Rex
2yr ago
I wonder if they still say this.
Is this kind of thing common knowledge that is just left unsaid? Was I just in some sort of bubble where I dont hear it, but everyone knows it?
I just saw that LibsofTickTock is back from a 1 week twitter ban. It seems the ban was a result of an alleged harassment allagation. If you look at the details of the allegation it appears to be specious at best. A completely anodyne call to a hospitial to confirm their transsexual medical procedure options was characterized as harassment that made a doctor fear for their saftely.
This seems to at least loosly fit the DropKF playbook. It’s sad to see that it works, but it’s unsurprising. I think KW and LOTT are onto something. Documenting the most controversial aspects of the trans movement seems to be complete unnacceptable to these people and they will use all of their power to have it striken from the public conversation.
Rex
2yr ago
Galadriel is a Mary Sue, but I guess she is in the books too. We'll see how her story develops.
I heard an interesting take on this. She is a universally loved character in the books and movies. Some say that RoP is changing her characterization into a standard victim narrative so that they can show her overcoming her oppression. People seem very offended by this since she’s coming off like a huge bitch in the first few episodes. Some sort of character assassination to further the modern feminist narrative.
What do you think?
Rex
8d ago
Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP? I’m asking seriously. I only see reports where it’s implied based on the context of us having spent the last week talking about them. The X community seems to doubt they were used. There is a lot of speculation that this was another telegraphed strike that allows US and Iran to save face and deescalate.
I have zero confidence in my ability to know what actually happened here and make any predictions about the future.
I decided to check in on plebbit over at /moderatepolitics/. What a total embarrassment. There’s 1000 comments there all basically saying that Iran has been denuclearized, defanged, and is is either about to collapse or lash out with mass casualty events against the USA. As I said, I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we did fully destroy Fardow with 6 MOP and it was a perfect op. But the lack of even entertaining other possibilities is sad, but not surprising.
The comedy is indeed one of the the best part of the game. I’d reccomend the Jp voice settings though.
Rex
3mo ago
Doubting Bucha when we have so much confirmed evidence is pointless. It is what before we used to call FUD at the start of internet. I am that old.
As a sidebar, I started in the internet around 1999, in the forum era. So I missed usenet and bbs. FUD is from that era? What corner of the internet was this? Asking sincerely, was it the anti-war crowd?
As I’m sure you know, FUD has now been taken up by pro-establishment types online. I’m curious about the lineage of the groups that use this term.
Rex
6mo ago
There is a fan overhaul mod called Vox Populi, that for my money, makes Civ5 the best in the series. I started with Civ way back in Civ 2 and have played them all, including Civ6. I highly recommend it. Its main focus is improved AI play and i think they accomplished their goal and made it much more replay friendly. Once you "solve" civ on Diety the game gets quite boring.
Rex
2yr ago
I had a baby last year. Within hours of birth the medical team tries to get you to give a baby a Hep B vaccine. I’d love to hear someone explain to me why this is necessary. A vaccine for a virus that has no plausible mechanism for infecting the vast majority of newborns in general and my child specifically. A virus that is almost exclusively found in homosexuals, prostitutes, and IV drug users. My wife had multiple STD tests during pregnancy, as do all pregnant women in under medical care. There is zero immediate risk of being infected. Negligible short to medium term risk.
Even if one were to make the case that this Hep B vaccine safe, so just go along to get along, I think we all have enough experience to know that many people feel lousy after a vaccine. I’d love to hear why it’s necessary within 12 hours of a baby’s life outside the uterus to trigger their immune system. Why do they insist on doing this immediately?
It’s really ludicrous.
Rex
2yr ago
I tend to agree with you. The entire internment camp story appeared out of no where 5ish years ago and was convieniently timed with chilling western-Chinese relations.
The Muslim groups in western China that are oppressed used to be on the US list of terrorist organizations. They were quietly removed from that list a few years ago.
I imagine the Chinese apologist line is that these are Islamist extremists that have executed terroist attacks in the past. They’re surpressing them not unlike how Israel deals with Palestinians.
It’s not at all surprising that western liberals would be up in arms about this. Islamophobia is one of their pet issues.
I have no idea what really goes on in western china. But I certainly don’t think that the state department, cia, ngos, and media are telling me the whole truth. In fact we’ve seen them make up lies out of whole cloth many many times when it serves their strategic interest.
Rex
2yr ago
Have you seen the @whatever show on YouTube?
You may have seen clips of the guy asking modern girls dating questions and get absolutely ridiculous answers. The show is very clippable and the women are ridiculous, however he usually has 1-3 men and women that have a much more traditional view on dating and relationships. And I think they offer good advice.
It’s a fascinating show regardless. Give it a try.
Rex
2yr ago
Ackowledging I suffer from epistemic learned helplessness, have you considered that western propaganda is just that good? It’s easy to dismiss obvious propaganda in the opening weeks and months of the war. But when you have the entire western media ecosystem singing the same pro Ukraine tune for a whole year, I think most people just shrug and say “I guess Russia is a joke after all”
I’m not even saying Russia is doing well. I’m just suggesting that a year long propaganda campaign can work on even the most skeptical people.
Rex
2yr ago
Thanks for asking. I haven’t googled this in a while but it looks like the iron air battery projects are moving right along.
Here’s some detail that was just announced on Friday. It’s all moving very quickly.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/xcel-energy-form-energy-storage-coal-iron-battery/641386/
Rex
2yr ago
Climate seems to have an impact. When you have long winters, you need to plan ahead and develope large ag or industrial capacity.
If you can just pick fruit off a tree all year. No need.
It’s pretty hard to find any warm
Climate country that produces cars. Though I imagine there’s local South American brands I don’t know if perhaps.
Rex
2yr ago
I'll grant that are can be quite subjective. I'll also note that I'm not educated in art so I dont know if i have the tools to adequately explain this. But there is no doubt to me that there is a universal aesthetic that reflects beauty. This tends to come back to nature. Landscapes and vistas. The human form or even the animal kingdom in general. Fitness in the evolutionary sense. For a long time we became better at expressing this aesthetic in various mediums. Then we took a u-turn with modern art and focused on the most absurd, ugly, and unnatural things the human mind can create.
I dont think we need to turn this into a whole modern art debate, but there is nothing natural or beautiful about that video. In fact seems to optimize for the most unnatural and deranged movement and sound one could imagine.
To answer you question, I perfer whatever art is at the opposite end of the spectrum than what is in that video (modern art).
Rex
26d ago
What was the nature of the conspiracies? Asking so I can have a rubric for my own views.
Rex
1yr ago
Rex
1yr ago
Isn’t there quite a bit of chatter from ex-nato generals about Poland intervening in Ukraine? Wasn’t that a few weeks ago?
Perhaps this is in response to that.
I don’t know how likely it is that we see polish military fighting Russians in Ukraine but I reckon it’s a hell of a lot more likely than the speculation you’re putting forth here.
And even if I were to grant you that you’re totally correct here, what are we to do about it? Fund a ukrainian war for the next x years to preempt it? It’s still not worth it.
Rex
2yr ago
This is all great for an employee. I'm suggesting that being married is an advantage for being invited to senior leadership.
Rex
2yr ago
Does anyone know how easy or hard it is for non politically correct actors to get ahold of comparable tech?
Is the actual code to create a LLM simple enough that it could leak? Is the compute necessary to train it limited to commercial scale hardware or can you do it on a PC or small server? Is access to the training data hard to come by? Is the fact that we know it works enough for someone to develop their own models in parallel in a small dev group?
Simply put, can this tech leak to non compromised groups. Or will we only have access to the censored version.
I’m talking in the short to medium term, assuming no major strong ai breakthroughs.
Rex
2yr ago
I’m in a IR marriage with an East Asian. As I explained to my parents, the specifics here matter. It sounds like the examples you gave are specific to certain pairings. And the deficiencies relate to what are clear negative issues that are likely passed on genetically.
I’m sure there are pitfalls to white asian pairings as well. If my daughter is stereotypically Asian, I don’t personally see any obvious problems there. I think I prefer my wife’s attitudes to the generic western white woman who will put their daughter on hormone birth control at 13 and not think twice.
The obvious pitfalls with Asian men is trickier. If my son were stereotypically Asian it would certainly be a bit alien to me but I think the race specific stereotypes are not inherently negative. Anime and riced our cars may not be high status but neither are they serious negatives. My childhood experience wasn’t alpha jock so it probably not worlds apart either. Though there is a high potential for some disappointment here.
Perhaps I’m am blind to issues other would see as profoundly negative. That’s entirely possible. This was all considered when I married my wife and the altertive white women in my social circle all had significantly more negative issues. Not everyone can have it all.
Rex
6d ago
I previously expressed some skepticism about the details of the US strike. And I noted that many on X were questioning it as well.
One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.
Now it appears that this Iranian attack on the Qatar military base did no damage, cost no lives, and, if Trump is to be taken literally, the Iranians called them up and told them it was coming.
And now we have a ceasefire.
Was this just all theater? If it were, what would look different?
Obviously it’s a good outcome. The only downside it see is that it makes the US look incredibly weak to be led around by Israel. But then again, that’s par for the course.
What a puzzling thing. Another downside would be further emboldening Israel, the Israel US lobby, and the pro war faction of our leaders.
Rex
4mo ago
- If the rumours are true that Musk is sending these e-mails from a jury-rigged server rather than an official secure US government system, then the e-mail would show up as external in Outlook, and my actual immediate response would be to report it to IT security as a possible phishing attack.
This is such a non-issue in my opinion. The correct analogy would be that you receive a phone call directly from the CEO's deputy, where he verifies his identity, and tells you "you're about to receive an email saying...". In such a situation, I imagine the calculus would be different. Reporting it as a phishing attack would be malicious compliance or outright disruptive and you should expect to be on the CEO/deputy's shit list.
I'm sure there are a lots of things DOGE intends to do with this special project. Identifying the most disruptive federal employees is hopefully at the top of this list. The best strategy for any fed employee is to keep their head down and get lost in the hundreds of thousands of other low level fed workers. The email is brilliant because this stuff is like catnip to the most ideological of trump's enemies. They literally cant resist fighting back and "Resisting". It's truly a brilliant move.
Rex
1yr ago
I just bought a new PC after not having one for nearly 10 years. I went sort of nuts getting games: Total War: Rome; Dyson Sphere; Ultrakill; Satisfactory, Elden Ring, EU4, Monster Hunter World; Trails of Cold Steel 3 (difficulty mod); Cyberpunk; Witcher 3; and a few others I cant even remember. Kerbal space program too. Its my first go round with that and its not too bad. I wish the career mode had just a little bit more...production? I dont know, it seems like the edges are unsanded.
Noting has really drawn me in. My go to at the moment is Elden Ring, im maybe half way through a replay on that in advance of the DLC coming. I was really hoping Dragons Dogma 2 was going to be good since I really loved DDDA, but it seems to be a bust. I;ll wait till the DLC comes out and hopefully they get a hard mode.
As an adult, I really need complexity or extreme difficulty in games. Stellaris is really evergreen for me and I havent done a campaign in a while. I might download a new version with all the DLCs and give it another go. That game can really suck me in.
I’m also not suggesting it’s fair. But I think @walterodim’s opinion is very common.
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