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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   2171 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 17, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I was extremely suprised to find discussion that there are large income disparities by MBTI type https://old.reddit.com/r/mbti/comments/cvmx18/iq_vs_salary_by_mbti_type/

unfortunately it seems to be averaged by gender, looks like disparities would be even large when disagreggated by gender when they say that correlation IQ vs income is low (for some value of 'low'), do they factor in personality?

Does anyone have any advice on safely getting rid of a smallish, mostly-full canister of propane? Most of what I'm finding online assumes the canister is empty. Hazardous waste disposal in my city is handled in a different county, by appointment, bringing it to their facility and waiting in line, and the next day they have appointment slots open is December 7th. I want to get this out of my space as quickly as possible - at the very least I'd like to find a safe way to empty it. The only reason I even have it is that my old roommate brought it from our previous apartment and the canister wound up in a box of stuff in a bathroom closet when we moved.

List it as free on craigslist or nextdoor or a similar site and someone will come take it.

Why would you want to get rid of it? Keep it to run a gas burner in a power outage. I have half a dozen half-full camping bottles I use up whenever it's not worth dragging a 30lb tank around.

Pretty much all the manufacturers of these items have guildes to proper disposal of their products. Here is the one for yours: https://www.bernzomatic.com/About-Bernzomatic/CylinderSafe#. While is does assume they are empty, you can contact them for guidance on what to do with a partially full one. They even have a chat bot, though it probably isn't very good.

Can't you empty it by just gassing it out? Would that make it much easier to get rid of?

When a rich and/or important person in USA is convicted and imprisoned in USA, what kind of prison do they go to, exactly? A regular prison for the kind of crime they did, but with extra protection from guards? Some sort of an unofficially "elite" prison for bigwigs? Or do they just throw them into the main population, same as anyone else?

Red hot CW, but it's a limited-scope question (I hope).

How can I find out the profile(s) for marginal MtF transitioners?

A few definitions:

  • MtF transitioner: a male who does at least one of the following:
    • Goes on HRT (cross-sex hormones) for long enough to begin to develop female sex characteristics like breast growth
    • Gets surgery related to transition (including facial feminization, vocal, genital, but not including non-invasive procedures like hair removal)
    • Changes name and presents full time as a woman
  • In particular, I'm not counting cross-dressing, deliberate androgyny, a "second identity" as a woman, etc. unless accompanied by one or more of the above, even if the person considers himself "trans".
  • Marginal meaning the usual thing, which could cash out in something like one of the following:
    • Is "on the bubble" about transitioning in the above ways, narrowly doing so (or narrowly not, but that's harder to measure)
    • Wouldn't have transitioned in similar circumstances, in the cultural climate of, say, 20+ years ago, (i.e. comparing to counterfactual of born 20 years earlier, making decision 20 years ago, not comparing to past self) but did transition in recent years (or is about to start transition now)
  • Profile meaning:
    • Demographics pre-transition, especially including age both at beginning to transition and age when first considering transition (if those are different)
    • Motivation: why, in terms of consciously experienced motivation (no psychoanalysis or "no you really did it for X reason", but also not "what theory of themselves do they subscribe to"), did they choose to transition
    • Religious and/or ideological background in early life (not immediately prior to transition, as I expect possible ideological shifts to bring beliefs in line with actions)
    • Personality / interests
    • Psychological comorbidities

I'm not asking for your personal theories (unless you uniquely have an insider or reliable source of knowledge about it); I have my own and most people's ideas about this are half-baked at best and ludicrously ideologically motivated at worst. What I want to know is where I can find one of:

  • Many such people (unguardedly) talking about themselves, in places accessible on the public internet.
  • High quality data gathered on this topic by people who are not just trying to grind their ideological axes / prove their pet theories.

So far I've read through a bunch of stuff on the sorts of subreddits where I'd expect to find such people, such as /r/mtf, /r/trans, /r/egg_irl. But I suspect that may not be a representative slice of the population I'm interested in.

It just occurred to me that there's a good chance @gattsuru might know some relevant information. Hopefully this tagging will summon him.

I'm not really sure what you want, but if I'm understanding you correctly you can look at the repressor general/repgen on 4chan's /lgbt/ board. I don't know if it's still like that, because I haven't checked it in years, but the general idea is that they want to transition but won't because they wouldn't pass, or they do take HRT but don't present as women. Some voice train to sound feminine, but only use it online. While some of them don't take HRT at all, I think a sizable amount do, so it should still fit your criteria.

There's a also something similar "boymodding", but from what I understand that's usually temporary(present as male while in the early stages of HRT/pre face feminization surgery). There's also something called "Manmodding" that's supposed to be more permanent, but I only know the terms in passing.

Looking through the archives through an archival site like this is probably the best way to do it, since individual threads won't offer much more than "woe is me". There's also the AGP threads on the archives you can check(think they're banned on the board, although enforcement is selective), agpgen is way more interesting, but they are pro transition unlike repgen. If you don't know, you can change the repgen in the subject to agpgen if you want to search the other.

As far as info goes on what you want, that's probably the most easily accessible public source. It won't be easy to sift through it to get to the information you want, but it is there, somewhere.

Wouldn't have transitioned in similar circumstances, in the cultural climate of, say, 20+ years ago, (i.e. comparing to counterfactual of born 20 years earlier, making decision 20 years ago, not comparing to past self) but did transition in recent years (or is about to start transition now)

I feel like that's the case for most of them. If it was 20 years ago, and even if you had gender dysphoria you'd suppress it, or manage it through crossdressing or other ways. If you wanted to transition back then you really had to seek it out. The average transwoman from back then is a whore or a porn actor. These days it's much more visible, you see a lot of news about trans topics, even if you don't really see anyone who is trans, meanwhile online you have entire communities which are easily found by anyone. And the process of transition is easier too, you can order HRT online easily, and there's tons of guides to regarding dosages and other stuff relating to it. I don't have any statistics, but quite a few trans people did either start through DIY and then switched to official, or stayed DIY.

Another thing to look at more specifically is the last few years, aka Covid. This is completely anecdotal, but I think that if you look back to the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 you will see a huge spike in transitions. Everyone being inside and online, meant you were more likely to spend time thinking about it and see it and wearing a mask made passing easier too which helped with the woes of early transition.

Profile meaning:

As to this, if you want the most common example you can look at a "failed males". Nerdy interests, no friends, shut in, depressed, anxious, likely autistic. There's also an incel to trans pipeline too. HRT has created irreparable changes to any community that has a lot of autistic males, like programming, speed running, video games in general. There's definitely examples of successful people transitioning, but most were depressed prior. There's reason for the 42%? attempted suicide rate, that's often spammed online as a meme.

Although looking at your past posts, I feel like this post might not really be of much use to you, but whatever. Since you mentioned autogynephilia in an earlier post, but I hope it at least offers something.

I checked out that archival link to 4chan. I have to say, there definitely is a heavy selection effect going on there, but at least it's a different one than the the other places I've looked.

I find 4chan slang and culture to be extremely offputting, but a certain subset of the population there at least has the "brutally honest" thing going. (Or maybe they're being hyperbolic or making shit up for fun. Hard to tell sometimes...)

Does themotte have "subscribe to answers to a comment" option?

Save the comment and return to it is the closest we have.

Is the poem "Ozymandias" familiar to you? If so, did you first encounter it in one place, but it became more memorable later in a different circumstance?

I think I first heard it in full in a teaser trailer for Breaking Bad, although I probably would have been familiar with it before then.

I also had a brief period where I would try memorising poems. It was the first one I successfully memorised.

I also learned it from Civ IV when I was a kid. The game has a lot of interesting quotes read by Leonard Nimoy when you unlock new techs and I still have many of them memorized. However, the Ozymandias quote was one that I instantly loved even as a 9 year old and I still have the poem memorized nearly 20 years later.

We also "analyzed" the poem in high school AP lit (I'm sure I went overboard being a know-it-all about it).

Can’t remember where I first heard it. It wasn’t Watchmen. Probably either English class or one of those Egypt-adjacent kid’s books.

I recall reading it in a high school English class. I wouldn't say it became more memorable, but it was reinforced by 2 TV shows many years apart: 1st with Lost when an episode featured a vast stone foot that appeared to be the remains of a larger statue, which seemed like a clear reference to the poem; 2nd with Breaking Bad when an episode was titled Ozymandias in an explicit reference to the poem and likely meant to point out Walt's growing pride and hubris and hint at his inevitable downfall.

First encountered it in class in either grade or middle school, cemented by Civ IV in high school.

Watchmen (comic book). It was pretty memorable the first time.

Civ 4 for me as well.

Same. I wouldn’t be surprised if a large percentage of men of a certain age first encountered it there.

First time I read it was Googling it when I heard a line from it quoted in Civilization IV, I was probably 10. I don’t read much poetry but it resonated with me so much I’ve had the whole thing memorized since then.

Okay the world is getting crazy.

About 10 years ago I made the decision to not fully allow any one algorithm to curate what content I consume. I also made the decision to not like videos, tweets, posts and other content as I was worried that when you like something the algorithm decides you want to see more of something which inherently means you want to see less of something else. I had fomo for new novel information I guess.

However there is just too much information. And every field is advancing at a rate never seen before. I need to keep up. I need to keep digesting this wonderful juicy magnificent information that my ancestors could only dream of. I NEEED IT ALL. I need to know everything. Just the fact I've avoided algorithms (not completely) for 10 years means that I have a wide range of interests and it's allowed to make novel discoveries about our world just from the comfort of my bedroom. We live in quite unbelievable times really.

Please guys how do I curate information from all over the internet ?

How do I watch the internet from above?

How do I collate information from 4chan, crypto, Data secrets lox, Productivity, history, biohacking, Lesswrong, AI , UFO, Singularity, Robotics, Ray Peat, Paranormal, Biophysics, Genetics, Epigentics, Quantum Computing, Looksmaxxing, Slatestarcodex, YouTube, Apricity, scientific studies, Substack, Astrology, Neurofeedback Autism, etc, without losing my mind?

(Partial answers and Speculative answers welcome.)

(Also if you think there is a better place to ask this question please let me know. If you think there is a better way to ask this question please let me know.)

A straightforward answer could be to write a parser for each source of information that you are interested in, and then a frontend to consume that information. I am partially doing this (and it provides some of the magic sauce for my startup), though I also use email and rss. And Twitter; the serendipity factor for the algorithm is still too high to leave it be.

I will need chat GPT to decipher this comment but much appreciated. Is your startup a solution to my problem? If so please give more details.

Is your startup a solution to my problem?

No. Rather, some internal tooling I am not willing to release is. I am not willing to release it because it would take too much effort, and it might not end up meeting your needs (it uses the terminal extensively). However, from the description you could get an AI tool (maybe this) to try to replicate it.

Also, I've sometimes entered Data secrets lox, but bumped out pretty quickly; what is an example of a discussion you've found valuable there, if that's not too much trouble?

bumped out pretty quickly

Okay you caught me. I also had the same experience. I just added it to my list to make it look as varied as possible.

What do you think of my little list anyway?

I also refuse to give the algorithm anything. I'm not even logged in almost anywhere, and I certainly won't use an app.

The best way for me to keep tabs on content I regularly follow is - still, after decades - RSS feeds. You can even "subscribe" to a youtube channel and/or twitter account by just adding it to your RSS reader. And of course it works naturally for blog-style content.

Also, skimming hackernews and curating a list of decent subreddits still works OK for content discovery.

Its funny how one comment tells me it's impossible and then one comment basically gives me what I'm looking for. Thank you.

I also refuse to give the algorithm anything. I'm not even logged in almost anywhere, and I certainly won't use an app.

I'm getting the sense that your motivation for the avoidance of algorithms is different from mine. Mine is the fear of missing out on potentially helpful information. What is yours?

Mine is the fear of missing out on potentially helpful information. What is yours?

This is certainly part of it. Even if you don't 'like' any content at all, twitter, youtube et. al will feed you only more of what you consumed previously - even worse if you follow other accounts. But I also just really don't want those companies to built up a profile about me in order to sell me ads.

It also has previously unintended side-effects: for example, people now frequently report having trouble ad-blocking on youtube. This isn't an issue if you're not logged in.

Which RSS reader do you recommend?

Complicated question. Quick answer for normies: Feedly.

Complicated answer: Are you OK with making an account and maybe even paying for it? Do you need cross-platform support (sync between your phone and a tablet/PC)? If no, your options are endless. I like miniflux.

If you want cross-platform without a third party, you need to self-host your feeds. I really like the RSS features Nextcloud brings. Use and app on your phone, the web interface anywhere else. Miniflux can also selfhost.

Thanks!

I suppose the downside to self-hosting is that the computer would need to be on 24/7, or?

Yeah, but almost nobody self-hosts on their PC. You either rent a server/virtual machine somewhere for cheap, or you put something like a RaspberryPi on your network. That uses less electricity, and you can mess with your PC without taking your private cloud offline.

If don't have a server somewhere already anyway, or if you're not extremely privacy conscious, or if you're not actively looking for a beginner's hacking project, don't bother with self-hosting.

OK. I don't think I'll be following anything very sensitive on my feeds.

I don't get how miniflux works. I downloaded https://github.com/miniflux/v2/releases/download/2.2.3/miniflux-windows-amd64.exe

but it doesn't do anything. Flashes a dos window.

Maybe I'm too normie for this shit.

Honestly, then just use feedly.com or feeder.co

Both have decent Android/iOS apps. If you want to mess around with it only for a few minutes to begin with, Outlook also still has a built-in RSS reader. It's really easy to use. Rightclick the "RSS-Feeds" folder, select "Add Feed" and paste something like "https://www.astralcodexten.com/feed/". Done. (All Substack blogs provide their RSS feed just by adding /feed/ to the end of the address.)

RSS doesn't need to be this open source nerd fest, that just happens to be the guys who still use it most consistently. The reason for that is a bit historic. RSS used to be hugely popular 15 years ago. Everybody in tech was using it, every day. But it's by definition a decentralized technology - and Google, Meta and Amazon really have no use for something like that. So they worked hard at replacing it.

The installation instructions:

Installing Miniflux is straightforward if you have some basic system administration knowledge.

There actually aren't any instructions for installing on Windows.

A group chat that has competent people who are tied in with various industries and specialties in various fields.

And a highly curated twitter feed or set of twitter feeds for other competent people in various fields.

The first one is hard to find, for sure.

The second one takes some effort, because you have to filter out brainless pundits, grifters, kooks, and the occasional psy-op, and identify people with consistently correct analysis or at least an actual mastery of the facts.

Right now there's a LOT of people online who offers 'newsletters' and paid writing (usually via substack) where their whole game is that THEY comb through all the new of the day and analyze it and summarize it to their particular audience. If you found a good one that might suit your needs. But also consider how that person is choosing to present any given issue, and what they might be choosing to exclude.

Ultimately though, accept that you can't keep up, and your own sanity is probably better served by deliberately taking breaks from the firehose. News will happen in the interim, you will hear about it, but it won't take you long to catch up on the stories that ACTUALLY mattered later, rather than trying to identify meaningful stories as they happen.

The crazier the world gets, I assert, the more critical to ensure your own mental peace.

A group chat that has competent people who are tied in with various industries and specialties in various fields.

These are mostly in private Discords now. Its been one of the worst things to happen to the internet in the last decade, as much as I like Discord personally. Trying to find the answer to even a simple question on anything on the open internet is 90% scammers, click bait, and people that make you scroll past 10+ ads for the answer to a yes-or-no question.

Yeah. There used to exist forums with competent moderation that allowed quality, technical, high level discussion among members and yet random onlookers could view the discussion, and many of them were indexed by search engines so you could find them when needed as well.

Reddit sort of replaced this but shit the bed because

A) Useful subs get overwhelmed by casuals and Eternal September kicks in

B) Useful subs go private to avoid the above and can't be accessed or indexed or searched OR

C) Powermods capture the useful sub and turn it into an ideological echo chamber.

Wikipedia could probably step up and fill a massive gap here, but there's signs it is ideologically captured a swell.

I am not satisified with AI 'replacing' the open internet that we had, even if it manages to match the general quality.

Another big problem with Reddit is that any topic or question that might result in someone needing purchase something to resolve their issue is often burried under astroturfed replies by accounts controlled or hired by manufacturers to promote their products. On top of this Reddit also allows companies to moderate the subs dedicated to their products, massively degrading the usefullness of discussion in many cases. You can't find the solutions to common problems as the manufacturer-as-moderator doesn't allow posts about problems with their products.

You can’t. Also, you probably don’t want to. The closest thing is probably Gwern? You probably don’t want to be Gwern. How many Gwerns does the world need? Even Gwern himself, for all his knowledge, does not provide any societal benefit except for his collation of information.

Ray Peat

I am very suspicious of this (newly popular) health trend. Bill Gates and Trump have ridiculous diets, Steve Jobs had a ridiculous diet in the other direction, and Jordan Peterson has a yet more ridiculous diet. Yet all top in their respective fields. Meanwhile the average fad diet-ist is a loser, relatively speaking. The only things that I think are probably true is that we need more greens, fibers, and a lower glycemic load for meals (unless you’re working out), and also that consistency of diet is a uniquely beneficial independent variable in health because our body adapts to patterns. When I looked into the diet of top university students it was just like: consistent three meals per day, carbs, more fruit and vegetables. That was the best study I could think of for this question (how do top performing students eat), we should see the best habits rise to top there (or it just doesn’t matter).

You can’t.

Please tell me how sure you are of this

I am very suspicious of this (newly popular) health trend

Maybe I should have clarified but in all of those spaces/topics that I have stated there is always going to be stuff that is true and stuff that is false. I am not saying everything in these spaces/topics are true. IN FACT I am saying because I frequent these space/topics in a certain detached way I can see the flaws in these spaces/topics that other people cannot; especially those who attach themselves fully to one or two subjects.

Bill Gates and Trump have ridiculous diets, Steve Jobs had a ridiculous diet in the other direction, and Jordan Peterson has a yet more ridiculous diet. Yet all top in their respective fields.

Bill, Trump, Steve and Jordan all have star signs, heights, looks, productivity habits, personalities, social connections, family, IQ, motivations, clothes, voice, technologies, genetics, epigenetics, education, money, random events in their lives etc that contribute to their success as well as their eating habits.

I am not asking for people to validate me on the truthfulness on any one of these topics. That's a me problem. I am asking for a way to arrange such a vast amount of information in a way that I can stay up to date with new findings and eventually use this information to improve my life and the life of others.

I understand that this is a big ask. So I'm not expecting someone to just give me a fully baked working procedure. I am just asking for some initial ideas or first steps or even just guesses on how they would attempt to do this.

And if this question doesn't belong here please help me and try to think of a place that might be more receptive to a question like this.

I think they also do algorithms based on time spent watching a thing.

But I feel like your approach is backwards anyways. You should be liking the interesting and enlightening content. Some people will specialize in it. It's better to follow them.

I think they also do algorithms based on time spent watching a thing.

I understand. One aspect of my problem is how do I collect information of different formats from different places into information that actually allows me to improve my life and the life of others.

But I feel like your approach is backwards anyways.

I understand why you say this (maybe?). If I believe that sorting out information is too much for my brain why not just rely on an algorithm?

It's kind of hard to explain but having a general overview of things allows you to see that more isn't necessary better. You can go super deep on a subject and become the world's expert and still lack in other subjects.

I've seen crypto guys do the most inefficient workout routines and I've seen the genetics guys and the psychology guys struggle with the same question but from different angles but they have no idea that they can answer each others questions.

Everybody is so Silo'd that they can't really grasp the full picture. I am not saying that I have grasped the full picture but I have an overview that a specialist in their field cannot see unless they look at another field to complete the picture.

I'm watching people who have infinitely more IQ, attention, education, wealth, work ethic, etc than me make mistakes because they are siloed into an algorithm.

I understand. One aspect of my problem is how do I collect information of different formats from different places into information that actually allows me to improve my life and the life of others.

I'd suggest the old fashioned way, just writing down your summary and sharing that summary. If a bunch of people are doing bad workouts, share a better workout routine among them. Cite it with sources from the people that know workouts.

A suggestion for mixing up your information diet:

Real life is not siloed in the same way as the Internet, so you can mix up your information diet by sampling from your locality. It is of course still siloed in its own ways. I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of families, all of my friends here are parents. But I know there is a variety of political views, news sources, and job experience among them. The online silos of my neighbors look very different from one another.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, Galactic Patrol, Crystallizing Public Opinion and 12 Commandments.

Still on Castles of Steel. It’s more tense than I expected, and for surprising reasons. Everyone going into the war expected Britannia to rule the waves. Everyone today knows that Britain did, in fact, keep control of the sea, and obviously went on to win the war. The tension comes from all the disasters along the way.

The child’s model of naval warfare starts with two piles of ships, which are dashed against each other until one side is out of hit points. Both British and German strategies were chosen according to sophisticated versions of such a model, which agreed that the British would dominate an open fight on account of having more ships. In theory, Germany would only accept lopsided fights against smaller elements of the British navy, relying on torpedoes and mines to level the playing field. The British, then, had a veto on any German naval operations so long as they could avoid throwing it away.

And by God, they tried their best. Poor training, executive meddling, insane deployment orders—the British continually courted disaster. They had a near-perfect intelligence advantage thanks to lucky recovery of German codes, but they repeatedly failed to actually use it. When they did manage to engage the enemy, their gunnery was generally unimpressive, and tactical errors kept them from dealing crippling damage. Meanwhile, Germany kept trying operations which should have been suicide. Everyone on both sides thought they’re trying heroic maneuvers and devious plans, and but they're really risking everything for minimal gain, often playing exactly into enemy hands. The net results were unbelievable quantities of metal, coal, and human lives sent up in flames.

So the book is tense. Everything has to end in stalemate or disaster, and the question is usually who made the fatal mistake this time. That doesn’t detract from the overall experience. I want to recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the period. I also want to wave it in the face of anyone promoting an elaborate strategy for, well, anything. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

https://glog.glennf.com/hcwm-store/how-comics-were-made

Deep dive into how printing works/evolved

Finished Final Cut last night, loved it. Started My Brilliant Friend on the train this morning, having heard from everyone and their mother that it's fantastic. Only got about fifteen pages into it, don't know where it's going yet.

My girlfriend pitched the latter to me after she finished it. I decided it sounded incredibly stressful.

Gone South by Robert McCammon. Read it a long time ago and liked it. Also plan to pick up my copy of Medieval Canon Law again which is an intro to the subject for laymen.

Finished reading And The Band Played On. It didn't really change my views about anything, but it revealed a few aspects that I find interesting.

When I got to the last quarter or so of the book, it started to feel to me like it was an excessively negative or doomer take on the situation. Like, okay, things were pretty bad early on, but we're finally making some real progress, can't we acknowledge that? But nope, it's just negative takes, so we'll just blow by the actual progress and find some new negative aspect to focus on.

Were they correct to slow-walk the response at first? If you look at the actual death toll over the first few years after it was recognized that AIDS exists and is a communicable disease caused by a pathogen, it's pretty low. Only 618 deaths in 1982. 5596 in 1984. It wasn't until 1983 that somebody first calculated that the mean incubation period was likely to be in the neighborhood of 5.5 years, which would infact imply a tremendously increasing death toll over the next decade, which did in fact come to pass. And that of course is just one statician's opinion. How long for that to be accepted to be true by the whole scientific community? How many times has a single or small handful of scientists claimed that something they were working on would be super terrible in the future, so we should invest a ton in it now, which would incidentally be very good for them personally, but turned out to be overblown? I bet it's more than a few. Note that Covid-19, which we responded to far more vigorously, blew right by those early-1980s AIDS death counts in a matter of weeks. The fact that homosexuality was so broadly disliked didn't exactly help, but it doesn't seem super unreasonable that society as a whole didn't jump instantly to fight a disease that doesn't seem to hit all that many people.

It seems likely that a lot of the spreading took place long before there was any recognition that AIDS existed at all. This makes it pretty tough to construct an even vaguely plausibe counter-factual where AIDS is stopped from spreading.

The book seems to poo-poo the idea that it isn't necessary for the Federal Government to allocate extra money to AIDS research, these Federal medical institutes already have plenty of money and are already free to allocate as much of it as they want to anything their scientists find interesting. I think this idea seems pretty reasonable. If AIDS is so important and so dangerous, why can't they infact reallocate money away from other things and into AIDS research? Why does everything need even more of our tax dollars thrown at it? Yeah some scientists will bitch and moan that their pet projects are no longer high enough priority to get funded, but so what. As far as I know, the corporate world cuts off lines of research that aren't sufficiently promising all the time and tells the affected scientists to suck it up. I don't think it's all that terrible for the Government to do the same.

Another aspect that seemed interesting was just how wildly promiscuous at least some members of the gay community are and how opposed many of them are to any suggestion or attempt to cut down on that lifestyle. There was tremendous pushback against things like closing down bathhouses and discouraging gay orgies. It's interesting how all of the poor arguments we complain about today about how doing anything at all mildly negative for any "oppressed group" for any reason, including to try to prevent those people from spreading and dying of an actually lethal disease, is obviously a step on the road to genocide against them. I guess the internet isn't actually that special and there's nothing new under the sun.

There is very little reasoning on this earth that can stand up to the awesome power of “But I want to.”

How are proficiency standards determined for K-12 education?

I've tried looking it up a couple of times, after seeing a lot of angst about how less than half of students are proficient in reading or math, and have only found super vague verbiage like "The achievement levels are based on collective judgments about what students should know and be able to do relative to the body of content reflected in each subject-area assessment." That is not helpful at all. I can look at grade level standards to see what they are, and practice tests to see what the state expects that to look like, but it kind of just sounds like some board of people (Department of Ed? State Level? NCLB Commission?) got together and thought about what they wanted, and now every child is measured about that, and every state is panicking all the time about how the actual children aren't living up to it.

But maybe the kids are actually doing very badly? My neighborhood school has less than 50% proficiency, and they're above median for the state. Should I be worried? Did kids do better at some point in the past? When? Are there non BS sources of information about it?

For math specifically: most US states have adopted some version of the standards that were put together by the National Council of Mathematics Teachers and the US National Research Council's "Adding it up: helping children learn mathematics" report. The latter focuses solely on Kindergarden-8th grade, and in my opinion may explain why the NCMT standards are coherent up to 8th grade but lose serious steam in their recommended standards for 9th-12th grade. I have never understood the sense of teaching Algebra 1 for a year, then switching to Geometry for a year, then once the students have forgotten all about algebra switch back to Algebra 2 and spend the first half just recapitulating Algebra 1 for those who utterly forgot it and boring the rest silly.

For California I was able to find grade level reading standards that are somewhat clearer (PDF, page 18).

You might be better off getting a sample test and evaluating if it's a reasonable level of knowledge to expect of kids of that age.

I find it useful to look into the actual laws and regulations when media sources seem vague like this. From what I could find, the relevant law is 20 U.S. Code § 9621, which establishes the National Assessment Governing Board. You might have better luck finding the documents you want on the the NAGB website.

Here is a PDF which gives a broad outline of NAGB policy. Here is a longer PDF with more detail (the "procedures manual").

Here's the website for the PSSA which is a set of standardized tests used in Pennsylvania

When I was in school I recall taking them once in elementary school and once in middle school (I think, not 100% sure)? It looks like they've been expanded to be grades 3-8 now. If you scroll down to the "Resource Materials" section there's "Scoring Sampler" document that has testing procedures, grading methodology, sample questions. The "Technical Reports" include sections for the criteria in developing the test questions (which references other publications that were used to decide on the content) and the statistical analysis that was performed. The "Results" section goes back ten years if you're looking for trends.

Watched the Conclave (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/) at the cinema the other day. Visually well made (although it is just difficult to portray Catholicism without some impressive visuals), somewhat okay but uninteresting story with no clear point and an incredibly disappointing ending. Couldn't stop comparing it to another depiction of a Catholic conclave, from 2011's Borgia (the European made one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736341/)

Which made me realize that I am not sure if I have ever watched a movie that depicted a modern religious institution well. Not about some humble believer of the religion, not a sob story about how the religion doesn't match up to modern liberal sensitivities etc.

I am looking for a well-made movie about modern-day Japanese monks, or Latin American/African evangelizers or Iranian Mullahs or whatever is out there. Does anyone have any recommendations for me?

I'm not sure if this counts as modern, but have you seen Robert Duvall's The Apostle from 1997 focusing on Southern Pentecostal Christianity?

For all that the lead character is flawed, he is portrayed as actually believing what he claims to believe, and apparently a lot of the side characters are "played" by normal people Duvall met while traveling in the South researching the film.

The plot rhymes with Blues Brothers in a few places, except that the Christianity of the Blues Brothers is a joke played for laughs while the Christianity of The Apostle is played straight.

I've often heard "faith > religion" in various media and opinion outlets, but I don't think I ever heard "religion > faith". Not even from the most contrarian types.

Are you in the American cultural umbrella? Martin Luther did a number on the concept, but it definitely still comes up, mostly as a strategy for recruiting nonbelievers.

Which made me realize that I am not sure if I have ever watched a movie that depicted a modern religious institution well.

Not a movie, but Shtisel was a pretty good depiction of charedim I think.

I know the subversive ending to Conclave, so I will not watch it. How bad is Borgia (2011) on this CW front?

I remember it being fantastic. Characters who really believed in a way that I can imagine a renaissance Italian aristocrat would believe. Also very good plot and acting

One review by a historian claims that characters behave befitting their status and time, and aren't just 21st Californians somehow transported centuries in the past. Since anachronistic values are a prime indicator of subversion, that Borgia (Europe, 2011) lacks them, is a very good sign.

Try Into Great Silence about the Carthusians. The Island is another good monastic film.

What do you guys think of the Matt Gaetz pick specifically? This seems to be a high-variance pick from a high-variance administration. Attorney General is IMO the most important cabinet position for domestic policy. As we all learned in high school, the executive branch enforces the laws. The Department of Justice is the agency tasked with boots-on-the-ground execution of that constitutional mandate. If nothing else, the Gaetz pick puts the fear of god back into a lot of people in Washington.

Well, I wasn't familiar with Gaetz before this, so I'm mostly going off the reactions of others to his appointment. There's two things I find interesting.

The first also holds for many of Trump's other appointments, it's just the most stark in the case of Gaetz and Justice. And that's the take that he'll be useless as AG because he's not an insider, he's going to try (and fail) to tell people at Justice to do things they don't want to do, and that he'll get nothing done as they refuse to obey him, since they'll only "obey" an insider who only "orders" them to do things they already want to do. Pretty much admitting to what I keep saying (as does Yarvin): that, regardless of what it says on some musty old bit of paper, the Permanent Bureaucracy doesn't actually answer to their appointed "heads," nor the elected politicians that appoint them; that they set their own policies, and maintain them regardless of how the votes go, and that Our Democracy™ is mostly a sham. (Again, my only hope for the second Trump term is that the utter uselessness of even a Republican "trifecta" finally convinces enough right-wing Americans that no amount of voting can halt the leftward slide, and thus the only things to do are either give up, accept defeat, and lie down to rot; or else grab their friends, grab their guns, and march on DC to put bullets into Swamp Creature heads.)

Second, that Thomas G. Moukawsher at Newsweek and the Dreaded Jim have both compared Gaetz to Caligula's horse Incitatus, albeit with opposite valences of approval, and very different predictions of outcome:

If Senate confirmation still matters, all is lost. I don’t think it matters any more, but to maintain the pretence of still mattering, the Senate will confirm him, so that they can continue to pretend to matter.

Matt Gaetz has been compared to Caligula’s horse, in that he is wildly unpalatable to the Senate. The difference being that Caligula’s horse was unpalatable because incapable of functioning as a Consul, while Matt Gaetz is unpalatable because far too capable of functioning as Attorney General.

Our Senate will confirm him, as the Roman Senate confirmed Caligula’s horse.

and?

Take a look at Matt’s many Youtube videos of his finest moments. When the senate votes “confirm” despite all that, it will be a lot more amusing than Caligula’s horse.

and:

FBI has to be removed permanently. They are dangerous. They have committed enormous crimes, which if unpunished, will be repeated sooner or later. They have to be eliminated, or we lose.

I want to know if he can feasibly be forced in. Senate Republicans don’t seem keen on confirming him, and I hear there are some constitutional powers (should have written this down) Trump can leverage to force recess appointments - will he do it? Why didn’t he do it last time?

Noel Canning's punt will come back to haunt us: Congress must be in a recess of 'sufficient length' to be a real delay, not just the three-day break of Noel Canning... but while booting the conservative-lead requirement that such appointments be to fill a space that became vacant during the recess. So Congress has since gotten into the habit of pro-forma 'sessions' that did nothing but reset the clock, hence why October and August look like this.

In theory, the President has some powers to force Congress to adjourn, in Article II, Section 3:

"... he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper;... "

But afaik this has never been used, a strict read of the text would only allow it to apply where Congress was actively unable to agree on a date of end of session, and because there are no requirements for how Congress can choose to assemble (being having to meet on the first Monday in December) I don't think it would actually work otherwise.

In practice, if Trump tries for force recess appointments, it's extremely likely that the Senate fight further on everything else, so it's a costly decision to make to even try.

Gossip on the Hill is that Republican Senators feel they can push back on one of Gaetz or RFK and get away with it (but not both). I suspect it'll be Gaetz.

I wonder if Gaetz is a maximally unacceptable figure put forth to make the still-controversial real appointment more palatable.

Would Aileen Cannon be better? I'm honestly not sure.

Most coverage focuses on his alleged sex scandal. Which is lurid, but has the dual problems of being having run too long while, when described in detail (some ludicrous), just isn't damning enough. About the best that can be said there is that Gaetz lacks Kavanaugh's charisma: even if someone tries something really stupid like trying to bring a Mann Act prosecution against him, everyone's just not gonna care.

The other side is that he's actively uncharismatic enough that I could see him having a tougher time getting confirmed than RFK. Gaetz is hated, and he's an easy man to hate.

More critically, my impression's that he hasn't shown the competence or leadership skills necessary to do much more than take a few retirements out at the belt. My opinion of the DoJ is low enough that 'wrecking ball' might well be an improvement over BATNA, but I'm skeptical that it's the only or best option available. We know what happens when Gaetz demands someone do something and they refuse, and it didn't work out great for Gaetz last time, and it's gonna be every single day at the DoJ. Maybe he wakes up once shoved into the role -- if the conspiracy theory is right and that sex scandal above was being assisted by the DoJ, he'd have a lot of reason! -- but my bet is no. He might be vengeful enough to do a Nunes, but it takes more than a grudge.

Gaetz is gonna have some radicals in his staff that are much more competent, I’m pretty sure.

It doesn't matter how "competent" they are, the Justice Department will simply ignore them, along with Gaetz, and keep on as they are now. None of Trump's appointments will have any actual power over the agencies, whose personnel will prove impossible to fire. The only way the "Deep State" is getting removed is in body bags:

FBI has to be removed permanently. They are dangerous. They have committed enormous crimes, which if unpunished, will be repeated sooner or later. They have to be eliminated, or we lose.

First step is Trump’s truth commission, and RFK Junior’s gold standard science (restoring the scientific method).

First we have to expose and prove the crimes. Then it becomes possible to do what is necessary to prevent repetition. Whether Trump is able and willing to do what is necessary remains to be seen. The judges that staffed the FISA court have to die. They are too dangerous to live.

If the FBI and the rest live, Trump, Musk, and any namefag so incautious as to have spoken the truth will die.

Musk knows what the time is. Does Trump?

Once elite cooperation collapses, then it is time to win or die.

Jim is an idiot who has to position himself as the edgiest guy in the room. I don’t understand why you find him credible.

The problem with Gaetz is that, if you're gunning for people, insubordination isn't even the determining factor, since who suffers the consequences of prosecution isn't within the control of the Justice Department. He can order an investigation, and his subordinates can comply, but if they recommend against prosecution, he has the dilemma of believing them and dropping the matter or forging ahead anyway. He doesn't have the sufficient prosecutorial experience to even know if he's being bulshitted or not. So if he says he wants X to be indicted and the US Attorney comes back and says there isn't enough evidence, he's in a bit of a bind. He can fire whoever was in charge, but that doesn't really solve the problem — if there really wasn't enough evidence and the subordinate was being honest, he's just fired a good prosecutor for no reason.

But suppose he says he wants the prosecution to go forward anyway, and the subordinate complies. Now it's out of the hands of the DOJ entirely. The grand jury can refuse to indict. If he gets an indictment, the judge can dismiss the charges. If the case goes to trial, the jury could acquit. And in all of these cases Gaetz, as the public face of the department, is going to be the one left holding the bag. If Gaetz fails to serve up the necessary convictions, I don't see any scenario where Trump just gives him a pass; he's going to be publicly blamed and fired. If he believes his subordinates are loyal and takes their recommendations to heart and declines to pursue prosecution, he's going to be fired and publicly branded a member of the deep state.

This tendency to scapegoat is a large part of what makes Trump such an ineffective administrator. He promises his constituents certain things regardless of whether there is any realistic chance of accomplishing them. When his department heads explain they aren't magicians, or that his proposals are really bad ideas, he gets pissed and blames them. He expects loyalty but doesn't give any in return. If you expect people to deliver the impossible, competent subordinates will tell you why it can't work, and firing them and publicly castigating them for not plowing ahead anyway won't change that. Sycophants will attempt to achieve your goals, but since loyalty is their only asset, they'll bungle them. Trump's image among his base is nearly Christ-like, so he's never going to be the problem among his own "bosses". The only people who can survive in such a system are savvy political operators like Bill Barr who have the ability work Trump and pretend they're achieving his goals and gain enough of his trust that they can talk him out of truly stupid ideas.

Gaetz has neither the political savvy nor the requisite experience for the job. He's made alienating other politicians his life's work, and his legal experience is limited to three years he spent working on pennyante cases 15 years ago. He's bounf to make a hash out of anything Trump wants him to accomplish, and his loyalty isn't going to save him. Even if he somehow gets confirmed, I don't see his tenure lasting very long unless he can pull some rabbits out of hats.

There is nearly no interesting discussion on Reddit now, the vanishingly rare interesting post on 4chan is extinct (and will probably be posted on X anyway), substack is fine but most blogs are found and marketed on X and the comment system sucks (impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance), tik tok is probably interesting for viewing memetic culture but obviously has no discursive value…

For quality discussion on popular sites, this just leaves X, then?

(impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance)

I can't even read comments on ACT. Every time I try to scroll down the website shits itself, goes blank and then tries to recover. It still blows my mind that a website in the modern day like ACT/Substack provides a much worse experience than a php forum from several decades ago.

It's impressively bad.

I think honestly the future is personal website blogs and discussions on places like this. Substack is still okay, but it has limitations especially since as you’re hosting on someone else’s site you have to abide their rules. The other option is self publishing books which might be a decent way to get long form content.

Best to abandon all hopes of reading something interesting online in 2024. Put the onus on yourself to dig through old publications and research instead.

impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance

That's just because Scott doesn't want likes, the rest of the blogs have "Top" sorting, and you can see who liked the comments, if "total like count" is not a relevant metric to you.

X is full of such garbage and riddled with mediocre grandstanding (even if you prune your followed obsessively), but it remains the place with the most interesting links. The issue is more that midwits clog up the comments for anyone even remotely interesting, misinterpret things constantly, and generally bring annoying.

Honestly I just want to see in what kind of circular firing squad Bluesky will eventually turn out to be. I do hope that X will have some competition, but not exactly bullish on that.

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