Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
2hr ago
The "attack on the French language" thing is particularly transparently dishonest from Carney. Trump's devastating alpha strike on Quebecois identity is... not requiring US streaming services to promote French-Canadian content.
Bartender_Venator
2hr ago
To be clear here - you're suggesting that a Taiwan conflict could end in a land invasion of Mainland China?
Kurds in Afghanistan?
You're probably thinking of the Kurds in Iraq, who are doing great by regional standards. The allies we left behind in Afghanistan were mostly Tajiks and to some extent Hazaras.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
If you want to suggest that he hired a Turkish contractor out of racial kinship bias, say it. Then put in the work to actually defend it, because this mealy-mouthed aside isn’t enough. I guess the source article does the same thing. But I digress.
I'm sure you know Texan business, but I know Turkish business, and I would want journalists (or the FBI) to take a serious look at the decision to use Repkon. Gezen being a US-born citizen, I'll suspend judgment, but in this sort of area in Turkey, corruption is the null hypothesis.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
iirc we're supposed to catapult toxic waste into it until they help us make shortform video more addicting
Bartender_Venator
11hr ago
I get it, but standard artillery is essentially only relevant to a land war in Europe. We're already ~fighting a land war in Europe, and as much as I'd love to liberate Sweden, that's the only one happening in the theatre for the foreseeable future. Latam/Middle East/Africa, the opposing forces will not be competent/coherent enough for you to need conventional artillery (with the exception of Iran, which is geographically un-invadable anyway), and any China conflict is a purely air/naval one, unless you're expecting trench warfare in Taipei. The shell shortage is damning not because shells are universally critical munitions, but because of what it says about the rest of our military supply chain.
Bartender_Venator
11hr ago
It seems incredibly bizarre to me that we should allow any Canadians, except for the good people of Alberta, to vote. I prefer "Canadian Territory".
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
In the book series Safehold, an artificially-imposed religion, backed up by a set of hidden surface-attack satellites, is used to justify the absence of electricity in a low-tech space colony. Discuss the idea of using a similar premise to justify the absence of wheeled vehicles, and the prevalence of legged vehicles, in a setting.
I misread "Safehold" as "Seinfeld", and ChatGPT's attempt to write a Seinfeld scene on the topic is quite something:
GEORGE: What did Saint Newman reveal?
Kramer leans in.
KRAMER: The circle is an abomination.
Silence.
JERRY: The circle.
KRAMER: The circle. No beginning, no end. Man wasn't meant to make something like that.
ELAINE: What about plates?
KRAMER: Ceremonial exemption.
JERRY: Coins?
KRAMER: Flattened spheres.
GEORGE: Bagels?
Kramer hesitates.
KRAMER: That's controversial.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
One I loled at:
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, for I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the migrants, and I did not speak out, for I was not a migrant.
Then all the problems were solved, so they kind of stopped coming for people.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
I've seen some people suggest that what makes a lot of Third World men abuse Western women who're seen as too loose is because of terminal pornbrain.
This goes back before internet porn. I was told in Turkey that it was a big problem back when mass tourism first started coming (harassment more than rape, because Turkish police are scary fuckers) that a lot the young men who became tour guides, hotel workers, etc. had been taught by clerics that Western women were all whores who would have sex at the drop of a hat, and of course the young men were really hoping that would be true.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
For most of these countries - think like West Africa, not Afghanistan - their wealthy elites all want to be able to visit the West, buy property, open bank accounts. And they're the ones who have the power at home.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
There are some things which are beyond politics and science - in particular, the domain of the tragic. If HBD, and genetic determinism more broadly, are true, they are part of the tragic nature of the human condition. Modernity tries to deny that nature, because it believes there can be nothing beyond politics and science (and modernity has ameliorated our condition - mass infant mortality is no longer one of our tragedies, for instance, and I recall Scott's old take on HBD being "let's not think too much about it but work really hard on gene editing to boost intelligence"). Historically, people have turned to faith and art, but we're not as good at that these days, either.
The Sam Kriss article is very good, but you've missed part of it in a way that's understandable for American readers. To understand British tabloid culture, imagine if the most popular media outlets in the country, left right and center, were a mix of the New York Post and TMZ, except with even lower ethical standards for "human interest stories" (most famously, the News of the World was shut down after an inquiry learned their journos had hacked the phones of a murdered schoolgirl, terrorism victims, etc.). What happened to Jason Arday is not particularly exceptional - his race, and therefore politics, is inextricable from it, because his whole career was about his race, but this is just what the British media does when they see a juicy "human interest story".
Bartender_Venator
8d ago
Let's see, this Reno girl married a local architect 40 years her senior before she could even drink, divorced him after 3 years for what's probably a serious payday by Reno standards, traded up to Eric Schmidt, and then cougared Dario? (I say cougared based on the relative psychological maturity)
Move over Mrs. L.S. Bezos, there's a new queen in town.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
Finding genuinely cold aircon in a European/NYC summer.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
To me the 'save room effect' of a business or credit card lounge is less the peace and quiet, though a lot of non-Big-3 lounges still do have that vibe, but that you've made it through the commute/check-in/TSA, know when your flight is leaving, and no longer have to think about anything urgent in that time block (conversely, if you're in a rush and just trying to eat in the lounge, even a quiet one doesn't feel peaceful at all...).
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
Yeah, it's interesting, the authors are very much redditors but within that worldview they're sort of small-c conservative of it. I will say characterization gets much better as the books go on (I hear Books 3/4 are rough in that respect, some unfortunate teething pains with bad POV characters, I skipped them since I was coming from the show). I've made this argument here before, but it's a rare case of the show being better than the books in the early seasons, since the writers had time to go back and write what they would have written if they knew where the story was going, plus polishing up some rough patches.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
The hard part is getting that across to them for budget approval. You can’t frame it as an expense. If you say you’re putting in a request for an $800k investment to upgrade the backend because we’re currently carrying a $2.3 million risk that’s expected to grow with our current rate of expansion, that’s something they’ll understand.
One useful application of LLMs could be translating tech concerns to C-suitese...
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
OK yeah that's just real stupid of them. I would hope things would converge on a sensible equilibrium of "the metadata will say say 'claude made this document from the user's provided text'"
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
I have seen far more affection for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan than I have in African towns which are currently getting their drinking water, HIV meds, etc. etc. from the largesse of the US - not to say they don't like Americans, but to them Americans are just cool guys on TV and sometimes tourists. Aid is just something that happens down there, Gods Must Be Crazy style.
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
I will grant that libs have weaponized shaming campaigns to wild social detriment, and they are trying to do so around any AI use whatsover in e.g. video games. However, we do need social norms, and shame is how you enforce them. And we have perfectly good social norms around all of this, anyway! Treat AI writing as if it was another person writing, a co-writer or a ghostwriter, and just be honest about your creative process when you use it.
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
Along with a couple of men from my company who had hooked up with me, I proceeded down the path. To the right of it was a fortified line, from where we came under heavy fire. We retreated to the first of the dugouts, over which the bullets of both sides were soon flying back and forth. It looked as though it had been a base for messengers and bicyclists attached to the artillery. Outside it lay my British soldier, little more than a boy, who had been hit in the temple. He lay there, looking quite relaxed. I forced myself to look closely at him. It wasn't a case of 'you or me' any more. I often thought back on him; and more with the passing of the years. The state, which relieves us of our responsibility, cannot take away our remorse; and we must exercise it. Sorrow, regret, pursued me deep into my dreams.
So that's why Germany lost the War!
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
Thank you, good to know.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
You can read his papers. They're full of basic typoes and solecisms. No wordcel academic would have passed him if he was a first-year PhD student, except for the specific circumstances of the case.
The Taliban are a strange outlier by historical Afghan standards. Generally, Afghanistan has been governed by a centralized Kabul regime which distributes foreign patronage to provincial strongmen in return for nominal fealty. In theory we could have done something similar with Karzai, but he and his cronies just stole all the money instead of delivering it to clients.
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