OpenStars

SEOs destroyed queries so hard that LLMs had to come in and save it.

What will the equivalent of SEOs for LLMs be, I wonder.

This is at best a temporary reprieve, and we should use it to work towards a longer-lasting one.

no one is going to save us. We have to do it ourselves.

Abso-FUCKING-lutely!

Two additional thoughts:

One is that a lot of the evil being done "by America" is actually being done more by evil people who hide behind it like a shield. Even if all of America were to fall, these illuminati types would go on, reduced/diminished but still viable. Like a witch controlling a zombie or a japanese manga type person sitting inside of a robot, the USA may be a good tool for the true master's purpose (e.g., Haliburton, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, etc.), but they can surely find other tools besides just the one. It is just that the USA prostates itself before them so well that they like this one.

I think it is important to make that distinction, b/c e.g. if someone attacks you and you merely knock the gun out of their hand, the problem is not "solved", especially if in their other hand they still hold a knife. You imply that we should "wake up" - and I agree, and this is part of that, to disambiguate the various factors involved. America shares an enormous portion of this blame, by virtue of stupidly signing our body away to serve the desires of some other mind than our own - fulfilling its purposes instead of the one that that "we" all want to be done, i.e. for people to be able to live in their own spaces and have a chance at happiness.

Which leads me to the second thing: this video is not necessarily "cynical", though I understand why you say that. It is truly one of the more unbiased depictions of this matter that I have ever seen or heard or read, and by virtue of it refusing to tell us how to "feel" about the matter, it does come across in our cultures that are traditionally so amped-up in the latter regard that it seems wooden by comparison. I liken it to when astronaughts wanted to make rockets to go into space, and someone gives a dissertation on "gravity". Knowing about how gravity works is how you get into space - it is not that it cannot be done, it is just a Truism about the world that becomes relevant when talking about leaving the planet. So while talking about gravity may sound "cynical" to someone who wants to talk rather about flying through space, it is in fact a necessary first step.

So rather than cynical, I see it as neutral. Other videos provide plenty of motivational calls to action, but that is not the purpose of this particular one, which is solely to inform - and I actually appreciate that so much about it! e.g. conservatives and liberals alike can watch it and become better informed, without hampering the spread of that information by mixing it along with political rhetoric that allows only a single interpretation of it. I am not saying that *I* am neutral, but I am saying that I like it when information is, b/c imho that is the best way to further the cause of understanding, from which people can be helped better (than by e.g. misinformation and lack of understanding).

This "threat" stings less and less over time - i.e., if we get nothing from them now in taxes, then how would them moving away change anything? Like, would we pay higher amounts for food maybe, or not be able to buy a house anymore, or have lesser access to medical care as a result?

Also, we cannot change how others act, only what we ourselves do. e.g. perhaps if they become honest about being non-taxpaying corporations, we could do things like pass laws restricting the amount of money that such entities could contribute to politicians?

Ultimately, would it be so bad if like "Apple" were a non-American company anymore, and we could incentive our own USA-backed companies instead? (or if Apple does pay appropriate taxes, then substitute with some other company example here) Likewise, Google already is losing its ability to "find stuff", b/c of its chasing after pure profiteering. Let them go, I say, b/c while that may induce some pain in the short-term, it is the only way that we will heal.

But, I have been wrong before, and you should not base any real decisions off of my opinion:-).

People did answer the question. Re-read the top two comments, sorted by Top. The question was "Why don't we hear more about...?".

It is emotionally difficult to accept, but it is the reality that we live in. The richer people have bodyguards and send their kids to better-protected schools, maybe bring in private tutors that are each more expensive than a cheap college education. They deal with this shit in their own way, leaving everyone else to the "freedom" to do as they please - subject to the whims of other lords who e.g. buy up all the media outlets, or buy up all the houses, etc. People do not wish to understand that this is what "absolute freedom" looks like, aka anarchy.

And quite frankly, random gun violence isn't even the top threat in America, bc climate change seems much more likely to kill us all, or else an actual civil war, or perhaps Russia or China will shut down our entire power grid, if our own home-grown terrorist extremists don't beat them to it.

iirc, most people here die of heart disease and cancer, and other things that mere exercise may provide a partial solution for. So we don't care about the deaths of kids or strangers for the sake reason we continue to eat burgers every single day: bc they are tasty and we DGAF about anything else.

Except they can jam up - otherwise as you said it would be better to reload one than to switch?

I mean... America is influencial, therefore what evil is there gets spread more readily. Also it has historically been more transparent, so what evil is there is easier to see.

But e.g. Communist China has evil too, though it is usually better at hiding the details, and yet it cannot cover everything and what little does come out is rather chilling.

And India, well I can't start listing every country on earth, but let's just say that if I did, much evil would be listed out.

Smaller nations with less ability to create evil on a larger scale ofc may demonstrate less evil, but if those nations were to suddenly discover I dunno let's say vibranium, they would likely become just as evil as the USA. What nation doesn't have a sordid backstory of murder and espionage and assassination and so on? (Unless it is brand new I guess?) Though America does enjoy it to excess and even puts it on display, so yeah I agree with that part at least.

Check out that video I linked for more.

More to the point, I would hope for something to be DONE about the whole fiasco. Simply calling it "evil" is not enough - of course it's evil, and it also does good too, ironically, but now what? Commit violence against it? :-P

As @lad said, it is not the identical same thing, but yeah it certainly does seem connected.

As for evil, I could not name a single country on earth that wasn't, especially in a historic context, but neither does that excuse the USA for being thus.

Watching Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes on that score though.

Possibly. He's not the best at making documentaries, and perhaps watching a trailer for it would be sufficient and better than watching the whole entire thing. Or maybe that one was actually good? It's been awhile for me too and I do not recall either the details of how "entertaining" it was, but I do recall that it pointed out how news media aims to make profits rather than inform the public - and that is a very necessary lesson to learn. There are other sources to do so ofc, though this was also a commentary on gun violence at the same time, so I thought of it. But if people want to point to other, better documentaries that's awesome.

But more than all that, and whether OP actually watches it or not, my point is that it exists, and moreover it did so for DECADES. In all that time since, protections against gun violence have actually gone down, as some stuff has expired and new protections for the violence have been added - e.g. in California where the judge ruled that AK-15s or whatever were perfectly fine home defense weapons. i.e., Bowling for Columbine shows one example of how long we've known about all of this stuff. Surely there are other documentaries too - probably some from the 70s even - but this is one that I could recall offhand.

And for that purpose it does its job just fine, merely by existing:-).

I dunno, at this point - as always - the person most singly damaging to Trump's brand is the man himself. His people don't worship him so much as the ideals that he represents. They KNOW who he is, they simply do not care. And if he died, they would just move on to the next one - we thought DeSantis but similarly to Trump himself, his own shortcomings got in the way, and unlucky for him Trump did not step back + he (DeSantis) simply could not force the issue on his own.

And unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to the idea that the Democrats suck ass. If the question is "what is 1+1=?", the Dems answer is a million, whereas the old-school (e.g. Tea Party) Repubs answer was negative Pluto, while the Alt Right would fuck your mom and kill your dog (or maybe get them confused and vice versa). i.e. there are a lot of ways to be wrong, but they are not equally so.

His conservative base is not nearly so "Pro-Trump" as they are "anti-libtards". Which should worry us all, b/c McCartyism has touched this nation before, and those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Anyway, yeah they would move on, and yeah those others would not be supported quite as strongly, but I don't think this would actually matter, in terms of people showing up to vote to swing an election? If anything, it could even help Repubs chances, for those middle-of-the-road voters who definitely do not want to vote for Biden yet did not want to vote for Trump, and would consider voting for a different Republican.

It is impossible to type out all of the reasons, but here are a few. Check out Bowling for Columbine btw - a movie from two thousand fucking two, 15 years BEFORE that particular one. We've seen that particular bullet coming for a LONG time, and the ones before it, and the ones after it, and the ones yet to come - we KNOW, yet we do NOTHING. Most especially the "Pro-Life" crowd.

Lobbying. It's a thing. The NRS especially is one of the more powerful ones. More than 80% of American citizens - rising to >90% of NRA members even!!! - want some form of extremely limited gun control. However, we do not live in a democracy, not even one dominated by conservatives or rural Americans - rather, we live in a plutocracy where despite the OVERWHELMING support of the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, we cannot manage to get anything done.

Also, much of that money supposedly flowing to politicians from the "NRA" actually has been found to have ties back to Russia. Many of the politicians receiving that money may not even know the true source of where it came from - nor do they particularly seem to care.

Oh, and then billionaires bought up pretty much all of the major news outlets (a handful of others still exist - did The Guardian escape that? Well, even if they were, they seem to be allowed to talk about other corporate take-overs (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/may/03/billionaires-extra-power-media-ownership-elon-musk).

And hopefully you already know what happened to Google, where SEOs took over the searches so that it is nearly impossible to find things that just five years ago were easily retrievable, with the only lingering hold-out being Reddit, before then that whole thing happened...

BTW, the government is literally not allowed to collect statistics on how many violent gun deaths occur in America. I am not sure if this is the video where Jordan Klepper showcases that, but if not then he has a bunch of others. Or take your pick - there are millions if not billions of videos, of varying degree of quality and relevance. I've never seen one show a truly "unbalanced" take though - that is just not how for-profit corporations work. You just have to educate yourself by watching a bunch of stuff until you know how trustworthy the source is, and also each and every material topic too. It is sad, but we cannot seem to trust any (especially for-profit) advice these days. Though if you want another recommendation, there's John Oliver's whole expose on the NRA. To provide a modicum of balance, on the other side there are series such as Paul Harrell's Mass Shootings: Causes and Possible Solutions.

And - yes there is always more - there are other arguments such as: "if someone cannot get a gun they will simply make their own bomb" (ignores how much harder it is to do that), and the whole thing of plastic ghost guns (again ignores how difficult it would be to do that). Ultimately, i think that children being sacrificed is itself merely a symptom of a much deeper cause. People on Lemmy call it "capitalism", which has a LOT of truth to it - but then again, nations such as communist China have their own different issues. But, again, since ~90% of Americans already are in favor of stopping these kinds of mass-shootings, this will not be solved by merely educating yourself or "getting the word out". In fact, this type of issue is precisely the type of thing that Trump leaned heavily on as his route to the White House - "Hillary Clinton is corrupt so you should elect me and I will get rid of all the corruption, everywhere". So realistically, this is just something that we are going to simply have to live with, unless and until people fucking DO something about it. e.g. a responsible gun owner could patrol their own neighborhood schools. However, do note that every time someone does try to do that, they end up shooting innocent people instead, and yet it does nothing to stop the actual shooters, who can pull guns out of a bag (long-ish violin or trumpet case maybe?) and start shooting in mere seconds - not enough time to notice and prevent it. So start by educating yourself, since that's really all you can do, and also it will help enormously to ensure that you are on the correct side of the issue.

For those so inclined, there is a verse commanding the latter point even in the actual Holy Bible, at 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true". I don't know what can be done, after the education stage, but I know it MUST begin with that.

He also deregulated the FCC, the SEC, and trains. I dunno, I seem to recall hearing some stuff about train derailments that seem to me to be directly traceable back to those decisions...

Also, while he is not directly responsible for Russia invading Ukraine, he likewise directed our response - e.g. "you have to do me a favor though" (which iirc is literally treasonous).

Also, well there's a lot of also's.:-( Unfortunately, we may get to start working on a whole second listing:-(.

If you find it, let us all here on Lemmy know - it looks like people are very interested (I know I would be to see a refresher). The sad part is how this stuff has been known for decades, but people just ignore it - e.g. "just grab 'em by the p$#&y". There are some, like John Oliver and Innuendo Studios, who are doing fantastic work to spread awareness of matters that need attention (and Jon Stewart is back, sort of:-), but ofc that won't reach the ears of people who refuse to listen, and instead choose to highly regard those who spread fear and chaos, most likely purely for profit reasons.