I can agree with that general viewpoint even though (I assume) portrait painters got paid more relatively since they work more hours than photographers. I don’t even think I blame AI on the fact the post production was all cut, but instead blame it on the “hype” surrounding it. My industry at large is still operating at 40% of typical since covid which is unrelated to AI, but jobs getting cut for the explicit purpose of trying AI still stings. 1/3 of post was laid off prior to covid because workers in South America were much cheaper. AI is just the new excuse for an existing problem.

So anyway, I’m planning to become an electrician now.

I wouldn’t say “every time new technology appears” since portrait painters definitely got replaced by photography as a widespread industry and a structural shift did happen. Technology in general tries to reduce human effort because human effort is expensive. Any expense that can be shaved down year after year to make more profits will be made regardless of if the quality is consistent. AI doesn’t need to be as good as creatives to replace them (either in part or in whole) eventually. It just needs to be “good enough”. And the thing about technology is that it’s always trying to get to a point to replace people whether it’s there yet or not. Photography couldn’t replace portrait painters initially due to color and image quality, but it eventually got there.

The CEO of a company I worked for decided to fire all the people in post production because he was convinced AI could replace humans in that department. He then sold the company after realizing AI wasn’t the magic solution he thought it was.

So it likely doesn’t matter if AI is replacing jobs or not if the people in charge of the workforce believe it can so much that it impacts decisions. The results are the same.

Do you honestly believe politicians don’t know what we want if we don’t vote? Sure, they can gauge how much they can truly get away with, but we have the internet and polling and email and phone calls and protests and petitions and every manner of just as ineffective tools as voting that tells people in power what regular people think, which is generally ignored for the wishes of the mega donors.

Like I said earlier, I voted, but hyper fixating on it only distracts from the knowledge that there’s far better things to do than talk about voting other than the single day every couple of years where you go to the polls.

Focusing on voting over direct action where one has a <1% impact on things over the far more impactful thing kind of implies you think it is the most important thing. My apologies if that wasn’t your meaning. It just comes across like “of course we have global warming when Jerry down the road didn’t recycle that one time”, ignoring the blatant destruction of our planet by oligarchs. Yes, Harris would’ve likely been better for me as well, but I’m done thinking that sacrificing others for my own comfort is justifiable because of my gender identity.

Voting is a tool the capitalists have provided to you because they know that either option will give them a win. I vote because local positions are important, but federal positions have been pre-approved by our abusers. If the ruling class has convinced you that voting is the most important action you can take to stop fascism, you’ve fallen for the exact propaganda they wanted you to believe. You don’t stop a house fire through politics- you throw water on the immediate problem. Direct action is responsible for nearly all of our civil rights gains we have made in this country.

As a nonbinary person myself, you’d think trans people wouldn’t throw the entire global south under the bus to keep themselves (and by proxy, this system) safe and secure, but rather stand against the system that causes all this death. It’s no surprise that reaping the benefits of exported fascism will eventually bring that fascism home.

otherwise you justify all kinds of “just following orders” arguments.

I’m not sure I’d equate having your hand forced with following orders blindly. It’s nearly impossible to change individuals’ behaviors unless it’s due to systemic forces (minus the few who just want to be correct as long as it is visible). But if you’re more focused on individuals and their “responsibility” even though they had no input on the creation of this system, I’d only assume that you’re fine with this system and would rather shout at the brick wall of “individual responsibility”, then get frustrated when people end up hating vegetarians and vegans. I’m like 90% vegetarian nowadays because I can’t really afford meat anyways as well as it giving me headaches and foul moods, but I don’t think you’re being realistic in what you’re asking. Would the world be better with no factory farming? Absolutely yes. But we’re in this situation not because of people’s choices. We’re in this situation because the choice has been made for a lot of us. Some people are a single paycheck away from homelessness, so they likely don’t have the resources to learn how to cook, then ruin a bunch of food in the learning process, only to overspend, and be threatened with getting kicked out all for your own comfort. Go fight the people making this the reality we’re living in.

There’s something to be said about the ease of access and personal energy needed to deal with changing a diet that has been inherited by birth where the alternative is possibly much more expensive. I don’t blame individuals who eat cheap meat out of necessity just as I don’t blame people for not recycling since the responsibility of the exploitation and destruction of our planet lies entirely with the people who run the machine, not those who are forced under threat of violence to exist inside it.

I just know we’ll find that damned Insulindian Phasmid soon

Beer is a little tricky to compare with cocktails since beer can range from a little over 1% to 15% and cans are generally the same size. Though at a bar, specialty higher ABV beers do typically come in smaller size glasses.

Everything else you said seems pretty accurate though. Gotta always watch out for drinking things too fast before you know where your comfort levels are.

Rights are proclaimed and fought for by the marginalized, not gracefully given by our rulers. If you put so much emphasis on which group of tyrants to vote for, you’ll never think “maybe I should become a Stormé DeLarverie and actually make a difference”

There’s Meshtastic/LORA if you also like getting yelled at by airport security lol

Idk DeepSeek probably just stores things in the history of my Terminal window.

I feel this. Though I don’t tend to be optimistic in general about the state of my little place in the world , it definitely gets worse when I think of the big picture stuff that I have even less control over. I really wish I knew how to help, but I guess all I can do is relate and hope that you’re doing okay. At the risk of sounding insincere and acting weirdly intimate to a stranger online, we might never see each other in our lives, but we are fighting and suffering a reality that was forced upon us together. Hopefully things get better, but even if it doesn’t, we aren’t alone in this.

The weird incongruous part is that the people on Rednote (up until recently) thought the average American has over a million dollars (due to a weird mistranslation of something our embassy said about the average income from all Americans being over a million dollars), have a house (due to television shows), have free healthcare, and generally live a carefree life. Many people are questioning why there’s been such a push to work over here by their friends and family who visit.

Just superglue a neodymium magnet to the bottom of your bike shoe and hover it over the sensor lines in front of the stop light.

Ohh gotcha! I do think images would be fine if there was some way to verify original content since there are some truly amazing creators out there. But yeah, that’d likely require constant moderation.

Every day I relearn that Neocities still exists I’m surprised. I also had no idea it was open source! Thanks for the info! I honestly love the “small web”, and neocities really has a large portion of those kind of sites. I also follow some Bear Blogs, though I think it’s rare to find comment sections on these sites, so communication is limited to emailing if this was to be considered social media. But it definitely makes me feel more cozy than any of the corporate owned media sites.

I have both Matrix and Revolt, but they remain empty unfortunately. The advertised public servers are so full I usually leave within an hour. And I can’t get my friends to join my Matrix channel instead of the discord server they are used to using. I also fully admit that real time chatting is just not my thing, so my bias is definitely towards non-real-time social media sites. Growing up with dyslexia and AIM, I’d always feel really insecure about spelling things correctly and it always takes me a while to send a message. Again, fully a me-issue that other people generally don’t have, but I can dream haha