News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by db48x on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:01AM (#39465888)
It’s far worse than that. Whole groups in the US now think it a virtue to be racist, as long as you are racist against the correct groups.

Students openly call for racial segregation on university campuses.

They angrily shout to professors that it is a professors job to shelter the students from “harmful” or “violent” ideas, and openly call for any professor who disagrees to be fired. Professors are routinely brought up on disciplinary charges and dismissed for expressing their honest opinions.

Mobs of students chant in favor of killing the Jews outside the locked door of a classroom where a few Jewish students hide in fear for their lives, and the administration looks on with a benevolent smile.

Mobs burn down city centers, and the police don’t arrest them. Meanwhile politicians get on the news and openly call for more violence.

The FBI passes around memos stating that Catholics are “extremists”, and instructing agents on how and when to surveil them.

If it’s a phase, I fear that it can only end in blood.

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by solumunus on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:11AM (#39465989)
Be less online, please, for your own sake.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by elzbardico on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:52AM (#39466354)
LOL. Please don't be so eager to prove OP's point. It is kind of tacky.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by concordDance on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:23AM (#39466672)
While there's definitely something to be said for ignoring the ridiculous extremes that a world of billions of people can throw up, there's still some much less dramatic effects in our daily lives.

For example, at the big company I worked for in the UK if you were to look at our marketing material, documentation and in-app images you'd be forgiven for thinking that the UK was 30% black and 20% South Asian. (East Asians were comparatively neglected, being about as common as white men)

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by itsoktocry on Thursday February 22, 2024 @10:08AM (#39468175)
All of those things happened in real life, though.

It's the most online people who don't believe these things actually happened. Go to some of the towns where these issues actually occurred and see what people think.

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by rpmisms on Thursday February 22, 2024 @10:56AM (#39468945)
I agree with both GP and you.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by zmgsabst on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:55AM (#39469791)
Harvard and UNC lost a lawsuit over being racist to Asians.

Was that online, too?

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by AirborneUnicorn on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:10AM (#39465974)
Do you have sources for these events? I’d like to read them. Thanks!
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by Terretta on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:31AM (#39466767)
People often use “do you have sources, I'd like to read them” to imply “links, or that didn't happen”.

However, sources* for all of the above are easily found, both coverage as the story is breaking and followups. For example:

news campus students chant kill jews classroom locked door

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-colleges-jewish-students-seen...

https://www.foxnews.com/media/chants-calling-murder-jews-sho...

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-stresses-cooper-un...

Or ...

news fbi memo catholic extremists

https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-internal-memo-warns-against-22142...

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/new-report-...

https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?sto...

The ease with which links surface suggests if one genuinely wanted to read sources, one could Google with no effort.

* NOTE: Media made broad claims on all of these, and media made narrow “corrections”. It's easy enough to find both types of sources. Asking someone for sources doesn't prove anything. On controversial topics one really needs to “do your own research.”

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by AirborneUnicorn on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:54AM (#39467076)
> People often use “do you have sources, I'd like to read them” to imply “links, or that didn't happen”.

Oh, I just hadn't heard of these things. Thanks for the links!

Edit ---

However, I am now confused by the latter portion of your response

> Asking someone for sources doesn't prove anything.

I wasn't trying to prove anything, nor did I make any claims. I only wanted to be aware of current events. It does seem to me quite backward to place the burden of proof not on the party making claims, but someone asking to understand why that party made those claims.

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by Izkata on Thursday February 22, 2024 @10:57AM (#39468954)
I can understand not hearing of some of them, but it's kinda weird to not have heard of any of them. The next to last one for example was the George Floyd riots in summer 2020.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by AirborneUnicorn on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:48AM (#39469701)
I agree, though I assumed (shame on me) these were in reference to events more current than 4 years ago. But, I’m not always completely in touch with US news or politics either.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by db48x on Thursday February 22, 2024 @01:19PM (#39470960)
It’s a problem that has been growing for well over a decade.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by Izkata on Thursday February 22, 2024 @06:01PM (#39474540)
Yeah, I first saw it in the mid 2010s, then a short time later when I first watched LEXX, the episode "Girltown" surprised me by mocking some of the things I thought were new - but it aired in 2000.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by peanutcrisis on Thursday February 22, 2024 @09:03AM (#39467187)
For the race-essentialist practices described by the original poster, Yascha Mounk's "The Identity Trap," published in 2023, and interviews with Coleman Hughes regarding his college experience at Columbia are insightful resources.

To delve into the philosophical roots that lead to the type of absurd reasoning mentioned by the original poster, "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, released in 2020, is recommended. Despite Lindsay's more recent radical stance, the book provides a critical exploration of these theories. It is also heavy on citations.

For the kind of misconduct in higher education described by the original poster, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) or the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) serve as reliable references. There's no lack of explicit anti-semitism on campus.

The discussion around "woke" culture is often muddled by attempts to obscure its existence, framing it as merely an extreme right-wing concern. For those who genuinely want a quick way to challenge their priors regarding "woke" being some kind of "right-wing" thing, you should give this short piece[0] a read. Does it comport with your notion of "right-wing"? If not, you should start questioning those who use "right-wing" as a boogeymen to convince you that there isn't a radical ideology who've created newspeak for their brand of racism, sexism, whatever-ism.

[0] https://helenpluckrose.substack.com/p/defining-woke-and-woke...

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by AirborneUnicorn on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:53AM (#39469773)
This is an interesting article, thanks for sharing! Nuanced perspectives like these are useful.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by bnralt on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:10AM (#39469181)
I thought that a Yale speaker giving a public talk disparaging white people where they say they fantasize about shooting white people in the head was pretty extreme[1]. Even more so since it didn’t seem to bother the attendees there, and there was no push back until someone leaked the audio a few months later. If the audio hadn’t leaked, it seems like Yale and the attendees would have just considered that a normal lecture.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/yale-says-lecture-fanta...

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by AirborneUnicorn on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:51AM (#39469745)
Certainly extreme, how bizarre
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by TheHypnotist on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:23AM (#39466665)
Ah so we're just making stuff up now
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by weweersdfsd on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:55AM (#39466388)
Western countries should have paid more attetion on social media as a means of information warfare. It has been so easy for actors from Russia and China to polarize the political landscape. Both Trump supporters and the woke left are just useful idiots implementing their plans. In EU we similarly have both anti-EU "nationalists" and lefties who oppose nuclear and call for open borders, both groups most definitely working for Russia whether they know it or not.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by conradfr on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:30AM (#39466756)
Maybe they just don't do it at the scale Russia does it but:

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by colpabar on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:23AM (#39466663)
We’re only allowed to acknowledge foreign influence on the right, even suggesting the left is also susceptible is highly verboten.
Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by Workaccount2 on Thursday February 22, 2024 @10:58AM (#39468992)
The problem is that there is no need to acknowledge it if it is pushing your side. Why would you call out someone who is actively pushing your agenda?

It's very insidious.

Re:Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after i... by lynx23 on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:01AM (#39466430)
I can relate to Catholics being suspect extremists, but the rest is pretty crazy.