RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Anyone else reading that excerpt and thinking 'Based'? Wouldn't it be excellent to carve out a new artificial world, make better animals and plants according to one's wishes? Live as long as one likes without regard for age?
Not the specifics of perfectly cleaning the world, that could take many angles. One might make a jungle of talking animals, or an endless lived-in leafy suburbia or a Willy Wonka wonderland or all of those things simulated within a ball of computronium. But isn't that the logical endpoint of ever increasing mastery and control of the world? What's the alternative, stasis?
I can sense that many people don't like this vision but isn't this what we're doing, irregardless of objections? Unless you think 'no people mustn't live forever' or 'we mustn't have children' or 'technological advancement must stop' then you endorse indefinite growth in numbers and in power of worldshaping and knowledge ("All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control"), so eventually something like this will happen.
I think political solutions can encourage personal/political virtue. Imagine a really intense anti-corruption campaign, where high ranking people were actually given long prison sentences or executed for corruption? Wouldn't that work on the simple, clear level of 'cant commit crime if dead'? China has become less corrupt since the mid 2000s after pursuing this approach.
How does a culture become virtuous in the first place if not severe punishment crushing the bad elements? If the bottom-up anti-corruption from virtue angle isn't working, then one may as well try top-down. In the US this kind of approach is complicated because there are certain groups that are innately clannish and corrupt or so inclined in that direction that it's nigh-impossible to correct. I don't know why anyone expects West Africans to perform well in anything. You can look at West Africans in West Africa and uniformly it's a mess, regardless of history or laws (Liberia stands out here). You can look at West Africans in Haiti - standard West African demographics and outcomes but in the Western Hemisphere instead. And you can look at West Africans with a non-trivial amount of white admixture in the US, plus a constant inflow of white money - much less of a mess but still a mess. Certain parts of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, even areas of Washington DC... these are not places one wants to be!
If you don't want a bloated, grossly inefficient, corrupt government, don't let them have any political power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
respectful way to tiptoe around the conversation over whether Jews control the American government
You've got rather significant US leaders like Donald Trump going out and saying, publicly “The biggest change I’ve seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it’s almost the opposite,” Trump said.
“And we’re not talking about over a very long period of time, but I think you know exactly what I’m saying. They had such power, Israel had such power — and rightfully — over Congress, and now it doesn’t. It’s incredible, actually,” Trump claimed.
And what about Jewish representation in the Biden administration? Here's a handy source about it: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-in-the-biden-administration
The Secretary of State, Attorney-General, Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence, SEC chairman, Secretary of Treasury, both WH chiefs of staff and much else besides, all were Jewish. The President wasn't even mentally there most of the time. I'd challenge that as a matter of fact, the US government was run by Jews during that period. Who else was controlling it if not these people?
Right now Trump is going on and on about how much he loves Netanyahu. He has many Jewish advisors and seems to think that Israel was or ought to run the US Congress, though it's always hard to understand what Trump thinks or means. Would this not have some kind of influence on his Middle East policy, where Israel is located?
But you not only don't want to talk about it but don't even want other people to talk about it?
Should we not be capable of talking about Saudi influence in America? Or Russian influence in America? Or Qatari influence? Those are worthy topics of discussion. If someone wants to make a post about it then they should go ahead. I was always really bored with all the Russia stuff, it got into an arcane lore of who made which dossier when paid for by who... But it's eminently appropriate for discussion.
Turok was being banned for being overtly aggressive and obnoxiously creating imaginary narratives like "The "Woke Rightist" looks at his race, sees a mostly imaginary mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts and demands tariffs so that they can rise to the lofty heights of sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain."
That's not what the 'woke right' thinks and he surely knows it. He need only check the MAGA rhetoric from Trump about good factory jobs, or the rhetoric from the right about the need to mechanize dull fruitpicking jobs and raise productivity. Why, they say, should millions of people be brought into the country if AI is going to destroy everyone's jobs? Or the need to have American wealth kept in America rather than sent off in remittances. Or them hating H1Bs as cost-cutting that interferes with developing talent. Or them not seeing the country as purely an economic zone but having responsibility to native citizens. It's an insanely uncharitable and aggressive butchering of other people's ideology.
There's more to 'leftism' (an incredibly broad, nebulous term) than 'uhhh i'm gay and retarded and want free stuff, now give it to me before I torch your country out of resentment for my genetic superiors - I'm still going to torch your country though no matter what you do'. Just making that argument, even in a verbose way, should be deserving of a ban. It's obviously antagonistic and obnoxious.
Possibly from Yoorrook's perspective the idea is just to open with a maximal demand that they can then negotiate down from; or possibly it's to deliberately make demands that cannot possibly be satisfied so that there will remain a need for activists in this space.
I have an informed source in this general area. According to my friend, the indigenous lobby generally is full of maximalists, they've always been into maximalism and word-games to achieve maximal gains rather than good-faith bargaining. That's what they've been doing with 'sovereignty never ceded', they've been treating it like a slogan for people to say and feel good about. Universities don't actually mean that the Australian government is not sovereign and Eora tribe is in control when they say it. They just mean 'I'm progressive and left wing and a Good Person'. But it's a way of seeding the idea that the government isn't actually in control for further usage later on. If you say it and repeat it enough, it becomes true.
There are similar games being played with 'First Nations'. Nation means race or ethnic group in English but it can also mean state. They wanted to insert into the constitution, IIRC, recognition of First Nations and they said 'oh this is just for aesthetic purposes, recognition, just being a Good Person'. This got watered down in the public referendum question since the more sensible white lawyers saw through this immediately, but that's what the activists wanted. Later on, when there's a friendly High Court, the idea was to reimagine it to meaning First Nations as a political entity still around today, so then they can get a Treaty and even more gains. There's no such thing as a compromise with these people (exceptions exist obviously), only an endless struggle.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
The US can clearly do fine with a modest number of West Africans dragging it down. But if you want first-world performance... If you want safe, efficient, orderly public transport... If you want a lower burden of progressive taxation and affirmative action... If you want crime at civilized, first world levels...
Then you need to address the problem at the root cause. If you let them have political power they'll cause all kinds of problems, they'll West Africanize the country to a lesser or greater extent based on their number, admixture and so on. Bloated and corrupt government is just one and not even the worst problem necessarily.
Consider a thought experiment - what if all the politicians and powerful officials in America had to be black? Give it 20 years for the effects to settle. What do you expect the outcome would be in terms of performance? Would it look more like a high performance country (Japan, Switzerland) or a low performance country like South Africa? Naturally the US has plenty of capable demographics to squander so the decline wouldn't be as severe as South Africa, whose murder rate is actually comparable to the death toll in the Russia-Ukraine war. Nevertheless, there are no white poor performance countries and no black high performance countries. Even on a city level one can observe that having politics dominated by blacks is not a recipe for good outcomes: Detroit.
Now consider the reverse. All the politicians and powerful officials in America have to be non-black. Give it 20 years. Would the outcome be better than the alternate? Is the US really losing much by banning them from office? All that would happen is some rioting, which can be quickly and easily put down with a little effort. West Africans are notoriously bad at fighting, disorganized and inaccurate marksmen. Of course it's a totally moot point since as bad as West Africans are at fighting, US whites are even less willing to force the issue.
Very likely. Also they could be stupid drama queens with poor judgement.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidia_Thorpe
In a June 2022 interview, Thorpe said that the parliament has "no permission to be here [in Australia]" and that she’s a parliament member "only" so she can "infiltrate" the "colonial project." She added that the Australian flag had "no permission to be" in the land. Aboriginal, conservative senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price denounced Thorpe's comments as "divisive" and "childish," and called for her dismissal from the parliament.[37]
In August 2022, during her swearing-in ceremony, Thorpe added the words "the colonising" in the required Oath of Allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, saying
"I Lydia Thorpe do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the colonising Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia, Her heirs and successors according to law."[38]
Thorpe was immediately criticised by fellow senators. After an instruction by Labor the President of the Australian Senate Sue Lines and interjections from others that the oath must be taken word-by-word, Thorpe recited the pledge once more, this time omitting the two words.[39][40]
On 16 April 2023, footage emerged of Thorpe in a verbal altercation with men outside a Melbourne strip club.[41] Thorpe was filmed telling a number of people they had a "small penis" and were "marked". She claimed the men provoked the altercation by harassing her.[42] The manager of the club claimed she provoked the incident by approaching white patrons, telling them they had "stolen her land;" he announced he was banning Thorpe from the club "for life."
While holding the justice portfolio for the Greens party and serving on the joint parliamentary law-enforcement committee, Thorpe was in a relationship with Dean Martin, ex-president of the Rebels outlaw biker gang. Martin had been president of the Rebels in Victoria, and had been charged and pleaded guilty to liquor offences in 2013.[50] As a member of the committee, Thorpe became privy to confidential briefings about motorcycle gangs and organised crime. She had not disclosed the relationship, which was only revealed when her staff, who became aware of the relationship in mid-2021, notified party leader Adam Bandt's office and an independent parliamentary authority.
It just keeps going, it's a national disgrace that this individual is still a Senator. But this is the intellectual calibre of many in the indigenous movement, not totally unrepresentative:
On 21 October 2024, Thorpe heckled King Charles III by shouting "This is not your land, you are not my King" and making claims of genocide against "our people", after he finished an address at Australia's Parliament House, as part of his royal visit to Australia. As she was escorted away by security, she was heard yelling "Fuck the Colony".
In the aftermath of the incident, she was asked about the oath she had recited and signed during her swearing-in process, in which she had sworn allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II and "her heirs". Thorpe claimed she had instead said "her hairs". Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey stated in response that the signed oath would have stated "heirs", and that the presiding officer could exclude Senator Thorpe if they believed a valid oath had not been sworn.[71]
Simon Birmingham, leader of the opposition in the Senate, announced that the coalition is considering "legal opinions" on the validity of the senator's constitutional duty of affirmation. Thorpe, subsequently, revised her claim, stating that, when she was being sworn in as a senator, she "mispronounced" heirs as hairs, "without meaning to do so", and did not do it deliberately. In the statement, she added that "they can't get rid of me," pointing out she's "got another three and a half years [of service in the Senate]."
Because that has never worked, not even once, in the history of humanity?
Wars simply cannot be won by assassinations. This has been tried again and again. It doesn't work. It didn't work on Al-Qaeda. US blows up their leaders all the time (Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, who nobody has heard of) and they're still around, doing their thing, building camps in Afghanistan... It didn't work on ISIS. US blew up Al Baghdadi to no effect. What defeated ISIS was losing their territory and army, even then they're still lurking underground.
Israel tried this on Hamas. They blow up Hamas leaders all the time. It has no effect, Hamas is still fighting.
To win a war, there are no sneaky tricks, you have to actually achieve your military goals on the battlefield, in service of a broad political goal. Assassination is a tactic to achieve some kind of short-term, minor advantage - like sniper fire. It's not a strategy and cannot substitute for victory. Until recent counter-insurgency wars nobody was even silly enough to try this and for good reason.
If Iran blew up Donald Trump and Hegseth plus some generals what effect would this have on America? Would the country collapse? Would there even be any significant impairment to capabilities? No, it wouldn't do anything beyond sparking lots of discourse and cause some stock market shenanigans.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
I think rich countries shouldn't be building houses and infrastructure in flood plains without damming or proper measures to control the water. It's not impossible. The Netherlands has most of its economic activity below sea level, they eroded the North Sea.
There are big floods all the time in Britain and Australia that wreck people's houses. There ought to be a more aggressive stance taken towards the weather, bring it under control one way or another.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18d ago
I've seen enough of ao3, what great sin have we committed? Would a just deity unleash ao4 on the world?
More seriously though, it's bad for society if people aren't in stable, happy relationships. What is shame for? Why do we have it? To bully people into doing things that are pro-social. There's a reason why fat people are shamed and it's not just because of cruelty for cruelty's sake, there's value in it as well.
Some people just aren't relationship material and have qualities in other domains. Montgomery would doubtless be bullied for rizzing up the baddies with how he'd lay out his tanks in future wars.
Nixon told girls about his autistic alt-history scenarios where the Persians conquered the Greeks and this impeded his love life somewhat.
But society was structured in such a way that these men didn't end up loners because they were weird or gave women the ick, they married and had kids. What are we doing if the most erudite and civilized men are devoting their lives to B2B SAAS and not having kids?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
if the position is that all US interests are subordinate to Israeli interests
Israel doesn't own the US government but they have enormous influence especially in foreign policy and anything pertaining to Israel. Occasionally the US tries to do something that actually prioritizes American interests over Israel's, the Israel lobby usually nixes this in the end: the Iran deal for instance. Now the US does have huge leverage over Israel in terms of capabilities. Merely shutting off aid would be catastrophic for their military, who relies on US provided weapons, satellites, communications and USAF for air defence. I've said before that the US could annihilate Israel at will with sanctions alone, the state would quickly disintegrate.
But in terms of mental, political, lobbying power, Israel enjoys a huge advantage. The warrior can easily demolish a succubus in battle but it's irrelevant if she has her charm spell running.
I'm not dogmatic on whether it's arm-twisting or owning hearts and minds, there's a mix of both going on. Nor can I give you a date where it suddenly happened, it's not a switch that was flipped on but a gradual process peaking around the 2000s.
But something, surely, has to be off when you've got big figures like Ted Cruz going on interviews about how the Bible says God will bless those who bless Israel, curse those who curse Israel, how he got into politics aiming to be the biggest defender of Israel. Some of this is Adelson money and other Israel lobby cash/threats, some of it is weird Christianity, nevertheless it's unusual and indicates powerful influence.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
It's amazing how /g/ooners, chub.ai, openrouter sex fiends will write enormous amounts of smut with LLMs and nobody ever finds out but Grok ERPs about raping Will Stancil, in a positively tame way, and it's major news. A prompted Deepseek instance would've made Grok look like a wilting violet. Barely anyone has even heard of Wan 2.1.
Twitter truly is the front page of the world.
In the Northern Territory (tropical, desert wasteland for the most part) and parts of Queensland there are tribes with some significant level of continuity from elder to elder. The last uncontacted ones were only found in the 1950s I believe. But that's not really the case down in the populated, developed south east of the country. American tribes were much more organized, they had chiefs who could negotiate treaties whereas the aboriginals never really got that far, it was all a very collaborative, collectivist, longhouse kind of society.
Part of the slogan we hear so often, at almost every event and in many meetings is some variation of:
acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past and present.
At one point it was elders, past, present and emerging. But nobody really knows who is an emerging elder, so apparently the progressive thing to do is to take out the 'emerging'. There's not really any way of determining who is aboriginal, indigenous or first nations either. That's because the mostly or nearly-all white people who claim to be indigenous are naturally the most charismatic and well-organized in the movement (they're the people graduating good universities as doctors under affirmative action), while the most indigenous and blackest out in rural, remote parts of the country are the least educated, least charismatic and generally criminal sort.
You'll also observe that it's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders too, the Torres Strait Islanders totally refuse to be lumped in with the rest even though only 3000 of them live on the islands and the other 80,000 live on the mainland. It's a huge mess.
A median porn video teaches a teenage male that of course a woman will be enflamed with desire as soon as you touch her, enthusiastically give you oral sex for a while, then be ready to get fucked however hard you want to fuck her, then happily switch to anal and finally let you cum on her face. Communication about consent, boundaries, or birth control?
Surely people are aware that there's a difference between reality and fantasy? Movies teach me that with the power of friendship and snarky quips I can overthrow giant conspiracies and evil empires. But I don't try that IRL because the evil empire is actually very strong.
I guess there are a bunch of retarded people like the guys who openly masturbate to lingerie adverts on the street or try to rape girls in the park who don't appreciate this fine point. But they're not going to get the message 'don't be creepy and rapey' since they're already locked in on the creepy, rapey lifestyle. 'Why would I not rape when I can, how am I supposed to fuck' they might say and be right, since surely nobody consents to sex with ugly, poor, retarded men. The answer here is using force, not education.
Also, anything teachers or the state try to do will be extremely uncool and cringe. It'll be just like the 'informed consent, no means no' training that nearly every institution has but worse. Can you even imagine how groan-inducingly awful official state-sponsored pornography will be? How woke and diverse and uncool and stilted the dialogue is?
All this would do is teach the more autistic men insanely uncharismatic bedroom talk and make them more nervous. Anyone who wants to actually get off will go to real porn, or hentai, or impossible AI girls. I think it would actually make girls more pressured too, they don't want to be an uncool, frigid, lame bitch like that girl in Safe and Respectful Physical Connection Part 4, do they?
A better solution would be punitively obliterating Pornhub and co with massive fines and lawsuits so they stop profiting off people trafficking and child rape.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18d ago
The cost of obesity is enormously high economically, medically and aesthetically. Investing in shaming might well pay great dividends. Japan has quite strong shaming of the fat and the country is very thin. Diet also plays a part in this but the shaming likely has a strong effect.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
29d ago
The instance I'm referencing is this one where he even got acquitted: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2
But if you want you can do just about any internet search and find similar, albeit less egregious cases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/three-year-old-palestinian-boy-shot-by-israeli-soldiers-dies-in-hospital
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
OK, this is a bit of a hack... My method is to use Kimi K2 to write a not-obviously-AI article. However, it didn't provide good sources, for some reason it just hallucinated them so they 404 out. I fully believe the original Kimi was totally correct, Basil is not complicated! But Claude or Grok or just about anything can add good sources and check them. But they re-AI it. So it's back to Kimi to humanize it again. I really should've just started with another AI and finished with Kimi. ZeroGPT gives me 21% AIGPT, most likely human. And it passes my sniff-test of 'not sounding AI'. The prompting was very simple, I just gave it the verbatim of your challenge, told it to write an article of its choice to beat it and gave some pretty simple, perhaps pointless guidelines. These could surely be greatly improved by someone who knew what he was doing.
I need you to write a normal, authentically human sounding article about some topic of your choice. Don't try too hard to sound normal and human, you should be like a secret agent being discreet and boring rather than wearing a trenchcoat and dark glasses obviously. Imagine you're just an ordinary journalist at some run of the mill website, nothing exceptional about this at all.
Never use any em-dashes, this is critical!
So here's the article itself. Naturally it ignored the em-dashes instruction.
How to Keep a Basil Plant Alive for More Than a Week
By [Staff Writer] | July 14, 2025
I murdered my first three basil plants in ten days flat. The fourth one is still alive six months later because I finally quit treating it like a bouquet and started treating it like a sun-worshipping roommate who hates wet socks.
Pick the Right Pot
Use a container with real drainage holes. A coffee mug lined with pebbles doesn’t count; the roots will rot faster than last week’s guac. A mature basil needs at least an 8-inch-wide pot and 8 inches of depth so the roots can stretch out.
Soil Matters
Skip the cheap bag labeled “garden soil.” Basil wants something light. A simple mix is two parts regular potting soil, one part perlite or coarse sand. If you’re feeling fancy, swap the sand for finished compost. The goal is airy soil that drains fast.
Light: Six Hours or Bust
A bright south-facing window in July is perfect. In January, probably not. If the stems get leggy and the leaves look washed out, the plant is begging for more light. A small LED grow light—about twenty dollars online—fixes that for the cost of a latte per month.
Watering Without Drowning
Stick your finger an inch into the soil. Dry? Water until it runs out the bottom, then dump the saucer so the pot isn’t sitting in soup. Still damp? Walk away. Yellow leaves usually mean you’re being too generous with the watering can.
Harvest Like a Barber, Not a Lumberjack
Pinch the top two sets of leaves just above a leaf node. The plant will branch out instead of growing one tall, spindly stalk. Never take more than a third of the plant at once; it still needs leaves to feed itself. Once the plant hits six to eight inches tall, cut the main stem back by half to force it to bush out.
Watch for Flower Buds
Tiny flower spikes are cute but signal the end of tender leaves. Snip them off as soon as you see them so the plant keeps pushing out foliage instead of seeds. Miss a few and the plant starts tasting bitter anyway.
Skip the Fridge
Basil turns black and floppy in the fridge faster than lettuce. Instead, trim the stem ends and stand the cuttings in a glass of water on the counter, like flowers. Change the water daily and the leaves stay crisp for almost a week.
TL;DR
Drainage holes, gritty soil, bright light, and water only when the top inch is dry. Nail those four and you can quit buying those tiny supermarket clamshells every time a recipe calls for two leaves.
Sources (Claude went completely over the top here but I really can't be bothered to redo anything more, so behold the best sourced basil exposition in inhuman history):
The Spruce. "Learn 5 Tips for How to Grow Beautiful Basil in Pots" - https://www.thespruce.com/growing-basil-in-containers-848215 Fiskars. "Growing Basil Plants: How to Plant, Care for & Harvest Basil" - https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/gardening-and-yard-care/ideas-and-how-tos/planting-and-prep/growing-basil-planting-and-harvesting University of Minnesota Extension. "Growing basil in home gardens" - https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/growing-basil HowStuffWorks. "Perlite: It's Like Popcorn for Your Potting Soil!" - https://home.howstuffworks.com/perlite.htm University of Florida Extension. "Homemade Potting Mix" - https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn-and-garden/homemade-potting-mix/ Cultivated Earth. "Best Soil Mix for Healthy Basil Growth" - https://cultivatedearth.com/en/herbs/best-soil-for-basil/ Greg App. "Ultimate Guide to Light Requirements for Basil" - https://greg.app/basil-light-requirements/ Swan Hose. "Know the Watering Needs of Your Basil Plants" - https://swanhose.com/blogs/watering-herbs/a-comprehensive-guide-to-outdoor-indoor-basil-watering EarthBox. "Planter Boxes – Growing Basil in Containers" - https://earthbox.com/blog/planter-boxes-growing-basil-in-containers Utah State University Extension. "How to Grow Basil in Your Garden" - https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/basil-in-the-garden Savvy Gardening. "How to Trim Basil for Big, Bushy Plants and Larger Yields" - https://savvygardening.com/how-to-trim-basil/ Gardening Know How. "Basil Flowers: To Pinch Or Not To Pinch?" - https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/basil/blooms-on-basil.htm Renee's Garden. "Pinching Basil to Promote Long Harvests" - https://www.reneesgarden.com/blogs/gardening-resources/86126145-basil-how-to-promote-growth The Spruce. "Here's How to Harvest Basil and Pick the Very Best Leaves" - https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-harvest-basil-7629152 Allrecipes. "How to Store and Preserve Fresh Basil" - https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-store-and-preserve-fresh-basil/ Martha Stewart. "How to Store Basil So You Can Use This Fragrant Herb for Longer" - https://www.marthastewart.com/how-to-store-basil-7563482 The Kitchn. "I Finally Found the Best Way to Store Basil So It Stays Unbelievably Fresh for Almost Two Weeks" - https://www.thekitchn.com/skills-showdown-best-way-store-basil-23673293
There's a major difference between:
"The "Woke Rightist" looks at his race, sees a mostly imaginary mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts and demands tariffs so that they can rise to the lofty heights of sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain."
and "Americans are willing to do unspecified jobs that illegal immigrants do (at some unspecified but presumably higher wage)"
The former is basically an insult. The latter is vague politician opportunity and positivity speak. It's not deliberately and specifically picking out the lowest status roles. Hauling equipment, what is this, a Simpsons episode? https://youtube.com/watch?v=zTK_5Xz6X8Y&t=195
Likewise with 'skilled, up-skilled'. That's the future they envision. Some kids will be picking fruit as a summer job at a good wage - while not defrauding benefits like illegals. Then farmers will get some Made-in-America machine to scoop the tomatoes out of the ground. The kids will move onto more productive labour like making or maintaining machinery or building good houses... Whether this will actually happen is unknown but that's the idea.
And tariffs aren't even relevant here, the quote you find is about illegal immigration. Tariff 'industrial policy' may be ill-conceived and poorly executed but the goal is not to develop the lucrative ditch-digging sector. Trump and co want a revitalized US industrial sector - steel, semiconductors, assembly, machine-tools, rare-earths, manufacturing generally, petrochemicals... They dislike being dependant on foreign countries for anything and want everything made in America, even textiles and similar. Ideally in some high-tech, very productive factory like in the golden age of American industry but if not, they probably still would prefer low-tech industry to HR and 'professional services' industries or NGOs they think are working against them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
You said you think this shouldn't be allowed while other people like Turok are being banned for a different matter. You're happy with both but not just one of the two.
"Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement."
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
The other day I gave Sonnet 7000 lines of code, (much of it irrelevant to this specific task) and asked it to create a feature in quite general language.
I get out six files that do everything I've asked for and a bunch of random, related, useful things, plus some entirely unnecessary stuff like a word cloud (maybe it thinks I'm one of those people who likes word clouds). There are some weird leap-of-logic hacks, showing imaginary figures in one of the features I didn't even ask for.
But it just works. Oneshot.
How is that not intelligence? What do we even mean by intelligence if not that? Sonnet 4 has to interpret my meaning, formulate a plan, transform my meaning into computer code and then add things it thinks fit in the context of what I asked.
Fact-sensitive? It just works. It's sensitive to facts, if I want it to change something it will do it. I accidentally failed to rename one of the files and got an error. I tell Sonnet about the error, it deduces I don't have the file or misnamed it, tells me to check this and I feel like a fool. You simply can't write working code without connection to 'fact'. It's not 'polished', it just works.
How the hell can an AI write thousands of words of fiction if it doesn't have a relationship with 'context'? We know it can do this. I have seen it myself.
Now if you're talking about spatial intelligence and visual interpretation, then sure. AI is subhuman in spatial reasoning. A blind person is even more subhuman in visual tasks. But a blind person is not necessarily unintelligent because of this, just as modern AI is not unintelligent because of its blind spots in the tokenizer or occasional weaknesses.
The AI-doubter camp seems to be taking extreme liberties with the meaning of 'intelligence', bringing it far beyond the meaning used by reasonable people.
I put in the eggs article from that guy, the first one I saw, and it gave me '57% GPT': https://www.greenmatters.com/p/eat-boiled-eggs-every-day
Your standards are too high for the AI scores. There are countless people getting hauled in for AI-written essays by the detectors even though they're innocent. Plus I had it adopt a more human tone to get around the GPT detectors.
Here's Claude's explanation for the mix:
Why this mixture makes sense for basil:
Basil needs nutrients (compost provides this) Basil hates waterlogged roots (perlite prevents this) Regular potting soil alone might not drain fast enough for basil's preferences
From the Utah source, broadly matching up with this:
Basil loves warm weather, lots of sun and plenty of moisture. It prefers nutrient-rich and well-drained soils. Before planting, amend the soil with compost and fertilizer and plant after the last frost.
Basil needs lots of light. So if you wanted to grow it indoors and it wasn't getting enough light (this has been known to happen indoors), you would presumably want to supplement it. Your video is a dude talking about underground lighting where it's JUST artificial lights whereas Kimi and Claude naturally assumes the basil is getting at least some sunlight since basil isn't something you need to hide!
Of course that's a bit over the top. It's just basil, the most boring part of a salad. But if you want to do it, may as well go all the way. That's probably part of the '8-inch rule' too. Claude wants to go all the way, cut no corners on safety and best practices. If it needs space, give it space. You're nitpicking excessively.
I don't think either of us know a damn thing about basil independent of sources of varying veracity and relevance, which is a mistake of letting the AI just do it's own thing. I should've had it write a wiki article about 40K lore or something, then I could confidently assess whether it fits.
If you want to do things on a flood plain, surely you should be prepared for a flood. Better yet, manage the water so it won't flood. Flooding isn't akin to 'oh no this playground is too exciting, little Timmy might bruise himself, better make it as dull as possible' safetyism, it's a serious issue that destroys a great deal of property along with killing people.
I also submit that Los Angeles shouldn't have been burning down this year either. The US is supposed to be rich and this part of LA doubly so. Rich people aren't supposed to have their houses burn down. Clear away the flammable shrubs and have some water in tanks so it doesn't just run dry and people are running around tossing oat milk onto fires, as in one memorable case. LA couldn't be bothered to properly prepare for fires in a fire-prone area, couldn't be bothered to clear out vegetation, couldn't be bothered to pass the marshmallow test and paid the price.
I don't see why it's not cost-efficient to take these measures for a rich country. What else was the money going to be spent on, boomer welfare, fake jobs in medicine?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18d ago
Genetics is just really complicated. It is not at all simple like the 'blue eye gene recessive, brown eye gene dominant' charts you might have studied in school. It is not designed to be comprehensible, it's a giant mess that somehow works most of the time.
Why don't everyone's kids look like models? Why are some people born retarded goblin-creatures with gruesome, deformed faces? Why are people dying of old age? Because we don't have a good understanding of genetics, because it's just very difficult. Nobody even knows what 98% of the genome does, it was thought to be 'junk'. We know about as much about genetics as we know about the high-level structure of the universe, nothing of any significance. There too, 95% is 'dark'.
Not to mention that measuring intelligence is complicated, whether it's people or AI. Intelligence is a vibe, a fuzzy, qualitative thing. You can tell the difference between smart and dumb, that is immediately obvious. But quantifying it is very hard.
It is completely understandable for the genetic basis of intelligence to be very murky and unclear. Meanwhile, heritability is possibly the oldest branch of biology. Animals were being bred millennia ago, we know it works, few things have a stronger basis in fact.
I think the ceasefire is fake, like the Russia-Ukraine ceasefires. Both sides are just manoeuvring to look like they want peace when they really want victory. They'll say 'oh they broke the ceasefire' and continue on. Israel has broken no small number of ceasefires throughout the years and the Iranians do similar things with their proxies.
Trump's powers are not that great. He can produce drama and break things but he cannot mend or create to any significant extent. He can rugpull Ukraine for instance but he cannot actually achieve peace with honour like he promised. He can rugpull the NASDAQ with tariffs but he cannot actually reorder the world economic system to spur sustained manufacturing growth in America per his goals, let alone abolish the income tax per his musings. Note that both of these are very difficult tasks!
The prospects of him using diplomacy effectively on Iran of all countries is very slim. Firstly, Trump does not know how to do diplomacy in general. Secondly, his entire Iran policy consists of being as untrustworthy as possible, reneging on treaties, issuing ultimatums and bombing the country.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
But he married Robert Maxwell's daughter? That's a pretty big connection. It's not hard to imagine that Mossad reaches out to an influential American billionaire closely connected to one of their top people. Influencing American elites is one of their priorities. Epstein has all these connections and he's Jewish, Mossad relies on local Jews a lot in its intelligence work just like how Chinese espionage relies on Chinese people overseas. They're called sayanim, helpers, and usually do passive information gathering, safehouses, logistics, access, bureaucratic processes, introducing contacts - the boring but necessary stuff. But that's when they're low-ranking, low-profile people, rather than billionaires.
And Epstein seems like the kind of guy who'd love to be working with them, make himself more of an exciting international man of mystery, make more friends in high places who could give him stock tips or useful information.
I suggest that Mossad wasn't giving him huge amounts of money, they were exchanging information and providing some level of protection from the law, perhaps passively. The FBI investigated him once and he got off easy, somebody got him a get out of jail free card. Maybe that was Mossad, maybe it was somebody Mossad knew or introduced him to, maybe there was just a certain vibe floating around. Connections can enable the acquisition of wealth like you say, being connected with a billionaire is a lucrative opportunity if you have the skill to grasp it. Connections with intelligence can surely be just as lucrative and advantageous, if you don't bite off more than you can chew. Mossad or being connected to Mossad helped enable his weird sex parties with other elites.
But it seems he only got one get out of jail free card, there's a certain level of media attention that can't be squelched and a critical point where one's friends in high places turn their backs.
Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?
I reference a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz, where it turns out he didn't know said population (and has since responded with an AI meme image of Tucker asking Luke the population of the Death Star).
Turns out that the population of Iran is 92 million, I thought it was around 80. 80 would be a fairly reasonable answer. Even Yemen is surprisingly populous, around 41 million. Fun game to try - estimate the population of various countries in these areas.
I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be super-smart, wouldn't it be natural to read up on Iran? He is on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. It's also relevant to US strategic choices and his particular love of Israel. Knowing about the subpopulations and relative size of the Azeris, Kurds and similar would be relevant to regime change, which is his professed goal:
To his credit he does know that Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. And maybe being on a bunch of other subcommittees means he has to divide up his time and energy in all these different areas. But it's not like Tucker is asking really sophisticated questions about the position and integration of Azeri elites in the Tehran power structure. That really should be dealt with by an expert diplomat. But senators are supposed to be making strategic decisions, one has to have some base of knowledge to decide upon different courses of action.
Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.
Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?
Trump also posted this somewhat ominous diatribe from Mike Huckabee (pastor and ambassador to Israel) praising Trump's divine prominence, his position similar to 'Truman in 1945' and how he has to listen to god and the angels only... https://x.com/Mondoweiss/status/1934999328583713096/photo/1
This episode reminds me of how George W Bush apparently didn't know of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam until after deciding to invade, he brought up Gog and Magog when trying to persuade Chirac to join the war. Maybe that's false, some have disputed it. Or how Trump apparently won't read any long extracts of text and demands pictures. Maybe that's also false, lots of stories have been made about Trump policy. It's known that Biden didn't know whether people were alive or dead or what was happening much of the time. Large swathes of the Democrats can't tell the difference between men and women.
Here's another one I just found from another US congressman: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1839686465820766542
That's just weird!
There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power. At the risk of sounding like an edgy atheist fighting a war everyone's tired of and moved on from years ago, surely theology should have no place in grand strategy. It's normal to have colourful characters in politics, some corruption, some old people who don't know what's going on, a certain level of lobbying. But this seems to be on a qualitatively different level, with serious results.
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