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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We go back to having white men be 70% of characters in all entertainment media, and another 25% are white women with zero character traits beyond 'sexy and horny for the main character'?




I think it's at least worth noting that the racial demographics of the United States were substantively different in the '50s-'80s (about 85% of the country was considered "white" by the 1960 census, and most of the rest was black) such that, while white characters may still have been overrepresented in those eras (not doing a formal study here), the background expectation should be much different today, where closer to 60% of the country fits that description.  Complaining that the culture of yesteryear looks like the people of yesteryear seems a bit misplaced, in my opinion, although I don't have quite as strong of thoughts on current television demographics.


This, of course, doesn't apply to the gender breakdown of leading roles, so your mileage may vary.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Unless I'm missing something, it seems like there is no good business reason for an email queue to be 3-4 days steady state.




Your question is reasonable.  I've always assumed (without evidence) that "steady state" isn't perfectly steady, and overprovisioning to get to zero backlog constantly would be expensive.  Both short-term day-to-day noise and seasonal effects (few warranty claims on snowblowers in July) could make volumes unpredictable, and a couple of days slack would let you schedule shifts based on volume.


Although as Oracle pointed out, it could be a contractual obligation.  I've certainly had interactions with, say, insurance where I've been quoted 60 days to evaluate a claim, but gotten a response within a week.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Visible-source seems to have helped track down the whole story, as did the development discussions that happened in public (though what about e-mail/discord?), but the initial discovery seems like it was entirely separate from any source-diving, and a lot of the attack never had its source available until people began decompiling it.




There isn't any evidence directly supporting this, but I saw a claim that this entire claim of discovery ("slow SSH connections") could easily enough be parallel construction prompted by The Powers That Be (tm) aware of this effort for other reasons -- which range from "we know our adversaries are trying to insert this code" to "we run our own audits but don't want to reveal their details directly".  Even in such a situation it's a bit unclear who the parties would be (nation-state intelligence agencies, possibly certain large corporations independent of their respective governments).  The obvious claim would be something like "NSA launders data to Microsoft to foil North Korean hacking attempts", but "China foils NSA backdoor attempts" isn't completely implausible either.


That said, I can only imagine that sneaking a backdoor like this into proprietary build systems would be even less likely to be detected: the pool of people inspecting the Windows build system is much smaller than those looking at (or at least able to look at) libxz and it's (arcane, but somewhat industry standard) autoconf scripts.


Also, this is the sort of thing that I have a vested interest in as a long-time personal and professional Linux user.  I have the skills ("a very particular set of skills") to follow the details of issues like this, but there isn't yet any organized way to actually contribute them.  I'd be willing to spend maybe a few hours a month auditing code and reviewing changes to "boring" system packages, but I'd never think to look at libxz specifically, or to get enough "street cred" for people to actually take any feedback I have seriously.  And even then, this particular issue is underhanded enough to be hard to spot even when an expert is looking right at it.  Does anyone have any suggestions for getting involved like this?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Half-baked thought: all of those industrial accidents don't involve victims aware that it's happening.  I can imagine that, while it can sneak up on you, being told you're going to die invokes all sort of deeply-rooted vestigial instincts.  Industrial workers in confined spaces aren't generally trying to hold their breath or escape.  This may apply to some of the times lethal injection goes poorly as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Cottagecore and associated cultural trends are 95% LARP. Obviously, there are a few people who really are into it, but my observation so far has been that this is far more likely to mean "I moved to an exurb and picked up a horticulture hobby" than anything remotely resembling actual rural or off-the-grid living.




I think you're right that the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to seriously take up off-grid living, but I think we are seeing a slow shift in the zeitgeist around the margins.  Sure, someone who fills Pinterest boards with cottagecore styles and buys a potted plant isn't personally making a huge shift, but I do think from talking to friends and co-workers that we're seeing a bit of a rebound into, for lack of a better term, touching grass: hobbies, IRL social groups, and such.  It's less clear to me whether it's countering the broad, growing online-ness of the last two decades, or more specifically the stark digital isolation of 2020 (likely both), but the social status of "being online" has, to my eyes, peaked as of a year or two ago.


The Internet has completed a full cycle from being the exclusive domain of weird academic types, to primarily high-paying tech workers, to everyone's parents, and I wouldn't be surprised if the median (American) internet addict already has or will soon have a lower income than the average American.  Admittedly, that's ill-defined: it's hard to escape the Internet completely, but it feels to me like constantly burying one's nose in a phone playing games or watching videos is becoming a low-status behavior.  Less so for email, reading books, or texting friends, but I've seen people engaging in analog activities (writing, drawing, photography) get explicit positive reactions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Colorado Supreme Court Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yeah, none of those things count.




The text of the Fourteenth Amendment specifies "insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution of the United States.  Conspiring (within the Executive Branch) to issue orders that violate its plain textual explicit separation of powers (which SCOTUS ruled those orders did) sounds at least as plausibly in violation as Trump "raising an army."


(Although this would probably effectively rule out any incumbent president running for re-election, to which I probably say yeschad.jpg)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but the EU has exhausted its disposable stocks of arms and armor and the US, which has enough disposable firepower to zone rouge a medium-sized country, is a) not a charity and b) kinda getting busy with other stuff.




One point that I think bears mentioning more often is that there is a back-channel game at play here: the US probably could fund or supply this war itself, but has been trying to pressure (Western) Europe into properly funding it's own defense.


There is that video of the Germans at the UN laughing at Trump suggesting their military expenditures were inadequate and that Russia was not to be trusted, but official statements about missing NATO GDP targets on defense spending have been going on for multiple administrations.  Here is an easy chance for the EU to do so, and it's failing in a tragedy of the commons: Germany isn't likely to get invaded soon, so why should they pay for it instead of Poland?


Also worth mentioning is a political zeitgeist in which the EU has often historically protested American foreign policies (most notably the 2003 Iraq adventure, which I will concede probably deserved it, but also the presence of US troops in the EU, support of Israel, and a few other military activities like Libya), but also expected Team America, World Police to show up when war came to their doorstep.  The US seems to be trying to balance its hardware support with a goal of getting the EU to pull it's share.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How much does the average Democrat care about Republicans? How much does the average Republican care about Democrats?




I think this is one place where the Internet has severely soured the discourse.  I strongly suspect that the median answer in both cases is that they care more than you expect, and that the loud cases you see online aren't truly representative (although I worry they are becoming moreso).


There exists genuine disagreement about how best to care about, say, single-parent families ("encourage marriage"/"throw money at them") with both sides accusing the other of being counterproductive, but as a fairly moderate voter, I don't generally doubt the intent on either side.  There are some obvious cases of motivated reasoning --  although it's often hard to tell when one's reasoning is so-motivated.  I have friends across the political spectrum, and while the level of empathy I see for others varies, none of them seem to operate purely selfishly (although such people probably exist outside of my set of friends).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While I wouldn't overall classify Heinlein as a right-wing science fiction author generally, Starship Troopers won the 1960 Hugo for best novel, and is generally considered a (far?) right-leaning book.  So the answer isn't "never".  Looking at the list of winners (and limiting to books I've read, which does bias against the last two decades) gives A Canticle for Leibowitz (1961), Dune (1966), Ender's Game (1986) which I'd at least describe that way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars.




On a purely academic level, I wonder if there's an argument that, in isolation, "he's a fed!" is not actually defamatory.  The claim is (I assume) that he was defamed as "working for the feds by encouraging protesters to enter the Capitol," but the second half of that claim is pretty evidently true from the video evidence.  Is the first half alone, even if it is false, a negative claim about a person?  I'm sure it is to some people, but it seems fraught to allow a court (in which most of the professional parties probably see "working for the government" as a positive, or at worst neutral claim) to generally rule as defamation something that only a small minority actually find disparaging.  The overall claim is probably disparaging to the government itself, but I'm not aware of any law against alleging government conspiracies.


Sure, I believe he's received a bunch of hate mail for these accusations, but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course of anyone who achieves that level of infamy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Possibly.  I think you might be able to track net cash outflows, rather than purchases directly, to cover most of it, but that admittedly only works for people that use banks and would have trouble with people who get paid and pay in primarily cash.  But the existing income tax system has those problems too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's bonkers how much you pay for plywood smaller than 4'x8'. Basically a "Hah hah, you don't have a truck" tax. It's fully double per square foot for a 2'x4' sheet versus a 4'x8' sheet.




At least my local Orange Box store has a couple of saws they will use to rough cut things like this.  There isn't always someone on hand to operate it (I've had to wait either in line or while they paged the guy in the store) but they don't charge for a simple "make it fit in my car." I will admit I have to spend more time planning my cuts on the panels as a result.


For long boards, I've usually just waited, but I have considered bringing a handsaw to make it work for small jobs.  If I ever need a lot, they do rent trucks by the hour, but I've never tried that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


While underage drinking, and providing minors with alcohol as an adult, is of course illegal in the United States,




There are some subtleties to this (which aren't terribly relevant to the described incident): my jurisdiction allows parents (or guardians) to provide alcohol to their supervised minor dependents, as well as spouses.  Obviously not to whole parties, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Plenty of bad behavior happens among the Silicon Valley elite.




As much as I find the statement itself reprehensible, I think there's a kernel of truth in an infamous quote from a former president:




And when you're a star, they let you do it.  You can do anything.




High status lets people (almost exclusively men, in this case) get away with a lot, in part because people are willing to put up with more to be with someone high status: Christian Grey's romance plays don't work for anyone who isn't a hot, young billionaire.  The quid pro quo is implicit, and rarely spoken about, although I seem to recall a few blow-ups in recent memory where it seemed part of the drama involved (by deceit or misreading) mistakes about how high-status one party was.


And nobody really complains because it's hard to declare that behavior with "groupies" (for lack of a better word) is categorically non-consensual.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Everyone is free to build their own GNU/Linux distribution




If anything, GNU/Linux is, itself, an example of voting with feet.  There's a reason we're not running GNU Hurd for a full GNU stack.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always assume that anyone unironically quoting Schenck agrees with its conclusion that distributing anti-draft pamphlets is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.  Which seems like a downright fascist perspective, but what do I know?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Carol Hooven was, as far as I can tell, forced to retire from teaching at Harvard within the last two years for making the controversial statement that there are two sexes while promoting her book about testosterone and its effects.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do find the "it's a Korean peninsula proxy war" commentary to be amusing precisely because it's not completely wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I watched Idiocracy (2006) recently and had a similar experience.  Sure, it takes hard swipes at Bush-era conservatives, but the fundamental premise is about how intelligence is heritable (this is, in fact, just assumed without discussion) and how educated populations aren't having kids.


Also Team America World Police hit differently in a 2023 in which opinion seems to have swung back towards "actually, some intervention might, hypothetically, be for good" with wars of violent conquest ongoing in Europe and potentially elsewhere.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To play along with the metaphor, it probably means either as you suggested ("perhaps that's a bad destination") or that civilized taxis aren't interested in serving "people like you".  I wouldn't be surprised if the people in question see it more like the latter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a non-Catholic (but familiar with some of the traditions), what are the bounds of "blessing"? It's not a high sacrament: blessing meals is ubiquitous, and I've never seen a priest refuse to provide a blessing in lieu of communion to non-members.  I know there are limitations on selling blessed objects.


I wouldn't be surprised at priests blessing weapons of war (although most of the examples that come to mind might be orthodox or protestant, there is a Catholic concept of Just War), but I can imagine a refusal to bless, say, objects of a prurient nature.  Is this generally up to discretion or is there a general bright line rule I'm not familiar with (or more likely, some combination)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think you're completely wrong here, but in my experience in engineering, there is a fundamental, but useful distinction between the guys with the degrees running simulations and making designs and the technicians (frequently with at most a two-year degree) that actually build things and put them together.


This isn't to discount your plant scientists, but they probably won't even think about out-of-specialty things like booking crop dusters and beekeepers six months in advance, or maintaining good relations with the migrant farmworkers that actually pick your apples (agriculture isn't my wheelhouse, so maybe these aren't the best examples.)


Really, I've come to believe that our systems work better when both types work together, and while we probably overvalue the ivory tower types overall (and I say that as one), lots of 20th century attempts to "put the working class (alone) in charge" turned out pretty poorly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think if I were the Baltic states, and I was depending exclusively on the EU (sans America) for protection, there would be some legitimate questions about whether German or Spanish troops were ready and willing to fight on our behalf, or whether we'd be ceded like Czechoslovakia in 1939 for "peace in our time" and continued natural gas to Germany (largely moot post 2022)? Would the French or British use nuclear weapons in our defense?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The NSA has known about using language models to generate text embeddings (or some similarly powerful form of search based on semantic meaning rather than text patterns) for at least 15 years. This is why they needed absolutely massive amounts of compute, and not just data storage, for their Saratoga Springs data center way back when.




Not commenting on this directly, but I remember back at $UNIVERSITY (a top 100 school) listening to a math professor discuss career prospects for math majors.  On one hand, they could go into academia, get paid peanuts, but get all the fame of publishing their work.  On the other, they could work for The Nation's Top Employer Of Mathematicians, get paid well to work with really really smart folks on hard problems, but have to suffer in 10-20 years when someone else published the same results in open academic literature that they couldn't ever talk about, and never get credit for.


Or they could go into finance, but that mostly just paid well and was boring from a research perspective.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To be clear the practical consequences of conversion therapy being legal/accepted is parents imprisoning their children in facilities against their will and subjecting them to unbelievable cruelty for months or sometimes years at a time.




I'm rather skeptical this is a common occurrence.  One could point to this 2018 NYT editorial by Sam Brinton and plenty of other press of their accounts, but the author has since been fired from the Office of Nuclear Energy after being caught stealing women's suitcases from airports in Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, and even queer-friendly publications have published pieces doubting those conversion therapy stories.


Like many things, I don't doubt that bad examples have happened somewhere, but I've seen far more stories claiming nebulously abusive therapy and surprisingly few examples of people naming names and testifying in court about their published accounts of what I can't imagine a jury finding to be anything other than child abuse.