Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
The underlying assumption by Pro-Israeli voices is that it is impossible for Pro-Israeli content to simply be unpopular. It is impossible that the Israelis are simply bad at memes. There is no actual evidence of bias produced, no evidence of suppression of Israeli creators or boosting of Hamas hashtags, the assumption is that this bias must exist in order for consumers to make the choices they made.
I suppose the evidence would be that we have strong evidence that TikTok is willing to censor/promote/bury certain topics, as that's far more plausible than TikTokkers just not caring about Hong Kong compared to other platforms and causes. We also know that TikTokkers are more antisemitic than other platforms. Correlation does not equal causation (it's possible that anti-semites just prefer TikTok over Instagram for other reasons), hence why I said weak evidence.
To quote Nate Silver,
TikTok’s users are young, and young people are comparatively more sympathetic to Palestine than older ones — but not by the roughly 80:1 ratio that you see in the hashtag distribution. I would not treat this data as dispositive — expression on social media can be contagious and overstate the degree of consensus. But this matches a pattern in other TikTok content that is sensitive to China, such as tags critiquing its policy toward Hong Kong.
Mantergeistmann
20d ago
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment
I'm assuming there's no good analysis as to why this airstrike is grounds for impeachment whereas all the other airstrikes and drone attacks over the decades weren't?
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
some of the people I see holding firmly to the view that a six year old can know their gender and be rock-solid on they're a girl not a boy
I mean, I would imagine there'd be no problem with a six year old girl assigned female at birth who's adamant that she's a girl and not a boy (and that it'd be horrible parenting to insist that no, she really is a boy, she just needs to wait until she grows up and she'll understand that she's been a boy all along), and same for a boy assigned male who's sure that he's a boy, for instance.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
Again, though, we're back to the question of why it is that "not surrendering when you're invaded" is "Western warmongering".
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
Part of the problem is that "Nazi, fascist, far-right extremist, white supremacist" have been so over-used that people are now reacting "If that makes me a Nazi, okay I'm a Nazi" instead of falling over themselves trying to deny it or dropping whatever argument they had been making.
It's weird how nobody seems to recognize this, from either side. The right keeps diluting "socialism", and then the left calls them on it... and proceeds to dilute "fascism".
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
Popehat hasn't been the same for a while, sadly, at least to my mind.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
if you ask me, I wouldn't say that it's bad that AI learns from "stealing" from artists. Honestly, ask absolutely anyone who's learned anything creative: learning art is all about learning how to steal from people. I know it's not completely analogous, but I don't personally believe that it should be bad for AI to learn by stealing while it's okay for human artists to learn by stealing.
The concern isn't about learning by stealing, it's about earning by stealing: the thought is that AI will put (some) human artists out of business.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
I'm (still) playing Anno 1800, in between finishing FFVII rebirth, my NG+ of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and returning to low-level LotRO. My biggest takeaway is that the newer LoTRO writers are far, far worse than the original dev team.
Mantergeistmann
3d ago
A Bug’s Life
I mean, it's Seven Samurai, but bugs. Well animated for the time, decent humour and voices, and also (and possibly more importantly at the time!) better than the coincidentally competing AntZ. The writing wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was solid, and I'll happily rewatch it.
Mantergeistmann
21d ago
Yes. I think if Iran were preaching peace with their neighbors instead of having a countdown clock to Israel's annihilation, the world would treat Iran's nuclear program very differently.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
even Stalin and Mao haven't been as effectively pariahed
I think those two are helped by the sheer number of intellectuals who either fell for live propaganda about how great life was in the USSR, or who are generally pro-socialist/pro-communist and would rather not draw attention to such high-profile failure states.
Mantergeistmann
5mo ago
Curious for people's thoughts on the Dept of Education getting shut down? Personally I think it's a good thing - our education system has had terrible outcomes with no accountability for far too long.
Is there a good breakdown anywhere as to what the Department of Education actually does, aside from administering national standards of achievement and the testing thereof?
Mantergeistmann
6mo ago
using depleted uranium rounds
My understanding is that the impact of that has been vastly overstated, usually by the same sorts of people who think the radiation from being near a nuclear power plant is worse than the radiation from being near a coal plant.
Mantergeistmann
9mo ago
So hypothetically, what happens if you get stopped by Police and they ask to see your license? Or is that not a thing that they ask for where you live?
Mantergeistmann
9mo ago
I loved the branched conversation style over single-threaded forums like PHPBB that dominated the web before.
It's funny you say that, because I honestly really miss forums, and how they've been completely displaced by Reddit and Discord.
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
Hell, my great grandfather's brother used to listen to police scanners for news of animal strikes so he could head over for some free fresh meat. I'm sure it's reasonably common in a lot of rural/rural-adjacent areas.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
Ithaca: Eternal shithole, long has been, long will be. Those who must live there deserve nothing but pity. I’ve heard it’s even worse now, but how that’s possible is beyond me. 100.
I assume this is the part where you're taking the piss. Ithaca's always struck me as a very nice place, whenever I've gone there to visit family. Or is there a different Ithaca, one that doesn't host Cornell?
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
It was a weird moment when I realized that the cancelled 1970s Boorman script was truer to Galadriel's character than RoP...
Mantergeistmann
30d ago
It is certainly where Hamas would have placed such a facility.
Hamas seems to be the only governing body on the planet where "deliberately putting your own people on danger" is seen as a plus, not a minus. I have trouble imagining, say, the Russian populace being used as public affairs shields by Putin on such a scale and putting up with it.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
At least we got to read weekly educational flyers posted in the bathroom about Testing on the Toilet (alongside other flyers asking engineers to remember to flush...)
Is it something about engineers, or just people in general? We had signs plastered everywhere in the bathrooms reminding our engineers "don't flush things down the toilet that aren't toilet paper, you know how often it breaks and that's the cause, what's wrong with you?"
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
Personally, I think more about torpedoes. Some are very long range, with impressively hard to defeat terminal guidance, and they are absolutely ship-killers in terms of payload/mechanism, rather than just mission-killers.
Mantergeistmann
3mo ago
You'd think the overfishing is something Conservatives could absolutely be brought on board with. I know a fair few in favour of protecting our environment (but not climate change initiatives, since they think those are all just an excuse for socialist economic transition), and given that China is one of the biggest overfishers, especially in other nations' waters... feels like a failure of messaging more than anything else.
Mantergeistmann
3mo ago
Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
I drink none of those. Give me a good dark beer (Ayinger's Celebrator doppelbock is my all-time favorite), or an ice wine (Reif is my go-to winery). Mixed drinks? Pimm's Cup or a Southern Comfort Collins. I learned the latter as my grandfather's drink of choice at weddings; I don't know if it is actually a real drink... it seems impossible to find the recipe anywhere online, but I remember a decade or two ago no bartenders questioned it or how to make it. So it must have existed at some point?
Mantergeistmann
4mo ago
Also the part where to enforce a no-fly zone, you have to be willing to enter combat. A no-fly zone means being willing to shoot at Russia and have them shoot back directly. Which is usually called "being at war".
I'm convinced that if the Democratic Party was just willing to let Trump get the credit, they could have had their entire wishlist of infrastructure/green energy projects during his presidency on a scale unprecedented since the CCC.
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