domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
Personally, I always click once on the upvote button (turning it to a pale blue color that's barely distinguishable from the default gray) and then once on the comment itself (turning the upvote button from barely-visible pale blue to very-visible dark blue).
Lazuli
2hr ago
I will soon be founding a Bitcoin mining startup
It seems pretty late to get into this now.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2hr ago
It works and the color does change for me. But it is very faint and hard to see.
If you haven't seen it yet: Scott's AI Art Turing Test. See if you can guess which pictures are AI and which are human.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the quiz won’t automatically tell you your score at the end, so if you want to know your score, you’ll have to write down your answers and manually compare them with Scott’s answer key.
Spoilers below where I discuss some of the answers, don't look until you've done the test yourself:
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
I wouldn't celebrate too quickly. While I don't have any hard evidence, this thing trips my "scam" intuition big time.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
"Unemployment" has been limited to that since the 1930s. And the term seems to be mostly limited to the concept that the agency measures.
Crowstep
2hr ago
I think you're right. Hell, I thought that until I read your post. Then I remembered that 'OK Boomer' was a meme several years before the pandemic.
I assume that Zoomer was just meant as a portmanteau of Boomer and Gen Z (which itself was based on the letter convention that started with Gen X).
Mantergeistmann
2hr ago
Is this why negotiations dried up after Netanyahu refused to compromise on the Philadelphi Corridor? From the sound of his possessions, he seemed to be ready to try to flee across the border.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
2hr ago
I don’t know why you would include the line “the NYT didn’t interview every doctor” if you weren’t insinuating that the sample was biased by the NYT. But okay, if you’re not alleging that, then you’re alleging that the doctors were under some pressure by Hamas to testify in a certain way?
I've already explained this several times. What I believe is that every doctor in Gaza is obviously someone who sympathizes with Palestinians and has seen a lot of dead children. They aren't out in the field, so they see kids coming in with bullet wounds, and they probably aren't doing forensics to determine if it looks like a direct shot or a ricochet. If people tell them "IDF soldiers are shooting children," how skeptical will they be? Are they really seeing a lot of direct "kill shots" (e.g. to the head and chest, as opposed to various other random wounds like you'd expect of civilians caught in crossfire?) If they see one or two, how much convincing do they need? If you have one or two doctors willing to go along with a fabrication or an embellishment (such as doctoring an X-ray scan), and then disseminates them, who is going to call bullshit on them? How much evidence would the NYT need?
What I believe, and have explained, is that the truth is probably much messier than either "Yes, the IDF is now sniping children as SOP" or "Every doctor in Gaza is now making up stories of children being sniped." It's going to be a combination - a soldier here or there who said "Fuck 'em all" and is willing to shoot children, a few credulous doctors, a very active Hamas PR campaign (with no small amount of help from people like you). The fact that the NYT is willing to signal-boost any hint of Israelis misdeeds and spin a narrative of Jews being child-killing monsters, on the thinnest of evidence, helps make the extreme version of the story more plausible to people like you, who hate Israel and/or Jews.
Please notice the italics. My assertion would wholly explain why the children are shot in the head. There are 20k-30k Israeli soldiers in Gaza. How many deprave, genuinely evil Jewish extremist soldiers do you need in order to see too many killed children? Not most. Not half. Mere percents in combat roles. Yet this is not excusable; the failure of Israel to check or punish its extremists is inexcusable.
If you just want me to agree that shooting children is bad and anyone who does so intentionally should be prosecuted, I agree. That Israel is allowing it is your claim; I suspect Israel is "allowing" it in the same sense that the US "allowed" atrocities in Viet Nam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some people got away with shit, sometimes the brass were willing to look the other way, but sometimes people got caught and were prosecuted, and the American public was definitely not "okay" with it. Only people with a deep ideological hatred of America would say we committed war crimes out of sheer American evilness.
Jews are not a monolithic group. I hate the extremists, and I do not hate the others. I probably have positive valence toward secular Jews. While I hate aspects of progressivism, I do not see it as Jewish-driven like some commenters here.
Okay. That is genuinely surprising to me, though I am not sure I believe you. But I'll take your word for it--
I can’t help but ask: have you invested your identity into Israel in some way? Are you yourself a religious zionist? Your posts come off as biased, to say the least.
Oops. There's the tell. Gotta admit, I was waiting for that.
As I have told the other Joo-posters who eventually pulled that on me (and not that it is your business or should matter): nope. No Jewish or Israeli affiliations whatsoever. Well, I do have Jews in my family tree. Which according to some Joo-posters would make me a Jew genetically, so maybe my Jew-genes "bias" me. But given that my entire family is Protestant and I have literally never set foot in a synagogue in my life, that would have to be some deep DNA-programming.
mrvanillasky
2hr ago
Is it just me or is the upvote button broken? If I click on an upvote, the color won't change, so I can't tell if it has been upvoted.
HaroldWilson
2hr ago
as evidenced by the observation that anyone relying on them just a few weeks ago would have completely different conclusions as to
Not true at all. The statistics have barely changed and one's conclusions should be exactly the same - a very small decrease moving to a very small increase is not important.
obvious statistical bullshit of the highest order.
I'm just asking you to explain why it's bullshit, not just refuse to engage with any specifics.
Crowstep
2hr ago
Well it looks like embryo selection for IQ is here.
A US startup, using data from the UK Biobank, is offering embryo selection for “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants”, including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness.
What surprises me most about this is that they were able to use the Biobank data, and that the head of the Biobank is defending its use. The Biobank is, as I understand, the world's best source of genetic data and I had always hoped that it would be used for this kind of liberal eugenics. However I'd assumed that doing so would be hampered by 'bioethicists' or at least the default political caution of these kind of institutions. However, the head of the Biobank seems to...think this is good?
UK Biobank … has confirmed that its analyses of our data have been used solely for their approved purpose to generate genetic risk scores for particular conditions, and are exploring the use of their findings for preimplantation screening in accordance with relevant regulation in the US where Heliospect is based. This is entirely consistent with our access conditions. By making data available, UK Biobank is allowing discoveries to emerge that would not otherwise have been possible, saving lives and preventing disability and misery.
Well that's a pleasant surprise. I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that the head of a massive genetics project actually understands the implications of his scientific field, but it's great to have my default cynicism proven wrong.
The quotes from the 'bioethicists' are maddening, of course:
Dagan Wells, a professor of reproductive genetics at University of Oxford, asked: “Is this a test too far, do we really want it? It feels to me that this is a debate that the public has not really had an opportunity to fully engage in at this point.”
Not an argument, he's just vaguely gesturing at the implication that it might be bad. It's also unclear why, in a context where IVF is already legal and accepted by almost everyone, this needs to be subject to a public debate. This is just IVF with more informed choices over which embryo to implant.
Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society, in California, said: “One of the biggest problems is that it normalises this idea of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ genetics.” The rollout of such technologies, she said, “reinforces the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes”.
Translation: This scientific advance is bad because it reminds people of facts which I am politically uncomfortable with.
If being slim, happy, kind, law-abiding, rich or intelligent is better than being fat, depressed, cruel, criminal, poor or stupid, and if these things are affected by genetics (which they are) then there is such a thing as superior or inferior genetics.
Either Ms Hasson believes that genes don't influence anything (in which case she should not be working at a centre for genetics) or she believes that all human characteristics are equally good (in which case she should not use the term 'ethicist' in her title). Or perhaps she is a bioethicist who believes in neither biology nor ethics.
By late 2023, the founders of Heliospect claimed to have already analysed and helped select embryos for five couples, which had subsequently been implanted through IVF. “There are babies on the way,”
This is probably the most important part in my mind. It will be extremely hard to argue against embryo selection when there are happy, healthy, intelligent children running around. In the same way that skepticism around IVF vanished as the first IVF babies grew up, there will one day be embryo-selected adults giving interviews on TV, eloquently defending it.
Tiger mothers of the world, rejoice. You can now give your kids a heads-up that actually works, and doesn't require you driving them to extra-curriculars all the time.
SlowBoy
2hr ago
e my reply to @gattsuru), statistics which are in some sense 'constructed' are the only way of understanding any large scale and complex societal phenomena, whether it be crime, inflation or whatever el
I'm not suggesting that all statistics everywhere are bad. I'm saying that these statistics, collected by these people, in present America, are bad, and unreliable, as evidenced by the observation that anyone relying on them just a few weeks ago would have completely different conclusions as to etc. etc.
You want to have some sort of tough guy online moment where you call me a coward for not wasting my time parsing through obvious statistical bullshit of the highest order. Silly goose
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2hr ago
I don’t know why you would include the line “the NYT didn’t interview every doctor” if you weren’t insinuating that the sample was biased by the NYT. But okay, if you’re not alleging that, then you’re alleging that the doctors were under some pressure by Hamas to testify in a certain way? This hypothesis is unevidenced, would be evidenced if it happened (given how important it would be for the Israeli propaganda machine), contrary to the nature of the interview (anonymous), and counter-evidenced (20% of doctors said it didn’t happen). So I have to simply ask why you retain this belief. If you’re merely insinuating that the doctors, by virtue of their willingness to volunteer in Gaza, are predisposed to lie (?), or predisposed to like Hamas (?), or by virtue of caring about dying children are willing to exaggerate how many they saw (?)… maybe it would just be helpful if you tell me clearly what you believe.
To copy-paste my original assertion,
Some extremist branches rise up in some Jewish academies, especially among the conservative and non-ultra orthodox. These extremist branches are most likely to pour out students onto the Israeli military. In other words, the Israeli military selects for the extremists which are raised up within the de-centralized schools of Israel
Please notice the italics. My assertion would wholly explain why the children are shot in the head. There are 20k-30k Israeli soldiers in Gaza. How many deprave, genuinely evil Jewish extremist soldiers do you need in order to see too many killed children? Not most. Not half. Mere percents in combat roles. Yet this is not excusable; the failure of Israel to check or punish its extremists is inexcusable.
For some reason you are naive about the extremism in Israel. So I will provide more sources. It’s almost Jihadi, indeed we may call it Jewhadi. Apparently the support for sexually torturing POWs by some Israeli leaders, and the call for killing children by what amounts to a military recruiter, were not sufficient. From Haaretz:
In late January, Rabbi Dov Lior, a leading Orthodox rabbinic figure on the religious far-right, was asked if it was permissible to desecrate the Sabbath to block humanitarian aid to Gaza […] For Lior, blocking aid to a starving population, even against the wishes of the Israeli military and an extreme right-wing government, is a more crucial religious commandment than keeping the Sabbath.
To be a good Jew is to put the collective punishment of Palestinians ahead of basic observance. Recently, Rabbi Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Zfat, even wrote a special prayer for those blocking humanitarian aid.
This mode of religious thinking, which sees God as a God of holy wars and vengeance and demands that Jews act violently in His name, has been gaining ground for more than half a century in some extremist corners of Israel and the Diaspora. But since October 7, it has developed into a more coherent and grotesque worldview, a political theology that licenses and even commends collective punishment and the proliferation of gun licenses while undermining or even dismissing efforts to return the hostages. It demands the expulsion or total submission or death of Palestinians
From the New Yorker, interviewing Yehuda Shaul, who founded “an organization made up of former Israeli soldiers dedicated to exposing what they see as the realities of Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories”:
Over the years, every once in a while you would see a video of settlers attacking Palestinians with soldiers not intervening. In the past four or five years, there was a transition. We moved from soldiers standing idly by while Palestinians were being attacked to soldiers sometimes even joining the attacks. Sometimes it was soldiers who were settlers, who were back at home in the settlement or the outpost where they live, or where their friends live, and the guys are organizing to go down and attack Palestinians, so they take their gun or come half in uniform and join the attack. Sometimes it’s because specific military units were made up largely of extremist, nationalist, religious guys that the U.S. was even contemplating restricting military assistance to. But after October 7th things got even worse. Now the settlers are the soldiers and the soldiers are the settlers
two more things are happening. One is the sociological change in the Army. What we see is a significant shift within the Army—a change from the old-school, secular, Labor Party-oriented people to nationalist religious people, and especially to the ultra-Orthodox nationalists. People like Smotrich.
In 1990, only two and a half per cent of graduate officer cadets in the infantry were nationalist religious. In 2015, it was nearly forty per cent. That’s about three times their size in society. So you have this change, this sociological change, of middle-, high-class, secular, better educated military people going into cybersecurity and signal intelligence, more into positions that can advance their status in the economy post-military service, while the combat rank and file is being filled more with the ideologues, the nationalist-religious guys, as well as blue-collar people. In the past decade, there has been a big fight in the I.D.F. about who the real authority is. Is it the rabbi or the commander?
In 2016, two Palestinian attackers stabbed a soldier, wounding him. The Palestinians were shot. One of them was killed—the other one was neutralized, laying on the ground. Minutes later, a military medic called Elor Azaria arrived and he shot one bullet into the head of the Palestinian—basically executed him. And it was all filmed by a Palestinian activist who was living nearby. Once this came out, there was outrage. Ultimately, Azaria was indicted, but there was outrage about the fact that he was indicted. And it got to a place where even Netanyahu, who was the Prime Minister, called the shooter’s parents to show support. Ultimately, Moshe Ya’alon, who was the minister of defense at the time—a right-winger and a former chief of staff of the I.D.F.—had to resign, among other reasons, because he supported the indictment. Azaria was sentenced to eighteen months for basically an execution that was filmed.
That was the moment where the rank and file within the Army, plus the political base of the Likud Party and the Israeli right, essentially rebelled against the old guard who want to say that the I.D.F. is a professional army with discipline, who want to tell a story to the world of adherence to international law, checking ourselves, investigation, accountability. Now it became, “In our Army, we have different ethics than you, and we have a different idea of rule of law than you have. And it’s unacceptable that a soldier will be indicted for this.” For me, that’s the threshold where you understand that, at least at the level of the rank and file, the ideas had changed.
For me, the idea that bad things are happening in Gaza, that bad things will happen in detention centers, is not surprising. But how bad they are, to be honest, is surprising. I fear that we’re just scratching the surface here. And I fear the fact that the media is largely not yet in Gaza. I fear that we’re going to discover that we’ve reached serious new lows in our behavior—in terms of rules of engagement that were extremely permissive in the amount of collateral damage allowed, and in terms of treatment of detainees
I think there is a big chunk of Israeli society that, for them, the kind of assault that is alleged against detainees actually sounds reasonable. It sounds reasonable to people in the Knesset today and for ministers in the government. You saw thousands of Israelis standing and defending these soldiers, even with what is alleged that they’ve done. That’s how low we’ve reached. An entire section of Israeli society and the political class and government have actually stood up to defend these actions.
—
Now responding to other points:
Are you willing to clearly state this is false and you do not hate Jews?
Jews are not a monolithic group. I hate the extremists, and I do not hate the others. I probably have positive valence toward secular Jews. While I hate aspects of progressivism, I do not see it as Jewish-driven like some commenters here.
I can’t help but ask: have you invested your identity into Israel in some way? Are you yourself a religious zionist? Your posts come off as biased, to say the least. You misread my original post, which isn’t a big deal, but maybe it hints to deeper biases in this discussion. I am a random American guy from the east coast, have made friends of all faiths. There is no reason for me to be biased against Israel. But, you know, if I grew up singing songs about how Israel is the pure God-given land of my forefathers, and that everyone else has it out to get me, and that I have to love other Jews as tribesmen, that is going to bias me, right? So I think I am naturally less biased than anyone who grew up in a religiously Jewish household. If you think about how Hitler was able to make young Germans prejudicial and extremist, it was through singing songs about their homeland, hyping up their history, believing they were the chief victims of the last world war, increasing love for pan-Germans and sending them to German summer camps to instill values and camaraderie. So should we really be surprised if Israel has a lot of extremists — more than a Western nation? They are maxxing for extremism, except unlike the Hitler Youth, some of the orthodox get little secular education and are trained in the violent Old Testament.
JarJarJedi
3hr ago
It's usually mutual agreement from both sides. NYT would not explicitly produce fakes by themselves, but if they want fakes, they know where to find them, and they know which fakes are to be approached critically and which to be taken at the face value, and the sides play a huge role here of course. This mutually beneficial cooperation gives NYT a plausible deniability - they never deceive by themselves, in worth case they are just a bit too "naive", and the other side of the deal gets to benefit from the seeming reputation that a lot of people, for reasons unclear to me, still attribute to NYT.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3hr ago
[Alex Jones voice]
“They’re turning the frickin’ bugs trans!”
Jiro
3hr ago
it's absurd to get annoyed because a statistic designed to measure something (i.e. unemployment among people in the workforce) measures that thing,
No, it isn't absurd. Words have common definitions, which the agency can't just redefine.
If they had called it the "job-seeker-limited jobs index" or something else which can't easily be treated as though it just means the common definition of "unemployed" we wouldn't have this problem. The statistic is, by its name, "designed" to mislead.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3hr ago
The explanation is that the FBI doesn't need to make itself look good to the public, it needs to make the party in power look good to the public, so they can get the funding they want.
throwaway-7742
3hr ago
When I (very briefly) dabbled in triathlons in college, I heard about a student a few years ahead of me who broke a leg getting hit by a car while on his road bike in town. A professor of mine sustained nerve damage in his arm and leg after some kind of accident on a road bike. A relative of mine needed surgery on his rotator cuff after falling off a road bike on a bike path. A guy in one of my classes lost his leg below the knee while riding a motorcycle when a driver didn't see him while pulling out of their driveway.
On the one hand, you can never be too careful on the road (seriously). I have a bad knee and hip from a car accident. But on the other, maybe it's not worth riding a bicycle, a road bike, or a motorcycle. Too many people get fucked up from an accident. Yeah, it's the driver's fault. Is that gonna fix your permanently broken body? No. So why risk it? The cyclist, the driver, and their families are all traumatized from something that could've been avoided.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3hr ago
No. To the extent the provisions were not reached (which evidence seems sketchy at best to me), they still delivered much more, in a much shorter period of time, than the other competitors.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
3hr ago
It's pork.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
3hr ago
I don't want tax dollars given to Starlink, or anyone else, to subsidize rural broadband.
To clarify: is this because you want rural people to not have broadband (e.g. because you want to keep SJ away from them), or because you don't think this is something the government should be meddling in (e.g. because you think this is basically pork)?
gattsuru
3hr ago
Hard to square unless there's some wild spin going on. Which I wouldn't put past the FCC.
Specifically, the FCC collected Ookla data from 2021 and 2022, highlighting that "that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022", and then cited a single drop in average-monthly-speeds in one month of 2023 during appeal. The FCC analysis quoted by Rosenworcel in that section was from August 2022.
By late 2023 those numbers were already vastly improved (median 79/9.2 Mbps). It's currently October 2024; while I can't find a specific Ookla report, tomshardware cites them saying in September "Speed test analysis by Ookla shows Starlink seeing major gains in speed in the past few months. Median download speed has jumped from 65.72 Mbps to 97 Mbps."
Anecdotally from those who've use it in rural areas near me, they've consistently seen 100/20 or higher. I can't say for sure what the current Ookla numbers area, but I'm not seeing any good evidence otherwise.
These are compatible claims. It's just one of them is stupid: taking a two data points and extrapolating with a ruler is the sort of thing I'd caution a high schooler about.
Contrast other RDOF defaults: the Starry (bankrupt), GeoLinks (blocked by California regulations) or LTD Corporation (severe financial chicanery, heavily delayed regulatory compliance mandated in the contract), all have far clearer and more certain problems.
laxam
3hr ago
Also AIUI cable providers often pool their customers' downlink and provide much less that advertised speeds at peak times; is the FCC looking into this?
Requiring providers to not oversubscribe their link bandwidth would make broadband multiple times more expensive than it currently is and be wildly inefficient.
The only "scam" that seems likely here would be overstating the potential. It doesn't look like they're doing anything that isn't already routinely done with IVF, they're just getting more specific and detailed about it, connecting it to current best-understanding data on genetics. IVF clients are already routinely informed of the sex and "strength" of the embryos created, along with obvious stuff like "this embryo has trisomy 21" or whatever. Since there isn't a "big IQ" gene, the best they could do with this particular measure would be "given our current best understanding, embryo A is X% more likely to have increased IQ than embryo B."
That is still a long, long way from doing things like bioengineering superhumans. As the Gattaca line goes--"Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply--the best of you."
EDIT: On reflection I guess my biggest worry about this is that it could exacerbate a certain poorly-understood trend.
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