Grant_us_eyes
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User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
1d ago
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.
Getting on statins, ironically, might be the worst thing possible for you, as there have been some indication that statins actually surpress GLP-1.
...which, if that's the case, explains atleast one possible factor regarding the obesity epidemic.
...also ironically enough, there's some indication that semaglutide helps with cardiovascular health.
Do with that information what you will.
Grant_us_eyes
2d ago
The Motte is what you get when you get arguably decades of selection pressure.
I've noted this before, but let me re-elaborate what my experience has been in forums regarding left/right politics. Most forums that allow for political sub-forums to discuss such things tend to be heavily leftist. As a result, you end up with two things;
One, left-aligned individuals will find themselves in a massive echo-chamber supported by a horde of fellow leftists;
Two, right-aligned invidiuals will find themselves obscenely outnumbered and buried under mass-replies or gish-gallops, or both.
This results in a curious selection pressure; The right-aligned posters that stay and actively discuss politics despite the above conditions end up being a cut or two above normal posters. They are the White Whales, as I personally call them, hardened in debate by scars, able to smash others in one-on-one debate while still behaving well enough that the Admins can't overtly censure them, and they refuse to flame out. (Instead, things will often escalate to the point where such posters just get pushed out for other, made-up reasons, or forum rules forcing them out.)
Now, here's the other side of this; I've seen circumstances where, in another, smaller, seperate, more niche outside forum, still made up of contintuents of the larger forums for one reason or another, allowing for a political sub-forum.
Except, things are changed, now. The White Whale is still the White Whale, but the left-aligned are no longer in whaling ships. They no longer have the echo-chamber or gish-gallop to bring down the larger foe, or atleast drown them out.
Instead, they find themselves in a dinghy, up against a scarred monster, and, as a result, it's now the left-aligned posters having a severe flame out and reduced to bad behavior when, all of a sudden, thier arguements no longer work(from thier PoV) and they find themselves constantly on the backfoot.
...naturally, the sub-forum ends up closed, as the Admins just get sick and tired of having to deal with said left-aligned posters behaving so badly.
I bring up all of the above personal anecedants and observations to get to my points; Left-aligned posters have no reason to get in that dinghy, IE, the Motte. They're perfectly content in thier various echo chambers - indeed, as we've seen, when such places end up turning more neutral(such as Twitter), the left-aligned posters will end up fleeing for more safer waters(Bluesky).
Now, I'm sure there are a host of posters on the Motte thinkings 'But I'm left-aligned and don't think that way/do that'. And yes; You, instead, have made it through another selective pressure where you don't flame out, or behave badly, or expect echo-chamber backup when making your arguement.
The Motte will always have it's selection pressure, and there's never going to be a way to combat against that. Trying to find 'new blood' will always be a fools gambit, as you're never going to be able to lay down the nessecary bait to get the left-aligned posters you want. The only way to do so would be to allow special exceptions for left-aligned posters, and all that would result in would turn the Motte into yet another left-aligned echo chamber as what centric and right-aligned posters shrug and leave, as the unique charachteristics that make up the Motte would no longer exist.
If anything, your example of Darwin is very topical. People were pointing out his bad behavior and special treatment for years, and every time this was brought up, the only real defense that could be mustered was along the lines of 'Well, he had a bunch of quality posts, so...'
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
You might have heard of 'Young Maid Emma', or just 'Emma' which was drawn/written by the same author/mangaka, and is an earlier work. It's also excellent, and I whole-heartedly endorse it, but comparing Emma and Otoyomegatari, you can definitely tell the mangaka has improved drastically, to the point where you can call the style 'profound'.
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
Those two are my go-to examples when this topic comes up, explicitly because they're so radically different.
One's a brutalistic dystopic transhuman venture through the metaphorical circles of hell in order to find god and may very well be the ultimate example of 'Show, don't tell', given how much of it is spent in utter silence. And is written by an architect.
The other is a sloppy, historic love-letter to the Asian steppes with attention to detail that borders on extreme autism, with a broad palette of adorable characters you can't help but hope they have a good ending. And is written by a woman.
I'm rather enamored with them both, if you couldn't tell.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
Two examples that always come to mind are Blame! and Otoyomegatari.
Grant_us_eyes
7d ago
Depends on how you define 'fiction film'. If you're asking for stuff involving multiple actors doing TV-series like stuff, well... yeah.
If you're talking about creative fiction in unique settings, hell, Analogue Horror could send you down a multi-day rabbit hole.
Grant_us_eyes
9d ago
I fucking hate the internet. People refuse to do thier due dillagence, spouting off uniformed one-offs to generate click-revenues without doing thier goddamn due dillage and include some fucking references.
Yes, I'm ranting. Why? Because of one-off remarks on twitter claiming '"Massive investment in AI contributed basically zero to US economic growth last year," per Goldman Sachs'
Clearly, this is a big deal. Quite the claim. Wonderful. Delightful. You'd think they'd have the decency to actually include a fucking link to the article claiming this, but no. More slop for the midwits.
This did not satisfy me. So, I went sluthing, and found the article that sources the claim, which is... a goddamn video interview.
For fuck's sake.
But no. The wizard is undetered. Thankfully, my stubborness in the face of video essays means I have have semi-reliable sources for grabbing youtube transcripts, which I promptly did so to find the money quote. Which I will share for you now;
Interviewer: What surprised you and what didn't in 2025?
Jan Hatzius: Yeah, what surprised us was that the increase in tariffs was bigger than what we had in our baseline assumption, closer to our our risk case, but uh definitely a more pervasive increase in in tariffs.
And that I think explains why US growth was was weaker. The the the shock was bigger. But if I step back from the specific numbers, I think the title of our outlook going into 2025, which was tailwinds, probably Trump tariffs, held up reasonably well. [...] Second driver of growth in 2026 is the fiscal boost. The tax cuts in the one big beautiful bill act which are taking effect mainly in the first half of 2026.
And there's an an aspect here of full expensing of plant and equipment which is going to have a positive impact on the corporate sector and probably on business investment. Tax refunds for households are going to be quite a bit higher than normal. That should support consumer spending. And you know, we're estimating that fiscal policy adds a half to 3/4 of a percentage point to growth in the first half of this year.
And then lastly, financial conditions have been easing as we've gone through most of 2025, at least post liberation day. And that's been for a variety of reasons, but in part because the Fed's been cutting interest rates. And that impulse to growth is also probably going to be most visible in early 2026. So all of that gives us a an above consensus uh growth estimate.
You'll note that one uh one item that may be missing from this list is AI investment. Uh we don't actually view AI investment as strongly growth positive.
I think there's a lot of misreporting actually of the impact that AI investment had on US GDP growth in 2025 and it's much smaller than is often perceived because most equipment most AI equipment is imported and that means there's a positive entry in the investment line but that's offset by a negative entry in the net net exports line And a lot of the AI investment that we're seeing in the US adds to Taiwanese GDP and it adds to Korean GDP but not really that much to US GDP.
Interviewer: Can I just pause there for a moment because at your point and I think this is in the forecast as well is that basically AI investment has been negligible to US GDP growth in 2025. Is that a fair assessment?
JH: Yes. Basically zero. Basically zero.
Interviewer: That seems completely counter to the narrative we read almost every day in financial media. What we hear talked about AI capex and boosting and how that's it's basically supporting the US economy through tariff headwinds and otherwise. Where is the disconnect between the reporting and what you're saying here?
JH: Well, again, I think some people forget that you need to look not just at investment but also at net exports. just from an from a GDP accounting perspective. There's another more technical point which is that some of the AI investment as the AI investment directly in semiconductors isn't actually classified as investment in the national income and product accounts. It's classified as intermediate inputs. So the the national income and product accounts miss that part of investment spending. So we've talked about the the true GDP impact which is still very small but positive positive contributor to growth in in 2025 and then the measured GDP impact which is literally we estimate uh zero.
Interviewer: Okay. I think that's just an incredibly important point to underscore and take forward. And then in 26 you estimate slight increase there as investment comes more online.
JH: We do. We do, but it's still pretty small. I mean, the the the significance of AI and the AI trade and, you know, none none of what I'm saying means that I don't think AI is important, right? It's I think it's very important and it's obviously very important for financial markets, but the specific impulse from AI investment on GDP is still going to be pretty small. Although I do think it's going to be positive to a limited degree this year.
Please excuse any odd errors in the transcript taken straight from youtube. People's direct quotes can sometimes translate oddly to text. Some of the interview has been excised for brevity, as marked by '[...]'
I have suffered through find all of this information, and now you must suffer through reading it. The above discussion can be taken almost straight from the start of the video, should you wish to double-check the above quotes.
And I note all of this above to venture to wonder if we'll see, if not a bubble popping on AI this year, atleast some severe evaporative cooling. It's something to question by this point, but it's always good to recall that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Grant_us_eyes
10d ago
I mean, there's technically nothing about destructive uploading that would require an AGI Singularity, just enough fidelity in the scanning process, messy as it is.
Anything beyond that... well, I confess, I'm both impressed and terrified that they managed to atleast stumble in the direction of uploading a fruitfly. So I guess we'll see.
Grant_us_eyes
10d ago
I mean, that's exactly what the Left did, initially. When the idea of Covid effectively being a Chinese-derived flu and talk of ceasing travel/immigration from Asian countries, it was the Left as a whole piling out and going on about hugging a Chinese person today.
Then, when it finally arrived, the Left were the ones driving Lockdown efforts, with the Right being turned into Covid-deniers.
And then BLM happened. And we all know how that turned out. So...
Grant_us_eyes
17d ago
The Civil war.
No, seriously, the Civil War. Historically, the last time we had what amounted to a multi-party election was the one involving Lincoln - there were four presidential canidates on the ballet, each a different party, each of whom received a sizable chunk of the electorate vote.
That entire instance kind of soured the notion of anything above and beyond two-party voting.
Grant_us_eyes
20d ago
Been playing far to much Vintage Story, still.
I have to confess, this is probably my longest and most accomplished run. The fortress I built is working very well for my needs, I've got a double-stack windmill giving me more than enough power to drive the gear ratios I've got setup and the devices I need, and this is the first time I've actually started to work toward developing steel and building up the end-game Jonas devices. Turns out, melting cupronickel, despite being a copper alloy, requires coke to reach the requisite temperatures. And if I want to start dying clothing, mining chromium requires steel pickaxes.
Goddamit.
Grant_us_eyes
23d ago
Even better, this development is honestly kinda recent. I can think back to, oh, pre-covid and things were alot more managable in terms of getting together and whatnot.
While this is a personal supposition of mine, I honestly think the economy is doing alot worse than people realize. So the only option left for alot of men are jobs that are basically the 'leftovers' - requiring lots of travel, technically unappealing to those that want to settle or have families they want to spend time with, and so on.
Grant_us_eyes
23d ago
While I have a compartively large friendgroup that streches back to high school(And beleive you me, you have NO idea how surprised I am by this), the one issue we run into nowadays is the one you mentioned - Work. All the work my friends can get require either heavy odd hours or boatloads of travel with intermittent time at home, meaning getting together can be sporadic.
Amoung said particular group, mine was the only job that didn't require travel, and given my luck, that may very well change in the coming year.
Grant_us_eyes
24d ago
Reviews as a whole have become fairly useless due to bots and paid shills. Even forums like Buy it For Life have been seeing hints of bots posting to fluff a product.
The best way to wade through the grey sludge I've found is to focus on 4-star reviews, but we'll see how long that lasts.
Grant_us_eyes
25d ago
Thank you. I could go off on a long rant about this, but best not to distract the conversation so much.
It's the type of 'historical revisionism bordering on a lie' that even Americans have started to believe it.
Grant_us_eyes
26d ago
That's quite the bubble, yes.
For what it's worth, post October 7th, I recall a massive amount of support for Isreal from a large number of right-wing coded spaces, though perhaps that's my bubble in action.
...conversely, I'm also seeing a number of that same space react negatively to getting dragged into a war with Iran, while the other half has simply devolved into Holden Bloodfeast.
Grant_us_eyes
29d ago
You're saying nobody wants to match her energy
'Want' isn't the case here. You can't 'want' to match someone's energy. You either match it or you don't.
From my experience, guys who can match that level of energy are rare on the ground.
but you know a guy and his GF made him jump through hoops
My exact words were 'and the amount of hoops that he had to jump through to find someone'
Seeing that from off to the sides was one of the things that severely curtailed my enthusiasm for dating. When you've got a guy who runs his own business, owns several vehicles, has a list of hobbies longer than my arm, and is fucking ripped, if you'll excuse the vulgarity, and still struggle to find someone to settle down with, well, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in one's self.
Having a lot going on is a good thing for most people.
There's a wide gulf between 'having hobbies that make you interesting' and effectively having three jobs that take up a fair bit of time in her life alongside all the other stuff you mentioned.
Are there guys who can match that? Yes. Are they very rare on the ground? Also yes.
I'm not arguing that she should change. Shine on, you crazy diamond. But I will point out that said hobbies and activities pretty much explain why she's single.
Frozen Keto Chow might be an option for you; My brother used it as a frozen treat via a Ninja Creami, and from personal experience, Keto Chow itself tends to taste pretty good.
I'd advise heavy cream as opposed to melted butter when making said Keto Chow, however, as I don't think melted butter freezes that well.
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