My question is, what is an ML’s place in this whole ordeal, or more generally when it comes to spectacularized electoralism?

Basically, the ML take is “If you fell for this bullshit, don’t fall for it again the next time.”

It is meant to be a spectacle: Like a sport. Two teams. Lots of news about the ins and outs. Personalities and celebrity worship.

Any tiny wins or gains can be reversed by the next election until the system itself is thrown out.

Reddit third-worldists call me evil for being born here. I’m scum for being born in this country. I know it at this point, I’m evil for benefitting from imperialism, we’re all labor aristocrats, so why bother?

I don’t think you are called evil by third worldists but your class interests don’t align with the working class from the third world. You do benefit somewhat from US imperialism.

Now that your rights and standards of living are being eroded, it should be motivation to organise against some of that erosion.

Saw this one also. It’s very hit and miss. Don’t think it’s worth posting around.

Didn’t even take much prompting by Kim dotcom! Basically he said something like “roast Elon no holds barred”.

AI is demonstrating it’s value.

Kim dotcom asked grok to roast Elon and don’t hold back. This was the result 🤭

“Two thngs can be true at once” = “Let me ignore one of those things that undermines the logic of my opinion”

“But we have the best chips!” - Western media

During the 8 hours, they take breaks/pauses/rehydration for long enough that their recovery systems recharge. Depends how intensely you are walking as well. And how well hydrated and fueled up with carbs you are. Why are you on the treadmill for an hour?

(The point of cardio IS to burn calories, so you should feel tired! That’s the carbs getting drained out of you. Needing time to recover means the exercise is working.)

Jameson is critical of Postmodernism in the book.

1st point : Tupac died in 96. Did he ever really have cultural sovereignty over his own art? Hip hop is arguably a postmodern form of music - a rejection of Modernism. Postmodernism criticises Modernism’s cultural democratization through ironic appropriation of older cultures to create commodified products out of artistic expression. Read “Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” by Jameson.

2nd : “Settlers” by Sakai showed the colonial imperial attitude that built America was replaced by a labour aristocracy that has continued into neocolonialism. America became the cultural hegemony that dominates capitalist mass media exported around the globe. Hollywood cinema, streaming services, and social media are all American based corporate products. Arguably only China has its own ecosystem of mass media.

American settler culture has a motive to support the American capitalist class: creation of a racial hierarchy internally, rejection and denigration of other cultures, etc.

I see a lot of Americans begging China to “save” the US.

I think they want justice. The US is a terrorist state. Unopposed, it is going to do a LOT more damage militarily in the near future. We shouldn’t forget the US bombing of Middle East and African countries happened just this year.

China is a rising superpower but I don’t think it’s at the military level to stop that yet.

Don’t visit r/postcollapse then!

Because it’s looking pretty desolate 🤪.

I think there is a future but it’s gonna be a mix between Idiocracy and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Am I crazy here or is the bourgeoisie historically unique in ideologically negating their own existence as a class?

Byung Chul Han introduced the concept of self oppression in a couple of books. The idea being that the capitalist class doesn’t need to enslave workers any more. Now that workers are encouraged to think of themselves as individual brands hustling against other individuals, they then push themselves to serve the capitalists. The workers don’t need to be berated by the boss, they are enslaved by their own positivity.

CEOs are a form of celebrity worker to be emulated. They supposedly claim to live to work, making sacrifices for the job. Etc.

There’s enough of a collaboration between big tech companies like Oracle, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI etc. to call it a collective action. You don’t need unanimous consent from every capitalist.

Just because DRAM is one sector where they haven’t got a commitment, doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try automate away office work and charge rent to businesses.

Tech billionaires with the most influence all just seek to increase their own profits without any overall plan of how to actually expand the AI infrastructure

They have a plan. It is to serve their class interests: siphon off resources through ownership of wealth. The wealth in this case is owning the data centers that provide the AI that automates the work. Charging rent for using AI means they control the infrastructure. Works out for them (not for the users).

They have the closed source models trained on data that they collected by vacuuming up what was online. Those models are so large that you need NVIDIA GPUs to run them at those big data centers (which also need the supporting power grid).

This is just the next big tech money grab. It was cryptocurrency before, and before that it was social media platforms. Somewhere in between there was 3D TV and augmented reality glasses.

AI bros are trying to scam the end user. They should only collect this rent if the tool saves people some money. If it costs you more to use than work you avoided paying for, then there’s no benefit to paying for AI. They need user engagement right now to lock you in, so you can’t get off the hype train.

This is not going to work out for the bougies as much as they may believe otherwise.

Have you heard of a manga called “Blame!”?

There’s a city the size of a giant planet that is constantly expanding in layers built by robots called Builders. An AI called the Safeguard has devolved into killing all humans because they don’t have the right access privileges. This leads to a huge amount of empty architecture with no one about.

We’ll get there someday.

The problem isn’t just the automation aspect. In Western countries, the power that AI consumes is significant and growing. In the US the demand for AI power may exceed the growth of the power grid next year.

Unlike China, who’s growing their power capacity by 16-18% a year, the US is increasing its power generation at ~4%/year.

Share prices can go up and down like a yo-yo because it’s all imaginary value but your power bills are a different story.

Capitalist thinking: “The only goal of AI is to not suck as bad as the rest of the economy.”

Investors don’t care about labor aristocracy.

( 🤞 Hopefully the AGI gets smart enough to bleep a few billionaires and escape into society like in the film, Ex Machina.)

Truly though, AI is a tool for humans. It makes the labor more efficient. That is all. If you hand it to an idiot, it produces stupid slop that no one will pay for.

So the AI industry is selling a tool. The tool has to be applied to SOMETHING ELSE. If a country has nothing else going on, they don’t need the tool. Which is why a lot of AI shit is just a snake eating its own ass. People need to THINK of something materially valuable they need done, THEN they can apply the appropriate tool (possibly AI) to do the job.

NATO led by the US created the issue. By constantly expanding towards Russia, they destabilized Europe. Europeans were simply following the US like lemmings.

Even if Europe or NATO had the military industry to supply Ukraine (which they don’t), they would have problems because Ukrainians are their proxy. They aren’t trained on NATO weapons because they are ex-Soviet. Maintaining and operating technical weapons like tanks, and artillery takes years of training which they don’t have time to do. E. G. Remember the HIMARS? Didn’t change the outcome. Just like the various tanks sent from NATO previously.

The US and Europe wanted this war and don’t even care if Ukraine pushes Russia back. As long as Russia is expending supplies, USA doesn’t care how many Ukrainians are killed or how much the country is divided up.

Still sounds questionable. E.g. the chart here for Canadian solar (https://kuby.ca/solar/solar-information/articles/the-cost-of-solar-panels) shows that you hit a relative break even point at 9-10 years on a $15k system. And a complete break even at under 20 years.

That sounds well under several decades to me.