VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
I get nervous about the death penalty for the same reason I think it should probably be legal: death is irrecoverable. When the state puts someone to death in error, that is an error that should shake the government to its foundations.
Amusingly, for largely the same reasons, I find myself mostly ambivalent (and maybe weakly in favor of) the death penalty. IMO for all the advocacy of "life in prison instead," that lifetime in prison isn't recoverable either: "Sorry grandpa, we realize you didn't do it 50 years ago. Here's some cash in exchange for the life you never got" isn't much, if any, better than a mistaken execution. They deserve the same standards of evidence as death penalty cases, at which point we shouldn't really be questioning guilt. The state already claims the right to expend lives in its service or at its discretion --- see The Draft and plenty of generally-approved-of kinetic actions against adversaries, even when those adversaries are citizens, or even the actuarial acceptance of marginal, but measurable increased risks of death in exchange for other goals, like banning DDT.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Finished The Diamond Age: some interesting thoughts on child rearing, nanotechnology, and AI. A bit ironic to be reading it on a Kindle, although not one equipped with an LLM to tell me a custom story — give it a few years. The neo-Victorian aesthetic was an interesting touch (modern culture comparisons to Victorianism are a bit en vogue these days). I see how that was supposed to contrast with
Started A Fire Upon the Deep. Not far enough to have an opinion.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
a firing pin that strikes the primer only
As far as I'm aware, most higher-power cartridges are center-fire (there's a clear ring on the back that's the primer). There are also rimfire cartridges like 22LR that you might be able to set off by hitting the corner.
The bullet probably won't gain a lot of velocity without a barrel to contain the pressure, though.
Please don't do this while holding the cartridge. Or without significant thought given to protecting yourself (remotely, while behind cover). It probably won't send the bullet terribly fast, but the expanding gas alone can be quite dangerous (blanks have killed people), and the brass will likely do something interesting like shatter when not supported by a barrel.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
I feel like this is going to be biased toward declaring groups that get along to be "homogeneous", and those that don't are subdivided into smaller groups until they do, with the broader discording factions declared "heterogeneous". You could divide the English into Anglos, Saxons, Normans, and so on, but they still mostly get along so you'll call them all "English".
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
As someone who once unwittingly had all his car radio stations tuned to country FM stations, I am surprised that more of The Motte hasn't embraced its "be like my elders: buy some land, marry someone you love, raise some hell, then some kids, and go to church" aesthetic.
As for me, I would describe it like root beer: "insidious, just like The Federation".
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
The other told me point blank there were way too many Indians arriving, that it is ruining the country and that they would vote for Trump if they lived in America. The former was a white Canadian of colonial stock and the latter was a first-gen Pakistani replete with accent.
Was this an attitude toward South Asian immigrants generally, or a reflection of Indian-Pakistani animosity? I'm assuming the former, but I've seen the latter around from time to time (my favorite example was a mixed group of second-generation students mocking that their parents probably hated each other).
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
I have heard at least one (blue-voting!) New Yorker complain about the stranglehold the transit unions have on the city's mass transit. In particular that the leverage of a strike halting the subway prevents investment in some better technology that would improve the rider experience. In particular, this included any sort of automatic driving system, which (I'm told) limits total system throughput and those self-aligning train and platform doors that have existed elsewhere in the world for decades and would probably improve safety substantially.
I'm not wholly opposed to unions, but I don't think they uniformly make everyone's life better either. See also the Chicago plumbers union and lead pipes. But I suppose most of the time they probably ask for more reasonable concessions.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Climate Change advocacy, for all its faults, actually makes a serious attempt at this
I would also point at the astroid folks, who are diligently cataloging near-Earth asteroids and recently attempted an impact test as a proof of concept for redirection. The infectious disease folks are also at least trying, even if I have my doubts on gain-of-function research.
I haven't seen any serious proposals from the AI folks, but I also identify as part of the graygreen goo that is cellular life.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Is Clive here American (and directing a UK charity), or is he speaking in outrage-inducing hypotheticals? Because if I were British, I'd be ashamed at the Crown's tyrannical encroachment on the free speech rights of Man.
But I'm not British.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
And if that timeframe is shorter than other European countries,
In yet another failure of attempted federalism, I expect the EU is going to have to unify citizenship rules, or at least specify minimums, to prevent something like the old Irish corporate tax rules.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
From what I can gather, the idea of residential schools at the time was a rather progressive idea: "we can make these kids lives better by bringing them up assimilated with Western education and values." And several prominent Native Americans were at least loosely supportive of the idea (Charles Curtis, Vice President of the US during the Hoover administration comes to mind).
It strikes me as very similar to the far-left/communist meme about who gets to educate your children. And I think even now there would be support for it among progressives as long as you make sure it's for children of the right "undesirables."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
make the evidence-based call.
It isn't always evidence that is the deciding factor. To point to another hot-button issue, I don't trust doctors to decide "when is abortion murder?", because it is more a question of moral philosophy than medicine.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
There is definitely room for a Reddit competitor and I think making one is one of the greatest moral acts a programmer can do today (unironically).
IMO we've reached a point in the technology adoption curve where the hard piece to build such a competitor is not programming. Acquiring and keeping a critical mass of users while dodging politically-charged lawfare (copyrighted content, criminal activity, pornography) seems like the real missing piece. And the users are probably more difficult than the lawfare.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Imagine trying to defend yourself against 10 bullet-size drones flying towards your face with a small but lethal explosive charge at the tip.
I'm not itching for the chance here, but I'd be very surprised if Western R&D isn't cooking up mostly-autonomous, short-range anti-drone weapons (lasers, small caliber guns) that they intend to strap to pretty much everything bigger than a jeep. I imagine that modern electronics manufacturing could build a miniature CIWS for not too much more than the drone it's targeting: the RF and compute electronics to do this are much more ubiquitous than they were when the original technology was deployed on ships.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Not all areas have need for basements: if you're not digging to get below the frost line (warmer climates), soil is shallow, or the water table is near the surface (the entire Gulf coast), a basement is really expensive to build as an option, and they aren't very common choices. I'll keep my garage.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
You could cut apart the battery and compare it to similar batteries.
For added fun, you'll need to be careful doing this because lithium battery chemistries have a tendency to spontaneously combust when exposed to oxygen.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
In states with closed primaries (like Pennsylvania), there are plenty of reasons to register as a member of a party you don't really agree with completely to vote in the primary. As a voter in an open primary state, I tend to choose which primary to vote in to maximize the volume from my vote, not because I consider myself a member of a partisan group.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I find eye contact uncomfortable so I mostly avoid it
I hear this sort of thing brought up a lot as a sign of autism, and maybe it is in higher doses, but from generic people-watching and life experience, most people don't make eye contact most of the time. Eye contact does happen in platonic and romantic interaction, but excessive eye contact is off-putting in its own way (creepy). It's up there with how people generally don't directly face each other when talking, but more obliquely. IMO it's important to make sure we compare ourselves to real, normal people rather than exceptions or movie characters.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I suspect this is very true in the modal case. I've known a couple of exceptions that are self-motivated enough to make remote work effective. And I'd buy that it can be better for very deep work requiring intense concentration and few distractions for those that can manage it in those circumstances. But I will also admit that I feel at least a bit less productive on those times when I do get to work from home.
But I also know people that are being forced back into the office to hot-desk and work with distributed teams, so they aren't really getting the benefit of in-person discussions, which IMO have a much higher bandwidth than video chats.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Supposedly these were all pagers bought by Hezbollah and distributed to their operators? Sounds like the most targeted strike, with the least collateral damage, that I've ever heard of or could ever imagine.
Even if it's not killing these operators, consistently maiming them seems like an obvious way to prevent them from blending into the civilian population. If I were Israel planning a ground invasion of Lebanon, temporarily injuring my unwitting enemies is great, but being able to filter out those with hip injuries for additional screening or capture seems a potentially-existential threat for such an organization.
But I can't speak to whether a ground invasion is actually likely, and I haven't been following the region very closely in the last few weeks.
The annexation of Texas was largely downstream of first Spain, then newly-independent Mexico encouraging Americans to colonize the mostly-unoccupied-except-Native-Americans region (land grants happened elsewhere in the American West as well). For reasons involving language/culture barriers, a proto-fascist dictatorship, and, yes, slavery, Texas declared and won it's independence from Mexico, puttered along as a recognized independent state for a decade before US annexation, and the actual Mexican American war kicked off over the exact borders of Texas.
I don't see that many parallels here. Did Ukraine encourage Russian settlement in Crimea/Donetsk? I don't think the Spanish Empire fits in the place of the USSR here. And the US was actually pretty reluctant to annex Texas at the time because it would change the antebellum balance of slave and free states. Texas had formal relations with other major powers, and there was some discussion with the British about border guarantees as an alternative to American annexation, although IMO the close ties there probably made that a non-starter.
I see a little bit of what you are suggesting, but I think it plays almost equally well in reverse: with independence from Spain the fall of the Iron Curtain, Western ideals were invited into the region, setting up an inevitable conflict with caudillo Santa Anna Putin in ways that lost Mexico the Russian sphere of influence huge swaths of territory and riches in ways that might have been salvageable. Was Texas independence, or the broader Mexican Cession, truly inevitable? Maybe, but Santa Anna didn't seem particularly interested in keeping them (edit: except by force), and Texas wasn't even the only rebellious Mexican province in 1835.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Credentialism isn't what is stopping diggers from working fake email jobs.
IMO "fake email jobs" is a bit of a Russell's conjugation: "I have an important role keeping [industry] moving, you work remote as a middle-manager, and that guy over there has a fake email job." Not to say that all such jobs are useful, but I'd bet there'd be a fair bit of disagreement about whether any specific role qualified. People often don't have good visibility into what other departments are doing, and I'd bet nobody considers their job this way, but absolutely does sneer at, say, the accounting department ("it's all just a spreadsheet anyway") or purchasing.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I have known a few white collar engineering types who have told me they're paid (well) hourly. I assume it's just a bookkeeping thing, but I believe they may have been in states that mandate overtime hourly pay anyway. I don't think it'd take a huge incentive to make that more universal.
I seem to recall reading, probably either here or on Hacker News, that native Japanese speakers can identify those who mostly learned the language from their (opposite gender) significant other because they don't do well following the gender conventions. I don't know much Japanese --- I tried Duolingo on it for a few months --- but I appreciate the examples you've listed, even if I don't understand much of it at all.
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