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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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I am also a Syncthing user. Eh. So long as they don't build SBU-approved trackers into it. But sure, it's frustrating.

Incidentally, same story (but worse) seems to be happening to DeepFloyd IF, the expected successor to Stable Diffusion and an open-source Imagen trained with Stability funding by a secretive Deepfloyd lab. It seemed to be decently complete months ago, and by now is essentially obsolete. It's still not available. I am not sure it will ever be.

Behind cringey jokes (derivative of Emad) about releasing the weights «Soon» and the stream of pro-Ukrainian signaling is what I take to be a very simple reality: the lead developer is Alex Shonenkov, ex-head of Sberbank text-to-image efforts like ru-Dalle, and a lame duck on account of his trajectory; and his Ukrainian/Israeli «friend» Misha Konstantinov of the Mishin Learning channel minor fame, despite technical ineptitude, is much, much better at reading the room, playing committees and pandering to the right people. He's maneuvered somehow to represent the effort, and now they're branding this technology as very socially responsible, very pro-Ukrainian, pro-feminist... you wouldn't like it if somebody used «your» opensourced diffusion model to produce images flattering to Putin, would you? So it should be carefully vetoed and trained and retrained until it satisfies the parasitic-management class who'll take credit for the Promethean task of endowing people with a smart drawing assistant. Here's what it should be good at:

don't be a coward”. color photo of a real leopard in a german bar with germany flags holds a sign in his hands with the text "don't be a coward".

'happy birthday mr president', color close-up photo of a ideal blond marilyn monroe in a white dress holding in her perfect hands large paper with text "happy birthday mr president". the flowers on the wall in color of ukrainian yellow-blue flag on the background.

Etc. Very much a reddit culture.

This war is really testing certain nerdy assumptions. Says Misha, showing another immaculate generation of a black woman with dyed hair and an appropriate slogan produced with the tech stack he has no relation to except as gatekeeper:

It is a very important day. But for me, it is not a holiday, but a day to reflect on the ongoing struggle for women's rights and gender equality around the world. It is a time to recognise the many challenges women continue to face, not just because of their race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability and other identities, but simply because they are women.

On this day, it is crucial to recognise that gender inequality remains a pervasive problem in different spheres of life, from work to home and beyond. Women continue to face multiple barriers, including the wage gap, lack of access to education and health inequalities.

On International Women's Day, I invite us to recognize this challenge. Let us accept that everyone in their place can make this world a better place. Albeit locally - Be the change you wish to see in the world.

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Comment section, meanwhile, welcomes actual, honest-to-God Ukrainian Nazis with hot takes about subhuman Finno-Ugrics and Mordva with slavery in DNA, upvoted comments advising admin to put Totenkoph in the avatar and such. Urging them not to lose control – «what is important is that we remain humans» – Misha helpfully bans Russian scum who ask «is this the channel about Machine Learning or politics?» and other retarded Putinist bullshit.