Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
No bio...
User ID: 265
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
9mo ago
a “bunker / shelter” that would be used for “some event where 50%-99.99% of people die [to] ensure that most EAs [effective altruists] survive”
This is especially galling coming from the guy who will flip a 50.1% coin forever at double or nothing on civilization's behalf. We might all be lucky he blew up "early".
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
6mo ago
Foreign policy is a thing, and Israel is one of the US' most steadfast allies outside of the Anglosphere and the #1 ally in the Middle East, modulo oil and weapons deals with the Saudis.
There is also the question of shared values. Liberal democracies are natural allies, unlike the rest of the Middle East.
It has very little to do with religion or ethnicity, IMHO.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
6mo ago
I wish your first link was something other than a google search result, which will of course change drastically over time, complicating any analysis or discussion.
It looks like Israel bombed a neighboring residence (I would expect an apartment building but the current results refer to a "house"). It seems strange that the Israelis would bomb a single family residence (aka "house"). And the damage extended, presumably unintentionally, to the church.
I suppose we'll see if there is a characteristic Israeli crater or not. And at this point, maybe Israel can drop the equivalent of small barrel bombs as a false flag to implicate Hamas, etc.
I doubt Israel intentionally bombed a church unless it was a legitimate military target, which is entirely possible given the defensive strategy of Hamas, etc. I tend to defer to Arnold Kling's reasoning for this type of situation: https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/the-gaza-hospital-tragedy
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
8mo ago
Arnold Kling on Michael Huemer on Thought Crime
Michael Huemer has a meditation on the phenomenon of thought crimes. A thought crime emerges when one group of people decides that if a person is suspected of believing X, then that person should be punished.
It kind of goes without saying, but inherent in the notion of "thought crime" are both crime and punishment. If it doesn't deserve punishment, then it's not a crime.
the status of ‘thought crime’ does not in general attach to beliefs that are so conclusively refuted that anyone who investigates carefully will reject them. Indeed, it is precisely the opposite. It is precisely because epistemic reasons do not suffice to convince everyone of your belief that you attempt to convince them through moral exhortation. When the plea “Believe P because the evidence demonstrates it!” fails, then we resort to “Believe P because it is immoral to doubt it!” Indeed, you might reasonably take someone’s resort to moral exhortation as pretty strong evidence that they have a weak case, and they know it.
Calling something a thought-crime is a dominance move. It is coercive. You only have to coerce someone if you cannot convince the person voluntarily. If X is demonstrably false, then you should be able to convince someone voluntarily not to believe X. It is only if X is plausibly true, or ambiguous, that you have to resort to coercion.
This makes the accusation of thought-crime highly suspect. The more that you try to force me to believe that the virus could not have come from a lab, the more suspicious I become.
Amen, brother. But is this just preaching to the choir? Consider: A whole lot of NPCs and talking heads sure ate up The Narrative. Propaganda is effective, to an extent, but beyond that extent it is deeply corrosive, particularly to any intellectual class, who become disillusioned and cynical. Thought crime is next.
Religions in general, and Christianity in particular, are all about thought crime. You have to take the salvation of Jesus into your heart or something, and if you don't, have fun with eternal damnation. I can accept Aquinas, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis. These are men who appealed to reason, writing to convince and persuade.
I imagine only atheists see the appeal of comparing woke (progressive, successor) ideology to a religion of sorts, likely filling some kind of primitive need for tribal loyalty, purity tests, and expensive signals (rabid adherence to nonsense). I'd love to hear Antonin Scalia's take though. Or L. Ron Hubbard's. Perhaps what we are seeing with successor ideology is not an individual need for such, but instead just the character of mass movements, the nature of power, its patterns of growth and movement and perpetuation. Are propaganda and thought crime inevitable?
Let's take it back to 1984. Orwell demonstrates the existential horror of a regime that can successfully deploy thought crime. Didn't he make it blindingly obvious for everyone? I'm pretty sure we were all nodding our heads in 8th grade English class about the evils of totalitarianism, only a few years after the USSR fell. I suspect this issue is particularly salient for me, as a libertarian.
Anyways, I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
7mo ago
Just some feedback as there are no replies here. There is a distinction between a wall of text and an effortpost, but it can be subtle. OP reads more like the latter, to its credit. But while I was nodding my head according to the first 5 paragraphs or so, I had an intense desire to "get to the point". While I understand the value of dripping out information and keeping the reader hooked and engaged, I found myself skipping ahead to try to find the thesis, or novel point being made.
I have a concrete suggestion: if it takes more than 5 paragraphs to "get to the point", then you're better off summarizing and defending, rather than buttressing and presenting.
To be clear, I guess I am delineating two different rhetoric styles: buttress and present, where by the time the point is presented, it's basically a foregone conclusion; and summarize and defend, whereby the point is not hidden til the last minute but is instead presented early, allowing the reader to grapple with it, and then defended later by the author.
Both styles have their places.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
2mo ago
What are the numerator and denominator in the overdose rate?
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4mo ago
For me, the alt-right was the Tea Party, opposing bank bailouts and obstructing big government from a libertarian perspective. This was not the old Moral Majority focused on respectability but instead bomb throwers fed up with the status quo. This well predates the rise of Trump and emergence of Richard Spencer.
The term was an amorphous label that could be placed on a wide dispersion of groups that harbor major mutual disagreements.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4mo ago
the most dramatic of which was supporting Patrick Stevedores to fire their entire union workforce.
Is this some form of nominative determinism? The Wire Season 3 (?) revolved around the Stevedores Union, dockside in Bawlmer.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4mo ago
That a subset of them when other progressives are unwelcoming they turn to the right but they don't think they have done anything wrong.
I've spent about 60 seconds on this sentence and I'm still not sure I understand. For clarity, do all 3 theys refer to the same group, that subset of liberals?
1/2 (so far)
The Saga of Karl Kasarda
File under: Internet Drama
Dramatis personae:
Karl Kasarda is very real person with a significant internet presence, whom I have paid attention to since maybe 2015. He is (or has been) partners with Ian McCollum, who runs Forgotten Weapons, initially a website, mostly famous as a Youtube channel, and lately expanding to other social media platforms. If Forgotten Weapons is Ian's baby, InRangeTV is Karl's baby, though Karl has rarely (never?) made an appearance on FW, while Ian is (or used to be) a regular on IRTV.
Ian's focus is mostly on rifles and handguns, occasionally shotguns, and often military weapons. If it fires a brass cartridge, it's a potential Forgotten Weapon. While the focus is mainly on lesser known and rare weaponry, Ian won't hesitate to cover ubiquitous guns like the AR-15. He is also known as Gun Jesus for his long hair, mustache, and goatee, and his extensive research and authoritative takes on niche subjects.
Karl's competency is mostly based on competition shooting. He's a cerebral guy with a network security career, who has historically competed in "High Power" rifle disciplines, as well as "Cowboy Action Shooting". In the last 10 or 15 years, he has been a big promoter, host, and competitor in so-called 2 gun Action Challenge Matches, which are mostly defined in opposition to 3 gun competitions. There is plenty of history and internet words spillage regarding "2 gun vs 3 gun", but here's the gist: "3 gun" refers to rifle, pistol, shotgun, while "2 gun" omits the shotgun. "3 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on precision without much physicality. "2 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on effective shooting with lots of physicality (action challenge match).
Mostly within the last 5 years or so, InRangeTV has featured Russell Phagan, aka SinistralRifleman. He is a skilled 2GACM competitor, and good friend to Karl and Ian, who are all based out of Arizona (AFAIK). Russell works for KE Arms which manufactures firearms parts, largely for the AR-15 platform.
WWSD (What would Stoner do?)
In 2017, it was widely recognized in the American gun community that the AR-15 rifle (aka M16 or M4 in its military designation) (5.56mm ammunition, 16 inch barrel, gas operated, with a buttstock) is a pinnacle of engineering and design. It was designed by Eugene Stoner in the 1950s, as a scaled-down successor to the AR-10, which used a larger 30 caliber round (7.62 mm). It's pretty wild that here in 2023, the best all-purpose rifle for Americans was designed nearly 75 years ago. Have there been improvements along the way? Abso-fucking-lutely.
So now it's 2017, and what would Eugene Stoner do? Well, one of the unifying principles his early design was to use modern materials, like aluminum and polymer, to reduce weight for the same effectiveness. Polymer science was very primitive in 1950 before carbon fiber and modern epoxies. Both aluminum and steel production have become much more sophisticated, consistent, and reliable. Small parts tolerances have improved with CNC and modern milling machines.
I have a lot more to say here, but Karl and Ian came up with a modern "build" of an AR-15 rifle that uses carbon fiber and polymer along with modern metallurgy and design lessons learned from the last 75 years. Importantly, this design was based off of a polymer "lower receiver" for the AR-15, which is the item that the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives) considers a firearm. The milspec lower receiver is a chunk of forged aluminum that is then machined or milled to its final dimensions.
There have been many attempts at polymer lower receivers throughout the years, essentially all of which have been failures in function, design, or sales. The WWSD 2017 design was based off the CAV-15 from GWACS, which is a one-piece polymer lower receiver which includes the grip and the buttstock. The milspec lower receiver does not include the grip or buttstock and instead provides attachment points. The so-called "monolithic" design of the CAV-15 gives it extra strength and reliability relative to other polymer lowers.
Then, in 2020, just before the COVID pandemic hit, we have a product called "WWSD 2020". Partnered with KE Arms, Russell Phagan's company, Karl and Ian want to produce WWSD AR-15 Rifles to sell for a profit. First of all, due to their following, there are thousands or millions of enthusiasts trying to buy CAV-15 polymer lowers, along with carbon fiber handguards, and pencil profile rifle barrels, and the suppliers cannot keep up with demand. Second of all, of course, let's "monetize" this following. No shade.
I have a lot more to say but I am running out of steam. I will augment this post within 12 hours.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
1yr ago
In which case the obvious explanation for bias in the output of the system is bias in the input. The AI classifier doesn't understand what "men" or "women" or "are" or "awful" or "hateful" mean in the way we do.
Right, but in this case OpenAI is rebiasing the results, using human feedback, to what is shown in the blog post. The technique is known as RLHF, Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback. Humans reward the AI for classifying negativity toward women as hatred but not as much for men.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
1yr ago
Really, that's the part that I tentatively describe as "gaslighting" (hate the term). One questionable "dude" makes an absurd claim, and the rest of Twitter NPC falls in line. When any neutral reader would accept Jesse's straightforward interpretation.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
8mo ago
I'd strongly suspect there is a prison pipeline that feeds "Aryan Nation" type ideology, and these types do buy into it.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
7mo ago
I just re-learned about rabies, in the last 10 days:
- if you're symptomatic, you're a dead man walking
- symptoms take weeks to months to present
- symptoms include hydrophobia, which is an intense thirst combined with your musculoskeletal system refusing to accept water (via the nervous system)
- IV fluids for some reason do not ameliorate
- "foaming at the mouth" is related to increased saliva production combined with an inability to swallow said fluids
- zombie-like symptoms including an instinct to bite others
- transmitted primarily via saliva
- zoonotic reservoirs are mostly bats and rodents, with dogs as the bridge to humans
- very few canine or human cases in countries like USA
- a really shit way to go
- less prevalent but more scary than I thought
The long border with Israel is about 25 miles, the length of the overall strip. Was the short border (closest to Tel Aviv) breached? Total border is 32 miles.
Surely they could dispatch the equivalent of 5 SWAT teams to run the border within an hour or two.
I am sure they have realtime satellite surveillance as well as tripwires, cameras, and other detection mechanisms. The level of incompetence on display suggests they tacitly allowed this to happen for the sake of casus belli.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4mo ago
Part of the advantage of liberals as a tribe, is this false sentiment of neutrality, of moderation, of centrism, when they are creatures of the left in reality.
I'm probably first and foremost a classical liberal, extremely libertarian, with sympathies to anarchocapitalism. I oppose nearly all progressives in some form, though they're not necessarily wrong about everything. Mainly to the extent they want to intrude upon or eradicate classical liberalism.
As a young teenager, I had a vague notion of progress, from barbaric wars to slavery to racism to the color blind attitude I embraced wholly in the 1990s. Clinton was cool, Bush and Reagan were evil empire.
But I had a libertarian history teacher who was great with insights and making conceptual connections, and read some Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman before college. Then Rothbard, Hayek, Mises. Then 9/11 happened and I moved rightward in a couple dimensions.
Am I the exception that proves the rule? Or a creature of the left?
All this to say, it's an interesting idea, but I don't buy the conclusion. I think liberalism is a concept prior to left/right, and while the left/right spectrum is useful, it fails to illuminate the nature of liberalism.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
1yr ago
Based Chris Rufo demonstrates how to deny the heckler’s veto.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
11mo ago
Sure, but it takes the sting out of
this community in particular had egregious problems with this
When in fact it's a general problem and not particular to this community.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
7mo ago
You'd need 1000 boats with 1000 person capacity to move a million refugees. Among the refugees would almost certainly be terrorists and crypto-militants. Obviously no weapons would be allowed on board, despite a small chance of smuggling efforts succeeding. So you will need a sizeable police force. And can you trust all of the police to maintain control of their weapons and populace, and not support some kind of mutiny?
Food and water could probably be handled.
Who is paying for this, and in charge? Israel? The UN? Someone will have to take responsibility for the Iran destination, and that will prove quite contentious. Iran can reasonably blockade and/or refuse port. Eventually conditions onboard deteriorate. Maybe the crew abandons ship? Iran could commandeer the ships and park them at the Port Authority of NY/NJ.
It's whimsical but seems quite unrealistic to me.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
7mo ago
the BAP sphere, which openly celebrates murder, rape and death.
Citations needed. I highly doubt they are celebrating Hamas style barbarism, or else we are nutpicking.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
9mo ago
Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition?
Joe Rogan, maybe? Jordan Peterson, less so.
2/2 (so far)
Note, this comment has been significantly updated and extended since first written (and replied to, sorry).
The fundamental difference between WWSD 2017 and WWSD 2020 is the monolithic polymer lower receiver, originally the GWACS CAV-15, and then later the KP-15 from KE Arms. The KP-15 is a successor design to the CAV-15 which had gone out of production (and with GWACS effectively dead as a business). While obviously inspired by the CAV-15 with similar features, it is a fresh redesign without reusing any specific design or feature from the CAV-15 while improving function with additional features (e.g. flared magwell). Extensive research and testing went into the production methods and polymer molds.
As KE Arms was ramping up production to meet the considerable demand for the monolithic polymer lower, two significant events occurred: GWACS sends a cease-and-desist to KE Arms over intellectual property concerns regarding the CAV-15, and a deal is struck with Brownells regarding marketing, distribution, and retail sales for the WWSD concept including both parts and complete rifles. KE Arms sues GWACS over the cease-and-desist, and GWACS countersues KE Arms as well as several related organizations and individuals. Kasarda is not named as a defendant but is deposed as a witness.
Fast forward to 2023. Due to COVID and legal interference, the production ramp-up for the KP-15 takes longer than expected, but the lowers are now produced in significant quantity, available from both Brownells and KE Arms directly. However, forum drama is about to upset the apple cart once again.
I wasn't aware of the forum drama or any of its basis until Karl himself posted to the InRangeTV subreddit, seeking consolation for what he felt were unfair attacks on him. The basis for the forum drama, as I was to find out, was mostly Karl's own social media posting, often under his InRangeTV brand. I was mostly just watching the YouTube channel, which had a pretty strict focus on guns, 2 Gun Action Challenge Match stuff, and occasional forays into First and Second Amendment issues and advocacy, along with complaints about Youtube content policies. The social media posting, mainly Instagram, was a different beast entirely.
One Father's Day, Karl posted:
Happy Father's Day!
Personally, I have chosen to not add more of us to this overpopulated planet as my gift to humanity. I highly recommend a vasectomy. Additionally, as a person of entirely Scandinavian descent, I am assisting with the extinction of the white race.
~Karl
Now, there is obviously some attempt at humor, here. Still, I find it pretty offensive and abhorrent. I love my dad, and it's largely because of him that I am comfortable with guns, gun safety, basic carpentry, basic mechanic skills, motorcycles, etc. To take something like Father's Day and twist it into a sick joke just rubs me the wrong way. Still, I have very thick skin and am pretty much a free speech absolutist, so Karl is welcome to hold and express these views. I just find the holder of such views to be disgusting.
He got a pretty negative reaction to this post, and tried to play it off as "just a joke" and not any sort of self loathing or promotion of genocide; it's not anti-white but anti-racist. Yet in the very same post and reply chain, he complains about white fragility. I find it very hard to square this circle. While I struggle to find the humor in the Father's Day post, there is a very obvious butt of the "joke". It's a troll post that targets white people in an attempt to expose white fragility (which he clearly admits).
A later post:
"DEATH to all who stand in the way of freedom for queer people"
This is pretty clearly a call to murder people, which Karl and his buddies attempt to deny. And which freedoms, exactly, are we talking about, Karl?
There is a lot more of this stuff, all posted by Karl to social media, going very much against the grain of American gun culture. As people started to notice this, compilations of Karl's material were posted to ar15.com forums. As the drama was blowing up, Brownells backed completely out of the WWSD deal, which Karl had some stake (5% of something, I forget) in.
I have some thoughts about what is motivating all this drama, which I will save for a further comment.
Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: X will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.
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