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xor

@xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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xor ,

@ lemmy.ml

xor ,

The fuck did Ukraine do?

xor ,

Lol

xor ,

That'll be "marxist-leninist"

xor , (edited )

Source?

Edit: so I figured I go investigate for myself and by "Ukraine" you mean random citizens involved in what was basically a civil war, the people in the building were using it as a fortress, and blockaded themselves inside, and by "people" you meant Russian separatist insurrectionists, who were firing from the building and throwing Molotov cocktails into the crowd below.

xor ,

Ah yes, because there definitely wasn't some other common characteristic to the (not only leftist, as you carefully avoided mentioning) parties that were banned

Something like, I don't know, supporting the country actively invading Ukraine, perhaps?

xor ,

Which bit did I make up?

xor ,

Twice. I did it twice.

xor ,

Why not just use type c headphones?

The 3.5mm thing has always baffled me, it feels like complaining your pc doesn't have a VGA port, except the thing you connect costs like a fiver

Lawsuit alleges Grindr illegally shared users' HIV status, sensitive data with third-party advertisers. (www.theregister.com)

Hundreds have joined a UK class action lawsuit against LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr, seeking damages over a historical case of the company allegedly forwarding users' HIV status as well as other sensitive data to third-party advertisers....

xor ,

As people have said, it's actually perfectly legal in the US, horrifyingly.

But the UK has very strict data protection laws which we inherited from when we were in the EU, and medical data is explicitly considered sensitive. If they actually did sell medical information, they're in deep shit, legally.

xor ,

I broadly agree, but that's not what this is, right?

This is a demonstration of using AI to execute combat against an explicitly selected target.

So it still needs the human to pull the trigger, just the trigger does some sick plane stunts rather than just firing a bullet in a straight line.

xor ,

Upvoted exclusively for that 10/10 pun

xor ,

I'm hoping that the sheer cost of executing that sort of war will continue to be a prohibiting factor like it is today

xor ,

How is turning it off an improvement over lockdown? I was under the impression that the security impact is basically the same

xor ,

Downvoted for using the r-slur

xor , (edited )

I assume the usual complaint, which is that it's the one of the only major servers where tankies are prevalent.

That's, of course, not to suggest that even a majority of its users are tankies or that there aren't plenty of great communities there, but the users who are tankies seem to be almost entirely split between lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.

You guys should check out the reddit clone I've been working on (matrix.gvid.tv)

It's sort of a different concept. Posts and users also have position in addition to age and score. The sorting algorithm gives you complete control over how much to weight each one. It's like if new and hot existed on a continuous spectrum. It's sort of like what Aaron Swartz initially wanted to do with Reddit where what you...

xor ,

You'll love crack houses!

UK Trial: Pornhub's Chatbot Halts Millions from Accessing Child Abuse Content (www.wired.com)

A trial program conducted by Pornhub in collaboration with UK-based child protection organizations aimed to deter users from searching for child abuse material (CSAM) on its website. Whenever CSAM-related terms were searched, a warning message and a chatbot appeared, directing users to support services. The trial reported a...

xor ,

The panopticon is... a chatbot that suggests you get help if you search for CSAM? Those bastards! /s

xor ,

Why is that interesting?

xor , (edited )

Does it behave the same if you refer to it as "the war in Gaza"/"Israel-Palestine conflict" or similar?

I wouldn't be surprised if it trips up on making the inference from Oct 7th to the (implicit) war.

Edit: I tested it out, and it's not that - formatting the question the same for Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine respectively does still yield those results. Horrifying.

xor , (edited )

"no, I won't provide a source for my claim, because my source is not good/non-existent"

FTFY

provide the reason you don't like those studies

They didn't say they don't "like" the studies though, in fact they actively said they were interested in seeing them. What's the point of asking someone to explain why they don't like something that they haven't even seen yet. Sure they could go find some random related studies and then critique those but that seems pretty pointless.

Edit: since I'm whining about lack of sources, I should probably give some myself

Here's a paper investigating the correlation (or more specifically, lack of correlation) between social media usage and mental health outcomes for young adults:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-017-9535-6

xor ,

Yes, you're definitely getting ratiod into oblivion because there's a shadowy cabal of around 30 people who spend their days downvoting your posts, specifically.

Definitely not just that your take is bad, and your response to criticism of that take is even worse.

xor ,

Yet another EU w

They're really just regulating big tech on behalf of the rest of the planet right now

xor ,

Jeez, who shat in your cereal?

xor ,

Sir this is a meme

xor ,

I'm don't understand, what are you referring to?

xor ,

While it's not formalised in the email specs, support for it is pretty consistent, and only needs to work for whichever provider you use

xor ,

I've heard very good things about wireguard-easy to simplify the config and management, too

Women STEM students up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism (www.hepi.ac.uk)

We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England...

xor ,

Dismissing sexism within a particular group because it is disproportionately prevalent in that group is, frankly, treating that sexism as acceptable.

You can just as easily extend this approach until you either reach a group where it's evened out, or is the entirety of humanity.

"It's more prevalent in stem? No, you have to look at university students overall"

"It's prevalent in university students overall? No, you have to look at all students"

"It's prevalent in students as a whole? No, you have to look at everyone involved in education"

"It's prevalent in education in general? No, you have to look at public services as a whole"

"It's prevalent in public services as a whole? No, you have to look at all non-private entities"

"It's prevalent across non-private entities? No, you have to look at all forms of work"

xor ,

every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide

This argument is so frustrating, because it totally ignores the fact that the common thread, both for communist countries and capitalist countries, and both for intentional genocide and crises through incompetence, is the consolidation of power in a small set of individuals or group that prioritises their own self interest over the common good.

The big issue with "trying" communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.

Never mind the fact that genocide is absolutely not limited to communist countries, and that genocide goes against the actual fundamental principles of a communist system, which is centred on equality.

Yes, the USSR committed genocide - so did Britain and America, and so are modern capitalist Russia and China right now.

There's loads of good reasons both for and against every economic system, communism included. But "communism=genocide lalalala" is just a cheap excuse to totally avoid considering the merits of a different economic system. Doing that denies yourself the opportunity to genuinely consider how a different economic approach, whether that's communism or just using concepts from the ideology, could improve the lives of citizens in a healthy democracy.

xor ,

Okay - I shall do so.

You are wrong.

If you're going to base your disdain for the entire concept on a single work by a single author, then it would help if you actually read the work itself, rather than deciding what it says based on, I can only assume, something someone you know said offhand that one time.

So as a starting point, here's the whole work. Why not do a quick search through for the word "violence" and see if he ever advocates for it (spoiler: he does not).
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/theoryfromthemargins/manifest.pdf

However, in his conclusion, he does say this of communists:

They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions

This is an interesting passage to interpret - the use of the word force in this passage is fairly vague, for example, overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered "by force", regardless of whether the police use violence. This is because it is done not by allowing what Marx calls the bourgeoisie to decide to switch to communism, but by enforcing it through law.

Now, there's more to unpack here, so I'll break it into a couple of sections...

Revolution

Marx does use the word "revolution" a lot in his manifesto, however typically not in the meaning you're envisioning (ie an overthrowing of government) but instead the meaning a fundamental shift in distribution of power and wealth within a society.

Is violence ever acceptable?

As a thought experiment, imagine a country ruled by a purely evil autocrat. This theoretical autocrat abuses their power, harms innocent people on a whim and takes whatever they please from their citizens. There is no allowance for dissent, no democracy for the people to represent their interests.

Would it be acceptable for the people of this nation to use violence to remove this dictator from power? I think most people would probably say yes in this context.

So we have determined that in some scenarios, violence may be acceptable when it is the only possible way to overturn an oppressive system of government.

That's not to say that it's the only way any system can be changed, or that violence is acceptable when it can be avoided.

The consequences of violent revolution

While violent revolution will change the distribution of power, it also provides an chance for opportunists to abuse this power vacuum to consolidate it around themselves, under the guise of being part of that movement.

Good examples of this are, of course, Stalin in the USSR, and, as a non-communist example, Putin consolidating power in Russia during the USSR's collapse and its transition to oligarchic capitalism.

The geopolitics of 1840s Europe

Europe in the 1840s was not like it is today, especially in a political sense. The continent was made up almost entirely of absolutist monarchies, with no democratic systems to allow the voices of the citizens to be heard.

There was a wave of failed revolutions against the feudal systems under these monarchies across the continent, which, with few exceptions, were brutally crushed by the states with almost no change.

Understanding these circumstances, it is easier to understand why the idea of transitioning to an equal distribution of both political, and in communism's case, economic power through peaceful means would be considered not just difficult, but laughably impossible.

Many of the seeds of the modern democracies we enjoy today were planted during this period of turmoil, in part in response to Marx's manifesto.

Communism and revolution under modern democracy

Now we have the privilege of living under modern democracies across much of the world, we have an unprecedented opportunity to actually consider Marx's ideas for a different societal structure, and implement changes that would be for the benefit for all citizens through democratic systems.

But we need to actually have reasonable discussions about these ideas and their impact, and "communism=genocide" is not only wrong, but takes a hostile stance against the concept before even understanding what the ideas are.

Edit: wrong link

xor ,

That quote isn't saying "we should go start some violence for a bit of fun".

It's talking about the exact revolutions that were ongoing during that period (see the section on 1840s geopolitics), and noting that the ongoing revolutions give an opportunity for citizen centred political system - ie a democracy.

ACAB isn't some international stance the left takes. It's a reaction to the frequently racist, violent and corrupt policing specifically in the USA. And it certainly doesn't mean there should be no law enforcement whatsoever - you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anybody who would take that stance.

Violence always begets more violence, there is literally no exception

Counterexamples: the British suffragette movement (which was notably extraordinarily violent, despite its common modern image as a quiet, polite disagreement), the American civil war, the Swedish coup of 1809, the Ukrainian defensive resistance in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.

Gandhi was a fantastic and principled man, and had an enormous impact. But, whether or not he liked it, violence was absolutely a part of the end of British colonial rule, and would have been even if every revolutionary was exclusively nonviolent, because the violence by the British was not conditional on violence by the Indians.

But all of this is separate to the key point - regardless of whether one considers it an effective method of revolution, violence isn't the aim of a communist system, and it's use is only considered acceptable in a scenario where that is not the current system, and when it would be the only possible method to overthrow that system.

Edit: as an aside, even Gandhi accepted that violence can be necessary:

Even though Gandhi considered non-violence to be "infinitely superior to violence", he preferred violence to cowardice. He added that he "would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor"

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