applfanboysbgon (u/applfanboysbgon)

applfanboysbgon commented on Oil hits $100 a barrel despite deal to release record amount of reserves bbc.com/news/articles/c1w... · Posted by u/tartoran

itake · 16 hours ago

1/ When authors use AI for editing, it reduces their credibility.

2/ As much as I don't like the current administration (and Israel leadership), there is absolutely no way the assumptions this article makes about them are false.

There is no way the US/Israel didn't calculate that:

- the straight would be closed

- a new leader may represent similar idiologies of the past leader.

Everything that has happened so far (in regards to Iran attacking neighbors) has been extremely predictable. There is just no way these weren't calculated in.

applfanboysbgon · 16 hours ago

They were calculated in, but the decision was made by someone who did not give a fuck about the math.

applfanboysbgon commented on I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now dwarkesh.com/p/dow-anthro... · Posted by u/emschwartz

conradev · a day ago

I love that you are allowed to go off about how we are a worse country without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that. You are using your rights properly!

applfanboysbgon · a day ago

You are assuming that they are American and that the account is tied to their real identity and that they are not willing to take risks to state the truth. The Trump administration is already attempting to persecute critics[1], including some for random comments posted online[2]. If "freedom of speech" is your metric for what makes you a better country, you are in fact literally proving their point.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

People have also been detained with intention to be deported for their views about Palestine, with online comments being part of how they're chosen for targeting:

[3] https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-go...

There was also someone jailed for a month for quoting Trump's own words about a school shooting, "we have to get over it", in the context of Charlie Kirk's death, along with many other noted instances of retaliation against online comments around that incident:

[4] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...

applfanboysbgon commented on Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages ft.com/content/7cab4ec7-4... · Posted by u/petethomas

VirusNewbie · 3 days ago

GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people and having an overall shitty culture where people mostly don’t want to stay?

applfanboysbgon · 3 days ago

> GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people

GenAI is literally the direct reasoning they used for laying off 30k people.

> “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” [Amazon CEO Andy Jassy] bluntly admitted.

applfanboysbgon commented on Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/Red_Tarsius

Al-Khwarizmi · 3 days ago

But will they still support him if gas prices and general inflation spike hard, as is nearly a given if Trump doesn't back out from the war?

My impression is that most of his voters are selfish and couldn't care less for other people's woes (migrants, sexual abuse victims, Iranians or whatever), but will care if his antics hit their own pockets. I'm not American so I may well be wrong, though.

applfanboysbgon · 3 days ago

Yes, they will still support him. Republicans dying of COVID would still deny its existence on their deathbed, so you can be sure there is no consequence that is too far for them. Farmers bankrupted and people who lost jobs because of Trump's policies continue to support him. Inflation is bad when Democrats do it, but it is fine if Republicans do it, as with all things, because that is how their hierarchy works.

Their support is not the result of a rational calculation of self-interest, and never was. If it was, a base of rural and poor people would never be supporting a coastal city New York elite born with a silver spoon in his mouth as "one of them". But they do, because he is one of them in the way that matters to them. They are fighting for something larger than themselves, and are completely committed to a cultural war for social hierarchy.

> if gas prices and general inflation spike hard, as is nearly a given if Trump doesn't back out from the war?

As an aside, I don't think there is any backing out of this war. If somebody launched a missile at your country and killed hundreds of schoolgirls, and destroyed ships on diplomatic missions while leaving the survivors to drown, while also assassinating your country's leader (but not out of any intention of liberation), would you just let things go because they stopped bombing? Of course you wouldn't. Your country would continue to retaliate. And it is trivial to punish America. Even if America unilaterally decided to "declare peace" and withdraw from attacking Iran, Iran has every reason to continue locking down the gulf and making Americans pay the price. Unlike with tariffs, there is no backing down from these price increases even if Trump gets cold feet. But, even so, there is no reason to believe it will move the needle on his base. There is already talk of "short term pain for long term gain" among those who realise this.

applfanboysbgon commented on Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/Red_Tarsius

keiferski · 3 days ago

I’d be glad to see evidence that people voted for interventions in the Middle East, if you have any.

My impression is that a key part of Trump’s campaign was ending excessive foreign wars. There are lots of clips going around with him saying this.

applfanboysbgon · 3 days ago

Trump's approval rating among his base is still overwhelmingly high. They know what they were voting for, and they still support him. They know that Trump lies like he breathes, and they are perfectly fine with that. Trump supporters themselves are largely liars. They do not openly state the positions they actually hold. That Trump says X and does Y is fine because his supporters say X and believe Y. Words are a game to them, a means to accomplish a goal rather than something to communicate honestly with.

The most important thing to understand about Trump and conservatism in general, by far, is that there is one central principle that underpines the entire ideology: hierarchy. Going back to the time of kings and nobility and clergy, through to the present day.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

One set of laws for the people higher in the hierarchy, and one set of laws for the people lower in the hierarchy. Things that are okay for them to do are not okay for you to do. Wars started by Democrats are bad. Wars started by Republicans are good. They know this is not convincing rhetoric to anyone who is not part of the in-group, so they lie about their reasons and play games with words. This, however, is what they truly believe.

It is why every action they take appears hypocritical to their opponents, but in actuality, it is perfectly consistent with their values - it is good when they do it, because everything is good when they do it, and it is bad when somebody else does it, because everything is bad when somebody else does it. It is why "the only moral abortion is my abortion". It is why the exact same policies executed by different presidents will have the same approval rating by democrats, but a completely inverse approval rating by republicans (eg 40% of Democrats approve of either Obama or Trump striking Syria, while 20% of Republicans approve if Obama does it and 80% approve if Trump does it). It is the single consistent trend through all of their policies. They know exactly what they were voting for, and that is for the man who represents their hierarchy. The games he plays with words are part of the platform.

Edit: I have rewrote the message quite a bit, apologies if anything doesn't make sense.

applfanboysbgon commented on Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues torrentfreak.com/uploadin... · Posted by u/askl

Ekaros · 5 days ago

I can't believe that no one has ever tried that one before... So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted?

applfanboysbgon · 5 days ago

> So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted

No, because those cases were pirating-while-poor. This is pirating-while-trillion-dollar-corporation, which falls under a completely different section of the law.

applfanboysbgon commented on Maybe there's a pattern here? dynomight.net/pattern/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 6 days ago

A little "How many people were soldiers in ancient Rome" type searches gave me these numbers...

16% of adult males in the Roman mid-republic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic...), call that 8% of adults of all genders.

Wikipedia says that there's about 1.34 million people in active duty in the US military, out of about 342 million people, 21.5% of which are under 18. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)

I think that's 0.5%? Down from 8% in ancient Rome?

applfanboysbgon · 6 days ago

That has little to do with technological advances, just the fact that the US is at an imperial peace; ie. it is under zero threat of invasion and is currently only engaged in small-scale imperial adventurism across the globe which does not require a large standing army. ~16% of adult Americans served in WW2, or ~33% of adult men.