This is actually why I’d be in favor of AI generators creating a hash database of their generated images. If legalized, they should be required to maintain records of the images they have produced. So that if those images appear elsewhere, they can be verified as AI generated.

It would be a monumental effort to actually get the AI companies to agree to it willingly. But that’s why legislation exists.

The fact that you don’t need to actually supply any real CSAM to the training material is the reasoning being offered for supporting AI CSAM. It’s gross, but it’s also hard to argue with.

Yeah, this is basically the crux of the issue. When you get into the weeds and start looking at more than just surface-level “but it needs CSAM to make CSAM” misconception, arguments against it basically boil down to “but it’s icky.” Which… Yeah. It is. But should something being icky automatically make it illegal, even if there are no victims?

I hate to make the comparison (for a variety of reasons) but until fairly recently homosexuality was psychologically classed as a form of destructive/dangerous kink. Largely because straight people had the same “but it’s icky” response whenever it got brought up. And we have tried to move away from that as time has passed, because we have recognized that being gay is not just a kink, it’s not just a choice, and it’s not inherently dangerous or harmful.

To contrast that, pedophilia has remained stigmatized. Because even if it passed the first two “it’s not just a kink/choice” tests, it still failed the “it’s not harmful” test. Consuming CSAM was inherently harmful, and always had a victim. There was no ethical way to view CSAM. But now with AI, it can actually begin passing that third test as well.

I don’t know how I feel about it, myself. The idea of “ethically-sourced” CSAM doesn’t exactly sit right with me, but if it’s possible to make it in a truly victimless manner, then I find it hard to argue outright banning something just because I don’t like it.

This is really the biggest hurdle. To be clear, I’m not arguing that being an active pedo should be decriminalized. But it is worth examining whether we’re basing criminality purely off of the instinctual “but it’s icky” response that the public has when it gets discussed. And is that response enough of a justification for making/keeping it illegal? And if your answer to that was “yes”, what if it could help pedos avoid consuming real CSAM, and therefore reduce the number of future victims? If it could legitimately help reduce the number of victims but you still want to criminalize it, then you are not actually focused on reducing harm; You’re focused on feeling righteous instead. The biggest issue right now is that harm reduction is very hard to study, because it is such a taboo topic. Even finding subjects to self-report is difficult or impossible. So we’ll have no idea what kinds of impacts on CSAM consumption (positive or negative) AI will realistically have until after it is widely available.

Do yourself a favor and soak them in some vinegar water after you get them home. About a 1:4 mixture of white vinegar to water. The acidity will kill the mold spores that cause the berries to go bad, and it won’t be strong enough to affect the taste after you rinse them.

I usually just dump about a cup of vinegar into a mixing bowl and top it off with water when I’m getting groceries in. First thing I do is drop the berries in to soak. Then I put away all of my groceries, which gives the berries a few minutes to soak. Finally, I dump the bowl and give the berries a quick rinse with the sink sprayer.

I haven’t had strawberries go moldy since I started doing it. If I forget about them in the fridge for a week or two, they’ll simply dry out instead.

I’ve long said that every retail worker should be legally allowed to physically fight ten customers per year. And not a calendar year, where all the employees would be out of fights by the time holiday shopping season rolled around (or would be forced to save all of their fights for the holiday season). Give them ten points, and each point takes a year to fall off of their record once it is used. And the retail employee would have zero obligation to tell the customer if they have any points. Leave the customer guessing until the employee swings on them.

As gun nuts are so fond of saying: An armed society is a polite society. I think it would solve a lot of the problems with Karens. Karens only go full Karen because they hold all of the power in the relationship. But the threat of potential violence would go a long way towards quelling the most unreasonable ones, and people would only bother going full Karen if they truly felt they were justified and were willing to back it up with a fight.

I’m not sure, but I’d die happy.

Hah yeah, Lemmy is a much smaller community than Reddit. I have started tagging users, and it’s surprising how often I see the same tags in the comments sections.

This is true in America. In the EU, Apple was recently forced to allow third-party browsers. But even in the EU, developing those third-party browsers will take time and money.

That’s largely because the companies want to grab all of your telemetry data, which they can’t do in a browser. Putting it in an app allows them to gather whatever info they want, instead of being siloed inside of a browser.

Yeah, people complain about roombas not giving a super deep clean… But they’re really not intended to do so. They’re meant to be a daily maintenance clean. They may not be great for when you dump an entire can of coffee grounds in your carpet… But they’re wonderful when you have a big dog with lots of fur that needs to be vacuumed every single day.

Yeah, life always seems to throw expensive problems at people all at the same time. I thought I had a pretty good nest egg saved up, and then boom… Car shit the bed, cat needed surgery, wife had a hospital stay, and a few other big life events. All while the economy is in the garbage, inflation is in the high double digits, the wife is out of work (due to the aforementioned hospital stay), and any hope of a social safety net was being dismantled right in front of me.

I didn’t even consciously realize how stressed I was about money, until I realized I had fallen back to pirating my PC games instead of just buying them. I hadn’t been a prolific pirate since my broke college student days… And then suddenly there I was again, browsing FG’s site for the latest repack, so I could install it in between shifts.

Yeah, you always have to account for the Wife Factor with things like this. Good luck convincing your wife to stop clicking on sponsored links on Google, especially when it’s what she’s searching for.

There’s a reason people say officers are class traitors. Policing has never been about protecting the public; It has always been about suppressing the masses and protecting the elite.

BSG… Big Scary Guy? Boobs Sex Guns? Beavers Selling Green? Brave Snew Gworld?

No offense, but your post reads like a military dudebro’s war story. Introduce initialisms the first time, please. I knew a few of them through context clues, but not everyone will.

Which is really only used in the americas. Europe/Asia doesn’t use it, except in specific circumstances where the child wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship elsewhere. But even that is only due to treaties set up to prevent stateless people. If the child would have citizenship elsewhere (like in America), the European/asian country would tell them to apply there instead.

Alternate take: If we actually implemented my above plan, you wouldn’t need to be stupidly rich to own two homes. Home prices would be reasonable, because there wouldn’t be giant corporations hoarding all of the real estate.

We have over two vacant houses for every single homeless person in the country. We could give every single homeless person a house, and still have plenty to act as summer cabins. And that’s before you even factor in the fact that the market would be flooded with houses (at least in the short term) from corporations trying to avoid the increased taxes.

Tax homes based on how many you own, and how many are vacant. Allow two homes at a regular rate; Enough for a summer and winter home. Then ratchet tax rates up as the person buys more.

And if the third, fourth, fifth, etc home sits vacant for more than a few months out of the year? The tax rate goes up even more, so giant corporations can’t just buy entire neighborhoods and sit on them to remove them from the market and increase property values for the other homes they own across town. Because that’s what’s happening now; Giant corps are buying homes and letting them sit vacant, just to remove them from the market so they can charge higher rates elsewhere. Allow a few months of grace for renovations and finding tenants… But after a ~3 month grace period, that tax rate skyrockets.

And then take the revenue from these increased taxes, and use them to fund First Time Homebuyer programs, so home ownership becomes more available to the people who are renting. Incentivize the corporations to actually flip the houses and resell or rent them, instead of just sitting on them.

Ding ding ding. This is just a talking point so they’ll be able to pivot into “we should give Musk a trillion dollar contract to run GPS on his Starlink satellites.” Hammer the “GPS is unreliable” point long enough that the conservative voters have time to start believing it. Then pivot into handing more money to Musk. It’s a typical advertising strategy; Create a problem so you can sell the solution.

The average household income where I live is ~$80k. Excluding the top 5%, it drops to ~$50k. That’s (on average) two full-time workers per household, each making ~$12/hour. Their annual (pre-tax) income would be about $480 per week, or ~$2080 per month each. After taxes, that would be closer to $1450. So likely around $3000 for the household’s monthly budget.

The cheapest homes near me start at $300k. A 30 year mortgage with a 6.5% interest rate and 10% down payment would be almost $2100 per month. That’s assuming they’re able to save the 10% in the first place, and get approved for the loan. It also leaves them with only ~$900 for the entire monthly budget. That’s food, utilities, car payment(s), insurance, childcare, etc…

Another big part is that Americans have been taught that protesting is the only valid method of affecting change. Our history books spend a lot of time talking about MLK’s peaceful protests. It totally glosses over all of the violence and angry mobs that were the other side of the same coin. My history book in high school only had the Black Panthers as a footnote.

The government has a vested interest in not teaching Americans that violent protest is effective. It’s like the history books cover the American revolution, and paint the revolutionaries as proud patriots who were justified after dealing with an oppressive monarchy. And then there’s a hard pivot towards “oh and also violent protest is never okay, and you should just chant at your local park instead.”

Hell, look at the comments sections of any protest coverage, and you’ll see people blatantly stating that they’d make a point of running over protestors who blocked a highway. There are plenty of people who fully believe that protest is only supposed to be directed at the government, and should never inconvenience the citizens.

FWIW if you’ve only ever had commercially produced wine, your issues may actually be stemming from the sulphates used to preserve the wine. You may want to pick up a bottle of sulphate-free wine and see what happens; You may be pleasantly surprised. And if that ends up being the case, homebrewed wine obviously wouldn’t have those sulphates.