To me, it’s more like the Netherlands giving out free syringes and needles so that drug consumers at least wouldn’t contract something from the used ones.

To be clear: granting any and all pedophiles access to therapy would be of tremendous help. I think it must be done. But there are two issues remaining:

1. Barely any government will scrape enough money to fund such programs now that therapy is astronomically expensive
2. Even then, plenty of pedophiles will keep consuming CSAM, legally or not. There must be some incentives for them to choose the AI-generated option that is at least less harmful than the alternative.

I think such matters should be kept strictly out of corporate hands, or be completed with total oversight.

Why though? If it does reduce consumption of real CSAM and/or real life child abuse (which is an “if”, as the stigma around the topic greatly hinders research), it’s a net win.

Or is it simply a matter of spite?

Pedophiles don’t choose to be attracted to children, and many have trouble keeping everything at bay. Traditionally, those of them looking for the least harmful release went for real CSAM, but it’s obviously extremely harmful in its own right - just a bit less so than going out and raping someone. Now that AI materials appear, they may offer the safest of the highly graphical outlets we know, with least child harm done. Without them, many pedophiles will revert to traditional CSAM, increasing the amount of victims to cover for the demand.

As with many other things, the best we can hope for here is harm reduction. Hardline policies do not seem to be efficient enough, as people continuously find ways to propagate the CSAM and pedophiles continuously find ways to access it and leave no trace. So, we need to think of ways to give them something which will make them choose AI over real materials. This means making AI better, more realistic, and at the same time more diverse. Not for their enjoyment, but to make them switch for something better and safer than what they currently use.

I know it’s a very uncomfortable kind of discussion, but we don’t have the magic pill to eliminate it all, and so must act reasonably to prevent what we can prevent.

Victims’ consent is paramount. I thought I made it clear enough when I gave the example of police investigations asking for that, but apparently not.

In any case, this is exactly why I’d like to see more research being done on the topic. First things first, we need to know if it even works. For now it’s a wild guess that it probably should.

That would be true if children were abused specifically to obtain the training data. But what I’m talking about is using the data that already exists, taken from police investigations and other sources. Of course, it also requires victim’s consent (as they grow old enough), as not everyone will agree to have materials of their abuse proliferate in any way.

Police has already used CSAM with victim’s consent to better impersonate CSAM platform admins in investigative operations, leading to arrests of more child abusers and those sharing the materials around. While controversial, this came as a net benefit as it allowed to reduce the amount of avenues for CSAM sharing and the amount of people able to do so.

The case with AI is milder, as it requires minimum human interaction, so no one will need to re-watch the materials as long as victims are already identified. It’s enough for the police to contact victims, get the agreement, and feed the data into AI without releasing the source. With enough data, AI could improve image and video generation, driving more watches away from real CSAM and reducing rates of abuse.

That is, if it works this way. There’s a glaring research hole in this area, and I believe it is paramount to figure out if it helps. Then, we could decide whether to include already produced CSAM into the data, or if adult data is sufficient to make it good enough for the intended audience to make a switch.

Honestly, I’d love to see more research on how AI CSAM consumption affects consumption of real CSAM and rates of sexual abuse.

Because if it does reduce them, it might make sense to intentionally use datasets already involved in previous police investigations as training data. But only if there’s a clear reduction effect with AI materials.

(Police has already used some materials, with victims’ consent, to crack down on CSAM sharing platforms in the past).

I feel like our relationship to it is also quite messed.

AI doesn’t actually undress people, it just draws a naked body. It’s an artistic representation, not an X-ray. You’re not getting actual nudes in this process, and AI has no clue how the person looks like naked.

Now, such images can be used to blackmail people, because again, our culture didn’t quite catch up with the fact that every nude image can absolutely be AI-generated fake. When it does, however, I fully expect creators of such things to be seen as odd creeps spreading their fantasies around and any nude imagery to be seen as fake by default.

Proxmox can work with VMs and LXC containers.

When you need to always have resources reserved specifically for a given task, VMs are very handy. VM will always have access to the resources it needs, and can be used with any OS and any piece of software without any preparations and special images. Proxmox manages VMs in an efficient way, ensuring near-native performance.

When you want to run service in parallel with other with minimal resource usage on idle, you go with containers.

LXC containers are very efficient, more so than Docker, but limited to Linux images and software, as they share the kernel with the host. Proxmox allows you to manage LXC containers in a very straightforward way, as if they were standalone installations, while at the same time maintaining the rest behind the scenes.

Oil

Also an easy win over a long PITA of US leaders to boost reputation among MAGA folks

What exactly is proxmox?

In layman terms, it’s a Debian-based distro that makes managing your virtual machines and lxc containers easier. Thanks to an advanced virtual interface, you can set up most things graphically, monitor and control your VMs and containers at a glance, and just generally take the pain away from managing it all.

It’s just so much better when you see everything important straight away.

That would be good, yes. A more relaxed approach to vaccination has caused plethora of public health problems.

Side effects tend to get less likely when we get more experience working with vaccines of a certain type. Modern coronavirus vaccines are better and safer than the first ones already, and flu ones have been around for so long that making a new vaccine very safe is no issue.

Meanwhile, side effects caused by repeated exposure to the disease may compound very badly.

Vaccines have side effects.

No one argues with that. But you know what also has side effects that are orders of magnitude more likely? Diseases.

Forcing people to is where I have the issue

I understand that mandatory policies are to be reviewed with caution, and forcing people to do something that has inherent risks should normally be avoided. But here, by not taking a vaccine, you simply multiply and outsource the risk elsewhere, putting others in danger. If your decisions around vaccination would only hurt you, government would have no business dictating you what to do - yet, someone’s refusal to vaccinate has killed someone else - say, immunodeficient person or a child who couldn’t get vaccinated.

Sometimes we desperately need collective action, so much so that it may be mandated. This is one of such cases. Yes, it would be cool to have more time and do even more testing, to refine the preparations, etc. But when people die by millions, you’re on a short timer.

COVID-19 has demonstrated a level of deadly disorganization in the face of a global crisis. People “mind their own business” so much that it kills others, with governments struggling to keep everyone looking in the same productive direction.

Depending on the country, it might be banned, and that’s one obvious example I came with.

And, in my opinion, it must be, no matter what you smoke, tobacco or weed or something else. Why the hell should others inhale terrible chemicals just because you chose to?

Same, why should they be exposed to dangerous microbes just because you are reckless?

It quickly gets more complicated when it affects others.

Is it your bodily choice to smoke on the street? No, because others have to inhale it. Same idea - no one wants to breathe in your disease-causing microbes.

On the death rate: in some countries, mortality rate went as high as 5%. To be fair, though, this only takes confirmed cases into account, leaving behind those who never reported a case, mostly because it went milder.

https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid

On a personal note, my mother lost two colleagues to it, and I lost an acquaintance. All confirmed COVID deaths.

I did get COVID-19 once. It went easy though, and I rapidly recovered after a mild fatigue and headache without long-term consequences. Some of the people I know had long-term effects, like warped smell, chronic fatigie, etc. One got it before vaccines rolled out, and two decided not to vaccinate. None of the vaccinated folks I know had something of this magnitude.

Vaccine is not a protection from infection. It’s a pre-training program for an immune system to quickly beat the hell out of the disease before it gets nasty (and spreads violently).

Sad you got side effects, and I understand how it changes your perception on the matter. Personally, my only bad experience is having weakness in the arm for the first two days after the very first vaccine dose. In any case, I hope it will pass rather soon!

Every pre-COVID representation of global pandemic: scientists discover a vaccine, everyone vaccinates and lives happily ever after

Real pandemic: people chicken out, start obsessing over 1 in 10000 side effects (vs, you know, a 1 in 50 chance to die of COVID-19 at the time) and then forever tell the story of “it’s not tested enough yet”.

You know what also constantly changes and cannot be tested for decades? Every. Single. Virus. Your flu vaccine is also not tested for side effects forever, because the virus changes all the time.

Before rolling COVID vaccines out, we were very damn sure they work and won’t wreak havoc on you. But as people suddenly decided to go anti-vax, government had to get more assertive, for any vaccine works best when most people are vaccinated. You could normally self-isolate and not take vaccines, though, so it’s up to you, the government’s concern is that you don’t spread this thing further, straining medical system that was already under a heavy load.

Disclaimer: not a medical professional. Had four COVID-19 vaccines though, including Sputnik-V, the very first one.

We are certainly shaped by our upbringing in a big way, but we can learn throughout life and change whatever concerns us

I know little of cooking tortillas, but to me the main limiter with gas cooking is that it cuts off at certain gas pressure, not allowing you to use it at very low heating.

Also, it mainly heats in a certain ring and not equally through the whole surface, which might probably be critical for tortillas unless you have a big cast iron pan.

I start to wonder if maybe her parents were similar - did provide materially, but not emotionally. Striving through this (and getting hurt along the way) might have taught her to ignore the emotional and she might start thinking it’s a good strategy overall.

As per the rest - she doesn’t need any mind control devices to pull these tricks on you. She doesn’t even have to be intentional about it.

See, an infant is infinitely attached to and dependent on the mother, as it is naturally the only way of survival. At this point, the life of a child is firmly in the mother’s hands, all-round.

As kids grow up, though, they learn to think for themselves, to be independent, to disagree with their parents and act their own way. Some parents are not ready for this shift, and exert an ever increasing amount of pressure to control their children, to ensure they act exactly as their parents please. There are many tools for that, and your mother seems to manipulate your need of love and acceptance. She thinks she can use your feeling of hurt and neglect to teach you the “right ways”.

These “ways”, though, are nothing but her own desires and her vision that doesn’t always align with your reality. She may never have suffered depression, and she never got to properly reflect on the issue, so she accepted the wrong narrative that depression is laziness, and now pushes it on you the same way she pushed everything else. By making you feel not loved nor accepted when you do something “wrong” in her book.

Now, what part of your thoughts you should be “locked up” over? The fact you rightfully feel manipulated? Or the fact that you attribute it to some mysterious CIA mind control (read: any external circumstance)? Both are things therapists see on the regular, they can work with it, and all it takes is some talking sessions and maybe simple meds in some cases. Seriously, go for it, you’ll be in a much better place (at least mentally) in a few months if you do, and it won’t be such a big pressure on your life anymore.

Getting therapy and learning to do things your own way without consulting your mom every step of the way may not only improve your own wellbeing, but your mom’s, too. One thing controlling parents need is seeing their kids do things their own way and being just fine. When that happens, your mom will learn to trust you to yourself and finally relax for once. It will also significantly improve your relationships.

Source: went through a very similar thing, then after 1,5 years of therapy I’m free and my mom still loves me the same and we both live a calmer happier life now. After conflicts ended and the dust is settled, our relationships are better than they’ve ever been. She doesn’t want to go back to what was before, and neither do I.

Yes, induction stoves are the solution. The way I went about it is I bought a secondhand hob for just $110. Works brilliantly, controls just as well as gas. As a bonus, pumping all the energy straight into the cookware makes it heat things up REAL fast.

Regular electric stove is very inert, making it straight up impossible to do a lot of stuff.