JulianRota
2mo ago
Eh maybe. But then still, why an opioid epidemic now? Opium and derivatives have also been around for a very long time. Is it just that much more appealing in pill form and prescribed by your doctor than in smokeable or snortable form?
JulianRota
8mo ago
Does it matter whether the Jan 6 protestors were fools or badasses? It may be satisfying to some, but I don't think it's very important to the country the moral value or lack thereof of the protestors. What's much more important is to what extent Congressional leadership and multiple high-level people in many military and law enforcement agencies coordinated to ensure that the Capitol would have very minimal protection on Jan 6 despite ample intelligence of how big of a protest there was going to be, as well as lots of provocateurs. Unless we believe Mr. Sund is completely full of shit, I think it's hard to conclude anything but that exactly that happened. They wanted an ugly riot and they did what it took to ensure that they got one.
JulianRota
11mo ago
To be more exact, I wouldn't bet that there's much daylight between the overall approval rates of most types of alternative medicine between registered Republicans and registered Democrats. But I would bet that the great majority of people enthusiastic about most types of alternative medicine (possibly aside from things Covid-related) would code as highly Blue team based on their overall interests and values etc. They might not necessarily bother to actually register and vote for various reasons, or may claim to support one of the third parties more Blue/"crunchy" than the Democrat party.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Maybe... still feels like a stretch though. Why do it now? Is there some active pressure on the German government now that I'm not aware of?
It all seems awful speculative. Like, maybe Germany will end up being critically low on energy this winter, but that's not established yet. Maybe they won't be able to think of any solution better than buying Russian gas after all, but ditto not established yet. Maybe they will / would have come under powerful enough political pressure to cave on that, but ditto. And maybe the US would be worried enough about Germany caving on this and unable to otherwise help them or pressure them to carry out a risky act of sabotage, but ditto.
Which all leads back to, why do it now, when the only possible benefit to the US is after 5 or so things all happen in the right way in the next 6 months or so? I'd buy it more if it happened after all of those things actually did happen and the German government was actively looking to cut a deal. It all feels a little loopy and desperate.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Well yeah. But if we decide we're going with that solution, then we validate the allegedly paranoid fears of the Russian Nationalists, including the guy that @DaseindustriesLtd quoted above. If that's the plan, then it's their best move to seek to dominate Ukraine and any other neighbors who they view as uppity at any cost as a necessary defensive buffer against our upcoming attempts to totally eliminate them.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Part of the reason why I disagree with the "good vs evil" framing is that, once you have framed a conflict in that way, there is no way to end it except the total elimination of the side perceived as "evil". If you want to find peace, eventually you have to see the issue from the perspective of both sides and be able to come up with a solution that acknowledges the physical reality and the concerns of both sides. This is basically impossible if you see the other side as evil. One of the characteristics of most conflicts is that, presuming they didn't end with the total elimination of one side, they tend to end when both sides become weary enough of fighting that they're willing to let go of calling the other side evil and see things from their point of view enough to make some concessions.
I'm not sure if you're trying to make it a bad thing, but personally I see it as a good thing that I can independently come up with an argument similar to what a Russian Nationalist war-backer would use. Now, I certainly don't agree with this fellow when he makes the arguments that total destruction of Ukraine is desirable or that nuclear war is preferable to a perceived Russian loss. I don't agree that it means the "end of Russia as a state and nation", but he does have a little bit of a point in being concerned about how "Big Bad Russia" will be seen in the region after an effective loss to Ukraine and what their longer-term future will be after that.
Does it seem reasonable to be concerned about how effective the Russian nuclear arsenal would be after the poor performance of their more sophisticated forces in Ukraine? From a Western perspective, I definitely don't think we should see it as, well they probably won't work right so Russia is no real threat - far too dangerous to be even a little bit wrong. But from a Russian perspective, if you perceived an existential threat from the Western powers and saw your nuclear arms as the sole trump card guaranteeing your security, how safe would you feel?
JulianRota
1mo ago
Who decides what it's "supposed to do"? What gives any such person the right to dictate that?
For that matter, how do you know there aren't already sites that work exactly the way you think, but you don't know about them, because they aren't as popular or well-advertised? That would imply that the way all existing well-known sites work is exactly how their users and their owners think they should work. I think private chat groups, as exist in pretty much every messaging app, are much more like this, but by their nature aren't well-known.
So by saying you want a law, as an "interesting experiment". Laws mean people will be fined, potentially lose their livelihoods, get thrown in jail, etc. Somehow I don't think the people who would be affected by such a law will find this "experiment" quite so "interesting". Particular when you are forcing every site and all of the users to do things they actively dislike to satisfy your notions about how they "should" work, when there are already alternatives that work that way.
JulianRota
1mo ago
I've seen a little bit of a few things like this. Not really enough to have much to add to this thread. But I do think that one of the major issues in the way our larger culture discusses political issues is that a large segment of the "activist class" doesn't have the slightest idea of how these people are, how they really think, and how they actually respond to the "helpful" programs that they constantly dream up. They just listen to a few of these fake sob story tales or videos and go off entirely on believing that, never even pausing to consider that it might not be an accurate description of the situation.
JulianRota
3mo ago
I think it works okay if you view things in a more fuzzy way. The idea of abolitionism didn't just magically appear at the time of the Industrial Revolution, just like the IR itself wasn't a single thing at a single time but a gradual progression over hundreds of years. Going from an idea written about by a few privileged elites to a movement endorsed by nation-sized populations and that nation-states are prepared to wage full-scale wars over is not an instant or automatic process. It seems very plausible to me that the IR powered the growth of abolitionism from something that they were willing to pass in places that didn't really have any slaves anyways to something that they were prepared to enact and enforce by force of arms in places where the entire economy was built on slave labor and the controlling imperial power was getting a fat chunk of the profits.
JulianRota
3mo ago
A question that sounds snarky and rhetorical, but is actually serious: Why don't you guys just argue with each other privately?
Why indeed? If you move to DMs over any of a hundred systems, you can sling as much crap as you want at each other, and nobody will judge you or mod you or ban you for doing so. So why not? The only reason that makes sense IMO is that the audience matters. Everybody here has to see it, or at least be able to see it.
But what of the effect that has on the place? I see that you don't feel offended or put off by the argument. What of the audience though? They're important - they must be, or you wouldn't be interested in posting it publicly. I've come to think that, to use another Wire quote, all the pieces matter.
Regardless of whether you or BC are super offended by the debate, when everybody sees it, and sees it not being modded, it changes the tone of the whole place. It becomes just that little bit more acceptable to trash your debate partner rather than discuss civilly. People who love that are more likely to come and stay, and people who don't will disengage and drift away. Even more importantly, it changes peoples behavior just a bit. Nobody is perfectly combative or perfectly civilized. It's a signal to turn off the civilized part and dial up the combat part. And that does in fact matter, even if we'd rather it didn't or it isn't immediately obvious.
The same points can be made perfectly well without the personal attacks. Perhaps even better. Even if I think User X is a great big jerk, it's not conducive to a reasonable conversation to just call them a jerk. It's perfectly possible for me to be the calm and reasonable one and make my points without the insults. If I do it right, and I'm right that they're a jerk, then they will show themselves to be one to the audience in short order. The audience is a lot more likely to believe it when they see it for themselves over just me telling them.
JulianRota
4mo ago
I've enjoyed Extra History. They're mostly good, though to be taken with a grain of salt on anything too close to the culture way.
JulianRota
5mo ago
Have you tried any corticosteroids class skin creams? I didn't see any on your list. I use them daily to keep my skin in decent shape. I found a nice strength chart here for all of the specific types. The weakest - hydrocortisone - is available OTC at pretty much any drug store. I was prescribed a class 6 on that chart for a while, but I eventually discovered that the OTC hydrocortisone worked just as well for me.
Dermatologists really don't like prescribing the stronger variants long-term, but it might be worth a try to see if it helps if the OTC stuff doesn't help much. It helps if you find a friendly one who is willing to experiment with unconventional things.
JulianRota
5mo ago
I haven't seen anything I regard as solid for Telegram corporate providing significant special access to any authorities. There are a few articles with vague implications, but no actual results that would require such access. Most actual results I've seen seem to be from the authorities confiscating somebody's device and getting into Telegram etc on it, which is a problem, but not a Telegram problem.
A bit conspiratorial, but I have a feeling that the legacy media enjoys writing articles implying such things for Telegram specifically because they don't give any special access to anybody. They want people to believe they do and distrust them, so they use competitors such as Meta, Alphabet, etc which actually do give authorities the keys to the castle, who they don't write scary articles about.
It does do the unique username. I suppose if you already talk to a lot of IRL friends that expect it to be close to your real name it might be weird to need to join a bunch of super-anonymous groups. I guess you could create a new account, but I think it's tricky without a new phone number. I have written a few basic apps against it, as far as I can tell, the phone number truly isn't accessible if it's locked, but there is a unique integer user ID. But I'd stick with my point that's about the same anonymity level as any other platform.
JulianRota
5mo ago
What's non-anonymous about it? One setting change to hide your phone number, then you're exactly as anonymous as any other platform, including this one.
JulianRota
8mo ago
I don't think VPNs are a great solution to any of that.
If you want less tracking from the tech majors, it's probably more effective to get adblock and/or pihole and block all traffic to them. After voluntarily switching away from their services of course. Being on a VPN while logged into their accounts and/or still allowing every website that integrates with them to send traffic to them doesn't accomplish anything. And being on a VPN while blocking all traffic to them also doesn't accomplish anything.
For torrents, I've tended to think it's better to use only private trackers locally and use remote seedboxes for any "public" torrents that might be tracked or detected. Why VPN all traffic to and from your home PC just to hide your torrents from your ISP badly (they will still know you're using a lot of upstream bandwidth in patterns typical of torrent servers, if they actually care enough to check), when for a similar price, you can set up a proper seedbox that's always online and your ISP will never know about at all?
JulianRota
8mo ago
Just went to do volunteer duty, and a slot for a post in the list has the radio buttons but no actual post: https://imgur.com/a/AJogzPc
The other two posts in the 3 post list were perfectly normal, just the third one was completely blank - no content, date, or links.
JulianRota
9mo ago
Yours sounds like it behaves more like an actual injury. Mine tends to feel better when I'm using it, and tends to flare up when I'm not using it.
JulianRota
9mo ago
Yeah that's pretty similar to what mine is like
JulianRota
9mo ago
I'm not super against paying for it, I'm just a little reluctant to when I don't have any idea what to use it for that's actually useful. I've mostly used ChatGPT for things I might otherwise google for general explanations. It does mostly provide better results than whatever you'd find on Google.
JulianRota
9mo ago
How are you guys accessing ChatGPT4 anyways? I've used ChatGPT a couple of times and I was under the impression that GPT4 is only available via the commercial API with significant costs. Are you all paying for it, or is there some other site that lets you use it for free for some limited amount?
JulianRota
10mo ago
Do you not think people could dictate essays, draw with their hands, edit music, etc with this tool? Why does this entire OS seem fundamentally based on consumption to you?
Sure, you could do that, but what's the advantage over conventional hardware? I can do all of those things just fine with any ordinary computer and off-the-shelf accessories and software that has been available for years. The only really new thing that this device has is the immersive VR experience. That's cool, but I don't see how that gets you anything for creating content.
I'm betting that right now many people who would otherwise be more economically useful are not because they don't have the temperament, ability, or inclination to learn how to type quickly or move a mouse around quickly. With VisionOS and later generations, we'll see much more 'natural' inputs, or at least have a lower barrier to entry than, say, learning to type at 100 wpm.
I don't think that's the case. Keyboards and mice have been dominant because they are very easy to use. Sure, it's not easy to type 100wpm with good accuracy, but pretty much everyone can type 10wpm. Typing 100wpm isn't that useful outside of stenography anyways. Typically the limiting factor is how fast you can think of more meaningful words of text or working lines of code to type, not how fast you can physically type them. In fact, I'd bet that whatever the solution VisionOS uses for typing (we haven't seen that yet, gee I wonder why that is, you'd think if they have an awesome solution to getting text from the user's mind to the device they'd have shown us), it's less intuitive than a keyboard. How much skill does it take to get 10 correct wpm into a VisionOS document versus a regular computer with a regular keyboard?
And that's before we get into things like, how easy is it to read text or data off of a physical page while typing it or something loosely based on it into a VisionOS document?
JulianRota
1yr ago
Well that's... both interesting and disturbing I guess.
It does seem like a lot of the best content is gone from Reddit. There's still some decent stuff sometimes, but it seems like it's buried in a mountain of garbage.
JulianRota
1yr ago
I did watch both The Wire and We Own This City. I enjoyed WOTC, but I think it's definitely a step behind The Wire.
IMO, part of what made The Wire great is it showed the good and bad of everything and everyone. Some cops are dirty or assholes, but others are good police, working hard to take bad people off the street. The urban drug dealers might be being subjected to some level of abuse by the police, and sometimes actually do good deeds, but they really are murdering people in their own neighborhoods by the dozens and employing children to sell basically poison on the streets. Some of the parents in these neighborhoods are good people trying to get by in a tough neighborhood, while others are willing to sell their childrens' food for more drugs or demand that their children become drug dealers to bring in money for them while they do no work. Criminal defense lawyers are of course necessary, but damn sure they knowingly pocket a whole lot of drug money, help out with money laundering, and basically request people to be murdered.
WOTC over-focuses on how bad the GTTF and a few specific cops are and basically ignores everything that caused them to be that way. Okay, they're corrupt and abusive, but most of their targets really are drug dealers, and we don't get to see what other bad stuff these drug dealers do. Arresting actual bad guys who don't want to go to jail is necessarily violent and unpredictable, but if you show the police that they will be randomly fired and prosecuted for any violence that doesn't go perfectly right, then of course they'll start refusing to do anything. But the show pays no attention to this dynamic and just portrays the cops as lazy jerks for not wanting to get out of their cars. The Feds are of course perfect angels trying to root out the evil police corruption, but who cares that they aren't really doing anything about the 300+ murders a year and rampant drug dealing.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Thanks, this sounds more like how I was thinking about it. Like, maybe the algorithm can, or at least could, make okay decisions if it had all of the information. But then isn't actually gathering all of the information and getting it into a form that could be entered or written down somewhere like 80% of what doctors do anyways? I'm not sure if it matters how good the algorithm is if any professional could have already made the best practical decision before they even would have been able to enter all of the information into some system anyways.
Looks like an interesting article, thanks! I will read later. But that, and TheDag's point would imply that any "chronic pain epidemic" is just a broader symptom of, I guess I don't really know what to call it, the broad cultural sickness we have in the West and America right now, and treating with opiates is clumsy duct-tape over the real problem that mostly won't help much.
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