JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
15hr ago
Lack of spaces makes it harder to read for me, but otherwise for work code, it's coded into the IDE and whatever it is it is, I usually don't spend any mental energy dwelling on that. For my own code, I usually have everything set up for K&R.
JarJarJedi
23hr ago
Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were looted in Gaza. Hamas security forces retaliated by killing over 20 gang members involved in the looting. Israel cited distribution challenges as the main obstacle in aiding Gaza.
Here I'd like to call out the fact that I don't see a reason why Hamas is any more entitled to have the food than the "gang members". Hamas is a gang like any other, maybe the largest and the most violent one, and maybe having the most success in controlling the food sent from abroad and thus maintaining its edge over other gangs - but I don't see why they would be allowed any more legitimacy than any other gang. The main obstacle is, indeed, that the food ends up in hands of violent gangs - either Hamas or other one - and the only way to get fed is to either associate with one of the gangs or to pay them for the food, and if you don't want to do either, you get no food. This is a huge problem but we shouldn't pretend Hamas is any different, and they have legitimate claim while "looters" do not.
JarJarJedi
23hr ago
If it were about the dude in a dress and his particular emotions, it'd be so nice little summer problem. I mean sure, there are mean people around that would bully everybody who's different, and they'd want to bully the dude in a dress so hard because it's so easy. But that's like 1970s problem. We are in 2024 now, and our problems are much different. Our problems are the dude in a dress now is the school teacher, and the parents aren't even allowed to know what and how he is teaching the kids, and the dude in a dress has full unrestricted access to spaces where the girls and the women were supposed to be in the company of women and if you mention there's something wrong with that, you are the one who is suppressed. The dude in a dress is now the government functionary, and we're supposed to put up with his antics on the job and hire more dudes in dresses because otherwise we're nazis, and if he directs the vast machine of governmental oppression towards people he doesn't like - it's ok, the dudes in a dress deserve our deference, so we must say nothing.
We are supposed to literally think the dude in a dress is no different from any woman in any way from the moment he dons the dress. Nobody of course thinks that, but you are supposed to pretend you do, or bad things will happen to you. We are supposed to loudly proclaim things we know are false, because the empathy to the dude in a dress is more important than telling the truth. And this is not just a voluntary choice you can make out of sympathy for the dude - if you disagree, bad things are definitely going to happen to you. We are supposed to think a dude in a dress competing in sports with women is beating them easily (sometimes "beating" very literally) because of his great sportsmanship and not because he's a frickin dude. We're supposed to watch the dude in a dress convince mentally vulnerable kids to cut their private parts off and change their lives forever and think it's normal and a kid can't decide to drink a bud light until they are frickin 21, but they are capable of informed consent to overhaul their whole body biology forever in kindergarten. We're supposed to institute speech police and abandon freedom of speech (and freedom of scientific inquiry) because this particular dude may feel bad if somebody says something he doesn't like. While of course a dude in a normal attire does not get such reverence (not that I advocate he should, but at least that would be some kind of insane tyrannical equality). We're supposed to reform our whole language and culture and brand anyone who says something as vile as "pregnant woman" as a violent criminal, while actual violent criminals get away with wrist slaps at best, because see, it's the dude in a dress, shouldn't you have some empathy here?
You notice how it's not about the dude in a dress and his problems anymore?
I am not saying the old problem aren't a problem. I recognize it is. But it is not the problems that we as a society are dealing with right now. I'm very willing to have a little empathy for a poor dude with mental health issues (I'm even go as far as inventing some way to say "mental health issues" without it sounding demeaning, after all, there's nothing shameful in having a migraine, why it should be shameful to have broken gender identification?), but that is not helping with the real issues now. Sure, I am going to give the dude as much empathy as I can find in myself, but given how many of those dudes are involved in making the actual current problems worse, the reserves are limited.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Russia has consistently had full coverage of entire Ukraine territory with its weaponry, there's nothing new in that. Ukrainian government is well aware of that fact.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Pivdenmash is indeed a large missile factory, and has been repeatedly attacked during the course of the war.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Not an ICBM, a mid-range MIRV missile.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
he'd declare a national emergency and use military assets to institute a mass deportation program
That makes a lot of sense. Military knows how to house, feed and clothe large groups of people, and has logistical chains to do stuff like that. Why reinvent the wheel?
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Why should you require more effort from top-level posts
It''s a service to me, the reader. And I am thankful for it. Twitter link requires me to click through to see what's going on and then guess why the author thinks it's interesting. Minimal effort post to describe what it's about and why it's interesting does this work for me, and I am grateful for it.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
The world that has no recognizable rules would be incomprehensible for us. You can't have "magic" - at least fantasy type magic, with wizards, magic books, spells etc. - in such a world. Why would doing a gesture and saying "imperio!" produce any consistent result in such a world? Maybe once it would put a person under your control, another time it would turn them into a frog, and another time it would turn your own head into vanilla ice cream. How would you "teach" magic in such a setting? How would you explain this world to anybody and make them involved in it? Basically the only thing you can tell the reader is "any shit can happen shrug". People would be unable to emphasize with such a world and imagine themselves being part of it. The beings living in such a setting would certainly have very little in common with humans as we know them. Maybe H.P. Lovecraft would be able to work with it, but even his nightmare worlds have some rules.... We need rules because our own world has rules, so our brains would be unable to comprehend a world which doesn't work this way. And Rowling is certainly going with the standard here, her magic system is not chaotic, it is set up as having very definite rules - in fact, the whole plot of the series relies on the fact that the rules of magic work in certain way and even the most powerful wizard of all times, who worships power and does not have any moral limitations, is not able to overcome these rules and is ultimately undone by them. In that aspect, I think Rowling's world is more rule-based than ours - in our world, the laws of nature are morally neutral, but in Rowling's world the magic is not. The only problem is that her system was not consistently designed and has many logic flaws. Which is also common for fantasy worlds, so I don't really hold a grudge agains her for that, one just needs to understand we have an imperfect rule system here and deal with it.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
But it's not even explained why you can't do it, not even addressed. There are a lot of limitations which are spelled out, even if inconsistently - like Avada Kedavra being unblockable (which turns out not to be exactly true but ok) or you can't use Imperius to reveal certain secrets, or other stuff you can't do. But this point is never addressed - given that there are ways to remove Imperius (e.g. Thief's Downfall) why everybody, e.g., entering Ministry of Magic is not automatically un-imperiused? Worst thing it does nothing. There's also finite incantatem, there are also veritaserum (ok this one may be too expensive to use on each suspect consistently), and if MoM can detect magic done by underage wizards, up to knowing which spell what used by whom, why can't it detect Imperius usage by others? It looks like tracing works on adult magic (if it is performed in the vicinity of underage, at least) so again, it's inconsistent.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
The text implied there was a ton of low-level DEs who escaped any punishment basically just by going "don't know anything, was imperiused, leave me alone" and ministry of magic doing nothing about it. If anything, the prominent DEs were the ones who got Azkaban or forced to recant and snitch in public on others, and low-level goons largely got away with it - to flock back to Voldie once he came back.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
DEs had a lot of people and AFAIR accepted anyone who was pureblood and was willing to worship the big V. I don't think it required any special position in the society, at least for mere membership - it seems to be modeled after the Nazi party, which explicitly welcomed low class people that felt the society has left them behind and wanted to do something about it, no matter who gets hurt. It seems the true numbers of DEs weren't even known as many who were eager to join when the things were going well for them, later claimed there weren't true DEs as they were imperiused or coerced (weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Well, they weren't forharrising hard enough, so they get no prize. Yet again, meritocracy raises its ugly (at least as far as the left's theory is concerned) head.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Who's "we"? Is she supposed to know such things? I don't see in her assignments much that would require her being briefed on the latest propulsion tech, for example. So, she not knowing what it is may just not mean much. I don't think she even knows what stuff is on the shelf (not to be critical of her, most people that do not specialize on studying this probably wouldn't know, a lay person would know nothing about it) and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of stuff off the shelf being tested of which only select people are aware and know the details. She is on Armed Services committee but the military does a ton of stuff, and I doubt they brief every person on that committee about every single project - nobody would have time to follow on that, especially given it's not even their main or only job.
If somebody who really specializes on military R&D and propulsion systems and is fully knowledgeable on all current projects and technologies said something like that, it'd be interesting. But I am not sure Sen. Gillibrand, with all due respect, is that person.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I saw no warhawk ever saying Trump would attack South Korea and Taiwan on behalf of China and North Korea. This is literally something nobody believes in. That's what makes it such a bad meme - instead of being based in reality, it just goes "what's the worst thing I can say about person I hate"? That's not how good meme is done, you can't just say maximum vile shit, it should be based on something recognisable and draw from the truth even in exaggeration.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
Well obviously Trump is hitler because it's on the left. But what is that crap with balancing and nuking South Korea? Trump never not only wanted to do anything like that but was accused about anything like that. Same for Taiwan. Worst that was said about him that he may cut off aid to Ukraine, but that is far from what is being displayed, as if Trump is going to do worse that Russia, China and North Korea taken together, by far. This is just stupid.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Yeah, they still can't. It makes zero sense.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Because "public" does not exist - it's just an imaginary entity to make our conversations easier, but there's no actual thing as "public" that owns anything. What actually happens is that the government functionaries are controlling the speech over the airwaves, and as we have found out multiple times, they can not be trusted not to abuse this function, even if they have best intentions at the start. And being human, they rarely even have the best intentions. That's why the best method to prevent the abuse is to deny them the power of control.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Nate did nothing wrong.
I disagree. If he were a modest statistician that would just work his models the best way he can and produce the results, and let people interpret them as they will, without pretense, then he'd done nothing wrong. But as my link above suggests, he thinks his models reveal the deeper truth about the actual structure of the world, and his way of revealing it is superior to any other possible way - so much superior, that he is justified treating anyone who suggests the world may be different from what his models suggest with condescension and disdain similar to how a physicist would treat somebody who denies existence of Newton's laws. And the problem with it, of course, that this pretense of superiority is revealed, again and again, as false, and then complicated explanations are concocted why he technically has been correct all along and only by some weird fluke his opponents have been appearing to be correct. I think this is wrong. If you are in prediction business, and you predict wrong, you should at least eat the crow and be humbled. Otherwise you are in a scamming the gullible business.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
But for a lot of Democrats, the money is in winning the elections, not losing them. And yet, they are doing everything to avoid understanding why their popularity declines and people turn against them. Even if they are paid by Soros or any other deep pocketed entity - I doubt this entity would pay them for long if it sees they can not produce more power and more wins, and most of the power in the US, luckily, is still gatewayed through voter consent, so pissing off voters is an uniquely bad strategy. Yet, the left insists on it again and again.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Is this the same Nate Silver, the mighty predictor? Or somebody impersonating him? https://x.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1855215191102750879/photo/1
More seriously, though, I just can't understand any meaningful way in which you can accurately predict Trump winning 312 electoral votes and then accurately predict his chances of winning the electoral college is a coin toss. These don't seem to be compatible in any sensible way. Maybe you can invent some statistical trick to make it sound good but on the plain common sense meaning it just makes zero sense.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
There's actually a precedent to that - Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR used to have its own seat at UN, along the USSR seat. So USSR essentially held three seats, despite the SSRs being much less independent than US states. USSR wanted all 15 SSRs in but the US said if they do that, then they get 48 US states as members. So they bargained and since USSR had pretty strong position they agreed on every nominally independent state being in, despite being de-facto dependent (e.g. Philippines at the time) and even British India being in, but USSR gets three seats.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
I'm sure they'd try that but I hope somebody there is still sane enough to realize a violent coordinated movement of this size which is controlled by somebody other than the government is kinda problem for them. Before it's too late.
"Governing" here is a very murky term. Sure, they are the biggest and the meanest of the gangs, but so what? Among any set of gangs, there would be one that is the biggest and the meanest. They didn't have any process that resembles free election even remotely - they had a gang war with FATAH in which they emerged victorious, and slaughtered or exiled anybody who was affiliated with the competing gang. Being the strongest gang counts for something, sure, but that something shouldn't earn them any legitimacy in the eyes of people who should know better.
More options
Context Copy link