Olives @olives@qoto.org

The BBC's instance doesn't even work properly.

I'm wary of the BBC here. I feel as if they're the sort of people who'd attack the fediverse, although there's no particular strong reason to defederate them either.

If Israel's Supreme Court striked the law stopping them from striking down bills which are unreasonable because it is unreasonable, that would be so ironic.

The OSB might get in the way of the BBC's "Mastodon experiment" (I hate this bill).

I have neither watched or thought a whole lot about this film.

I can think of how this *might* be useful, however, it's really not helpful for one guy to make this change unilaterally without any discussion.

In hindsight, and I suppose hindsight bias is a thing, people probably shouldn't have invested so much in centralized platforms like Twitter and Reddit.

Q is random and inexplicable, the rules he operates by are random and inexplicable, when he can't act, it is random and inexplicable. The writer makes it up as they go along.

There isn't any real system to how he operates, he is just there to play the role of this "higher and superior" being in random episodes.

That's what I kind of think. They probably could have fleshed his character out more, his system out more, but I guess that undermines being unfathomable.

I prefer Q the Star Trek character to Q the conspiracy theory, although tbh Q wasn't a very interesting character.

While a classic, I'm not fond of Monster. It's a bit boring (including the story tbh). I wouldn't buy it.

Also, Johan is basically just the stereotype of a psychopath, not really an interesting villain character imo.

Modern anime are usually better (although, there are enough anime in each season which are garbage).

Is that Monster? Wow, that's a classic. A story of a serial killer and a doctor (who saved his life without knowing after he sustained a bullet wound to the head, I think he was shot by his sister).

Perhaps, it has something to do with the bad faith puritans who keep complaining about slutty shirts with the word "daddy" on them.

Or the company is pulling a Paypal and screwing their sellers to try to pander to consumers. Or freezing someone's funds might be a neat way to make more money.

https://reason.com/2023/07/25/government-wants-to-control-your-digital-identity/ An American take on such a system in Colorado.

https://reclaimthenet.org/u-tries-to-justify-support-for-scanning-private-messages More ways in which Ylva's opinion survey is unethical.

https://reclaimthenet.org/australian-finance-minister-pushes-digital-id-system What do you think of this? I can think of several ways in which it could be very bad. It gives the government a lot of power... Power is easy to abuse and over-reach with.

With #AI, my main concern lies in things like predictive policing, facial recognition, hiring algorithms, landlord tenant algorithms, tax collection algorithms (yes, these have gone horribly wrong), moderation algorithms, and so on.

These sorts of algorithms where power is imposed by a powerful party onto a more vulnerable party (and which are inherently discriminative).

I'm not really concerned about generative "AI" (which is really a hyped up threat in a number of ways, it's up to someone to be responsible).

https://reason.com/2023/07/29/the-return-of-mdma/ "services such as testing partygoers' drugs for dangerous ingredients"
There was a country which was doing something like that, I think it was New Zealand? My memory is foggy.

It'd be interesting to get data on how that goes.

"In 2002, a senator from Delaware named Joe Biden proposed the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act."
Hehehe, it's always him.

https://truthout.org/articles/profiteers-of-holmesburg-prisons-medical-experiments-have-yet-to-redress-harm/ Since I already brought up the subject of historical scientific ethics being poor, here's another story of inhumane experiments.

It doesn't even really surprise me that one of these Q grifters is making money by... Posting illegal photos of the vilest abuse for the purposes of shock and conspiracy.

They're not exactly known for being particularly good people.

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-nsa-wants-congress-to-allow-purchase-of-warrantless-data Of course the NSA would want to keep that loophole open.

As lovely as national security is, I don't think mass surveillance of literally everyone is proportionate for it, and it's left the door open to all kinds of abuses.