America will not be annexing Canada. Now or ever.
What a vile and predictable comment.
8,816 karma · joined April 25, 2015
What a vile and predictable comment.
Anything else regarding this is sophistry. Criminals need to be stopped from committing crime and the most effective way to do that is to take away their ability to operate in society whether that’s by taking away their assets, publicly shaming them, restricting their ability to conduct business or by putting them in jail.
Everything else that you talk about flows from there.
So that tells you that they know what they're doing is wrong / controversial and that they needed to shape their actions based on that fact.
The course of action they took tells you a lot about the people making these decisions.
All too often someone who espouses libertarian or ultra free-market capitalist beliefs will smugly state that Silicon Valley is proof that America and free market ideals are better than another country such as say Norway, Finland, or Estonia.
I've never really had a good way to respond to that kind of belief in part because I'm not too well versed in the history of intelligence agencies funding American tech industries or the contemporary state of that relationship but also because it's so startlingly ubiquitous and adamant.
Does anyone else have any input on how it's best to address this misconception and worldview that people in SV have?
I'm not disputing that one of the links from the comment that gmerc made came from a US military domain, but that's moot. A licence against military use covers every army, not the one you happen to identify with.
As an aside, I'm curious what nationality user gmerc is. If they're the person in the video that they linked to it sounds like they're German?
And this isn't being nitpicky -- it's really important in the context of this discussion. People from certain countries more than others seem to lack this concept of civic hygiene and clam up when the discussion comes up.
We should push past that awkwardness and keep having these discussions about concepts like civic hygiene. It's important.
As a general rule preserving historical artifacts for continued future analysis and appreciation by people who have yet to be born is a noble cause that's considered worthy in and of itself without the need to justify it. We're talking about the richest group of people who have ever existed with the means to preserve them but decline to do so and instead act like the Taliban blowing up statues of Buddha.
I think this is intuitive to most people. If a prerequisite for the birth of AGI was that a humanoid robot had to sit down in the Louvre and eat every single painting there with a knife and fork while occasionally stopping to wipe away historical detritus with the Mona Lisa that it's wearing as a bib people would by and large express a visceral and justifiable outrage.
The people who are doing this know how this looks so they're trying to do it all behind closed doors, through cut-outs and intermediaries.
They don't care about the R.L. Stein Goosebumps series or Louis L'Amour pulp fiction. They want the stuff that isn't digitized and they're willing to destroy original artifact to do so with no guarantee that even the digitized text will ever be made publicly available.
It's foolish and selfish.
It seems a little short-sighted to destroy an artifact to get the text.
Perhaps the genetic material that remains in books from the people who handled them, or the pollen from plants in the environment that the book existed in will have value in the future, but we won't know what we lost because some people foolishly destroyed it in a bizarre quest to make AGI that the creators argue could potentially destroy humanity.
The more and more I read about these kinds of people the more I'm starting to realize that they're in the "here for a good time not a long time" group of people and those are the last people you want making long-term decisions.
Vibecode an app that builds a list of corrupt law enforcement officials and that finds their mistresses or other unscrupulous behaviour. Have it determine when the exact most damaging moment to release this information to their families and /or the public is.
Agentic muckraking.
The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Even if it's little stuff like a person calling out "Hey how come he doesn't have to wait in line?" when small town city councillor gets special treatment at a local restaurant. We want to close the gap between the every-man and people with power wherever we see it.
In the bigger picture as it pertains to this kind of sousveillance introducing as much friction in these kinds of things as possible causes the people you're opposing to need to exert more force to do what they're doing and it distracts them and throws them off guard. It's a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing.
Take the opposition to datacentres and the protests and resistance to it, if the protesters really wanted to gum up the works they'd target the finite number of anonymous professionals who are involved in the approval and development process for these megaprojects. There are a lot of paper-pushing accountants, lawyers, and civil engineers who just want to cash a fat cheque and make it to retirement who will back the fuck out the second they hear about people publishing the full org-chart and comings and goings of the professionals involved in these projects.
It's a very important tool to figure out which people in positions of authority are coordinating for authoritarian purposes or just plain old corruption.
I'm instantly suspicious of anyone in government who is critical of this idea.
What are they hiding?
Any time they've wanted to. That's the conclusion that I've come to after that dweeb clipped his ear with a bullet.
I would have thought that after Hinckley getting so close to Reagan with a handgun that this kind of thing wouldn't be possible but now I have no doubt any Squeaky Fromme from any country could pull off a presidential assassination if they wanted to.
The reason it hasn't happened yet isn't because the Secret Service valiantly defending the president, it's because the American people are by and large complacent or satisfied with his presidency, foreign citizens are too disinterested, and foreign governments / intelligence agencies view the outcome of his presidency as beneficial to their self interests.
It's kinda perverse but if you stop and think about it in the age of drones Donald Trump remaining president is the biggest act of democracy ever. We all just sort of allow this to happen even though it's becoming more and more trivial by he day to assassinate him.
It doesn't deal with the lingering threat that remains of the people who would be willing to do this kind of stuff for money.
The problem is ultimately that there are people motivated to spy on their neighbours and bring about a totalitarian surveillance nightmare in exchange for money.
You're just playing whack-a-mole as long as these people can still operate in society. They'll be back, and more insidious and more determined to destroy society.
What's the solution to that?
I'm confused by the comments that seem to imply that the author is taking credit for ideas that they're writing about, as I didn't get that impression from writing in the article at all.
I'm also confused by the idea that they didn't provide enough citations for concepts in a non-academic source. I feel like in the day and age of Wikipedia it should be sufficient to colourize / bold terms like "Entropy coders" or "Huffman Encoding" to indicate to the reader that these are important terms that they can research for more details if interested.
Overall I guess my position on this is that ~80/285 comments on this post are related to whether not this is a good post which I think is far too many. There are slight issues with the post but they aren't worth 80 comments.
Why do you disagree with them?
Deep down they know that how we collectively treat animals is abhorrent and shameful and they see their role in it and it frustrates them that they won’t change their behaviour when they’re faced with the overwhelming proof that it is possible to do in the form of someone else doing so.
It’s a crab bucket mentality coming from a place of shame. I say this as an omnivore who isn’t in so much denial about my role in animal suffering and ecological destruction.
Perhaps you could contact the author with your suggestions?
They have amassed incredible power and vast fortunes in a time and era when doing so could only be done with great damage to the environment. Despite years of talk and superficial motions towards climate efforts these people have completely pivoted that signalling and have doubled down on endeavours that cause even more ecological destruction.
They have the power and means to do the right thing.
They chose not to.
I’m starting to think that you’re having a conversation with yourself and your perception of people online, not actual people and the things that they’re saying.
What would the American response to these kinds of actions be if the shoe was on the other foot?
Given the asymmetry in power how should Canada and Greenland respond?
If the American response to Iranian actions against American allies and interest in the Middle East is to spend half their missile stockpile to assassinate the leadership of Iran how should Canada respond to American threats of annexation and Greenland of invasion?
What’s proportional and sensible here?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/08/greenland-iwar...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alberta-separatism-trump-ad...
Thanks for catching that.
What position should Canadians or the people of Greenland take with regards to the people in the US military who are currently working to annex and invade their countries?
What position should the US military take with regards to the people in those countries who are currently working to resist those efforts to annex and invade their countries their homelands?
Do you consider Canadian and Icelandic civilians your adversary? If so, how did that come to be?
In some contexts a healthy weight is stocky with extra body fat that can carry a person through a cold winter or a famine.
In other contexts a healthy weight is leaner with less body fat to better handle a hot climate or chase down an animal.
After decades of ignored negative externalities from unchecked suburban growth and car-culture are coming to an end. As populations decline and temperatures increase places like Dallas and the wealthy suburbs around it that you mention will have less and less relevance.
There isn't going to be a future where the citizens of suburban Dallas are enjoying Starbucks coffee in single-serving cups delivered to them in Waymo vehicles. It isn't viable to just paper over unsustainable nature of these places with self driving cars and ignore urban environments and mass public transit as the comment that started this thread suggested.
The only places that are going to survive what is coming are ones that are dense, well managed, and sustainable.
We could go a step further and tax automobiles in such a way that they covers the negative externalizes that their use results in so that again, the users of them don't unfairly burden others with the cost of their choices?
The money generated from these endeavours could be used to fund the development of mass public transportation infrastructure in more, dense, sustainable areas as well as things like high speed rail to connect those regions allowing the people who chose to live in those areas an easier and cheaper day to day life as well as the access to distant cities and all the economic opportunity that this encourages both in the destinations and in the economic corridors that arise along them?
Places like the US and Canada may be able to stave it off a bit longer because of relatively open immigration policies but the demographic collapse is coming. That means that cities are going to start fighting to attract a dwindling pool of people and cities with less debt, be it financial or infrastructure will fare better than those that have suffered under decades of perpetual growth mindset based policy making.
Many suburbs are a rot on a city's finances and will inevitably need to be amputated. The sooner the better I say.
You’re right, it would be better if there were no nukes on the region but that isn’t possible. That ship has sailed.
It was great to get to live my entire life in a world where nuclear non-proliferation was a goal that a lot amazing people dedicated their lives to doing and with remarkable success but that’s coming to an end.