roystgnr
15hr ago
Biden may have been a bit demented (if only in the "sundowning", "good days and bad days" sense), but I was referring to Harris (endorsed in the link) as "retarded". She obviously wasn't literally retarded (or even subnormal, I'd bet) by "average human being" standards, but she kinda was by "average human being who should risk campaigning for President of the US" standards. I get that the competition was a guy who thinks the dementia screener he's been acing is an IQ test, but my advice for Republicans could be flipped around for Democrats and would still be 100% applicable: the goal is not to hang on to a candidate who seems to be a tiny bit better than the competition, the goal is to come up with a good candidate.
(Well, to be fair, the goal is to come up with someone who would be a good candidate and a good President, which is harder - Harris was probably even worse by the second criterion, even if Trump again set us a low bar)
Granted, by 2024 it was too late for the Democrats to come up with a good candidate, perhaps because the task of "convince the declining elderly person of how badly he's declining" leads to a veridical paradox where the better your evidence is the harder it is to use. But in 2020 it probably wasn't too late for Biden's team to ensure they filled the "person who becomes President in an emergency" slot with a person who would definitely be a top choice for more than (literally, not a typo:) 844 of their party's voters. 20% of US presidents have died or stepped down in the middle of a term and left their Vice President in charge. This is not a wild unforeseeable happenstance, and in modern politics the "don't betray Big Chief!" attitude is bipartisan enough that whoever's in charge when the next election rolls around is generally the presumptive nominee, even in "normal" cases where the handoff isn't mid-campaign.
roystgnr
1d ago
The rest of us are leftists, pretending to be rightists
Nah. You'd expect a lot more "Guys, we have to join the web of supporters of the fugitive child molester! It definitely won't destroy our electoral chances while sending our souls to hell!" false flags if that was the case. Instead, so far at least, I've only seen the one...
We know this forum is spiritually leftist because if constantly fails the moral circles heatmap meme.
Nah, it's spiritually focused on truth. It was founded by fans of an actual retarded-communist-may-be-the-lesser-of-two-evils leftist, just one who became popular with rightists too for prizing truth above leftism.
I know emotionally our hunter-gatherer hearts really feel like there's Our Tribe versus Their Tribe, and if only we can get all one hundred of us to collectively stick our fingers in our ears and pretend Big Chief and Little Chief have no faults then morale will stay high and Our Tribe will win, but that's just not how it works. With a hundred million people there's going to be someone who won't go along with the ruse. The people you really need to win over are swing voters who are never going to give Little Chief the kind of love that you're wasting on him (instead of sublimating it into Yankees fandom or something, like you're supposed to do to keep your head clearer for politics), and a "who cares about a couple molested kids anyway" attitude does not win over swing voters.
It doesn't even seem to be a winning play among many MAGA voters. Remember when that was all about stuff like avoiding war with Iran and exposing child abusers like Epstein's network? But now here we are. You beat the retarded communist last time, but the victory was narrow and Pyrrhic, and there's a lot of time and even more crazy developments coming up in between now and 2028. So, if you want to pull it off again, then we may need an actual competitive primary that filters out bad candidates, not just a princeling's coronation. You might think it would be impossible to sink so low that normal people will prefer the kind of candidates that the Democrats come up with these days, and it really should be impossible, but it's not. It's really not. It's not even impossible for the modern Republicans to just sink that low by default, in the absence of conscious effort to avoid it, much less in the presence of conscious effort to resist avoiding it.
roystgnr
1d ago
I would guess it won't be long before it's easy to create AI-generated "reenactments" of culture-war sensitive events.
I've seen two examples tweeted within the last week. I can't find one, but here's the other, when it came up on Reddit several months ago. The post photo is reportedly AI, though based on the real (probably? hopefully?) video linked by some of the commenters.
For example the sexual encounter at issue in the recent Cornell fiasco.
Neither example was of a drugged-up orgy, thankfully.
It seems that if it fits their tribal allegiance, people will even accept "fake but accurate" materials.
The Reddit comment to this effect, "its not misinformation, it happened - the "photo" is ai, the story is not.", is only slightly net upvoted, but IIRC it was even worse on Twitter.
roystgnr
1d ago
Ha! Egg on my face. I'm so sorry, I just utterly misparsed your sentence.
You intended "(women who only date men) identifying as bisexual"; somehow I read "women who only date (men identifying as bisexual)".
I figured maybe this was the latest stage of an anti-cis-hetero-men purity spiral somewhere but you were exaggerating it.
I hope no citation is needed for the claim that men are much less squicked by female bisexuality than vice versa.
True, but there's some squick! 20% of young men in that poll. I suspect that the demographic of women considering self-identifying as bisexual don't think they want to date any of those men either way, though.
roystgnr
1d ago
but at the bottom it’s all g
Well, it's nearly half g anyway. There's a seeming-paradox where, although you can estimate g from two different sets of tests and get a correlation of .99 between the estimates, that's entirely due to having each set be broad enough not to be too swayed by any individual test, because correlation coefficients between g and individual tests (including in test batteries designed to measure g!) hit .82 (g explaining 2/3 of variance) at the very highest and go way down from there. It's possible that some people just don't spend their time using their g for e.g. "Subtraction/Multiplication" (correlation .59; presumably they used their g for evading the elementary school truancy officer instead?), but a more likely answer might be that Moravec's Paradox has implications for human intelligence alone, not just when comparing human to non-human. Enough general intelligence can augment or compensate for weaker special-purpose systems, but that doesn't mean the special-purpose systems aren't there.
Or maybe they’re too stupid for logic but can figure out how to get a picture to look good (using cause and effect AKA logic). It makes no sense.
The predicate "makes no sense" is binary, not unary. The history of human progress is a series of discoveries of observations that made no sense, to us, followed by formulations of theories that revealed why the observations had sense behind them after all.
In this case, we observe (repeatedly! this one seems to be surviving the replication crisis!) that most people are unable to solve an abstract logic problem which is isomorphic to non-abstract logic problems they are able to solve. This is even more shocking than being able to catch a baseball without being able to solve the differential equation predicting its motion from observations, but it doesn't seem like it's a difference of kind, just a difference of magnitude. It's been less than 2500 years since humans first classified which possible syllogisms of deductive logic are fallacious; that is not the history you'd expect from a hundreds-of-millennia-old species which has inherently mastered logic and obviated the need to find other ways for our brains to solve logic problems.
roystgnr
1d ago
Citation needed? Last data I saw was that half of straight 18-34yo women in Britain were "unwilling" to date a bisexual man. Presumably some significant percentage of the remainder are at the "bisexuality is a negative, just not an utter disqualifier" level.
That "unwilling to date a bisexual" percentage is dropping fast from generation to generation, but I'd be very surprised if there was any age group for whom "unwilling to date a non-bisexual" exceeded it.
roystgnr
2d ago
For a game of that scope I wouldn't worry about the price. If it's worth spending 30+ hours on then it's almost certainly worth spending $30 on too.
Subnautica is a very different game than SOMA, despite sharing some "mysteries of The Deep", "Weird Science", and "monsters that might be best avoided rather than fought" vibes, though. Subnautica's nonlinear exploration is more fun than SOMA's story-on-rails, but the horror is even less horrifying (though whether that's a good thing or a bad one is a matter of taste), and the crafting+construction mechanics might be to your liking (it really does enhance the exploration and make a playthrough feel like your playthrough) or they might not (yay, the 18th most popular survival+crafting+base-building game on Steam - hope you didn't get sick of the genre by #17!). I liked Subnautica better overall but YMMV. It's probably worth trying, at least, especially because Subnautica 2 has multiplayer co-op and those are often the best games to play with the SO and/or family.
roystgnr
3d ago
Did you like it from the start after the time skip, or did it take a while to grab you? I think I might have read 5 pages before deciding I had other things on my to-read list, which might have been unfair.
roystgnr
3d ago
Last third felt like a worldbuilding exercise without a clear point.
I feel like I can't nominate something for AAQC if the audience for whom it hits home is as narrow as "readers who thought the first two-thirds of Seveneves were fine enough but gave up on the last third but also are Neil Stephenson fans and thus wonder if they shouldn't have given up". But speaking on behalf of that group (singleton? is it just me?), thank you!
roystgnr
4d ago
SpaceX's demonstrated mastery of control of a flying object entirely based on a limited number of relatively low-power thrusters with very limited fuel.
I do wonder how much engineering here they're sharing with SpaceX. Falcon 9 uses and early Starship models used cold-gas Reaction Control System thrusters that would have been a lot like these (except using pure nitrogen instead of air), but surely the different optimal sizing would have meant they didn't use the exact same engines, and other SpaceX engines (small methalox and ullage-gas rockets on newer Starship, hypergolic on Dragon) are even more different. But the control problem for Tesla might be much less tricky. With Falcon 9 the hardest part is that, even with just one main engine active, they can't run at a low-enough power to land without a "hoverslam" that uses that higher power at the last second. Control software for cold gas thrusters that can be throttled arbitrarily up and down is probably easy by comparison.
IMHO the scary thing here for SpaceX fans is the Carbon-Overwrapped Pressure Vessels holding the compressed air. They're at least not dumping Roadster COPVs in liquid oxygen (which led to the unexpected failure mode that lost AMOS-6 a decade ago), nor will they have them in a vehicle full of hundreds of tons of fuel (like during the Starship 36 explosion that also trashed a test stand 16 months ago), but even without a force multiplier like that, hundreds of atmospheres of pressure can be scary stuff. It's still been less than a year since SpaceX had a booster turned to scrap by a COPV rupture.
Based on that, as well as the nature of it, it will probably never be useful outside of demos and stunts.
Yup. The flying "Rocket" model is sales-by-invitation-only; the direct target market there is basically "Hollywood" plus "hectomillionaires who like to drive hypercars". The value here is all indirect, trying to improve the brand status and to attract top engineers.
The suction fan is cool too, and might be possible to actually have on a production car sold to the public.
They're claiming it'll be even on the base-level "Performance" model sold to the public. On the other hand, they're only putting a "Not approved for public road use" asterisk on the "Rocket" model, suggesting that the intermediate limited-release "Thrust" model with just the rear "sub-1s 0-60" thrusters will actually be street-legal. I'm betting that's currently true in the sense of "nobody imagined needing a regulation to cover sub-1s 0-60 so it hasn't been written yet", but it might not be true in the sense of "that regulation won't ever be written". Might not be safe to put a deposit down on the Thrust model, at least not unless you're under the aegis of Florida Man.
roystgnr
7d ago
Gillis holds a history degree from Westchester University. I'm not American so I don't know how prestigious that is
Slightly below 50th percentile as a national university. Knowing nothing else besides his degree, best guess would be that he's smarter than average, but ironically "becoming nationally successful in stand-up comedy" is by itself probably better evidence of above-average IQ than the degree is!
roystgnr
7d ago
My first impulse is to scream "I said I could quit any time I wanted!" Impulse control is important but hard.
More seriously, while there's probably better solutions, "Don't lie to your date about them if somehow the topic comes up, but if possible keep the topic from coming up." is probably still Plan A here. The only obvious upgrade (from both dating and personal perspectives) is to make sure it's possible to honestly frame "insane political philosophers" as a small subset of "political philosophers" whose ramblings you read. There are legitimate benefits to reading the crazy rants here (anything topical hasn't had a chance to be filtered by the test of time regardless; most crazy thoughts are not brilliant innovations but most brilliant innovations seem crazy at first, etc), but if the central goal is "philosophy" rather than "crazy" then these should be the condiments, not the meal.
roystgnr
7d ago
The top tier of hobby qualities are "produces something interesting to others" and "done socially with interesting people". If you don't have any of these (Hail Mary attempts: do you re-arrange the scores after analysis? do you have a group who watch games with you? do you play, either music or football?) it's probably worth getting one or two for your own sake, even aside from the question of whether they appeal to dates.
The second tier is "produces positive change in yourself". The "classical musical scores" one is intellectual enough that it might qualify as "positive change in yourself", worth mentioning. You might even be able to elicit genuine interest from someone who is only politely curious at first, as long as you're tracking the ratio of politeness-to-curiosity in the conversation and don't go full autistic-hyperfixation. (not sure if that's a risk for you; maybe that's just me)
There's also a nonlinearity in the above tiers: combining "produces" with "done socially" can be better than the sum of its parts. It's not a first-date offer, but later on "let me bring you in to a group of friends and teach you X" is gold for establishing status and creating attachment.
The last tier sometimes worth talking about is "consumes something interesting to others", but the trouble with those is that people have varied and narrow definitions of "interesting" in this context. You might find a woman for whom either "watching football" or "analyzing classical musical scores" already qualifies. (Or you might find one for whom both qualify - do not propose marriage immediately after finding this out; give it at least a month.) That might be a long shot, but regardless, don't be afraid to talk about hobbies in this tier if asked; good way to weed out narcissistic or closed-minded or superficial dates.
The bottom tier qualities are "consumes something uninteresting" and "produces negative change in yourself". You might think the former case is a paradox, but there are a lot of things that are addictive to the user yet repellent to non-users. "Stupid internet drama" (I say, judgmentally, because surely I could quit anytime I wanted!) and "insane political YouTubers" might fall in both categories (this is worth worrying about for your own sake), and probably fall in both categories to anyone first hearing them. Don't lie to your date about them if somehow the topic comes up, but if possible keep the topic from coming up.
roystgnr
8d ago
Fog of war, grain of salt, etc. etc., but it seems worse than that at this point. No just "claims by pro-UA accounts", but e.g. the Wall Street Journal quoting Ukraine officials. Not just ordinary Starlink (which isn't supposed to be used for military weapons, or with terminals in-motion on any standard plans) but rather Starshield (the military-grade hardware with dedicated satellites, etc., which is supposed to already be disabled inside Russia but which was donated to Ukraine by the Pentagon for military use there, including in Russian-captured areas). Cut off with no warning while missions were in-flight.
Could be a misunderstanding, an attempt to cut off Russian use of captured terminals that accidentally impacted Ukrainian terminals as well ... but given the lack of warning and the timing, I highly doubt it.
roystgnr
9d ago
That makes sense in the Frenchman-attacking-allied-countries case; I just think there are a lot of other combinations of attacker and victim where the international nature of the crime will have the opposite effect.
roystgnr
9d ago
I don't understand the lackadaisical attitude toward likely recidivism in any case, so maybe I'm way off base here, but how would "international" make anybody become harsher? "Good thing for our local criminal that he's in our custody where all we'd have to do to crack down is say the word, not halfway around the world where we'd have to declare war to get him properly punished, because a declaration of war we'd totally do!" If anything I'd expect the modern west to go easier on fargroup members while the "modern" North Korea would be happy to oblige.
roystgnr
9d ago
deliberately allowing North Koreans to remotely defrost French freezers is an act of war by North Korea against France
This would be true for "encouraging", and for some definitions of "allowing", but "allowing" has a lot of grey area. "We thought he deserved a fifth chance!" is a pretty good shield of plausible deniability in too much of the modern west, including France.
roystgnr
10d ago
There's fan fiction that makes Harry Potter more adult (well, as much as possible under the circumstances) for the purposes of drama, but now I want to see it as an adult comedy.
roystgnr
10d ago
It depends on the car (the difference in price used to be much greater than it is now) and the location of the commute (pure-ICE mileage has gotten pretty good outside of stop-and-go driving) and on the future of gas prices too. My daughter picked out a hybrid for environmentalist reasons but I was surprised to see (even pre-bombing-Iran) that, if gas prices don't drop, the break-even point would be under 50k miles in. That would actually have been a reasonable investment if not for the opportunity cost vs the stock market going wild during the past few years.
On the other hand, I have a friend with a hybrid who made the same calculation during a gas price peak pre-fracking. Gas prices did drop. For a long time.
There's also auto work to consider. On average hybrids now are a little cheaper to maintain thanks to less engine and brake wear, but more expensive repairs means that one bad accident or post-warranty breakdown could put her back in the red there.
roystgnr
11d ago
If you like analysis of storytelling, my favorites right now are Brandon McNulty and John Matthew Fox. Their video titles and thumbnails are godawful algorithm-optimized clickbait, but the video contents are actually quite thoughtful and interesting.
roystgnr
11d ago
I went to see how bad it was, so I could write an expanded version of my "why are humans making it so hard to come up with an AGI definition that AI doesn't yet meet but they all do" rant, with the appropriate "considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists" reference and everything ... but I actually only saw a single "obliterating water" comment, and it seemed to be satirical rather than serious. I didn't scroll very far down, so I'm not questioning your credibility here, but even if there are a ton of dumb water takes I missed, I'm kind of amazed they didn't reach my screen. Does YouTube now actually have an algorithm (or even more incredibly, a user base) that successfully filters out the dumbest comments?
roystgnr
12d ago
surely they understood that there was no way that a blood purist group would ever give them a good deal once the war was actually won
They might just have been desperate for even allies of convenience. Very risky, but not unheard of.
"Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists In Well-Thought Out Scheme"
roystgnr
13d ago
She did start writing well before Twilight started showing us the left side of the female id bell curve, much less 50 Shades of Grey.
The two major artistic reactions to Anne Rice style "sexy vampires" were the Buffy/Angel series (exploiting but subverting the trope), with around 10 million total viewers tops, and the Twilight series (taking that shit to 11!), with around 25 million readers and twice that many movie viewers. Despite its lesser success, I'd give Joss Whedon a lot of credit for trying to show young women that falling for a much-older dark-triad-sociopath-type guy is a tragedy at best and a travesty at worst, but, well, you know.
roystgnr
13d ago
Fanfiction.net lists ... are they kidding me? over 800,000 Harry Potter works? ... so I have to assume that every possible gender swapped romance has been done at least a dozen times before.
I do wonder whether "gender-swapped Harry instead" would have been an even better series overall, if that had been Rowling's canon rather than fan fiction. It would be a big help for some of the "women writing men" problems problems that @Lewyn points out, if those problems didn't apply to the protagonist who occupies most of our attention. I think there are some gender asymmetries that would make a Draco+Harriet romance creep me out way more than Dracina+Harry, but maybe that would just mean I'm not the target audience; Draco+Harriet probably could have made the Twilight/50-Shades crowd go wild.
Yes. That's not obvious?
Children making false accusations is a thing that happens sometimes, though almost certainly not in this case. For a politician to hold that belief here is evidence that they're either uninformed or wasting their intelligence on rationalizing their own mistakes. For a politician to share that belief here is evidence that they're politically incompetent. You wouldn't want to vote for them, but if you find yourself in the same room you should probably talk with them and see how amenable they are to reason.
Children deserving to be raped is not a thing that happens sometimes. For a politician to hold that belief would be evidence that their souls have been lost to the service of evil. For a politician to share that belief would be evidence that they've had a full psychotic break. You wouldn't want to talk to them, but if you find yourself in the same room you should probably be wary and ideally armed.
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