uuldika

it was an art installation for (literally) fuck's sake! how are people thinking this was an actual product?

I, for one, enjoy not living in a Puritan theocracy.

it was an art piece, not a serious product idea. they weren't pitching it to Trojan, all it purported to do was make a "statement."

it's like an OmegaMart product, basically.

my sibling in Christ, we're on Lemmy.

this surprised me. from what I can tell from your sources and Wikipedia:

✅ the tanks were indeed leaving the square.

✅ Tank Man stopped them, climbed onto the top of a tank and talked briefly with the soldiers inside, then was quickly shepherded away by two people. it's unclear whether the people were PLA or concerned bystanders. nothing is known of the man.

🤔 sources disagree on whether civilians were killed in the Square itself. some supposed witnesses were shown to have left or been elsewhere.

❌ at least 300 people, mostly civilians, were killed that night, according to the PRC itself. most of the casualties were likely students surrounding the square. from what I can tell it was likely a Kent State situation, where students were throwing rocks and setting fires, and the PLA overreacted with lethal force.

China's suppression of the media didn't do them any favors. the Tank Man photo wouldn't be so infamous but for the Streisand effect caused by PRC's heavy-handed censorship. rumors of a massacre in the Square would be easy to dispel if foreign journalists were allowed to stay and film. but protests were an embarrassment to China, and China sweeps embarrassments under the rug.

dictators are distressingly popular. nobody likes checks and balances when they're holding your guy back from giving the bad guys a well-deserved beating.

the seventy maxims of maximally effective mercenaries?

the context makes it better, for me.

Harry is the protagonist, but he's not a good person. he's a ruthlessly utilitarian sociopath who takes himself far too seriously, but it's entertaining to watch his thought processes. again, much like the author.

Roko's Basilisk is real, but only for LW rationalists. living with contradictions in our thinking and using gut feeling rather than obsessively chaining Bayesian priors together protected the rest of us.

seriously, Yudkowsky and others were tormented by the thought of the Basilisk. it's a literal mind virus. just one that requires a very specific host (true believers in Timeless Decision Theory.)

Also as patient zero of Roko's Basilisk!

there used to be platforms that would show livestreamers on a map, so you could get angles on protests as they were happening. I remember using it during the George Floyd protests in 2020. terrible for privacy, but it was incredibly useful to get an unfiltered view from the ground.

do any of those still exist? or did they shut them all down?

I've noticed a lot of infantile and absurdly maximalist takes on Lemmy lately. it's kind of souring me on the project.