Solar Bear

Reddit is mildly left of center as a whole. It is not leftist. You do not find many people there who are genuinely anti-capitalist, which is a prerequisite for any flavor of leftism.

A direct case was not reported in the UK in recent years, but evidence of very likely polio transmission was found in sewage samples two years ago:

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/polio-virus-found-in-uk-sewage-samples-risk-to-public-low

A similar situation happened in New York where an actual case was found a month later:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/polio-found-new-york-wastewater-state-assesses-virus-spread-2022-08-01/

The short of it is, when vaccination rates fall, Polio can be reintroduced via transmission of the live virus found in the oral vaccine, usually taken in poorer countries. If someone were to take the oral vaccine and then immediately travel to a country with lessening vaccination rates, like is currently happening in the west due to the spread of right-wing conspiracy mongering, the live virus still in the vaccinated individual has a low but not zero chance of propagating to the unvaccinated or immune-compromised population there. Samples containing these vaccine-derived viruses are found a few times per year in most places, and it’s a weaker virus so often it leads to no symptoms, but in very rare instances it does take hold with the expected effect:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON366

Despite individual cases of polio turning up, either via direct reporting or evidence found elsewhere, it would still be correct to describe polio as being “eradicated” in these countries, at least currently. Nobody is confused by this or demands reclassification of the status of polio.

I don’t follow. We regularly refer to polio as being “eradicated”, even though there have still been documented (but exceptionally rare) cases of polio transmission even in western countries over the last couple decades. That actually sounds like a perfectly apt comparison for the goals of prison abolition, just not in the way you intended.

In short, prison abolition isn’t about abolishing prisons?

Bad name choice in my opinion, as it immediately makes me think: what a dumb idea.

This is kind of like saying being anti-war is a dumb idea because there will surely always be wars fought in defense. Being anti-war isn’t necessarily being an absolute pacifist. It’s about opposing war and striving towards a future where war is a relic of the past. Everybody understands this, but struggles to apply the same logic to other topics.

Striving for intentionally utopian and impossible ideals is a great idea, actually, as long as you recognize it for what it is. I’m a prison abolitionist. Ultimately what I strive for is a society that doesn’t need prisons. I don’t know if total prison abolition is possible, but worst case scenario, we get as close as possible. What’s so bad about that?

Similarly, I’m a communist, in the classical anarchist sense: abolition of state, class, and money. Are these things possible? Maybe not. In fact, probably not, at least not in any timeframe where humanity will be recognizable to us, as it would require true peace between all people and absolute post-scarcity in every way available to everyone. But worse case scenario, we get as close as possible.

Ultimately, adopting a utopian ideal is a recognition that the struggle to do better never ends. We’re never “done”. There’s no end of history. Even if we do somehow achieve it, it must be maintained.

This is so cozy and giving me some inspiration for my own environment!

The only difference between Tumblr and Facebook is size. Facebook isn’t uniquely evil; it does exactly what any corporation would do at that scale. The systems that molded Facebook into what it is would also mold Tumblr or anything else into the same abomination.

I would respect principled opposition to megacorps even if I think it’s still misguided in this instance, because at least that’s overall based. But all of the discourse focuses on the specific wrongdoings of Facebook as if any other corporation wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing in their position. It feels very kneejerk.

I want to federate and use it to destroy their platform. The biggest problem with the periodic social media “migrations” that always fail is that it creates a fragmented diaspora. Take Twitter as an example. When the big migration off Twitter was supposed to happen, some went to the Fediverse, some went to Threads, some went to BlueSky.

You know what happened? After a few weeks, most of them went back to Twitter, because that was the only common place between them, where they knew they could all meet and communicate. If Twitter was forced to federate with all other platforms, it would have been snuffed out by now. But if that was even proposed, everybody would have a kneejerk reaction, because Twitter bad. Nobody is thinking of the big picture.

I find it kind of strange that people seem so hesitant about it

I simply want the Fediverse to be a proper alternative option for social media access, not just another secret nerd club. We have enough of those already. That requires not completely closing off access to the things the typical person will want to access. I want all social media to eventually be interoperable like email is, preferably on the ActivityPub standard and not whatever centralized bullshit BlueSky is trying to cook up. That is the only way we’re going to break the corporate stranglehold on social media.

Put simply, if you make people choose between our platform and the large corporate-backed platform with orders of magnitude more users, they will choose the corporate platform almost every time. And I think that’s a bad outcome for all involved.

THIS IS A RED CUBE HOUSEHOLD

We don’t believe that at all, we believe privacy is a human right.

That’s just a different way to phrase what I said about defending the good side of encryption.

Offline uncensored LLMs already exist, and will perpetually exist

I didn’t say they don’t exist, I said that the help and harm aren’t inseparable like with encryption.

We don’t defend tools doing harm, we acknowledge it.

“My point is that if you want to have a consistent view point, you need to acknowledge and defend the harmful sides.”

If you want to walk it back, fine, but don’t pretend like you didn’t say it.

What the fuck is this “you should defend harm” bullshit, did you hit your head during an entry level philosophy class or something?

The reason we defend encryption even though it can be used for harm is because breaking it means you can’t use it for good, and that’s far worse. We don’t defend the harm it can do in and of itself; why the hell would we? We defend it in spite of the harm because the good greatly outweighs the harm and they cannot be separated. The same isn’t true for LLMs.

It is open; if you want that, just install Linux on it yourself. Valve explicitly left it open so you can do that. The version Valve ships on the system is tailored for the Steam Deck. Obviously it’s going to prioritize Steam for ease of use. But nearly all of their work is open source and already merged upstream. You can just put regular Linux on in it.

Anyways, I think you’re on the wrong thread.