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MaiqTheTrue

Zensunni Wanderer

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joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC 

				
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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Zensunni Wanderer

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My understanding is that he can’t serve more than two consecutive terms. Since Theresa gap, he gets two more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The problem is of course that AI can take jobs faster than we can train people to do them.  It’s just as adaptable as we are, maybe more so.  Can an AI atttached to cooking utensils make a hamburger that’s as good as Five Guys?  I think it probably could, given enough time.  If it can do that I think it could probably make just about any food you wanted.  I think it can also produce creative writing and movies and TV.  What it takes is someone deciding to train it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He annexed Donbas and considers them a part of Russia, which makes any attempt to retake them an attack on Russia proper.


The other thing that I think is dismissed too lightly is that him losing the war is likely to be fatal to him.  Russia has a history of killing or deposing rulers who lose wars.  If the only way to win in Ukraine is to use nukes then he’s likely to at least think about it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aren’t most of us doing this now?  I mean most people are assuming that this was negligent simply because a shooting occurred.  But my contention is outside of buying a troubled teen a gun and taking him to gun ranges to practice with it (which is negligent) a lot of the things they did would not be that unusual for a family that owns guns.  And I think that matters because you shouldn’t be able to convict someone of not taking extraordinary measures to prevent a crime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s unreasonable to hold someone responsible for choices that other people make unless they’re knowingly making choices that a reasonable individual would see an enabling a crime.  If I leave my keys on the counter, that’s not participating in the roommate using my car to drive to his girlfriend’s house and shoot her.  If I know he’s going to get her in some way and I knowingly give him the keys, sure I get that.  Any person watching would interpret that as me giving the guy the keys to go harm his girlfriend.


I think it has to go through that reasonable man test.  If a reasonable person looks at the situation and says that the parents knew or reasonably should have known that he wanted to kill people, and they knowingly provide him a weapon and ammo and refuse to secure it, yes, they’re involved. But if it’s “there are guns in the house,” not really.  And especially if the kid gets into a safe or something, at that point, they’ve done everything reasonably doable to keep the kid from getting a gun.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In what way?  I don’t know of anyone who takes the idea literally in the sense that they think that there’s a literal perfect [object] in heaven that Al, similar things on Earth resemble.  On the other hand the concept is used quite a lot in mathematics as mentioned below and in law.  We have legal definitions of all sorts of things which is why tomatoes are vegetables in a legal sense.  It probably happens in CS as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First of all, the person who makes a positive claim is the one obliged to provide evidence.  This is simply elementary logic.  Negatives cannot be proven, so it’s not on me to prove that no conspiracy happened, it’s on you to provide some evidence that there is a conspiracy.


Second “it’s obvious” isn’t evidence.  If it’s obvious, proving it should be easy.


Third, I don’t accept YouTube as a source.  Find me a newspaper or other print source so I can check on the facts presented.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a self-preservation thing.  Lots of people just have this odd need to believe that AI isn’t really going to take over the art scene, from movies to music to writing and painting and so on.  And it will end those pursuits as a viable career simply because it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to have an AI write and make the next Star Wars movie than it will be for them to waste that money on human writing and acting and so on.  Just a few humans to tweak the output is all you really need, and that’s essentially one guy doing the fixing.


It’s already getting hard to tell the difference between a human and a bot, and that’s tools that are pretty stable and probably were developed and trained 3-5 years ago.  Give it five more years and the professional arts will be dying because they’re no longer different enough from AI to justify the price.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think we’re largely in agreement.  It’s a weird part of American hobby culture where you do anything and the expectations are to somehow monetize the product.  Don’t make videos or keep a blog for fun, don’t just paint or write for your buddies, even gaming is now turning into “get good, and twitch-stream it and try to be in esports.”  I think it’s weird that almost everything has to be optimized and monetized as though “just have fun” isn’t a valid reason to do something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve never understood that though.  These people basically have a very expensive hobby and generally need to be told that.  I would expect them of everyone else to be willing to economize especially on things that don’t matter much in the name of getting the actual writing out in public.  Yet it’s exactly these people who seem the most upset by the prospect of AI covers and AI editing (I understand the pushback on AI story development and writing, as these are the point of being a writer, without which the “author” is reduced to prompter and unimportant to the work itself) when it would actually reduce their sunk costs.  Having human cover art is in the hundreds of dollars range, and human editing is about $3000 for a novel-length work.  AI reduces those costs to near zero which reduces the break even point for a self published book from $3500 to the cost of a maybe on the order of $300 or less for AI subscriptions.  At $5 a book, we’re down from a break even of 700 books to a break even of 60 books.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s the same logic extended one more step.  Recognizing that Israel isn’t living up to those ideals or even pretending to puts Jews on the negative of DEI.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it actually could become a problem in that the far left and far right are in pretty strong agreement on the accusations against the Jews, that they’re manipulating narratives to their own benefit, and that they only care about themselves.  The left has absolutely blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel, and they don’t seem to care what Hamas and other Palestinians have done or want to do.  There’s barely even a whisper of blame on Hamas for launching the attacks or holding hostages or the crimes committed during the attack.  And when you couple that with full support of the intifada, chanting of the slogans that deny Israel’s right to exist,


Personally, I think most of the Gaza situation is on Lakud which isn’t all Israelis and has little to do with Jews who don’t support Lakud or Natanyahu.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think you can really compartmentalize to that degree with any integrity.  In most governments and political parties they have openly stated platforms and they at least intend to make good on those promises.  You can’t support only the good without accepting the bad.  You can’t have support for a faction that kills gays and support gay rights.  You can’t support the political goal without supporting the social goals because if they get their goals of defeating IDF they’ll go right back to running Gaza the way they want to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The internet led to a small resurgence of pagan LARPing among largely young whites in a way often tied to Nordic black metal. Not all of this is far-right really, but much of it is. Varg Vikernes is obviously a major figure in both worlds and a pagan missionary of sorts. Naturally these people blame Christianity for destroying ancestral European paganism, and they blame this for hurting Europeans in various ways for arguably religious reasons. There is also obviously a hostility towards the fact that in Christianity an aspect of God is embodied in an unambiguously Jewish man and that much Christian ritual and scripture is descended from Judaism.




I think the lack of a religious alternative makes the idea of trying to remove Christianity from western culture more or less a nonstarter.  Until there’s a robust religion that comes out of Pagan thinking in a real pagan way, with an unapologetic pagan way of think (that is, a religious and philosophical movement in authentic paganism that doesn’t have its origins in either Christianity or as a reaction to Christianity), then you can really build outward from it.  Judaism is its own thing and always has been, and it’s not really a LARP of a dead religion that exists only in distinction from Christianity and Islam.  Jews have their own thing.  My experience of paganism is that it’s a LARP that no one takes seriously, and certainly don’t behave as though they believe in Odín, Thor, Zeus, or Athena.  They don’t have a sense of reverence for their deities, the sense of them as having wants that you might not like.  No sense that you can’t just pick and choose.


And I think that matters because like it or not, the best innovation the Abrahamics have is that their texts are canon and inspired and thus it gives a bulwark against it being twisted into whatever form the elites want.  The Torah, the Bible and the Quran are explicit in what they say, and thus cannot be easily interpreted to not mean what the text says it means.  Islam can never allow pork.  It’s in the book, and the book is from God and not changing for the whims of the rest of the world.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that Nate Silver’s approach is correct, though like you, I don’t think his math is right.  Probability modeling is just simply more accurate than gut feelings.  Or as Ben Shapiro likes to say “facts don’t care about your feelings.”  And this is something the left especially has missed quite often.  In fact they missed out on putting a liberal on the bench because RBG didn’t retire with a Dem majority.


And if the polling data is showing that Biden loses in 2024, you’re talking about minimum 2029 before we could replace a justice with a liberal judge.  If Trum does really good, he might win in 2028 thus making the next replacement window at 2033.  That puts her at near 80.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Bailey Podcast E036: White Right
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In general I think formalism is a good thing.  If we’re to have a debate on the merits of a certain social system or political ideology, we must know what it is that we’re actually talking about.  If I’m advocating for “democracy” or “white nationalism” or “communism” it’s absolutely important to know what the terms actually mean.  The first reason this is important is that it prevents people from speaking past each other.   If “communism” is formally defined as “state ownership of capital” then we can be sure we won’t get lost in the weeds of talking about things that look like communism that actually aren’t like Kibutz or monasteries or nuclear families.  It also avoids the issues of changing definitions and snuck premises.  If we don’t define Communism, then either one of us are free to change the definition in ways that suit us.  If I don’t agree with communism, I can redefine it to be only totalitarian socialism and dismiss everything else as “not really communism” even if it would meet the definition.  If I’m in favor of communism, I can do this in reverse and start including Sweden as a communist country because some utilities and the health care system are state run.  It also prevents to snuck premise problem where I talk about things that I really wish were part of the communist system but aren’t.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But compared to the USA, Russia hasn’t been a globe-trotting military power imposing its will on other countries.  This is the first large scale military invasion of a sovereign nation by Russia since the end of the Cold War.  Compare that to America who has invaded Iraq twice, bombed Libya, invaded Afghanistan, and expanded NATO to include almost all of Eastern Europe.  Whether or not you agree with either the geopolitical position (not wanting a NATO member along a difficult to defend border) or the stated aims (removing Nazis from Ukraine) or not, it’s not exactly the military adventures of the USA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think based on the COVID response, go with online services— instacart, Grubhub, online streaming, Zoom type online services, basically anything that replicates an in-person service at home.  I would anticipate at least an attempt at a lockdown if the flu is bad enough.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s not that I think “Boeing the bad guy” works better.  I don’t think the morality of a country and its fate are nearly as intertwined as commonly believed.  I put the concept in the same continuum as the idea that eclipses are signs from the gods.  What works is smarts and tactics, and a large dose of willingness to take power.  What I fear is that large swaths of people in the halls of western democracies tend to believe that the righteousness of a cause means it will eventually win.  I think that’s a dangerous way to think because it creates a false sense of security.  We’re defending Ukraine so we will eventually win (by the way, they’re short enough on fighters that they’re recruiting teens to fight) no matter what Russia has or does.  We think it right that Ukraine get Donbas back along with Crimea.  Except those are now considered under the Russian nuclear umbrella.  Right has nothing to do with reality because we don’t exist in a Hollywood movie.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
MBTI types are somewhat useful for this even if the theory is bunk.  The descriptions are detailed enough that you can predict what people who share those traits will do in a given situation.  It gives strengths and weaknesses for every type, which you can use to predict that your ESFP character might well do something stupid before he completely thinks it through, while your INTP will spend several hours studying a theory and not take any action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you’re kinda overthinking it.  Most of the advice (beyond the absolute basics) is written for people who want to be professional writers.  I do believe in structure and planning, but if you’re just doing it for fun, a lot of the  the advice is completely over the top where you need every detail exactly right and to have a twenty page description of your world building and the 15-point beat sheet and know what your characters eat for dinner every night is overkill.  Even more so if what you’re writing is short fiction.


If you’re not going pro, I think that getting a blog and putting your stories on there is probably saner.  Get a substack or a live journal or even a tumblr blog.  Publish short stories there and see what happens.  You can break that up with meta posts about your writing, thoughts about various topics, pictures or whatever you want.  And because it’s just a blog, you’re not under the same pressure that everyone trying to become a serious author (a field that’s overcrowded even before you get to people who publish and can’t write in standard English let alone plot a story), and you can do whatever you actually want to do.  Unless you’re really looking for a career, and willing to put full time into writing and promoting your writing, trying to publish or self publish isn’t going to work.  Just have fun for now, and don’t worry so much about publishing unless you’re seeing a big following.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe rigor is the wrong word.  But I think it’s a case where people are simply taking a word in a post of several thousand words, and assuming with no context that even implies antisemitism that 4bpp was clearly trying to imply that Jews were somehow involved in making games easier and thus more bland, boring and so on.  And this without anything else that points in that direction.


And the thing I observe about most dog whistles is that they’re rarely one off events.  I’ve never known anyone who could keep a clean profile online and only have one incident.  I wouldn’t say it’s never ever happened, but it’s extremely rare for someone to sincerely hold an opinion and never say so in the open.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a reasonable framework for ideological thinking.  A “slave” ideology would be one that places value on passively accepting fate, on not being assertive or demanding of other groups.  A master ideology would do the opposite and be demanding and assertive and less concerned with helping others.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True, but then again, we expanded NATO eastward to a difficult to defend border after it told Russia it had no intention of doing so.  Even if Poland wanted in, it’s hard to ignore that having NATO troops and military equipment on the border of Russia is at least somewhat provocative.  And given that it’s all of Eastern Europe and soon Ukraine as well, Russia is going to be basically surrounded.  It’s about equivalent to Russia forming an alliance with Mexico and Canada.  I can’t imagine a universe in which the USA would not view that as a threat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 10, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve often thought that a part of the issue is that there are so few cheap/free entertainment options.  If you don’t want to just hang out and watch tv at a friends place, or play a tabletop game, you’re generally going to have to spend $30 a person to go out on the cheap.