My favorite of all time and winner of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss—a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.

– Molly Ringle, Seattle WA

Despite this, the affected specialists and their families were doing well compared to citizens of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Zone, apart from the suffering of deportation and isolation. The specialists earned more than their Soviet counterparts. The scientists, technicians and skilled workers were assigned to individual projects and working groups, primarily in the areas of Aeronautics and rocket technology, nuclear research, Chemistry and Optics. The stay was given for about five years.

…

After this period of intellectual quarantine had passed, the specialists returned to Germany between 1950 and 1958, the majority of them before 1954. Before leaving, they were taught to keep their years in the Soviet Union secret. Some specialists received chairs in GDR universities (e.g., Werner Albring, Waldemar Wolff), became an East German party official like Erich Apel. Otherwise the GDR had difficulties to offer adequate jobs because the industry was mostly down. Brunolf Baade was given responsibility for developing and producing a passenger jet. A portion of about 10% made it to West Germany, Austria or the US, among them Fritz Karl Preikschat, Helmut Gröttrup and Kurt Magnus.

Yeah, sounds like the Soviets punished them harshly. Totally treated them like “resources” and not better than most of their own citizens.

A strawman and whataboutism?

A strong effort, and I appreciate the work you put into that comment.

rf rf

Irregardless, I don’t think theirs really a difference between the too in this case.

You weren’t around for it, but it was bad – you couldn’t avoid them. A few dozen trolls doesn’t sound like much, but they were coordinated and relentless. Blocking users didn’t work because they were constantly making alts, including on other instances.

Calls were made for instances hosting them to ban those users: most did, some refused to or couldn’t. Blocking instances in user settings wasn’t a thing yet, so those instances were mass defederated from. Lemmygrad and hexbear were the big two and home of the dirtbags that were upset their “fun” was over.

Instances defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad because a few dozen users from those instances were terminally online trolls. They’d relentlessly harass users they didn’t like (i.e. most people), spam threads with gross images, and were generally obnoxious shitheads.

Also, “Tankie” is an insult against the hardcore authoritarian left: people that cheer on repressive dictators and violent supression of dissent. The term was invented by communists out of disgust for some of their “fellows”.

Of course, if you ask a tankie they’ll try to argue the word is an insult to all communists/socialists/leftists … it’s not.

– and are being used by rich sociopaths to replace the very people that made that content.

“AI” has become synonymous with “Generative AI”

Has sanitation, pest control, and medicine have advanced since the 13th century?

No … we still need cats to do all the heavy lifting.

The BBC Historic Farm Series?

in charge of a country of under-educated, mouth-breathing, inbred racists, with a soupçon of imperialism.

I’m not disagreeing with you, but I hope you don’t think Canada significantly fewer of those degenerates per capita than we do.

Yours might be a slightly different flavor, and they not be as emboldened as ours – but those shitbirds are universal and will absolutely destroy Canada just like the USA if you’re complacent.

You’re on the decentralized social media network that was created to get away from corporate bullshit and are surprised the people here don’t like posts containing AI slop?

I think the “Je ne sais quoa” is the human element: art is fundamentally about human communication and interaction.

We can (usually) infer the meaning and emotion an artist is trying to convey – particularly if given context. Even if we don’t “get” what the artist is trying to say, we can come up with something an equally valid. Real art only “works” because of empathy.

AI generated “art” fails for that reason: you can’t infer the thought process of a machine that doesn’t think, or emphasize with emotions it doesn’t have. As a tool it can assist with creating art, but the more heavily it’s involved in the creative process the less meaningful the resultant “art” becomes.

He won every borough… except Staten Island, where said millionaires and billionaires live.

AI reviewing medical imaging/labs and flagging abnormal findings for review by a doctor is awesome.

AI spamming social media to push fascist propaganda is not.

Distasteful like: “Use SCOTUS’ ruling on the president having unlimited powers to immediately arrest or remove corrupt MAGA officials and judges”.

It does, unfortunately.

“If any of you local or state law enforcement decide to grow a spine: the state courts have your back.”

Getting shot with pepperballs for peacefully assembling in public tends to radicalize people, their friends, and their family. Pissed off people tend to be far more motivated in putting in the work to make things better. Experiencing or seeing police brutality first hand is a fantastic motivator when it comes time to boycott, strike, recall elected officials, etc.

You’d probably know that if you learned the history of any social revolution in the USA … but they really gloss over those movements in schools for some reason.

I know I’m late in replying (life) but I’d say it’s because most people’s experience of hearing criticism of Islam in the west is it coming from assholes of the white supremacist variety. They are overwhelmingly the loudest and most proliferate critics of Islam, so people start associating the two – and unfortunately that assumption is correct more times than not.

It’s a given considering most western leftists are fairly ignorant on the topic of Islam and have a tendency to diametrically oppose everything bigots claim. Now throw in assholes that will exploit those facts to push their fucked up beliefs.