TIRM
5mo ago
men can still, to this day, be forced to fight and die for society
I understand you are not American. From my very American perspective: yes, I registered for selective service, which is our national male military draft program. I volunteered for some hypothetical draft. I predict if they ever to use the draft in anything other than an apocalyptic impossible situation in which mainland America was invaded, it would be an unmitigated shitshow. Our culture used to have a commonly used draft. A significant minority of American men were called to military service including in peace time to maintain a standing military. The Vietnam War ruined it beyond recovery.
TIRM
5mo ago
I'm late to the party but for the sake of completion: Varg is Varg Vikernes. The notorious serial arsonist, convicted murderer, white supremacist, black metal musician and sometimes Twitter shitposter. Also made his own white supremacist pen and paper fantasy RPG. He's a theater kid gone mad.
TIRM
5mo ago
proctored exam time to (mostly) write several short essays in person by hand, without electronics
I'm really showing my age here, but this is my typical high school and college experience. Tests are maybe an hour long in high school, longer in college. No electronics other than sometimes a scientific calculator. No graphing calculators since they can be programmed with the relevant formulae; including fake screens that say all memory has been just now wiped.
AP English literature, English language and history was lots of hand written essays. Just write a few paragraphs answering some question statement about some short reading.
This is all so obvious and relatively fool proof. Sit and do the work in a room in front of your professor and TAs. If you could wave a magic wand and give young me an amazing hand held device with a super-LLM, it would not have helped me at all for in class final tests. Nothing but pens and paper allowed. Unless your professor is a sadist and makes open book exams. But always no looking at your cell phone.
Even my numerical methods class final was in a computer lab with the professor and TA watching us. Do whatever you want with that base installation of MATLAB, no opening the web browser. No LLMs need apply since only the final exam doc and MATLAB are allowed to be open on that computer. Using the meagerest mental faculties, I memorized the few solution methods they taught me and performed them under my professor's watchful eye. I don't see why now that doesn't equally work. I could have tried to cheat and opened the web browser to Google answers. But I didn't and couldn't given the monitoring. LLMs are not beyond Google in this respect.
Reading this thread I see more a problem in instructor will and discipline than LLMs. In class, no cellphones, no laptops, write down your answers tests. Problem fucking solved, like they were for me 20ish years ago.
TIRM
5mo ago
I don't use it at home. I use it at my job and it is a viable replacement for expensive and slow to order cnc'd fixtures. Real quick draw a fixture around a part and print it. We have rows of 3D printers for the design engineers and put them to good use.
And may I present: https://old.reddit.com/r/fosscad/top/?sort=top&t=all
From my point of view we are living in the future.
TIRM
5mo ago
This is the best way yet to permanently torpedo the refugee program.
I predict a Democrat will be in the White House soon. Probably next election. They'll scramble to selectively undo Trump's work. Expect the NGO cash spigot to open back up.
TIRM
5mo ago
tech bubbles that ultimately failed to really pan out for one reason or another, like ... 3D printing
We are in a golden era of 3D printing. Now that a few key Stratasys patents have expired they no longer have a stranglehold on 3D printing. Anyone can make a FDM 3D printer.
A few high performance airplane components are 3D printed thanks to SLS delivering full strength metal parts. This is the good outcome for 3D printing as a practical technology.
I've seen proposals for tech worker unions. It's mostly about social justice and workers refusing work due to ethical concerns. As though a union could block a corporate contract with the Israeli government or the US military. As though less work is good for us.
Another main issue is making it harder to fire tech workers. It being easy to fire tech workers is a good thing. Driving out weaklings is obviously good. It makes the rest of us more valuable.
The one defensible point they make is regarding number of hours worked. I understand why some people don't want long hours. I'm still against the proposals since hiring more people to do the same amount of work would probably result in a decrease in compensation per person.
The above points are pushing for more people and person-hours with less work. That should result in a decrease in total compensation per worker. My entire concern is total compensation. Their concern is progressive culture warring and an understanding of workers' rights that amounts to encouraging mediocrity. Our values are incompatible and I don't want a union forced onto me. They would be taking my dues and spending them on progressive political lobbying while working on goals that would decrease my total compensation. In every way bad for me and opposed to my values. And then people act like "techbros" are fools working against their own interests.
They want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and tell me it is for my own good.
TIRM
6mo ago
As Abraham Lincoln once said:
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer: If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
TIRM
6mo ago
Credible threats are 5th degree assault. He may have engaged in hard talk that's technically hypothetically assault.
TIRM
6mo ago
the government trying to address the problem in place where it is actually feasible to fix it
It is not a problem and I'll vote whichever way prevents the government from ""fixing"" it.
TIRM
6mo ago
"He's not a gang member. He just happens to like finger tattoos of skulls and marijuana leaves."
That's the arguments I've seen on reddit. I'm really missing the larger point of it. "Skulls and drugs" guy can enjoy his maybe-maybe-not gang tattoos in El Salvador. I don't see why the US particularly needs his presence.
TIRM
6mo ago
Sybil system is very much not a panopticon. The scanners are mostly in nicer urban public areas.
In slums and outside the city there are no scanners as best I recall. So nice houses outside of the city or a boarding school are scanner-free. There's a criminal underclass and illegal immigrant criminals who don't go anywhere there are scanners. There's plenty of characters who if they were scanned would get immediately death-squaded by Public Safety. There's illegal thoughtcrime music concerts that the cops eventually track down.
The Sybil system seems to mostly judge people on how emotionally cool they are. A somewhat emotional rock-loving lesbian gets solitary confinement and gassed with sedatives if she gets mad about her poor treatment. An actual psychopath feeling nothing as he runs a knife down the back of a young woman is judged as 0 crime coefficient. A really well made and rigorously implemented Sibyl system would be a very different show; as you mention about politicians and rich kids getting culled.
It's a good show. Watch a few episodes and you'll see how it makes sense as they present it. Which is a rather shitty and hypocritical implementation of this system.
How do you maintain a set-up like the one in the factory when the color vibe check should reveal "Yup, you assholes are all guilty of pre-crime harassment and conspiracy to commit harassment, everyone to jail
The factory has no wifi for security reasons. They are completely isolated from the net and even shielded to prevent transmissions or spying. The guns themselves can't do a scan, they need the Sibyl system to look through the sensor and make a judgement. The guns are bricks when offline. In the absence of Sibyl's judgment they can't even shoot in nonlethal paralyzer mode. Police gun combat training begins and ends with point the gun at someone, hear Sibyl's judgement, shoot if Sibyl allows you to. It seems to autoaim and blow criminals apart if an investigator pulls the trigger.
Other locations in the series lack scanners, such as a fancy boarding school. Some criminal characters spend their whole lives successfully avoiding scanners. That means they can never visit a public place in an urban area.
Full scans are computationally expensive and not that common. Investigator guns are very privileged in that they can demand immediate scans. In all other contexts there are rather low accuracy scans generally checking groups of people. Or none at all depending on the location.
TIRM
6mo ago
Some people need a refresher on sigmoid functions. I've thought this for a long time about singularity believers.
Early in the process it looks exponential and projecting forward a few periods gives implausible results. "At this rate of bacterial growth, the entire universe will be this bacteria in a few months" level of silliness. Obviously that doesn't happen and instead some physical constraint is reached and the system slows in growth and flattens off over time.
TIRM
6mo ago
It seems like there doesn't exist an organization that doesn't have a child sex abuse problem.
Yes, in the sense that pedophiles commonly have the big-brained idea to get a job working with kids.
Child actors are commonly sexually abused by Hollywood executives. I don't think that means the typical Hollywood producer is a pedophile. I think it means the subset of Hollywood producers who happen to be pedophiles make sure to work with child actors.
It's like that with every organization. I don't think the average youth pastor is fucking the kids. But if a pedophile happened to be a member of that church, he might get the clever idea to volunteer to be youth pastor.
TIRM
6mo ago
a crude comic of some guy (?) giving another guy (?) a BJ
Both women. One wearing a strap on.
There have been school board controversies over Gender Queer when parents discovered what was being presented for elementary schoolers to learn about gender identity.
TIRM
6mo ago
Gender Queer is, among other things, a book of gay cartoon sex. Targeted at 8 year olds and stocked in public school libraries at my expense.
I support sex ed and some Motte interpretation of the positive things you mention. But the current popular Bailey of sexual cartoon books for young children supplied at taxpayer expense has nothing to do with those positive vibes.
I read your posts and just hope your children against the odds manage to become well-adjusted adults despite your efforts
Sneering contempt against most parents.
Someone here recently criticized drivers for "selfishly trampling" on this shared infrastructure by driving their kids to school. You have the opinion that these roads are not for use by suburbanites.
A tiny portion of my taxes are spent on roads. Having paid my taxes, I feel entitled to use of public roads and entirely unsympathetic to people saying my use of public roads is actually bad.
Every now and then I get roped into visiting the nearest major city for some reason. No one can rightfully tell me to keep in the suburbs or block my use of public streets.
And I notice the contempt and sometimes hatred new urbanists have for suburbanites. I'll not pretend anti-suburban policy is neutral and just coincidentally harms me. They declare me prospering to be a negative externality and propose suitable Pigouvian taxes to correct the problem. They cannot make me want to live in an apartment downtown or ride a train to work. But they could possibly make me too poor to live any other way.
TIRM
6mo ago
Congestion pricing could be a wonderful tool to help steer more people to mass transit
I suppose. But I also really don't want to be "steered" in this one manner. They almost entirely lack pull incentives to make me voluntarily want to use mass transit. So instead they use push incentives that are naked attacks on suburbanites by urban enthusiasts. I notice how disgusted they are by me and my lifestyle and wish to avoid the punishments they have in store for me.
TIRM
6mo ago
red states will benefit from an influx of [Californians and New Yorkers]
Spicy opinion in light of Californians desperately fleeing poor governance but then importing it with them.
TIRM
6mo ago
it appears they made a mistake
"Oops. Looks like I, a career bureaucrat, accidentally foiled the Republican executive I derive all my authority from yet again. I sure hope these accidents don't keep happening every time a Republican is elected president."
TIRM
6mo ago
white liberals who unironically believe this is a railroading because their brains fell out.
They're the only group with significant outgroup bias. And they outnumber black Americans. Naively I would expect most donaters to be them.
They found a solution
I naively would have thought some significant minority of them would go for all the transwomen we work with. As best I can tell no one does. It must be more than zero, but so low I somehow don't notice. I certainly notice all the asian wives and half-asian kids.
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