Romaq @Romaq@qoto.org

The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.

Genocides do not start with mass murder. That's where they end up.

Genocides & other mass atrocity crimes begin with words - specifically, with powerful people dehumanizing a minority.

Once they are seen as less than human, anything is possible, even mass murder.

👉 You can speak out loudly today for the rights of others, or you can stay silent & wait for tomorrow, when your rights will be taken away too.

SIDEBAR: If you've ever taken a collection of RPG tables and then rolled some dice to create a scenario, you've played the same sort of "game" that lots of people currently play with AI art generators.

You feed some data into a system and find out what emerges. It's fun!

Some AI Art thoughts:

1st and foremost, it's not going away. We can litigate and legislate to protect human careers, but the robo-genie is out of the magnetic bottle.

@Romaq @PeterStefanovic This will need a majority of non-liars, or a rule to be adopted at one point that creates an advantage to liars that sets the default vote to approval.

In 1925, Dr. Cecilia Payne completed her PhD thesis, described as “the most brilliant ever written in astronomy.” At a time when few #women entered academia, Payne discovered what the universe is made of. Her work began a revolution in astrophysics.

Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin became the 1st female professor & 1st female department chair at Harvard. Given most of us remember names like Darwin & Newton, we should also celebrate Payne. #science #space

Read more at https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201501/physicshistory.cfm

I couldn't help but feel that #XKCD 1269 was relevant to the #selfhosted #Mastodon #fediverse.

I'm sure the GOP Congress really cares about getting to the bottom of this

Revealed: Trump paid off secret debt to North Korea-linked company while in office
#politics #news
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-daewoo/

Attacker who opened fire on substations causing outage in NC county 'knew what they were doing': sheriff
#rightwing #politics #news

https://www.rawstory.com/north-carolina-blackout-police/

Oh! Is he going to pivot to being presidential now?

Trump hasn't condemned antisemitism because he says anti-Semitic stuff all the time: Mehdi Hasan
#news #politics
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-antisemitism/

@Romaq

I didn't say anything about cutting off FB.

The point here is about FB possibly being a reflection of a more and more poorly equipped culture to have productive conversations about tough subjects.

@Pat

We have to go at 1-2pm just to get a lane.. normally it is shoulder to shoulder... even at 2 pm today it had a good number of people.

In ISrael atleast no one considers COVID as even a worry anymore...

Side note, you dont know what I do do you? You know I work in a lab with COVID samples right?

@2ck @WhatYouMcCallit @tatzelbrumm

Good Sunday morning!

You heard it from the horse's mouth, or should I say pastor. They want to kill you.

The fact that for 4 years this anti-American psycho narcisist had the launch codes to their nuclear arsenal is probably the most terrifying thought possible. #Trump

The GOP is obsessed with genitalia. What kind people using bathrooms have, whether they should blast their own with light, and what the president’s son’s look like.

Many Tesla owners seem to now be concerned that their vehicle may be increasingly viewed as the automotive equivalent of a red MAGA hat, or noting that they themselves are now viewing Teslas that way. Not very difficult to understand why.

Something particularly notable as I read through this thread is the current Tesla owners who say that they really like the car per se, but would not consider getting another, because of what Musk represents to them now (and of course, there's much more EV competition now also so they don't have stop driving EVs). Professors will be talking about this "self-inflicted brand implosion" in business school classrooms for generations.

A presidential candidate who would welcome Nick Fuentes and Kanye West to dinner is a candidate who is completely untethered.

A candidate who has no one around him to tell him no.

He is surrounded by people as crazy as he is. Which means he’s even more dangerous.

TSA now wants to scan your face at security. Here are your rights. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2022-12-02/tsa-scan-face-security-rights-8276741.html

Reminder: If anyone from any instance, large or small, wants to be added as a founding member of the United Federation of Instances please send me a private message. Happy to add anyone who adheres to the code of ethics.

You can always leave any time.

We have close to 200,000 members right now.

https://ufoi.gitlab.io/constitution/united_federation_of_instances_proposal.pdf

#UFoI @ufoi #UFI #Mastoadmin