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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   2242 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 12, 2026

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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@pigeonburger @YoungAchamian @The_Nybbler @bolido_sentimental @Tretiak @cablethrowaway

Updating Job Search again. Bitter Sweet news:

1.) All the jobs posted on the previous post fell through, minus IT Support for the school. The Building maintaince company gave me a really unprofessional and sad email, Saying that they filled the role, despite promising me a final interview previously (this was like, 3 days after the 2nd round interview) EDIT Network Engineer Internship pulled through. Im gonna get a call Monday.

2.) I've technically been given an offer, however, its 21 an hour with no benefits. Better than 17 an hour part time. Not ideal (but i accepted anyway).

3.) I had an excellent interview for a Tier 2 position at a Mortgage company. Dude tried to sell me on the company for atleast half the interiview, he really likes me! Its 27 an hour with benefits. Im crossing my fingers and hoping it wont be another "we filled this role" situation. He says HR should hook me up with a final interview early next week.

I have to say, its really fucking frustrating to be getting to the final round, only to be given the no. Its happened to me 3 - 4 times during my entire job search. Either Im doing something at the end that fucks everything up, or my competition is just insanely good, and they are edging me out in most cases. Its nuts that i could get to the final round and get the no that many times.

If i get the school or the mortgage company, im ditching the 21 an hour gig. I've been broke my whole life. I am tired. EDIT Ok, Now I have to choose between Network Engineer Internship and 21 an hour job at a hospital with no benefits. Better position than before. Still hoping that something fulltime with benefits pulls through.

1.) All the jobs posted on the previous post fell through, minus IT Support for the school. The Building maintaince company gave me a really unprofessional and sad email, Saying that they filled the role, despite promising me a final interview previously (this was like, 3 days after the 2nd round interview)

Consider it a blessing if this is how they lead with things. This company clearly failed your test.

2.) I've technically been given an offer, however, its 21 an hour with no benefits. Better than 17 an hour part time. Not ideal (but i accepted anyway).

A good way to step up regardless. Congratulations!

3.) I had an excellent interview for a Tier 2 position at a Mortgage company. Dude tried to sell me on the company for atleast half the interiview, he really likes me! Its 27 an hour with benefits. Im crossing my fingers and hoping it wont be another "we filled this role" situation. He says HR should hook me up with a final interview early next week.

Do keep things posted. Really hope all goes well for you.

Consider it a blessing if this is how they lead with things. This company clearly failed your test.

A shame too. They were late with both the phone screening and the initial in person interview, I had to email them to get an update on what had happened. I was actually curious about the role.

I’m going to Japan for the first time in a month and was hoping to read some good history first. Any recommendations?

I’m really not a fan of Oxford-style overarching summaries. I have the feeling that those “have to exist”. I’m more interested in books that “do not have to exist” where the author takes a few incidents or periods or personal experiences and wraps them into a bigger story.

But any recommendations appreciated

When using a ten-point scale to score the looks, do you consider a ten to lie outside the three-sigma band?

  1. Is each band from 2 to 9 0.6σ wide, with 10 being 2.4σ to infinity, or 0.82% of the population?
  2. Is each band from 2 to 9 0.75σ wide, with 10 being 3σ to infinity, or 0.13% of the population?

Or are you contrarian enough to insist that each point is a decile?

The best explanation I've heard is that nobody is an objective 10. A 10 is a 9 that does it for you, specifically.

I was going to say that your question doesn't seem small scale, but then I realized that it's actually the most literally small scale question that has been asked here.

I expect that the typical person (1) has not assigned and recorded enough attractiveness ratings that he can construct a coherent normal distribution from them (I assume that dozens of data points would be required at the very least), and rather (2) assigns ratings (and does not bother to record them) on a purely ad-hoc basis without reference to any distribution.

(Also, obligatory reminder that rating out of ten is unreasonably granular, and rating out of five is better.)

Anyone know of post-apoc fiction that features storage units?

It feels like half the new construction in my town consists of these stupid, chunky self-storage buildings. Incredibly cheap materials. Similar but not identical layouts. They are fundamentally dead buildings, existing to facilitate brief visits and long periods of quiescence. Mausoleums for consumer goods.

This brought to mind the sci-fi tropes of “tech-mining,” delving the ruins of the past for lost and valuable resources. It’s a big part of certain genres of post-collapse sci-fi. Starsector (probably by way of Revelation Space), Hyperion Cantos, Battletech, arguably Foundation. I most recently saw a version in Iain Banks’ Matter, where an eroding waterfall progressively excavates the long-lost city buried beneath its cliff. The advanced alloys which withstood all that water are salvaged for building materials by a subsequent civilization. Evocative.

These tropes surely owe a lot to the post-apocalyptic genre. A Canticle for Liebowitz begins with a monk uncovering relics in a lost fallout shelter. Not anything useful, mind you, but cultural artifacts of immeasurable value. An apocalypse is perhaps the easiest explanation for how the ancients had something we can no longer get for ourselves.

There’s a game called Caves of Qud dotted with ruins from a long-dead civilization:

Here crumble the mysterious Eaters' vine-swathed works, spun on the cyclopean lathe in an ageless past. Chrome steeples and parapets that rise above the clutches of shale hint at the labyrinths beneath them.

You can trudge through a futuristic jungle only to stumble upon these bones of the former world, populated by tribal robots and sentry turrets. Descend into the caves like a true arconaut, and you’ll find even greater treasure…

In our current reality, how much of that “treasure” is piled in storage units? Boring-ass grids of concrete with one, maybe two garage doors between the loot and the outside world. If the bombs dropped today, any future generations would face the most boring, practical version of tech-mining: cleaning out the attic. “Yeah, we cleared out the mutants from sector 35. Found another one of those metal crypts. Bring the boys over; we can probably find each of them a golf club.”

This brought to mind the sci-fi tropes of “tech-mining,” delving the ruins of the past for lost and valuable resources. It’s a big part of certain genres of post-collapse sci-fi. Starsector (probably by way of Revelation Space)

Right author, wrong book. You basically described the setting of Revenger.

Ah. I haven’t read any of his stuff outside of the Inhibitor books. That would do it.

I remembered Girls' Last Tour had a storage units chapter, but skimming it, that is not quite right, or at least ambiguous.

Years ago, a storage unit executive compared his business to WMI (a massive trash company) saying we run dumps that people pay us 100s of a month to use). I had never really thought of it that way before, but I never thought of them the same way again, either.

Incredibly cheap materials.

Fun fact: The live load for which storage buildings are designed is 125 lb/ft2—three times as high as the 40 lb/ft2 of a residential living room. So these storage buildings do at least have some hefty foundations (and walls, for the multi-story ones).

Star Citizen's 'end-game' revolves around a lot of this stuff, just with slightly different names:

  • Executive Hangars, in the pirate system Pyro, store keycard-locked and suped-up versions of spaceships, left over from when the mining company Pyrotechnic Amalgamated went bankrupt and abandoned the system. Get a lot of PvP attention (when they work).
  • Contested Zone Vaults, also in Pyro, are just where pirates store valuable guns and ship parts when they're busy worshiping/getting radiation burns from the star.
  • Caches in Nyx, which are ship parts implied to a mix of smuggled goods from resistance cells back when the human empire was overtly evil, and some weapons caches from the same era's cold war against some turtle-like aliens.

(though the Oynx facilities and Lazarus facilities, as quasi-active research labs, don't quite fit.)

SC's in a fuzzy zone about whether it's post-apocalyptic. The post-Messr human empire is supposed to be in the middle of a Rome/Byzantium split, so it's kinda the aftermath of a collapse culturally? But there hasn't really been a decrease in technological development (and several major advances), so much as a lot of previously-restricted military, forbidden science, and alien tech is getting spilled into the player character's hands. The goods are valuable because they're rare to players, rather than being impossible to reproduce (yet).

That said, it's pretty rare for it to be purely consumer goods. Finding an abandoned freighter with a bunch of sound equipment (or, more often, drugs) is a win and a possibility, but it's tied to a rare and poorly documented gameplay loop.

No Man's Sky at least looks like it, but there's some spoiler-reasons that it doesn't actual real. And the alien outposts are weird enough and often-populated enough that they map poorly onto storage facilities.

Minecraft mods play with it a lot. DeceasedCraft's probably the most accessible version, where machines and equipment that would normally be the entry level into various tech mods are very hard to craft, and thus scavenging them from various buildings is a vital progression mechanism, with warehouses and storage facilities being an early-game target. Don't know of any modpacks where they're long-abandoned, though; DeceasedCraft is implied to be days or at most months after a zombie apocalypse.

For the real world, it's a funny story, but it gets complicated by the nature of those goods. Very few consumer electronics can survive a long period of anything less than ideal storage, and the buildings themselves are famously prone to various failure states. Same for anything made of paper or unfinished wood. Raw materials like plastic, titanium, aluminum, and high-grade steel may well last and be impractical to produce in a post-apocalyptic setting, but a lot of them wouldn't be plausible to manufacture into anything particularly useful.

"Tech-mining" is pretty much the setting for the entire gaming genre of "extraction shooters".

I’ve always been a bit confused about that. What’s in Tarkov that’s worth facing down a couple dozen psychopaths, some of whom are highly trained and/or awfully resistant to bullets? I’m not even sure what you’re collecting in Arc Raiders or Marathon.

Out of the extraction non-shooters…Quasimorph acts like almost everything you loot was available, just to someone else. It’s more piracy than mining. Maybe the quasistuff counts.

At least Duckov has a sensible goal.

Not quite post-apoc, but there's Snow Crash, where the Protagonist spends most of his Metaverse time connected from the 20x30 storage unit where he and his roommate live.

I wonder how well most storage units would hold up, post-apocalypse. The climate controlled ones would lose that control when the grid goes down, and anybody paying a premium for climate control probably has something they expect to decay at ambient temperatures+humidity, but nobody's going to get a second unit for more robust possessions so even the climate controlled units would still be worth cracking open to see what survived.

This is now even less related to the Apocalypse, but your comment reminded me of jPod, in which a secondary character tried to save for retirement Beanie Babies-style. Once, when he was visiting his storage unit, power went off and he ended up locked inside with his precious collectible cans of soda. By the time he was found, he had already had to drink them all.

Opinions on abridged versions?

Approaching the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, which at 1300 pages has worked out nicely.

I'm now eyeing up Les Miserables (no spoilers please). While I'm not averse to reading another 1300 page monster the reviews suggest that a good portion of this is spent on the author's digressions into history and dissertations on society. I'm leaning towards the abridged version (still a healthy ~900 pages) as I'm reading for pleasure rather than intellectual edification. I've always read unabridged versions before now but I've sometimes felt like many authors take the piss (looking at you in particular Dostoesky). On the other hand part of reading the unabridged versions is that it grants the privilege of talking shit about authors who take the piss, which counts as one of the pleasures of reading.

You can always skip through the most egregious digressions. I won't hesitate to admit I did when I was ten.

Seconding this. Skip the lengthy discussions on the Battle of Waterloo and the Parisian sewer system (also the argot one, though I personally found it interesting the first time I read it), but enjoy the rest of the novel intact.

It has lengthy discussions on the Battle of Waterloo? This is the first thing I've heard that makes me want to read it.

50 pages’ worth in my copy, plus a final few pages that are directly relevant to the story (this out of a total page count of 1,463). I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from reading it, but it’s definitely extraneous to the plot.

Coming back to this discussion, I think I’ve changed my mind. A 900-page abridgment would probably only eliminate the digressions, in which case it wouldn’t be bad to read. Actually, I suppose you’d also lose the lengthy biography of the bishop at the beginning of the novel.* I enjoyed that section of the book, but its omission would lose very little of value to the plot.

*No spoiler since it’s the first 58 pages.

Just read the real thing. If you realize you can't stomach Melville's "digressions" on Cetology in Moby Dick, well, you can always just skip a chapter. People will rightly think less of you, but at least you'll have done your abridging yourself!

I wouldn't even have minded the cetology digressions if the information contained therein was actually correct. It felt profoundly demeaning reading information I knew to be inaccurate just so I could honestly say I'd read the whole book.

It's not a science textbook, you know! I for one found it very funny.

If that was actually the case, editors wouldn’t exist. Frequently the author is blind to their own follies and very often one of those follies is not knowing to cut things that are irrelevant and pointless digressions (see Scott’s writings for an extreme example).

If they were ”as the writer intended”, they would be unedited. Clearly there is significant benefit for books to not be literally as the author wrote and abridged editions are just another point on that continuum.

I'd question the writers' intentions and whether it's always better. Often writers' intentions were to keep people buying additional installments of a serial. I've read unabridged Dickens and Flaubert and what it taught me is there's a lot of filler that could be cut without much loss beyond the awareness of how much filler was inserted for a reason that serves the writer at the expense of the reader. The literary effects of commercial serialisation might be an interesting textual insight the first time but that insight doesn't stack while the time lost when I could be reading another book does.

Devil’s advocate: that ship sailed immediately. Even the earliest collected versions did shit like spelling the title “Monte Christo.” Who knows what else was modified?

And that’s for the original French. I’m not sure if Dumas wrote much English, but he never published his own translation.

I’m not sure if Dumas wrote much English, but he never published his own translation.

A while ago I whined about how “écu” is often translated as “crown” in The Three Musketeers.

This is a perfectly legitimate translation. A "shield" is not a unit of currency, it would be distracting to talk about people paying so many "shields" for something.

"Crown" is not only British currency: M-W has it as "any of several old gold coins with a crown as part of the device". Did écus have crowns on them? Why yes they did.

When I read Charles Perrault as a boy in Spanish, several of his tales would talk about "escudos". I admit it was a little confusing, but it was obvious from context that they meant some kind of currency (I would imagine them trading heraldic shields). Maybe "monedas" (coins) would have been clearer, but "pesos" would have been a bastardization.

It does seem that escudo has the currency meaning in Spanish though.

This is a perfectly legitimate translation.

No, it's a confusing localization—or, in Nabokov's words, a paraphrase.

A "shield" is not a unit of currency. It would be distracting to talk about people paying so many "shields" for something.

If "shield" sounds wrong to Anglophone ears, that's their fault for failing to acknowledge the validity of French currency units. And there are zillions of fantasy stories that use outlandish-seeming currency units with which readers quickly become comfortable.

"Crown" is not only British currency: Merriam-Webster has it as "any of several old gold coins with a crown as part of the device".

It doesn't matter. There is no good reason to falsely insert the French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. shields into the ranks of the English/British, Scandinavian, Czech, etc. crowns, and thereby erase a meaningful distinction between two categories.

It isn't a paraphrase any more than wiring "horse" instead of "cheval" is a paraphrase.

If "shield" sounds wrong to Anglophone ears, that's their fault for failing to acknowledge the validity of French currency units. It doesn't matter. There is no good reason to falsely insert the French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. shields into the ranks of the English/British, Scandinavian, Czech, etc. crowns, and thereby erase a meaningful distinction between two categories.

You've invented a distinction that does not exist. "Crown" is not limited to those things. I have already shown you the definition. It's a fact of life that no two words in different languages have exactly the same meaning.

There's no particularly good reason to translate "ecu" at all. If you read a history book about the period, it will say "ecus", and translators of novels should just follow that convention. Should we translate "sestertius"? "Solidus"? "Ducat"? "Reichsmark"?

An autistic fixation on accuracy in translating currency names in literature is basically a high modernist project. The based and lindy approach is to pick a reasonable substitute. Matthew 20:2 KJV: "And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny [orig. dēnarion] a day, he sent them into his vineyard."

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¿Por que no los dos?

I’m saying that you can lose as much through translation than you do by omitting passages or chapters. Both are dependent on the editor’s understanding of the original intent. In the same way that you can have good and bad translations, then, it should be possible to find good and bad abridgements.

According to the Wikipedia article (citing a 1978 bibliography of Dumas's works), the misspelling "Monte Christo" was used as the title of several non-translated French editions.

Is the war in Ukraine eugenic for Russia? Apparently all the combat units are sourced from soldiers who sign volitional contracts, and those who sign up are from the poorest regions, enticed by a one-time payment of 2-4x their annual salary.

This war is eugenic for both sides. It is final end of modernity and retvrn to 17-18th century when war was seen as the best way to get rid of criminals, beggars and assorted dregs. Frederic the Great explicitly banned "useful citizens" from being recruited into Prussian army, even if they wanted to volunteer.

In Russia, as you said, prisoners and rural people lured by promise of big bag of rubles are fed to the meat grinder. In Ukraine it is even more stark, the losers who can't flee the country or bribe their way out are dragged to the vans.

If this continues for several centuries, we would see in Eastern Europe the same eugenic process as happened in Western Europe. Feeding the criminals, poors, dumb (and small number of patriotic idealists) into shredding machine will produce superior race that will dominate the world.

No, it's selecting for cowardice. It's an unjust war, but those men who volunteer to fight are almost always better men than those who dodge the draft, every time. Not to mention that medical issues are probably the main reason for exclusion from the draft.

Russia is still not doing a universal draft (of the type that would involve calling in masses of people who have finished mandatory service) or sending particularly many mandatory-service conscripts, and even then there is a big caveat that distinguishes it from Western systems: if you go straight to university from school, your being "drafted" does not actually entail even having to stay at the barracks for any amount of time, but instead you get some substitute military leadership programme as part of your university education, similar perhaps to ROTC in the US. Therefore even if they sent all the mobiks into the grinder it could still arguably be eugenic.

Better in the sense that they possess some virtue you appreciate, or in the sense that they're making a better choice?

There will be no shortage of Central Asian migrants to replace them.

I'm suspicious that they're not using any vatniks conscripts at all right now, but leaving that aside, getting a significant fraction of your own young men killed in a pointless war causes too much damage to even remotely be worth it, especially given Russia's senile demographics.

IIRC, Russia hasn't declared war, so they can't draft anyone (at least without changing the law). It's all "volunteers".

That's incorrect. Russia mobilized about 100k people in September of 2022. The mobilization is still technically active, but the people in charge got spooked by the negative reaction to this and switched to paying volunteers instead.

Russia have been mobilizing and is continuing to mobilize, however at the same time - as it is common in Russia - officially not doing it. How? Well, there are actual "volunteers" - meaning people that actually decide to go to war without being pressured - many of which are induced by promise of payments (a lot of them don't get them) and by promises that they won't see any combat but would serve in the auxiliary roles (also frequently a lie - once you are in the system, you have zero influence on where you get sent) or just flying drones (which may be true, but guess who would be the primary target for the enemy drones). Then there are other pipelines. The obvious one is making draftees that finished their mandatory service to stay longer on contract. It's easy to do since they are already in the system and in the full power of their commander, and he just needs them to sign on the line. Prisoners were a big one, but you don't have to be in prison - many who have troubles with the law are offered a choice - either you undergo all the problems with arrests, trials, etc. or you sign a "voluntary" contract and become a hero, defender of the Motherland. Given as the attention from the law enforcement in Russia rarely ends well for anybody, many agree and sign up "voluntarily". Same if somebody owes a lot of money (either to the state or to private bank) - they are offered an easy and "voluntary" solution to their troubles. Same for illegal migrants. Same for homeless, other socially troubled cases. Easy solution for every problem. All "voluntary" - everybody signs a contract.

In addition to that, the heads of many major state-dependent organizations - major companies, large colleges, other state-dependent institutions - are given the quota of enlisting of 2% of their headcount to "volunteer". How would they do that? Dealer's choice. Lie, cheat, promise, propagandize, threaten, bribe - nobody cares, get to the quota. Even if they get to 1%, that's tens of thousands of people. None of those people technically are mobilized, all technically volunteers, though how exactly they came to volunteer, nobody will ever ask.

It appears accurate that, at least for now, Russian government spends a lot of effort to not declare an overt, forced mobilization and fill up their needs with contractors (in addition to regular draft, of course, but no additional forced mobilization). If the situation on the front lines will get worse for some reason, or they need more troops (like, there are persistent rumors about Russians eyeing Baltia and reconnecting Königsberg to the mainland) that may change. But for now, yes, no draft, officially.

You are correct with one exception. Illegal immigrants aren't routinely stealth-mobilized, they are mainly just getting deported.

Legally, non-citizens can not be mobilized, even though non-citizens did participate in the war (e.g. North Koreans) but not as part of "voluntary" or involuntary mobilizaton. But people who are freshly legalized can, and reportedly are: https://www.currenttime.tv/a/kak-rossiyskaya-armiya-otpravlyaet-migrantov-s-grazhdanstvom-rf-na-voynu-protiv-ukrainy/33428706.html That said, it's Russia, so "legally" can be stretched, and there are various reports that non-citizens got drafted too: https://longreads.cabar.asia/mobilization_ru How many of those have any legal status and how many do not, impossible to know. I am not claiming it's the main source of mobilized, but there's anecdata it happens, likely as a local attempt to fill the quotas.

Vatniks are the ideological supporters of mainstream Russian politics. I think you meant conscripts.

"Vatnik" is East European equivalent of "redneck". Vatnik is heavy quilted jacket worn by people working outside in frost, snow, rain and mud. It began as slur, but was reclaimed by proud vatniks.

As opposed to "sovok" - this is Eastern European equivalent of "boomer", it means person nostalgic for USSR and/or person with strong Soviet mindset and (negative) habits. Stereotypical sovok is elderly rural person, but not always, easy to find 20 years old sovoks.

This word is seen as pure slur, no people call themselves "sovoks" willingly.

Yup, looks like you're right. Thanks!

Best recommendations for bypassing paywalls?

Follow-up: Anyone have a reliable way for Substack? I'd gladly get a subscription along the lines of "unlock 10 pay-walled articles per month", but I'm not paying several hundreds of dollars per year for just a hand full of authors... they really need to rework their subscription model.

I've looked a few times but never succeeded.

Frankly I don't really understand how paywall bypasses work or why if Substack can block them, why everyone else doesn't use the same/similar tech to block them

There are really two different types of paywalls. The lazy version just hides the content using JavaScript but the site still serves it, so it can be displayed with a browser extension. Or the site gives you "n free articles" so an extension can just reset the counter. This has become less common over time.

Services like Substack use a more advanced version, that only serve the paywalled content to authenticated users. To get around that, you generally need:

  1. Someone with a paid account willing to scrape the content (or allow their creds to be used to scrape it).

  2. A site willing to host the content that won't fold after the first DMCA request.

I'm not aware of a Substack service for this, but archive.today does it for major news publications that are paywalled, and there's a fairly well known one for Patreon called kemono dot cr where people can upload paywalled content, or provide their Patreon auth token to enable it to be scraped automatically.

Archive.is basically abuses the fact that most publications want their content to show up on search engines. It pretends to crawls the html once and then just displays the cached version to the user.

Google used to have a link to cached pages in the search results. They also used to penalize (in site rankings) showing different pages to the search crawlers and regular browsers (I assume by spot checking the difference). I remember spoofing the GoogleBot user agent at least once to bypass a paywall, though.

The digital frontier isn't what it used to be: that ship seems to have sailed.

This is probably the most frequently requested feature request for Substack. I'd love if they had a credits system where you could buy €10 worth of credits, and pay €1 to unlock one article in perpetuity.

It seems like the space is ripe for someone to negotiate subscriptions at a discount, then charge a subscription for reposts on their own sub stack.

Seconding archive.is or archive.org. Smry.ai works really well for certain sites.

Bypass Paywalls Clean

https://gitflic.ru/user/magnolia1234

It’s on a Russian site because it kept getting DMCAd on GitHub.

I tend to use archive.is, and if that's down, archive.org will do some. This is pretty basic and doesn't handle all sites, but it gets most of the bigger ones.

If anyone has a way to sneak past Substack, that's one I'd love to have.

I recently inherited a distant uncle's medals from the Korean war. They're nicely mounted and framed, mostly campaign medals and a purple heart. I'm the closest relation left as a going concern, his only son predeceased them.

I'd like to hang and display them, to honor my uncle, but I'm wondering what the boundaries of good taste are, given that I never served, and he wasn't an immediate relative. What level of prominence is appropriate? Is it wrong to hang them at all?

Hydro is right about a plaque, but for an easier alternative, put them in a frame with a picture of him.

Frame them with a plaque explaining who earned them. Yes the plaque will set you back a bit.

They're already framed and labeled.

My first thought is to place them somewhere they are visible and available for perusal by guests, but not the primary focus of a decorative arrangement. Near or on a book shelf, maybe, or among a handful of comparable items on a mantle. Somewhere that says "These are noteworthy family memorabilia, but not something I am specifically trying to show off."

Do you know the story behind the purple heart?

Just want to say I appreciate the level of intention in this recommendation.

None of us knew he had a purple heart, I'm actually going to run down to the VFW at some point and ask some guys I know there how I would go about finding that information.

Parents of young kids with a pet that is not long for this world: how did you navigate this? My eldest kinda knows about death but not the rest and Larry the basset hound has got maybe a year tops left. We got him before we were married so he's been a permanent fixture in the family. We've been through a lot with him and I may, in fact, cry about it this time.

I'm leaning towards getting another dog, probably a Golden, before he goes as a way to soften the blow. I'm aware this is a known strategy but is this considered bad form?

(Also accepting input from former little kids of dead pets.)

Hmm. Many folks suggesting a new dog. I own two. I think it's an optimal number for kids and pets.

But I also think if the older dog is on death's door it may be tough on them, and there's something to be said about experiencing the grief of losing a dog like this without distraction. $.02.

I once helped a friend bury a family pet. He had told his young son what had happened: that she was sick and the vets couldn't figure out why, and that the kindest thing to do was to put her down so she wouldn't suffer any more. The vet had prepared a pawprint and a little jar of her fur as mementos. We each helped dig the hole in the back yard, each of us said a couple of words about how we liked her, and we put something heavy on top of the soil so the dog wouldn't dig her back up.

I lost several dogs growing up, and while it was saddening, 99.99% of small children can handle the truth. I know I wouldn't lie to my own (hypothetical) kids about what death means, since my parents never did that to me. But you know your kids better than I do, and it's not the end of the world either way.

If you do want another dog, then it's probably not a bad idea to get one now. It will probably soften the blow, though make sure to give your elderly dog extra affection just so he doesn't feel sidelined. I'm sure you won't, but it's still worth mentioning just in case.

Losing my own German Shepherd, who I owned and adored from the moment he was born? That broke me for days man, especially since I wasn't in the country. I had this bad feeling I wouldn't see him again when I was leaving for Scotland, and the only way I can console myself is by acknowledging he had a good life and went painlessly. If you cry, cry. But while he's still alive, make sure you let him know how much you love him. The crying is for you, not for him.

Second that. When I lost my calico, Sweet Baby Esther Goldstein, I was devastated and depressed for weeks. Her passing was inexplicable. One day she just stopped eating. I noticed she was losing weight, but nothing was found to be wrong with her just before her passing. She was found in the bathroom where she had passed away. She was up there in age though and she was very well taken care of by me all the days we were together. Hope I get to see her in Heaven.

If you need to put the animal down, please include the child to the extent that they are willing and able to be there. Be honest about what's happening, and let them have closure. Impress on them that it's not their fault.

My mother had a pet euthanized while I was at school and lied about it, claiming he had run away because I had left the door open. I found the receipt later, and to this day I still bear a grudge about it.

We just told our sons the cat died, and there are ceremonial things in Japan if you want (there is a cremation service). We buried her ashes out in the flowers under the mailbox.

Just a word of caution, Golden retrievers are my favorite dog, but are, at least in recent decades, prone to cancer. I am not sure why.

I'm torn between German Shepherds, labs and goldens, but yes, goldens are adorable. Poor breeding has reduced their life expectancy by a year or two, but I suppose the cancer risk depends on where you're getting them. They're very good dogs, and I wouldn't let that stop me.

The only dog I ever had died when I was about three and I remember when he died and it not really affecting me much. That being said, I'm sure there are books available to help young kids deal with this sort of thing. Maybe check some of them out?

We don't sugarcoat death with our kids. I'm not 100% sure if they know animals don't go to Heaven, they're little, but when our last cat died, we just told them she died.

Our family dog dying (of old age) when I was young was a formative event for me.

More impactful, though, was the death of my hamster because I was actually present and watching when he took his last tiny breaths. I actually wanted to take the poor thing to the vet to try to fix him, I hadn't understood just how little lifespan most rodents get.

Our cat got hit by a car and we only found out from a nice lady leaving us a voice message about finding the body after we put up Lost Cat signs. That did a number on all of us.

Also, I will always, every time, cry about the ending of Old Yeller.

Point being, its going to be a traumatic, stressful event no matter what. Only thing I can suggest is to help them redirect any blame/anger they feel away from any particular persons and also be ready to help field questions about their own mortality too.

The second pet of the same type (cat/dog) is usually great because it usually breathes a bit of new life into the older animal. You're not just getting the kids a new puppy, you're getting the hound a new puppy.

The kid angle is too particular to the kid. We've had a few pet losses over the years. My son is sad for a day or two, but ultimately fine. My daughter still brings one up as a point of trauma 8 years later, to the point where my son has expressed horrified dismay at the thought of how she'll react when our oldest cat passes.

Just make sure they know it's something that you'll take care of, and give them space to be involved if they want (memorials, burial, etc).

Agreed. We've usually gotten a second dog/puppy while the first one is getting a bit grizzled, and the increased interaction and energy are good for them.

My lab was middle aged when my older Shepherd died, and that, plus me no longer being home? The best way to describe his behavior was depressed. The golden my family got to keep him company probably made him lose some hair from the stress, but they all shed like maniacs anyway. I find dog hair on my clothes months after every trip home. Now they get along great, and the older dog can often train the younger one with minimal human input required.

You're not just getting the kids a new puppy, you're getting the hound a new puppy.

Seriously my old dog (rest in peace) Benjamin Button'd for a full year after we got a puppy. Then gravity re-asserted itself and her mind continued to turn into soup, but for a year she had a whole new lease on life. She'd even play at the dog park, something she hadn't done for years.

I saw a picture earlier purporting to show tons of sea traffic going around the Horn of Africa, supposedly rerouted from the Straight of Hormuz.

If we assume the SoH is going to be fully closed long-term, so that people adjust and buy into the next best marginal shipping pattern, what would the actual long-term consequences be? Are we talking more like a 15% increase in shipping costs or 200%?

It's hard to separate from the effects of a significant portion of the global fleet being stuck inside the Persian Gulf, but currently VLCC day charter rates are more like 200% higher than usual.

Baltic Dry (an index of charter rates for ships hauling coal and grain and similar things) is barely above 2026 averages.

Container rates seem to similarly only be slightly affected.

I don't quite understand; why would traffic be rerouted from the Strait of Hormuz be going around the Horn of Africa? That's what you'd expect if they were trying to avoid pirates/Houthis in the Red Sea or if the Suez was closed. The Strait of Hormuz isn't a general global shipping lane, it's specifically for ships going to/from the countries with ports there. I'm questioning the premise of this.

Some empty tankers that were unable to enter the Strait of Hormuz have chosen to go to the US or Brazil to fill up on oil there instead.

Now that you point it out, the whole thing being confused or misleading makes much more sense. I think I crossed a mental wire with the Suez.

So, what are you reading?

I'm rereading Yizhar's Khirbet Khizeh. When I read it for the first time, I felt that it wasn't the kind of book which I would trust to be honest if it were written about my country. Still, as far as national literature goes, it's a minor gem in terms of writing quality.

Approaching the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, which at ~1300 pages has worked out nicely.

At the expedition in The Doomed City.

Finished The Tale of Two Cities. It was certainly an interesting read. The action picked up significantly in the second part.

Started Howling Dark from the Sun Eater cycle. Hadrian is in his peacenik phase, though I have some suspicions it's not going to last...

About 40% of the way through A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Anyone else get annoyed (or at least roll your eyes), when someone says they "built" X with AI? It comes off to me as stolen credit, and ironically highlights (for me) the diminishing human input in the value chain.

For context, I am referring specifically to work-related scenarios, where X is not some output of design and engineering, but actually the result of a few prompts. In the past few weeks, the overwhelming majority of the people I work with seem to have completely and openly outsourced their jobs to Claude.

While I've been using ChatGPT since it first came out to help out with work (from research, to QA, to drafting documents and communications, etc), I've always been very careful to keep it's input in any final product discrete. Those who have left their AI outsourcing lazy and obvious (including tech leaders and C levels who should know better) like leaving em dashes and AI fluff in emails have previously been quietly mocked for their 'boomerish' obliviousness, or resented for the obvious lack of engagement.

We had a C-level a few months back write a corporate communication that was meant to be both encouraging and strategically informative about some top level changes, that was clear AI slop. It ended up being the exact opposite - engendering resentment of what was obviously being too lazy to tell us yourself.

But anyway, in the last 3 weeks it's flipped. Everyone gets onto every call proudly announcing the latest thing they 'built' in Claude, while pre-apologizing for errors in the work in progress as if they couldn't possibly have been reviewed.

These are dashboards, briefs, presentations, documents, all things that would have previously been expected to be completely error free, and important enough to make strategic decisions off of. Now it's all yeah, I had claude do my work and I haven't even checked it yet. but as a flex. because currently 'Use AI' is a key KPI. But it all seems so short sighted, it makes me sad.

Yes. If you just handed it off to an AI and did a cursory quality check, you didn't build shit. I immediately lose interest when someone says "I built" (insert software here) and it turns out it was Claude.

I do this... In that I make AI tools for work, albeit I do test them and put in effort to make sure the quality is good. I always feel kind of embarassed for saying this since I sound like a linkedin golem. But anyway...

There's a phase transition I think from 'we slowly and expensively make a tool or an output that is supposed to work totally right the first time but still doesn't because bugs and errors are a thing and so we have to go back and slowly fix it' to 'fast, disposable code that is way cheaper but buggier, less well-thought out but more easily fixed and altered'. This is a case of old standards being applied to a new paradigm. And there are people using the new tools in the wrong way too. But this is the new way to do things and it's how more and more things will be done, just like how water flows downstream. Artisanal code will be like artisanal clothing.

I think iprayim3 is not talking about programming code, but other things we call deliverables at my workplace. Like, a powerpoint deck for a technical meeting or a spec document. If there is important errors, it's usually huge waste of time as the work can't start or perhaps someone already started making their thing but it is now going in the wrong direction. Or even worse, someone made decisions that can't be walked back or talked to a client using the bad information. Any substantial correction may trigger a long thread of further discussion, or a series of new meetings solely devoted to correcting the mistake.

It will require total reinvention of corporate social contract, in my experience you can't treat meetings with other businesspeople like a test suite you can throw things at. If anything, time does not become cheaper with AI.

I get full on hateful when I see posts along the lines of "I asked AI about X and this is what it said!"

Bitch, you didn't do shit! It feels like the midwit bro version of the meme. I think I'd be more forgiving of even a simple coding project, just because that ought to involve a tiny modicum of effort.

Anyone else get annoyed (or at least roll your eyes), when someone says they "built" X with AI? It comes off to me as stolen credit, and ironically highlights (for me) the diminishing human input in the value chain.

No, as long as they QC'd it, understand what they built (or "built"), and to the extent the product contains any errors/shortcomings—they can take ownership of it and not be like "hm idk the AI did it." Just as I wouldn't be annoyed if someone used Word/Excel/Python or whatever.

We had a C-level a few months back write a corporate communication that was meant to be both encouraging and strategically informative about some top level changes, that was clear AI slop. It ended up being the exact opposite - engendering resentment of what was obviously being too lazy to tell us yourself.

Corporate communications have always been slop in being generic and substanceless, just manually produced by the C-suite author's minions.

Anyone else get annoyed (or at least roll your eyes), when someone says they "built" X with AI?

Not at all. It's a new tool, they used the tool to do a thing.

Do you get annoyed when someone says they "built" a PC? They didn't make a single part, they probably don't even know what a "PCB" is! They just slotted it together like Lego.

Do you get annoyed when someone says they "took" a picture even though they 1) have never developed a negative in their life and 2) all phone cameras these days run a shit load of post processing on the photo after it's taken? They barely did anything!

Those who have left their AI outsourcing lazy and obvious (including tech leaders and C levels who should know better) like leaving em dashes and AI fluff in emails have previously been quietly mocked for their 'boomerish' obliviousness, or resented for the obvious lack of engagement.

As they should be! Laziness is bad.

We had a C-level a few months back write a corporate communication that was meant to be both encouraging and strategically informative about some top level changes, that was clear AI slop.

This person is clearly not a good leader, AI or not.

while pre-apologizing for errors in the work in progress as if they couldn't possibly have been reviewed.

This is pathetic, one of the best parts of AI is that it will relentlessly hunt for errors. It'll happily read the same report 100 times looking for typos and never get bored.

These are dashboards, briefs, presentations, documents, all things that would have previously been expected to be completely error free, and important enough to make strategic decisions off of. Now it's all yeah, I had claude do my work and I haven't even checked it yet. but as a flex.

This is retarded and bad

because currently 'Use AI' is a key KPI.

This is retarded and bad

Do you get annoyed when someone says they "built" a PC? They didn't make a single part, they probably don't even know what a "PCB" is! They just slotted it together like Lego.

Building a PC is a technical task apparently beyond the median human being. What IS worthy of annoyance would be someone talking about how they built a PC by buying an Alienware gaming laptop.

The same is true for creating half-decent representative art, compiling a (wrong!) hello-world level C++ or Rust program, writing a coherent and consistent 20k word story with a meaningful theme, and reading a 100-page narrative document and recalling mid-grade detail. I think that leaves too much on the table.

Did you know that Christ is risen from the dead, putting down death by death?

I never found faith. Hopefully God can forgive that little design flaw in my wetware, if He is indeed out there.

I keep coming back to the thought that He could at least announce himself loud and clear if He actually cares to be heard.

As is, I'm willing to believe in a creator and lord over all that is, I just find it much harder to believe that He actually has any interest in us humans.

What constitutes 'loud and clear'? Genuine question.

I have a budding(but never actually written up) ten thousand word effort post on miraculous evidence for the truths of Christianity. Unfortunately, I would be unable to handle the blasphemies surely uttered against it, probably I would get an AAQC and a permaban in the same thread. This is why I avoid faith topics/proofs in general(my dm's are open to inquirers, sure). But this stuff... exists, even if I'm not the person to make the argument. What constitutes sufficient evidence?

My problem is something similar to the problem of evil, but it's not evil that's the issue, but unclear communications.

If God is all-powerful and all-benevolent and our cognizance of God matters, then why isn't he just talking to each and every one of us directly in clear, impossible-to-ignore language that we dumb people actually understand?

Instead it's all symbols and vague feelings and reports from questionable sources, all of which make it seem like divinity is a barely-coherent concept kept alive by wishful thinking.

I can kind-of square that circle through either:

  • Lack of power: God created the world and all that is in it, and cares about us, but is not actually able to to interact with us.
  • Lack of benevolence: God created the world and all that is in it, and is able to interact with it, but doesn't actually care about us.
  • Lack of God: The world and everything in it is some materialist accident, existence is a fluke.

None of which seem particularly satisfying, but "God dropped us off with a confusing book and some maybe-miracles a few thousand years ago and now we just need to take it on faith, even though he could of course have angels turmpeting right in front of us and informing us of divinity in plain English on a daily basis, but chooses not to, because [apologetics]." doesn't really it do it for me either. Sorry for that. Much like @KingOfTheBailey, He wired me up wrong.

If you were creating an LLM, would you train on the test set? If not, does that mean that you lack benevolence? You could just clearly and directly give it the answers!

Of course I lack benevolence towards an LLM. I can be polite to it out of habit, but I wouldn't hesitate to do horrible things to it if that made it work better.

if that made it work better

It seems to me that you are saying that you have goals for what you want the end product to be like. As such, I think you're implicitly affirming that you would choose to not do things like train on the test set. That is, you wouldn't just clearly and directly give it the answers, even though you could.

Now, the question seems to me, "What do you even mean by benevolence?" You originally said:

Lack of benevolence: God created the world and all that is in it, and is able to interact with it, but doesn't actually care about us.

But this sort of doesn't make direct sense. You care about the LLM you're creating. You deeply care about it, at least in that you very much care to "ma[k]e it work better". It seems like you're using some other sense of words that is not fully fleshed-out. Like, maybe to be benevolent, you have to care about some particular type of goal or in some particular way, but other types of caring/goals do not count, or something. I think we just don't have enough information to figure out whether this reasoning makes much sense.

but chooses not to, because it would be boring to watch

That's my explanation.

Can't fault Him for that, if so.

Amen! Don’t worry, He is big on forgiveness I hear.

And to those pissing in residing in the coffins gifting life?

No? A few people have been buried alive because they had an unnoticable heartbeat or something and then been rescued; but other than those arguable technicalities, Death stands undefeated with a perfect track record against humanity.

Far more than a few actually. In Britain at one point it was so common (enough to warrant a solution to the problem at least) that they tied bells to the foot of the deceased at the time of burial so the watchmen on duty could detect when someone had accidentally been buried alive.

;)

Aren't you a week late?

There are a ton of neat paradoxes in Christ's life and death and resurrection: "He became sin who knew no sin"

The orthodox are late to every holiday.

Pope Gregory and his ripping days off the calendar gets us all in the end.

And every service, and every event, and every informal gathering...

My parish has a custom of celebrating the Ascension every year by going up to the top of our local ersatz Mount Tabor. The first time I participated, I paid attention when the priest went to great lengths to make sure we all knew exactly where to park and what to do, and how long various routes would take, such that we could all be there on time and not miss the service. I was a single father at the time and did my best, but was sweating because I could tell I was gonna be about 20 minutes late.

When I got there, no one else was around. Had I missed it entirely?

The first other parishioner arrived about an hour after that. They trickled in over time, and we did the service about two hours after we'd all agreed we would. No one seemed the slightest bit surprised by this.

Punctuality is about the only thing I miss about Protestantism.

...

My priest told me not long ago that he has such different experiences counseling (ethnic) Americans and Greeks. The Americans, he says, are perpetually-terrified about their own salvation, but generally seem to rock it in life. The Greeks have no concerns about salvation, but he has to work extra hard to get them to do things like hold down gainful employment or make smart decisions about the future. Since I don't know what to say about that I guess I'm presenting it without comment.

Didn’t know you were orthodox.

Byzantine Catholics start services late(but usually use the Latin calendar for feasts in the US), too, it’s just an eastern rite thing- but our stereotype is for technically a Latin mainstream Americans who go there to be the ones who can’t manage their personal lives, and the ethnics to be successful diaspora types.

I'm Orthodox baby!!!!

Carry on! Happy Easter!

Glazed raisin cakes are some of the best parts of Christian culture that I'm glad to appropriate.

Did you know that the glaze symbolizes semen?

Is it taboo to eat that cake in prison?

It is taboo to tell them this.

Extra glaze here please, hold the raisins.

You're a member of the plucky rebels that are fighting against the evil empire that believes in X, an idea you find absolutely evil and abhorrent. The Big Bad Emperor is beyond your reach right now, but you can assassinate some of his most important supporters: Alice, Bob or Carol.

Alice is probably the better person between you two. She's smart, brave, loyal. There's only one difference: she sincerely believes that X is good.

Bob probably doesn't believe that X is good. Or that X is evil. He simply believes the side to be on is the one that is winning.

Carol probably doesn't believe that X is good. If anything, she probably finds it abhorrent, just like you. However, she is still doing her job and doing it well because otherwise she will be replaced by a true believer in X.

Which one of the three henchmen is the evilest? Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first? If the answers to these questions are different, are the plucky rebels truly fighting on the side of good?

Well ... alice - bob can be turned, and carol makes no sense.

No one of them is evil.

Why does assassinating Carol make no sense? It's the accelerationist approach. Let's say the ultimate goal of the Evil Empire is the total extermination of Asians and Carol is the economy henchwoman. Hardcore supporters are demanding that the Evil Empire exterminate all Asian residents and confiscate their property, nationalize all Asian-owned companies and stop trade with Asian countries. Carol is doing her best to find performative ways of satisfying them: instead of confiscating Asian property she's introducing additional taxes, instead of nationalizing Asian-owned companies she's banning Asians from the boards of directors and not letting Asians buy any new stock, instead of stopping trade she's introducing punitive tariffs and so on. But even though she's slow-walking the process, the ultimate goal is still the same.

Why shouldn't the plucky rebels assassinate her? Surely, if she's replaced with a true believer Candy that has a worse grasp of the economy, things will get better! Candy will implement everything demanded from her on day one, causing a massive financial crisis in the Evil Empire, no Asians inside the Evil Empire or abroad will have any illusions left and all of them will support the plucky rebels. And any potential Carols will learn that not only do their bleeding hearts cause more misery in the long run, but they themselves are putting their lives at risk by "trying to do their job".

Which one of the three henchmen is the evilest?

Bob.

Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?

Alice.

If the answers to these questions are different, are the plucky rebels truly fighting on the side of good?

You can't fight a war against opportunism. You can fight a war against X.

Which one of the three henchmen is the evilest? Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?

Those are two different questions. If you want to have the greatest impact on stopping the Evil Empire then you take out Alice, the True Believer who probably is working the hardest and most effectively to implement X (if you can't persuade her that X is, in fact, bad). Bob will flip the second it looks like the plucky rebels are going to be the winners, so he's neither helping nor hindering X. Carol will likewise probably flip if she gets a chance, particularly if she does indeed believe X is wrong. With her in place, she may not be able to do much about stopping X (for fear of being replaced with the likes of Alice) but she can act to put minor obstacles in the way of implementing X. Red tape and bureaucracy can be better stumbling blocks than hitting the local Imperial detention centre (which may be rebuilt afterwards).

Who is the most evil? Bob. He doesn't believe one way or the other, is only serving his own self-interest, and is contributing to the evil that X is doing.

Red tape and bureaucracy can be better stumbling blocks than hitting the local Imperial detention centre (which may be rebuilt afterwards).

The Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) realised this in 1944.

Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?

The one with the least guards (or the most predictable route). I mean, if you somehow arrived at the conclusion personal assassination is what you need to do to set back the Evil Empire, then it doesn't matter who of them loves kittens the most. You are not exacting personal judgement for the merits of their character, you are conducting a military action against the load-bearing components of the empire. As long as they are these components, their personal beliefs are of little relevance. Unless, of course, you can cause the same or more damage by other means - e.g. by inducing Bob to defect with an outrageous bribe or by converting Carol. But if that's not feasible, then see above.

Which one of the three henchmen is the evilest? Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?

Alice, Alice. Bob & Carol can be reasoned with, persuaded, or manipulated: only Alice believes that X is an unambiguous good; this is, as you assert, "absolutely evil and abhorrent": it's irreconcilable. You simply need to kill enough Alices to trigger a preference cascade. To prevent the Evil Empire from ever reconstituting itself you'll need to be thorough and completely erase every "true believer" in X, but you can save cleaning up the incompetent and ineffectual ones until after your rebels have consolidated power. The true believers like Alice are the biggest threat -- as they're smart, once they start to lose they'll cloak their belief in X and make it hard to differentiate them from Bob and Carol, then secretly advocate for X in the shadows. Hopefully the "X" in question is something like Christianity in Edo Japan and you can just demand the Alices to step on or desecrate some sacred icon and kill them if they refuse.

Agreed. Bob is likely to defect if it looks like the Empire will lose (or that he himself might pay the cost), and Carol is likely to either begin sandbagging or resign entirely.

In terms of evilness? Well, as a true believer in an evil cause, that would again be Alice. But I would say she is still more virtuous than Bob, who's an opportunistic mercenary.

I would rather Bob be killed, and Alice survive to reconstruction as a matter of personal preference, but in terms of pragmatic effectiveness, she's got to be the target.

Who’s most critical to the regime? You’re a soldier fighting a war, seeking a military objective(‘destroy the evil empire’), not trying to determine individual guilt.

I suspect that the tactically correct answer is to attempt to turn Carol as a source and kill Alice. But it’s going to depend on the circumstances.

For the purposes of assassination I don't care which one is the evilest. I'm not here to punish them individually for being evil, I want to do damage to the Evil Empire.

Killing a true believer and especially a sympathetic true believer seems like a great way to consolidate the Evil Empire followers around a martyr. Instead I'd say the plucky rebels should assassinate Bob, to send a message to the most apathetic, opportunist and amoral Evil Empire henchmen (which I expect to be the majority) that rather than the most loyal or the most efficient, it could be any one of them.

My thoughts exactly. Kill Bob, scare both Bob 2 and Carol. Kill Alice, spawn Alice 2 and 3. Easy choice.

True believers are cheap, competent true believers are not - take Iran for example - the combined IQ of the top cadres of the regime is probably less than those of mossad's janitor team.

I am given to understand that Charlie Kirk is a good example of this. Plenty of people have Kirk-like beliefs; none apparently have his combination of charisma, organizational skills, and industriousness.

Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?

Why does it matter who you strike first? Timeline doesn't seem like strong evidence of guilt or righteousness; the most guilty Nazis or Confederates weren't killed first.

Because you want to minimize the area under the curve of the Evil Empire's power.

But how does the morality or lack thereof of the targets influence minimizing the power of the Evil Empire? It seems like the relevant information is not provided.

Assume all three are equally important for the successful existence of the evil empire.

I assume they only get one chance during the given strategically significant period of time.

How does the smart, brave, loyal person come to sincerely believe in the absolutely evil and abhorrent X? Is she simply misinformed and deluded? Either she or 'you' or both have fatally misperceived something.

I guess I would deeply examine my sources, my reasoning and my beliefs before doing any judgements of evil and assassinations, to try and find out who is in fact deluded, first of all.

How does the smart, brave, loyal person come to sincerely believe in the absolutely evil and abhorrent X? Is she simply misinformed and deluded? Either she or 'you' or both have fatally misperceived something.

I don't think this follows. I think it's entirely possible for two equally intelligent, brave, loyal, [insert good adjective here] people to look at the same set of facts and come to equal and opposite conclusions about the goodness of the exact same thing, because people can have arbitrary fundamental values that inform every other value they have.

If the difference is due to fundamental values, then Alice is not a better person than me.

I interpreted the original hypothetical as Alice being better in all things except for fundamental morality - hence why she thinks something as evil as X is good.

If the fundamental values are simply arbitrary or random, are they actually 'good and right' and worth holding on to?

They're arbitrary, but not random. They're not "good and right" in some sort of objective sense, and whether they're worth holding onto would depend heavily on the exact specifics. Whether it's possible not to hold onto those is also a separate question that I think the answer is No to most people in most contexts.

When you differentiate between 'arbitrary' and 'random' you are thinking that the arbitrary one is determined by the environment around the person, whatever it might be, while 'random' would be like a random number generator?

By arbitrary, I mean that there's no particular characteristics that they must take on, other than the fact that they're fundamental values. A person could have a fundamental value of praising God or of making sure that the final digit of the S&P500 closing value each day is 6, or of watching Mrs. Doubtfire as many times as possible in their lifetime, or anything else. It's arbitrary.

Random, as I understand it, means impossible to predict (if not literally, at least practically). I coin flip is random in that one cannot, with confidence, claim that either of the 2 outcomes (ignoring the edge and the shape of actual IRL coins causing bias - again, practically) is more likely than the other. When I see, say, a woman wearing a nun's habit praying in a church, I believe that can make predictions about her fundamental values that are more likely than chance to be correct.

Yes, but how is that surprising? Look at the drama over trans issues, or mass migration, or MAID, or models of criminal justice... people end up with polar opposite values all the time, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how smart, brave, or loyal they are.

I set a higher bar for categorical Evil than what any of those issues represent. Someone supporting mass migration aren't being cruel for the sake of cruelty (my definition of evil).

That's an extremely high bar. Excepting rare psychopaths, almost nobody is being cruel for the sake of cruelty. The Holy Inquisition burned heretics for their own good - after their body had been destroyed, the important part - the soul - would be cleansed and would have a chance for eternal life. Who wouldn't prefer a brief short-term pain to the eternal never-ending torment? Communists exterminated millions - to give happiness and prosperity to billions (or at least they thought so - it didn't work out that way..). Nazis had the same kind of idea - their list of "bad" people was based on genetics rather than class, but otherwise same structure. Very rarely somebody sets out to do evil by trying to do evil - they always are the heroes in their own story.

It's not a high bar. Far from 'extremely high'. Lots of sociopaths exist. Lots of unprovoked cruelty occurs in this world, both from the sociopaths and from many other people. It was not to 'punish badness' that Germans tortured Jews.

If you read the literature, most of people committing the atrocities - including the Nazi atrocities - are not psychopaths. They are pretty usual people. That's the whole "banality of evil" thing. Put in the right circumstances, with the right motivations and the right indoctrination, a real lot of people would commit atrocities - not because they derive perverse pleasure from causing suffering - in fact, they very well may not - but because they consider it necessary to achieve some beneficial ends, or simply because it's the easiest way to go. Nazis didn't happen because German population suddenly turned mentally ill. They happened because Nazis were successful in convincing part of the population in their narrative, and scared the rest of the population enough to go along. That's what makes it so scary - it's not some insane Joker or Hannibal Lecter that does all those things. It's just regular people, in suitable circumstances, with suitable mind disposition.

Just because someone thinks they are doing something for good doesn't mean it's their true motivation though. People who enjoy cruelty, find purges orderly and tell themselves they're helping could also be included in a definition of evil. This would cover e.g. a sadistic cop.

Just because someone thinks they are doing something for good doesn't mean it's their true motivation though.

We'd get into very deep weeds here. How do we know what is "true" motivation and what is self-delusion? We can't read minds. How do we know if the sadistic cop enjoys causing pain, or enjoys the righteousness of his anger agains the criminals (in his own view)? I don't think it is possible, and I don't think it matters too much. If you do evil, and think it's good, it's still evil. There could be a possibility of opening the eyes of the evildoer to the true nature of their deeds, and thus convincing them to stop, but this possibility is remote and theoretical. Most people would find a million of excuses rather than admit "I was doing evil".

I don't think it has to be all that deep. It's not like you require a truly Freudian and unfalsifiable notion of a subconscious to understand the idea of someone who has a false narrative that gives them a license do what their baser self really wants to do. Confronting the fallible bad guy with a truth about themselves that they can't handle but deep down know is true is a common part of thousands of thrillers.

As you say, we're deep in the weeds here though.

That's a rather lax definition, it lets off the hook every utopian mass-murdering sociopath.

Have there been mass-murdering sociopaths who did it out of utopian dreams, rather than those being fig leaves?

Hard to say without being able to read someone's mind, and you might as well ask the same question about mass migration supporters.

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