VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
18hr ago
Of course excluding "military secrets but art", "private personal information but art", etc.
I'm old enough to remember the first few bytes of the leaked AACS master key (09 f9 11 ...) because people made so much art, some of it decent, out of it. Controversy over that was a big part of the downfall of Digg, but you're not wrong that I'd probably feel differently if it was nuclear launch codes and not content protection keys.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
19hr ago
I haven't played that one, thanks for the example. I have played BioShock (and Infinite) and Dishonored, though. Maybe I just missed that one: I'm not a PS gamer, and missed the PC release and don't really play that many single player games anymore.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
20hr ago
This trope feels very gendered: I can't think of any comparable examples where the player ends up playing dad to a boy. I'm uncertain if that's a fundamental type difference (sons grow up and become protectors themselves, daughters narratively always need protectors -- not agreeing with the position, just observing the trope), or a difference in magnitude that protecting daughters has a stronger emotional valence and makes a better story.
Also there exist unfalsifiable yet anonymous algorithms for digital vote counting where you could be sure your vote was part of the count via a hash...
I don't think any of these systems have solved the last-mile "assigning digital IDs to people" in a practical way. We've had enough trouble getting RealID drivers licenses for things like flying that I doubt we could enforce smart cards for voting any time soon, and I bet both sides would oppose it today for different reasons.
ETA: and that's all before you get the fun chance to explain the cryptography to the median voter.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
23hr ago
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
CS Lewis had a point there, I think.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
23hr ago
I know the guy gets autistically fixated on random shit, but I can't recall him ever caring much about PR.
There was that entire arc involving a branded garbage truck, but I'm not sure that is indicative of deep political ties to the local leadership, or just riffing on the news cycle.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
23hr ago
Is this something the DOJ could consider federal charges for? I'm pretty sure "state law enforcement or judiciary deciding to look the other way at hate crimes" is something we've written laws about in the past, but no clue if even the current DOJ would be interested in this case specifically.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
a small number of pills which can be posted from a legal clinic in a blue state
IIRC current telehealth rules revolve around the locale of the patient, and traditionally doctors are licensed by the states and only have authority within those states. While blue states have allowed this (and I'm not even sure it bothers me too greatly), I wouldn't expect it to not get challenged in court WRT state extradition law and such, or for red states to find an equivalent axe to grind to upset blue state authorities on similar jurisdictional grounds.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
Are there many laws generally about the acceptable set of arguments you can put in front of a jury? "Ban the X Defense" IMO is usually trying to appeal to some sense that this was an affirmative defense (see self-defense law), not "you can't ask the jury to consider this". The only one I can think of offhand is that directly appealing to jury nullification is heavily frowned upon.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
You are the librarian of a magical university. Your goal is to reshelve literally three thousand books that have been thrown onto the floor by a rogue fairy.
Ook!
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
I'm pretty sure the Vatican has similar signs, as do some cultural sites (cathedrals) across the EU. Also occasional bans on specific types of garments: Switzerland bans face-covering headwear.
I've definitely encountered my share of "tourists go away" graffiti in a few EU countries with lots of tourism, which seems like the subtext of the sign there too.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Because OF COURSE the LLM has an internal model of the chessboard in the system; that's the only reason it could possibly make moves that are correct at a rate better than chance.
If I trained a Markov model on the textual representation of thousands of games, and constrained it to only play legal moves, I bet it'd do better than random chance, but worse than a classic min max engine, which has defined metrics for what "winning" means. Is that an internal model, or just "usually a player castles after moving their knight and bishop" correlation?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
Yes, Hitler hated Jews, but this isn't the only thing he's infamous for,
Notably, everyone seems to hate "Nazis", but what exactly is the defining characteristics of such seems to vary quite a bit: Putin calls anyone opposed to Russian dominion of Eastern Europe a Nazi (or sometimes anti-communist positions), which I suppose are some of the actions Hitler is famous for. I've occasionally seen other parts of Europe drop the reference to any sort of German leadership of the bloc. Israel-stans point to the Holocaust as the defining action for obvious reasons, which part of America seems to align with, while the rest of America sees "Aryan supremacy" as the most salient. I'm sure there is some mass-transit-stan somewhere who sees the Autobahn and its ilk and the idea of a "People's car" as central.
They are such a widely-defined enemy that it's almost important to clarify why the Nazis were evil in contexts like this because it can explain otherwise-nonsensical positions.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5d ago
People tell me if you’re looking to really “get into it,” beyond the horizon of an ordinary retail investor, what you really want is a job in “structuring.”
Just make sure you're not committing the federal financial crime named "structuring" too. :)
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5d ago
I think there is a related interesting question here if red merely has a high probability of survival (99%, say), but blue has better/guaranteed odds if you solve the coordination problem.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5d ago
Exercise-induced hyponatremia is a thing, and deaths from it aren't unheard of. If you're sweating a lot and drinking straight water, I'd strongly consider some sort of electrolyte supplement.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
France has had a democratic government continuously since 1870
Several declared-integral parts of France, most notably Algeria have felt otherwise about this statement. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had to change its name because most, but not all, of Ireland felt otherwise. Even when it's done peacefully and democratically (see hypothetical Scotland referendum), a decision to change the definition of the polity seems anathema to the requested "stability" of a heterogeneous democratic government.
Admittedly the US has also divested several territories in that time (Cuba, the Philippines), but none of those examples have been self-declared as "integral" (states) except for that one time in 1861-1865 (and arguably Reconstruction effectively treating those as colonies for at least a while). There's certainly room to contest the relevance of integral-ness, but it seems important to my reading of "stability".
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
"These United States..." used to be a thing too.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
Plenty of other democracies have been stable without such a system
Can you think of another heterogeneous democracy that has operated for at least a hundred years and hasn't had a region or subset of its population declare independence? Sure, the South tried to leave, but you can't exactly point at France (new Republic every two generations!) or Britain (see Ireland, or India) either.
if a general rule has a disparate impact should you eliminate the general rule.
If you look closely enough (and I've never seen a specific proposed amount of "acceptable" impact here), all general rules have a disparate impact at some form. I think it'd be difficult to come up with an example of two statistical variables that are absolutely uncorrelated for any sample size in the wild.
ETA: For a rather concrete example, any tax regime almost certainly has some degree of disparate impact. If income is correlated with race [citation left to reader], the burden of income taxation is as well, presenting a disparate impact on high earners (especially for a progressive taxation regime).
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
My trolling solution is to randomly assign voters to districts: "look ma, no consideration at all of race, creed, or anything". Except that it's definitionally the worst possible gerrymander.
Honestly, I think geographic districting is a lost cause and proportional statewide representation would at least give easy answers to these problems.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
And yet, by some strange coincidence, they chose essentially the same villains for their script as is chosen by Leftists.
It's not that surprising if you consider that the Iranian Revolution followed on the heels of the 60s and 70s waves of protest and all of that period's political change, and was in part driven by students in the same vein as Kent State and friends. The Islamic hardliners were but one faction initially, but happened to displace the others after the Shah was forced out and Khomeini returned, although some of the trappings of leftist anti-colonial revolution were still useful.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
a large part of the appeal of the Arc de Triomphe is the history and era in which it was built.
I'm reminded of that proverb that the best time to plant a tree for shade is 20 years ago, but the second best time is now. If we want "public buildings and monuments" (a valid debate itself) we can just build them, but they won't be historical overnight.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
It's not a "book suggestion", but The Rest Is History (of which Tom Holland is a co-host) has done a few series of episodes on the history of the area, including a recent one about the Iranian Revolution. I was surprised at how un-kind it was to Jimmy Carter and his handling of the whole situation.
I'm sure at least a few folks have had to sit through a threat brief involving not falling for a loose rewording of Cunningham's Law.
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