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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Except that’s not even how most bus systems work because most of them are majority funded by taxes with fares originally meant to serve as a stopgap but then slowly converted into a profit engine (usually after privitization). Fares are a way to gatekeep a service which your taxes already pay for, which I would argue, is by itself a form of theft.

    As an example check out the latest MTA report only 26% of funding comes from fares, and that ones a bit in the higher end from what I’ve seen (NYC public transit, picked as the example a it’s recently been in the news for issues with fare evasion)

    All that aside, it’s also worth noting that fare increases are extremely unpopular and it’s not that easy to increase them without potential serious backlash (ie the mass protests in Chile a few years back that were in part set off by the fare hikes.)



  • Right and I linked that article because it’s functions as a media literacy litnus test. It takes the viewpoint of the CEO and the scientists as equally valid, and you did get the main points, but you missed the lead that was buried:

    A paper he coauthored last year in Nature Communications, using the massive sargassum seaweed bloom in the Atlantic in recent years as a model, concluded that seaweed farming in the ocean could even become a source of increased carbon dioxide. That’s because the seaweed competes for nutrients with other carbon-sucking species like phytoplankton, among other complex biogeochemical feedback effects.

    Which if you actually look at the paper from the scientist (and ignore the bullshit from the CEO):

    Ocean afforestation at the scale of Sargassum growth in the GASB during 2018 could contribute −0.0001–0.0029 Gt CO2 of CO2 removal, if all of the seawater CO2 consumed through biomass formation is balanced by permanent influx of atmospheric CO2.

    In other words, carbon source to negligible because it kills the photoplakton was already doing that, and doing it more efficiently (albeit at a lower biomass). The paper also, briefly, touches on other concerns (where we get a nice crossover with solar radiation modification) which it unfortunately doesn’t delve much further into:

    Furthermore, we estimate that increased ocean albedo, due to floating Sargassum, could influence climate radiative forcing more than Sargassum-CDR.

    It makes climate change worse because it acts as a potential net CO2 source, requires maintenance and human intervention to maintain, destroys the local ecosystem which was doing carbon sequestration in the first place, and lowers the ocean albedo thus increasing radiative warming.

    If you want to talk SRM instead the oft cited paper is this one However the final line is the important one:

    The sobering reality is that unanswered questions such as these will remind the research and policy communities that relating climate response to anthropogenic perturbations is still a long way from being an exercise in engineering design.

    As it was published in 1992 a lot of the questions it left at the end have answers now, and there have been attempts at some engineering design. Why don’t you try to find one you think is a good potential and we can drill into its possible pros/cons (warning that meteorological stuff gets real math heavy, real quick).



    1. It’s worth pointing out that the IPCC no longer uses the term “geoengineering” or “climate engineering” for the exact reason that we may be talking past each other here. They are problematicly vague and can describe things with very different characteristics. Are you talking about CDR, CCS, CCU, SRM, other vague “offset the impacts of climate change” (IE ocean liming/fertilization, glacier stabilization, etc.), or all of the above?

    Some approaches to geoengineering may have negative side effects, but others don’t appear to.

    Be specific. Which ones?

    1. You have misread my previous comment.

    Climate change would cause famine, ameliorating the effects of climate change would prevent that famine.You have misread

    This statement is correct, but you are bringing it up against the point being made about how taking a “treating the symptoms” of climate change might improve things a bit in the short term, but leads to worse long term outcomes.

    1. Nowhere did I say it’s not worth studying.

    You’ve got some sort of a priori conviction that “no, geoengineering must make the situation worse somehow” and therefore it’s not worth studying. If it’s not studied how can you possibly know?

    I have stated that the current status of said studies do not have sufficient evidence to merit the claims you are making. If you think otherwise please provide some evidence/papers/links etc. otherwise we’re in a Russell’s teapot situation here.

    Unless your definition of “studying” is the argument that because the situation is bad enough it’s worth trying, at scale, whatever approach in the hope it improves things somewhat… Because that’s the argument that many use in order to sell dangerous and unethical grifts which seem promising and ‘harmless’. (I’m linking that article specifically because it’s “neutral journalism” at it’s worst and I’m curious at what you take away from it…)


  • Frankly, this argument always bothered me.

    Because you don’t understand the argument…

    Using your metaphor the thing you’re proposing to “treat the symptoms” has side effects which worsen the disease thus causing more real damage and worsening symptoms.

    The only reason you would willingly pursue that course of treatment is if a treatment for the initial disease was ongoing (in this metaphor it’s not, ghg emissions continue to increase dramatically) or if a patient was on palliative/EoLC.

    You aren’t saving “millions of people from starving to death”, you’re gambling that it will hold a bit longer before tens-hundreds of millions of people starve to death, and the evidence that these “treat the symptoms” is minimal at best thus leading to both outcomes (millions soon, more later).



  • From an article about a recent lawsuit

    The App Store appeared to harvest information about every single thing you did in real time, including what you tapped on, which apps you search for, what ads you saw, and how long you looked at a given app and how you found it. The app sent details about you and your device as well, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages, how you’re connected to the internet—notably, the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.

    Notably, knowing keyboard language and monitoring tap locations allows for reconstruction of text the user types (as detailed in this article

    I do think you are correct that Apple probably isn’t actively keylogging every iOS device (just because there’s easier ways with less legal concerns that ultimately get the same outcomes), but it’s not like there’s “no evidence”.


  • This is a classic case of “tech journalism”… If you follow the sources the source of the data and it’s methodology uses the CBECI which the latest update lists a range of 75-384 TWh. (Note that the “2%” listed in the parent article is the global power consumption of the Bitcoin network compared to the US electrical network, aka a bad faith comparison). It explicitly states:

    The upper-bound estimate corresponds to the absolute maximum power demand of the Bitcoin network. While useful for providing a quantifiable maximum, it is a purely hypothetical value that is non-viable for various reasons…

    Which of course is the estimate that the journalists use for this peice.

    There’s also a bunch of likely issues within the methodology as it’s estimate is largely based on the number of ASICs produced; the assumption that “mining nodes (‘miners’) are rational economic agents that only use profitable hardware.” and that any amount profit is sufficient to keep a mining operation ongoing; and many others. It actually does a pretty good job of disclosing a lot of the methodology flaws within the link above.

    My goal is just to call out bad/lazy journalism and what I assume is oil/gas distractionary tactics. Electricity is ~38% of US energy consumption and even that maximum bound of 2% when comparing it to the global Bitcoin network is practically negligible when contextualized.




  • No, that’s the current legal precedent within the US.

    Kelly v. Arriba Soft

    The court opinion:

    “The Court finds two of the four factors weigh in favor of fair use, and two weigh against it. The first and fourth factors (character of use and lack of market harm) weigh in favor of a fair use finding because of the established importance of search engines and the “transformative” nature of using reduced versions of images to organize and provide access to them. The second and third factors (creative nature of the work and amount or substantiality of copying) weigh against fair use.”

    That “compression is transformative” principle has been pretty solidly enshrined as precedence at this point (IE Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.) however with no real guidelines as to what amount is required to be considered transformative

    The major argument as to whether the sort of LLM training in the parent article still constitutes fair use or not depends on whether there exists “market harm” or the “substantiality of copying” is especially egregious (note that these are the two fronts that the NYT is taking.) There is precedence for copying of style not being fair use Dr. Seuss Enters., L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc. which I suspect is why NYT is approaching it the way that they are…

    Now, all that being said, my personal opinion is fuck the US legal system and fuck copyright. There is no solution to the core issues surrounding this topic that isn’t inherently contradictory and/or just a corporate power grab. However, the “techbro idiots” are “right” and you’re not, but it’s because they are idiots who are largely detached from any sort of material reality and see no problem with subjecting the rest of us to their insanity.




  • No they don’t… You do and the media is engaged in a terrifying amount of manufactured consent, but the raw data from those same polls does not agree with that claim.

    Ignoring the sampling methods used, lack of transparency on filters and other methodology, clearly biased questions, etc. The latest CBS news poll on the topic lists:

    • 52% believe less weapons and supplies should be sent to Israel.

    • 76% believe more humanitarian aid should be sent to Israel.

    • 57% believe more humanitarian aid should be sent to Gaza.

    • 56% disapprove of how the situation with Russia and Ukraine is being handled. (Though there isn’t much of a breakdown on the “how is it being mishandled…”)

    A few things that should be explicitly pointed out as this is a bad poll, but it would appear the inherit bias is trying to agree with you, so the margin of error means the “true feelings of Americans” is even further in contradiction to your statement.

    • Note how Isreal is kept consistent without a single reference to Netanyahu/Israeli government compared to the constant switching back and forth between “Hamas” and “Palestinian people”

    • poll is 63% white, 62% of that group has “no degree”, 33% aged between 45-64 (amongst 4 categories).

    So even when polling predominantly uneducated* white baby boomers who are the exact demographic that agrees the most with you, and doing the typical statistical magic the numbers still cannot be finagled in such a way as to make your statement true.

    • it should be said that “uneducated” doesn’t necessarily mean ‘uninformed, stupid, etc.’ However, in this context it means they are deliberately polling non-experts who’s primary source of information is CBS/Paramount itself (or other closely related corporations) in order to manufacture consent.




  • People are capable of more than 1 emotion at a time and that doesn’t make any other emotions invalid and it certainly doesn’t make any of the other possible ones people may feel or express “immoral”.

    Yes, someone is dead. They were flawed, but so is everyone and their passing is a tragedy to those close to them. Sadness, mourning, and empathy for those who will be most affected by his passing is a valid emotion.

    Ryan actively chose a profession dedicated to inflicting violence upon those around them including the deaths of many others. Relief that he is no longer able to cause harm is a valid emotion.

    Ryan was unable to stop causing harm to others on his own volition. He likely did it with the best of intentions, but through a steady diet of misinformation and lies he was conned into acting as a violent enforcer of capital. Frustration that this is what it took to prevent him from inflicting further harm is a valid emotion.

    The empathy you are demanding with “it’s bad when people get killed” is the same moralistic argument that “it’s good when killing is avoided”. Celebration that Ryan will no longer be causing the deaths of others is a valid (and morally equivalent) emotion.

    Etc.

    In short: It’s a good platitude, but it’s a poor moralistic argument, and is a narrow-minded viewpoint. Lemmy isn’t the problem, your lack of empathy for those outside of Ryan’s direct social circle is.