netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
I think it sounds rad. Like an alternate-universe set of Metal Gear Solid sequels.
Little bit of Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead, too. Makes sense as it’s like cyberpunk but for necromancers.
Act III might be a bad fit for a game since it relies on taking away player agency, at least until the final decision. Visions of the Mass Effect “Reapers go away” buttons, except in that series, your character has always been making a difference. There’s a real risk of not just nihilism, but unfun nihilism. I remember almost dropping A Fire Upon the Deep, despite its amazing premises, because of how bleak it felt for the protagonists to run and run with no expectation of a turn. This kind of plot can be done, but it’s not trivial!
I can’t think of much mainstream fiction which handles that sort of AI race plot. Maybe Marathon approaches it on a very fantastical, seed-that-instantiates-the-AI level. Reminiscent of Hyperion Cantos, I guess.
For less mainstream stuff, uh.
Animorphs: the reckoning . The fact that fic of a children’s series veers into AI value alignment is, like, several layers of spoiler.Pokemon: the Origin of Species , ditto. Actually, it might be spoilers that it dips into organized conspiracy territory, too.The World as it Appears to Be , a bizarre Overwatch fic. I don’t even like Overwatch, but this was unreasonably interesting. Probably the closest to your Act 2/3 plot.Ra, by qntm . Double extra plus spoilers that this one involves AI at all.
I’d say these are all amazing on their own merits, but I have weird taste. For all I know you’ve already read half of them if you hang out on /r/rational. I also never read any of the Twilight or Madoka Magica rationalfics, which have a good chance of conspiratorial AI takeoff plots.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15hr ago
How so? It should be just as 501(c) immune as before.
Actually, it looks like Trump enthusiasts would like to raise the existing tax on endowments established in the 2017 tax bill. So yes, I could see Trump adopting that as a vendetta.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15hr ago
The rest of your comment doesn’t make sense!
@Gillitrut gave you the U.S. law which governs this situation, the act of Congress which established it, and a Supreme Court case specifying that yes, §1231 applies.
What “other parts” disagree?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15hr ago
An extraction shooter marketed to fans of boomer shooters.
Wait, Bungie has that covered…
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15hr ago
Reminds me of that mecha game where you have no joystick, no mouse, just the keyboard. It’s command-line only.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
17hr ago
Yeah, but being Donald Trump was off the table.
To be clear, my guess is that parole was chosen as the easiest bleeding-heart-compatible overcrowding strategy. They wanted to handle the logistical problem without disincentivizing arrivals.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
CHNV, discussed here.
I think @SteveAgain is wrong about the terminology. “Inadmissible” was used, as intended, to describe someone without any of the immigration protections of a refugee or temporary resident. You can see it used the same way on the current dashboards like this one. The inadmissible numbers include anyone given a Notice To Appear under various laws…but not CHNV, which uses a different law.
Beneficiaries of that program were inadmissible and “parolees.” This was a separate status handled through USCIS instead of CBP.
Given the immense pressure on the border through the Biden presidency, it’s not hard to guess why ~530,000 people were granted parole. About 400,000 were flown from their ports of entry to other sites, mostly in Florida. Again, this didn’t affect their immigration status, but it sure did make it harder to count them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
The U.S. Code is, quite literally, the law of the land.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
We did spend an awful lot of time and effort making it harder for them to do so, yeah? From English common law to bodycams. Incentives matter, and the incentives for the federal government to avoid deporting citizens ought to be pretty strong!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Agreed. We rode that high for a decade. Then we decided to retool everything for flattening hill villages and surviving IEDs. It’s fixable, but not trivial in the slightest.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
The former. I thought specifying “First” would distinguish from the Coalition invasion, which was definitely an outmatch.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
An initial blitz by a superior opponent. Immediate slowdown and a transition to entrenched warfare. Brief offensives and counteroffensives failing to stop the enemy. Inability for either side to secure the airspace. Huge reliance on foreign arms.
Key weapons have changed, but that doesn’t mean everything has.
Doctrine can’t be the same because they’re trying to accomplish different things. All else equal, the guy who’s entrenched has an advantage. As evidence I present all of WWI.
More specifically, consider a town defense like Khorramshar. The Iraqis were forced to expose their armor to RPGs and Iranian tanks if they wanted to get anywhere. As a result, they suffered much heavier casualties despite a numerical advantage.
Actually, I suspect the First Gulf War Iran/Iraq War would provide a lot of insight into the Ukraine invasion, but I’d need to do a more careful reading.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I wouldn’t mind seeing more about those serious estimates. The one you linked is methodological and doesn’t provide a total.
Other than that, I generally agree. Trump’s personal aesthetics don’t really care about foreign casualties. He’s going to manage Ukraine in whatever way serves his domestic politics, so previous support is probably a high-water mark. It’s not going to get any harder for Russia.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Self-imposed, as with the last few of his accounts.
It’s charging someone for the services your government provides vs. charging them for not using those services.
If we have to raise revenue, I’d say to do it that way instead of LARPing at autarky.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I would like to note that it's not a rule or requirement. The OP was modded for being obnoxious; copy-pasting a tweet is only one part of his offense.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
proscriptions
What exactly did you mean by that? Banning political parties?
we can’t either
Why not? Obviously the norms keep arising in the first place.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
A couple in the Depression. More if you count local politicians, conventions, etc.
Not so much during COVID, perhaps because, you know, it wasn’t that bad?
This asshole tried to kill a judge in 2020, but it was some sort of unhinged #MeToo grift instead of a COVID thing. And then there was this random act of schizophrenia in 2023.
But really, violence is rare.
hold up do any militaries achieve that last one? They’re not getting it from exercises. I guess OCS and the specialist schools are filters for personality traits that might signal competence. But it’s not like they’re anonymous, and they definitely don’t keep sending officers back to Ft. Benning every time they’re up for promotion.
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