spit_evil_olive_tips

Are you trying to say that there were not any people on Lemmy loudly saying that

...

I haven’t seen any of those people apply any of that vigor

...

I gave two concrete examples, one of which involved one guy, and the other of which involved multiple “guys.”

I think you may be right that our conversations aren't productive. but I think you're wrong about the reason why.

your entire political universe seems to be based around Lemmy comments. and I think that's given you a staggeringly misleading view of the world.

it seems a little unlikely that you’re going to respond to a detailed factual reply with anything like “Oh yeah I see your point”

so when you're talking about a "detailed factual reply" what I think you actually mean is "reply with lots of links to Lemmy comments".

and like, yes, the existence of a Lemmy comment that you disagreed with is a "fact". possibly even multiple Lemmy comments that you disagreed with. wow, look at all those detailed facts.

but you're right that I'm not going to respond "yeah, you have a point" to that, because I fundamentally disagree about the premise of the point you're trying to make. you could link to a million Lemmy comments you disagreed with and I'm not going to be convinced.

because you're making sweeping generalizations about American politics in general, and the behavior of left-wing voters in particular. and when asked for evidence, all you ever have is "look at these Lemmy comments".

you're staring at the world through a paper-towel tube. Lemmy is a very small, non-representative sample of the population as a whole.

doesn’t come alongside making sure that Mamdani wins the election

I live in Seattle. you’re saying I’ve been slacking off about making sure Mamdani wins? OK, tell me what I should do.

do you have an answer to this? you quoted and responded to the rest of my post, but this was a weird omission.

because this sort of tracks with the overall point I'm making. this is a forward-looking question, it can't be answered with "look at this Lemmy post from a year ago".

in particular, whatever you think I should do to help get Mamdani elected - does it revolve around "post on Lemmy about it"?

the conspicuous lack of much corresponding effort by the same people to talk up Mamdani himself.

who are "the same people" that you're referring to?

is "people" singular, or plural?

how many people, specifically?

because the last time I asked you for a concrete example to back up a sweeping claim like this, you brought up one guy who was a petty tyrant forum moderator you had a beef with. and you were still salty about the beef like a year later.

making sure Kamala Harris lost the election, to teach the Democrats a lesson about genocide

do you have any concrete evidence (preferably something more substantial than "Lemmy comment from a guy I got into an argument with a year ago") that people not voting for Kamala because of Gaza actually changed the election outcome and caused Harris to lose?

because...ballots are secret, right? you can't actually know who someone voted for. they can tell you, but they're not obligated to tell you the truth, they could lie.

there are exit polls...but by the very nature of exit polls, you can't capture people who stay home and don't vote.

every time I hear this argument about "Democrats who stayed home because of Gaza" it seems like they're Schrodinger's voting bloc: so large that it swung the entire election. but also, so small that Democrats were correct to not try to appeal to them (Umberto Eco has a principle that fascism requires an enemy that is simultaneously strong and weak...but I'm sure that's just a coincidence)

doesn’t come alongside making sure that Mamdani wins the election

I live in Seattle. you're saying I've been slacking off about making sure Mamdani wins? OK, tell me what I should do.

I guess my writing style ends up looking a bit polished sometimes

uh-huh..."too polished" is not the thing that's causing you to fail the Turing test. and your emdash count keeps rising, btw.

— just wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had for a while.

and what thoughts are those, exactly?

your original post followed the pattern of every AI slop "discussion prompt" post I've ever seen - 3 paragraph structure that ends with "in conclusion, it's a land of contrasts — what do you think?"

and all your other comments in this thread are just variations on "yeah there are positives and negatives — we'll need to think carefully about it"

humans who want to talk about a thing...usually have opinions about that thing. often strong opinions, and often based on specifics about the thing. do you have any?

“In other words, these conversations with a social robot gave caregivers something that they sorely lack – a space to talk about themselves”

so they're doing a job that's demanding, thankless, often unpaid (in the case of this study, entirely unpaid, because they exclusively recruited "informal" caregivers)

and...it turns out talking about it improves their mood?

yeah, that's groundbreaking. no one could have foreseen it.

if you did this with actual humans it'd be "lol yeah that's just therapy and/or having friends" and you wouldn't get it published in a scientific paper.

it's written up as a "robotics" story but I'm not sure how it being a "robot" changes anything compared to a chatbot. it seems like this is yet another "discovery" of "hey you can talk to an LLM chatbot and it kinda sorta looks like therapy, if you squint at it".

(tapping the sign about why "AI therapy" is stupid and trying to address the wrong problem)

An insincere apology is not newsworthy

is there an article with better framing that you think I should have posted instead?

because I certainly agree the apology was forced and insincere...but the original comment about executing homeless people was definitely newsworthy, don't you think?

and annoyingly, I didn't see any major news outlets covering his comments, until he was forced to issue the apology.

so it's kind of unclear if you're just complaining for the sake of complaining, or if you have any constructive criticism to offer.

Jones was talking on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday about public money spent on trying to help homeless people and suggested that those who didn’t accept services offered to them should be jailed.

“Or involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill ‘em.”

hypocrisy from the right-wing with regards to advocating/endorsements of "political violence" has been on full display recently

...but this is just very lazy and heavy-handed from the writers of this season of Reality. come on, try to be a little bit subtle.

the excellent Knowledge Fight podcast, which does media criticism of Alex Jones (and other right-wing ding-dongs) has the concept that big news events like this have a period of "wet cement"

when the cement is still wet, you can write whatever you want in it, and it'll harden with your message written in it.

if you wait until the cement dries, you can't do that.

the entire right-wing has been desperate to carve "transgender" into the wet cement of Charlie Kirk's shooting. the exact details don't matter. the important part is getting there before the cement dries.

You need better mental health care.

you start off by saying you've always thought you're on the left

but the moment you disagree with someone, you start shit like this, which is a very common pattern of argument from right-wingers.

"I think your opinion is so wrong that it's a symptom of mental illness" is just fucking stupid. do better. or, if you refuse to do better, stop attempting the "I've always been on the left but..." shtick. it is absolutely see-through and does not fool anyone.

here is the official NASA press release. primary sources are always preferable, especially compared to this fuckass "digital trends" clickbait website.

“This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “NASA’s commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars’ rocky soil.”

quick fact check: it was launched in 2020, but announced back in 2012. giving Trump credit here is idiotic, but it's about what you'd expect from Sean Duffy, he's a Trump crony through-and-through. before being the NASA administrator he was Trump's Secretary of Transportation, and before that he was a Republican congressman, and reality TV contestant (on The Real World and the *checks notes* Lumberjack World Championship)

I think it's important to remember that everything, even basic scientific research, is liable to be politicized if it suits their ends. so it's totally possible this biosignature is legitimate, but it's also totally possible that they're hyping up questionable findings because they want to persuade Trump that funding a NASA mission to Mars would boost his TV ratings.

I haven’t. It was omitted from the article in question. I stand corrected.

keep standing...because here's the 5th paragraph of the article:

Political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC on Wednesday after speaking about Kirk’s death on air. During a broadcast on Wednesday following the shooting, anchor Katy Tur asked Dowd about “the environment in which a shooting like this happens,” according to Variety. Dowd answered: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”

a contributor who made an unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event

have you read the actual statement that got him fired?

from wikipedia:

On September 10, 2025, commenting on the killing of Charlie Kirk, Dowd said on-air, "He's been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can't stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that's the unfortunate environment we are in." Dowd also speculated that the shooter may have been a supporter.

you can agree or disagree with the decision to fire him (I'm not shedding any tears, Dowd was the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush re-election campaign, it's ludicrous that he was working for a supposedly "progressive" network like MSNBC in the first place)

but characterizing that statement as "celebrating murder" is just bullshit.

How the fuck does the government have this much control over the media?

wealthy oligarchs purchased the media, and purchased the government. so it's not the government controlling the media directly, it's just that they report to the same boss.

would you like to know more?