He’s not a politician, but he has one of the biggest platforms and access. What is he doing with it?

I’m honestly not sure. I’ve seen him have a few interesting discussions with left leaning political figures so I assume there is more of that. I know Cuomo is, as of like a week ago, demanding that Mamdani condemn Hasan because he’s had a few pictures with him so again Hasan isn’t just doing nothing - he’s visible, though he may just be taking advantage of his status to pal around with popular people on the left. The few streams I’ve been linked to I recall feeling like he was honestly engaging topics on the left and making an effort to educate those watching. I’m not deep in his content so I don’t really know how often that happens or how accurate his “takes” are on average. My impression is that, on average, he far exceeds you assertion a 100% self-serving slop factory.

Kirk, I see the damage he did because of how effective he is.

Honestly, I saw him as just another gross, right wing internet personality spewing the kind of garbage that disgusts me. I assume he spends most of his time regurgitating the typical talking points of the right like a good little soldier. He’s maybe a bit more creative with his debate tactics. I’ve seen him masterfully dodging and manipulating the conversation to avoid having to actually defend his abhorrent views (like in his recent debate with those student in that British university), though he has also proudly taken disgusting stands without any shame and just basked in his own self righteousness. I am just not deep enough into the right wing internet sphere to consider him specifically effective. Just another loud, popular, well paid voice strengthening the right wing echo chamber.

Here’s what I think is more important. As I said before, I’ve heard multiple times that Hasan is “The Joe Rogan of the Left”. Again, I think it’s kind of apples and oranges but along those lines how much of what you’ve said would apply to Joe Rogan? Is he as openly political as Hasan? Is he as consistent with his views? Does he fundraise for the right or has he pushed for certain policies? I know he’s known for agreeing with whoever is in front him him and I don’t know of him doing anything more political than having a political person on his his show. Would you consider Joe Rogan to have had no impact on the success of the right? Could he disappear and the right wouldn’t notice?

Regardless of whether or not Hasan is actively maximizing the value of his political capital or wealth to change the world, he’s popular and he is openly, consistently left. More left than Destiny, who I (admittedly) recall being more politically proactive - I heard he was canvasing for 2024. I’m also not a Destiny follower so please don’t make me defend him. I’m a lefty who’s online enough that I’m familiar with a number of popular personalities because they bounce around and get mentioned in the space.

So Hasan could do more, sure. Hasan makes a substantial amount of money, yes. But, as far as popular strongly left-leaning personalities he has influence and I think he’s contributing a lot more than nothing. That’s why I’m countering your assessments.

You know what, I’ll gladly admit I did not bring enough specific receipts and I’m talking in broad terms (although I provided plenty of examples to support my point).

…

That’s why I brought you some examples which you discounted or simply ignored.

You’re “examples”, paraphrased:

• He doesn’t know the significance of the Western Wall

• He called an Israeli that wasn’t a settler or IDF and called for “peace and a ceasefire” a Nazi

Am I missing any?

I don’t know much about the significance or controversy of the Western Wall. It’s where politicians get photos taken when they want to demonstrate their Zionism. I don’t see the open air prison that is Gaza, or it’s destruction, or the Settlements in the West Bank being directly related to the Western Wall.

I don’t know anything about the interview or the guys comments on this allegedly reasonable, peaceful Israeli. Maybe he just decided a week before the interview that enough is enough. Maybe he is perfectly fine with the situation in the West Bank and the open air prison of Gaza, he just wants to stop worrying about the geopolitics of the conflict and his own safety. I don’t know because you did nothing but make assertions.

Your points, paraphrased:

• He just reads Twitter

• His content is just slop

• He doesn’t care, he just wants money

He doesn’t just reads Twitter. He’s been on TV, He’s been in debates (literally was scheduled to debate Kirk in like a week or two as per this interview). I’ve seen him visiting other political programs. I’m not a fan but it’s obvious he does more than Twitter.

The content I’ve described above is more than slop. He allegedly averages 49 hours a week. A lot of that is going to be trash and low effort. It’s not all he seems to do.

Does he run ads for his own products, like the other grifters? Does he shift his position to maximize viewership or is he principled? I have seen and products (though I don’t really follow) and he has seemed pretty principled. Does he make money? Yes, he’s the largest streamer/influencer on the left. I’ve heard him called the Joe Rogan of the left and that we need of him. While I think that is a ignorant simplification and a bad metaphor, it sounds like he’s at least not just feeding rage bait and slop the entire time.

What has he managed to achieve politically so far? What is he doing to build the movement up? He doesn’t seem to care. Why should I?

What do you expect him to achieve? What would change your mind about him caring? What could he do going forward to earn your respect?

Engage with what I wrote instead of strawmans.

You made a claim. This is the problem with engaging with comments like yours. I’d have to hunt down whatever you are talking about and waste how much time watching it? Then I might have to do more researching in order to just verify that it happened the way you claim, or the way some summary video portrayed it, and that you yourself did enough research on the guy.

Fucking give me something other than assertions about his personality and motivations, or suggest I would agree if I make watching his stream a full time job.

I don’t want him to do anything for the democratic party. That’s not what I said. I compared effectiveness. One (Kirk) dsepite being a vile person, accomplished something. Hassan, despite being vile and narcissistic, can’t seem to do much but read Twitter headlines all day.

Did you check to make sure your results were statistically significant or was it just vibes and who won the last election? Effectiveness at what? More importantly how the fuck does this support dismissing what was said in this interview? You know, the comment that I originally responded to?

Were not having a conversation because you seem incapable of engaging with my points…

Go watch his stream

Alright, I checked. He streams ~7 hours a day, ~7 days a week. No thanks. You don’t get to assign me that kind bullshit work in order to justify my opinion that your opinion isn’t justified. You gave me one link to an hour long summary of one dude allegedly watching Hassan for a week (which I doubt they actually did ~49 hours of watching for). This was to support your claim that he didn’t know the importance of a location within Israel and felt that it was a point of such extreme ignorance that it invalidated any of Hassan’s comments, ever, on the Israel - Palestine conflict, therefore he’s a rage baiting narcissist who’s accomplished nothing?

Were not having a conversation

We’re not. You’re making assertions and I’m telling you why assertions aren’t evidence. Then you tell me to go find support for your assertions within an extraordinariky large body of work. I feel like you are wasting my time. I suspect you are just easily offended, a Zionist upset because this guy isn’t backing ADL talking points (both of your only actual, specific references were related to Israel), or just don’t want people to pay attention to what is being said.

If.

You.

Say.

So.

If you say so. I’m not a fan, but he’s been a decent debater and representative of the left in the few times I’ve heard him speak. I find anyone dismissing him wholesale to be disingenuous. He’s speaks well, makes good points, and makes right-wing idiots look like idiots. I appreciate that.

Maybe you are like the other guy and just want him to cheerlead the Democratic Party blindly and follow their talking point? Or are you just upset because he seems to be pretty hard on Israel?

The only thing Hassan seems capable of is shitting on EVERYONE. … He spends 80% of his stream chastising democrats.

Ah, there it is. So you want someone on the left (the actual left) to pretend like the majority of the Democratic party and it’s leadership isn’t ineffective and feckless. You’d rather blame the left for pointing it out and call their criticism worthless rage bait.

He has such a massive platform and all he can do is read Twitter headlines and rage bait seven days a week. For what?

Here we go again. The dude streams for how many hours a day, how many dayss a week, and you expect him to deliver high quality content the entire time… to modern Internet audiences…?

Like I said, I’m not a fan. I’ve seen a few interviews and debates he participated in. A few referenced clips of note. I remember the clips had a lot of bullshit. Inside jokes with chat, immature shit, or references to things only constantly online people would get, at least I assume. I’m aware enough to know modern shock humor and genuinely offensive comments are separated by a fine line within internet culture.

Just the other week he streamed an interview of a man who lost his son in the Nova music festival. Despite losing his child this man was calling for a ceasefire. He wasn’t a settler. He wasn’t IDF. He wants peace. The best we can get out of Hassan? He calls him Nazi scum.

Ok. He watched and interview with this person? I have no context so I can’t really comment beyond the polls coming out of Israel disturb and scare the shit out of me. Just because you are a victim of a tragedy, and aren’t a member of groups openly commiting crimes against humanity in Israel, you aren’t immediately a good person. Supporting Bibi at this point is enough to make you a pretty horrible human being.

Hassan is just outrage farm and nothing else.

I don’t need justification for your glint of truth. I need justification that nothing in the linked interview of Hassan is worth reading or listening to because he’s nothing more than an outrage farm.

I actually listened to the interview. He said several things that so few people in mainstream media are willing to say, and he criticized mainstream media for not saying those things.

Kirk advocated for gross positions. He literally stated that empathy was invented by the left. In response to the shooting, right wing politicians and pundits immediately called for retribution against the left just like they did when the democratic lawmaker was assassinated, and say nothing when it turns out it wasn’t a leftists killer. Trump never bothered did any honor the victim of that killing, but they lower flags this weekend for Kirk and don’t mention the school shooting that happened literally one hour later or the 45 prior shootings in 2025. They praised Kirk for valuing debate and free speech, but are now firing people and refusing to let in travelers if they posted negative opinions of Kirk. Rage bait, or reasonable things to talk about?

I’m not a Hassan fanboy, or even a fan really, and I’m not having fun. You simply didn’t put any effort into your accusations. They still sound like the typical troll behavior used to silence or muddle people you don’t agree with. Try to offend, barely substantiate, if at all, your accusations and assertion, and try to engage without putting any effort into it. Be as disingenuous as possible but bait responses and keep interlocutor lost in the weeds of your half assed arguments.

So I assume you are a troll.

Inaccurate simplification of Hassan. So much so that I assume you are just elaborately saying, “Nothing to see here folks. Go about your business.”

Your tactics are in line with those of right wing trolls. Call into question something you want silenced with ad hominem attacks, obscure references, with just a glint of truth buried in there to make anyone arguing with you get sucked into a lengthy complicated debate. Yes, modern popular media feeds off of outrage and Hassan is part of it. That’s something I could say about virtually every popular person on the internet. It’s doesn’t mean that none of them have ever said anything relevant, accurate, or otherwise worth listening to.

Crawl back into whatever hole you came from you disingenuous troll.

I don’t disagree but I think there is more too it. Many forces working in tandem to push people into marriage.

Most simply, marriage is glorified by society. It’s considered the ultimate declaration of love (within normal circumstances). Humans often feel the emotion so strongly and wish to express it. Society tells them this is how they should do it. It’s also viewed as an achievement or a measure of love by many societies. You aren’t committed (married)? Do you have cold feet? Do you not love them enough to marry them?

I may be viewed as one of those people for saying it, but there are a lot of pressures to conform to those around you. There is a certain life script - a series of things that those around you have done and expect you to do because… that’s just what you do. You find someone, get married, have kids, etc. If you don’t do these things or take too long to do these things you are defacto weird. You’ll be slowly ostracized, gossiped about, avoided, suspected. You won’t share the life experiences of those around it. It will be awkward. You won’t fit in unless you manage to find enough atypical people to surround yourself with.

Also, most governments create a society where it is beneficial to marry, to encourage stable families and population growth. Certain circumstances can negate the benefits or even counter them, as some commenters have brought up, but in most cases married couples are given boons from the government.

His official title should be changed to the “Speaker of Rot”.

Such confidence in your assumptions! That must be why you confidently turn to accusations and attempt to instigate instead of addressing my point and demonstrating that you have the capacity for empathy.

…Or are you just trying to drive a wedge between leftists because you are trying to divide us to further the christo-fascist agenda?

Either way, I’ve made my point and you are counterproductive. If you want to stop the right, I recommend you stop fighting others on the left and get to work.

I can empathize with people who had to choose between 1) supporting and empowering politicians of their own party guilty of defending, enabling, and supporting genocide or 2) using the only power they have, their vote, to communicate their disapproval for genocidal members of their own party at the risk to enabling christo-fascists who are absolutely going to defend, enable, and support the same genocide even more blatantly. It’s an insane situation - one that the fucking party leadership should have recognized.

What you are saying to these people is “What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s SO OBVIOUS! I don’t care how much it bothers you, you need to give the fucking war criminals more bullets to slaughter innocent children because, if you don’t, even worse war criminals are going to slaughter even more innocent children. How fucking hard is it to just hold your nose and murder innocent children? Now it’s your fault that even more children are dead and the fascists are in charge.”

So rather than embrace those who just want to stop any innocent children from being murdered you are wasting your time telling people who played this fucked up political game wrong to pound sand and get lost because you played it right.

No. Get over it and work together to fix this shit. You are just dividing the left when it actually has a chance to come together and do something.

LoL. I didn’t realize the fallout of disagreeing with TrickDacy was so severe. I’m sorry America!

For real though, I’m condemning anyone who unloads on these people, particularly if they were trying to pressure the Democrats to stop supporting genocide. Not because I think staying home was the right move, but because we need to fucking move on and deal with the situation we have now.

No.

I know someone who needs it to sleep due to PTSD. I think limiting REM sleep is actually the point for them. Their dreams are horrendous, wake them up, and sometimes trigger panic attacks which makes getting back to sleep quite difficult.

This is a dumb question but I’ve really wanted to use Pangolin and I have trouble finding it clearly explained whether or not it works, with authentication, for applications that are not browser based. For example, if I wanted to connect to my self hosted home git server from VSC via ssh would that be possible through Pangolin? Obviously I could use it to log in to the web interface but what about apps/applications that I need to punch into my home network? The authentication is browser-based so in my mind it would not.

I’ve been working on the same and ran into the same issue. If not Bandcamp, I’ve had success on Qobuz. Their streaming payments to artists, last I checked, are substantially higher than anywhere else I’ve looked. I’m hoping the same is true of their music sales but I’m sure half of that is dependent on the labels, which likely have something to do with their not being on Bandcamp… or maybe that’s just my cynicism. I know little about how things work in the industry I just want to pay artists for their amazing work.

I think it would be infinitely better for an LLM to walk a user through the use of the formula in their specific use case rather than do it for them… but that won’t sell as well because most people don’t want to learn to use a spreadsheet they just want to do a thing and move on to something else. This is how it is sold and this is why it is used, in most cases. It’s not a hammer that people misused despite there being nothing in the sales material about it’s usefulness as a bludgeoning device against other humans. LLMs, spreadsheet copilot included, is commonly packaged and sold as a magic solution that will just do the work for you, with an asterisk and fine print stating that it’s for entertainment purposes only and that whoever isn’t liable for any false information or whatever bullshit clause they come up with. People use it as it is sold to them and that’s what worries me.

another optional tool at users’ disposal.

I just had my place of work upgrade me to Windows 11 this week. In order to install office, I was directed by Microsoft to download the “Office 365 Copilot” app which downloaded the office installer. Copilot is not subtle. It may be technically optional but good lord does it want you to know about and use it for everything.

And no, I didn’t try it yet. I will likely be trying it and Gemini soon out of curiosity. Last time I tried to use it I was given hallucinated nonexistant python modules and powershell commands that wasted my time. It’s been a year or so though.

it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant.

This is what I think AI and automation is generally good at and should be used for - mitigating unpleasant or repetitive work so that the focus of the user is productivity/creativity.

This is what this integration is for - it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant. As are all LLMs.

The context is something we disagree on wholeheartedly. Those funding and fundraising for AI and an enormous subset of those using are not looking to use AI in the way we are talking about. The prior are hoping to use AI to extract value from it at the expense of people who would otherwise need to be paid, or they and claim it can do anything and everything. Those using it, many of them, do not have a sufficient understanding to comprehend the solution. They are basically “vibe coding”. Tell the LLM to do something they aren’t knowledgeable about, then keep telling it to fix the problems until they don’t see problems anymore. Yes, spreadsheet formulas are likely simpler than an app but I know people who use AI for Google Sheets and they rarely test any results, let alone rigorously.

Anecdotal, sure, but I don’t have enough faith in humanity to presume everyone else is doing something wildly different.

Edit: To expand, LLMs specifically, are what I consider to be the worst side of “AI”. You can use ML and neural networks to create “AI” (self altering, alien blackbox algorithms) to become proficient in analyzing information and solving problems. LLMs create a situation where the model appears intelligent because it knows how to mimic language… and so now we pretend like it can do whatever people can do.