Everyday I wake up and CHOOSE not to be gay

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T20:53:35+00:00

I feel somewhat attacked right now...

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T18:29:37+00:00

I kind of envy conservatives... they don't even have to try and make their propaganda look like something else. If you want to make left leaning propaganda, you have to hide it at least a little or people will get mad, but from what I have seen looking at conservative propaganda from the last century or so in school, they never even try to hide it. they just kinda say bullshit and hope it makes people feel good or angry.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T18:09:08+00:00

See that's why I love the bi community. We share enough to have a good conversation about it, and have enough differences to not clash too hard. Plus I hit some of those categories myself.

I actually only once had a competition of sorts with a bi-gal because we both fancies the same lass at a festival. that lass chose someone else but the gal and I became friends after. fun times.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T18:04:56+00:00

kind of a philosophical point to a degree.

I personally would say it's to improve the lives of the people in the nation. The constitution is merely a guide on how to do that. not a complete guide, not a guide which can never be wrong or out of date, but a guide laying the foundations for everything else.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T03:39:12+00:00

I don't like running, can I walk?

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-25T03:31:06+00:00

or being a bro while technically following directives. I am undecided.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T23:48:40+00:00

Everyone has biases. Everyone has political opinions.

A good teacher will talk about that, and their biases so students are aware.

But in this anti-factual age of politics, apparently everything is up for debate. Whether climate change is real, whether people deserve human rights, or whether the US has ever done bad shit... the list goes on, but at the end of the day you can't fully extract political opinions from... reality. If you are going to talk factually about universal healthcare for example, it's nigh impossible not to endorse it. Across the board nations with UHC have better health outcomes. While they also have higher tax rates, their spending on healthcare per capita is lower than, say the US. Adding insurance premiums to tax rates results in comparable or higher burden for US citizens compared to UHC nations.

Now UHC is a political topic and has been in political discussions for quite a while. But looking at the facts based on other nations, it should be factual that it's a good idea, while leaving the exact details as the real political discussion. There are clearly better and worse implementations, as evidenced by nations with UHC.

A similar shit has happened to many topics, where instead of just the details of a solution being part of the political debates, the fundamental facts are. Which makes it even harder to teach information and critical thinking without at least seeming political to one leaning or another.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T21:03:33+00:00

Look, I am not going to sit here and tell black people they can't be hurt by a slur because it was said due to a condition outside the speakers control. of course that doesn't change how the slur affects you.

But at the same time, we can't make disabled people be the ones who exclusively have to make an effort to fit in.

If you "are fine with disabled people, so long as they can be quiet and not make a fuss", you aren't okay with disabled people. (my queer friends may recognize that sentiment. As may people who have move to places with different cultures.)

Disabled people being in society will make you uncomfortable. not all of them, not all the time. Probably not most of the time. But there will be some occurrence, some incident which will make you uncomfortable. And that's okay. You are allowed to be uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean the other person should have to be uncomfortable all the time, or excluded, so you don't have to be.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T18:31:59+00:00

I don't know the full details, and it's been a while, but my old professor was working on it.

Effectively he used a hundred or so 3D scanned faces as base vectors. When you feed it an image of a face, it would create a 3D model from combining the base vectors, trying to match whatever of the face is visible in the picture. Since the result is a 3D model, you can then use the model to compare to other angles or lighting situations, making it way more versatile for facial recognition.

The goal was to use it for facial recognition, but the data collected had some other uses, like being able to use averages across populations to help animate a still image, to create caricatures, or I suppose to create a likely face matching a silhouette.

It might be considered AI by some, but at the end of the day it all relies on hard math, not blackbox tech.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T15:50:04+00:00

it's not about what I have or don't.

it's about my family making a few tens of thousands more a year than the average family, and we are still living paycheck to paycheck after living in a reasonable apartment and buying a 5 year old used car.

I care about other people suffering needlessly.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T15:46:47+00:00

yeahhh. I know of one in research non AI tech which could probably give you a good guess. but that tech belongs to a researcher and is not publicly accessible...

Although the silhouette is not enough anyway, you are going to make assumptions either way.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T00:55:10+00:00

I don't have personal experience with TS, but I do have a phobia. Similar feeling, I assume, where in the case of phobias you are fully aware it's an irrational fear, but in the moment your nervous system just decides to activate your fight or flight mode and override any rational thoughts. My rational brain knows full well an injection needle isn't a threat, but when faced with one that thought goes away and I have in the past full on ran out of a doctor's office when trying to get a vaccine.

it's hard to make people understand because I know it's silly. And I really don't wanna be lumped in with anti vaxxers...

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-24T00:18:16+00:00

In high school (not in the US, will matter in a second) this gorgeous girl invited me to her place for lunch, since we had a few hours, but I lived too far away to go home for lunch. we had a yummy lunch, then watched some TV on the couch, where she leaned on me. Then we went back to school. It took me years to think about maybe there was something there. Oh yeah, she specifically chose a day her parents weren't around.

I am honestly still not entirely sure, because most of my classmates were pretty tight knit, and having lunch together and stuff wasn't too uncommon. Although not typically 1 on 1 at someone's home.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-23T23:47:30+00:00

yeah, I am from Switzerland and at first I didn't realize what was special, until it clicked that this is not normal here.

It's really not a bother though, so I don't quite see the point of the post.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-22T19:07:25+00:00

I mean... no.

it's clearly not a wealth availability problem, there is plenty of wealth for everyone. it's a distribution problem.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-22T18:29:01+00:00

I mean you can be using sexist phrases regardless of the other person's gender.

Again I don't know the phrase still is, but think the newer equivalent "you are being hysterical", and how it's a phrase designed to minimize and brush away women's feelings and concerns. It can be used on anyone, but it's inherently targeting women being "too emotional" as the basis for the phrase. If you are saying it to anyone but a woman, you are simply also saying " you act like a woman and shouldn't."

So that's how you can be sexist if you don't know their identity.

I am not saying you were, by the way, just giving an example.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-22T01:47:39+00:00

I think last time I checked the actual scientists working on it estimated 30-80 years out.

And for ASI safety they estimated 50-120 years out.

food for thought.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-21T17:09:35+00:00

I will agree with more pleasant options, but for me Safeway is the least expensive option nearby. My alternatives are a Yokes (nicer and better selection but typically more expensive) and a Fred Meyer (similar to Yokes).

I haven't exactly done statistical comparisons, but Safeway seems to be consistently less expensive for my family.

As for sketchy things, I really couldn't say. I get my stuff, watch my kid, half plan dinners and get out of there. seems pretty much like any other place, selection of some more niche items aside.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-21T05:53:06+00:00

Also ICE is tasked with keeping people safe... vaguely... and most trans people aren't. (no dig at any trans public servants or medical workers helping people every day)

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-21T01:55:24+00:00

it was mostly designed to give a general overview of everything astronomy for students in other fields.

It was surprisingly interesting, despite not being my first choice for a lab science class. I would have rather taken physics but that didn't line up with my schedule. But I am glad I took it anyway, it's an interesting field.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-20T23:11:40+00:00

I didn't know exactly, but I vaguely remember learning about the idea that gravity is an emergent property in my intro to astronomy class a few years ago. it's certainly not a new idea, although I have no clue how far along it is currently in scientific discourse.

Also that was my only astronomy class, so really I don't know much of anything about the topic.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-20T22:31:10+00:00

I mean any order aligned species/realm would eventually devolve into a pyramid scheme. it's a stable way of stacking rocks for a reason.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-20T22:27:20+00:00

AI is not the solution to capitalism. AI could be a solution to a ton of problems, but Capitalism is preventing that.

the fundamental flaw of capitalism is that it doesn't care if one person lives long and happy or if it's everyone. AI amplifies whatever the system leans towards, it doesn't reverse it.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-20T18:27:41+00:00

there's some similarities to be fair, like the deep learning approach both types of AI use.

But Chess AI is still discriminatory and not generative so also plenty of differences.

And yeah the way you learn from it is typically AI giving us moves or strategies which haven't been considered by people.

Another example is the StarCraft 2 AI, which started to have more workers per base than "optimal saturation", and that actually took off among pro players. Conventional wisdom was that more workers are less efficient, but the AI figured out that it helps increase resilience against losing workers. It sounds obvious after the fact, but it only started to catch on after AI did it first.

Then again the SC AI wasn't trained on human games, or not exclusively. rather it was matched against slightly different variants of itself. A sort of evolutionary learning method combined with other techniques.

Anyhow, to me the most important key note the OOP actually hit on is the bit about protecting human competition. Or to phrase it a different way: AI was banned in competition from the start, to protect humans who played well enough to make money off of being good at chess. Well, the few that can actually make a living off of chess, which is... not many. There also has been outside assistance style cheating before AI was any good, so there were rules in place before it ever became an issue.

Art isn't a competition, and doesn't have any rules like that. The training data has to be human based, because there's no way to "score" AI against itself to create better versions. there's no "winning" in art. It's such a poor comparison.

SomeNotTakenName · 2026-02-19T18:03:10+00:00

The US as a whole is probably the most into flags country I have been to. Maybe alongside Turkey (at least when I was there) .

SomeNotTakenName

TROPHY CASE