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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Biden is an average to above average president.

    It’s mostly republican lawmakers passing shitty laws in republican states that makes live for many American worse. DeSantis is the one fucking up Florida. Gregg Abott and Ted Cruz are fucking up Texas. Biden has very little influence on that.

    And Biden is fighting the terrible decisions from the previous Trump administration. Were many shitty things are only now starting to show their full efect. Like the increase in higher income tax for lower brackets. Or deregulating coal mining operations that were in place to protect rivers, or defunding the women’s health budget. Most of these things take time for the average person to feel the impact. And Biden is actively trying to reverse some of them. He recently signed a new bill that gurantees funding for women’s health research. Biden rejoined the Paris agreement (which Trump left), with the goal of reducing emissions and combating climate change. And a lot more. But just as with the negative efects taking time to be felt, so does reversing them.

    Biden for some reason just isn’t liked by many Americans. It has little to do with his policies or (in)actions as a president. People like to bring up the geonicde for why they don’t like him. But many of the same people have been critizing him before the situation in Israel even started.


  • It’s not a legitimate competition, that’s the entirely point. The claim is AI models rely on stealing content and changing it slightly or not all. And if a “regular” journalist does this, they would get into trouble. Just because the entity switches to an AI company doesn’t make this business model legitimate.

    A few years ago there was a big plagiarism scandal on IGN because one of their “journalists” mostly took reviews of other people, changed a few words, and published it. Obviously that’s not fine.



  • Scottish Highland clans would use something called the “Fiery Cross” or “Cross of Shame” as a symbol for a call to arms/war. Basically sending a person carrying the thing from village to village and every able-bodied man had to get ready for war or be shamed.

    But whether or not they actually used a burning cross is very disputed. The main source for this is the author Walter Scott. He wrote Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake and other Scottish mythology/historical fiction. While he claimed to try to be as historical accurate as possible, there are a lot of made up facts in his books. So not really a good source and sometimes even the only source for Scottish mythology.

    The original KKK didn’t burn crosses. But in the early 1900s Thomas Dixon wrote a book series that romanticized the KKK. He was very inspired by Walter Scott and included the Fiery Cross in his novel. Saying the flames symbolizing purity, purifying the people of their sins, and the light it gave is a symbol for “The Holy Light”.

    His books were the source for the movie " The Birth of a Nation" and that movie included the burning cross scene. And KKK members thought it looked cool and started to use cross burnings using the made up justification of purity and holy light.



  • Your calculations to get 100% are right but you are off for the 50% and. You are only considering one specific outcome. But it doesn’t matter if the first question is wrong or the second so the chance is 0.250.75+0.750.25 which is 37.5 or double your answer. We can double check it by looking at it from the other direction.

    The chance of failure is 0.75*0.75= 56.25%.

    So there is a 43.75% of passing the first go around. Split between a 6.25% to get 100 and 37.5% to get 50.

    Same mistake for the second calculations. 44.22% is the chance to get 50%







  • YouTube doesn’t have a say in this, it’s up to the copyright holder of each individual song. YouTube just detects if a song is copyrighted or not then gives the owner the option what to do. The three common ones are

    • Disable the Video.
    • Claim Monetization of it.
    • Do nothing.

    So whoever holds the rights to Phil Collins song is the one responsible for your video being disabled. While whoever holds the rights to the song Joe Schmo decided to go with option 2 or 3.

    This process has mostly been automated. So it feels like YouTube is doing it but they are just following the orders of the copyright holder.

    The system is a bit overzealous in some cases and even fair use gets flagged.That’s on YouTube. But to be fair, it’s very hard to have an automated system detect the difference between fair use and not. YouTube should just implement a better way to dispute false copyright claims.


  • While I wish it wasn’t necessary to go take these steps, the cost of going to a different country for an abortion are much smaller than you imply.

    The total cost to get a surgical abortion in Canada is at most USD 5,000. That includes flight, hotel, the procedure, and going back to Canada for a checkup after 2-3 weeks. That’s still a lot of money but not take a second mortgage money.

    Depending on the exact clinic and circumstances the total for a surgical could be closer to USD 2,500.

    If you notice the pregnancy early and can get a medical abortion the total cost is below USD 1,000 and that includes 3-4 nights in Canada so you don’t have to take any medication into the US.

    Again having to go through this is bullshit and it is still more money than some can afford. But I don’t want anyone reading your comment to think it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get an abortion out of the country.



  • What if that car thief suddenly charges you after you hear the alarm and go outside to check on it.

    I can see a situation where the kid was trying to scare his father as a prank. And unfortunately the father mistook it for a real threat.

    I assume the person who shot the kid claims he felt threatened. It’s probably not enough and even the police said so, but they still have a duty to look into it.

    The police jumping to conclusions is a big issue in the US, so let’s not criticize them when they follow proper protocol. In every civilized country in the world the police would investigate exactly what happened.

    Maybe the person giving the interview/report should have used better words. But what’s going to happen would still be the same.


  • That’s important to figure out because it impacts the kind of charges they are going to press. There are different degrees of murder.

    If the guy planned on killing his son, that’s first degree murder. If he mistook the kid for a car thief that’s second degree murder or depending on the exact circumstances maybe just manslaughter. And even with manslaughter the exact circumstances change it between voluntary and involuntary.

    So let’s not get our pitchforks out for the police doing their work right (for once).



  • I think they want to build a new front rather than joining an existing one. They might align more with Russia but I don’t see India and China getting closer anytime soon.

    The border clashes between India and China are getting more frequent. China and Pakistan are fairly aligned, which is a no-go for India. China doesn’t like that India is chiming in on the South Chinese Sea stuff (against China). China doesn’t like India “supporting” Tibet.

    I don’t know enough about the relation between India and Iran to comment on it.