Generative Fill isn’t a filter, the posters complaining about it were using AI tools to remove cars and other things from their photos and then getting butthurt when Adobe tattled on them in the meta data.

It wasn’t a case of tweaking the LUTs or changing exposure, they manipulated the photos using an AI tool and got upset when they got tagged out for it.

My Cyberpunk installation has about 177mb of saves right now.

Every other game is basically <1mb.

Back in the day, when it was light-hearted things like Habbo Hotel raids, Triforcing, and secretly hiding CP in the images you upload so that other people help proliferate CSAM.

If you can’t tell by that last part, I don’t go there anymore. /b/ was never good and all that.

Every now and then, I check it out though. I’m obviously old and certainly not anyone’s personal army so I look at a page or two of porn and gore and shrug, click out, and let time march onward.

Chinese manufacturing won’t allow quality Chinese cars…

At least they won’t have them in the export line.

You’re over here asking GPT about “secret scientific research groups” but wanna point out that it’s an English acronym? You could’ve asked Encyclopedia Britannica instead and gotten the right answer.

Secret scientific research groups? Lol. Anyone with a passing familiarity with government work knows about SOPs.

Not the brightest fork in the tool shed, are they?

What kinship do the Kurds owe Aleppo when they would hand their lands over to Russia? They can sell it to the Americans or they can sell it to the Regime who bombs them, who’d rather they be bombed out to make room for their Russian Allies. Not much choice for them.

If Assad, because I don’t blame the Syrian people as a whole, recognized Kurdish autonomy they could begin to move towards unifying in the people’s best interest instead of scraping what little they can through bad deals. Instead, the Assad Government is ready to move the Kurds out of their lands to hand them over to Russian companies. The people of Syria don’t really get the oil either way - the people do struggle for US benefit but Assad is not a heroic revolutionary fighting for the people either. A free Rojava would be the first step in removing the US yoke but it would also remove the Syrian one.

Turkyie doesn’t like the Kurds, maybe for a good reason in their eyes. Syria doesn’t like the Kurds and again they probably think that’s a good idea too. Iraq gives them autonomy but that’s who knows what will happen if Sadr continues to expand Iranian influence.

The US has on multiple occasions used the Kurds and left them out to dry, so they’re not some blameless paragon, but they didn’t at Al Sina’a and they continue to keep food shipments moving in despite Russian aggression raising the price of wheat and Syrian shelling the White Helmets.

There’s no angels but at least the US isn’t bombing whole towns for the crime of being “rebel held”. They keep their collateral down to whomever might be standing near their targets…

Or, in the case of their Task Force 9, merely precision bomb their civilian targets.

I think we can both agree that US actions in the region have been abhorrent. Though, the Coalition at least attempts to maintain an air of legitimacy (and aid funding) and the Kurds by and large don’t have many other friends.

I’m not saying it’s legitimate or illegitimate and, yeah, there are US assets (likely other countries too but they ‘need’ more discretion) in Syria. Not just ‘force projection’ but troops on ground, patrolling with the SDF.

So, yeah, you’re not wrong but US assets are supporting SDF assets who are keeping detained ISIL under lock and key and, when they get uppity, hellfire missile.

But, at the end of the day, The Syrian Government could simply roll out into the country and take back the oil fields from the Kurds that everyone in the region loves to oppress and ship it out themselves. I’m against Iraqi oppression of the Kurds. I’m against Turkish oppression of the Kurds. Guess what? I’m also against Syrian oppression of the Kurds. If that makes me a US (and Coalition by proxy) shill then by all means, think me a shill. The Kurds have held their lands since the beginning of written history but you think that the Syrian Dictatorships of the last fifty years have more right to that land then go off, friend.

SDF has extraction, not refining. Crude has to be shipped out.

Imagine thinking the existence of oil tankers in the middle east is somehow evidence of a grand conspiracy.

Look, this article runs every few months from the Syrian regime. To be blunt, the trucks bring in Wheat and probably arms or something else they shouldn’t. The SDF (formerly called the YPJ and YPG) runs oil refineries and sells the oil as a means of finding themselves. The US… Well, ‘Coalition’ supplies them with the refineries.

Why all these steps? Turkyie hates the YPJ/YPG but Turkyie is part of the Coalition against ISIL. The ‘SDF’ gets bombed by Turkyie but the SDF also runs the largest ISIL prison in the region. So Turkyie and Syria don’t team up against the SDF, the SDF doesn’t get full US support, and resupply trucks have to ‘sneak’.

Everyone in the region has stakes in not letting them break out. Iraq doesn’t want it, Syria doesn’t want it, the US and Coalition don’t want it but, outside of the US, no one can publicly back the SDF and save face with their regional counterparts. The US makes sure the SDF has food and funds, everyone gets to keep the ISIL and Refugee camps ‘running’ and no one has to support the SDF and lose face with their local parties.

I’d call it shades of gray but it’s more like shades of blood…