BahRamYou
2hr ago
It's OK as long as they humble themselves by calling themselves "girls" and "dudes." Lowercase white. Not like the Black women and Black men who can wear their identity with pride.
BahRamYou
1d ago
yeah, you can't just chill at home enjoying a board game by yourself. You need other people, and usually a specific number of very dedicated gamers to play the more complicated games. Putting together a group of exactly 7 people to play a multi-hour game of Diplomacy is something of a game in itself, so you really have to work at it and bring in anyone you can get sometimes, even if they're kinda toxic or bad at the game.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Thank you for writing this! This is basically exactly what I would have written if I had more motivation to write a response.
BahRamYou
1d ago
I have a half-baked theory- I think that board games tend to be nerdy (of course) but also relatively low-stress, and low-competitive. I know there are exceptions, like professional chess, but for the most part it's a pretty relaxed hobby. The result is a group that isn't fierce enough to resist takeover from the political entryists.
BahRamYou
1d ago
also notable for being an objectively bad player, who got massively lucky, and thus played a big part in creating the online poker boom of the time.
BahRamYou
1d ago
"all the time?" Like what? Do you think Trump is going to invade Pennsylvania to get revenge for the assassination attempt?
BahRamYou
1d ago
Man, this is such a strange conversation! I don't want to accuse you of being an NK propaganda tool but... I feel like you're hitting a lot of their talking points.
Let's go back to the start:
For me, it helps shed light on why the North Koreans felt like they "needed" to start the Korean War and invade the South in 1950.
It makes no sense that they would invade a peaceful neighbor just one random terrorist- who defected from North Korea! tried to lob a homemade bomb at their leader. That sounds like something North Korean army officers would use as an excuse. Kim Il Sung was looking to take over all of Korea ever since the day he got into power, and was heavily backed by the USSR the whole time, just waiting for the right time to invade. They invaded 4 years after the assassination attempt, during which South Korea made absolutely no attempt to kill Kim Il Sung or even build up their military.
You want to make a meme connecting Trump to Kim Il Sung... why? Kim Il Sung is not very popular in the US, even among the fringe online right. Are you trying to make Kim Il Sung more popular with Trump fans?
Eh... I think the cyberattacks/crypto scams are blown way out of proportion. Literally every country on earth does this. For some reason, however, it's only used as an excuse to block exchanges with North Korea and not with countries like Israel.
Every country has some degree of cyberwarfare ability, sure. But most of them simply keep it in reserve as an emergency warfware option, or (like the US and Israel) occasionally to target terrorists and nuclear weapons development. North Korea uses it regularly, either to "earn respect" for their regime, or to bring in foreign cash when they have no legitimate exports. See eg: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/dprk-cyber-espionage.pdf. These attacks are increasing over time, suggesting that they are gaining technical skills and are not bound by any sort of international norms. This is actually becoming a large part of their "economy!" ("Remarkably, North Korea is also deemed responsible for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency heist, worth $530 million, to the detriment of the Japanese exchange Coincheck.34 It appears cyber thefts have become an integral part of Pyongyang’s strategy as a way of survival.")
Also, FWIW, I used to work for the NSA red team running these types of operations. I have a pretty good sense of what types of training contribute to hacking capabilities and can ensure that the academic exchanges stay far away from that material.
Not the point. I'm sure these academic exchanges don't directly teach hacking capabilities. But it's opportunity cost. When they teach basic, civilian skills for free, which Pyongyang would have had to fund itself, that allows the regime to use its own resources to create more "cyberwarriors." It's the same pattern we've seen from North Korea again and again- Giving them food, money, or technical equipment does not help their people like it would a normal country. It simply lets the regime transfer more people and resources into its military. Giving them food during the 90s famine didn't stop their military buildup, and the more recent sunshine policy did nothing to halt their nuclearization or cyberwarfare programs.
In a larger sense- you said you teach computer science? I'm sure you know more about computer and programming than I do. But don't you think the state department knows more about diplomacy and military matters than you? Of course your NK colleagues seem nice, they're not going to put you next to someone who's openly hostile. But the state department can monitor the nasty parts of their government much more than you can as a visiting professor, and there's a good reason why the government has decided that it's a bad idea to give them technical help or even to travel there as a tourist. Don't be a Useful Idiot.
BahRamYou
2d ago
If this was a third-world country with limited state power that might make sense. But NK isn't like that. There is no "separate technical class" or "civilian class." If those devs are useful to the military regime, they'll just be transferred to work on whatever the rulers deem useful. Creating more "civilian" devs just frees up more resources to use for blackhat devs. And if they start to act "philowestern" from exposure to the internet, they can just be imprisoned or executed (as many people are who are caught with contraband material, like banned books or even SK dramas on DVD.
This sort of thinking has been tried. For a good long time now, most notably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Policy. The hope was that giving them free, peaceful aid would make them a more friendly nation. It didn't work, it just gave them enough resources to keep their shitty dictatorship running while they developed nukes and ICBMs. It's astonishing to me that people still think giving them "no strings attached aid" is going to magically change the mind of people who have spent decades running one of the cruelist military dictatorships on Earth.
BahRamYou
2d ago
With a much smaller country like North Korea that is super isolated, I think there's basically no risk.
even though they have a history of cyberattacks and crypto scams? I don't know why you think there's no risk, or any benefit, in freely helping them increase their IT skills. Even if the stuff you're teaching them is purely peaceful, it frees up their state resources to work on other, more black-hat stuff.
BahRamYou
4d ago
4 months? you wish. It'll 4 years of this if Trump wins.
I pretty much lost my mind after 5 years of incessant anti-trump deranged news.
BahRamYou
5d ago
Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.
This is a common issue for vice presidents as presidential candidates- they can't just "untether" themselves from the president. For good or ill, they served him loyally as his #2. If they go on camera and say "actually I disagreed strongly with him on that issue, I just kept my mouth shut for the sake of public relations" it looks horribly dishonest. If they just want to say that they supported the president on everything and will continue to do more of the same, it's hard for them to come into their own as a real candidate, instead of just a weak shadow.
It can kind of work when the previous president is still popular (Reagan, Clinton, and Obama) but still leads to a fairly bland, forgettable candidate (HW Bush, Gore, and Biden).
BahRamYou
5d ago
I know it sounds like TV fiction but... why is it hilarious? It seems to me like it would work. Romney would pull a good chunk of never-Trump Republican voters, plus all the loyal Democratic voters. Some people might splinter and go third party, but they're already doing that to RFK Jr who is... not doing well. Romney would win, and accomplish what Democrats always say is their main goal of "stopping Trump." It's quite possible the Republican party would completely shatter after that, too.
I think that's why it will resonate. It might be "old news" to very online rightoids and old-time san francisco politicians, but most voters will be hearing about it for the very first time. Especially the low-news, marginal, swing voters who can actually change their mind. I think a lot of them will be learning about Harris in detail for the first time now and thinking:
"Hmm, she doesn't sound very smart or very presidential. How did she get picked to be vice pres?"
"Oh, Biden felt he needed a black woman. Not very fair, but I guess it makes sense. She had a long career in politics before being vice pres, right?"
"...oh. She only got elected in the first place by trading sexual favors to an old corrupt dude? That's pathetic and gross."
Trumps scandals, on the other hand, already "priced in." Everybody knows about them, at least the general sense of them. And they might be morally gross, they don't make him look incompetant.
BahRamYou
6d ago
The back cover of the DVD described this as “love and idealism triumphing over the forces of corruption and conformity”. Nope. Benjamin Braddock is a whiny asshole with no ideals and is himself a force for corruption. If he does indeed represent a rebellion against the conformity of middle-class life—as he breaks up two marriages and a business partnership—he only serves to make us appreciate squareness. Skip this one.
Isn't that sort of the point of the movie? The famous end scene doesn't end with their romantic runaway from the wedding. They sit on the bus, silently, with an awkward look on their faces, while a sad song plays. I got a strong sense that they had just ruined both of their lives from impulsive behavior, and the reality was sinking in on them. It's an interesting film with a lot of nuance!
BahRamYou
7d ago
Of course they never directly called for him to be assassinated. That would be vulgar, and possibly illegal. But there was a lot of rhetoric like "Trump is a fascist," "he's a threat to democracy," "Jan 6 was a coup attempt," "if he wins there might not be another election until he dies," etc. The logical conclusion from that, that any redblooded young wanna-be hero would think of, is that he's a monster who must be stopped by Any Means Necessary. Pundits need to back off and say "yes Trump is bad, but even if he wins there will still be another election in 4 years, so keep a sense of perspective."
BahRamYou
7d ago
I can't help but think about this post that was linked on the SSC reddit a few days ago: https://matt.sh/panic-at-the-job-market
(long, rambly post that I don't fully agree with but it did say a few interesting things) In particular these two quotes:
Modern tech hiring, due to industry-wide persistent fear mongering about not hiring “secretly incompetent people,” has become a game divorced from meaningfully judging individual experience and impact
...
Such job descriptions also means: your job is physically impossible. You will always feel drained and incompetent because you can’t actually do everything everyday. You will always be behind because each of those bullet points can be multiple days of work per week just on their own (plus, how are you supposed to be productive in 35 different areas requiring months to years of experience if you actually want to be good at each task?). So, from day 1, you will already be about 4 months behind on your expected job responsibilities and you’ll never catch up. It turns into an endless game of managers and executives saying you are “underperforming” because you have 18 primary tasks, each primary task requires 4 to 20 hours of effort, and every manager wants their task done within 4 hours. You are setup to fail. What’s the point?
Maybe a point is some companies just shouldn’t exist if they can’t afford the fully staffed professional teams required to build and maintain their products? The worst secret in tech is amateur developers are happy to act like entry level workers across 20 arbitrary roles for years (in the absence of never having enough time to focus on building up long-term experience or best practices). You can’t get gud if you are always rushed from task to task without any chance of leveling up knowledge and capability through “deep work” as we would historically expect of professionals.
I don't think it's like that at every company, or even the majority. But there are certainly some companies like that. They, in theory, care greatly about their tech workers, because the salaries are high and they have a vague understanding that tech is important. But they don't have a good system for actually hiring good tech workers. And then, once hired, they use them all as generalists, moving quickly from one thing to another, with no chance to actually develop expertise or fix deep underlying issues. And they are never given any kind of decision-making authority in the company, only responsibility to "just fix whatever breaks."
I think that behavior happens the most in companies that are not "tech companies," but still use tech. Banks, airlines, large retailers, that sort of thing. They need tech to function, but it's just a cost center to them- they want to just pay a fixed price per month to "handle tech" and then not think about it ever again. And it seems like those are the ones being bitten in the ass by this thing, because it turns out that running a windows server with third-party antivirus on it with automatic updates is not actually very secure! I wonder if we'll see any restructuring, or if this sort of thing is just going to happen every so often forever, as companies get blindsided by tech issues that they don't understand and never cared to try and understand?
BahRamYou
7d ago
Would you consider plunging for distance to be a great test of athleticism? Thats a "sport" that rewards being extremely fat (plus i guess some amount of training and discipline).
Alternatively, what if they raised the basketball hoop so that you really have to be super tall to compete? That would be ridiculous.
Theyre probably slanting towards sports that are topically relevant. Right now that means the wnba and olympic swimming. Edit- tennis is also topical with Wimbledon just ending now. Theyre also slanting for relatively recent athletes. Anything that can farm clicks for current news.
BahRamYou
9d ago
If thats true, that person just lost a ton of money. Djt shot up the day after the failed attempt.
BahRamYou
9d ago
I feel that. Im travelling in asia right now, and one thing that jumps out is how well dressed people are here compared to back home. Im kind of embarrassed by how shlubby most of the white tourists look here. Ratty stained t shirts vs suits or stylish street wear.
I think it does help with social cohesion. People here are a super high trust, low crime society. Shops leave their wares unguarded on the street, and nobody steals it. Of course there's many factors for that, but i have to think that a society where everyone dresses terribly helps to erode the social fabric.
I would guess its a combination of car and digital culture. We're so alienated from each other, we just dont see each other much in person. In a more traditional society where people still socialize and conduct business face to face, clothes matter a lot more.
I also tend to think most of the modern clothes sold to men just suck. Its either hip hop, video game graphic tees, or gay country club shit. Very little to make an adult straight man feel cool.
BahRamYou
9d ago
Probably some correlation there, yeah. Also somewhat related: the famous Bertrand Russel quote: "While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don't have any choice to make." Probably not a coincidence that economics is more right-wing while sociology is more left-wing.
BahRamYou
10d ago
I feel like the people you describe tend to fake it a lot. It's almost a cliche, they talk about books a lot but hardly ever actually read them. I doubt they're spending a lot of time listening to classical music or watching art films, either. Unless they're really into it, in which case you're not going to fool them by "speedrunning" it, it's going to be glaringly obvious. But there's enough other people just faking it that you wouldn't really stand out either.
Also:
Nijisanji vtubers
Do you watch the JP branch or are you still watching Kurosanji?
Isn't that the whole point of the olympics? Most of its sports are things that would never get any sort of audience normally. It's just not that fun watching sprinting, weightlifting, rowing, etc normally. watching them once every 4 years with "fierce international rivalry!" and "olympic gold medal!" at stake is about as much as most people care to watch them. The big sports like soccer and basketball are kinda lowkey at the olympics, since there are other, better tournaments to watch them.
I feel like the olympics coasted for a long time during the 20th century based on the USSR vs USA rivalry. No one cared about the actual athletes or the sports themselves. I guess the networks are trying to add "human interest story" to make us care about the athletes, but frankly most of the athletes are extremely boring people who practice like a machine, nonstop every day at an extremely tedious sport, just to shave of 0.1 seconds and win 5 minutes of fame at the olympics. It might have been more fun to learn about them back when they were actually amateurs and had a life outside of sports, but those days are long gone.
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