May help to see if you can channel the energy into clerical organizing work in an org; the kind of work where you don’t have to talk to people a lot, especially liberals. Not everybody has to be a big talker, especially in the capacity of tolerating people who are way different politically.

USian ex-liberal here. It would be hard to go back and trace all the steps, I don’t have the best memory for that kind of thing to begin with and stress has probably done a number on me as well.

But in broad strokes, I know Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016 was a catalyst (though I’m pretty sure I was already discontented with capitalism to an extent, which was why I readily agreed with him). His positions alone, in retrospect, were pretty mild, but he wasn’t the only one involved in it. There were others who seized on the energy involved to educate beyond him and that was more what made a difference. For some time, I lingered in a state of “baby leftist” who probably sounded like one of those “leftists” who wants healthcare but also is scared of AES states and still believes in the empire. Eventually, best way I can think to put it without having all of the transformative details to rattle off, is quantitative transformed into qualitative. And when I read State and Revolution, I think I was already ready to hear it, you know? It wasn’t like a shock, like it might have been if I’d read it when knee deep in Red Scare views.

It was eye-opening to read. I don’t think it immediately made me supportive of AES states, partly because of the stigma surrounding doing that, but eventually I came to reason that if I was going to believe in ML as a solution to anything, it only made sense to be supportive of projects that were trying to do it. Back then, I knew almost nothing about the projects in the particulars and so I would default to more of an “I don’t know” mindset; rather than saying they’re bad or saying they’re amazing, I’d say I don’t know enough about them and I’m not going to pretend that I do. After being here a while, discussing, reading, reflecting, and discussing more (sometimes rather vigorously), it has become a little bit easier to defend AES states in the particulars and confidently say what they are for and what they are doing. There is still a lot that I just don’t know about the weeds of it, but now I can confidently say a thing like, “The US lets a guy like Jeff Bezos reign, whereas China would depose him of power” (which is putting is nicely, I don’t think it’s out of the question they might execute someone like him). Being able to say this to a person who is dissatisfied with the world as run by billionaires is nice to be able to do. I’m not sure how much it moves the needle on sympathy for AES states, but maybe it gets a foot in the door. It sure beats being like, “Well AES states might have done horrible things, I’m not really sure” or the so-called ‘leftist’ thing of being like “no, no, you see I’m proposing the good communism that has only ever existed in the abstract, not the bad version that they tried and had to test against actual reality, I’m a ‘safe’ commie who will never challenge your power with anything real.”

Long live the actual people’s democracies of the world.

Thought after reading the ad script on a box of tuna cans: capitalist marketing is the art of sounding like you’re saying something without actually saying anything.

It’s key to committing to nothing, so that you won’t be held liable for anything.

Could you give an example of this brand-unsafe behavior? I meant to ask before, but I’m still unclear reading through how the thread has progressed on what “wild culture” means.

Been thinking about that tweet that goes, “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it”.

Metaphorically, this is true of capitalism and its contradictions, not just climate change. Some are more insulated than others for now, but that won’t always be the case.

I don’t mean it in a scary doomer way either, it’s just like… living through decline is not going to be pretty, already isn’t. And it’s not going to turn around unless the regular people oust the imperialists and the capitalists from power.

but since when have we been authentic lol? Those were the exceptions.

Yeah I remember early youtube for example. Early youtube was more of a “doing it because you want to make something fun and put it out there” to an extent. But some of it, especially as it grew, was “appearing to be doing it because you want to make something fun and put it out there but there’s actually a company like Maker Studios behind you that you don’t call attention to and you act like it’s all you anyway (probably because that sells better)”. Then there was shit like all the “prank” channels that would put on this show like they were pranking people in real life and eventually it came out that most of them were staged. Slowly, youtube morphed into being more openly a place where people were trying to make money off of it, but it was already being that with a mask on for a long time prior. When Patreon came along, it more enabled people to turn the stuff into an actually independent “small business”, as opposed to being on contract with a corporation, formalizing the idea of the platform as one to make money off of while trying to retain some semblance of the quirky individual image.

But it was never very authentic. Maybe more so in the very early days before monetization was well-established, but as soon as people could be a youtube partner and make money off of videos, that was the beginning of the end of “quirky authenticity”, instead morphing it into something more like reality TV that is presented as actually real to a (largely in those days) audience of kids who are not wise enough to tell the difference.

Not to be a downer, but well… was playing guild wars 2. Then they fucked it up so badly, I don’t want to deal with it anymore. So I’m getting back into reading and fiction writing, and trying to move away from my list of hobbies being so dependent on video games. Been burned too many times…

Wonderful medium when it works, just… fucking capitalism, god.

US ‘economists’: “Trust me, creating jobs is HARD. Like you don’t even understand how hard it is to make a functioning economy.”

China: creates jobs

US ‘economists’: “WTF, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE DAMAGE YOU’VE DONE.”

This comment is a satirical dramatisation and embellishment of recent events. Don’t take it serious, it’s just for fun.

I liked reading it though. For the most part, feels like the kind of press release lemmygrad would have if it was a socialist state project.

Nukes are kinda weird. As far as I can tell, there really isn’t any reason to actually use them unless you’re going scorched earth (literally), as in pretty much either genocidal or tit for tat against an enemy that’s trying to be genocidal toward you. Using them without dire backlash so far worked only once in history because at the time, the US was the only one who had them and I’m sure because of how well positioned the US was at the end of the war to get away with it. Since then, the proliferation has created the policy of MAD, Mutually-Assured Destruction, effectively creating a stalemate mindset toward nukes: what benefit is there in going scorched earth (even for the most barbaric colonial/imperial forces) if the enemy can also go scorched earth?

So instead we see decades of sieges conducted through economic policy, color revolutions, conventional bombings, and so on. Which nevertheless can be extremely murderous, including toward civilians, it just doesn’t happen all at once the way a nuke does. The more insidious nukes are the violent campaigns of imperialism and colonialism that have genocided peoples over territorial control and this framed in terms of “civilizing”, “peacekeeping”, “freedom.”

As for China, it shows no interest in, nor benefit to be gained from, such violent policy, nuke or otherwise. Its people will undoubtedly defend its interests, but not with interest toward annihilating others. Neither the material conditions, nor worldview, are there to support such barbaric action. The more salient point is the economic power that its building and the ways it can use this to hit military interests with precise restrictions (such as in the rare earth minerals stuff that was going on with the US - they may have made a deal since? I’m not sure offhand), focusing on damaging warmongers without hurting civilians in the way that US sanction-wielding does. This isn’t to say they can’t defend themselves if attacked, but there is no reason to believe they would view it in some gleeful way as an opportunity to go scorched earth.

That said, I guess the less literal view of “China has nukes this time” is that China is far from helpless and if Japan tries to fuck with them the way imperial/colonial Japan did in the past, it’s not going to go well for Japan at all. Another way to put it is, China is the economic and military powerhouse this time, so Japan should be glad it’s not run by imperialists of a Chinese kind who like the idea of revenge and take the opportunity to work on relations instead. They are probably too dependent on US controls right now though, warping them toward self-defeating interests.

I have kind of drawn a line on video gen so far, one I don’t draw with other forms of gen AI, as in not really supporting with it or engaging with it intentionally and being opposed to its proliferation so far when it comes up for discussion. I’m open to there being edge cases where it’s useful, but in its current form, it’s hard for me to see value in it.

Problems I have with it are things like:

• It’s sorta in the position image gen was in some years go, in terms of quality, except that image gen is one frame at a time and after years of research progress, image gen still hasn’t solved basic problems with consistency across generations. So why burn money (aka: resources) trying to make video gen work with brute force funding, as if doing so will magically create breakthroughs, when the fundamentals would indicate that it’s not likely to be going anywhere quality any time soon.
• For some reason, people are fixated on it being lifelike. Maybe because of how much footage there is to train on that’s lifelike, I don’t know, or maybe because there are motives to fake footage for political reasons, or create lifelike ads to sell products. Whatever the reason, it makes the quality problem significantly worse. If video gen was absurd cartoon animations, a cat disappearing mid-frame wouldn’t matter so much and the point you make about people learning realistic behaviors from jank fake footage wouldn’t matter either. Cartoons are not meant to be representative of realistic movement and behaviors.

Nevertheless, as per usual with AI, the problems you outlined are more a capitalism problem than AI itself. The motive to shovel bad fake footage for content mills is there because of the motive to make a quick buck in whatever way you can to make ends meet. And to some extent, “bad” knowledge has preceded AI, with infotainment content mills that put out stuff barely qualifying as information or advice. Or the spread of misinformation more generally online. I don’t think the internet, at least in the capitalist context, has ever been very trustworthy. Thus joking statements people make like, “If it’s on the internet, it must be true” (pointing out how easy it is to run into things that aren’t). Still, the example you give is probably more insidious to come across and shows one of the ways that gen AI can hypercharge already-existing problems with the system.

I tend to think the western capitalist English-speaking version of the internet (I can’t speak for elsewhere) is unsustainable as is, largely because capitalism is unsustainable. So we’re going to continue to see things that were maybe a somewhat reliable experience on it worsen more over time, as capitalism worsens more in RL. Sometimes this takes the form of gen AI uses, sometimes it’s “enshittification” or other things like it.

the way you remove shit would make bluesky blush. ;)

You can read up on rule 3 here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10105758

There is also a handy link to it in the sidebar on the main page. It has nothing to do with liberal decorum.

Huh, weird. My general takeaway from this and other stuff I’ve looked up in the process is, “never assume something that appears private on lemmy is actually private.”

Thank you for keeping an eye out. 🫡

1. That doesn’t address the point about Cuba specifically.

2. It is in question what’s actually going on with that story. See: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10668800 Is there a source on the Venezuelan government explicitly approving it to normalize relations with israel? I’d think there’d be some kind of statement for a thing like that if the goal was to have ties.

I mean, the bloomberg source says:

Venezuela is sending its first crude oil cargo to Israel in years as the Latin American country’s exports open up following the capture of its president Nicolas Maduro.

The cargo is being transported to Bazan Group, the Mediterranean country’s top crude processor, people with knowledge of the deal said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

Why would they be all cagey about it if they’re capitulating?

I would say, find the people who are most willing to listen and try with them first. Especially ones who are in the middle of having a grievance with the system, find ways to tie it into an explanation about why those things occur. Under some circumstances this could be manipulative (playing off of people’s upset), but from the ML standpoint, the goal is to give them real theory and practice of solutions that can help them. Don’t get lost in the weeds of thinking they all have to agree with you theoretically if they aren’t likely to put it into practice anyway. Like… wages are shit, can a labor union be formed? Dealing with obnoxious landlords, can a tenants union be formed? I know unions alone are not ML (and it’s just an example), but things like that may lead to them being more open to listening on ML theory.

Cold opening on ML talking points can be a lot, especially for somebody who is really immersed in thinking “communism bogeyman scary.” So try to meet them where they’re at first and go from there.

And in general, try not to take it personally if you struggle to get through sometimes. In my experience, sometimes there are situations where one person is simply better at connecting with another and getting them to listen. Perhaps because their minds work similarly, I’m not entirely sure. Like I am good at talking in the abstract, on concepts, but remembering specific dates and events to cite is hard. This is not so much a problem if I’m talking to someone else who is similar because they may not find the events citing stuff all that moving anyway. But if someone does more think in those tidbit “trivia” events, it may be a person who can rattle off events is going to stick with them a lot more easily. This is a very general example and it is probably going to be a lot more nuanced in most situations, but something to think about.

That makes more sense to me that it’s because of the ramp up in US attacks. What I don’t understand is the OP implication that Maduro is somehow the deciding factor here. Unless Venezuela has a fleet that can stand up to the US and it’s not using it only because Maduro isn’t there, I don’t see how he is the difference.

I’m confused, is Delcy Rodriguez not mostly continuing the same policy? I thought the Bolivarian Revolution was still going, in spite of them kidnapping Maduro.

Also, Cuba has I’m sure done immense work keeping itself alive against imperialist threats. They have struggled for a long time because of siege from a much more powerful country, but that doesn’t mean they are helpless.

So if someone has an account from a Kbin instance that is federated with a Lemmy instance, they can see stuff that normal Lemmy users can’t? Do you know if it requires them being an admin of a Kbin instance or just normal user?

Yeah I guess that comes back to the thing of a vanguard really being a vanguard, doesn’t it? As tautological as that might sound. Like having a force who can in a disciplined party manner ensure that power is not being handed off to just anyone “because they’re working class so they must be trustworthy” or something like that. That there is a degree of process to it and building people’s democracy from the ground up based on people who have proven themselves in their communities, while also going through a process of taking a closer eye at people who caused problems for others even if they have an excuse of “I was pressured into it for my job” or whatever. Are they going to take to reeducation and build socialism, or join the reaction and re-offend? Are they going to try to right their wrongs and make amends, or only make excuses for them and double down? And it is likely more effective to look to those who haven’t been the architects and the lever pullers first, as having the most potential. Either because of tenacity they have shown when faced with temptation to throw ethics out the window and/or because their material conditions mean they never got that offer and in general are closer to the ground, in terms of oppression.

I suppose in a roundabout way I’m saying what others have said before in different words. That it’s worth far more energy to recruit from the most oppressed than from people who are oppressed in one way or another but also play a closer part in making the capitalist system function. Their technical knowledge and experience could have great value, depending, but that doesn’t mean they need to be leading the vanguard.

Edit: slight wording change