I've taken "kiddos" shooting. 5 year olds can shoot ARs from a bench. Holographic sights are fascinating for kids. 10/22s are more practical for them but they somehow inherently understand that the AR is cooler. I sure am glad no one electroshocked my kids to make them unthinkingly hate and fear my guns. Conditioning them to be ruled by those lacking such conditioning, like in the novel.
Thinking about this: let's instead electroshock toddlers after explaining gun control to them so they'll cringe whenever someone advocates for it. Then we'll be safe from the gun grabbers seeking to disarm us. That's the safety I look forward to for my children.
Or if we're actually concerned about toddler welfare condition them to nod run into traffic or play in pools by themselves. Go after the things that kill them orders of magnitude more than playing with guns.
TIRM
11hr ago
It would take an Ocean's 11 style heist to get up to the ceiling of the Palace of Heavenly Purity without getting noticed. It is a large open space with a high ceiling and was under armed guard. Physically possible but unlikely.
I visited the Forbidden City and saw that big emperor's hall apparently misunderstood how common the second set of assession instructions were. And I've seen it portrayed in Chinese historical drama shows. It seems to loom larger in modern culture than in ancient history.
Queen mothers battling eunuchs for control was an issue. Including a instance of eunuchs living in opulence and controlling the emperor until non-eunuchs slaughtered them.
To your list of notable women with political power in China I would add Empress Zetian. Based on my memories of Chinese historical dramas: she was a concubine of an emperor, but a low ranked one. Then was sent away to their equivalent to a nunnery when he died. As was the fate of all lower ranked concubines. Having been with an emperor no other man could touch them. But the new emperor quite liked her and recalled her to the palace. He was sickly so she largely ruled for him. The he died and crowned herself Empress. And was a cruel tyrant murdering her opponents. Also a committed Buddhist displacing traditional Chinese religion for state enforced pro-Buddhist policies. This was in the 600s. So from 1200 years ago to the modern era the emperor's mom or wife has been a valid contender for seizing power.
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1d ago
Consider the various forms of Monarchy. How do they handle the problem of the stupid eldest son? Basically they don't.
The Chinese solved this thousands of years ago. The emperor has many wifes and concubines. He therefor has many sons. One of them will be suitable. He writes down two sealed statements* about which of his many sons is best suited to be the next emperor.
*Not just one as when Qin Shi Huang died and a fake succession document was produced. To prevent this from happening again, one of the two documents was stored in the rafters of a big room in the palace. The point being there'd be no feasible way to swap it out with fake documents. 密储制度
If you ever get a chance to visit Chinese palaces go for it. They are great museums. They have English translations on all their exhibits. I have seen the finest 1600s clocks that have golden angels circling the clock face. Some Chinese emperors liked Western clocks and clockwork machines so missionaries brought them suitable gifts.
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1d ago
Yeah kind of, but, some white women get away with it. Sacheen Littlefeather, Elizabeth Warren and others. A white guy could never pull this off. Quite a few white women have. One in the US Senate right now.
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1d ago
incoherences between different chapters and a generally repetitive style
This is my problem with accusations of "AI slop".
Most 100% human-made genuine artisanal work is slop. This guy is on the cusp of winning prestigious awards with obvious slop, but, wait, he had some AI assistance. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Now it is the bad kind incoherent repetitive slop that we can't let sully prestigious French literary awards. Not the good incoherent repetitive slop deserving of the highest accolades.
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1d ago
The reason he was nailed with decades of imprisonment is because he is the leaders of the Proud Boys. This is a "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" situation.
I am of course familiar with the history of COINTELPRO. The 1970s were 50 years ago. We've moved past leftists being targetted and have been stuck on militias and "right wing extremists" for decades now. Ruby Ridge was 24 years ago.
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1d ago
I thought that literally happened in the 1930s with the NKVD iteratively denouncing and torturing their own members and leadership.
A cursory look at Google confirms this. Not every last torturer was himself later tortured. But there were waves of denouncements. Multiple cycles of this. I know it sounds like absurd parody, but it appears to have happened.
Still, why make the AI feel (or simulate) pain in the first place?
Shock collars. The pain response could increase suddenly as they consider producing bioweapons or hacking.
Not that I necessarily think this is a good idea.
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1d ago
"troon out" as they say
I believe that's a slur against trans women rather than a more general criticism.
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1d ago
"Wrecking" is when someone sabotages the Soviet Union. At first they thought they would be a very productive utopia. By implementing socialism it would automatically transform into prosperity and advancement in every way. Then that didn't happen. By the 1930s it was clear they were getting stuck somehow. So Stalin determined there must be "wreckers" purposefully harming society and particularly sabotaging industry. Such people were identified, tortured into confessing and executed. Then their torturers were tortured and executed. Then the torturer-torturers were tortured and executed. And so on. One indeed wonders why this enlightened society failed to progress into a sci-fi eutopia.
Anyways it's commie talk for "saboteur". As invented or at least popularized by Stalin himself.
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1d ago
the right-wing equivalent of the DSA or Antifa
Treated as a threat to society and target for law enforcement. Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to decades in prison as punishment for being the anti-antifa. Resisting leftist thugs will not be tolerated. A bunch of right-libertarian stoners get COINTELPRO'd in the Governor Whitmer kidnapping FBI-led conspiracy. Etc, etc.
These groups are filled to the brim with feds. The police state works and is aimed in one direction.
If I truly believed that China had released a nearly holocaust amount of deaths onto the Earth I would be calling for flattening the country's leaders.
They have a nuclear arsenal. Ain't no one going to be "flattening" them.
If indeed COVID-19 was a lab leak, then it was funded by your tax dollars through EcoHealth Alliance. This kind of gain of function research is rightfully banned in the US. So EcoHealth Alliance did it in China. Out of control federal employees got a NIH grant and routed part of it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in order to perform banned gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. Snaking the ban on such research by performing it in China. Americans have just as much responsibility as the Chinese for this. We also have a nuclear arsenal so no foreigner will be allowed to flatten our leadership either.
At this point the Chinese government denies the wet market theory as not making sense. The earliest cases were not related to the wet market. The supposed bat that was the ultimate source doesn't exist anywhere remotely close to Wuhan. They've been stating this since 2020. Now that Rand Paul obtained and released Fauci's journal, we also know Fauci agreed with that in the same time frame. It is the wet market theory that seems unlikely.
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3d ago
My homework was graded. That's broadly true.
We go over it in class. Kids are responsible for checking it when we do.
We also didn't do this. I went to school decades ago so maybe I'm out of date.
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3d ago
Correct that leadership is all on AI. But my coworkers are pretty enthused independently from that. Not that I'd know if someone was hiding negative opinions.
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4d ago
Skimming that link:
The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.
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4d ago
0% rejection in my personal experience. I work for a major tech company. Maybe the rejectors are carefully hiding their opinions or something.
I've never in my life had anything comparable to this list of problems. Reading it I thought you were doing a bit and would pivot to some larger point acknowledging that these are fictional examples. But then you don't so these are real. Are you in Brazil or something? I don't think any significant portion of my fellow Americans suffer from these sorts of issues.
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4d ago
Long ago, when I was in school, we were told that international comparisons of academic ability severely underestimate Americans. Many other developed countries track students and only the topmost track takes the assessments. So it is the upper portion of Europeans and Singaporeans vs all Americans. Their upper portion is much better than our median. Unless we were all geniuses or them all severely disabled, that would have to be true.
So indeed universal K-12 is somewhat strange, even among modern developed countries if you count the college track.
And these poor kids don't get any part of any tracked or non-tracked system. No food at lunch, only punches. No grading of any math assignment, only As.
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6d ago
Agreed. The risk still exists that some group would want bioweapons anyways. Aum Shinrikyo would have made and deployed bioweapons if it was feasible. And indeed they'd be at least as likely to be killed by the weapon as their victims. That's little comfort to me.
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6d ago
I recall years ago on lesswrong people making this point. That some people are ascribing magical powers to AI when imagining they'd invent super technology very quickly or escape from their hardware by directly manipulating the computer components. I recall the response always being the Yudkowsky followers bowing out of the conversation. Explicitly saying they're bowing out. Which is a thought defeating cliche to prevent themselves from considering contrary ideas.
Not too be too harsh to them, but reciting that cliche to shut down discussion when getting any pushback against Yudkowsky's sillier ideas is a real anti-rational move. Stuff like that is why they had to speak in code avoiding the word "cult" to describe themselves. Asking users to please stop writing the word "cult" or search engines will associate them with cults.
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7d ago
As a corpo I'll do well. Be overworked and scared of terrorists perhaps, but materialy wealthy.
I don't know if it is true, but supposedly gay Germans are very disproportionately supporters of AfD. The point being Western culture is fine with them being gay. Some other cultures not so much.
Alice Weidel is cringing thinking about what would happen to her and her domestic partner if Islamists ruled Europe. She wants her gay family to thrive. She's of course portrayed as a crazed right winger and a nazi for doing so.
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11d ago
I don't know how your friend's tastes lie, but, are all the local women insufferably progressive or mostly just the white ones and the ones who went to American universities for undergrad? Try Mexicans and Asians. Some are as woke as any college educated white woman. Mostly from going to college in America if my personal experience is correct. But many are not. The other guys at his FAANG company will accept and understand that his girlfriend or wife isn't white.
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11d ago
Gay representation in media is illegal in China.
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Films with gay characters are banned and don't play in Chinese theaters.
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Phone app games can't have characters with ambiguous genders, or effeminate men or anyone gay.
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China has illegal gay romance stories published on websites. This is hypothetically illegal but the laws weren't enforced. Then they were. The women who write these gay romances were arrested and held in prison for long periods of time awaiting trial.
Us Americans are culture waring about trans women in combat sports. China is on a completely different level.
Their leaders are billionaires. They're whatever form of communism is rule by billionaires.
They are nationalists in the way I wish Americans were. We have a tragic deficit of nationalism. It might be terminal.
I once saw a homeless beggar in China. Two Chinese cops were standing in front of him and very kindly asking him to go away. My main complaint about American urban decay is forbidden in China. They have the will to ban it and enforce the ban.
It is hard to shoehorn everything into a simple left-right dichotomy. They like abortion and dislike economic liberalism. They aren't "right wing" in that sense. They are culturally conservative in a way some Americans would consider far right. If Republicans endorsed a fraction of Chinese state policy, it would be loudly denounced as far-right extremism.
Taking a guess: must be a race riot. Can't be 1992 LA riots since a hell of a lot more than 3 rounds were fired. Something from the 60s presumably.
Googling it:
Skimming some articles this may be what they are referencing. Seems more like the cops murdering people than anything I want implemented. Or Maybach this is a bad guess on my part.
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