π€ The US government is the most well funded in the world. We have Federal agencies dedicated to emergency management (FEMA). We have a robust network of highways. We have the best access to electricity and fossil fuels. Most US citizens are adults. Despite all this, when there is a hurricane, we struggle to evacuate a few million people from the path of a slow moving weather event.
If most Gazans are children, who have no fuel or electricity, how do they evacuate a million people?
during Hurricane Katrina almost 2 decades ago, when they announced the evacuation of New Orleans, before the storm changed track to Mobile, the European tourists and expats showed up at the Amtrak station, expecting orderly and well-run evacuation trains.
We donβt know how to run an evacuation, either, even when we pay for the infrastructure.
Evacuating roughly the same order of magnitude of people in the path of a storm with days of notice was beyond us.
Oakland is only about 12 miles from San Francisco. It's a short trip. I like to think of myself as reasonably intelligent, resilient, and good at problem solving. If you ask me to evacuate 10 family members ranging in age from infant to 80 years old, from SF to Oakland, I think I could figure out how to do that.
But if you added the constraints that I had no fuel, no food or water, that some of those relatives couldn't walk, others were missing, and I had spotty to no cell service? Much harder.
@ellie That is already the case in California. A lot of community emergency response planning for large earthquakes works on the assumption that all major roads will be blocked by crashes or bridge collapses (enough people around San Francisco still remember 1989), so that even where you can drive you can't get more gas in. Local transit by bicycle cuts down on how many vehicles need to be run around.
This all does nothing to change @mekkaokereke's essential point above.
@michael_w_busch @ellie I'm going to first point out that the point of the OP was that it's functionally impossible to do what Gazans have been told to do, full stop, but they are going to be punished anyways.
Basic Cop Logic, nothing new here, but it's not really a moment to necessarily come forward as solution-oriented just yet.
That said, solutionally speaking, I think horses, donkeys and possibly even dog teams are also going to figure big into the solarpunk good future.
The current auto-centric world is also quite hostile to their feet, even with shoes, is what I'm told.
That said, humans have always needed - wait for it - horsepower. Bikes won't cut the mustard when the fuel really gets low and we want to remain a globally-intertwined world.
Camels too, if you're in future peaceful solarpunk Israel/Palestine.
Thereβs something about pratting about in a chlorinated swimming pool (or maybe just a particular one) that seems to give me cold like symptoms the next day. Congestion, runny nose, sneezing, headaches. And this was with a nose clip!
The Northern Ireland Assembly website is βtemporarily unavailableβ which I suppose is appropriate. (If annoying since it means I canβt read it to inspect the Assemblyβs processes)
The buildersβ merchants have a βno reversing without a banksmanβ sign. Whatβs the gender neutral equivalent? βNo reversing without a bankerβ?
Heading out into storm #Babet, #RRSSirDavidAttenborough departed from Portsmouth this afternoon to begin the long journey South. Intention is to find shelter further along the coast rather than burn unnecessary fuel battling the 8-10 m waves presently in the Western Approaches.
This is fascinating: Hacking the job search process by inserting secret prompts into your resume that confound or manipulate the AI language models that are being used to screen applicants.
To escape a deluge of generated content, companies are screening your resumes and documents using AI. But there is a way you can still stand out and get your dream job: Prompt Injection.
IG/Meta has been inserting the word "terrorist" into the bios of users that included the words Palestinian" and βalhamdulillahβ (which means praise to Allah, or God) 404media.co/instagram-palestinβ¦ #meta #instagram #palestine #war
The "see translation" feature for user bios was auto-translating phrases that included "Palestinian" and βalhamdulillahβ into "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom."
Christian Arabs say βalhamdulillahβ too, so maybe Meta is playing inclusive 4D chess and saying that anyone can be a terrorist regardless of religion π
unfollowed - unethical post writing that missed key words of βtranslationβ, βAIβ, etc. I suspect your reasons were to help drive traffic for ads. I follow sincere journalism only. Happy to discuss further.
While we can roll our eyes on such translation errors, it was probably done by a neural net. As a model of how one works, imagine a one-year old child that can speak and that knows what words tend to follow other words, but that has no idea as to what anything means. Plus the child was trained on Twitter.
I wouldn't want to ascribe maliciousness where incompetence could be the more likely outcome but this would only translate like this under 2 conditions:
- a constantly learning/re-learning translation model - editorially
The former seems unusual because most words don't change in translation based on current events ... unless Meta is of the opinion that what words mean is based on their users opinions.
I also tested this phrase on a few LLMs & none of them translated to that.
I've had a number of non-Jewish friends reach out to me over the past week to see if I'm okay.
No, I'm not okay. But neither is anyone.
Tribes are bullshit. Race is bullshit. Religion is bullshit if you kill in the name of God. Murder is murder. Cruelty is cruelty. Injustice is injustice. Dead children are dead children.
The planet is being devoured by the insatiable greed of a handful of people and the rest of us are fighting over scraps. It only gets worse from here unless we learn to love.
We are so enbroiled in all the world that we cannot understand there is only one simplesolution to it all. We cannot reach this solution because the world is full of people who do not love themselves for whatever reason, good or bad. When you no longer have love for yourself, you cannot understand anything. Not one thing.
Our world is full of broken people that do not love themselves so they will never be able to act compassionately and see that the entire worlds problem lies within each and everyones heart and their ability to love in the true sense of the word. Not the love we sell as true, that for your family friends and church. But true compassionate and powerful love. The deep type of love that does not allow you to be violent, angry and mean. We have lost the ability to have LOVE. Without it we are doomed.
Psychopaths and sociopaths are people who no longer can identify with the power of love. Not the love of couples family children. That is the only love we are left with currently and it is an exclusive GIFT we only give if we feel the other person is WORTHY.
That is not real love. Real love has no judgement. The world has fallen out of its capacity to actually love and the result of this is sheer catastrophe. Our planet is now out of balance with hatred and hatred kills. It is as simple as that. But we have no recollection of how it works so we will have to suffer horrible loss so we can regain our humanity which is the path to understanding that love IS NOT SOME GIFT YOU GIVE TO PEOPLE YOU LIKE A LOT.
Love IS the POWER of all creation. Without it we cease to exists.
That was Christs Message That was Muhammad Message That was Buddhas Message That was Gods Message
Itβs weird. I remember in the lead up to the 1997 General Election that Blair and Brown were offering hope. With an election next year it feels like all the parties are now offering is reduced despair.
One might think βthe cold blooded murder of a million children is a bad thingβ is an uncontroversial statement to make on this here federated network thing, but apparently there are more fans of murdering children here than one might imagine.
They are sensitive to the foreign policy of the UK, so writing to your MP or otherwise demonstrating your concern publicly is the most effective action you can take.
the funniest thing in the Apple is the last version of MacOS features "video reactions" where if your camera sees you do a thumbs up or heart symbol with your hands, stuff happens behind you like fireworks in ANY video app you are using BY DEFAULT.
A friend was in an online therapy session, describing his trauma so the therapist asked if he was alright and he did a thumbs up and then HUGE FIREWORKS BEHIND HIS HEAD.
It's so bad that online therapy sessions now start with a warning dialog!
GAZA CITY, GAZAβThe complicity of each and every Palestinian in the violent actions of their militant ruling authority was reportedly on full display Friday morning when dying Gazans received justified criticism for not using their last words to condβ¦
The Activision thing finally landed. Which means MS owns Infocom, via an impressive 40-year chain of buyouts, takeovers, and shakeups.
Now I formally put forth the plea:
Microsoft should put all of Infocomβs IP under a Creative Commons license. Or donate the rights to a nonprofit which can do the same. Letβs bring all these legally-shaky fan sites and collections into the light.
The gavel has fallen; the cup has been stomped; pick your metaphor. Microsoft has succeeded in its almost-two-year quest to gobble up Activision. The peculiar side effect in my corner of the world is that Microsoft now owns the dusty remains ...
@8bitgames That is true! I forget about the 8-bit interpreters because they donβt have much currency for modern players. Even the retro folks talk about Ozmoo more. But the interpreters are part of the history. Iβll be sure to bring them up in any discussions I have.
Well that's odd... It works from my computer. The last few times I tried to read it was from my phone, and there it doesn't. Instead, I get a "Mattermost" login page. Maybe it's being overly sensitive about the connection not being secure, or something like that?
@et_andersson I think whatβs going on is that if you visit the https:// version of the domain, you get a Mattermost site (with a bad ssl cert warning) rather than the Infodoc site.
@lxo If it was the criticism of the "Free software 9/11" post, I can promise that the intent of the criticism there was purely towards the content of the post, not any broader aspect of you
it was intention to make fun of something I did, that was clear enough, but as I said before, it was a minor thing. in itself, it was no biggie, but its being part of a pattern of intolerance, dehumanization and mob aggression made it stand out to me. I have no desire to revisit those hateful posts, but I blogged about it shortly after that episode, maybe the date will help you locate it: 2020-02-27
@lxo Your email response to it? Sorry I've dug through various archives but I'm not finding it. I really don't want to push you to talk about stuff you don't want to so I'm not going to press on this point, and if it seemed like I was making fun of a disability then I'm sorry - it was either not my intention or I was wrong to do so and genuinely apologise for it.
@lxo I'm afraid I still don't recognise the situation, and can't explicitly respond to it. If there's ever a situation where you'd feel comfortable talking to me about it then I'd be happy to, but I understand if that doesn't feel comfortable.
email was where you observed the behavior you made fun of, but you may not even know that I saw your making fun of it elsewhere. it was public, but not a forum I participate in. and it's not like it seemed, it's like you were, but I have no reason to think you thought of it as a disability. heck, I don't even have a name for this fuzzy perception of time in the past, by which I perceive things as "just the other day" or "a long time ago", having little clue as to exactly when things happened. it leads to embarrassing mistakes when I go by otherwise faulty memory, and, as I said, I didn't make much of it in itself, but making fun of it in public in a gang didn't fit with the notions of promoting inclusive, tolerant and respectful behaviors. it was rather cheap, cruel and hateful. see, it doesn't matter whether you perceived it as a disability. ridiculing someone for a mistake, for ignorance, for a disability, for a different cultural background, is not any cooler than doing so for sexual identity or orientation, for ethnicity... the difference is that some of these are more sociall... show more
email was where you observed the behavior you made fun of, but you may not even know that I saw your making fun of it elsewhere. it was public, but not a forum I participate in. and it's not like it seemed, it's like you were, but I have no reason to think you thought of it as a disability. heck, I don't even have a name for this fuzzy perception of time in the past, by which I perceive things as "just the other day" or "a long time ago", having little clue as to exactly when things happened. it leads to embarrassing mistakes when I go by otherwise faulty memory, and, as I said, I didn't make much of it in itself, but making fun of it in public in a gang didn't fit with the notions of promoting inclusive, tolerant and respectful behaviors. it was rather cheap, cruel and hateful. see, it doesn't matter whether you perceived it as a disability. ridiculing someone for a mistake, for ignorance, for a disability, for a different cultural background, is not any cooler than doing so for sexual identity or orientation, for ethnicity... the difference is that some of these are more socially tolerated than others. same goes for endorsing a cancellation campaign over intolerance to characteristics related with disabilities, and incomprehension of differences in perceptions of context, meaning, and intent. it's no less hateful just because you don't know or don't understand enough of these things to know better. there are terms for that: prejudice and intolerance
@lxo Oh, one thing I should add - if you're concerned about the lack of corroboration regarding Eben's behaviour, you know people who should be able to confirm or deny my claims about what happened at Libreplanet 2017.
thanks. I'm pretty sure I was there on that year. I even watched his speech, but I surely didn't have the context to read between the lines what you did.
I realise I have fallen out of the habit of hash tagging or cw-ing posts. Given the distressing nature of the news at the moment I will try harder to do so.
this doesn't appear very well on my timeline - I get the CW, but have to visit thegoatery to actually see the post (unlikely a regular CW where one just clicks-through)...
@demoographics I think this is because the post is originally on friendica. I got confused about it a while back. Our comments here *do* end up in friendica, but the original content is a link.
It is strange and disturbing to see so many posts on social media that deny it's a war crime to stage a surprise attack on civilians (including murders, kidnappings, and rapes) or to starve out a civilian population (by cutting off electricity, food, and water).
These are both obviously war crimes and should be discussed as such.
And there it is. A fully sorted #Amiga 1200 with a working floppy, 68060 CPU, 128mb of RAM, and a 4gb SD for storage. Really, really pleased with this thing. 2023 is the year of Amiga on the desktop. π
Humanity throughout history is beset by fuckers. Right now, for example, we have overtly homicidal fuckers like Putin and Netanyahu, would be homicidal fuckers like Trump, and common or garden “hoarding all the money like some fucking dragon or something” fuckers like Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc.
There are also lots of other variety of fuckers: hatemongering fuckers like Farage, Murdoch or LePen: grifting fuckers swinging a wrecking ball at society because mummy didn’t like them or something.
And it seems to me that the problem is that for every fucker who gets to encounter the “and find out” stage: Hitler, Charles I of England, Louis XVI, etc, there are more for whom the only people finding out are the rest of us who have to live (or die) with their fuckery: Stalin, countless people with that Hapsburg chin, Henry Ford, and so-on.
I honestly think the world would be a much better place if fuckery were inherently a much higher risk strategy, and far less likely to leave all the important fluid pipes running through the neck intact (this i
... show more
Humanity throughout history is beset by fuckers. Right now, for example, we have overtly homicidal fuckers like Putin and Netanyahu, would be homicidal fuckers like Trump, and common or garden βhoarding all the money like some fucking dragon or somethingβ fuckers like Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc.
There are also lots of other variety of fuckers: hatemongering fuckers like Farage, Murdoch or LePen: grifting fuckers swinging a wrecking ball at society because mummy didnβt like them or something.
And it seems to me that the problem is that for every fucker who gets to encounter the βand find outβ stage: Hitler, Charles I of England, Louis XVI, etc, there are more for whom the only people finding out are the rest of us who have to live (or die) with their fuckery: Stalin, countless people with that Hapsburg chin, Henry Ford, and so-on.
I honestly think the world would be a much better place if fuckery were inherently a much higher risk strategy, and far less likely to leave all the important fluid pipes running through the neck intact (this is a traditional βand find outβ method throughout history, but far from the only one), but alas, the fuckers are the ones who by and large get to structure our society, and they do their best to ensure itβs structured in a way that keeps finding out as far from them as possible.
Just seems to me that the proportion of fuckers is related to the risk inherent in the strategy of fuckery, and that risk is far too low right now, hence the high and frankly unsustainable level of fuckery we encounter in our time.
I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number of lower-level fuckers meet with 'misadventure' after causing a sufficient level of desperation in the wrong people. Pissing against the wind and all that. Sadly, that is less likely to happen on the political level.
Available on rough trade records: https://shopusa.roughtraderecords.com/artists/view/name/jarvis-cockerRunning The World can be: Streamed via Spotify β€ https...
Just want to say βfar less likely to leave all the important fluid pipes running through the neck intactβ is one of the best things Iβve read here.
There was a time in Palestine pre Oslo where waving the Palestinian flag was against the law and Palestinians were arrested and jailed for doing so. Apparently it became a custom to wave slices of watermelon instead. mastodon.social/@Lazarou/11121β¦
When one of the West's most ghoulish fascists in government says they have your back perhaps it's time to stop and think? #UKPOL #Tories #SuellaBraverman #FreeSpeech
Incidentally, the ban is still in place in the 80% of the West Bank still under Israeli military law. Military Order 101 says: βIt is forbidden to hold, wave, display or affix flags or political symbols, except in accordance with a permit of the military commanderβ. (Source btselem.org/demonstrations/milβ¦ )
Over the past decade, the Overton window has shifted so drastically that it is now considered acceptable in mainstream discourse to advocate for the eradication of Palestinians, liken them to animals and place blame on them for their own deaths
Seems horrible. Like First Nations being robbed by Europeans from their lands through genocide, now in real time, an occupation, theft and extermination of human beings presented as something acceptable...
The Israeli government has cut off food, water, and fuel to 2 million people inside Gaza as part of its campaign to stamp out Hamas terrorism. Collective punishment is not only contrary to international law, it is inhumane and illogical. It is what my community once endured in World War II, all because of the actions of others who happened to share our ethnicity. Have we learned nothing? How will this possibly help deescalate the violence rather than radicalize many more? It is madness.
@ajlanes Don't get me wrong, I think it is terrible that people are captured inside a warzone. But I also think it is terrible to put all the blame on Israel.
@Jan Tovar Well, it puts the kibosh on supplies coming in. Regarding people coming out, Egyptian authorities were concerned at the calls from some quarters in Israel for Gazans to resettle in Sinai. Nobody serves the people well in all this.
@ajlanes I will not judge the whole situation because my knowledge about it is not profound enough. I am just very sure that jewish people deserve a country to live in and that neighbours of Israel want to erase that country. Which is why I can understand military consequences by Israel even though I don't like it.
it has been about moving Palestinians from Palestine for a half century. Ideally, through driving them into other countries or other means. Netanyahu and the rest of his government are in their element now. They love war.
I do NOT support Hamas and never would. They aren't for the health and safety of Palestinians. They used the ineffectiveness of the Arafat and the later government as an in road.
As well as the desperation one feels for the Palestinian people there is the immense sadness that so few in the West seem moved by it. The silence of so many is deafening.
Amidst the performative cries of βIsrael has the right to defend itselfβ, it seems to be heresy to acknowledge the humanity of the few million people who get to live, in perpetuity, as Israelβs ritual punching bag, and are expected to do nothing in response, nothing in prevention, and accept the blame for others doing literally anything.
And even saying this will just result in tedious wankers going, βoh, you support terrorism then?β
The way the Palestinian people are treated is some serious Omelas shit.
You don't even need to say anything. The Tories are currently on a cancellation rampage trying to find opposing politicians who have yet to spout the performative line.
When the state of Israel was formed there was still a significant Palestinian area. Subsequent invasions and occupations by the state of Israel means there is very little left. Even Gaza, which is tiny compared to Israel is now half the size it was. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fights. They have been invaded, occupied, controlled and had food, power and water controlled by a far more significantly armed nation. And although I canβt condone the murder of innocent civilians BY EITHER SIDE, I can understand the desperation in this action.
@Sarah Brown The main thing I remember from visiting Gaza was how full it was, and how closed in it felt. Border fences on three sides, sea on the fourth (but restricted). Even in the heady days of 1994 just post Oslo it felt like a cage. Sometimes the electricity would go off. You had to queue in the heat to get in or out, divided families shouted news to each other across the barbed wire fence. That was probably the high point of freedom. The thirty years since have raised a generation whose hopes for the future keep getting blown up and locked down at the jailersβ whim.
For UK readers desiring a sense of scale, this is the boundary of the Gaza Strip (area 365 km^2, population 2m) rotated so it can be overlaid on the Isle of Wight (area 381 km^2, population 140k).
49K likes, 339 comments - emilyscartoons on July 4, 2019: "Scroll β‘οΈ Yes I know I post this every year but God dammit it's my favourite thing I've ever ..."
jack the nonabrasive
in reply to mekka okereke • • •during Hurricane Katrina almost 2 decades ago, when they announced the evacuation of New Orleans, before the storm changed track to Mobile, the European tourists and expats showed up at the Amtrak station, expecting orderly and well-run evacuation trains.
We donβt know how to run an evacuation, either, even when we pay for the infrastructure.
Evacuating roughly the same order of magnitude of people in the path of a storm with days of notice was beyond us.
mekka okereke
in reply to mekka okereke • • •Oakland is only about 12 miles from San Francisco. It's a short trip. I like to think of myself as reasonably intelligent, resilient, and good at problem solving. If you ask me to evacuate 10 family members ranging in age from infant to 80 years old, from SF to Oakland, I think I could figure out how to do that.
But if you added the constraints that I had no fuel, no food or water, that some of those relatives couldn't walk, others were missing, and I had spotty to no cell service? Much harder.
Alexandra Lanes likes this.
Ellie
in reply to mekka okereke • • •Michael Busch
in reply to Ellie • • •@ellie That is already the case in California. A lot of community emergency response planning for large earthquakes works on the assumption that all major roads will be blocked by crashes or bridge collapses (enough people around San Francisco still remember 1989), so that even where you can drive you can't get more gas in. Local transit by bicycle cuts down on how many vehicles need to be run around.
This all does nothing to change @mekkaokereke's essential point above.
JimmyChezPants π¨π¦
in reply to Michael Busch • • •@michael_w_busch @ellie
I'm going to first point out that the point of the OP was that it's functionally impossible to do what Gazans have been told to do, full stop, but they are going to be punished anyways.
Basic Cop Logic, nothing new here, but it's not really a moment to necessarily come forward as solution-oriented just yet.
That said, solutionally speaking, I think horses, donkeys and possibly even dog teams are also going to figure big into the solarpunk good future.
Michael Busch
in reply to JimmyChezPants π¨π¦ • • •@jpaskaruk @ellie Horses, donkeys, and dogs all need to be fed and cared for.
Bicycles (or, in the event of a lot of snow on the ground, cross-country skis and sleds to haul stuff on) don't.
Which is not to say that people have not ridden or dog-sledded through disasters and evacuations before.
JimmyChezPants π¨π¦
in reply to Michael Busch • • •The current auto-centric world is also quite hostile to their feet, even with shoes, is what I'm told.
That said, humans have always needed - wait for it - horsepower. Bikes won't cut the mustard when the fuel really gets low and we want to remain a globally-intertwined world.
Camels too, if you're in future peaceful solarpunk Israel/Palestine.