LLMs as a technology are incredibly powerful tools that have so many useful applications. The issue is trying to turn them into this all powerful omnitool that could do everything, and then shoving that product up everyone's ass at every turn.

There was always bound to be a correction to this bubble, because the current model is unsustainable. You can only keep making unreasonable moves for so long before everything starts to crumble and your forced to scale back.

No, my point was the French revolution wasn't exactly a success because it was followed by two other revolutions in 1830 and 1848 that also aimed at overthrowing the monarchy.

I had a good friend named Areef who surrendered during Iraqi Freedom. He trained police and military in the use of small arms.

The US is notorious for making it extremely difficult for anyone to enter the country in general. Iraqis, specifically, had to (still do) go through a much more extreme vetting process than other immigrants. The US was very wary of terrorism at the time, and so they almost never accepted young military aged men by themselves. Most of the people who were accepted were families.

Now for people who were actually in the military in some capacity, they get to go through a special vetting process that's extremely long, demanding, and difficult. It did not matter if you're a woman, a cook, retired, surrendered to the US military, disabled, or were applying with your family, everybody went through it. The vast majority of these cases were rejected. For anybody who actually dealt with weapons, that rejection was pretty much guaranteed. The rejection rates were so high that such individuals often found it worth the risk to lie about their involvement on their applications so they could leave with their families.

My family literally went through this process. I've seen this shit first hand. The only possibilities for your friend are these: Either your friend is made up, Areef lied to you, or he was the luckiest man in the country at the time.

He was learning to be a commercial pilot in the US and was dating a white girl. He eventually left to go back to Iraq to marry as an obligation to his family.

I'll let you in on another thing regarding Iraqi immigrants, once they're out of the country they never go back. Iraq is dangerous, oppressive, extremely hot, poor, and unstable. For people who put themselves through hell to leave, there's no way they would voluntarily go back, especially once they get a taste of the freedom and high standards of living outside the country. For Iraqis in diaspora that do get married to Iraqis in Iraq (which does happen a lot), they almost always pull their spouse to come live with them outside of country. In fact, a lot of marriages exist for this purpose because that's one of the few avenues that people could realistically immigrate to the West.

That being said, Iraq is no place to raise a family, especially back then, and everybody knows this. Which is why I find it very unlikely that his family would demand their son to give up the life he built to go back to Iraq and start a family there. No family would be unreasonable enough to ask their son to do this, and no reasonable son would accept such a request. Especially because marriage as an obligation is not a thing for men in Iraqi culture. So again, the only possibilities are either that your friend is made up, he lied to you, or he has the most unique and unreasonable family circumstances.

You are frankly full of shit which is why I commented to begin with. I totally get your sentiment, but you said it in such a stupid and trivial way I couldn’t help myself. I am sorry for what has happened to Iraq and your people.

There's nothing wrong with showing empathy towards Iraqis nor is there any issue discussing the events that took place. The parts that I specifically take issue with when people try to use us as props to push their agenda, when they spread misinformation about what happened on our behalf, and when they talk down to Iraqis who call them out. In other words, don't speak for Iraqis, only Iraqis can speak for themselves. This is not specific to you, but it is a big issue in the Western discourse in general. This type of attitude tends to come from people with good intentions, but it often comes off as patronizing.

So please take your outrage somewhere else and do try not to make an idiot out of yourself in the future. If not just for you, but the people of Iraq. The last thing we need is someone like yourself pouring fuel on a fire.

This is precisely the thing I'm criticizing.

Lemmy in a nutshell

I've come to learn over the years that biggest driving force behind homophobia is not irrational fear or ignorance, but irrational disgust. The most prevalent type of homophobia are the ones who genuinely believe that is something that's disgusting, gross, and abnormal human behavior. They're fully aware that it won't affect them in any way and they're fully aware that oppressing these people will cause them great harm, but they will pursue it anyway because they think it's for the greater good. They think it's something necessary to achieve a clean and healthy society that's free of filth. This type of homophobia can't be resolved with simply logical reasoning because often times, the underlying opposition isn't even coherent, it's just an emotional reaction.

You're proving my point. You literally know nothing about the country's people, history, problems, geopolitics, or culture. I'm fully confident that you never even stepped foot in that region of the world, let alone the country itself and I also highly doubt you've ever met an Iraqi, let alone spoken to them about what they think about their own country. All of your information comes from grossly oversimplified, ignorant, and misleading narratives from other Western activists who use us as props to push their agendas. You can't speak on behalf of other people and then try to talk to them when they call you out for doing so. That level of arrogance is peak Western chauvinism.

The whole point of Brexit was to control immigration, it failed to do that. So now they have uncontrolled immigrations and economic pain on top of it from being out of the common European market. Now, they're seeking to go back to the EU in some way while keeping the immigration issue unaddressed for the time being, aka back to square one. Truly a 4d chess move.

But exactly do you think this will accomplish?

Spending an hour a day reading news from reputable sources is a lot healthier than doomscrolling questionable content for 8 hours on Reddit and Instagram.

People on Lemmy also have horrid information hygiene that's just as bad even though a lot of people here like to pretend that they're better than everyone.

I disagree with this. Political parties have radically changed multiple times in the past. If the remained as they were, like you're claiming with the GOP now, then the Democratic party would've still been the rallying point for slave owners and segregationists, but that demographic moved over to a different party and the Democrats formed a new coalition. I see the same thing happening now.

The oligarchs will run the MAGA GOP train until it breaks, and when that happens, they'll move on to the next thing. This will leave behind an empty shell that used to be the Republican party. There's bound to be people who would want to take advantage of the GOP's name and historical significance to launch themselves on to the scene, and the only way they can take power is to form new coalitions by altering the party's identity and platforms. I'm fully confident this will happen within the next two presidential cycles.

It led directly to Napoleon conquering Europe and crowning himself Emperor of France...

This only sounds good to people who are ignorant of both economics and history. Wealth caps, rent control, fixed prices, etc all sound nice until you take a minute to learn about the side effects. These sorts of policies aren't knew, but they don't work which is why they haven't stuck around.

I'm Iraqi, nothing grinds my gears more than brain dead Westerners using my country and my people as prop for ignorant talking points.

What I find really interesting is that the MAGA type are literally incapable of defending Trump on his own merits, they always resort to some sort of logical fallacy that deflects, distracts, or misinterprets. It implies that they are in some degree aware that Trump is indefensible, but they defend him anyway because they're brain dead and their entire ethos is built around dishonesty.

Vietnam stopped being socialist a long time ago. They still retain the authoritarianism of Marxism, but not the socialist economy.

And that's supposed to change Cuba's objectively failed economy, how exactly? There's no way around it. Cuba's economy is a failure.

Good

This is literally the best news for Cuba. Only idiots on Lemmy want to keep an oppressive regime and a failed economy

Putin will never stop being a war criminal until the day he dies. If he takes over all of Ukraine, he will move to Moldova then Georgia then Latvia then Estonia and so on.

The moment this war ends, the Russian Federation will collapse. People forget but Russia has collapsed twice in the last century by doing the same things it's doing now.

It collapsed the first time when the out of touch tyrannical Tsarist government dragged the country into a needless war (WWI) while the country was going through a crises. The country collapsed and formed the Soviet Union.

It collapsed a second time when the out of touch tyrannical communist government dragged the country into a needless war (Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) while the country was going through a crises. The country collapsed and formed the Russian Federation.

Now the same thing is happening. The country has an out touch tyrannical dictator that dragged the country into a needless war during a time of crises. Once the war is over the country will revolt and collapse once again.