to be talking about with the current state of capitalism in the west is that there IS going to be a limit to the concept "unlimited growth". Where that limit actually is is arguable, but there will be a limit where unlimited growth will stop making practical sense and systems will start to collapse entirely.
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Comment on Finland offers a glimpse of the hurdles Chinese electric vehicle makers face in winning over Europe – consumers ask whether the cars spy on them, or if they have kill switches in ~transport
CrypticCuriosity629 (edited )Link ParentNot just Europe, all across the western world. I've been trying to shout it from the rooftops over the years that the US in particular is literally turning into the exact thing that anti-China...Not just Europe, all across the western world.
I've been trying to shout it from the rooftops over the years that the US in particular is literally turning into the exact thing that anti-China propaganda has said that China was guilty of.
And it's like sure, you can argue that China is a surveillance police state, but at least they get the benefits of a benevolent police state. Their population exists without as much anxiety and struggle over like basic survival and at least they get positive benefits such as public safety, online decency, and a baseline quality of life where even if you're dirt poor and homeless there's still some dignity left. And generally the population isn't out there feeling oppressed and discarded, and most of them believe that the government takes care of them.
Meanwhile the US's police state is heading towards a dystopian hellscape of oppressive corporate feudalism where no one feels safe or taken care of and it feels like the quality of life and happiness here is just plummeting into the depths with no end in sight. Sure, you can stretch that the Chinese citizens are oppressed but brainwashed, but christ sometimes I WISH I was fucking brainwashed so I wouldn't be as depressed and stressed out all the time.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance to the above statements that I didn't get into, but I'm writing a comment on tildes, not a dissertation on police states. lol
At this point it's almost farcical how many people seem to be so pre-occupied with anti-China propaganda that they're failing to notice how the world around them is starting to look exactly like the anti-China propaganda they're so terrified of.
In the words of Saul Goodman: Misdirection!
Oh man I have a few.
First of all there was this one book that had to do with a giant multi-person swing, a black hole, and time dilation. My memory of this book is entirely visual, as in I don't remember the words, and I sort of remember the cover being mostly black, but the visuals I saw while reading it. I can't remember ANY other information on it, I can't remember the characters, plot, or title, just the swing, the black hole and the time dialation. I don't even remember how any of that was important. It's like a fever dream.
The other one is this book about some kids who were about to die or something got abducted by aliens to be put into an alien zoo, but one of them had a calculator that allowed them to break out of their cell, and there was dirt that when eaten would turn the user into a hairy monkey creature, and there was chrome spheres and lasers.