Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14d ago
Fair points. I live in the countryside, so urban concerns are somewhat invisible to me.
Absolutely this. Firstly the choice to want an EV in the first place is purely virtue signalling - nobody I know ever justified it with anything other than highfalutin saving-the-planet rethoric - and secondly the choice to not pick a Tesla might have been justified by practicality, but let's be frank: it isn't. What it is is "Musk man bad". EVs are like anything related to the whole "carbon is killing the planet" narrative and its associated Ablaßhandel (Indulgence/Pardon Industry) - 100% virtue signalling.
It's so very obvious that as far as I'm concerned, any claim to the contrary will need thorough justification. I'd have to contort myself into a pretzel of charity to pretend otherwise.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14d ago
@Southkraut gave me a bit of pushback for writing on screens in my daughter's presence, which I felt a bit bad about, but also not. I do agree with Zvi and Scott that it's probably bad if Everything is Childcare, and parents aren't allowed to read an article and post about it because the children might be infected by the proximity to a screen. (The children are painting. They have used their agency to decide that they want to paint, asked for the paints and supplies they need, and the older one has made a little notebook full of concept sketches)
If it works for you, it works. I won't argue.
It's just in my immediate experience that parents trying to get screen-time in while parenting set themselves up for misery. First by conditioning themselves to seek and expect superstimuli when they should be performing their daily duties (I strongly believe that you should be able to get through a day - at least as long as the child is awake - without needing to feed your addictions), secondly by being an example to their children that will teach them to habitually stare at screens, and thirdly by getting their priorities in a jumble: Do you actually need to read that article in the middle of the day? Can it really not wait until the little ones are asleep? Or are you just going easy on yourself? Be honest with yourself on that one.
But still. If it works it works.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14d ago
It might be, but I feel like this theme of naked violence superseding all other concerns is rather universal. It pops up pretty much regardless of time and place. It's in the Iliad and it's in Roman history and it's in Mein Kampf and it's in The Wild Bunch. There may be situations in which it seems out of place, but none in which it truly is out of place. Like the good book says:
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14d ago
Well crap. It was meant as a reply to https://www.themotte.org/post/2013/smallscale-question-sunday-for-june-1/331790?context=8#context, but I fumbled. I have corrected my error, in so far as any error can ever be corrected.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14d ago
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.
Edit: A mis-post.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
17d ago
Fair point and good suggestion.
It's all temporary anyways, isn't it? A few more years and the whole internet will just be bots talking to each other.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
18d ago
A little concept work - some writing and a lot of editing until almost nothing but the good bits was left - and a few lines of code, which I wrote with my daughter on my lap, holding still and keeping quiet. When I was done, she very proudly told me "Daddy look how nicely quiet I was!".
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
20d ago
Them's fightin' words.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
I always found it attractive
You found self-pity attractive? Please explain yourself. That sounds about as wrong as it gets.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
Please elaborate.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
"we're cooked, gooners."
You're cooked, gooners. We're at the decline into decadence stage of the cycle of civilization, the polar opposite of the whole "when old men plant trees in the shade of which they shall never sit" stage. This is probably terminal, and no, a carpet of maggots eating a soon-to-be-corpse do not constitute a healthy living body. This civilization, which fails to achieve a remotely reasonable TFR, is absolutely fucking doomed. It will die and something new will take its place that does not suffer from the same affliction. Probably said maggots.
Go down with the ship or find some Amish to link up with.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
Ah fair enough; on a strict reading you did say as much.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
Respectfully, this seems slightly off the mark. There's plenty of RETVRN-posting on the Motte, sometimes quite overtly. Just look at all the people who indeed advocate for Christianity as the only path to running a functioning civiilization.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
LLMs can collect answers from StackOverflow and sometimes get the right one. How nice.
Meanwhile, I'm switching off CoPilot because it keeps suggesting that I use classes and methods that plainly don't exist.
Things that happened to me this week.
Confirmation bias in rural Germany.
Incident 1: The pharmacy.
Following some advice from my physician, I went to the pharmacy to discuss allergy medication and possibly buy some. The clerk was a muslim woman, and spoke bad enough German that I ended up backing out of the store rather than risk relying on her contradictory information. The whole conversation would have been better off conducted in Italian or Latin or some other language I simply do not speak, using hand and feet, rather than under the pretense that broken half-German does anyone any good.
Incident 2: The gas station.
At the local gas station, I parked at the pump, exited the car, and was immediatelly welcomed by an overgregarious foreigner (though his German beat that of the pharmacist!) who addressed me as his brother and wished my family good health. I gave him a polite enough "Hello" and went on to pump gas. He pivoted to begging for two liters of Diesel. I gave him a "No." with baseline politeness and no room for argument. He went on to accost positively every customer at the place, variably commenting on their families or the beauty of their cars. Normally I just leave beggars alone, the same way I leave alone cats and pigeons, but in this case I went to the cashier, paid, and notified them of the goings on, following which they sent out the manager to shoo the beggar away.
Incident 3: The national public radio station.
Tuning in to one of our national public broadcasting stations on the car radio, and expecting yet another sermon on carbon emissions, I was greeted by yet another sermon on carbon emissions.
Incident 4: The regional public radio station.
Tuning instead to a local (Well, not really. Actually a Bavarian from a few miles further east) station, and expecting news on soccer and local politics, I received a sermon about insufficient representation of women in local politics.
Incident 5: Unknown street.
Arriving in an unknown larger town on an errand, I failed to find my destination on a first attempt. I spotted an elderly man with a toothbrush moustache, and thinking him either a neo-nazi, an autist or a joker, and in any case someone who would respond favorably to attention, I greeted him to ask for directions. He gave me a "not understand" in reply. When in Atomized Globalized Urban Place, do as Atomized Globalized Urban People do, and so I just got out my phone and checked google maps instead.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
21d ago
FWIW OP used the LLM to do his math for him, but still - I don't want to be double-checking a chatbot's napkin arithmetic.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22d ago
You really like rubbing it in.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22d ago
How much are you willing to bet on this timeline?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22d ago
I checked out the prologue, didn't proceed any further yet. That far in, it seemed fairly strong except for the combat. I doubt there's any way to make JRPG combat worth the time.
Maybe I'll give it a go if and when I have more time.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22d ago
No offense, but can the mods please just blanket ban any post that builds an argument based on LLM output?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22d ago
Thanks for the input. I'll try to stick with it a little longer then.
Newspapers don't say, or epxlicitly claim it was random.
Though the Tageszeitung (https://taz.de/Herkunftsdebatte-nach-Attentaten/!6087003/) deplores the obvious racism in the discourse surrounding this event.
Fair. I know there are plenty of angles from which Blood Meridian is just edgy cringe.
More options
Context Copy link