Rex
2mo ago
My opinion of Scott Alexander continues to crater. I don’t know how much of this story is his or the collaborators, but there is a shocking level of naïveté about everything other than AI technical progress. Even there, I don’t know enough about AI to comment.
My favorite part is the end where Chinese AI sells out China, assists a grassroots Chinese pro-democracy group affect a coup, democratic elections are carried out and everyone lives happily after.
Rex
4mo ago
I was going to reply with OP on similar lines but you nailed it.
Europe, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are a bigger threat to me than China or Russia, and have been for a long time. The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies. It’s still a threat and I hope/suspect that Trump will apply maximum leverage on this issue. If not for Trump winning, we would be screwed. By our “allies”.
The list of offenses is too long even for an effort post. Good riddance.
Rex
1yr ago
I keep going back to what Rob Costa said a week ago and retweeted this afternoon:
https://x.com/costareports/status/1807080990067576943
"Spoke this morning to a couple people close to President Biden. Hard to overstate how much he dismisses the political class and media in private. Believes many of them haven’t understood him for decades, don’t get his appeal. Cares what elected Ds with real power and voters say."
There is a decent chance that Biden is just stubbornly going to hold on at this point. The pundit class is certainly going to try to manifest Biden withdrawling, but it seems to me that the average person on the street is not there yet and remains unphased by the debate.
I think it also reveals just how weak the biden campaign infrastructure is. Even if biden doesnt have the ability to get out there and prove it was just a bad night, you'd think they would be able to bootstrap or astroturf a social media campaign to get a counter message out there. Even if its transparently fake, the fact that I havent seen a trending hashtag for #RidinWithBiden is pretty pathetic. I thought they had $90 million in the bank and just bought a $50 million ad campaign? They couldnt afford some fake follers and an influencer campaign? Of course they could. They just have no vision.
Rex
4mo ago
I thought his attire was no big deal at first. Then I read that trumps aids informed him that Trump would prefer he wear a suit. This is basically a slap in the face. And Trump seemed to even take it in stride joking “all dressed up today?” I’m guessing it didn’t help him though when he continued to be an asshole by continually bringing up security grantees in front of the press - when he clearly had been told that’s not on the table.
Rex
5mo ago
What’s amazing about musk is his perhaps pathological need to double down at every opportunity.
He supported trump at great risk to himself in the event of a loss. Having won he’s now ratcheting things up further. He clearly thinks trump and the state department will give him cover (as they should) with European regulatory issues. He’s playing an all or nothing game. To what end. I don’t know.
I was familiar with Ian from X and I actually bought into smears on him and muted him. Then he pops up on Rogan, I listen to the whole thing, and it turns out he’s completely reasonable. He makes the appropriate caveats that he’s not taking about all Jews, just the documented facts about some Mega group of influential Jews working together to advance Jewish interests. He makes the point that it’s completely reasonable for them to do this, assuming they’re not doing anything illegal. He also makes the distinction that when he talks about Israel or CIA or other groups doing something, he’s not saying that literally all people in the org are doing it. Rather it’s groups within those orgs. Again. Sounds reasonable.
I’d also add, that I think everyone should listen to that episode to get a broad tour of what a reasonable “conspiracy theorist” take is in 2025.
Rex
25d ago
Do you have any intuition as to why there are so my psychotic cyclists? It seems to select for aggressive narcissists, despite the fact that their phenotype is more of a skinny soy boy or scenester. It’s obviously not all of them, but it could easily be 50% of the cyclists on the road. Does a bicycle imbue some sort of power fantasy where otherwise meek people can easily flee if they run into the wrong type of person?
Rex
29d ago
On one had, I did not expect this fight to actually happen and I was profoundly disinterested in the media that seemed to be egging it on and trying to make it happen for the last few months. On the other hand, does anyone else get the sense that this is a staged fight? It seems so ridiculous and performative that it maps closer to WWF wrestling or Biggie/Tupac feuds that were purely stage managed events. Jon Stewart suggested as much this morning before all the big fireworks went off this afternoon. I cant help but think that he's got it right here, even though I'm sure people will say this afternoons attacks make that less likely.
This is a great post and very informative. I'll add a bit of my own experience.
You do a great job pointing out some of the absurdities of some masses, but that's certainly not the norm. I say this because i find the normie suburban XP mass to be even more oppressive. I reckon that most Catholics go to a normal diocesan church, they sing awful liturgical music from the OCP Gather book, they have a lay deacon give a homily that was emailed to them from the archdiocese. There is absolutely no energy.
To your point on lay people changing the mass. I find the music to be just the worst aspect of this. And i dont think any of this was done with ill intent. Its just a bunch of ex-hippie boomers singing modern catholic music in a folk rock style. I'll never forget the women who lead our music ministry when i was a kid. She sung kyrie elaison with hippie guitar riff every week. There's another problem - this style has been the normie suburban mass standard for a LONG time. At least 40 years as far as I can tell. These awful songs are now "classics" to the current crop of old people who are involved in the church. As i said, I dont want to be too hard on these folks because they are giving their time and energy to the church, but they are so misguided its a sin.
A few years ago I found a new parish that was run by a religious order in a major metropolitan city. I actually got coffee with the pastor before joining just to see who he was. He was a brand new pastor, so young. He had one other priest under him, also young, and a number of brothers to help out.
My church is the opposite of whatever the normie catholic mass is, but still fits within the vatican II / novus ordo framework. The priests have wide latitude to have a much more traditional mass if they choose. We dont use the OCP mafia hymm books. We have young cantors rather than some old lady choir.
Easter mass this year was the possibly the best easter sunday mass I've ever seen, surpassed only by Easter Vigial mass at this same church. Full on 1hr 45 min Solemn Mass (I remember as a kid at my normie suburban church that easter mass was pretty much just a normal sunday mass. the extra long mass was for palm sunday only). The church was more packed than usual as well, even for easter. Its a big church that probably fits close to 800 people comfortably, we rarely get 150 on a normal sunday and id reckon 400-500. I think the word is getting out. Attendance is surely rising at my parish.
All of this is to say that I believe @OracleOutlook when he says that the new generation of priests will demolish the spirit of Vatican II. I see it every week. I just hope that its crushed in time for me to enjoy it when im older. Its pretty much impossible to have something like this local to you right now except if your lucky or moving somewhere specifically because of a church.
Its also good to remind people that while Vatican II may have been a mistake, it does allow for a really beautiful and traditional mass. If only the normie parishes would learn this. I suspect it will be a while before that happens.
Rex
3mo ago
It’s plausible that there was a cabinet meeting where there were opposing views and heated discussion about important matters. Pretty standard stuff in high stakes meetings from what I’ve seen in corporate.
NYT and the rest of the media have been salivating for a wedge between musk and Trump. The media in general tried to make it a “thing” for months. This at least hints at something. And failing Trump-musk fight, a cabinet-musk fight is close enough. I have no doubt the framing and subtext of the NYT story is bullshit.
Rex
6mo ago
Try some physical exercise - lifting heavy objects over and over. I assume you have a holiday shutdown coming and will have enough time to get into a routine. Your physical situation will improve your mental situation. Busy season sucks and there is still a ways to go. Good luck.
Rex
2mo ago
If he meant AI controlled technocratic shadow-totalitarianism, he should have said so. I agree it seems silly to think that democracy could exist in such a scenario. I wonder why he didn’t address this? But beyond not addressing it, he’s specifically saying democracy wins.
Rex
3mo ago
I’d recommend listening yourself. Many people are getting a read out second and third hand. He really didn’t criticize Israel at all. He was fairly pro Israel and Zionist actually. He just notices that Epstein likely was working for elements within Israel - and that’s why we’ll never get the full story.
Rex
11d 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
30d ago
What was the nature of the conspiracies? Asking so I can have a rubric for my own views.
Rex
13d 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
4mo 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
2mo ago
They don’t need a full choir doing Gregorian chant every week. Ditching OCP, a single organist, and a single cantor would do wonder. Hell, just ditching OCP would get you 75% of the way there.
Rex
6mo ago
If anyone here is familiar with the Shawn Ryan Show (ex SEAL/CIA operator who's clearly well connected in the special forces community), Shawn just posted that hes releasing an interview today with an associate (friend?) of Livelsberger. The associate received a manifesto from Livelberger and theyre going to go through it on his show.
I've been binging the SRS over the xmas break and as soon as i heard the Vegas guy was a green beret i knew he would cover this story - but this is quite an explosive turn of events if it turns out to be legit. At the very least, i suspect Shawn's interest in this is genuine and that its not just him hopping on a trend for clicks and views. We shall soon see if there is any meat here.
Rex
25d ago
Is your neighborhood in urban or suburban area. I should have clarified that I'm talking urban locations, even small cities.
Former President Trump has picked JD Vance to be his running mate.
I must say that this is probably the best pick he could have made if we restrict the selection to just the people on his short list. Vance is the most populist of the potential picks. He has some obvious strengths with a demographic that cost trump his victory in 2020 (white males). The left seems to hate him more than any of the other potentials. He is certainly the most MAGA of the bunch, however it's hard to tell just how mercenary he is. I like that he at least had a life before politics and was a successful person before he came on the scene.
Haley, Rubio, Scott, Burgham, Youngkin. MAGA sees them all as neocon swamp creatures. They were the more moderate choices that would have put the VP just one more assassination attempt away from getting things back to business as usual.
There is a lot to digest here. Trumps statements since Saturday indicate that he wants to run on a Peace, Unity, and Love platform. I think this is a great idea, especially with Vance as VP. He should offer the country an opportunity to unite on his (our, MAGA) terms. It would be a tricky thing to pull off and Trump would need some softer language and a perfect delivery, but I think it's do-able. Let the left reject the call. Trump is perhaps in a unique position to pull this off right now. Vance gives him cover to do this.
It's also been said that VP picks rarely or minimally affect the race. I tend to think that is true which also is a reason to double down on MAGA with Vance. If its not going to be that important to the vote count, might as well go for someone that is ideologically aligned.
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