It’s just gross. The conversation one of these journalists had with the bot shows how faux this diversity is.

It reminds me of Levi’s using AI to diversify their models.

There’s something sick in hiding actual black, queer, hell fat bodies and voices while claiming to be promoting diversity.

Peter Thiel is also a gay man, and pulling a lot of these strings behind the scenes.

It’s oligarchy. Thiel can fuck who ever he wants (and make them disappear when he’s done…) while maintaining political power by sacrificing queer people to the Hour of Hate.

I don’t disagree with you about Christian theology in general. I think a part of it is that American Evangelical Christianity is rapidly diverging from what most would recognize as Christianity. I’ve seen a few news articles where pastors get pushback on things like the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve never a seen a literalist/dominionist advocate for the clearing of debts every 7 years; only stoning queer people. I could see Trump ending up as some sort of messiah figure.

I think Salafism and American evangelical fundamentalism have a lot in common; in my religious historiography class we discussed how increased literacy in general in the 19th century led to a lot of these “literalist” movements.

Can we just agree that most people with religious identities don’t care about actual philosophy?

100% - for the vast majority of individuals it’s more of a cultural/in group experience. Very enlightening when you study periods of mass conversion… usually more of a practical concern than one of conviction.

Gotta wonder how things would have shaken out if Mohammad had a son survive long enough to take over.

With Islam, you do have multiple thorough legal traditions to choose from for authority. There’s at least some consistency. Iirc, there’s an entire system of grading Hadith based on how many steps removed they are from the prophet - while your average American Christian believes that Mark, Matthew, John and Luke wrote Mark, Matthew, John and Luke.

Evangelicals don’t have that kind of textual tradition, and what they do have is cockeyed squinting at their Bibles while trying to make it work with their pop culture understanding of theology. The focus on having a “personal” relationship with Jesus + sola scriptura when most of these folks have sub fifth grade reading levels means that whatever feels good at the time is what God wants.

I think the risk more is the bad theology and idol worship that American Christianity is becoming. It’s sorta like how almost all mega churches are “non denominational.” There’s not a commitment to an actual ideology or set of religious beliefs, it’s become a strange cult fixated on Trump. It’s more dangerous in some ways because it’s less predictable. Being a “Christian” has nothing to do with believing that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, it’s more a conservative White identity status.

They already do with online charters. Teachers don’t know the material, they just spam AI generated essays and answers. Teacher work loads are so much that they don’t check the responses.

Online charter schools are horrifying. There is no expectation that the teacher know or understand the material they are teaching your child. High school is basically working through an online work book by yourself. Teachers use AI to “look up” answers they don’t know yourself.

It’s hell.

He was under investigation for fraud and insider trading.

Colleges are also trying to address this by seriously lowering standards.

One thing I make money doing is essentially getting intellectually disabled people through college. I’m not ragging on my clients, but it’s become very clear to me that universities are less interested in educating these people than they are taking their parent’s money.

I was looking through one of the discussion forums for one of my clients’ English classes and it was genuinely horrifying. I’m talking R1 university, and the majority of the posts were either “AI” generated or were written at a middle school level.

I had a file browser with tabs on my 2009 Ubuntu laptop… heck, even with the full compiz fusion ridiculousness I had going on, it was more responsive than win11.

The train scenes or the rape scenes?

The Civil War didn’t really end, it just went cold. They immediately started writing revisionist history and trying to control the narrative. What’s really fascinating is the rapid transition in how African American men started being depicted in media - before, happy go lucky “Sambos,” after, savage rapists. The dismantling of social services in the south is largely to prevent black folks from accessing them. Slavery never really ended - the last person enslaved without being convicted of a crime was freed during World War 2.

I don’t understand how Windows 11 file system/explorer just chugs so much. If you have a folder with more than a dozen or so files, it’s optional whether anything will load or not. Everything about Windows 11 is leaning into the worst aspects of windows 10, without any benefit.

Manufacturers should have been made responsible for ensuring that there was a system in place for their packaging, decades ago. This isn’t a “vote with your dollars” thing - plastic is cheap and has no downsides to the megacorps, only to us and the environment.

The plastic industry has been gaslighting us for decades, in a way that the cigarette industry must be kicking itself watching.

The problem is, trans people are very vocal about this, people don’t want to listen! I see so many comments about chopping dicks off - that’s not even how bottom surgery works.

Trying to “decouple” does nothing, because these people are going to be deliberately disingenuous. Notice how all often the news headline is “judge bans sex change surgery for youth” - it’s a lie, and it’s on purpose.

The reality is that gender affirming care is mostly hormones. Bottom surgery is prohibitively expensive and rarely covered by insurance. Rarely I’ve heard of teens having breast reductions, but it’s also 100% legal and accepted to get a cisgender 16 year old a breast enhancement.

They genuinely don’t care what gender affirming care even is. I’ve seen so many conservatives wailing about surgery on kids, when 99% of gender care is using the right name and pronouns plus hormone blockers. Like fuck, I wish they were just handing out surgeries! I’d really love a phalloplasty, but my insurance excludes any gender confirmation surgery for adults!

He did it during his first administration. I was planning on joining the Navy and becoming a doctor at the time.

Yeah, I have no faith in the legal system at this point. It’s really clear they’ll sign off on whatever the right wing wants. It’s ridiculous that he’s spent years thumbing his nose at the legal process, and is continued to allow to do so.

Nex Benedict was murdered, and the state covered it up. There was an immediate attempt by bad actors on the far right (Alex Jones/4chan/etc) to spin a suicide narrative. State coroner is a governor appointed position in Oklahoma. Owasso just had a federal investigation into not just the queer bashing, but serious issues with neglecting children with disabilities and covering up sexual abuse by teachers.

The kid was murdered, it was covered up, and no one seems to care.

Zoom would be nice if they stopped pushing the AI crap and didn’t randomize functionality and button placement every other upgrade. The annotation tool is really great when it decides to show up.