@FCfromSSC's banner p

FCfromSSC

Nuclear levels of sour

25 followers   follows 3 users  
joined 2022 September 05 18:38:19 UTC

				

User ID: 675

FCfromSSC

Nuclear levels of sour

25 followers   follows 3 users   joined 2022 September 05 18:38:19 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 675

then take it from me: they have increased the amount of gameplay/content/complexity by ~300% at least. it's pretty close to a full sequel at this point.

have you been keeping up with the friday factorio facts stuff they've been posting? Space age is adding an absolutely absurd amount of new mechanics, shifting mechanics around, rebalancing existing stuff, adding new enemies... it's nuts. There's a planet where you generate power by tapping lightning strikes from a never-ending storm, and run the manufacturing gameplay backwards by digging up alien ruins and sifting the wreckage for random refined products that can be further broken down for raw materials. There's a planet with giant lava worms that steamroll your defenses if you tresspass on their territory. There's a jungle/swamp planet where you need to grow and harvest produce, and get what you need from it before it rots on the belt. You can build space platforms and fly them between planets. You can build fusion reactors. Plus a million improvements to existing mechanics: reworked recipes, reworked research, elevated train tracks, beacons and modules redesigned, and on, and on, and on... I've got near two thousand hours in factorio, and the amount they've changed with this patch is staggering. It's pretty close to a whole new game.

I can see his post, but it's greyed out which usually means he deleted it. @Belisarius, if you didn't mean to delete it or otherwise wanted it to be up, let me know.

...not really the point, but also, nope, having massive numbers of unwilling immigrants whose intended support network was in Texas bussed in at once is inconvenient, especially for them, but they're still going to make us richer and safer in the medium term

In what way are the bussed migrants "unwilling"? I thought it was pretty clear that Texas is bussing volunteers.

What was the "intended support network" in Texas, and why is it better than that of self-declared "sanctuary cities" like New York? My understanding is that absurdly massive numbers of illegal immigrants have been flooding into small Texas towns with poor infrastructure for quite some time now.

Does that mean anything to you? When you look at... anything - a person, a work, a system, a phenomenon - are you struck by the impression that there is so much that remains unread? Do you want to believe that there is so much that remains unread?

I have been, certainly. I do not think I am often "struck" by this now, as it has moved past initial revelation into basic knowledge. The list of unknowns is infinite. As the author says, "Our brains have one scale, and adjust our experiences to fit." "Human subcultures are nested fractally; there is no bottom.". Everything is like this. But I wonder if you would agree that I am capturing the essence of "so much remaining unread."

Do I want to believe that there is so much that remains unread? There seems to be an implicit optimism in this question that I do not think I can muster. I would like to believe that there is deep value contained in Trout Mask Replica or The Large Glass or The Birth of the World, to the extent that I have made some minimal effort to sift them or to try to get leads from others. I can recognize some level of significant value in Klee's Angelus Novus because I greatly value some of those his work inspired, and I can work backward to see how his work influenced theirs, and I can imagine that there is more in that piece that I lack the context to recognize.

But on the other hand, the unknowns remain infinite, and life is fleeting. I do not think that there is enough there there in any of those pieces, for me, to be worth the time digging for it would take. And so my time and effort goes to what seem to me to be more fruitful artistic pursuits.

Suppose that there were no God; even if you think this is absolutely inconceivable, try to grant it as a hypothetical.

There being no God is entirely conceivable to me. I used to be an atheist; not being an atheist now is a choice I make freely each day. The other side of that choice does not seem mysterious or inexplicable to me.

What would become of the "A" view then? Would it still make sense, in any context, or no? If there were no God, would reality shrink to the point that we actually could master it all in a rational, calculated way?

I would say no. God's existence or non-existence doesn't seem to me to have any significant impact on the correctness of the "A" view.

Are there certain attitudes - wonder, awe - which, when applied to mortals and their deeds, can easily be construed as a category error at best and blasphemy at worst?

I think so, but wouldn't mind some elaboration.

There's that quote above: "our brains have one scale, and adjust our experiences to fit." I think that's a pretty insightful description of how the human mind works: we can focus down on some emotion or some aspect until it fills our entire perception. We can work it into our past and our hopes for the future, wind ourself around it till we grow to its shape, obsess over it, bend every other aspect of our life back to it, until it seems to be all that matters, elemental, primordial, a terminal value, the hub of our universe. And we can, I think, do this with anything. The subjective perception of value has no necessary correlation to actual value. Feelings of goodness have no necessary correlation to goodness. And some forms of twisting our minds in this way appear to me to be deeply misguided or actively evil.

I spent a considerable portion of my life chasing Eros, and I went far enough for long enough down that rabbit hole to get philosophical about it, to begin trying to search for transcendence in it, to consider shaping significant portions of my life around it. In retrospect, that seems to have been, as you say, at best a category error, and at worst blasphemy.

Wrath is far sweeter. "The blood sings" is an evocative phrase, but the experience itself is a pleasure beyond easy description. The world narrows, simplifies, clarifies. The hands shake, the teeth grind, the mouth twists into a rictus of sheer pleasure and ravenous anticipation. And that is only the hot, momentary rush; nurtured, over time, a cold fury builds secret and implacable within the mind and the heart, like an avalanche of iron poised to sweep down on the adversary. Down in the chthonic depths of the inmost self, the primordial drives of cooperation, competition, and predation come alive. And high above in the heavens of the rational mind, the sunlike certainty shines clear that one's wrath is Just, that They Deserve It All And More, that this is how it should be, that this is how it must be. Then there comes the flowering of Pride; I am better than them, I will be their downfall, I will lay the snare, I will triumph... There is grandeur there, and ample room for awe and wonder. The pull is strong, easily strong enough to shape a life, to define one's entire existence. Brief though that existence might be, would it be so terrible to be a meteor, to burn so bright as to illuminate the world, even for an instant?

And yet: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Merciful, smothering calm. Stillness. A sense of hollowness, brittle, like an empty shell. Sanity returns, and with it shame. Here too, "Blasphemy" seems an appropriate term.

Basically, I would like to determine the extent to which the light of the Almighty makes everything else seem dull in comparison.

I formed most of my opinions about art back when I was an atheist, and returning to Christianity has not materially changed them. Atheist or Christian, I have always been skeptical of emotion; I do not "trust my feelings", and I do not think that others should either. They have swept me up before, and I have experienced what seemed to me a full measure of their extremities, but they eventually pass, and life resumes.

It is a contingent, empirical truth that there are a number of facts about reality which remain unknown, and therefore, on a rational cost-benefit analysis, we should refrain from hasty action. But in principle, if we could learn enough true facts, we may not need to be as prudent.

The latter. If scientists can actually demonstrate mind reading and mind control, what would be the point in arguing that they can't do so? Reality is reality. "A" is a caution against a specific lie that we have previously and are currently telling ourselves; it has no bearing on counterfactual scenarios, and can be entirely invalidated by subsequent events should scientists actually succeed in their Abolition of Man.

We do not now control nature in the sense that I perceive "B" advocates to be claiming. But it seems to me that art is much closer to "B" than it is to "A". Its scope seems clearly limited. We have not "solved" it, nor reduced it to pure engineering, but neither does it run rampant, dismaying our intentions and trampling our works. There are artistic misfortunes, but there has never been an artistic disaster, nor, I think, will there be.

I've been speaking about art as a totality - all of it, across time and space, not just one kind or type. And furthermore I disagree that commercial art is "frivolous".

I'm given to understand that one of the generally accepted defining characteristics of art is that it is, strictly speaking, unnecessary, optional, chosen rather than compelled, a luxury rather than a necessity. Further, it seems obvious to me that commercial art, made as a job to earn money, is generally considered to hold the least artistic merit, relative to works made out of sheer passion. Would you disagree?

End of Evangelion for example is an exemplary film, plainly a creative triumph of the first order, despite it being a thoroughly "commercial" work and having a mass theatrical release.

If a person lives and dies without seeing it, do you think their life was necessarily made lesser thereby? I don't particularly disagree that End of Evangelion is a "creative triumph". For that matter, I think the Madoka fanfic Fargo is a creative triumph. And I think the same of Hellboy, BLAME, and the H&K MP5K submachinegun. I think my disagreement is more about the significance of "creative triumphs" in general. I maintain that these are games we play together. Games are a good and proper part of life, and it is well that we should enjoy them. But they are not of terminal or even of very great value. Many things should outweigh them in a healthy worldview, because their scope is in fact too limited to support a central role in our existence.

If I tell you that I highly value Duchamp's The Large Glass, more than the large majority of representational works that would traditionally be considered "technically correct", would you believe that I'm being sincere? Or is this just pretension and laziness? I encourage you to be honest; I won't take it as a violation of charity if you say that I'm lying, or deluded.

I'd say I'm cautiously skeptical. I observe that people claim great value in many things. I'm confident that some of these things hold little to no value, and I'm confident that some of those claiming otherwise are either lying or deluded. For this piece in particular, I'll say that I see little to no value, am fairly confident that the value you draw would be sufficiently esoteric as to be inaccessible to me even if I were to actively pursue the context. having not yet pursued the context, I think it less likely but still possible that it holds no real value at all, and you are deluded.

It seems obvious to me that:

  • humans can generate endless rabbit holes out of anything or even nothing, for a variety of reasons.
  • These rabbit holes appear to me to vary widely in perceived value, and that my perception of value appears to correlates with the perception of others, and the features that indicate the presence or absence of value likewise correlate. In other words, value doesn't seem wholly, solipsisticly subjective.
  • Some of them seem straightforwardly explicable even from the outside, meaning that their depth appears to be illusory.
  • Some of them seem to be straightforwardly harmful to those caught in them, even if those caught in them disagree.

Given the above, discrimination is necessary, is it not? Life is fleeting. We pays our money and we takes our chances. And given the above, arguing for or against the value of a thing is useful; whoever is wrong could benefit greatly from correction.

All this is to say, I entirely recognize that value might exist even if I cannot see it. I am at this moment actively hunting for more value down a variety of rabbit holes, some of which might be completely bizarre and inexplicable to you, so it is easy for me to imagine that you likewise are mining gold down a hole that seems bizarre and inexplicable to me.

But do you recognize that value is sometimes, perhaps even often claimed falsely? And further, that sometimes those claiming to perceive the value are themselves misled? You asked if I wonder whether there might be more. I ask if you wonder if there might be less?

"He can't keep getting away with it."

It seems to me that we Trump supporters also feel this way, simply with a different referent. Hence, Trump.

But nonetheless, if the phrase "artist's temperament" is going to mean anything at all, then it must be something determinate, to the exclusion of what it is not; and I don't really see how it applies to you.

I love the act of creation, of weaving new things out of my imagination and building them up into something approximating reality, drawing connections between them, rolling them up into a big katamari-ball of associations and idea-connections and emotional inductions. This act brings me great joy and delight, and has all my life since I achieved self-awareness.

I love sharing these creations with others, and seeing joy and delight spark in their eyes, hearing their laughter and excitement, seeing them experience the induced triumph or sorrow or conviction as what I've made sweeps them up and carries them along, even if only for a moment or two. I love the communion with others innate to this act, the joyful seduction of drawing them out of the material and mundane into the immaterial and fantastical.

I am vain enough to desire that it is my creations that should strike a fire in their minds, that some part of me should take root in those around me, to see some part of myself reproduced in the mind of others. I want to make a mark on those around me.

But in much the same way, I love partaking in the creations of others, being swept away or inspired in turn, and I love taking pieces of what they have made and kitbashing them together into something "new" of my own. I love finding the Buddha-nature in something, finding which parts of it hook and pull, which motivate, where the payload lies and through which channels the current flows, and I love how this knowledge, once gained, strengthens and invigorates my own creations. It's a push and pull, give and take, cooperation and competition, like all of the best things in life. This, to me, is the essence of the "artist's temperament", the center around which any dividing line should be drawn.

Do you disagree? And if so, how would you define the center of the "artist's temperament"? The distinction that stands out from what you've written appears to be the idea of the mysterious, the numinous, the "losing of one's head", the encounter of something incomprehensibly vast or primordial. You are correct that I see art from a "B" perspective, or close enough for purposes of discussion. What I don't get is where you're getting the makings of an "A" perspective from with regards to art, other than sheer assertion. I can imagine that there's some sense I lack, some frequency I'm deaf and blind to, but I can also imagine an invisible dragon in my garage. How to proceed?

More on this soon, hopefully.

I had J.C. Denton read me the Unabomber manifesto. 10/10, would critique industrial civilization again.

I take the "A" view on AI art, and you take the "B" view.

In that discussion, "A" is something approximating "we are huddled around a small kernel of knowledge, surrounded by vast, dark unknowns, hoping to grow that kernel a little larger", and "B" is something approximating "We reside in a well-lit framework of knowledge that encompasses the small, fragmentary set of unknowns that remain to be eliminated", where these are referencing what we comprehend about the real world and our place in it.

But even before AI, art is our creation, is it not? Where within art are the vast unknowns that could loom over us?

We make images for our own pleasure. We find that some images please us more than others. We discover rules and techniques that optimize the pleasure generated by the images; these rules and techniques clearly derive from our own psychology and history and nature, but they seem both discoverable and explicable, and can and have been reduced to engineering. What part of this does not fit within the "B" perspective? What realities of art does it neglect, which could form an argument for "A"?

With regards to philosophy and epistemology, I would argue that "A" is better, because it better fits observable reality and the historical record, while "B" appears to me to consistently generate notable disasters; a straightforward argument from prudence. But commercial and popular art of the sort we are discussing here is inherently frivolous, so where would an argument from prudence even be grounded?

Again, I am an artist by trade and by temperament. I do not claim to have perfect insight into the nature of Art, but neither do I accept bald assertions of deeper mysteries wholly unknown and invisible to me. I have spent the better part of a lifetime observing how the sausage gets made; I can accept that there may be things of value that I do not understand or am not wired to appreciate, but I also can observe that much of what people claim to value as "art" is in fact pretention covering for laziness or naked greed. I have known too many artists to believe that the pursuit of or mere association with art confers any special virtues beyond those innate to discipline and skill, or indeed any significant insight into philosophy or truth. Beauty and Truth are not synonyms, at least for any common definition of those terms.

All that being said, what am I missing? What is the "A" view, with regards to art?

But freedom has a limit; it is, after all, only one ideal among many, one concept among many, no matter how charming of a concept it may be. I can't actually bring myself to get upset if someone gets canceled over AI art. That's how high the stakes are for me - my other "principles" turn to dust in the face of this reality.

Why, though? What is it about AI art that prompts such outrage?

I'm an artist. The AI is pretty clearly doing what I do. Any argument I see for objecting to AI art applies equally well to artists generally. To the extent that AI art infringes on copyright, we all infringe in exactly the same way when we learn to draw by copying other peoples' work. AI is very likely going to put me out of a job. But why should this be objectionable? My job is a job. The AI won't take away my ability to draw or paint or model. To the extent that it reduces the value of my drawing and painting and modelling to zero in an economic sense, why is this a bad thing, when it wasn't a bad thing to invent lace machines or lathes or jackhammers or whatever other labor-saving machines we might care to name? It won't stop me from making the art I actually care to make, and while the idea of having to change careers is quite scary, I certainly won't be in this boat alone, and I imagine that we have a reasonable collective chance of muddling through.

This makes me a hypocrite; but so what? If I contradict myself, then very well, I contradict myself. Some instincts are too powerful to be ignored.

...But then, why would you expect others to respect your own appeals to freedom, when you've concluded that no one actually cares about Freedom as such as a terminal value? You roll out the Shall Nots for something as trivial as AI generated art, but don't want people to roll them out for sexual ethics or homogeneity of values?

My understanding is that there are a couple considerations. First, the studs used for catching are much lighter than legs used for landing. Lighter weight for the landing components means more payload.

The other part is that the engines produce blast shockwaves which reflect off the landing surface and back into the engines, causing stress and potentially damage. Catching the rocket well off the ground prevents this.

In the case of Hlynka, his rule-breaking posts were generally highly visible, and usually when he broke the rules he did it with gusto. He simply was not willing to abide the rules, so eventually he ran out of second chances and was banned. I don't think him having a "fan-club" of reporters mattered much one way or the other.

concur that time will tell, and if there's any solid evidence of intent, I'm open to hearing it.

My understanding is that the fake ID and fake plates is standard sovereign citizen behavior. they make their own license plates and IDs routinely (or use novelty reproductions) because it's part of the sovereign citizen memplex; they believe they're the "real" united states government, so they issue themselves "official" ID. I've heard he claims not to be a sovereign citizen, but I'm not sure if that's just a permutation of the meme, where he'd claim to actually be a "free citizen traveling" or whatever not-actually-a-distinction.

Multiple weapons isn't that weird. When I travel with guns, I usually travel with more than one.

A Canadian lady apparently tried Ricin.

For this incident, my current understanding is that the only evidence that he intended an assassination attempt is a loaded weapon in his trunk, while he denies any such intention, and appears to be an enthusiastic Trump supporter. My bet is that he was not actually an assassin.

your measurement definitely beats my eyeballing. and yeah, I'd be mystified at how either one could end up in that position in a kid's head, on purpose. Like, you need the bullet to have lost 80-90% of its velocity before it's going to stop like that, so we're probably talking high-angle fire at long ranges.

they use 7.62 NATO for snipers and machine guns, IIRC, and .50 for HMGs. that bullet looks like a .50.

You're assuming that's a 7.62x51 projectile. It looks like a .50 BMG to me, given the relative scale to the head, unless that's a newborn.

Organization and management is also labor.

There is a reason SpaceX has developed and deployed this capability, and none of the national space organizations and none of the private space organizations succeeded or even tried.

According to Musk, they're explicitly prevented from hiring migrants due to Federal ITAR rules, which means they're being sued by the Feds for obeying a Federal law.

This would be more effective the more this perpetrator could serve as an effigy of the outgroup. Life in prison for a single easily mockable overweight Democratic Party apparatchik transwoman would have gone a long way to restore faith in institutions in many Deplorables, and if that person did in fact perform election fraud it would not even be unjust under the standard American understanding of justice.

I think we're past that, unfortunately. Toss out a scapegoat, and that will be seen as "here's the one they couldn't cover up, just imagine what else they're hiding".

Trump is an instructive example here, I think. I would argue that he has been investigated pretty thoroughly, and now he's even been prosecuted, tried and convicted. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that, by any reasonable standard, he doesn't have any skeletons left in the closet, and what we see is what we get. By contrast, the sense I get from Blue Tribe is not "the process has succeeded, we have discovered his crimes and punished him for them", but rather "we've barely scratched the surface, he's obviously guilty of a thousand times worse offences, and the fact that he isn't in jail is an indictment of the system." Further, it seems to me that the impeachments and prosecutions and conviction (and, one might argue, the assassination attempts) have only fed the appetite for a dramatic conclusion. People want to see the mammoth brought down under the spears of the tribe, and every spear thrown only increases that desire.

I think Democrats are wrong to take this stance with Trump, but I do not think they are obviously wrong. A similar argument was made for Bill and Hillary Clinton, and it held no water with me for what seem to me to be solid, entirely factual reasons. If we look at non-partisan examples, crime lords for instance, we see that despite intense investigation and prosecution, often they are only formally held to account for a small fraction of their misdeeds.

More generally, the problem is that there isn't a "we". Reds and Blues do not perceive sufficient shared values and interests to make power-sharing practical. Elections are a vast, opaque system, and the Federal Government they maintain makes them seem miniscule and transparent as glass by comparison. It turns out that our system requires more social trust than you need for credit cards to work, and we don't have enough any more so the system is breaking down.

If it's gorilla war, I'd say all bets are off.

It really seems like you're focusing on the worst possible examples.

That's pretty much the definition of what a "superspreader" is, isn't it? And the reason that term is now common knowledge is that, at least hypothetically, superspreaders can cause immense amounts of harm by spreading infectious diseases.

This feels like blaming all conservatives for the tiny minority involved in school shootings.

Well, let's roll out the comparison and see where it leads us. Roughly half of gay men in America died to the aids epidemic. What percentage of that number do you think died because they scrupulously avoided risky activities, and just got really, really unlucky?

Meanwhile for COVID or school shooting deaths, I don't think either correlate with Conservative behavior at all, though it is absolutely routine to see such claims made. Having seen such claims made, I'm backtracking the logic to a situation where there does, in fact, appear to be a correlation.

Do you feel that other groups should be held to a similar standard, even one's that you're a part of?

This standard has been applied to groups I'm a part of, and using false data to boot.

Does that really sound like a group that's trying to spread AIDS and opposed to restrictions on homosexual activity?

Did their efforts work? Not before the disease killed roughly half the male homosexuals in America and went on to be a global pandemic. My understanding of the history is that activists arguing for restrictions were outnumbered by those arguing for no restrictions until it was much, much too late, and even the restrictions they belatedly put in place were not enough to halt the spread.

Are you comfortable saying the same things about these groups as you are about homosexuals?

The actual record of how the disease spread and who it killed tells the story. AIDS is spread overwhelmingly by risky behavior. If Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately contracting the disease, that tells me they're disproportionately engaging in risky behavior. What's the alternative explanation?

I don't get it - you seem opposed to lockdowns for spreading an airborne pandemic that threatens everyone near you, but you also seem to be advocating for lockdowns against a pandemic which only threatens sexual partners?

In the first place, it seems pretty clear to me that the lockdowns and the vaccines failed at their defined objectives. COVID was too infectious to be controlled, the vaccines were not terribly effective and had side effects, and top-down government mandates caused much harm for little to no benefit.

Despite this, those objecting or resisting absurdly massive and unbelievably draconian interventions into every facet of our lives were treated like antisocial scum, and in many cases had the resources of the state turned against us to punish resistance in any form. This was cheered by the Blue population broadly, based on widespread lies told by academic and government agencies, and the result was demonization of people like myself.

I am pointing out that the gay community was the actual epicenter of a much worse disease than COVID, and the individual action of the members of that community evidently played a pivotal role in the disease becoming endemic, resulting in dozens of millions of deaths. The disease was straightforwardly more serious than COVID. The actions taken to spread the disease were straightforwardly more objectionable, and the end result seems significantly worse. Yet the standard narrative I observe is that American Gays were the victims, and Lockdown/Vaccine Mandate opponents were the straightforward victims.

It seems to me that this narrative is built on a stack of lies, and so I am kicking at them to see what happens.

If you think the "coordinated meanness" deployed against lockdown/mandate opponents was appropriate, what was the appropriate level of "coordinated meanness" for gay men when AIDS got rolling?

For that matter, weren't there plenty of people selfishly spreading COVID? People who went to major events and caught flights, despite knowing they were feeling sick? Isn't that selfish behavior that we should want to punish?

If we're going to punish selfish behavior, I'd like to imagine we'd punish it based on fair and impartial standards, and not play tribal favorites.

...What's your guess at the average number of sexual partners per month for a Gay man in California or New York in the era immediately predating AIDS?

That was pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

the question was prompted by seeing an advert for a self-published book, with cover-art in a very eye-catching watercolor style which immediately triggered my "that's AI" sense, and it made me curious about the state of the market these days. I've had several experiences of what I suppose you could describe as AI paranoia, the creeping suspicion that the bots are getting past my personal filter. I figure the best way to tell where the tide is would be to see where peoples' boats currently are.

Would you consider conservatives dangerous, due to their behavior in spreading the Covid plague?

I don't think Conservative behavior had any significantly disproportional impact on spreading the Covid plague. But then, I observe that there were a lot of people who disagreed very strongly with my assessment, who called people like my own family members "plague rats", who advocated firing them from their jobs or even putting them in camps, or any of a wide variety of social or legal sanctions in between.

Meanwhile, I observe that Homosexual (and hard drug user) behavior appears to have had a very significant impact on spreading AIDS as widely as possible in the early years of the outbreak. The contrast between the treatment of those opposed to lockdowns or vaccine mandates for COVID, and those who for selfish reasons actively spread an extremely lethal plague as widely as possible is my whole point here.

Have you considered that part of why AIDS was so dangerous, was because we didn't really have the concept of "AIDS" back then?

My understanding is that from fairly early on, they understood that there was an infectious, lethal pathogen, and they understood that it was being spread primarily by homosexual practices and drug use. Further, my understanding is that some gay men intentionally spread it as much as possible, and more gay men staunchly opposed any restrictions on homosexual activity. Eventually this opposition was at least partially overcome, but by then AIDS was endemic.

Does that description seem inaccurate to you?

hey @gattsuru - you got any information on the state of the freelance/fan art market these days, in whatever portions are adjacent to you?