HereAndGone2
No bio...
User ID: 4074
As someone who lives in a EU country, that’s just plain false.
My guilty pleasure are the Youtube revenge story channels (AI-scripted slop churned out by Chinese creators all about divorced women getting revenge on cheating husbands, men getting revenge on cheating wives, older employees getting revenge on bosses who exploited them, parents getting revenge on ungrateful children, children getting revenge on parents who favoured one sibling over another, and the ever-popular 'my in-laws are demons straight out of hell who treat me like a slave, this is how I got my own back' which makes me think Asian social mores about domestic and family life must be awful and explains why married women are not having more than one kid/women in those cultures are not getting married better than any other reason I see put forward, and the likes; total fantasy nonsense but popcorn for the brain).
These are mostly allegedly set in the USA, and every so often one of the plots will be "my boss fired me for being in the hospital" or some equally dumb reason and I'll go "ha ha, stupid AI, you can't be fired for that" and then I'll look up US labour law so I can point and laugh and it turns out "Oh. You can be fired for that in the USA".
So yeah: much better wages but you can be fired on a whim and that means your employer provided health insurance runs out and then you are in Hell. Reminds me to be more grateful the next time I'm complaining about some new EU regulation impinging on my workplace.
HereAndGone2
20d ago
Yeah, I think if AI does not turn out to be magic money-printing tech all the stuff about "they're conscious! they feel pain!" will go the way of the dodo and the AI companies will face demands to make their goddamn talkie toasters actually toast the bread.
HereAndGone2
20d ago
It seems like free money to bet against Talarico in Texas and El-Sayed in Michigan.
I genuinely don't know about Talarico. By every account from all sides, Paxton is a terrible candidate. I can't understand why Texan Republicans haven't done a Platner on him, except that perhaps he has such entrenched support that he cannot be shifted by anyone. That being so, I have to wonder: is it likely that Democrats won't turn out to vote for Talarico because they assume he'll win so it's not necessary? Or will the Republicans manage to convince enough voters to hold their noses and vote for Paxton?
Silver Bulletin is giving it to Talarico at the moment (48.9% to Paxton's 45.5%), but I dunno. There's something unconvincing about him. So I see why it's not free money on the prediction markets against him, but the result could always swing the unexpected way.
“Effective altruists” the idea is OK, but I won’t defend the official movement after they re-hired Caroline Ellison.
Effective Altruism and the Rationalist movement are so intertwined that it's hard to separate them out, and the Rationalist bubble has/had a lot of their own specific problems. To be fair to them, they all started off being maximally open-minded and tolerant, which meant that of course every scammer, grifter, and sociopath immediately zoomed in on them as pigeons for the plucking. Remember the case a while back of the sex pest guy grooming a runaway fifteen year old (though she probably wasn't fifteen when he got his paws on her EDIT: seems the victims were nineteen) and getting everyone else who knew of them to keep their scruples to themselves by threatening to commit suicide* whenever anyone said "Dude, this is maybe not 100% consensual"? And because he was so popular in the movement and had successfully inserted himself into a lot of the groups and movements as "genuine original thinker with amazing ideas that can radically change society for the better" plus presented himself as a neurodivergent victim of oppression due to his unconventional sexuality, they all held their tongues where normal bigots like myself would immediately have booted him out as a rapist and called the cops. He weaponised empathy and successfully guilt-tripped them all, until someone eventually grew a backbone and did something about it. And still nobody called the cops because that's not the done thing.
That's the dark flip-side of "we don't judge anyone on age or ability or mental stability or unconventional lifestyle, we accept you as you are and if you say you're mature enough then chronological age is just a calendar date" acceptance. A lot (the majority?) suffered from maybe mild bullying or at least standing out as the nerdy, geeky, awkward weirdo at school and in their private lives, so they bent over backwards not to be like that once they were building their ideal society. And that is blood in the water for the sharks. See how good ol' Brent, for example, used all the jargon of the sub-culture and brainwashed the nice people around him into the mindset of "well we're discussing this rationally not emotionally so we are Doing The Work and not being normies and so his conclusions must be correct and reasonable, because just being squicked by what is going on is the disgust response which is Conservative and we are not Republicans!" Extraordinarily easy to manipulate people into doing what you want and agreeing with you if you just use the right words in the accepted manner.
And in every context, this is how you get "Good old Bob/Tim/Sam/Jason, they're a vital part of the organisation, I can't believe these accusations because he's not that kind of guy, there must be a reasonable explanation and the accuser must be motivated by bad things".
*I would have called his bluff re: the suicide if I were there by marching into the kitchen, grabbing the sharpest knife I could find, marching back out, and slapping it on the table before him with "there you are, be my guest, go right ahead". But I'm not a nice person or a quokka.
HereAndGone2
20d ago
Oh, definitely repentance and conversion of life is indicated. I'm not saying they can just keep going on as they are, I'm not a liberal Christian 😁 But when does repentance come? "Between the saddle and the ground is the mercy of God".
130 'Let the people, then, not be too certain
131 in their judgments, like those that harvest in their minds
132 corn still in the field before it ripens.
133 'For I have seen the briar first look dry and thorny
134 right through all the winter's cold,
135 then later wear the bloom of roses at its tip,
136 'and once I saw a ship, which had sailed straight
137 and swift upon the sea through all its voyage,
138 sinking at the end as it made its way to port.
139 'Let not Dame Bertha and Master Martin,
140 when they see one steal and another offer alms,
141 think that they behold them with God's wisdom,
142 for the first may still rise up, the other fall.'
HereAndGone2
21d ago
Tough to do. If you can pull it off, the world is your oyster. Politics selects for fellas (and women) with necks like a jockey's bollocks, to quote the pithy saying. Part of that is an unwavering conviction that "I am so supernally important and so obviously correct that I deserve to be governing the people", and getting around that sort of high level of self-confidence is tricky. See Katie Porter for one example of a lady who does not share the limelight well.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
There's also Matthew 25:
Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.
So those are the people hearing and responding to the Good News - the outcasts and despised of society.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
he has inspired at least one no-shit murder cult
I think the Zizians were batshit insane anyway and would have cropped up in some true crime report eventually, with or without Rationalism. I also think they had little to do with Yudkowsky himself and were more on the nuttier fringes of the bubble, thanks to San Francisco being the place where all the nuts end up. I wouldn't blame Yud for them anymore than I'd blame the Beatles for Charles Manson.
First, Scott is not a Christian. I think this is a difference that gets forgotten or not even considered in such discussions, because the assumption is "Well we're all the products of modern secular Western society here, so we all share the same values, right?"
So he's gonna make Jewish jokes about the boy from Nazareth. And as far as offensive Jewish jokes about Jesus go, this one is barely a one on the scale if it even makes it that far. Hell, I'm still salty about a stupid lapsed Catholic Irish comedian's dumb joke on a chat show decades (by this point) ago because that wasn't the time for it and they should have known better and it was still within a cultural context where they could get an easy shock reaction by mocking Jesus.
Second, he does have personal loyalty to the Big Yud, because back when he was young and impressionable and the kids were just getting started with this Rationalists thing, they were all in the fandom together. Good times, good times. And those of us who have been there from the start, or pretty near to it, in our own fandoms know the kind of bonds that means.
Third, I give Scott a hell of a lot of the benefit of the doubt, because he's earned it as far as I'm concerned. Some random 'who that?' on the Innertubes, I'll gladly leap upon him and rip off his face. Scott has been way more tolerant of religious posting on his website when us Christians get into it among each other.
Fourth, he's able to take it as well as dish it out, see any of the House Party posts on his Substack.
Fifth, this tweet should remind us of the scandal of Christianity. We're used to swimming in that water by now, two thousand years or so later, but it did not start off as "our teacher says we should all be nice". The religious establishment of the day were shocked by what they were doing, see this chapter of Luke (for one):
36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”
Sixth, I think I do not yield the palm to any here in being judgemental (particularly of sexual excess) so every now and then I need to get smacked upside the head by a seven hundred year old poem reminding me "Your ways are not God's ways, and God's ways are not your ways":
Venus: Ardent Lovers
Dante knows from Beatrice's enhanced beauty that he has risen to Venus, the third sphere of Paradise. Here he encounters four individuals among the rejoicing souls of men and women whose lives were greatly influenced by sexual love and desire. Charles Martel, a ruler from the house of Anjou whom Dante likely met in Florence (not long before his untimely death), chastises other Angevin rulers for their misdeeds and explains how the character and ability of individuals are determined not by heredity but by nature, through the workings of providence; society suffers when people are forced into professions for which they are ill suited. Cunizza da Romano, sister of a blood-thirsty warlord whom Dante saw in Hell, led a full and adventurous love life, with four marriages and at least two other significant relationships. She foresees a series of bloody acts and betrayals that will stain the March of Treviso (in northeast Italy), and directs Dante's attention to a companion in Venus whose achievements merit lasting fame. Folco of Marseille, who in his youth was consumed by sexual desire, was a troubadour (he wrote Provençal poetry) before turning to the religious life, first as a monk and later a bishop. He in turn lavishes praise on Rahab, a biblical prostitute who was the first spirit to adorn Venus, before harshly criticizing contemporary church leaders. Folco also identifies Venus as the celestial location at which the shadow cast by the earth comes to a point.
103 'Yet here we don't repent, but smile instead,
104 not at our fault, which comes not back to mind,
105 but for that Power which ordered and foresaw.106 'Here we contemplate the craft that beautifies
107 such love, and here discern the good
108 with which the world above informs the one below.109 'However, so that you may leave this sphere
110 with every wish that here has been engendered
111 satisfied, I must go on.112 'You want to know who occupies this luminescence
113 that scintillates beside me here,
114 like a sunbeam gleaming on clear water.115 'Know then that within it Rahab is at peace,
116 and, since she is of our number,
117 our highest rank receives its seal from her.118 'Into this heaven, where the shadow of your world
119 comes to a point, before any other,
120 first in Christ's triumph, she was taken up.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
But at the level of money going into something like Man City, the money is clearly going in for non-fannish reasons.
Bezos is amongst those buying a share of Liverpool FC. My gloom is positively Eeyorish at this point. I doubt it's because of his devotion to the results of the Carabao Cup.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
gay-coded white boy
I don't get that impression of him, but he is a bit milk-and-water.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
I find the meme convincing because the times I see people piously quoting "Didn't Jesus say [X,Y,Z]?" it has been in the context of "I have nothing but contempt for Christianity and I am only cherry-picking texts to try and make it out that you don't even know your own religion and are all hypocrites".
HereAndGone2
22d ago
No, I'll give Scott enough benefit of the doubt on him being generous with believers that the tweet just made me go "Don't make me come over there" rather than have a full-on meltdown. I'm not going to speculate on the state of Aella's soul, she could well end up like St Mary of Egypt (are we not told "Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you"?), but Big Yud is - well, like the guy said, You're no Jack Kennedy if we're gonna talk Jewish cult leaders.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
Whoa, how did I miss this story? (Probably because I am not subscribed to the NYT). Thank you for the link, this is indeed relevant to my interests, especially after the pope's encyclical.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
Was there anyone in his life who had the wherewithal to suggest that he was being an idiot?
What, you've never worked for a boss who steadfastly refused to accept any version of reality that did not chime with their view of what actually happened?
I'm currently still embittered from the work week just finished about my boss making a dumb jumping-down-my-throat accusation of me making a mistake I did not make, and luckily for me I had the evidence to prove it, but Boss was bound and determined Boss was in the right, Boss can never be wrong, Boss said I dunnit so I must have dunnit. Ah well, hopefully by the time Monday rolls round I'll have cooled off, but I can forecast that it'll be work to rule on my part all Monday and it might even happen that some browsing the Internet on work time might occur, who can say? 😁
HereAndGone2
22d ago
Oh, the church stuff is way worse so far as I am concerned, both the main minister of his church and the lesbian retired-then-came-back Pastorette Babs who isn't sure Jesus even existed but is darn sure Jimmy boy is only bluffing on his u-turns to appeal to the redneck rube voters and once safely elected will revert to being a Good Boy.
But this only counts for people who do in fact care about the alleged Christianity, plus Paxton is such a god-awful candidate that an empty bucket could probably run and defeat him at this point.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
At this stage, there have been so many attempts to get Orange Man Bad that I can't keep count or remember the cast of characters (it's like a triple-decker fantasy novel, I need the list of 'who's who and what's that' at the start) particularly since some Democrat has launched yet another impeachment attempt the other day.
But never fear, Kathy and Letitia are out there to keep the world safe by making sure they take over from the rubes and hicks unable to handle high-profile cases properly! Why it's almost like it's election season or something (though surely NY city and state are both sufficiently blue that such efforts are not needed?)
This is one of two recent cases that have me annoyed. Usually I am defending the members of my sex, but the Cornell case is clearly "she was damn well willing to take drugs and have sex with multiple partners, except it got a bit more spicy than she bargained for, but nobody raped anybody" and there's a case in Northern Ireland where my view is "she did commit murder". If it was a case of the accused couldn't get the guy out of her home and couldn't get away from him, then yeah, sure: killing in a fit of desperation. But she had a restraining order against him and yet the dumb bunny invited him back in to her house, then methodically murdered him. And I say murdered because this was not done in fear.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
HereAndGone2
22d ago
He was the only guy who stuck with publicising the story. Seems like other people, including media outlets, wanted to cover the story but were scared off by threats of "we will sue you into oblivion if you dare claim we knowingly promoted a lying liar" from the university and/or "we will call you racists and even meaner names for attacking a disabled black man" and it was a case of only the damned soul was already steeped enough in hellfire to ignore that and keep the story alive.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
Can anybody shed light on something I saw in passing, about allegations that James Talarico (Democrat nominee running for the Senate elections in Texas) is from a family of slave owners? And the defence being (1) he is adopted and (2) his adoptive family are Italian and emigrated to America after slavery was abolished?
I could look it up myself but I'm not that interested, and I think you guys would have funnier replies anyway. I don't know if I think these allegations are remotely plausible, but Talarico annoys me sufficiently (due to theology) that I don't mind seeing stupid stories like this. Uncharitable of me, I know.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
To be fair, mon poulet, there is enough stupid shit done by politicians of all stripes in every nation under the sun that it's a simple matter of putting one's thumb in and pulling out a plum for any and all parties.
HereAndGone2
22d ago
Kindly remember that some of us aren't American and do need reminders such as: who the heck is Jack Smith and why should I care? and also don't I remember something about Fani Willis having her own troubles when she tried to prosecute Trump, or am I mixing her up with another prosecutor who mixed business with pleasure and used the public purse (allegedly) to bankroll her hunny-bunny?
Anyhoo, seems Ms. Willis managed things so wonderfully that eventually the case against Trump was a resounding - nothing?
HereAndGone2
23d ago
"Buying your titles" is an old accusation and old traditional scandal. Nice to see a modern club going back to the roots of the game and it's not a sex scandal this time! As ever, Roy Keane has an opinion on this 😁
More seriously, certain clubs having insane amounts of money is why UEFA introduced the fair play/financial regulations in the first place. If you can buy all the best players and scoop other clubs, then it's no longer a (sort of) fair game anymore.
HereAndGone2
23d ago
In related(?) Zuckerberg news, him and the missus are throwing money at local sports clubs now they are going to be lords of the manor round these parts:
The donation comes as the Chan Zuckerberg family begins to put down roots in the Waterford community, with the couple recognising the central role the GAA plays in towns and villages across the country.
“The GAA is at the heart of communities across Ireland,” said Mark and Priscilla. “As new members of the Waterford community, we’re proud to support these local clubs and the important role they play.”
It does make me laugh because I think the guy would not know a hurley if you bet him over the head with it, and they don't need to buy goodwill because the locals in them parts are well used to tugging the forelock to the big house (the Duke of Devonshire has a little summer place there) or at least being very happy with how their bread is buttered once rich outsiders come in to buy and do up manor houses. Still, all donations gratefully received, even if I think this is Mark downloading programming about "how do flesh units integrate into local communities?" and learning all about the importance that the lowly sons of toil place on activities like sports, so supporting sports aids in gaining popularity for their new overlords 😁
Tallow GAA Treasurer Kieran Geary told WLR’s Big Breakfast Blaa that the club plans to invest in coaching and games, as well as a number of facility upgrades.
He said the funding will help with plans to tarmac the club’s community walkway and develop a spectator stand.
The donation is the largest single contribution Tallow GAA has received in its 139 year history.
Mr. Geary revealed that the process began around a month ago when club secretary Lindsay Murphy received a call from an unknown number.
That led to a series of meetings with representatives of Zuckerberg and Chan, with Mr. Geary admitting it had been ‘a hard secret to keep’.
He also described the donation as ‘a bit surreal’, saying people had jokingly suggested the club should approach the couple after news emerged that they had purchased Strancally Castle.
Another funny part to me is the revival in local cricket clubs due to the influx of Indian/Pakistani immigrants to Ireland; formerly a garrison sport, now the established local clubs are featuring new members and good luck to them!
Probably a poor idea, his campaign should stand back and let his church pastor(ette)s do the work there on attacking him for reversing course on LGBT+ stuff. Unless the Paxton campaign ads are quoting Talarico suddenly deciding there are in fact two and not six biological sexes, and how his allies and friends are assuring one another that he's only lying about the trans stuff and once elected he'll be right back to "fairness in sport is not important" etc.
That one could work: if your own side are saying "nah he don't mean it about boys should not be playing on girls' teams" then you don't need to do anything more yourself than, say, show that clip of Pastorette Babs.
Which I understand is the angle Paxton's campaign is taking, and that makes sense: you can call each other hypocrites till the cows come home and people will dismiss it as just the usual campaign slanging match, but get your opponent's side admitting it's all for show and you have a better chance. Attacking him on the economy isn't going to help because right now prices are high everywhere in the world, and that's under Trump and a Republican administration. Talarico's campaign can just come back with "vote us in and give a Democratic party majority in Congress and we'll harvest $100 bills from the money trees we will plant" about how they have plans to fix the economy.
More options
Context Copy link