I mean, after a lifetime of left/liberal infighting while conservatives lived by the phrase "no enemies to the Right", I'm just happy to see Democrats finding a lever that divides the right and jumping up and down on it.

And if a bunch of high ranking Democratic Party members are on the list too, and they go down with the Republicans, so much the better.

Also, and more seriously - if there's any hope of stopping fascism in the United States, it's not going to be through the corporate Democrat establishment. It's going to be through a left-wing populist movement taking over, or driving out, that establishment, the same way national socialists took over the Republican Party with the Tea Party movement and then memed Trump into office.

And ordinary liberals demanding the Epstein list, and continuing to demand it no matter how much Democratic Party leaders call it a conspiracy and a distraction, is a good sign that the American left is as sick of politics as usual as the Tea Party and MAGA movement were a decade ago.

When I was younger I really liked the idea of communes, but now I think intentional communities are more practical and avoid some of the worst aspects of communes.

The difference, to me, is communes typically collectivize all aspects of life - religion, culture, economy, working for a business owned by the commune and sharing property in common, and so on - and this not only isolates people from the surrounding community, but creates a dangerous power imbalance because of how much power the commune's leaders hold over every aspect of its members' lives.

Basically, I think a commune is what you get when you try to run a community like a family. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of abusive families out there.

But communes are only a subset of intentional communities.

In an IC, you don't have to share in any particular religious or philosophical belief system, you don't have to give everything you own to the group, you just have to want to live a lifestyle more sustainable and more closely connected to other community members than your average suburb or apartment building.

And you buy into the community and start contributing to common spaces and common meals and that's that.

You don't lose your home and family if you criticize the commune's leader. You don't have to hide your doubts about the commune's philosophy for fear of punishment. The community has a bunch of different income sources and doesn't fall apart if one communal business fails. There's no charismatic leader who, to give one completely hypothetical example, preys on teenage girls and gaslights their parents into thinking his dick is God's will. Power imbalances are limited because the power the community's leaders have over its members is limited.

I suspect that's why users are complaining about the new model. It's like the article talks about - the parasocial relationship between users and their AI agents. We grew up in an era when computers were tools, but these users want computers that talk to you like a friend.

On the OpenAI community forums and Reddit, long-time chatters are expressing sorrow at losing access to models like GPT-4o. They explain the feeling as "mentally devastating," and "like a buddy of mine has been replaced by a customer service representative." These threads are full of people pledging to end their paid subscriptions. It's worth noting, though, that many of these posts look to us like they have been composed partially or entirely with AI. So even when long-time chat users are complaining, they're still engaged with generative artificial intelligence.

Lol. How sad is it that people are using LLMs to write their fucking Reddit posts?

They watched South Park as kids and thought Cartman was the hero.

That's not a joke. That's literally the problem. The kids that learned morality from South Park and 4chan are now running the US government.

Doomerism at its best. Because how much better off would we have been, if more people in 2008 had said "okay, let's build renewable energy and circular economies to slow down climate change" instead of saying, like Lovelock, "climate collapse is inevitable and there's nothing to do about it"?

Bonus:

Fuck Midjourney, and also, fuck Disney. I hope they spend years in court blowing millions on high priced lawyers and making each other look bad.

Becoming?

Becoming?

Ironically, back then people my age were warning kids "don't trust anyone or anything you read on the Internet, don't give out any personal information to anyone".

Fast forward 25 years and my peers are quoting 8chan shitposts as fact and "investing" their life savings on crypto websites they heard about on Discord.

Selective enforcement is the core of conservative law making.