this is quite normal all over the world because the left has always been objectively "weak" in this fight. they're fighting giants after all. its tools are ideals, reason and goodwill and those tend to not fare well against ruthless power long consolidated in media, administration and executive. i'm from a country with a very rich left tradition and it has endured everything in history from mockery to outright mass killings, and the debate is still the same: the left has to reinvent itself! tactics are ofc important but are not the issue. the old ideals still stand for themselves: equity, progress, justice. as simple as that, and i would throw in brotherhood, but what else? it's just that it is an incredibly uphill and asymetric battle and the opponent always has all the cards. the only power source the left has is the people and mobilizing the people to that extent rarely (if ever) ends well. but let's say you get a win somehow. how long until you get bought out, entramped, corrupted, either from the outside or from within? it just doesn't work. "my" current government is led by a party that has literally "socialist worker party" in its name. it's not "lefty" by any stretch, it systematically bows to the local (and foreign) oligarchs just the same. it is marginally better that when the "right" is in office, but it's still marginal. and they will be back.

new tactics? that's what all that gender/identity/green stuff is all about. to appeal to the people with new slogans. does it work? my country was pioneer in europe in recognizing same sex marriages. it's still a pretty "right wing" government, because that's what power and money mandate. now even the "right" has been appropriating these slogans. they are very good at that and have immense resources. the "right" has always more power, connections and money to adapt to anything. they don't really need to make sense, in the end they can overwhelm any situation. even when the left is in office the right is pulling the strings. it's just how it works.

what i was saying (tongue quite defiantly in cheek, as usual) is that america (and i'm generalizing) doesn't even have a notion of what "left" means. it's not even up to debate, "left" is simply anathema, it doesn't seem to have any meaning, it's just like religious zealots obsessed with (what they consider) sin. that doesn't mean there aren't any admirable and great lefties, even straight out marxists. they're an oddity.

it's a teeny bit too early for that but ... don't give them (more) ideas!

i have news for you: there is no left in america, let alone radical. there is only right, extreme right and fanatical right.

bernie knows prefectly well this is doa, he's just trying to get some attention.

yeah someone has to keep the wheel spinning!

well, there is the thing, if you pick your account name sensibly it's really indistinguishable from "anonymous coward", it only tels which anonymous coward you are. in practical terms we're all "anonymous coward" except those of us who don't bother ticking the box expose ourselves to some weirdo tracking our handle to periodically relieve his/her (often sickly) emotional urges. this will only be a problem if one has excessive or unfounded (and likely also sickly) attachment to his/her online "flavored anonymous coward" persona.

it's like comparing street food with a 3 course dinner. both will nourish you but the experience/context is not the same.

higher tier llms can be more powerful out of the box and can be further tuned specifically for coding or specific domains and fitted with reasoning loops increasing overall quality. apart from that, an environment with context management, history and local rules can greatly optimize the actual experience of producing, validating and merging ai generated code.

this is just starting, new models are coming out all the time, competition is lowering costs and there are new setups that can be used for little money or even for free with some limitations and tinkering. i will not give specifics because i'm just starting with this (as a hobby) but they aren't hard to find. the "free version" will surely give some good pointers.

or a deliberate choice not to undo moderation. i'd rather not undo my +1 funnys when i can hand them out, this crowd desperately needs those.

also, some subset of "coward" might have legitimate reasons to be "cautious", for one because of psychos and thought police but there are several other valid reasons to engage anonymously with a crowd/conversation (regardless of the provider tracking you). there was a time (long passed indeed) where anonymous posts could be among the most worth reading.

well, that's a very open question with a lot of daring assumptions. the universe is so vast and the likelihood of a species making it out of their solar system is so small that 2 species ever meeting in real time (whatever time is) is really remote. my current understanding (or belief) is that species in the universe are sparks destined to glow and fade away in the dark, forever "alone". unless ofc two of them appear right next to each other, which doesn't seem to be our case (or our neighbors are hiding really well).

"contact" can't be ruled out, though. one can think of robotic (maybe self-replicating) exploration or even an itinerant species (that might not even be "intelligent" as per our standards). and if ftl travel is at all possible an advanced species surviving for a billion years might, perhaps, be able to harness it. that's the common scifi trope but actually the most implausible scenario i can think of. nevertheless that seems to be your premise. it sort of reminded me to the movie "hard to be a god".

"we" who? :-) not nitpicking ... our history is not the outcome of comunal decision making as a whole, but manipulation, and i would bet on that manipulation to continue. so the concrete prospects and who would be calling the shots and to what end would largely determine the outcome. my inner pessimist ofc says that wouldn't end well.

even if "they" were just observing, in a philosophical sense we would be struck by both awe and panic, with religious interpretations and reactions of varying signs being a thing. otoh the mere proof that "we're not alone" and such a thing is possible would be a huge hope injection and an incentive to be serious about getting there. that hype would wear out, though, and wether that incentive would be enough to sort out our problems and quarrels in the long run ... i have to again be pessimistic, sorry. we seem to only unite in adversity, and adversity with a civilization with a billion years worth of advantage doesn't bode well either.

otoh ... we would have so many questions! would they answer?

i think it is highly likely that "aliens" exist but it is highly unlikely that any of them have managed to get anywhere near our little solar system. there seems to be no conclusive proof that any ever did, and our current understanding of physics makes this a near impossibility, but our understanding isn't perfect so it's impossible to prove that they didn't so ... all this talk out of the blue about ufos now sounds very suspiciously like a new religion is being brewed. given that the foremost purpose of any religion is crowd control and the present turmoil and uncertainty it's not farfetched. also, aliens match the cultural conext quite nicely: it's hard to get today's people to believe in angels, prophets in sandals, miracles and afterlife virgins, but an alien story is much more believable and carries the perfect mix of fear, hope, awe, end-of-the-world vibes ...

it could also be just a mediatic smoke screen ... which at the end of the day is not that far apart from religion either.

the collective amnesia about boris is remarkable ... is that a british thing?

and i don't mind the uk now br-entering the eu at all but it's no less comical. that wreck will have sunk by then anyway.

will do!

you're welcome to pay 5x the price for a worse car from a country that is engaging in actual genocide falsely while crying genocide on others. and since you're paying for it, you might aswell go die in any of their holy wars for israel, thanks for your service.

if by a "huge part of your infrastructure" you mean 3000 fast chargers it doesn't seem really worse than 20000 fast chargers owned and operated by an unstable sociopathic zionist billionaire, from a free and exemplary democracy that is systematically engaging in wars of all sorts, piracy and warcrimes all around the globe and is actually just now gambling with (or perhaps engineering, who could tell?) the collapse of the world's economy in one of their pet wars. i'm thinking ... would that qualify as a "rather brutal democracy"? a world of a difference!

you do you, but i'm looking forward to a small nice byd, since i have the opportunity and it's a really good and affordable car from a prosperous, stable, mostly peaceful and predictable country, thanks. and i don't even really care much about fast charging.

that's not even the argument. millions upon millions of kids have seen such content and while that might have a wide range of effects from spurning curiosity to distress, most of them have become normal adults with normal sex lives. that's just part of life, and the straighforward thing to prevent negative outcomes is plain and simply sexual education. the "problem" here seems to be images taken and shared by the kids themselves which can then become public (with obvious bad consequences) or, even worse, used to coax them into worse or continued forms of abuse. which would ideally be addressed by education too, namely how to safely use internet in general.

but ofc all that is not the point at all; control is.

the fun part here is really starmer pompously announcing a 3 months deadline, dead serious. will he be still around when that deadline hits? but ofc another epstein stooge will take it from there. what a bunch of utterly disgusting crooks.

and ordinary people's pension funds. this is a cricular money printing machine but it's all based on "valuation", someone has to provide actual liquidity for the cash-outs before it crashes.

my upbringing isn't a mystery here, i've openly written about it, only anecdotally but at length and on several occasions. you have a really low id and claim to be aware of my "endless stream" so you should know.

but i honestly don't see how that should be of any relevance here unless you are a straight out racist nutcase (which ... kinda seems likely, tbh, in that case feel free to go fuck yourself) and have completely run out of arguments (likely too). anyhow your impertinence doesn't really merit any more clarification, so if you find that such information is important to you for some reason the have fun digging into my posting history.

other than that, unless you show yourself as willing (and able) of coherent discussion ... have a nice day!