Okay, but how do I personally monetize non-honey making bees? Sure, the general ecology needs this, but what’s in it for me, right this instant?

These rules seem arbitrary and capricious. If the dog is well-trained, the owner is able to meet its needs on the go, and nobody else is explicitly being bothered, there’s no compelling reason to block it from any of these establishments.

All of the above hold true for therapy animals, for instance. This isn’t about the animal being well-trained, it is about both the pet and the person to be comfortable and happy, without impinging on the comfort and happiness of others. Locking well-behaved pets out of all of the above establishments does nothing to improve your comfort or happiness. It only serves to inconvenience others.

Far more socialism in practice than you’re giving credit. Even setting aside the 1/6th of the global population and economy that is governed by the Chinese Communists, you’re neglecting the plethora of state managed economies across the Middle East (the Kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the Revolutionary Republic of Iran, the theocratic republic of Afghanistan) and the socialist state functions of more traditional capitalist countries - NHS in the UK, the Baltic State sovereign wealth funds, state owned companies like Petróleos Mexicanos and The National Copper Corporation of Chile.

Musk is the kind of creature that crawls out of the swamp only after you’ve turned too much of your economy to private interests. He isn’t a global phenomenon. If anything, his ejection from South Africa and the continued revolutionary anti-colonialism that continues to flare up in opposition to people like him all along the Global South should signal how much of the world isn’t welcoming to his kind.

But that doesn’t mean anyone actually likes AI art

Anyone in the business of churning out media slop at high rates and low quality loves it.

Low budget advertisers, propagandists, and click bait influencers are its primary user base.

One of the things that Americans loothe about the Chinese government is the rule that mainland owned and operated firms require a domestic partner, with legal access to the patents and property used in manufacture. This comes with subsidies and state support. But it creates a rich opportunity for those Chinese domestic partners to begin making fully local competitive alternatives.

The Chinese domestic EV market took full advantage of Tesla, siphoned out the best bits, and now allows the bad fruit to rot on the vine.

he can just fly in and start fucking shit up wherever he wants

In capitalist states, where politicians are explicitly beholden to international credit and industry.

State owned businesses are insulated against vulture capitalists like Musk, because they exist to deliver a service rather than turn steadily increasing profit for shareholders.

State run and independent citizen sponsored media are insulated against the influence of marketing firms and corporate propaganda, because the staff does not rely on a tiny cartel of ultra-wealthy private patrons to fund their journalism.

Elon Musk is a very American problem. He’s a creature of libertarian capitalism and colonial apartheid.

I hear world wars are good for the economy. A sharp increase in demand for instantly disposable munitions combined with a sharp downturn in the global life expectance does amazing things to Per Capita GDP.

Several of the apps traced back to Qihoo 360, a firm declared by the Defense Department to be a “Chinese Military Company." Qihoo did not respond to questions about its app-related holdings.

I have to wonder if this headline would be received the same way if it was “US State Department Accuses Chinese Internet Security Company of Conspiring With Chinese Government”, as all this seems to go back to a claim by Trump’s 2020 department that Qihoo leaked info to the Hong Kong police during the protests five years ago.

Still… Qihoo 360 appears to have been an active investor and developer in Silicon Valley since 2014. Chinese investment in the US isn’t new or even undesireable, as of a decade ago.

But consider how the US has also recently attempted to seize the US branch of TikTok and block domestic sale of Huawei phones. Add in the domestic freak out over Chinese AI companies outperforming their US peers. This could easily be American tech companies trying to freeze out their competition on national security grounds rather than Chinese tech companies posing a military threat to US domestic interests.

Me, a liberal: “You need to understand that gender and ethnicity and religious tradition naturally divide us. But we can overcome all that with meritocracy. If we just stack rank everyone, we can skim the cream and anyone who works hard enough can join the professional class.”

Also me, still a liberal: “Yeah, we’re just firing all the women, the non-Europeans, and any out LGBTQ faculty member from the organization because we need to comply with new Anti-DEI rules. No, I don’t see what that has to do with their economic position or social standing in society. Maybe they all should have just worked harder.”

War + Poverty is a consistent recipe for fascism

Dating apps are rigged to give men and women bad experiences so they (largely men) become desperate enough to pay $25 a month or whatever to have an unfair advantage.

It gets worse, as the engagement mechanic populates the apps with a particular kind of guy who is obnoxiously aggressive, persistent, and convinced that this is a game they can brute force with time/money. So women end up being introduced to a string of guys who believe they’ve “won” a date by “beating” the game while women are left fishing for profiles that don’t look completely gross or insane.

And that’s before you get into end-users who are straight up escorts or pimps or predators, fully internalizing the idea that site participants are just resources to extract.

It isn’t merely about giving people a bad experience, but to give them a cheap thrill that keeps them coming back to the apps without ever finding a fulfilling relationship that would render the website superfluous.

The internet (and other players!) likes to hate the players, not the game, and the only “comfort” many young men have is Tate and Co.

Tate on one side and Estee Williams on the other. Men are told to treat women like a commodity - interchangeable, disposable, and ultimately hostile to your personal interests - that you rent out when you’ve accrued enough surplus wealth. Women are told to embrace submissiveness, obsess over superficial appearance, and pursue men based entirely on their socio-economic status in pursuit of the same kind of passive incomes that Tate is selling.

These conservative icons put men and women into an inherent contradictory position, with the idea of two people coming together as collaborators (much less romantic partners) is fully alien. You’re purchasing a man’s income with your looks. He’s purchasing your looks with his hustle-money. You’re both purchasing the other’s status, with an eye towards a higher rung on the ladder. Neither one of sees the other as a life partner.

A Beautiful Mind - Bar Scene John Nash’s Equilibrium Game Theory

its easier than ever to produce and share art

Anyone who believes the transition from pencils and paper to high end computers and software has made art creation easier… Go compare the staff and budget required for the original Disney’s Snow White relative to the latest Pixar film.

And as to sharing, that’s where AI is extra obnoxious. On the one hand, you’re trying to make yourself heard in a wholly artificial cacophony of procedural generated spam. And the current iteration of The Algorithm favors AI, so even your hack favorites like Ben Garrison and Jon McNaughton have to compete with Shrimp Jesus.

It’s not a bad thing, we can create whatever art we want with ease

You cannot. You can make requests to a computer and it can approximate a result that you accept or reject. But you’re not making art, any more than walking up to a sketch artist, slapping down a $20, and saying “Draw a picture of me looking silly” is making art.

Let’s not paint that positive reality like a bad thing.

When the future of art is just a computer pumping out caricatures, because its cheaper than commissioning anyone with talent and experience to employ perspective or creativity or even just something beyond the sixteen pre-defined style choices, that’s pretty bleak.

Is digital art itself bad, because its not the human doing all of it?

It is bad primarily because it plagiarizes historical art in order to undermine the professional trade for future artists.

It forecloses art as a career, thereby depriving future generations of evolution in style and professional craft.

Gate keeping art is silly regardless

The gate being constructed fences off professional artists from the revenue their work produced. And in doing so, it defunds the schools and studios where professionals pass their craft from master to apprentice.

No no no. None of this should be acknowledged, because Whataboutism.

Oh no, the Groypers are here.

As the Buddha said in the Vasala Sutta, “Not by birth is one an outcast; not by birth is one a brahman. By deed one becomes an outcast, by deed one becomes a brahman.”

Why did the noble Japanese Buddhists boil Portuguese Christians alive? Was this one of those Brahman Deeds?

The Buddha goes on to criticize the various things that brahmins do

Much as Jesus critiqued the Pharasises. And yet modern Christian Dominionists have far more in common with Pharasises - even Roman Pagans - than the fishermen and slaves and prostitutes that were it’s original disciples.

The “liberal” in the USA is not a leftist in the same way a Tankie isn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

Now, the modern day use of the term has shifted much farther to the right. Any form of resistance or dissent - particularly when it comes into conflict with the NATO military apparatus - qualifies, whether you’re a FARC guerilla or a Wikileaks editor of BDS advocate.

Palestinian rights organizers getting dragged of a university campus earn the label. Food Not Bombs charity workers earn the label. Internet slacktivists excited about the latest Deepseek patch earn the label. So, in that sense, sure. You don’t have to be a leftist to get called a Tankie.

Does that mean that the US is perfect?

This appears to be the root of it. America gets some sort of ideological benefit-of-the-doubt, such that My Lai Massacres and engineered famines in Cuba and Korea and blacksite prisons that use genital mutilation to extract confessions are degrees shy of perfection rather than war crimes, atrocities, and holocausts.

Is authoritarian communism better? LOL, no.

Is your problem with the authoritarianism or the communism?

“The very concept of “revolutionary violence” is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like.”

― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

I’m pretty sure this meme is CIA funded.

I mean, you joke. But the number of “If you criticize the American Police State, you’re a violent bully” posts on every corner of the internet from accounts with those procedurally generated 4-digit suffixes is a wee bit sus.

You see the same shit from anti-Luigi memes, anti-piracy memes, and anti-Linux memes. They just aren’t well received.