BinaryHobo

BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

Ever since the computer first arrived, keyboard and mouse has been the standard. You have a flat surface with raised little squares that you smack with your fingers. You have another little rounded shape with a flat bottom you move around, and click with.

I mean... no? The first computer was the ENIAC, and it didn't even have programmable memory, it has to be hard-wired and manually changed every time you want it to do something different. You didn't interact via keyboard, you interacted via pulling wires.

And the mouse isn't until ~20 years later in the mid 60s. So far as I'm aware, it's first demo'd publicly during the mother of all demos

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

laughs in Catholic Er, maybe you heard about a little thing called the Reformation?

Unless you're some weird flavor of Greek-Catholic I've never heard of... You know that there were various latin translations, and the current one (the vulgate) wasn't finalized until St Jerome, several hundred years into the A.D., right? That's an awful long time for errors to creep in before we get into the translation stuff.

Maybe that's why the Catholic church has the reputation for changing quicker than the Orthodox churches (probably the only groups for which that comparison is valid).

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

Cuban

Not White.

Ok, so I understand the rest of these. I disagree with some of them, but I understand.

But do you think people born in a place colonized by the Spanish won't have a bunch of European genes floating around in their system?

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

We have a list of declining book sales for Disney in a medium overwhelmingly known for movies.

Star Wars is the epitome of nerd franchise. Nerds buy books. Now, if the books had broken into the mainstream (say, like Harry Potter), it would have blown all of the previous entries away. But even if they didn't, nerds still buy books. If these books were appealing to the traditional Star Wars demographic, 6 figure sales wouldn't be a problem.

It's not necessarily irrational for Disney to blow some money on a gamble like that, but that they keep putting them out does imply something about Disney's internal politics.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

What's notable is that there seem to have been no decision maker (with enough power, anyway) who was enough of a cynical profit maximizer to actually properly analyze the ideology's claims of profitability and to put a stop to this kind of ideology-prioritizing behavior.

Anyone that's much of a profit maximizer is maximizing their own profit. And it may very well be that defecting from the woke pattern would be detrimental to their own pay, rather than the corporation itself. It really depends on the internal politics of the organization, and if political rivals can use that defection against them.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

Yeah, but they are invested enough to defend against an actual "nazi coup". Look at how upset people were about J6, which was more circus than coup?

Are they? Getting upset is very different than standing up and defending. What are you seeing that makes you think the average person would get involved if an actual nazi coup showed up on the horizon?

A warlord in an african country isn't a new idea.

Sure, but people in the west like to feel like they're fundamentally superior to africa, that's not... the same thing. At least emotionally.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

you shouldn't be surprised when others seek to use force to challenge that hegemony

I'm not, it's exactly what I expect. Then again, I would expect it even if the US had an additional justification, such is the nature of power. Additionally I expect the rules based system to only last as long as US hegemony does.

But I also expect what comes next to be considered much worse, regardless of how much people talk now about America being evil. Despite getting to set the rules (and, admittedly, getting quite a few carve outs in its favor), Pax Americana has been good for basically everyone, save possibly the Russian elite.

-1

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

So the 'rules based order' has nothing to do with coherent, consistent law, it's just an excuse to do whatever NATO wants.

I mean sorta? Might makes right never went away, but the most powerful country generally wants a rules based system most of the time, and so one exists. With just enough exceptions and post hoc rationalization to prevent two nuclear armed powers from coming to direct conflict.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

This is just the populist / democratic "the real people are behind our niche ideas!" thing, which is dumb when a leftist does it, but especially dumb when someone who claims to be anti-democracy does it.

I read this as claiming that the people aren't invested enough in democracy to defend it, that is to say, concerned about the practicality of overthrowing a democratic government. Not about the people actually supporting the ideas, but anti-democratics not caring about the people supporting ideas seems reasonably consistent.

Military coups in less-developed countries are ... not unfamiliar for westerners, and are well considered as 'political forces'.

While political coups are quite understood, that a single private actor can become a sufficiently powerful political force is a bit jarring to some.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

I think people are using support for the death penalty as a proxy for various "tough on crime" measures.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

I read the comment as a statement that the Taliban would be forced into a political choice between taking more people and admitting that they're incompetent. I didn't really read it as a statement about the actual state of affairs of Afghanistan (except that it "recovering" seems to imply that it was worse before now).

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

I'd be an absolute idiot to prioritize the latter.

That certainly depends on if you need to punish heretics or defeat pagans more. If you need to prevent internal defections from the in-group, focusing on the latter makes perfect sense. If, on the other-hand, you need to circle the wagons to not be completely overwhelmed by the out-group, well, a lot can certainly be overlooked in an emergency.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

I wonder what that says about the entire U.S. war in Afghanistan taken from the reverse point of view.

Same thing Vietnam said. The US military is pretty great at dismantling the machinery of a state, but there's not really much point to doing it if you aren't going to annex the territory (see basically every empire ever) or at least fully occupy the area and re-build it (see Japan/Germany post-WWII). There's just no end-game if you're doing that, you just have to keep mowing the grass.

There's a theoretical reason to do this to dismantle a state that's a significant threat to the US, but the states that are a significant thread all have nuclear weapons, so it doesn't really work in practice post 1948.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

The problem with woke movies these days isn't necessarily the wokeness, it's that the writers seem to think the wokeness was enough and they forget to make the movie good.

Hasn't that been discussed as intentional? That is to say, if the movie is good, you might catch a bunch of people who just like good movies with your signaling. If the movie is bad, the only reason to signal that you like it is to endorse the message.

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

The hot dog question is obviously frivolous.

Except it isn't, and even the silly hot dog question can't escape human society. New York, for example, has a sandwich tax. In such a jurisdiction, the question isn't bickering about category membership, but answering it tells you if you're going to get a tax-evasion charge.

For the record, NY considers hot dogs to be sandwiches (also burritos).

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BinaryHobo hauling up the data on the Xerox line 2yr ago

I'm not really the person to talk about it, since Rome is more my jam than Africa, but there's a couple of decent comparison points. Assuming we're talking about Sub-Saharan Africa, as Northern-Africa is being conquered by the Muslims at this point.

The Great Zimbabwe is being settled around the 9th century. It ends up being a full stone-walled medieval-style city. This seems to be more technologically advanced that Europe was at it's lowest trough, but significantly less advanced than Rome at its height (it's not really comparable to the Theodosian Walls).

The Sao city-states are also humming along at this point. These are more impressive to me, but that might just be because it pattern matches to the Greek city-states.

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