arctanthrope

looks like an ai render of a Minecraft character

“the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” -John Adams

how are you still doing that, I thought they all shut down like three years ago with the whole API debacle

“the 1st amendment is a shield against orthodoxy of thought, that’s why we’re using it to justify the enforcement of orthodox thought”

insecurity?

this is poor writing, highly ambiguous, there’s no way to tell from context which country “its” is supposed to refer to

edit for those apparently not getting it: there is, but only because we know he’s a hypocrite

there’s a conspiracy theory that the term “conspiracy theory” was intentionally manipulated in the cultural lexicon to include both realistically plausible things and pseudoscientific nonsense. this creates an equivalence in perception between people who say “the FBI killed MLK” and people who say “aliens abducted me and took me to the other side of the flat earth where I met Bigfoot,” so that any accusation against the government is immediately dismissed

CiviClick, which bills itself as “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.”

so the word “grassroots” just doesn’t fucking mean anything anymore, huh

ok I see. my understanding of imperialism is that it encompasses both of those, meaning broadly, expansion of influence, especially (but not necessarily) by claiming areas of land, in order to gain control of resources currently held by others. but I agree, there are two types within that, and the distinction between them is whether the people currently occupying the land (or in particular their labor) are part of the resources that the empire is trying to claim

so, just walking through your own argument as I understand it: situations that are similar to the treatment of indigenous North Americans by the US can be considered imperialism, if it’s done by one nation to another nation. but the actual treatment of indigenous peoples by the US doesn’t meet that condition. the result of that syllogism must be: between the US and the indigenous peoples, one of them is not a nation. I assume you’re not saying that the US is not a nation. so the conclusion must be that the indigenous North American peoples were not a nation, or multiple nations; that there was no political or societal organization in the Americas before Europeans came. is that what you mean, or have I misunderstood?

and my question is why do you think that’s not a form of imperialism

the “neighboring nation” I was referring to were the indigenous people. North America was not a blank slate before Europeans arrived. “manifest destiny” was imperialism

so you’re saying going to war against a neighboring nation to expand your territory is not what an empire does?

a million documents is on average about one document every 35 minutes for his entire life. that seems like a lot, even for a broad definition of “document”

live SpongeBob reaction

this isn’t new, “making smaller marks on a rock” has been mankind’s method for expanding data storage for thousands of years

edit - hmm, needs workshopping I guess. maybe something like: “over thousands of years, humans have refined data storage from its most primitive beginnings as marks on rocks, to its most advanced novelty, different marks on different rocks”

exactly, the real Luddites weren’t opposed to technology, they were opposed to wealthy factory owners using technology in a way that eliminated or cheapened their labor to extract more profit. what Sanders and most others are citing as threats posed by “ai” are actually perfectly in line with the Luddites, but they’re not allowed to say so because the actual history of the Luddites has been smeared and propagandized to make them look like unreasonable morons who are scared of things they can’t comprehend