FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13m ago
I'm entirely willing to accept that interpretation, and in fact this is my interpretation of the culture war as a whole: we no longer have a cohesive society, and so attempting to pool resources or coordinate effort or share institutions in any way cannot be expected to work. You cannot build or even maintain memorials in a society that fundamentally cannot agree on what should be memorialized. Ditto for public schools, public libraries, public justice systems...
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
19m ago
State bans on CNC aren't preventing the import of auto-sears for criminals by the containerload, and they can't prevent me from constructing a functional bump-stock out of cardboard and hot glue. The law, at this point, mostly functions in an attempt to keep people from talking about what a failure it is to actually exert meaningful control in the real world.
And sure, this allows people in blue areas to be oppressed, so long as the vast majority of people are willing to cooperate with maintaining the system. This balance is not stable, and cannot be maintained in the face of even a small number of people sincerely wishing otherwise. You are correct that neither I nor anyone else has a way to give you current society, only less oppression for you. But if you are willing to let go of current society, the oppression can also go, and speedily.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
Here's CNN reporting that the water in the pool has elevated phosphate. My understanding is that one of the more straightforward ways you'd get elevated phosphate in the water is by dumping phosphate fertilizer into the water. Given the other evidence of deliberate vandalism, I'm not sure why incompetence or corruption are supposed to be the leading hypothesis here.
I'm open to being corrected if there's some other explanation.
My understanding, perhaps out of date, was that legal manufacture of new select-fire firearms was still banned by the 1986 act.
"Full-Auto" as a legal term means multiple shots fired with a single pull of the trigger. Forced-Reset Triggers force the trigger fully-forward again during the firing cycle, which is then immediately pulled again by the trigger finger in a distinct mechanical action. Legally, they are semi-auto, just semi-auto at 600-800 RPM. Semi-auto's legal viability has never depended on how fast the trigger is being pulled previously, and indeed many shooters have demonstrated the ability to fire semi-auto firearms and even revolvers at speeds equivalent to machine guns with no legal repercussion. Likewise, mechanical aids such as crank-fire have also been legally-permitted methods for generating rapid fire for roughly as long as we've had gun laws. FRTs merely make this easier to do. They are "select fire" in the sense that they have a selector switch with safe/semi/rapid fire settings. They are not "select fire" in the sense that they do not have a legally-recognized "full auto" setting, only a setting that allows the shooter to fire legally-semi-auto at a consistent rate of hundreds of rounds a minute with no significant effort.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
I too dabble in necromancy.
Anyway, I don't think this is what Exhalation thinks its own point is: it spends about ten times as long explaining entropy.
That is not my recollection at all. Everything in the story converges on the scientist's exploration of his own brain, and that exploration terminates at the idea of a manufactured mechanical system that is nonetheless entirely intractable from within a given material frame.
Eh, is it really more inaccessible than a program running on ram without a disk installed? If ram loses power, whatever it stores is gone, just like their brains.
But the point isn't just that a destroyed brain is lost, but rather that an intact brain is nonetheless intractable. The scientist figures that his mind is a machine, and thus that he should be able to interact with it in machine-like ways; gears can be assembled, valves can be opened and closed. But in fact his mind is not the machine, it is the air moving through the machine, and the exponential complexity is intractable. RAM/disks and microscopic air currents are both intuition pumps, but the latter leads in a very different direction than the former.
Entropy as a theme circles back to the same idea: our control over ourselves and the world around us is limited, and almost certainly always will be, in ways that we are very bad at recognizing for reasons similar to those related in the story. This is, in my view, a really good message to communicate.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Or print/mill the parts yourself, that works too and requires no interaction with the legal system.
My understanding is that they're selling AR15 rifles with factory-installed and -tuned FRTs. Setting aside the legal arcana, it is not clear to me what the difference between these and "true select fire" is in any practical sense. I'd imagine they shoot a little rougher?
On the criminal side, my understanding is that it's just straight-up Chinese-manufactured auto-sears and auto-lockwork, no workaround at all.
fixed the link in the previous post. Here's a link to discussion of the new generation of belt-feds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFtgEVkaQY&t=3s
...You understand that "automatic guns" are already unregulatable, correct? As in, it is no longer possible in any practical sense to regulate the ownership of automatic weapons in the United States of America. You can purchase a legal, full-auto AR-15 from Palmetto State Armory for a reasonable sum. Several companies are producing belt-fed light machine guns for the unregulated civilian market. Criminals have been mass-importing high quality auto-sears and full-auto lockwork from China by the container-load for years now. The government is incapable of keeping full-auto weaponry out of the hands of anyone who wants it, and is almost entirely incapable of prosecuting even those who gain such weaponry illegally, or even simply those who commit crimes with such weaponry. They are at the point of prosecuting a small fraction of carefully selected cases in a vain attempt to maintain keyfabe that meaningful prohibitions still exist.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
20hr ago
I would not be surprised if this happened, but would not bet on it happening either. It would fit the general pattern of institutional collapse.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
22hr ago
I've seen video of sections of liner coming off the bottom, and they certainly appeared to be cut/torn away from the concrete. Like, roughly a roughly straight-line rectangular section about a foot long and maybe six inches wide, with ragged edges near corners.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
- Make your point reasonably clear and plain. Try to assume other people are doing the same.
...Often summarized here as "speak plainly". The Ol' Switcheroo is a valid rhetorical technique in some cases, and can be used to good effect, but this ain't it. Specifically, the part where you went multiple comments deep trying to get your opposite to change their answer while attempting to shame their attempts at deploying skepticism seems highly corrosive to the sort of debate we're trying to foster here.
It's a blinded trial. It was necessary to test whether you were actually clocking trans women or just making up tells because you already knew they were trans.
- Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.
This is a discussion forum, not a sociology lab. Your opposites here are debate partners, not experimental subjects. It is entirely acceptable to propose a blind trial. It is not acceptable to exploit others' good-faith engagement by repeatedly lying to them to test a personal theory. The "experiment" justification in particular wears very thin when your opposite appears to have passed your "test" with flying colors, and this fact does not appear to result in any significant update to your own views.
You have one previous warning for booing the outgroup, no bans or AAQCs. I am banning you for one day. Please read the rules and attempt to internalize their intent before resuming posting.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
What if the Second Law of Thermodynamics? (Exhalation, I mean. This one's actually pretty good.)
Exhalation is pretty good, but the point of the story is not "what if the Second Law of Thermodynamics," but rather to describe how a mind could be explicitly instantiated within a machine, and also remain completely inaccessible to technological comprehension/deconstruction.
Based on the number of societies in human history doing absolutely heinous shit and considering it to be normal or even moral, I'm not sure about this. In fact I suspect there's very few societies that don't involve something I consider horrifically evil until fairly recently. And even then I'm not sure.
Why would you expect a human society to not feature heinous evil? Why would humans frequently engaging in heinous evil reduce your confidence that Evil exists as a useful concept and is recognizable by humans?
Unclear. I'm pretty confident that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.
Obviously.
But we can pretty confidently say that smoking increases your chances of getting cancer versus the counterfactual.
Can we confidently say that evil leads to misery, and good leads to happiness, even if this is not the case in every microscopic section of the causal chain that we can directly observe, yes?
I recognize that some kinds of things are evil, but religion calls many things evil that I don't recognize as such.
I am asking for a recognition that some kinds of things are in fact evil, not an agreement of any particular religion's listing of what those things are.
For the things you recognize as evil, what makes them evil? What does it mean for a thing to be evil?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
14d ago
@sun_the_second also.
We've got a variety of fairly reliable evidence that smoking causes cancer.
Sure. But you don't know you in particular are going to get cancer, or that by abstaining from smoking you won't get cancer anyway. You don't know how having cancer will feel in a subjective sense. You don't know what else might happen that might obviate all downsides of cancer; maybe you're destined to die before any negative health effects would arrive and smoking would be a pure net-positive for you. All of these can "support" the absurd claim that one's decision to smoke three packs a day was not sufficiently "informed", if one's reasoning is motivated. And as I've argued a number of times before, all reason is motivated.
Do you recognize that Good and Evil exist, that the difference between them is comprehendible by humans, and that they have important consequences for humans engaging in them?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
15d ago
You never give informed consent to separation from God
Alternatively, "informed consent" doesn't work the way you appear to be arguing it does. Does a 3-pack-a-day smoker give informed consent to the consequences of smoking three packs a day? Obviously not, since they didn't know for certain what the consequences would be or what the subjective experience would actually be like, right?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
15d ago
I know that especially Evangelical Christians would consider "God is evil" to be very nearly an oxymoronic statement, but if their God created me, why did He equip me with a moral compass that says it?
Do you believe that human moral compasses are 100% reliable and accurate? If they are not 100% reliable and accurate, would you agree that one of the ways we observe them losing accuracy is when people double-down or psychologically entrench on a bad moral choice?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
15d ago
Then you’ve got the actual politicians, who in theory have skin in the game. Elected officials are incentivized to call for calm, procedural responses no matter what.
This argument worked a lot better before lots and lots and lots of politicians very publicly and very repeatedly failed to do that, and continue to fail to do that, in situations where it really, really mattered.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
16d ago
Manipulation of procedural outcomes is quite powerful, but it is not infinitely powerful. Because its power is based on exception, it is utterly dependent on the basic reality exception deviates from. Manipulators of procedural outcomes defect against those cooperating with the construction and maintenance of procedure; without sturdy norms to defect against, they would have no leverage with which to generate and wield meaningful power.
People want results. The problem with setting up a system specifically tailored to deny them the results they desire is that no matter how many convolutions you generate between what they want and what you're giving them, sooner or later they figure out that you are, in fact, part of the system, and thus one of the variables subject to modification in pursuit of a better future.
Democracy, like Free Speech, is a spook.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
18d ago
"Are we sure everybody is going to read that first A as a short A?"
"Don't worry. We've programmed them not to enjoy it."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
20d ago
Oh, go fuck yourself, you liar.
Mods, I'll happily eat a ban for this; sorry, but the gaslighting from magicalkittycat is getting ridiculous.
One day ban, cool off and please refrain from this sort of outburst in the future.
Well spoken and well reasoned. I'm curious what of the above @JeSuisCharlie would disagree with.
If I were to disagree with @Soteriologian's thesis, I think I would start with this part:
The right, in contrast, has no Movement, especially not one that compels moral authority over the state to any relevant degree in #currentyear. There are two wings of the right: the actual tradcons (which look like this), and the Nazis (which often LARP as tradcons and look like this). If you bomb an abortion clinic or a migrant detention center, there will be no rallying to your defense by women with hundreds of thousands of likes inquiring when the conjugal visits will begin in your prison, there will be no photographer taking Renaissance photos or featuring your drip in Time magazine. Now, I know Luigi is unusually attractive, and the Clavicular worldview is to attribute the fanfare to that. But let's be real: if Luigi had shot a leftist figurehead, this is not the reaction he would have received. Luigi's cuteness is useful to the movement: the movement is not subservient to the actions of the most cute, as the Clavicular model would contend.
The basic nature of the problem he's pointing out here is undeniable. Blues are mobilized, organized, and integrated into an overwhelmingly powerful machine. Reds are none of these things, and thus their ability to secure or effectively wield power is appallingly limited.
On the other hand, I think there is incontrovertible evidence that this reality is visibly eroding over time, as Reds do in fact mobilize, organize, and integrate for the purposes of fighting for and wielding power in a serious fashion. I think Reds' position is better now than it was two years ago, better two years ago than it was four years ago, and so on, in a pretty clear straight line back to the eruption of the current culture war in 2013-2014.
@Soteriologian gestures at the enormous power of the Media, and in fact the media is enormously powerful... only, that power is a bare fraction of what it once was, and is pretty clearly sliding toward zero.
Blues used to brag about their ideological stranglehold over the entertainment industry, but that industry has become a laughing-stock being actively scavenged by a new industry of not-Blues.
Blues continue to revel in their ideological stranglehold of the education industry, but that industry is in serious decline, and I hope to live to see its expiration.
Blues reveled in their political dominance, but that dominance appears to me to likewise be coming apart. The Overton window continues to expand beyond the narrow constraints they attempted to enforce. @Soteriologian is correct that Reds as a collective are not to the point of embracing real conflict theory toward Blue society, but it seems obvious to me that we have been moving significantly and steadily in that direction for years now, and that this trend seems unlikely to me to stop for the foreseeable future.
It also seems clear to me that these significant improvements in the Red situation were not driven by "Overminds" like Yarvin or Hanania, but rather by exactly the sort of slow, grinding, tedious, grass-roots common-knowledge-generation @Soteriologian is dismissive of:
All it can do is appeal to the existing laws and say, "See, the immigrant with a knife stabbed somebody! That's against the law! The police should ARREST him, and and... maybe even DEPORT him."
He is correct that pointing out the unworkable hypocrisy of Blue social systems is unlikely to secure short-term tactical victory. What it can and has done, I think, is generate steadily increasing capacity for meaningful resistance to those systems, by building a long-term shared understanding of the fractal wretchedness of the system that currently rules us. A good example of this, I think, is Spencer Pratt's run for mayor of LA. One might argue that such a run is quixotic, as he is almost certainly not going to secure the office. On the other hand, what his run offers is a stark reminder, from this day forward, that things might be otherwise than they are, a spotlight on the responsibility of those he ran against and those who voted against him for the continued misery and filth in which they cocoon themselves. One might argue that Red resistance is currently insufficient to turn the tide because of the failures of previous generations to do what was necessary; I think it will continue to be insufficient right up until it becomes decisive.
As for "Overlords", Hanania in particular seems constitutionally incapable of recognizing and cooperating with this process, apparently due to being too enamored with the existing formalities of power as they have heretofore been arranged. I would level a similar critique against Yarvin, but he appears to me to employ somewhat more humility and ideological flexibility than Hanania, who seems more inclined to picking a hill to die on.
Consider the following:
In fact, I'll go so far as to say a lot of the Overminds they do have are false, in the sense that I think incidents like Jan 6 are setups to get rightoids to clown themselves into getting arrested. They think they're crossing the Rubicon with Caesar, but they're really just being goaded into making fools of themselves by agents more intelligent than they are running circles around them in their fog of war.
Do you agree with this assessment of the events of Jan 6th? If you had a magical button that could erase the events of Jan 6th from the timeline, would you press it? I'm confident Hanania would, and if he would not it would be because he thought it was a net-harm to his populist enemies. I would not, because it seems to me that the outcome has been and will likely continue to be of net-benefit to Reds. Reds as a tribe did not abandon the J6 protestors, and many of the Red leaders who did do so have subsequently been coordinated against by the tribe as a whole. In fact, J6 looks an awful lot like exactly the sort of "real power" discussed above in the reactions to Mangione, doesn't it? And where did it emerge from? Certainly not from Hanania and his ilk.
Angela Davis probably thought she was "crossing the Rubicon" when she provided material support in a terrorist action that resulted in the murder of a federal judge. Was that a wise move on her part? Under most normie analysis, it shouldn't be, but can we argue with the results? @Soteriologian scorns "rightoids" "getting themselves arrested" while "agents more intelligent than they are running circles around them", but isn't this exactly the sort of action you seem to be arguing for?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
21d ago
How many wealthy and influential Royalists lived in the Colonies before the Boston Massacre? How many lived in the Colonies after the revolution?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
21d ago
If you think my history and sequences of statements is that of a troll/shit-stirrer then I recommend for your own sanity and mine that you block or just ignore me.
Naw. I occasionally find your comments annoying, but my impression is that you are pretty clearly the good kind of annoying. That is, I may disagree with what you say, but my expectation is that what you say now will be at least roughly congruent with what you've said previously and will say in the future.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
21d ago
I can civility express an opinion to matter how distasteful you feel it is, and that constitutes normal behavior here.
True.
"Following around" on a forum means dragging the content of one thread into another.
This forum runs on a reputation economy. People can remember the things you say, and use sequences of statements to build a working model of your behavior and goals, and steer their interactions with you thereby.
Is that how the water system in question works? If so, I'd have thought I'd have heard of it by now, but again, I'm willing to be corrected if there's clear facts available.
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