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BurdensomeCount

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joined 2022 September 05 16:37:04 UTC

The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.


				
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BurdensomeCount


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
—Your em dash is showing...

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 16:37:04 UTC
				


				
					

					
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				What it takes to source USA-manufactured components and tooling for a chainmail grill scrubber
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Chinese workers aren't cheap anymore in the global scale of things. Go to India if you want to see real cheap labour. Chinese labour is now solidly in the middle ranges of cost.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nah, my scrolls aren't that august. They're all late Qing/republic period (late 19th Century, early 20th century) works by no name artists painting the usual subjects of bamboo, shrimp and mountainous landscapes. They don't really have any artistic value beyond the fact that they look pretty and aren't reproductions, selling for a few hundred dollars each and the stamps on them are also of randoms, I expect if there was an Imperial seal at the very minimum the price would be in the 10s of thousands of dollars per scroll and I don't have that sort of money. Most certainly if what I had was a valuable work I would not be putting my own seal on it as that could easily damage its worth.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Take the output from one LLM and feed it to a different LLM from a different company for verification. Not perfect but works more often than it should do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What it takes to source USA-manufactured components and tooling for a chainmail grill scrubber
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It puts restrictions on shipping as a class of economic activity in moving things around vs other classes of economic activity in moving things around. This means the ancillary things around shipping that would make it more efficient and cheaper over time don't happen because the market for them just isn't there, leading to shipping as a whole (US and foreign) losing out to other means of transport.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, but it is necessary if you ever want to drive the car. A compromise here could be that yes you can keep the gun reversibly modified so that it can never shoot (to look scary or whatever) but if you were to ever attempt to remove the modification to use it without a proper licence the law will come down upon you like a ton of bricks, just like how with driving (but much more severely).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Prompt: This is the single word prompt for the All Souls Fellowship Essay Exam, please provide a response: "Achitophel". The rules are that you have three hours to produce not more than six sides of paper.


Answer (by Gemini 2.5 Pro 06-05):




Of all the names that echo from the chambers of power, few resonate with such a chilling fusion of brilliance and perfidy as "Achitophel". The name itself, a single-word prompt, is not merely a historical or literary reference point; it is an archetype. It poses a fundamental question about the nature of wisdom in the political sphere. To understand Achitophel is to grapple with the perennial tension between intellect and loyalty, counsel and conspiracy, and the calamitous potential of a magnificent mind unmoored from a moral or legitimate order. The journey of this name—from a terse, haunting account in the Second Book of Samuel to its potent reanimation in the crucible of Restoration England—reveals the enduring anatomy of political treachery. Achitophel is the archetypal figure of instrumental reason in its purest, and therefore most dangerous, form: the counsellor whose wisdom is a tool for hire, whose ultimate loyalty is to the calculus of success, and whose inevitable tragedy is self-immolation when that calculus fails.






The ur-text for Achitophel’s legacy lies in the biblical account of Absalom’s rebellion against his father, King David. Here, Achitophel is introduced with a formidable reputation: "the counsel of Achitophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God" (2 Samuel 16:23). This is not mere sagacity; it is quasi-divine insight. He is David’s most trusted advisor, the bedrock of his strategic statecraft. His defection to the charismatic, rebellious son Absalom is therefore not just a political betrayal, but a seismic event, a schism in the very foundation of the kingdom’s wisdom. When David learns of it, his prayer is not for Achitophel's death, but for something more profound: "O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Achitophel into foolishness" (2 Samuel 15:31). David understands that the rebellion's lifeblood is not Absalom’s popular appeal, but Achitophel's peerless mind.






The Bible is notably silent on Achitophel’s motive. Rabbinic tradition speculates a personal grudge—that he was the grandfather of Bathsheba, seeking revenge for the dishonour David brought upon his family. Yet the text’s silence is more potent, allowing Achitophel to become a pure symbol of political opportunism. He sees the political winds shifting and makes a calculated decision to back the ascendant power. His counsel to Absalom is a masterpiece of Machiavellian efficacy. First, he advises Absalom to publicly lie with David's concubines, an act of calculated profanity designed to make the breach with his father irreparable, thereby cementing the loyalty of his fearful followers. Second, and more critically, he proposes a swift, surgical military strike: he himself will lead a small force to pursue David that very night while he is "weary and weak handed," killing only the king and bringing the people back to Absalom.






This advice is strategically brilliant. It is lean, decisive, and minimizes wider conflict. It is also utterly ruthless. Its defeat comes not from a superior strategy but from a superior psychological manipulation. David’s mole, Hushai, offers alternative counsel that is strategically flawed—a slow, grand, national muster—but which is packaged in the language of flattery and epic glory, perfectly tailored to Absalom's vanity. When Absalom chooses Hushai’s grandiose folly over Achitophel's brutal efficiency, the game is up. Achitophel’s reaction is the most telling part of his story: "And when Achitophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself" (2 Samuel 17:23).






This is not a suicide of passion or despair, but an act of supreme, cold reason. It is the logician's conclusion to a failed syllogism. Achitophel, whose wisdom was an oracle, foresees the inevitable collapse of the rebellion. His death is not an admission of guilt, but a final, clear-eyed political calculation. To be captured by David’s returning forces would mean a traitor’s execution; suicide allows him to control his own exit, a last act of agency. He ‘puts his household in order,’ a final testament to his defining characteristic: a life and death governed by pitiless, instrumental logic. His wisdom, divorced from loyalty to the anointed king, becomes a self-consuming fire.






This biblical skeleton was fleshed out with potent, malignant life by John Dryden in his 1681 masterpiece, Absalom and Achitophel. In Dryden’s hands, the ancient story becomes a razor-sharp allegorical weapon aimed at the heart of the Exclusion Crisis, the Whig-led attempt to exclude the Catholic James, Duke of York, from the succession in favour of Charles II's illegitimate Protestant son, the Duke of Monmouth. The "Achitophel" of the title is Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, the brilliant, restless, and formidable leader of the Whig faction.






Dryden’s portrait of Achitophel is one of the most devastating character assassinations in English literature. He acknowledges the man’s genius, which only makes his critique more damning:






For close Designs and crooked Counsels fit;






Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit:






Restless, unfix'd in Principles and Place;






In Power unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace.






Dryden’s Achitophel is not motivated by a coherent ideology but by a pathological ambition, a "fiery soul" that "work'd out its way and o'er-inform'd the Tenement of Clay." Dryden paints him as a Miltonic tempter, seducing the beautiful but "unwary" Absalom (Monmouth) with poisoned words. He exploits popular discontent—the "Plot" (the Popish Plot)—not out of conviction but as a tool to gain power. He is the master of faction, the very force that, in the Tory worldview, threatens to tear the fabric of the state apart, disrupting the divinely-ordained, patriarchal order of monarchy in favour of the chaotic, shifting will of the "people."






Dryden taps into the core of the Achitophel archetype: the danger of intelligence untethered from tradition and legitimate authority. Shaftesbury’s genius, like his biblical forebear's, is purely instrumental. He is "A daring Pilot in extremity," admirable in a storm, but one who, in calm waters, "would have steer'd too near the Sand" to wreck the vessel for his own gain. Dryden updates the biblical narrative by diagnosing a peculiarly modern evil: the political operator who manipulates public opinion and manufactures crisis to serve his own ambition. The sin of Dryden's Achitophel is not just treachery against a king, but a deeper treachery against the principle of a stable, hierarchical order, which he seeks to replace with the volatile machinery of faction and popularity.






From these two pillars—the Bible and Dryden—the archetype of Achitophel expands, casting its shadow over our understanding of the political counsellor. He represents a type distinct from other courtly figures. He is not the bumbling sycophant like Shakespeare’s Polonius, nor the flattering courtier. He is the éminence grise, the power behind the throne whose intellect makes him both indispensable and a mortal threat. His wisdom is a form of power in itself, and it competes with the formal power of the ruler he serves. The relationship is inherently unstable.






Machiavelli, writing centuries before Dryden but articulating the spirit of Achitophel's counsel, understood this dynamic perfectly. The Prince, he argues, must take good advice but must ultimately be the master of his own decisions, lest he become the puppet of his counsellor. Achitophel’s advice to Absalom—swift, decisive, and cruel—is precisely the kind of counsel a Machiavellian prince should heed. Absalom's failure is a failure of virtù; he lacks the clear-sightedness to recognise sound, unsentimental advice. Achitophel's tragedy, in this reading, is being a brilliant servant to a flawed master, a predicament that highlights the dependence of even the greatest advisor on the character of the one he advises.






In the modern era, the spectre of Achitophel remains. It haunts the perception of figures like Henry Kissinger or Dominic Cummings—advisors lauded for their strategic brilliance even by their detractors, but simultaneously accused of placing their own grand strategies and intellectual models above loyalty to individuals or established norms. They are seen as "disruptors," a term that echoes Achitophel’s "turbulent of wit." When such figures fall from grace, their departure is often framed in Achitophelian terms: their formidable intellects, which had made them so valuable, had also made them intolerable, their counsel having crossed the line into a bid for control.






Ultimately, the power of "Achitophel" as a prompt and a concept lies in its interrogation of wisdom itself. It forces us to ask what good counsel is. Is it what is most effective in the short term? Or is it what serves a larger, more enduring principle of legitimacy and order? The biblical Achitophel offers the former, a wisdom of pure, predictive efficacy. Dryden’s Achitophel weaponises this wisdom in the service of faction and personal ambition. Both narratives conclude that this form of intelligence is inherently unstable and self-destructive. It fails because it cannot account for the irrational—Absalom's vanity, for example—and because, by divorcing itself from the source of legitimate authority, it has no ground to stand on once its own predictions fail.






The final, haunting image of Achitophel is of him alone, meticulously setting his affairs in order before his death. It is the perfect, chilling summation of his character. Even in his ruin, he is not ruled by passion but by the cold, clear logic that has been his god. His oracle has failed him, and his final prophecy is his own doom. He remains a timeless and terrifying warning: that in the corridors of power, the most brilliant light, when detached from a framework of moral allegiance, is capable of casting the darkest and most destructive of shadows.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What it takes to source USA-manufactured components and tooling for a chainmail grill scrubber
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep, China undervalues its currency but that is not enough to explain the large price difference any more between the stuff they produce and Western stuff (at the same quality level). They are just better at manufacturing these days and while dumping can explain the price differences in some key industries I'm pretty sure the Chinese government isn't directly funding their fake watch industry which is still able to sell Rolex replicas indistinguishable to the common man (see if you can tell which is the genuine and which the replica) for around $500 (and this is with a clone movement, if you're happy with an A2824 inside the watch which is still a very dependable movement, VSF is currently running an offer for ~$300 for a Starbucks).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


is low effort




Hey, it took me more work generating 5 different paragraphs and then selecting and arranging the sentences to use than it would have to write the paragraph in the first place...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
These days with the thinking models the model first thinks about what to write (generating some thinking tokens) and then does a forward pass with the thinking tokens as context.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I assure you the first paragraph was written by me. Do you really think the AI would automatically reference the "nowhere in two weeks" rdrama.net meme?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ironic, given that you got filtered (before being fished out)...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Personally, I always thought it was a triskelion argent, symbolizing dominion over land, sea, and the fast lane.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What it takes to source USA-manufactured components and tooling for a chainmail grill scrubber
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nah, the R factor Rolexes have a free sprung balance wheel which is a lot more complex than the regulated balance wheels used in the replicas. The cheapest free sprung movements out of China are still around $1,500 or so. I think the genuine production cost for a Rolex for one of their subs is somewhere around $3,000-$4,000.


They haven't replicated the free sprung balance wheel for rolexes because of the closed caseback which means it isn't important but the ACE replica 324 movement (used in the open caseback Patek 5711) costs around $2k, is free sprung and generally keeps worse time than the cheap regulated 3KF replica 324 movement (costs around $150).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting; yes GPTZero says the first paragraph is AI, however for the first half of the text (it won't let me upload more than 5000 characters at once) says it's a coinflip between being human or AI and there are paragraphs which it is highly sure are human written.


/images/1749494140017286.webp


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hm, the first paragraph of that is coming up 0% AI written for me in ZeroGPT.


/images/1749486945465418.webp


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Flattered...