Joined the Mayqueeze.

  • 3 Posts
  • 868 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’m going to exercise my free speech here: what a good job ChatGPT did at summarizing this video. Is this really a thought provoking post or just a way to boost the views over at YT?

    If the US model is so great, why is the country so royally fucked right now? The first amendment only tells governments not to limit what people can say. If you have enough money you can buy CBS or the Washington Post and silence critical voices or just scuttle the whole ship respectively. And that’s not the government censoring, it’s just a good buddy of the big guy or some brownnoser doing it looking for favors at the court of the king. Freedom of speech becomes something you need to be able to afford. When even the big guy files frivolous lawsuits against media outlets that didn’t want to get up his ass for a gazillion dollars. Just to tie them down in courts hoping they will settle and in the meantime be extra careful not to incur more wrath. What happens when hate speech and libel laws don’t work, you get Alex Joneses who make a business model out of being a despicable excuse for a human being. Your freedom of speech situation is very much like your healthcare system, in that it is very different from lots of other developed nations and the consequences are tragic.












  • Stop fooling around with “he used his private money”, it’s money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users.

    What you call fooling around I call a factual distinction. It’s also been pointed out that Mullvad money wasn’t possibly a big bulk of the donation. Because they’re not raking in the dough.

    I’m not telling you not to be outraged. If I were a customer of theirs I’d be mad too. You draw your own line and that’s just fine with me. Let me draw mine.

    I believe facts matter. Facts like Mullvad didn’t directly fund a Nazi party, but one of their owners did. And it wasn’t per se a Nazi party becausre they are more of the horseshoe persuasion where they try to marry ideas from the extreme right with those from the extreme left, which is an unfortunate trend in European politics right now. And I’ve pointed this out before: the real threat is already in the Swedish parliament as the 2nd largest fraction. They are the Sweden Democrats and they are probably more deserving of the Nazi label.



  • There is no such thing as a perfect translation. Granted, languages that are more closely related and in places that are culturally similar make it easier. But translation is also making choices. Different translators will make different choices. It would be madness to assume that any book would not contain parts that are at least questionable. That’s regardless of source and target languages. You’re operating under the false assumption that stuff in English is just better, maybe because it’s the most understood language on the planet if you count nonnatives as well. Free yourself of these biases.

    I would also point out that neither 死亡 nor 戦死 strictly mean “died.” Without very specific context or a version of an accompanying する they would be translated as death/mortality and death in battle respectively. There you can see how little mistakes can creep in.

    Also, since we are sliding into the movie Idiocracy by outsourcing more and more stuff to LLMs, expect more shitty translations. Who knows, your book may have been translated by a bot.





  • You may be as outraged as you want. I just pointed out that Mullvad didn’t do anything (to their detriment, at this point) like the title of the post suggested. That’s misrepresenting the facts. If you feel like that distinction (a company endorsement vs. a private donation) doesn’t make a difference, that’s fine. I get that. I left Proton when their CEO was praising the regime of 47 for tech regulation. I just believe we should be mad for the right reasons. Facts are good.

    It’s been pointed out here in the thread that the majority of the donation to the horseshoe loonie party may in fact have come from other income streams, as Mullvad doesn’t pay an awful lot. I don’t know if that’s true but that would put another spin on the story as well.

    There is no shortage of c@>=s in the author community either. Let’s not mention her name again. She’s probably a lot richer and therefore a lot more impactful with her magic money than this mad meatball. In my estimation, a dollar spent in the famous magician universe will have a lot more negative impact on the trans community than a comparable amount of kronor at Mullvad for immigrants to Sweden. The bigger threat there are probably the Sweden Democrats and they’re already in parliament as the second largest fraction.


  • This isn’t good. It’s also not entirely correct. Mullvad isn’t financing this party directly. One of the owners took his money he made from the company and donated it to the loonies. He could’ve bought crypto with it, spent it in blow maybe, but he didn’t. “Mullvad is financing this party” is not correct. “Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party” is correct and an ongoing concern. So is their tepid response to the story breaking. I would still advise caution, hammer them with public outrage pressure on the socials, and hope they get rid of the loonie party donor before you bankrupt an otherwise serviceable VPN provider. If that guy is still there in a couple of months, by all means leave.

    There is no shortage of c@<%s in the tech sector.