Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
I guess it's not clear to me why the memetic change being driven by genetic change is different from the general memetic change. To concretize a bit, I imagine a church founded by, say, Catholics. Consider two evolutions. In one case the descendants of the original founders (for whatever reason) convert to Mormonism and convert the theology of the church the same. In the second case the descendants of the original founders gradually move away or stop attending, but newcomers move in and gradually convert the church toward a Mormon theology. It seems to me that the church is no longer the same church in either case, whether the members are descended from the founders or not.
I also think the degree to which continuity is thenetic varies by institution. Consider, for example, an institution like "The Supreme Court of the United States." Or "The United States Congress." To the extent these institutions are continuous through time I think it is in primarily a thenetic way. In their form or structure.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
To my mind there's a conspicuous absence of a fifth church:
- Church Five is a multi-generational congregation, with limited influence from newcomers. Perhaps it's in a remote place where the population doesn't change all that much. However over time the subsequent generations find themselves drawn to other beliefs and practices. So much so that after some number of generations there is little in it that would be recognizable to prior generations.
Is my hypothetical Church Five more like a Church Three or more like a Church Two? Is it identifiably the "same" church? It seems like a theory that permits continuity to be established by either genetics or memes would be constrained to say Church Five is the "same" church in the relevant sense.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Imagine you meet a woman who must be in the 100th percentile for promiscuity (at least in terms of numbers of sexual partners); who's had sex with men who were cheating on their girlfriends with her; who's explicitly encouraged married men to cheat on their wives. Maybe she'll tell you that's it's just a persona she's playing and she's nothing like that in real life (or maybe not). Either way, are you going to take the risk of introducing her to your husband or boyfriend? Maybe you'll counter that you're extremely sex-positive, without so much as a single SWERF bone in your body, and that you'd never get into a relationship with a man unless you trusted him completely – but I would hazard a guess that that does not describe the average woman. And a woman you don't trust to leave alone with your husband or boyfriend (or even your potential husband or boyfriend) is not your friend, no matter how you slice it.
I guess two things that come to mind.
1. I notice the shift in goalposts from "she doesn't have any friends" to "the average woman probably wouldn't be her friend." I'll agree to the latter, but the former doesn't follow from that.
2. This also seems to ignore the existence of both happily single and lesbian women, for whom the potential partner stealing is presumably not an issue.
I agree that she is above average. The point I was making about the average number of films a female performer stars in before leaving the industry is that a lengthy career is not the norm. IAFD has an "active from–to" field listing a performer's period of activity: if one were to scrape this data it should be trivial to find the average duration of a female performer's career. Given what I've read about the industry and what I know about the relationship between a woman's age and her perceived attractiveness (her value on the sexual marketplace), I would be astonished if the average female performer's career lasts for ten years or more. I'll do some digging and see if I can find a definitive answer to this question.
I don't disagree with anything in this paragraph, I just question the accuracy of extrapolating Bonnie Blue's career longevity from the average porn star's career longevity, given the many other ways in which she is not average.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I intended to convey something like (2), appreciate the clarification.
I am highly sceptical that Bonnie Blue has friends of any kind, at least as you and I would understand them.
Why?
It's a well-established finding that a woman's sexual desirability tends to decline over time, which has obvious implications for a sex worker's expected earnings and career longevity. Of course there are women who can keep it up well into their forties, but such people are the exception. This deep dive into the stats of the Internet Adult Film Database found that 47% of female performers leave the industry after filming fewer than three films.
Ok. But I think we have already established Bonnie Blue is hardly average. I am not sure how to compare traditional films to OnlyFans but I'm confident she has done more than the equivalent of three.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I think you overestimate the attention to detail people have. There's a bluesky thread here full of mistakes in AI-generated captions on anime from Crunchyroll. I cannot believe a human fluent in English read all of these along the lines they are supposed to caption and signed off on them. You would think a very simple and fundamental step in review would be "and then a human reads the caption alongside the line it's captioning" but no! Clearly not!
To take another example, in a legal filing by Anthropic their AI messed up a citation to a journal article. The AI got the journal, page number, and link all correct but got the title and authors wrong. The attorney's declaration was very clear that if you went to the link the citation provided it was the correct article (with correct title and authors). You might think a step in verifying an AI generated citation includes "do the cited title and authors match the actual ones" but, again, apparently not!
Given the rank incompetence with which companies deploy AI I am happy to believe HBO just put the un-edited originals in some AI upscaler and hit publish on the result, without any human sitting down and watching it all the way through.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
Assuming that 800,000 figure is correct in the first place (there’s probably room for doubt but that is beside the point) I think the simple explanation is that society generally condones or at least tolerates porn “actresses” making large amounts of money because people generally understand that such women are condemning themselves to social damnation with assumptions about their reputations that may very easily turn out to be naïve and thus deserve to be at least financially well-compensated by simps whom society considers to be loser chumps anyway.
This paragraph inverts the justificatory burden, to my mind. If society wants to prohibit some profession they need a good reason for it. Thing are permitted by default, not forbidden. In the United States, at least, it's not like no one ever tried! They were consistently prevented by courts ruling that the first amendment protected the production and distribution of pornography. This in a sense just moves the discussion "up" a level, why not amend the constitution to permit restriction on pornography? But prohibition of pornography has never enjoyed that widespread degree of support.
Warehouse workers and information security officers have a certain level of respectable standing within their social circles. The likes of Bonnie Blue don’t. Women understand that she condemned herself to the equivalent of crack whore Hell.
Do they? I am highly skeptical the people who Bonnie Blue is friends with in real life regard her this way.
It’s very obvious that she’ll never find any sort of respectable job. She’ll never be a secretary, a nurse, a teacher, an HR manager, an accountant etc.
Why would she want any of these jobs? At 800k/month She will make the lifetime salary of many of these professions in a few years. Comparing to the warehouse worker, she made the equivalent of ~30 years doing that work in one month! It's also kind of funny if you read the first paragraph of her wiki page:
Blue was born in 1999[1] in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire. Before beginning her pornographic film career, she worked in finance recruitment for the National Health Service (NHS) and was married. In 2021, her marriage ended and she moved to Australia, although she told Cosmopolitan UK in 2024 that her ex-husband still worked with her "behind-the-scenes".
She had one of those respectable jobs and gave it up!
She’ll very likely stay in the porn business or become a “sex worker” or be unemployed. Maybe she’ll become a porn director and people will pretend like she has talent for it. Either way, everybody knows she’ll age out rapidly.
If you had collectively starred in/produced dozens or hundreds of porn videos that made millions of pounds, wouldn't you be good at it? Why would people have to pretend you were good? As far as longevity Alexis Texas and Angela White have been doing it for over 20 years. I don't know what their earnings look like over that time but it's clearly an industry you can stay in if you have the talent and desire.
Now you might make the argument that she brought it all upon herself and thus should not be getting any sympathy and deserves poverty. But society doesn’t apply such norms to young women because they are seen as possessing innate biological value and also as naïve and easily misled. We’re aware that most young women who get drawn to porning probably don’t fully understand the long-term consequences of their actions, with the explanation being that they were fed modern feminism their entire lives and thus assume that women no longer live in sexual shame and that selling access to your orifices in camera is empowering. We’re also aware that this is a lie but modern feminism benefits well-off middle-class women so we’re not prepared to just jettison it for this reason.
She clearly has a talent that means she doesn't "deserve" poverty. Even before she was getting rich from OnlyFans she seems to have had a fine career. I'm also skeptical she wants or needs my sympathy. I suspect things are going pretty well, from her perspective. There are plenty of things about the current pornography industry I think are bad but few, if any, seem to apply to Bonnie Blue.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
Without saying too much I'll say I've been part of an effort by my employer to use LLMs to identify security issues. They do a good job analyzing pieces of code in isolation for particular issues but a limited context window prevents them from finding end to end issues. For example, the LLM might flag that there's no input validation for function XYZ, but that's because the input validation happened much earlier in the scenario. Thinking about this the reverse way, generating exploits, probably means assuming that you've gotten the payload you want in the place where it will be parsed how you want which can often be the hard part.
As an aside Jesus Christ this is ugly code. I am very glad the brief time I spent working with Javascript was with Typescript.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
Here is the FBI agent affidavit in support of probable cause for his arrest. The evidence breaks down like:
1. Based on Cole's credit card transaction history he purchased all the parts that were themselves part of the bombs as well as other safety tools one might use to make a bomb across 2019/2020. Sample paragraph (not gonna quote all of them):
Both pipe bombs were manufactured using a 1” x 8” galvanized pipe with markings consistent with a particular manufacturer’s (the “Pipe Manufacturer”) product labeling. COLE purchased a total of six galvanized pipes of this size and shape on or about June 1, June 8, and November 16, 2020. The purchases were made at two different Home Depot location in northern Virginia. According to the Pipe Manufacturer, approximately 26,000 of these items from Pipe Manufacturer were sold in 2020, and over 22,000 of these items were sold to Home Depot.
(continue for the end caps, wiring, steel wool, kitchen timers, etc.)
2. Analysis of cellphone data shows that Cole's phone was connected to towers in the vicinity of where the bombs were placed at the same time surveillance footage shows the bomb planter in the area. Sample paragraph (5 or so of these, covering from 7:39 to 8:24):
At approximately 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 59323, which faces southeast (approximately 120˚) from its location at 103 G Street, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector A”). Also at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 126187, which faces east (approximately 90˚) from its location at 200 Independence Avenue, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector B”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:39:32 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked westbound on D Street, Southeast and then turned southbound on South Capitol Street, Southeast. These locations are consistent with the coverage areas of Sector A and B.
3. A license plate reader caught Cole's vehicle in the area shortly before the first security camera footage captures the bomb planter. Cole's cell phone also starts communicating with towers in the area shortly after.
COLE is the registered owner of a 2017 Nissan Sentra with a Virginia license plate. On January 5, 2021, at approximately 7:10 p.m., COLE’s Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a License Plate Reader at the South Capitol Street exit from Interstate 395 South, which is less than one-half mile from the location where the individual who placed the devices was first observed on foot near North Carolina and New Jersey Avenues, Southeast at 7:34 p.m. Approximately 5 minutes later, at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE began to interact with Provider towers in the area.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
Sounds like your coworker needs to learn about pescetarianism.
I admit I'm struggling a little to understand what the actual policy change is here. Downthread @ToaKraka posted this USCIS Policy Alert. That Policy Alert points to this Presidential Proclamation as the source of the 19 countries. That Presidential Proclamation was issued all the way back in June. So the National Guard shooting was the impetus for USCIS to implement a 6-month-old Presidential Proclamation? I guess I'm also finding it a little hard to follow as, like, a matter of logic. An Afghan national who started working with the US in 2011 in Afghanistan and was brought to the United States in 2021 along with a bunch of other US-allied Afghans then was granted asylum in 2025 and shoots two national guardsmen later that same year, therefore we must restrict immigration from Burma. Huh?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10d ago
What was the legal justification for killing them?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
If it is not a "war", if the people the admin is blowing up are not lawful combatants nor achieving military objectives, then it is murder instead.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I mean, the Post's reporting is that the order was to kill everybody. That doesn't sound like the killing of the two initial survivors was incidental. That may turn out to be wrong, of course, but if it's accurate I am pretty confident saying it's a war crime.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
Someone online pointed out that 18.3.2.1 of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual reads:
The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal. Similarly, orders to kill defenseless persons who have submitted to and are under effective physical control would also be clearly illegal. On the other hand, the duty not to comply with orders that are clearly illegal would be limited in its application when the subordinate is not competent to evaluate whether the rule has been violated.
That second strike, if it happened, is literally in the manual as an example of an illegal order that would be a violation of the laws of war. I am as-yet unclear on how involved Trump or Hegseth were in this operation but it sounds like, minimally, everyone in the chain of command between Admiral Frank Bradley and whomever actually executed the strike is, at least, a war criminal.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
12d ago
I've worked with probably a dozen or so Indian coworkers over the years and this does not describe any interaction I've ever had with them. I am also deeply skeptical that a kiwi farms post from a thread entitled "The India Menace - Street shitting, unsanitary practices, scams, Hindu extremism & other things" which cites no evidence is going to contain accurate generalizations about Indians.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
12d ago
I'm not sure how common it is but it's something of a running joke among Indian immigrants at my company. That you go from having servants who do all the cooking, cleaning, etc to the United States where you have to do all of that yourself, even if lots of other amenities are available that aren't in India. "Yea the air isn't smoggy all the time, but I have to clean my own toilet!"
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
16d ago
I mean, maybe I'm the weird one but I don't think being hypothetically willing to do certain things is worth much compared to actually doing things. Would I kill a stranger to protect my wife? Sure. Do I think I will ever have to actually do that? Almost certainly not. Does that fact, like, oblige some gratitude or something on my wife's part? Create some responsibility to me? I don't think so. If it were a thing I actually had done, especially more than once, I would think differently but I don't think my hypothetical willingness generates much of an obligation on the part of others.
There's a CHH substack post that gets at a pretty similar theme (if anyone knows how to un-paywall substack articles let me know): You'll Kill Marauders, But Will You Change a Diaper?
The gist is that a lot of men seem to envision being a husband or father as entailing a lot of willingness to do violence and their contribution to these roles as being that willingness. This is, however, not a practical description of what is required to be a husband or father in a developed country. It's not to say that willingness is bad, but it is not something that is likely to be very useful.
But anyway, I think there are quite a few modern-day men who imagine fatherhood in all its glory, but are mostly imagining being a lord from Game of Thrones. In 2025, fatherhood means picking a kid up from school, buying a new backpack, and signing them up for swimming classes. I get that some men won’t do that, but even in the most trad households, fatherhood is remarkably light on the killing or even “protecting.” Yes, it’s good in theory for a man to be capable of protecting his family, but your average man will never be in a situation where he has to do that, whereas he will be in many situations where he has to attend his teenager’s terrible improv show or similar.
In fact, if your ultimate goal is keeping your children safe (and I think that’s a good goal) the most important dangers to avoid are things that fail to scratch the itch for grandiose violence. This includes things like carseat safety, pool safety, and social media. That’s not to say it’s useless to know how to take down a potential aggressor on the street (I’ve written before about the fact that unhinged stranger aggression in cities isn’t something to ignore) but in all likelihood, the biggest dangers to your children will be boring things: cars, pools, unsecured firearms, and mental illness leading to self-harm. No swords required!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
There was also some reporting by Punchbowl claiming other Republican members may resign as well. The House is currently 219-213 in favor of Republicans. With Democrats expected to win 2 upcoming special elections for currently empty seats and Republicans expected to win an upcoming special election for a currently filled seat. With those results and down MTG the House would stand at 218-215. Republicans would only be able to afford to lose one vote on any legislation and four resignations would give Democrats the majority.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
Has this objection been used before? Conversely, have previous administrations gotten away with repeated interim positions?
The opinion talks a little about the history. Pre-1986 there was no mechanism for the Attorney General to appoint USAs at all. Between 1986 and 2006 it seems there were a couple times the Attorney General re-appointed someone, but no one challenged it. In 2006 Congress abolished (c)(2) and (d) altogether. Then in 2007 it brought them back.
I seem to recall Trump I having a lot of trouble filling similar positions. Trump II has done a much better job on that front, so I’m a little surprised that they left the goal open. With control of the Senate, Republicans had to have the option, right?
For Halligan, specifically, I think there were timing issues. Siebert resigned on 9/19 and the statute of limitations for Comey's charges would be up on 9/30. So that's ~7 business days to get Halligan confirmed in the Senate and secure an indictment. Halligan was ultimately appointed the 22nd and the indictment was docketed on the 25th.
For the others, part of the problem is that the way they've made them "Acting" officials under the FVRA means they can't go ask the Senate for confirmation. The FVRA generally prohibits the nominee for a position from also serving as an "Acting" official in the role they are nominee for, subject to some exemptions that don't apply here.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
New updates in the Comey and James cases. Both indictments dismissed because Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and so all her actions as such are void and without effect. Comey and James opinions. Though the two are substantially identical, having both been authored by the same judge. These dismissals are without prejudice meaning the government can try and secure further indictments. Although, in Comey's case this faces some additional hurdles since the statute of limitations for his offense expired several days after the first indictment against him was secured.
Note that a similar dispute is playing out in New Jersey with respect to the appointment of Alina Habba as United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey and in Nevada with respect to Sigal Chattah's appointment as United States Attorney for the District of Nevada. These cases are a little more complicated than Halligan's due to implications of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act but they arose due to circumstances like what Halligan is facing now.
At the heart of these disputes is 28 USC 546 which provides:
(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant.
(b) The Attorney General shall not appoint as United States attorney a person to whose appointment by the President to that office the Senate refused to give advice and consent.
(c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the earlier of—(1) the qualification of a United States attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title; or
(2) the expiration of 120 days after appointment by the Attorney General under this section.
(d) If an appointment expires under subsection (c)(2), the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled. The order of appointment by the court shall be filed with the clerk of the court.
The dispute is principally about whether the Attorney General is permitted to make successive 120-day appointments or whether the Attorney General gets a single 120-day appointment and then when that expires the District Court makes the appointment as to who shall be United States Attorney. In Halligan's case Erik Siebert had already been appointed for 120 days earlier this year and was appointed by the district court upon expiration of that appointment. He then resigned under pressure to prosecute James and Comey, whereupon Bondi purported to appoint Halligan under 28 USC 546. Naturally, the court finds that Attorney General Bondi has had her 120 day appointment and so authority to appoint a new USA for EDVA lies with the district court.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
21d ago
FYI I'm not American if you mean that as a personal 'you'. I'm just observing what I see in Anglo countries more generally. But of course many Americans have their own ideas of what it means to be an American!
I did intend that more in royal-you kind of way, not necessarily you specifically. I appreciate the clarification.
Most of the time, more people think this way. But there is a window - broader than the Overton window - that you have to stay inside, or you lose the Mandate of Heaven.
I assert that:
The judiciary must, most of the time, make decisions that people broadly agree with and produce outcomes that they broadly like. This is a fundamental and unappreciated requirement of the Rule of Law.
Perhaps I should take a different tact. My impression, based on polling, is that Trump's deployment of the National Guard to DC is not just unlawful, it is also unpopular. Here is a Quinnipiac poll from August finding voters disapprove 56-41. Here is an NPR-Ipsos poll from late September showing a disapproval of 47-37 for DC that rises to 52-34 when the question is about National Guard deployment to "your local area." To the extent Trump's resistance to the judiciary is premised on having popular support over them, I do not think that is the case with this issue.
I find this essay very revealing on the topic. It mentions at one point an interview with Captain Preston, a minuteman who had fought against the British.
Thanks for the article! I'm enjoying it so far.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
21d ago
Yes, that is the answer of one faction. The answer of the other faction is that they do not trust Jia Cobb and her ilk to determine what is and is not lawful and correct (and they do not always believe that those are the same thing). You can hate that people think that way, but they do in fact think that way.
I have no doubt that people think that way. I think that way about a great many decisions of our current Supreme Court. But I think the government should obey them anyway. I thought the Supreme Court judgement striking down Biden's student loan forgiveness was not a well reason decision, but it still would have been wrong of him to say to hell with the court and do it anyway.
If you think we should only have a judiciary if the judiciary makes decisions you agree with and produces outcomes you like and when that doesn't happen we should instead have a single executive take the law and its determinations into their own hands then I think you are anti-American. You are clearly opposed to the fundamentals of the American experiment and what it means to be an American.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
21d ago
Suddenly announcing that illegal orders from the President shouldn't be followed may literally be a hypothetical claiming that to the extent the orders are unlawful they don't need to be followed. But what it actually means is "the President is giving out illegal orders now and they should be disobeyed now," even if the speech doesn't literally include the word "now".
The quoted section is just a factual description of what is occurring, according to the branch of government charged with making that kind of determination.
All the way back in 2019 Cory Doctorow wrote a short story about people radicalized into doing violence against health insurance companies due to claim denials. In his story it was a bombing rather than assassination, but still.
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