Most western governments are terrorist. Can you name an administration that isn’t guilty of war crimes? Should they all be automatically blocked from socials?

7mo ago

Bluesky just verified ICE

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

As they should. You only get a ban after you break their rules.

7mo ago

Personal information of 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol agents is leaked online

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

Post not found

7mo ago

Trump just sent a very dangerous message to Latin America

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

Trying to blame 2006 restrictions for a debt trap is historically illiterate. Venezuela's debt tripled because the government issued billions in bonds on the open market while oil was at an all-time high of over 100 dollars a barrel. They were not blocked from credit. They were the darlings of Wall Street until they spent the entire 1 trillion dollar oil windfall and had nothing left when the price crashed. Buying imports with your only revenue is exactly the problem when you use that money to destroy your own domestic farms and factories.

Calling Smartmatic's whistleblowing imperialist is a convenient way to ignore that they were the regime's closest partners for 13 years. If you spend over a decade letting capitalists run your unhackable democracy, you do not get to act shocked when they reveal how the sausages are made.

As for the UN reports, you’re ignoring the fact that the Fact-Finding Mission has verified forensic evidence and internal chain of command documents. Comparing US prison deaths (which are mostly natural causes and illness) to state security forces firing live ammunition into protesters or torturing people in the Helicoide is a massive false equivalence. One is a failure of a healthcare system. The other is a deliberate policy of state terror; and 5k is just the deaths from one year. You’d be better off comparing it to Iraq or something. But idk why you’re even making the argument, I’m not an authoritarian. Dismantle the US too.

The 90 percent food self-sufficiency claim is pure state propaganda. Independent data from 2024 and 2025 shows agricultural imports actually grew by 9 percent, with the US remaining one of the top suppliers. The only reason availability looks higher is because 8 million people fled the country and those left behind often cannot afford to eat, so the shelves stay full. Maduro is not a victim of a covert threat. He is a leader who broke his country and is using the CIA agent trope to justify a body count that even he admits exists.

7mo ago

Trump just sent a very dangerous message to Latin America

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

Venezuela's debt actually tripled during the biggest oil boom in history between 2006 and 2012. The country didn't collapse because of US meddling. It collapsed because the government blew every cent of the oil windfall on corruption and imports while gutting local production. By the time the oil price crashed in 2014, they had zero savings and zero industry left to fall back on.

Dismissing the chairman of Smartmatic for being a capitalist is cope and ignores the fact that they were the regime's hand picked tech partner for over a decade. When the people who literally built and ran the voting system for years tell the world they added a million fake votes to the 2017 count, that isn't a conspiracy. It is a confession from the only people who actually knew how the software worked.

And if you actually read the UN reports instead of just calling them specious, you would see they are backed by verified video and direct forensic evidence. They have documented systematic torture at the Helicoide including electric shocks and sexual violence. Calling state sanctioned murder anti-subversive activity is just a way to hand wave away crimes against humanity. You can call it speculation all you want, but thousands of victims aren't all making up the same story for fun. Don't believe everything you watch on TankieTube

7mo ago

Trump just sent a very dangerous message to Latin America

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

This is some top-tier tankie fan fiction that completely ignores how things actually work on the ground. Calling Maduro popular in 2019 is a total joke. His approval ratings were in the teens and he only stayed in power because of a 2018 election so rigged that even the voting machine company admitted the numbers were manipulated.

You are blaming the US for every single problem, but the Venezuelan economy was already in a death spiral by 2014 due to massive corruption and oil mismanagement, which happened years before the heavy 2017 sanctions ever existed.

Framing actual crimes against humanity documented by the UN as just "hunting subversives" is an insane way to hand-wave away torture and extrajudicial killings. It is not "Monday-morning quarterbacking" to point out that when a leader destroys the judiciary, jails anyone who polls better than him, and starves his own people, he is not a defensive hero. He is just another autocrat holding a sinking ship together by force.

7mo ago

This Is a Blatant Illegal Act of War Against Venezuela by Trump | Common Dreams

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 7mo ago

The type of oil they have is the one that the US refineries that were built before the fracking boom need.

And not to be the one defending oil companies, but when Trump says ‘they stole our oil’, he means they seized billions of dollars in American-owned assets without providing the "just compensation" required by international law. International tribunals agreed and ordered retribution but then Maduro just refused to pay.

8mo ago

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

So what percent is AI?

8mo ago

Believe in yourself

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

Scotland too please

8mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

I was using "chemical" as a shorthand for simple, automatic biological triggers to contrast them against complex, integrated networking.

i.e, for a Venus fly trap, a trigger (like a fly touching a hair) releases chemicals (ions like Calcium) that cause an electrical wave. This wave forces water to move quickly out of cells (turgor pressure), making the leaf collapse shut.

Consciousness is measurable because it’s not just that simple chemical reflex. It is the complex electrical buildup (readiness potential) in the brain's cortex that happens before the action.

8mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

Those paragraphs outlined the evidence which explain why it’s as improbable as any other nonsense statement.

8mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

We also can't know "for certain" that a rock isn't screaming silently, or that there isn't a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. Science doesn't deal in absolute certainties; it deals in probabilities based on evidence. There is zero evidence for plant consciousness and massive evidence against it.

Consciousness, as far as we observe it in the entire animal kingdom, is an emergent property of a centralized nervous system processing information. Plants lack neurons, a brain, or any substrate capable of integrating information into a unified experience.

Claiming a plant might be conscious is like claiming a calculator might be running Call of Duty. It’s not that we "don't know", it's that the hardware simply cannot run that software.

Evolutionarily, consciousness (and specifically the ability to feel pain or fear) is a mechanism to trigger escape or avoidance. Since plants are sessile (they cannot move), developing a complex, energy-expensive system to "feel" damage would be a massive evolutionary disadvantage. Why would nature select for an organism that can feel being eaten but do absolutely nothing about it?

8mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

Your definition of consciousness as any "internal state correlating to external state" is functionally too broad; by this metric, a mercury thermometer possesses a "world model" and is therefore conscious, which renders the term useless for distinguishing complex biology from simple causality. Phenomena like crown shyness are better explained by mechanical feedback loops, essentially biological if/then statements based on light and abrasion, rather than a self-aware "sense of self." A true "thought" or "world model" requires the capacity for "offline" simulation (counterfactuals) decoupled from immediate sensory input, whereas plants are entirely reactive ("online") and current AI lacks continuous internal state. Ultimately, you are conflating reception (reflexive data intake) with perception (integrated awareness), failing to distinguish between the mechanism of a map and the subjective experience of the territory.

8mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Jump

auraithx @lemmy.dbzer0.com 8mo ago

Complex, integrated electrical patterns rather than just the presence of a specific chemical.

The measure of electrical activity in the motor cortex (visible via EEG) that builds up milliseconds before a person makes a conscious, voluntary movement. It’s distinct from the sharp spike of a reflex.

If the action originates from the Prefrontal Cortex (executive function/planning), it’s generally considered "conscious effort." If the signal bypasses the cortex and stays in the brainstem or spinal cord, it’s a reflex.