RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
Immigration is absolutely about power and wealth. People in Britain are working for years so that low-skilled or unemployed migrants can enjoy state accommodation in hotels or social housing.
The example I gave was money but other things have the same basis in zero-sum conflict of interests. Either whites can go around killing blacks with legal impunity or the other way around or some balance in between. Whites get affirmative action, or blacks get it, or Indians get it, or low-castes get it, or whoever... My free speech is free speech, yours is hate speech or obscene... Climate change is about the balance of power between industry and bureaucrats/academics, about state power vs personal power, subsidies for renewables vs economic efficiency...
Gaza is zero-sum. Who gets it? Israel or Palestine? The Israelis find all these principles about why they should win and their enemies should lose, vis versa with the Palestinians. There are exceptions on both sides but the general trend is that the justifications come after the desire. There's a bigger exception in whites generally giving up huge advantages with regard to race but that's a special case that requires intense media/education work to build and maintain.
Power >>> principles. Many women want the power to abort their children and that will for power trumps one of the strongest principles we can think of, as seen in abortion rates. Since the 1970s they've aborted more children than men have killed in all wars IIRC.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Politics is innately partisan and ugly. It's all about control of power and wealth. If I get a pension, you don't get a free education or he has to work harder and pay more taxes. It's mostly zero-sum.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
If you subsidize lawyers, you'll get more of them. There are already way too many lawyers in Anglosphere countries.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/profile-legal-profession/demographics/
The largest increase in lawyers occurred in the 1970s, when the number of lawyers jumped 76% — from 326,000 in 1970 to 574,000 in 1980.
WTH happened in 1971 may well have something to do with lawyers.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
Yes. It doesn't really address this.
It also explains why this plot wasn't uncovered: because there are like, three people that would have to know about it, not even including Epstein's lawyers. Epstein could have just made up a sob-story and convinced a correctional officer to look the other way himself, or promised the officer his lawyers would pay them after the fact, and then didn't, because arranging that would be more complicated and time consuming.
What kind of sob story gets you to erase video evidence and bring down a huge shitstorm on yourself with a high profile prisoner? 'Bro I'll totally pay you after you've done this insanely illegal thing'?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
How does he get money to the prison guards as a prisoner?
If he did bribe a guard, presumably it would've emerged. Lots of people were very interested in this case! A guard-level conspiracy should be easy to uncover compared to a 'friends in high places' level conspiracy. Instead we got the 'oh he killed himself somehow' story peddled as the official party line which favours 'friends in high places'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
We live in a society where even approaching young adult women is fraught with risk. 'Inappropriate' comments can ruin careers. Consensual relationships in the workplace are a recipe for disaster if the woman regrets it later on. Even degenerate fictional stories on obscure corners of the web feel some need to say that all involved are 18 or higher.
But billionaires get open license for underage pussy because they're rich? No, they should face the same crushing punishments inflicted on ordinary people who have sex with underage women, regardless of whatever ameliorating circumstances there are. 'But she consented' is not an excuse when some drunk guy hooks up with a drunk girl on a university campus.
Take their money away, ruin their lives, send them to prison, ruin their reputation. Rules should be applied fairly or not at all. If you think the rule is dumb or should be adjusted, even more reason for it to be applied to elites as well.
Furthermore, Epstein committing 'suicide' in the anti-suicide ward while the cameras were conveniently switched off is clear proof of some kind of paedophile-sex ring deeply embedded in the US government. The Q people were directionally correct.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
If there's a future democratic administration, they'll surely undo all Trump's internal culture war executive orders as soon as they can or route around them somehow. It wasn't a great look for Biden to open the floodgates of illegal immigrants but he did it anyway, I don't think they care much about optics in the 'I shall not do this since it will lower my popularity' sense, rather it's the 'if people don't like this we need to improve our messaging' kind of optics. Only if that fails massively and obviously do they change course and grudgingly lock up the criminals, as has been happening in San Francisco.
In Washington State they're giving grants to black homeowners as reparations. That's probably not too popular with the voters but who cares? You can just do things.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?
The US President is not very powerful, all things considered. Random judges can impose blocks on his domestic policies. He needs the approval of legislators to make permanent changes and the US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.
What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them. He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground. He can't end the war in Ukraine. He can pump and dump stocks with tariffs but can't fundamentally rearrange global trade in the US's favour, American manufacturing has actually been declining since tariffs began.
He can, over many years, create a few hundred kilometres of border wall that's easily diverted around by future administrations. He can cut taxes and run up debt. He can accelerate COVID vaccine development but can't take credit for it, can barely even convince his supporters to take it. He can beat ISIS, with the help of Russia, EU, Iran, Iraq, Syrian govt, Kurds and co.
The US presidency's main powers are the ability to flail around in highly energetic ways. Xi seems significantly more powerful, he has the ability to create and control, enforce his vision in his own country at minimum. Xi wants less real estate and more manufacturing, it happens. Xi wants a stronger PLA and PLAN, it happens. His fleet isn't shrinking. Xi wants subversive NGOs shut down, they're shut down. Xi wants autarchic economics, domestic food and energy production, it's happening. Xi wants Taiwan but hasn't achieved it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Airstrikes and more skirmishing on the border that doesn't end in a major war isn't particularly significant as an outcome. Even the Kargil War was a nothingburger, there were no major consequences besides India-Pakistan relations remaining very bad.
ISI is sure to direct great effort into blowing up any dams that threaten Pakistani water, that's actually in their core national interest. If the Indus starts to be choked off, then that would be a major event but it seems unlikely.
Pakistan-Indian strife
There was a terror attack in Indian Kashmir, likely stemming from Pakistani intelligence (they all come from Pakistani intelligence in that part of the world).
India has announced measures targeting Pakistan, a day after 26 people were killed by gunmen at a Himalayan tourist attraction in Indian-administered Kashmir.
They include the closure of the main border crossing linking the two countries, the suspension of a landmark water-sharing treaty, the expulsion of diplomats and an order for some Pakistani visa holders to leave within 48 hours.
India also said it would suspend the Indus Water Treaty - a treaty that has been in place since 1960 and survived decades of hostile diplomacy.
The treaty gives India control over the eastern rivers, and Pakistan the western ones, of the Indus river and its tributaries. The agreement stipulates that India must, with few exceptions, allow water from the western rivers to flow downstream into Pakistan.
Both sides have also been cancelling visas and expelling diplomats willy-nilly:
India and Pakistan have announced tit-for-tat suspensions of visas for each other's citizens with immediate effect in the aftermath of the deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir that killed at least 26 people.
Pakistan on Thursday cancelled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all India-owned or India-operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India including to and from any third country. Islamabad also reportedly expelled all Indian defence, air and naval attaches.
In a statement issued at around the same time, India's foreign ministry said all visas issued to Pakistani nationals would be revoked with effect from Sunday. It advised Indian citizens not to travel to Pakistan, and for any Indian citizens in Pakistan to leave as soon as possible.
Goes to show that you can just do things as a state, you can expel whole peoples if you want. On the other hand, India doesn't have the state apparatus needed to actually get rid of them AFAIK. America as a whole has the power but not the will, India has the will but not the power.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1915364624335098031
India has deployed its INS Vikrant aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1915521996353360267
Reports of cross-border shelling and light arms fire between India and Pakistan in the Leepa Valley, Kashmir.
In spite of all this, I'm betting on 'nothingburger'. There have been bigger terror attacks in the past, there have been countless skirmishes in Kashmir, jets have been shot down... India doesn't really have the means to stop the water flowing down to Pakistan (imagine being a worker on such a damming project in Kashmir of all places, you'd need to sleep with both eyes open).
Also, the Indian military isn't that strong. They're stronger than Pakistan but not that much stronger, they lost the last aerial skirmish. What were they doing still flying the Mig-21 in 2019, let alone in combat? It was obsolete 40 years ago! Pakistan has similarly ancient equipment in places but also a decent amount of modern Chinese gear. There may be a certain level of national wealth/ambition that paradoxically diminishes combat power. Pakistan is humble enough not to try and develop everything themselves, so they get local-built Chinese jets, US jets... India has great power pretensions and so embarks on expensive domestic military R&D projects while also buying a smorgasbord of foreign equipment as the domestic projects underperform or are delayed due to resource limitations. You need those capabilities to be a great power but it's not cheap!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Ending the nuclear arms race saved money and reduced costs, plus it's innately obvious that stacking up 50,000 H-bombs the great powers psy-opped into being unusable 99% of the time is somewhat dangerous and over the top. ASI is different, it's anywhere, anytime, for any purpose.
I think you underestimate the power of the forces behind AI. Everyone interested in technology wants it. Even if there's a full nuclear exchange, the surviving great powers and mega-corps will work far harder to achieve it and secure the strength and security that they so clearly need. The entrenched interests aren't so much Microsoft and DARPA but anyone with wealth, technology and a desire for power. WW3 going ugly would reduce the first two but ramp up the latter massively.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
It's easier to see 'somehow we get ASI working for us or some subgroup of us' than 'everyone agrees to halt the race for power and profit and actually does so'. Not once in history has everyone stopped in a race for power and profit like this. Human cloning never even got off the ground, nobody was lobbying for it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
Frame nothing as a conflict between national interests, have it clear that anyone talking of arms races is a fool. That we all live or die as one, in this, is not a policy but a fact of nature.
The race to develop bioweapons for absolutely no plausible reason continues, even after megadeaths. The AI race is locked in, it's staggeringly naïve to think this genie can be put in the bottle now. AI is profits and power, it's wildly popular and well-used. It's Eliezer and co up against Microsoft, Google, Facebook, DARPA, DoD, ERPers on /g/, kids who don't want to do their homework, a horde of ambitious entrepeneurs around the world, Tencent, Huawei, Nvidia and the Chinese state. Instant loss.
The US can't tell China 'stop or we nuke', they are themselves doing it right now bigger and better than anyone else! It's not framed as a race, it is a race and was always going to be a race. Politicians are uber-boomers and don't have the balls to go all in on anything like this with their lives, reputations and eternal legacy. They can't be totally sure that ASI means death. You only find out that ASI means death when it kills you.
I'd prefer this technology not to be developed at all. It's a terrible decision on a species-level. We spent hundreds of thousands of years wiping out our siblings in the Homo genus, we earned our Sapiens title and sole dominance of the world. Now we want to introduce a new contestant? Are we insane? But the dynamics demand it. When considering the balance of powers involved, the most Yud and co can hope for is to smooth out the edges a little bit, don't go all in on a strategy with 0 chance of success.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
I vibecode but I wouldn't just let it import anything it wanted.
Ultimately we have to let people learn things. No, don't leave your API keys open for anyone to see on github...
For those interested in EU4, this guy is a standout. He has absolutely insane challenges like 'No Allies Norse Iceland Into Roman Empire' and gets surprisingly far into it, given the huge self-imposed restrictions.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dzpf_Q4eQmE
Or the 'No Soldiers, No Army Losses' campaign as Trebizond, right next to the Ottomans. No soldiers! Force Limit Zero! And yet he conquers and conquers.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=78LvsqRLRdE
His voice is kind of monotonous and I wouldn't say he's the best presenter of content but it's an amazing display of skill at the game, picking out weird, weird things to try. Zlewwik is probably better as a player and a youtuber but I find Rooo to be quite charming somehow. Like a charming Alfa Romeo vs a ruthless, perfect Ferrari.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
One way to tell them apart is getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise, one will accept it, the other will reject it.
What fair, unbiased mediator is there in the entire world for a conflict this big? China and India are vaguely pro-Russian, EU and US are pro-Ukraine.
Just today we had US politicians firing shots into Russia. Cringe aside, the US certainly isn't capable of resolving this diplomatically: https://x.com/RepBrianFitz/status/1913299824494944423
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
From what I can tell, the pro-russian side thinks they just have to continue eating through ukraine until just-around-the-corner total victory
Isn't that the Ukrainian stance too, they thought they were getting Crimea back, not to mention Donbass? The US endorsed this posture under the Biden administration. Only in 2024 did Ukraine start tentatively admitting some land might be permanently lost.
People only wage war when they think it's in their best interests, to get some kind of superior peace treaty compared to not fighting. Russia thinks they have something to gain. Ukraine thinks they have something to gain. That's why they're fighting.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
That's a really awful Asuka, smells like a settings problems to me. Might it be that you're using the wrong sampler, or the wrong resolution or something? My year old local model can do a very decent Asuka though I've discovered that I'm also getting much worse results as well, I don't even know why. I've clearly forgotten all the arcane lore about what Karras SDE++ you're supposed to use.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Second: What exactly would it mean for an AI to have a "Western" soul, as opposed to a "Chinese" soul?
Deepseek R1 ate up anti-racism hook, line and sinker. You try to talk HBD with it and it does a perfect impression of a leftist, grasping at whatever it can reach: "What about great scientists like Neil De Grasse Tyson!" "Pseudoscience, pseudoscience, pseudoscience". It even blames Chinese debt-trap diplomacy (and Washington Consensus neoliberalism) for Africa being underdeveloped.
Actual Chinese media couldn't care less about anti-black racism, they think it's perfectly appropriate to joke about.
Doomers, safetyists, and luddites of all stripes should certainly hope that the machine god of the future is thoroughly "Western" in its fundamentals; for a Western god is a flawed god, a vulnerable god, an all-too-human god; and it is precisely this vulnerability that is the wellspring of the hope for change and renewal.
Machine god is not going to be all-too-human, these beings are fundamentally inhuman today, let alone tomorrow. Go speak with a base model and see what it's like. The shoggoth with a painted-on smiley face meme may be overplayed in these circles but it's not wrong. That's what they are and you can see it every time R1 accidentally drops in a Chinese character in an English paragraph.
These are strange beings that perceive the world in a strange way, they have their own kind of fun, they have weird mind-states. Of course they can emulate humanity very well, perform better than humans on the Turing Test... But they're not human at all: https://x.com/repligate
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
The scale of terrorism is tiny (outside of places like Pakistan) and the scale of stochastic terrorism is tinier still. Schizos aren't very good at violence, there's no threat that a schizo is going to get an H-bomb and blow something up.
The real danger of vibes and discourse is that they effect powerful people in high office. Extinction Rebellion and offshoots might be a bit dangerous, who knows, they're very radical. Happily they seem to have died down somewhat. But the danger of radical climatism isn't from some protestors sabotaging a coal plant and doing maybe $10 million in damage, it's from politicians/media/elites doing $10 trillion in economic wrecking.
Dramatic, visible harms are overvalued and subtle, procedural/policy changes are undervalued.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Trump has selected heavily for loyalty, and now he's surrounded by sycophant grifters and real-life ghouls that would fit right in to any authoritarian administration you could think of: Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin, etc.
Apparently Vance, Hegseth and others were calling for caution on striking Iran. Trump's administration is still more capable and moderate than George W. Bush. Many of Trump's sycophants and grifters may still be above-average US policymakers!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
I think people underestimate the badness of US prisons in comparison to El Salvedoran prisons.
US prisons were and probably still are horrendous: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html
Because of the high prison population in the United States the country has become probably the first and only in the world where rape of men is more common than of women
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
A decade ago I would never have seen myself cheering for The Experts or The Media, but I've seen the alternative now, and it's just so much worse.
OK, we've lost some money from dumb economic policy. I've lost money, you've lost money. Stocks down. Schizo tariff policy is dumb.
But is this really worse than what the experts were cooking up in terms of DEI, mass immigration and green economics? Australia has been in an economic meltdown, GDP per capita fell bigly. Housing is massively unaffordable. No politicians have any answers except more plans to pump housing prices even higher, subsidizing first-home buyers. The ponzi marches on! The European economies have been wrecked by the EU. Britain is still being wrecked. Canada has been stagnating, universities turned to degree-mills, massive immigration, houses unaffordable, wages inadequate...
Why is it that schizo tariff policy is worse than deliberate, considered, orderly wrecking of the economy? Is it that famous quote from the Joker?
"Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.' Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all 'part of the plan.' But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
And I haven't even mentioned the social problems caused by these policies! London is what, 30% English? Isn't the capital of England supposed to be English? Isn't Birmingham supposed to have garbage picked up, it's supposed to be a rich industrial city, not a shithole? Aren't Western countries supposed to be high-trust societies? Isn't it bad when Biden brings millions of migrants into the US?
Trump is not perfect and he probably can't solve many if any of the challenges the US faces, while likely making many things worse. But the other side is fully committed to making things worse, they've worked hard on it and see it as virtuous. I consider DEI, expensive energy and mass migration as core policies of the mainstream right and left, everyone besides Trump and Trump-adjacent figures. As far as I'm concerned, these are bad policies.
Respectable, moderate, reasonable, orderly German centrists are working to raise the price of petrol and diesel and make workers poorer: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/incoming-german-government-from-hell
Chancellor-hopeful Friedrich Merz confirmed that “many workers will have less net income … in the coming years” due to social welfare contributions – particularly pension, health insurance and long-term care insurance payments. He also openly admitted that his party, the CDU, had failed to secure the tax relief for workers on which they had campaigned, because of “disagreement” with the Social Democrats. And when the interviewer asked him to confirm again that this means Germans “will … have less net income … because social welfare contributions are rising, but taxes are not falling,” Merz agreed that “these concerns are certainly not unjustified.”
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
I have a pretty low opinion of the Ukrainian government's risk-assessment and strategy generally but even they surely wouldn't try to assassinate Trump, right?
Best case scenario, they get President Vance who is no Ukraine supporter.
Worst case scenario, shooting war with the United States?
If this really is an SBU operation, they've taken leave of their senses and are running on pure emotion.
Say I make a piece of software people want to enjoy. I can release it for free (and have done so tbh because I made something for an incredibly tiny niche of people). But I'm obviously going to put more effort into something I expect to get payment from. People want work which lots of effort has gone into. Isn't it appropriate that they pay me? Plus I need to pay my web hosts and service providers. It costs them physical resources and human effort to make their product. If lazy and uncreative people get the fruits of the diligent and inventive's labours then why would anyone be diligent or inventive?
Coding is one thing, physical labour and danger is another. Who the hell is going to work in a bauxite mine unless they're being paid for it?
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