What an embarrassment for Scotland. They’ve betrayed the country as well as independence supporters. I hope they don’t get away with it, but with that many vans it seems the police mean business.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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Ex- First Minister of Scotland's husband arrested................
by BoogerMan in.........by police investigating the snp's missing £600,000.
(allegedly).
the police operation looks more like a murder scene!
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It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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slimboyfat
Not everyone has the time to watch the livestream or hear all the damning facts of the situation. People understandably look for shortcuts when trying to figure out what’s going on in any given situation so the easiest way to help them is to point out a couple of things: 1) well over half of his strongest supporters, his patrons, have abandoned him since his scandal broke 2) qualified professionals such as the psychiatrist Dr Das have said he has the characteristics of a narcissistic psychopath, a manipulator and a cult leader himself. People who were on his side such as Andrew Gold only reluctantly came to these conclusions. Those are all pretty difficult facts to explain on any other scenario than him being a seriously harmful individual.
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AI Generated Art - Impact on Artists
by Simon inunless you've been hibernating under a rock for the last couple of years, you're probably aware that ai is the new hotness.. chatgpt gets a lot of attention but equally amazing is how capable ai is at generating art.
if you'd been ask to name anything that would be the last holdout for humans, creative arts such as writing, painting, and music would probably be some of the things at the top of the list.. yet those seem to be the things that ai can do best.. it's fascinating to use the tools, but one thing you realize is that they are just combining patterns and shapes, there isn't yet any real "intelligence", artificial or otherwise.. as an example, you can ask it to create a painting in the style or a particular artist, with a whole raft of things you want to include.
it will do a great job on first glance, but can often give people more arms or fingers than is normal, and lamp-posts can grow to different heights, like trees.
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slimboyfat
AI art is derivative. But human art is derivative too. No artist starts from scratch. They all copy and adapt and evolve.
The malformed hands are really ugly, but they are already working on the problem and I hear it is fixed already on some models.
That’s what we’ve got to remember, these are very early programme. The deficiencies in the current images will be vastly improved. The ability already, and the potential for further improvement is mind boggling.
I suppose I sympathise with artists to some extent. But you can’t stop AI learning from existing art just as you can’t stop a human artist from learning from existing art. There is no practical or reasonable way you could constrain that.
Personally I think it’s fantastic that we can all produce images we want with increasing ease.
But I do worry what the whole thing means for society. I think we are looking at massive restructuring of society, work, the money system - everything. And I don’t think we have the political or public institutions ready to cope with the challenge.
Here is one of my AI generated images using Midjourney. It’s a scientist in ship yard in the style of cyberpunk.
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Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body
by WingCommander inthis has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.
this is not a joke.
anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!
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slimboyfat
Thanks Diogenesister for calling out vienne’s behaviour, it wasn’t necessary but appreciated anyway. :-)
To relate it back to the topic of the thread, vienne had claimed that removal of AMIII’s videos followed a pattern because Raymond Franz’s articles in the Aid book were omitted when it was reissued as the Insight books, and that some books were quietly dropped as quick as possible. The problem with the comparison is that it’s entirely false. Raymond Franz’s articles were in fact included in the Insight books, as four different posters pointed out, and another poster pointed out that it was the Commentary on James that was disused, which was written by Ed Dunlap, not Raymond Franz.
Another obvious difference is that removing AMIII’s videos is going to be noticed by ordinary JWs because he was such a prominent fixture on JW broadcasting. Even if Raymond Franz’s articles had not been included in the Insight books (which they were) ordinary JWs probably would never have noticed. We only know some of the articles that Raymond Franz wrote because he made it public himself. Ordinary JWs are generally unaware of who has written what in the literature, so the comparison doesn’t fit on a theoretical level either, as well as being wrong.
Having pointed out to vienne that Raymond Franz’s articles were not “omitted”, she then claimed they were “rewritten”, and “totally new articles”, under the same title only. I pointed out that the “overseer” articles are similar and even use much of the same wording. She then pointed to the “older man” article instead. But that’s weird because, if anything, the “older man” articles in the Aid book and the Insight volume are even closer in content than the “overseer” articles. Anyone can see for themselves in those articles too, much of the wording is exactly the same:
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200013239
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200003316
The three articles that vienne mentioned demonstrate the opposite of what she originally said: much of the material that Raymond Franz wrote for the Aid book was retained in the Insight books. That’s interesting because Raymond Franz explained the rationale behind his strategy in the “chronology” article as focussing on undermining the reliability of secular chronologies in order to create doubt and room for Watchtower chronology. That is a strategy that Watchtower still follows to this day, which tells us that Watchtower will still use the rationale, reasoning and actual words of defectors after they leave the religion, if they remain useful. Whether that will also hold true for some of AMIII’s videos I don’t know, because the situation is somewhat different as explained above.
vienne now invites me to produce other articles that Raymond Franz wrote. I don’t know why. It wasn’t me who claimed his articles were omitted, she did. Perhaps, having wasted such a long time trying to defend a mistaken comment, for unknown reasons, she wanted to send me on some sort of wild goose chase too.
Altogether, what a truly bizarre exchange.
btw, vienne mentioned, yet again, that her uncle Bruce would never post on a website such as this. They have made this comment a number of times on the forum. I don’t know why it needs to be said so often. Is there something wrong with this forum? As far as I know, nobody on the forum has ever claimed that her uncle Bruce is posting on this forum, or writing under someone else’s name. So why does she keep bringing it up? She is very eager for everyone to know that uncle Bruce is not posting on this forum. Okay, message received, loud and clear: Uncle Bruce is not posting on this forum! You don’t need to keep repeating yourself, “vienne”. ;-)
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Is the tide turning against covid vaccines?
by slimboyfat inhave you seen this video about the covid vaccines?
have you got any views on the information?
i find it worrying at least.
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slimboyfat
I think it was a conspiracy in the sense that media, politicians, and big pharma companies all stood to gain a huge amount by promoting injections that could make them a lot of money. But in that sense it’s not really any different than business as usual. We know that similar things have gone on for years, we have just learned to tolerate it somehow. The only difference is the scale of this pandemic and its potential for profit overshadowed everything else before it.
For example we know that pharma routinely invents slightly new medicines in order to keep essential medicines within patent and highly profitable. We know they use various tricks to produce studies that indicate drugs are safer and more effective than they really are. We know that pharma engineered, with clear premeditated intent, the addiction of millions of citizens to opioid drugs that made companies billions of dollars and cost millions of people their lives. We know pharma companies use underhand means to keep basic drugs like insulin more expensive than they need to be and that politicians help them do it. We know that pharma companies cynically test their drugs in poorer countries where regulations are not as strong and that children have died needlessly as a result. We know that pharma companies act this way routinely. We know that politicians help them do it because they are given jobs, money, and other incentives to enacts regulations that put profit before lives. We know the media don’t report these stories to the full extent because media is hugely funded by pharma companies and they are hugely influenced by the political class who serve the pharma companies.
Is it a conspiracy? You bet it’s a conspiracy. But not of the dress-as-owls and slaughter the goats-style covens in the woods. It’s the everyday boring conspiracy of business, media, and politicians who put their own financial interest ahead of the well-being of everybody else. I don’t think there are many of the elite who actively want to kill “ordinary” people - although there may be a few! They would probably prefer to make money from a good injections rather than bad ones, or from a good drug rather than one that kills millions of people. It’s just that they are highly motivated by money and power to the extent that they are willing, not only to overlook how the sausage is made, but defend the system to the last as beneficial and in everyone’s interest, rather than just their own interest.
Sometimes you get the impression that a segment of the population thinks you must be totally mad for even suspecting that governments and businesses could have colluded over the injections to cover up harms. (Got your tin foil hat on eh?) But really, come on, it’s just how the world works. It’s not even an extraordinary claim, it’s boringly, depressingly, routine, the banality of evil.
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Is the tide turning against covid vaccines?
by slimboyfat inhave you seen this video about the covid vaccines?
have you got any views on the information?
i find it worrying at least.
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slimboyfat
I think the best we are ever going to get from the media is some watered down admissions that there were more side effects from the injections than originally anticipated, all sugar coated with the caveat that “nobody could have known this at the time”, and pious statements: “it was the right thing to squash doubts in the middle of a pandemic”. The mainstream can literally never be wrong, because even when they turn out to be wrong they still act as if they were in some sense “in the right to be wrong”, and you were “in the wrong to be right”.
Plus the total lies about what was actually said in the past. I don’t know how many times we were told that only conspiracy theorists, freaks and racists would even dare suggest it was a lab leak. Now we are breezily told that was “always a possibility” and “no biggie”.
For crying out loud, a top Pfizer employee was caught on camera saying they were doing sketchy dangerous stuff and disguising it and making lots of money. The media didn’t even cover it!
What chance have we got of ever getting the truth out of the mainstream media? It’s not going to happen. I think the GB are probably pretty safe because they are protected by interests far bigger and more powerful than they are in maintaining the mainstream narrative.
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If you have a question maybe I can help doctor of theology and one of Jehovah's witnesses
by Jehovahisgod inmy name is ari matthew davies.
i am a life experience consultant counselor i have a doctor's degree theology psychology clinical addictions and computer sciences.
i am also baptized as well as jehovah's witnesses.. if you have a question i've got a lot of experience and a lot of real life training.
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Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body
by WingCommander inthis has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.
this is not a joke.
anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!
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slimboyfat
First you said that “all” Raymond Fran’z articles were “omitted”. That’s false.
When this was pointed out to you you claimed they were “rewritten”.
As anyone can see by comparing the “overseer” entries above, much of the same material was used including the original wording.
And you’ve completely ignored the points Jeffro made about the chronology article:
Though there are some significant alterations to the versions of the Chronology articles in Aid and Insight, there is no evidence that 'those are the bits Franz wrote' (or that the remaining parts are the bits he didn't write). Most of the omissions relate to weak apologetics that raise more questions than they resolve (especially inconvenient after the publication of The Gentile Times Reconsidered), as well as material that is already covered in other articles such as 'Persians', or that was too outdated by the time Insight was written.
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Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body
by WingCommander inthis has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.
this is not a joke.
anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!
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slimboyfat
Your original claim was that “all of Franz's articles were omitted“. That’s simply not true. You’ve had four different posters tell you as much. Far from all his articles being omitted, you’ve not been able to find a single article of his that was omitted.
So you’ve changed the goal posts and wasted a lot of time.
Now instead, to save your blushes, you say articles Raymond Franz wrote were “edited”. Many articles were shortened and updated for the Insight books. That’s different than being “omitted”. You’ve presented no evidence the material Raymond Franz wrote was given omitted. There is no evidence, because it wasn’t.
The entries for “Overseer” in the Aid book and the Insight books respectively can be compared on the links below. The Insight entry is shorter, with much of the same material, and in no reasonable sense of the word “omitted”.
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Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body
by WingCommander inthis has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.
this is not a joke.
anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!
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slimboyfat
When I arrived on the forum there were many posters who knew the history of Watchtower inside out, sadly many of them now departed, not only from the forum but from this life. You couldn’t get more knowledgeable on Watchtower history than AlanF for example, and James Woods who knew Ed Dunlap personally. Larc and Farkel and of course Leolaia and many more could be mentioned. These people not only knew about Watchtower history - some of them had front row seats. We don’t have so many detailed discussions about the history any more. I don’t know if it’s because few are left who know or care about Watchtower history, but it is a noticeable shift on the forum.