JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
he killed his way into being the ruler of Anhk-Morpork
The previous ruler was literally Mad Lord Snapcase (described by wiki as "sadistic, and extremely fond of torture"), so I think he was clearly entitled to the "Kingslayer exception" here, if you get what I mean. I can't count getting rid of such ruler as an evil deed, not unless every other hero in every other fairy tale who overthrows a mad tyrant is deemed "evil".
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
No, my point is it does. Things exist that are not atoms. Where this idea that if something exists there must be "atom" of it came from? There's no such thing as "atom of temperature", yet temperature is a very material thing. It is a characteristic of the complex system (which is composed of atoms), but by itself it's does not have "atoms of itself". Is wind a physical, material thing? Of course it is. Is there "atom of wind"? Of course not. There's an atom of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and so on - but they are not "wind". Yet wind very much "physically exists". It exists as combination of other physical things - but so are atoms, so if you accept atoms physically exist, even though they are just an arrangement of other physical entities, then wind is no less existent. Ignoring the structure and dynamic arrangement is insanely misguided - not only you'd miss the whole thing called "life", even the most basic phenomena would be completely in-expressible in this framework. In fact, as I mentioned, understanding atoms themselves would not be possible without understanding not only their parts but their structure and dynamics and phenomena emerging from those.
JarJarJedi
11hr ago
how do I even find what I owe after the insurance discount to pay it
In advance, you just don't. I mean, you eventually will, when the bill comes, but before that, it looks like our civilization is not advanced enough to find an answer to this question. That's one of the infuriating things in in US medical system - everything is set up to make it nearly impossible to state the cost upfront, or at least everybody involved in the system has been telling me so for years. Of course, this has a great benefit (for the providers involved) of precluding any price comparisons.
Is someone going to mail/email me a bill at some point?
Yes, sometimes several bills, because why make it easy for you, what you are going to do, not use medical services? And yes, those several bills may be from several billing systems, each set up differently, and not talking to each other. Some don't even have online payment options. A lot of medical billing is surprisingly low-tech still.
One wonders if anyone takes notes given how many times I had to answer "Why are you here?".
Weird thing they actually do - at least the system I'm with now, you can see the visit notes afterwards, and they actually record pretty much everything. Whether or not anybody reads it afterwards is an entirely different question.
Sorry about your elbow.
JarJarJedi
12hr ago
Vetinari may be very scary, but I can't remember a single not only evil but even ordinarily corrupt thing Pratchett would make him do. He's essentially a saint philosopher-king, or a patron god of what government bureaucracy would be if only it could be what statolatry adepts envision it to be.
JarJarJedi
12hr ago
I think Pratchett has in common with the earlier Christian fantasists is a genuine affection for the parochial
Isn't that the "good old England" thing? I'd expect something like that from a British writer. For American writer, for example, there's no "good old America" to reach for, neither real nor mythical, Wild West is the best one can go for, and there are a lot of skeletons in that particular closet, too. I think it's a very English thing to have this nostalgic feeling for the mythical past.
JarJarJedi
12hr ago
I absolutely love Pratchett, as a writer. But while I can look towards Tolkien for moral guidance (a Christian would look towards Lewis too, probably), I would never expect that from Pratchett. I mean, he has moral characters, virtue, and all that, but it's all kind of... floating in the void on the top of a giant turtle. That's not something you can really lean on when you seek moral guidance and support. And, of course, since he's a humor writer, there's a lot of exploiting "clown nose on - clown nose off" thing. Which I am totally willing to allow him as a writer, in fact, maybe I like him even more for that. But if you start to approach serious questions in the strictly "clown nose off" mode, Pratchett is not somebody you can have as your guide. At least that's how I feel. Maybe for many it can be, and standing on top of his giant turtle floating in the void is better than floating in the void alone.
JarJarJedi
12hr ago
Even a materialist can recognize emergent phenomena is a thing. In fact, a materialist must recognize it to be able to explain what is happening.
I don't think I ever "transitioned to married life". When it became clear to myself and my (then future) wife, over 20 years ago by now, that we want to continue living together, we made all the necessary formalities and continued the living together. There wasn't any "transition" as such - it's just life, only our commitment to each other became explicit and legally recognized.
Oh, and of course - Congratulations!
JarJarJedi
2d ago
You're too consumed by the American culture war to realize the Chinese leadership doesn't care much about what Milley said
Chinese leadership may be not concerned by what he said - they unlikely to rely in their plans on woke generals actually warning them. But they surely must notice what kinds of people are floating to the top, and what it says about the state of the system. And I think they may make a conclusion that Americans are now too obsessed with wokeness to be a serious adversary, if shit is going to really go down. After all, such a conclusion about Europe is entirely warranted, and if Trump didn't win, it likely would have been true about the US too quite soon. The fact that we dodged the bullet this time doesn't mean we're far from it.
It matters what you do, but also it matters what you are prepared to do. If your opponents are convinced your army is mostly Potemkin villages and your leadership is more concerned about not looking racist than about defending the interests of your nation, they would surely adopt a more aggressive stance than otherwise. If you have a asset stockpile that the enemy is sure you'd never use, they wouldn't be deterred much by it.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
I think that it's better to have the munitions and forego other entanglements to show China that we mean business
That's the thing - the US had done so much to show to everybody we do NOT mean business - up to US military leader openly proclaiming in public he would warn the Chinese if US government were about to do anything against them - that one can get the impression we genuinely do not mean business. Prior to Trump - given how the matters in Afghanistan were handled, given how the matters in Russia are being handled, given how the matters on the American continent are handled - which part would convince China we actually mean business? And are ready to go if they start any shit, and aren't going to just fold like a wet paper bag, after declaring fighting China is racist anyway? The Chinese are not stupid, and they have full access to all the information about the US. Maybe they are culturally biased, as every person is, but in 2025, and if we had President Harris now, I do not see how observing what is happening in the US, they could have made the conclusion that we mean business. Now, this conclusion - at least until Trump is gone - is much more supported by the facts.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
If China wants to invade Taiwan (and I think that they would prefer not to, to be fair) the best time is probably while the US is stuck in the Middle East bombing stuff
That is provided Chinese already decided to take Taiwan by force as soon as possible, and are only waiting for the right moment. However, if they did not decide that, and are considering what would it cost them and whether it's worth it, then showing US Army is no longer Milley's army - which had more concerned with looking pleasant towards China than with being lethal - may very well tilt their decisions towards "maybe not right now". I mean, nobody really wants a hot war with China. That'd be a complete disaster - not for US military as such, but for the world economy. Maybe convincing China they'd lose more than they'd gain is a good alternative? Unlike Iranians - whose ideology is pretty much a religious death cult - China can be very pragmatic.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I agree that trusting one's doctor, by default, makes a lot of sense, at least where data and empirical knowledge is concerned. However, there is one more methodological problem that is often missed - the unknown unknowns. Let's consider the following scenario - and I am making it completely ridiculous on purpose, to emphasize the point and not get bogged in the details. Let's assume we have a miracle drug that reduces your cholesterol with no noticeable side effects. Except in 10 years after you start taking it, your dick falls off. Obviously, no reasonable test can detect it - who runs 10 years of tests before putting the drug on the market? There's no way to know it, until people start noticing a suspicious increase in dicks falling off, try to make various statistical correlations and hopefully after several years of vigorous bickering zero in on the miracle drug and remove it from the market. In the meantime, people who took it in those 10+X years are preparing lawsuits and regretting their choices.
There's no reasonable way to prevent it - nobody can run enough tests to predict every effect and every drug+patient+environment combination. And nobody tries to, because trying to do it would paralyze any innovation way beyond the best efforts of FDA to do it. No doctor, no matter how diligent and educated, can know everything and predict everything. So there's always a risk. Often it's worth it, and I am not arguing against any intervention. I am just arguing for remembering there's always this unquantifiable risk component lurking in the background, and one has to remember it too.
If the doctor says "you have to do it, or you're going to be in serious trouble, the pills are the only way" - fine, do it. But if they say "you may try to change your lifestyle, or if it sounds too hard there are pills, your choice" I'd personally choose to try the non-pills way first.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I know a few people in tech - what you describe as "FAANG engineer" but vast majority of them never worked for FAANG specifically (though a small minority did). I would say I would be very surprised if less than 90% of them are Democrat voters. I of course can't know for sure, and I avoid talking politics at work or with work colleagues or potential colleagues, but you can see it, with some people right out of the door, with others eventually. Mostly because that's what nice, educated, open-minded, well-adjusted people in their circle do. Most of them are very smart people, IQ-wise. A lot of them are stunningly ignorant on actual policies they are voting for, and the consequences of those policies - and as far as I can see, most of them consider any negative consequences a minor bug which can be easily solved by proper regulatory policy tweaks, just as they'd fix a bug in the code. And I don't think anything short of at least full local society collapse would cause them to consider changing their vote. It's just not something that is done. I mean, they surely might vote for different Democrat candidates in Democrat primaries to select different Democrat policies, but that's as far as it'd ever go.
There's also a subgroup which calls themselves "libertarians". Some are actually libertarians and vote for LP (which is of course completely useless, politically, but points for consistency) but I'd give more than even chance that the majority still votes Democrat anyway.
Out of all tech people I know, I could name maybe a couple who I am pretty sure are pro-Trump, but most I'd say are very "orange man bad". Observing discussions in places like HN supports my assumption that it's not just my personal bubble, but it could be a wider bubble of course.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I quickly looked up statin side effects, and I know they tend to exaggerate in a lawsuit-happy society, but liver damage, muscle damage and type 2 diabetes do not sound like nothing. Most of currently available medicine are kind of blunt tools, which mess with many extremely complex chemical processes in the body, some of which may be beneficial for us, but other may be not. So I think being careful about messing with one's body chemistry is a prudent approach. Sometimes you don't have a choice - if somebody has cancer, mediterranean diet and exercise is not going to save them, but modern drugs might. But there are costs to that. I think we should not be dismissing those costs lightly.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
As everything with taxes, it's complicated (not a lawyer or CPA, just random guy on internet who files his own taxes). Generally, if it's a payout for a specific loss, it's not taxable. If it's something like disability insurance or more complex insurance not tied to a specific loss event - it may be taxable. Something like car insurance probably not taxable. I classify it as "other income" in my budgeting app but I do not report it to the IRS as income.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
would be committing war crimes
I think the first thing here is to define what we mean by "war crimes". Are those crimes by US law? By Iranian law? By the opinion of some pompous gasbags in UN that have zero legal authority but a lot of ego? By some bilateral or multilateral treaty that US signed and have not currently denounced? Do we mean it in any legal sense or in the sense of "there should be a law against it, dammit!"? I think without finding a mutually agreeable set of definitions the argument has no sense. Of course Iranians think it's a great crime bombing their stuff, who wouldn't? I am sure US military thinks its well within their authority to bomb shit in Iran, especially given Iran is a country which is actively hostile to the US and the US command chain authorized them to bomb the shit out of them. If you want to prefer one of those positions over the other, you need to establish the grounds why.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
There was a brief period in my life when I gave up buccaneering entirely because there was enough proper content on streaming platform to fill my schedule. That period ended quickly - the ecosystem fragmented explosively (and no, I am not going to buy 15 different streaming service subscriptions, thank you very much), most of individual platforms became 95% garbage, with distribution of worthy content in the remaining 5% being arbitrary and shifting all the time, and on top of that every streaming platform has its own app and most of them are crappy in their own unique ways. And of course it's all chock full of ads unless you pay and pay and pay and pay on top of that (and you'll probably still get ads because why not). It is completely intolerable to live like this - especially given the alternative is within the hand's reach, for those who knows how to reach it.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
YouGov says (link above) Americans think 30% of US people are Jewish. In reality, about 10% of New Yorkers and about 2% of Americans are Jewish (which would make it about 20% of whites in NY, though there are non-white Jews, but not too many of them in New York I presume). And this likely including people who have any Jewish genes, about half of them probably do not have any connection to Jewish culture or religion - though in New York due to large Orthodox population likely the distribution is a bit different.
That said, for comedians specifically I'd say 1/8 is probably low, could be as high as 20% if you count successful professional comedians, though I haven't seen any exact or well-supported figures anywhere.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years?
My first estimate would be close to none. 20 years is a really long time, especially for an actively managed fund. And the risk is asymmetric - if you get lucky and win, the investors will take the extra money out and spent it on cocaine and hookers charitable projects, and if you get unlucky once and lose, the fund goes bust and is no more. Well, maybe by pure luck there are some funds that survive that long and show positive returns above market, but I'd say excluding Madoff scenario, quite a small number.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
That's a very common thing - people routinely vastly overestimate minorities and underestimate majorities: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population
Though a billion Jews is obviously weird - like ok, there are a billion Jews - where do they actually live? There are only two billion-sized countries, and neither of them has any noticeable number of Jews.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
I agree, that wasn't a fair one.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
I got 290 which is about as I expected, there are a few of rare English words that I must have missed, and I also am pretty low on pop-culture knowledge.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Putting together a slide deck is second nature for many younger millennials and older Gen Zers
omg wtf
Emily Churchill, head of marketing
ok now I get it.
JarJarJedi
15d ago
Installments, for sure. If it was good enough for Dickens and Dumas, it is not such a terrible idea :)
I does feel differently - which was a surprise to me since we both aren't big on official ceremonies and legal formalities - but not in a way that can be properly described as "transition to married life". More like "yeah, this feels comfortable, I could do that for a while". The life itself did not change, but something that the young me did not understand and the not so young me understands now is that proper rituals do have its value. Despite what a lot of people think humanity wasn't stupid when it invented them.
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