You could’ve made this image using paint in under 5 minutes, did you really need to waste half a liter of water to have AI generate it?
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Training models takes a stupid amount of energy. Using them after the fact uses very little.
I could generate something like this on my phone using any of the dozens of local models.
I could generate something like this on my phone using any of the dozens of local models.
Feel free to share the device type and local AI model capable of producing an image like this. My guess is you won’t though because it’s not possible 😕
Try Z-Image Turbo it's super new and runs on any computer with, like, a cpu and 24 GB ram. It can generate way better images than this too.
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AI-generating images takes, like, zero resources. Think about it. My computer uses very little energy. It couldn't even heat my room if I ran it constantly (I accidentally tried by forgetting to turn on the heater). It can create an image in 20 seconds. There is no magic in AI that increases its wattage somehow. Also, I don't know if you noticed yet, but computers don't have a water input plug. Using a dishwasher once uses more electricity than generating thousands of images, and more water than infinite images.
OpenAI, and others, lose money on every prompt even with paid subscriptions. The resources will still be wasted by them but to cost them money is priceless.
The following can all be true:
- The Democrats are a right wing neoliberal party.
- The Democrats are the most left-wing option that is realistically available to American voters.
- The Democrats can be pushed further left if American progressives work to do so.
- The Democrats - at the party level - will resist such a change, but that resistance can still be overcome.
- In the long term, massive structural overhauls and the downfall of capitalism are the only things that will save America and the world
- In the near term, voting consistly and enthusiastically for the least bad option can still protect vulnerable groups from harm and create changes that lay the groundwork for those structural overhauls.
While those are technically true, they are inconseuqential at best, plain wrong at worst.
Yes, the dems could be pushed left a little over a long time in theory. But practice has shown that this is not achievable since all other material circumstances are against it.
The "least bad" option is a communist party, absolutely not the dems.
Voting is not going to help half as many people than going to the next soup kitchen or neighborhood meetup and organize there.
I hate these soc dem apology posts. Biden has blood on his hands up to his shoulders.
I think we're showing mixed results on your third bullet. It did seem that way, for a while, as we pushed on social issues. And when it came time to get on with the economic issues, the core management team of the party rallied, and rather than adopt the left flank to win, steps right to hand control to Republicans.
And it's happened more than once now, to obvious and clear effect: the goal of the Democratic party isn't to win elections, it's to keep the country idealogically aligned with a neoliberal ruling class. And if that means handing control of government to Republicans, they'll do so, then blame the left (even though it's them moving to the right losing elections).
To the fourth bullet, no, it's not clear that within the machinations of the party infrastructure it can be overcome. Because if not now, when? Party leadership has never been weaker or more vulnerable nor the times more desperate. Democrats as a party poll worse than Trump, yet progressives can win elections with both the entire Republican and Democratic apparatus gunning to take them down. yet somehow we can't replace Schumer's or Jefferies.
Skipping to the 6th point, again, that isn't actually borne out by the evidence. It's not something well know in advance and only as an artifact of history. What's been extremely clearly is that so far, voting has been wildly insufficient to make the kinds of structural changes necessary. Obama is the classic example of this. He runs on healthcare, holding wallstreet accountable, and ending the wars; he delivers corporate "access", bails out the banks, and continues the wars. The voters did their job and the system didn't work.
So a relentless optimism that the system will just work as intended doesn't seem warranted, and it's clearly not going in a good direction.
Until we recognize that the Democratic party, it at least it's current and historical structure is at the core of the problem with why we can't advance political change, its pretty clear that this decent into autocracy, fascism, and a degraded quality of life is inevitable. The Democratic party isn't just part of the problem: it's the core element of the problem.
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Liberalism has always been right from center. You can put neo in front of it all you'd like.
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Nothing new, in a profoundly capitalist structure like the US, there are no other options than to choose between conservatism and fascism, substituting reason for "in God we trust" and "Stars and Stripes", to keep citizens ignorant and obedient to continue functioning.
Their strategy is to give into Trump's demands in the hopes that it prevents him from destroying their precious institutions. They hope to be able to take over from an unpopular Republican party after Trump dies without really undoing the damage he's done. The problem with this approach is that it will prevent the system from needing to be properly rebuilt, effectively legalizing most of his abuses of power and prolonging the instability of our country. A big part of this will be institutionalizing the blatant corruption and oligarchy while further rigging elections to make it impossible for popular movements to ever legally gain power.
A Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg presidency will see them ruling as a weaker feudal king than Trump, but only to promote business activity and interests. Relying on the honeymoon period following Trump's removal, they will position themselves as the saviors of "democracy," yet they will do little to actually undo a lot of the election rigging that Republicans are installing right now. They will suppress workers rights and throw the most disposable minorities under the bus, deregulating and burning through all the goodwill they have. They'll parade the corpse of liberalism around as long as fools will believe it, but it will be a cynical gesture.
In order for actual liberal democracy to exist again in this country, the liberals would need to have shown a backbone and resist Trump no matter how much he destroys institutions. They would need to risk temporary jail time and potential assassination to invigorate long term support for a rebuilt American dream. Instead they're showing that they never cared about liberal ideals, only the goodwill liberalism afforded their power.
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I agree, but I also wonder if the Democratic party can be converted from the inside to change it's focus.
Probably not. I just winder what the best way forward is. It's not really clear.
It can't be reformed. It needs to be burn down and new party started.
The two party system exists to prevent this.
Sure, but there is no other option. We must build up a working class party, if running them electorally doesn't work, then it will still work when conditions falter and revolution happens.
I mean a conservative project to do exactly this is what transformed the Cheney era neocons into the modern day fascist party we see. So at least in principle that's possible. but clearly the neocons were more than happy to go along with fascism. Fascism and conservativism have effectively the same goals.
The neoliberals who faced the same kind of insurrection from within their party at the same time were unwilling to adopt progressivism and are still unwilling to adopt progressivism. The right was able to change their party into a fascist one, the left has failed to move the demo party into being a progressive party
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Always remember that left and right are difficult terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum
In Germany Harris would have been conservative CDU (the most conservative/right party before the AfD turned up) and Trump would have been in the AfD. However, CDU is still fine. Nothing bad about being conservative. I disagree with most of their opinions but they are valid political opinions. AfD and Trump share political opinions that are undemocratic, dangerous and stupid.
