The Bad Salesman

Graveyards, false gods,
I scuff

[FactPost @factpostnews]

The Trump administration has announced they'll need to spend an estimated $1 billion to combat the New World Screwworm.

[Luka Ivan Jukic @lijukic]

Every 19th century folk nationalism is like “our nation isn’t like the others, we have farmers who speak a language and dance in a circle”

[Bats ☭🔻 @BolshevikBeyond]

that one adorno piece about how hobbies are fake and dumb cracks me up every time i think about it

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@Raskisti He was pointing out that Mishima drew sexual pleasure from the idea of committing Seppuku, you illiterate idiot

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@pseudorandompi @martinshawx Why is Israel supporting West Bank settlements, which deplace Palestinians from that land and replace them with Israelis? Was the US colonizing Japan after the bombings? All facts point to a policy of eventual total displacement of Palestinians from that area.

[Southern Dan @StolenDans]

1960s bob dylan:
percy shelley plays his crossword/
hunched on the mezzanine/
while the ghost of mary magdalene/
makes love to her benzedrine

2020s bob dylan:
i eat black-eyed peas/
and i eat fried okra/
i'm a wicked cross/
between john rambo and cobra

[Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_devil]

There’s two big problems I have with Ed Zitron’s analysis in particular, and the “AI will never be truly impactful nor economically viable” argument in general

1) It doesn’t seem to understand the history of technology. Not just computer technology or software, but technology writ large.

AI firms aren’t profitable currently. The capex is insane, the business models murky. The ultimate social and broader economic impact remains largely speculative. As Zitron correctly argues, AI is, for now, just “exactly the shit that software has always done — automations, shortcuts, reminders, and document work.”

None of this suggests it won’t become profitable or hugely impactful, and a better understanding of the history of technological development and investment would reveal this.

I think specifically back to the printing press—a development so obviously revolutionary in retrospect that it’s easy to forget that Gutenberg’s press was never consistently viable in his own lifetime, and by 1458 (18 years after his first press was completed) he was *extremely* bankrupt. For the first *several decades* of print, printers operated with razor-thin or often negative margins, and bankruptcies were common. And of course, they didn’t do anything humans couldn’t already do—copy and reproduce texts.

Presses were expensive, high-investment businesses for the time. The market for their output was limited (not a ton of literate Europeans at the time) and often incapable of financial viability outside of select markets like Venice where literacy was much more widespread.

Contemporaries also had a lot of familiar complaints. Printers, as a rule, exercised little-to-no editorial oversight. They’d print whatever sold. Misinformation, plagiarism, and inflammatory content were rife.

And print took a long time to transform society. By the time print became undeniably, obviously transformative—with Martin Luther and the Reformation—nearly *eighty years* had passed since Gutenberg’s first press. About sixty since he’d gone bankrupt and been barred from Strasbourg for being such a profligate debtor.

This is the thing: if you understand the history of technology, none of the arguments made about AI are new, or even unusual. They’re the norm for new technology. The initial investment boom is exuberant and irrational. The ultimate market for the product is foggy. The social impacts speculative. The difference from what human labor can already do is underwhelming. The quality is worse than what human artisans produce. And yet, sometimes, new technology does indeed become economically viable and socially transformative. Maybe AI will flounder and fail—but none of *these* critiques are actually a good guide for determining that, because they’ve been true of *most* new technologies, dead-ends and revolutionary successes alike.

2) The stakes of believing this dismissal of AI *and being wrong* are massive. *If* AI becomes economically viable and socially transformative, the effects are likely to be horrendous, on the level of the individual (making us all less competent and capable thinkers, with a demolished sense of agency) and on the level of society (unemployment, intense mass surveillance, previously-impossible levels of propaganda consolidation—the destruction of mass politics as we know it, and a huge threat to the ability to organize). If we pat ourselves on the back for being wisely skeptical doubters, instead of taking legislative action, and we’re wrong? It would be a world-historical disaster for the left.

But, hey, we’d feel really smart on the way down.

[Rhys @ringolos1111]

A bit late but I always loved this one

[John Wakefield @JohnWakefieId]

In order to fully get into the Bolshevik mindset, one has to remember they were trying to work out how to build socialism while the Russian Civil War was going down like this:

[Dr. Simon @goddek]

> 70 years ago, Iran looked just like any Western country.
> Short skirts, rock’n’roll, open universities.
> It’s 1953. Iran elects a secular socialist: Mohammad Mossadegh.
> He nationalizes oil. That pisses off BP.
> Cold War excuse.
> CIA and MI6 stage a coup. Operation Ajax.
> Mossadegh is overthrown.
> They install the Shah, a brutal US-backed dictator.
> Secret police. Torture chambers.
> Iran turns into a puppet state.
> People are that desperate, they turn to Khomeini, an exiled cleric, promising independence and dignity.
> 1979: Islamic Revolution.
> The Shah flees.
> US embassy stormed. Hostage crisis.
> America never forgives.
> Arms Saddam Hussein.
> Iraq invades Iran.
> US provides chemical weapons, satellite intel, logistics.
> 1 million Iranians die.
> Iranian kids sent into minefields with plastic keys around their necks.
> US shoots down Iran Air Flight 655
> 290 civilians dead.
> No apology.
> Fast forward today, Israel attacks Iran.
> The U.S. immediately says “we stand with Israel.”
> They talk about “regime change.”
> They say that Iranians “deserve freedom.”
> No mention of the coup they started.
> No mention of the dictator they installed.
> No mention of the war they fueled.
> No mention of the decades of sanctions and sabotage.
> They created the monster, and now they attacked it because it was still breathing.
> Watch who they try to put on the throne next.
> The son of the Shah is already being presented as the “alternative.”
> The same dynasty.
> The same foreign backing.
>The same promises of stability.
> History will repeats itself.
> And it’s not gonna end well.

[GeoConfirmed @GeoConfirmed]

GeoConfirmed IRN.

Disinformation.

"Footage shows whatever hit the school was a failed rocket launch from IRGC, it wasn't Israel or US."

This claim, with almost 11k likes, 5k retweets and 750.000+ views is WRONG based on GeoConfirmed geolocations.

(link of the claim: https://t.co/gz8tck8Vv7)

Left picture is the school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran
27.109834, 57.084748
(GeoLocation: https://t.co/OVEne9QjZ0)

Right picture is from a misfire in Zanjan, Zanjan Province, Iran
Point of view - 36.684951, 48.488164

"There is no possible way this could have hit the school, 1,300 kilometers in the opposite direction."

Great work by @Stinky915846091 and @talhagin.

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@Ramandu_Star @cem_uk_ When the first hospital was bombed in Gaza, they were first saying Hamas did it, then that it was a mistake. Then they bombed another, then another, then levelled most everything. Are you really going to play this game again? Have you no shame? Or are you mentally challenged?

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@Fay82776914F @PGPapanikolaou @chrisochoidis Αστείο να πετάς τέτοια μλκια όταν υπάρχουν βίντεο απ' το τι έγινε

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@XMWzYeaHJ5l3rZq @chris_avramidis Η αφίσα της ταινίας που προβλήθηκε. Θα σου έλεγα να την ψάξεις, αλλά το επίπεδο σας είναι για ταινίες Ψάλτη και καμιά επιθεώρηση Σεφερλή. Μην μπερδευτεις και πάθεις κάνα εγκεφαλικό και σε τρέχουμε γερο

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@XMWzYeaHJ5l3rZq @chris_avramidis Μιλάει ο μακεδονομάχος για σοβαρή πολιτική. Ανεβάζεις ποστ indymedia απ' το 2022 για προβολή ντοκιμαντέρ στην Λάρισσα, για να πεις κάτι για προβολη ταινίας στο Πολυτεχνείο το 2026. Η άνοια σε έχει πιάσει από τώρα μπάρμπα, να το κοιτάξεις, πάρε τις πάνες από τώρα

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@Onlyview1889725 @chris_avramidis Δεν έχεις ιδέα τι σου γίνεται καημένε, είσαι είτε χυδαίος ψεύτης είναι πανηλίθιος. Και είδα το στήσιμο της προβολής, οπότε μην τολμήσεις να πεις κουβέντα παλιο-αποβρασμα

[Nina 🐙 Byzantina @NinaByzantina]

Jokes aside, everyone knows Stalin as the “man of steel” and Molotov as the “man of the hammer.”

But many of the TOTALLY WILD made-up names from the 1917 revolutionary days and especially from the Soviet industrialization period remain unappreciated. I always wondered why some industrial, electronic, or a band of a related genre didn’t use them as monickers.

✅ Elektrifikatsiya - electrification

✅ Aviatsiya - aviation

✅ Domna - sounds Latin, but is in reference to an industrial oven (!!!) for melting metal

✅ Barrikada- barricade

✅ Avantgard - avant-garde

✅ Volena - Lenin’s will (shortened)

✅ Idlena - Lenin’s ideas (shortened)

✅ Kir - communist international (abbreviated)

✅ Volt - yes, the unit of measurement!

These are actually pretty:

✅ Vladlena - after Vladimir Lenin

✅ Oktyabrina - after the October Revolution

✅ Dekabrina - after the 19th-century Decembrists

✅ Damira - an abbreviation of “long live peace” (or “long live global revolution”)

One of the CRAZIEST-sounding ones:

✅ Dazdraperma (“long live the first of May”)

[The Bad Salesman @Marc_us468]

@MattPirkowski Hilarious to blame Marxism, or whatever it represents in your understanding. As if uneducated people haven't always shown distrust to fields beyond their grasp, like you do with Marxism.

[wint @dril]

so long suckers! i rev up my motorcylce and create a huge cloud of smoke. when the cloud dissipates im lying completely dead on the pavement

[0x45 @0x45o]

five cracked websites everyone should visit:

https://t.co/2zbitP5SHL
https://t.co/8pQY7DP2kJ
https://t.co/NfbldaxalB
https://t.co/iZZyLQMcxM
https://t.co/yGcFzX6qtV