RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
I don't think those really are comparable - all of them were reactions to concrete fiscal crises/shocks which absolutely needed a short-term budget correction. Our current problems are ballooning costs, and while I think this has significant long-term negative effects, it doesn't have that immediate necessity. But I'll grant that I myself was being hyperbolic - it would be more correct to say that governments rarely manage to limit spending with long-term foresight in mind, but only purely reactively after a crisis has already happened and desperately requires action. DOGE is attempting the former.
On the second point, I completely agree, but in my view this makes reducing welfare spending for the old a foregone conclusion, it's only a question of how long we can kick the can down the road. And mind you, Americans have a comparably rosy situation - here in Germany the old / young ratios are much more grim.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
Even the politically motivated firings, I understand, if not condone. Trump's first term was plagued with malicious compliance, obstruction and outright and blatant ignoring of orders.
Yes. It's not nice, but I don't see how they could get anywhere without them.
The execution? All kinds of programs that most people think are laudable are catching strays. The administration doesn't seem to be particularly on the ball when it comes to rolling back the most obviously negative changes. And the savings figures they tout are frankly speaking, worthless.
I still find it very hard to judge whether the allegedly-laudable programs really are strays. All the ones I've personally looked into seemed fishy at best, and they almost universally have pretty bad transparency. When in doubt, cancel spending. Not to mention the multiple cases where the media just pushed blatant lies yet again, which is also one of the prime reasons why they are reluctant to rolling back anything - if they were responsive, they'd end up rolling back almost everything, because the media will always find a convenient sob story. The savings figures is just Elon doing Elon things - wildly overpromising, but even the estimates by critics seem quite OK for such a small team in such a small time. Especially considering how rare it is for a government to meaningfully cut spending at all.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
Even if you want that, the change in tariffs from one day to another is just staggering here. Say what you will about stupid, counterproductive left-wing economics (which I'm certainly not a fan of!), but they almost always make sure that they don't rock the boat too much in the short term at least (Corona aside).
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
Imo Musk has always been the same kind of person he is now - Make wildly implausible promises of over-delivering, including lying about current capabilities, and then reach beyond what anybody else can do ... while still technically significantly underdelivering compared to the promises. DOGE is the same. I'm not aware of any western government managing to significantly reduce spending in any way whatsoever - at most there is a moratorium on increase of spending. DOGE does not deliver what he is promising, but it still seems above any comparable efforts. Though I admit that his approach just objectively works best on easily-measurable metrics, such as "does the rocket fly", "how much does it cost" etc.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
DOGE I like - certainly on principle but also many of the criticisms seemed bad-faith and nonsensical to me -, but I've never been a fan of tariffs. If they were actually reciprocal / 2 I'd understand somewhat - a country can hardly complain about a new tariff if it's just half of what they charge - , but automatically classifying all trade deficit as equivalent to a tariff is pretty crazy, and then also giving a 10% tariff floor anyway to countries against which you have trade surplus is hypocritical. Or, as it seemed plausible early in his presidency, if they were used primarily as a threat / leverage.
Sigh. So many people are really, justifiably pissed at the current left/green administrations running most of the western states, but it seems we haven't found what can plausibly replace it.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
1d ago
Schools are falling over backwards to fight right-wing "toxic masculinity" and "incel culture" while referring to this show. It portrays this as a general problem of white boys. Yet, the real cases it's based on are extremely disproportionally minorities. It's a moral panic designed to misdirect from real problems (misaligned minority cultures) to imagined problems (white young boys being frustrated with progressive values).
I'm unfortunately mostly familiar with (late) 2000s animes and you already mentioned most of the older ones that I know.
Some more niche pre-2000s ones: I enjoyed the first short of Memories (1995) very much, though the other two shorts were mediocre imo. Infinite Ryvius (1999) is basically Lord of Flies IN SPACE. Serial Experiments Lain (1998) has already been mentioned by others. Great Teacher Onizuka (1999) is a lot of fun, but also no SF.
If we extend to early 2000s: Texhnolyze (2004) has a dark & arcane atmosphere very similar to Blame!. Gankutsuou (2004) is the Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE, this time literally. Haibane Renmei (2003) is by the same author as SEL and in my opinion one of the best animes of all time. But it's not SF.
On Blame!, I can definitely recommend the manga. Imo it's better than the movie.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
3d ago
I can second Mononoke, if you like this style of story.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
4d ago
Well, suit yourself. My personal experience with people who use this line of argument is that it's pure cope; i.e., the moment someone comes along who opens up the possibility of romance, they'll jump and cling on by any means necessary, betraying their earlier statements. It would have been wiser for them to put in more effort earlier, so that they're not so desperately dependent on that particular person later. But I don't know you, so maybe you really are different than everybody else.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
4d ago
What kind of anime do you have in mind? "Classic anime" is extremely broad, while Dean's post is specifically about internet-related 2000s anime, which is also late enough that many wouldn't consider it "classic" to begin with.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
7d ago
Trust me that's the very last of you worries. Two of my best school friends, then college age, went backpacking there for several months with very mediocre english and no knowledge of any local language.
One of them, a very shy but super nice, hardworking and competent guy who never had to my knowledge even kissed a girl - zero game as the kids say -, came back with a girlfriend. And not a bad one, some kind of banking business work, very easygoing, down-to-earth and admittedly quite attractive. They're now living together for a few years.
Of course sex tourism is also an option there, but imo getting a serious gf is a much more sensible option and very realistic for a well-earning westerner now matter how much you struggle with western women.
Also living expenses are quite low, so even apart from any dating a great place for young retirees to stay or travel indefinitely.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
7d ago
I also agree with the other two. Hardcore activists and mainstream Grüne/Linke are part of the same circles at university and get along well despite their differences. There is some grumbling here and there, but they have no problems working together, since they fundamentally share the same worldview.
For a public example, Nancy Faeser, part of the mainstream SPD and minister of the interior under the Ampel (which "protects us from enemies of our constitution", among other things) outright published an article in a magazine from one of the largest antifa orgs, one which has been noted as working together with violent leftwing extremists. Unsurprisingly, Faeser has been going after right-leaning journalists while completely ignoring the extreme left.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
9d ago
I'd rather advice a trip to Southeast Asia, in that case. If you want to retire anyway, it's a great place to stay for indefinite time as well.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
9d ago
Yeah. But it itself is a genuine piece of non-natural object added to your body that improves its function. So for me it's good enough to count, even if it's with some caveats.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
9d ago
Since I wrote it in another comment and I consider it unfair to "write behind someones back": Classifying "brushing teeth" as transhumanism and equating it with major changes to your own biology is quite silly. Firstly because brushing teeth isn't even necessary in the natural state, it's merely a solution to a problem of modernity, namely excessive sugar. And second, because it's just a variation of the very natural behaviour of cleaning yourself. Similar arguments go for most of the examples; Riding a bike changes nothing about your nature, and clothes have been, evolutionary speaking, long part of our natural state. A genuine example of transhumanism is imo only the pacemaker.
Sure as I said, the beginning was a bit of a digression and it was somewhat mean. But that's because I'm quite annoyed nowadays by the blanket "natural doesn't mean good", and his stated position, as far as I understand it, is that natural shouldn't be privileged at all.
And to that no, actually, natural biology is pretty good, and improving on it is very, very hard. It absolutely should be privileged. Any deviation is most likely bad, which means even if the preliminary evidence looks decent, it'll still probably turn out to be bad. Medical transition already was quite questionable based on the early evidence, and now with more evidence, it seems worse. Which was expected, because see the sentence before it.
Edit: Also, after reading some of the other replies here by him ... Classifying, for example, "brushing teeth" as transhumanism and equating it with major changes to your own biology is far more silly. Firstly because brushing teeth isn't even necessary in the natural state, it's merely a solution to a problem of modernity, namely excessive sugar. And second, because it's just a variation of the very natural behaviour of cleaning yourself.
Good news! You get to choose the entire genome for your next kid.
Bad news: It's only two choices.
Worse: It's a) a naturally occuring genome and b) a randomly generated genome.
So what'll be?
I know I'm being mean here, but the premium natural gets is justified. Natural evolution doesn't really care about us, certainly not our feeling, but it leads to something that works. On the other hand, the average for careless major deviations from natural is oh my god fuck fuck what have I done and the best case is something like Down's.
And don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of guy who dreams about replacing his full body with improved cybernetics one day. But you have to be serious about this. Natural gives us a pretty high floor, all things considered. Especially if you get to choose the best among all natural options (which is what, for example, embryo selection with PRS is). You're correct it's not a categorical difference, but getting over this floor is damn hard. I'm not aware of any currently available major change to basic human biology that a) improves overall wellbeing and b) isn't just a correction towards a different, better natural option. Yes running blades let you run damn fast, no they're not overall better than regular feet.
Unless you're intersex or have other major biological sexual deformities the honest answer to "should I try to change to a whole different sex" is "sorry, we're not there yet". Sure that sucks and it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep on improving, but the current reality of trans medicine is much worse.
That said I have very little problem with letting adults do crazy stuff to themselves out of their own pocket. But it should be discouraged, it shouldn't be for kids, and it certainly shouldn't be paid for by society.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
10d ago
The part many on the left are missing is that puberty itself is a large part of the mechanic by which teens become heteronormal. When I was around 12, I felt disgusted by teens, sexuality in general and was a somewhat odd kid to begin with. At that time there already was lots of talk about nonstandard sexualities and I strongly identified with asexuals. I also thought that I was very far from the average male, among other things refusing any kind of violence (I distinctly remember refusing to even watch shows/movies or play games portraying violence), an intellectual above all kinds of base instincts. Typical arrogant nerd stuff. Especially early puberty then felt like shit, very moody & scared of what happens with me. Then sometime in late puberty all of that went out of the window, suddenly I was a temperamentally fairly stereotypical guy. And even in retrospect, I had been to some degree in denial even when younger. In elementary school I was often beating up other kids for various reasons. I just learned that I was going nowhere with that attitude, so I had to force myself out of it and pretended that it never happened. Which combined with my otherwise bookish personality naturally led to the described intellectual self-image.
Conditionals are obviously hard to prove, but I could easily see my pre-puberty self taking puberty blockers to not become a disgusting, violent, sexual men. Especially with the argument that oh, it's reversible anyway, so just try it out. It would have been a grave mistake, but I wouldn't have known, and in particular it's easy then to then just stay the course and tell yourself you took the right option.
My wife is very similar in the other direction; She always was a tomboy who felt more comfortable with boys, then puberty hit and she changed. She also could see herself mistakenly choosing to take puberty blockers in her youth. And now our daughter is just the same, so we make sure to always tell her that her mom had the same struggles. Imagining her mistakenly getting talked into puberty blockers is horrifying, and worse, very plausible.
So overall while I have quite some sympathy, going through puberty seems like the less-bad option even for the majority of those who feel somewhat uncomfortable with their sex.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
13d ago
You're leaving out the part where abortion is only legal the first 12 weeks, which progressives in the US think is a far-right abortion ban but which here in germany is considered perfectly fine by most.
The CDU explicitly campaigned on being responsible stewards who abhor the proposition of new debt by the Ampel. "The green stuff" is, according to german lawyers, directly hamstringing current efforts to build up important infrastructure, such as energy, especially since it's overly vague and german courts tend to err on the green side when given the leeway.
Also, abortion is already legal, easily accessible and the implementation is a broadly popular compromise - what the SPD wants is late-term abortion & allowing doctors to actively advertise/promote abortion services, which is the equivalent of spitting into conservatives' faces.
Pretty much everything the CDU is doing right now is exactly the opposite of what they have been campaigning on right up to the vote. It's ridiculous.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
16d ago
On the topics of MMOs, nothing ever managed to match GW1 for me. Amazing build variety, deep mechanics with interesting interactions, easy to get into PvP, good, regularly updated balance, minimal grinding except for variety & visuals. Especially in retrospective it was far ahead of its time. GW2 was such a letdown in comparison, despite not even being a bad game in the grand scheme of things.
RenOS
the great beast is rumbling in its sleep
16d ago
How familiar are you with consoles? Imo N64/PS1+2/Gameboy/N(3)DS all have a fuckton of amazing games that can be played, easily and for free, on most mediocre modern PCs. Wii & Switch are also great because of their unique controls, but unfortunately need to be played properly.
I don't want to be mean, but there are far, far harder games than the DS series. DS is normie-hard; It's the maximum amount of hardness that you can afford while keeping most of the casual audience, and as oats says, it has multiple design decisions that allow you to get past content you consider to difficult (online co-op, single-use items, simple rushing, cheese/OP gear, or in the worst case, plain ol' grinding). Especially in co-op it's arguably quite easy.
What reason is there to think it isn't? He who controls the null hypothesis, controls the world.
Edit: For the record, my personal null hypothesis is that we should always assume the money was mostly wasted with very little to show for it. People are very good at doing minimal, ineffective work in a maximally photogenic way unless you give them good incentives to actually get anything done. And even then they'll try hard to game the incentives anyway.
I'm about as pro-capitalist as it gets but imo this is the wrong model for zero-sum (for example advertising) and negative sum (for example compliance) industries. Especially large, already successful companies can secure their position by burdening everyone with enough extra costs that only they can shoulder well enough due to scale.
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