Factiverse’s success rate is around 80%

That seems pretty close to useless even if we assume that the criteria they’ve used to define success are spot on. Funny how they don’t mention it until the second to last paragraph.

And then there’s Lemmy, where you can always count on some helpful stranger who’s completely missed the point chiming in to tell you why you’re wrong.

That’s not how it was as of yesterday when I signed up just to see what all the fuss was about. (I don’t think I’ll be participating.)

Bluesky: You are immediately and automatically welcomed into the warm embrace of an algorithm that entices you into a parasocial relationship with the synthetic community it has created.

Mastodon: If you’re lucky you’ll stumble across a warm welcome for new users explaining how posts are called toots here, likes are called florps, and our version of Grok is called Garfiald.

It’s the culture of an instance that makes the difference, not which software it runs, but there is often a correlation. Misskey tends to get more people who appreciate cute emoji and comfy vibes.

I thought maybe it was just my imagination that it’s been really slow since Wednesday, but you can see it clearly on the charts at the bottom of the page there.

Maximum rationalisation mode: Maybe Conservatives will now be so confident that they’ve already won the next election that those of them who are just feigning the hate for trans people, gays, immigrants, refugees, socialists, liberals, opponents of fascism, and whatever other scapegoats they can find in order to win popular support will feel that they can safely tone it down a little and just coast to victory without needing to stir up even more fear and anger.

We need to overcome those obstacles, otherwise we’ll get so soft and stupid and distracted by nonsense that we willingly opt for fascism.

Freedom of expression is very important, so I propose a compromise. Display as much advertising and other propaganda as you like, but no actual burning of fossil fuels is allowed anywhere within city limits. Temporary exceptions to be made for fire trucks, construction equipment, and essential freight deliveries so long as it can be show that there is no current alternative and there’s a credible plan to create one within five years.

The Featured Snippet quoted an article from the Mayo Clinic, highlighting the words “Caffeine may cause a short, but dramatic increase in your blood pressure.” But when she looked up “no link between coffee and hypertension”, the Featured Snippet cited a contradictory line from the very same Mayo Clinic article: “Caffeine doesn’t have a long-term effect on blood pressure and is not linked with a higher risk of high blood pressure”.

On the one hand, Google sucks. On the other hand, if people are unable to a) understand how those two snippets are not contradictory, and b) read at least one very short simplified-for-laymen Mayo Clinic article about the topic before thinking they’ve learned anything at all about medicine, it’s hard to see the problem as being primarily due to Google. There is something deeper, and worse, going wrong when people habitually take that kind of extreme shortcut to thinking that they know the right answer about almost anything, and it has little to do with whether any one-sentence snippets they’re given are biased or accurate.

… and people calling themselves communist still leaping to its defence, for some inexplicable reason.

Any talk of communism is a “red” herring when it comes to this topic. Russia isn’t in any way officially, notionally, or superficially communist.

Is there any truth to the allegations? Beats me, but seeing the possibility dismissed as as a preposterous notion that can only be part of a “New Red Scare” does not decrease my estimation of the chances of it.

This was just last month.

Just think of all the juicy benefits of replacing journalists with machines. They’ll never stumble or cough while presenting the news, they’ll never call in sick, never age, never get mad as hell and decide to not take it any more, never resign from the editorial board in protest no matter what garbage you tell them is the news. Machines are just better suited to the job, it’s inevitable.

They’re Canadian politicians. Their entire careers have been built in a world where everyone who matters believes that party loyalty is super important, or at least acts as if they believe it. They’re trying to do what they think is best for the Liberal party.

truly different aliens are expensive

They don’t have to be. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/3/3b/Ornithoids_2267.jpg

That it’s not a video game means also that you can’t so easily refute the entire thesis and approach of the linked article by appealing to some kind of simplistic ideal model of warfare where morale and recruitment do not matter at all to an army. Conscripting the unwilling has its costs, and here we have one attempt to describe how some of it is playing out on the Ukrainian side.

Don’t judge things just from the headlines, lemmy. It’s a bad habit. This reporting is credible enough, and El País a sufficiently respectable publication, that it deserves better than that.

It’s amazing how many big obviously consequential decisions around the world come down to a 50/50 vote lately. Have they perfected propaganda techniques that 49% of people are genetically susceptible to? Or is just that nobody knows what the hell is going on so we all decide completely at random what to believe?

Too long to read? I get it. Here’s the summary. Download Firefox.

Yes. One option is to download it from here: https://librewolf.net/

Did an AI write that, or are you a human with an uncanny ability to imitate their style?