abben @abbenm@anticapitalist.party

This!!!!! Forget Prophets of Rage (sorry), but this may be as close as we ever get to RATM getting back together in the Trump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY4ywyFXdik

Just a quote of Jordan Peterson being nuts in case you needed that.

I don't know what I expected. I thought he was at least vague about it, though

Another concern I just thought of with AI-generated faces, is that it will be that much harder to spot trolls with fake profiles now. They currently (used to?) rely on real photographs stolen from other people's profiles, so you could find the original person, and thus identify a fake.

Now... will that be possible?

Playing around with https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/, a site that auto-generates faces from scratch (well, from training on images).

And getting a biiiit of uncanny valley stuff, but also some straight up horrifying monsterpieces like this:

wtf happened to Jerry Coyne?

Used to be all in good fun taking on creationist nonsense, but then, creepily like Thunderf00t and Sam Harris, eventually came out as a "free speech" guy, an Israel apologist, and a both-sideser.

"conservatives do have ideas worth debating"

Do they??

"including the value of affirmative action"

Nope.

"what to do about immigration"

Seriously?

"economic policy"

No academically respected ideas on offer.

"and taxation"

Same.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/student-op-ed-we-dont-need-to-hear-conservative-voices/

"Pizza Hut lasts for a long time"

It reminds me of when Eric Andre said "you know they say if it's grey it's healthy for you!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HsaW0UnKZ0

This is amazing and hilarious. "Pizza Hut lasts for a long time" is my new go-to quote now.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/02/10/my-flabber-is-now-gasted/

ooops no no no nonono nono!

False alarm! Calcium bentonite. NOT calcium benzoate.

(where did I even learn there was such a thing as calcium benzoate so that my brain could reach for it, even accidentally?)

Me right now pretending like I know how calcium benzoate works

Wiki says it's used as a food preservative? And in soft drinks, fruit juice, and stuff?

And on human faces I guess!

Related: HackerNews questions of the kind produced by fried internet brains: "What's the best programming language?"

"What are some good programs?"

On topic but vague, and any conversation about whether it's a good or bad question (have you TRIED having that convo?) never gets around to addressing the problem that short attention span formats produce simple questions.

This is how you know you can't build your brain entirely out of internet sauce. Your brain dissolves to slush and you are only able to produce questions like this:

Hubzilla has a place where you are when you log in (is it my stream? my wall?), but I also have "channel home" ? Is that also my stream or different?

And messages, which I understand, but are shooed off to the side. Meanwhile I have all these different stream view options taking up prime real estate on my stream, which only further confuses me about what the stream is.

These things are not at all designed well. I can't program, but I def. could design something better.

Today in train-wreck level bad science writing: An article about consciousness that's equivocating between two fundamentally different things:

(1) A honeybee's unconscious, automatic pattern recognition, that can be blindly trained on stimulus/reward associations

(2) Human and dolphin using abstract concepts engaging in introspective, abstract reasoning

And of course we now have hundreds, probably thousands of redditors going "wow, honeybees can count, just like us!"

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/aopcne/til_honeybees_despite_having_the_brain_size_of_a/eg35hue/?context=0

This "soak the rich" thing looks like it only had the purpose of comedic exaggeration to undermine the seriousness of its proponents.

You can do anything you want with art, I guess, but the idea is that it speaks to something, resonates in some way... and this definitely wouldn't resonate with supporters, but maybe it would with the Tucker Carlsons of the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/business/democratic-wealth-tax-warren-sanders-ocasio-cortez.html

Google must have some really compelling research on "learn more/find out why" messages functioning as complaint-neutralizers.

Because then if there's Bad Thing Happening that you don't like, you have to read more, and if you don't, well now it's your fault.

today's wildly inaccurate reddit post with 11k+ upvotes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/all0p2/til_great_white_sharks_do_not_survive_in/

like when you have am article about "white woman killed by thugs" that gets thousands of upvotes- the article itself might be true but the way it's being pushed by trolls is downright evil.

And if you challenge it, you get an AVALANCHE of incredulous denial like "what? it's a real story!"

linked below is the reddit/MRA fantasy of "and she came craawwling back!"

I've seen posts like this before and it feels... suspicious, and awfully similar to blatant fakes.

It's in a weird in between space where it's not necessarily bad, but definitely plays into a shitty fantasy and validates toxic dudebro shit that, in other contexts is a lot more awful.

Again... probably fine? Maybe? But I'm suspicious both of what it is, and what it is used for by other people.

https://old.reddit.com/r/confessions/comments/ala58w/my_girlfriend_cheating_on_me_was_the_best_thing/

I'd actually rather not have fun with Google Assistant 📴🚮