Eternal Father,
you inspired the Virgin Mary, mother of your Son,
to visit Elizabeth and assist her in her need.
Keep us open to the working of your Spirit,
and with Mary may we praise you for ever.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
________
May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
Raul Portales
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Raul Portales • • •Raul Portales
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •So if you're growing at 60%, it's ok to have a 20% negative profit.
That is one of the reasons we are where we are.
Adél Kučera
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •maybenot
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •there's also this "funny" framing that corporations themselves *are* functionally agi paperclip-maximizers, only they run on human workers instead of sillicon.
"funny" because the various ai doomer talking points, are already shown to be true for corpos:
-(microtargeted) mass manipulation
-(occasional) warmongering
-government/regulatory capture
-the "alignment" issue (mostly on climate)
-convert all available matter into rent-seeking
-gaslighting opponents (a'la the basilisk wager)
🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I fundamentally disagree with this characterization of capitalism. Capitalism is not an entity. It has no meaningful intentional stance. It is a model of interaction only. It is not the enemy.
The enemy is those who wish to apply this model upon us no matter what the costs to us. This enemy consists of people. And these people have names and addresses.
Use them.
Ariel
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Hard disagree.
Generative AI intrinsically alters the political landscape in ways that put fascists at an advantage. The way people are using it to cognitive offload pretty much any given workload is crippling their own ability to engage in critical thought. Assuming access to a sufficiently advanced model, malicious actors in positions of power can use it to fabricate evidence of crimes and weaponise the state's violence against opponents. It's eroding people's trust in the authenticity of literally all online communication that's not coming directly from an already trusted source.
Surely you understand how a tool that's pretty much purpose-built to flood the zone with shit is inherently beneficial to a political project that's been relying on exactly that tactic for its entire existence, right? It's not a coincidence that this technology's most vocal proponents in the political sphere are all basically Hitler.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Ariel • • •@Walk_blesseD I’m not saying “AI” as branded and developed by Silicon Valley/Big Tech isn’t *a* problem. I’m saying the socioeconomic system that leads to it being developed in the manner in which it is developed is the problem.
Machine learning doesn’t have to be planet-scale. In fact, it’s more effective when it’s not.
At its core, there isn’t anything that evil about iterative matrix multiplications used for pattern matching in data sets.
But yes, of course, AI as it exists today is a problem. But it’s a symptom of the core malady which is capitalism/corporatism.
All that said, I really don’t think we’re stating different things 😀
Soldier of FORTRAN
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •instead of a rogue AI turning evil to "protect humans", instead it destroys corporations and the financial system.
Here's hoping.
Vassil Nikolov
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Capitalism came to be after a long chain of developments starting with the Neolithic Revolution and the latter was a consequence of climate change.
Deconstructing this thesis is left as an exercise...
Marquise de What 🇨🇦
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Nicole Parsons
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •It is a cancer that has funding & direction from individuals.
These bigoted billionaires have names.
independent.co.uk/news/world/a…
forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024…
usatoday.com/story/news/politi…
politico.com/news/2024/11/24/b…
opensecrets.org/elections-over…
Elon Musk
Timothy Mellon
Miriam O. Adelson
Richard & Elizabeth A. Uihlein
Kenneth C. Griffin
Jeffrey S. & Janine Yass
Paul E. Singer
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Timothy M. Dunn
Rob Bigelow
Diane Hendricks
John Joe Ricketts
Shirley W. Ryan
Warren A. Stephens
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Trump says he wasn't aware of Musk reportedly using drugs during the 2024 campaign
Zac Anderson (USA TODAY)Aral Balkan
in reply to Nicole Parsons • • •Aral Balkan
Unknown parent • • •Nicole Parsons
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •There's a long history linking substance abuse, alcoholism, and fascism, that is then used in excuse-making narratives whitewashing their conduct.
Musk may be an addict, but it in no way diminishes what he has done.
He is sane and culpable. He's trying to evade trials & lawsuits by claiming he was under the influence.
Richard J Evans "The Third Reich in History and Memory" and "The Pursuit of Power 1815-1914"
theguardian.com/books/2016/nov…
1/
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler review – a crass and dangerously inaccurate account
Richard J Evans (The Guardian)