ares
CDR in the US Navy Reserve. Former Googler. Computer programmer. I'm here mostly to read.
User ID: 2527
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5mo ago
You could do some military jobs!
- Leave Papers, Please: Reviewing and processing leave forms (penalties for approving too many, or approving ones with errors)
- Sweeping the same 50 square feet for an hour, making sure you look busy the whole time even though you've finished after 10 minutes.
- Navigating a warship at night through a busy shipping lane, trying to keep your closest point of approach (CPA) greater than 2000 yards for every ship out there so you don't have to wake the Captain, whose standing orders require you to tell him if you're ever going to have a CPA under that.
- Polishing your dress shoes
- Mess crank: like Cooking Mama, but you have to cook 10x the quantity, some of the ingredients are rotten, and you can't tell the difference between tablespoons and teaspoons.
- Leverage an LLM to determine how effective your speech is after telling your division not to get any DUIs over a holiday weekend. Additional levels could be to convince them not to buy a Dodge Charger at 26% APY, and not to send half your paycheck to the Filipino prostitute you met at the last port call.
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6mo ago
(Points if you can guess roughly how far into the linked NPR article you can get until the author writes the sentence "That really started to change in 2020, when police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis.")
Goddamnit I thought you were kidding. That really is in the article. So zero points for me, I guess.
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3mo ago
We had a similar issue with a neighbor playing loud music, which we resolved thanks to a bit of luck. This won't map perfectly onto your situation but may give you some ideas.
First we texted, and we also walked over a few times, asking them politely. We suspected the neighbors were inconsiderate but we started with polite and direct confrontation anyways. After that didn't work for a few weeks/months, we'd text once asking them to turn it down and call the police with a noise complaint when they didn't. This worked out great, because the neighbors (being inconsiderate assholes) had some friends over and decided to start revving their motorcycles in the driveway very loudly at the exact same time the police came by because of the noise complaint. That ended up getting them a court date, which we learned about after they complained to us about it.
Whatever happened in court, they no longer blast their music late at night.
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9mo ago
Colleges have 4 competing goals. Figure out which one you want and decide from there. Want a career that will make you lots of money? Figure out how you want to do that and get those skills and certifications and whatever else you need, no college necessary unless it's part of the certification process. Want to be a Renaissance Man, with a life enriched by an understanding of history, literature, art, etc.? State college might be appropriate. Want to contribute to human knowledge by doing Science and writing important papers in important journals? Find a school with at least some prestige in your field of choice and be prepared to play a lot of politics and be poor all your life. Want to be part of a grand social experiment of dismantling the patriarchy and white supremacy helping ensure equity across America? Well, don't, but if you must, then pick one of the many schools that makes that their priority above any actual education of its students.
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27d ago
Hence, it's good advice to "learn not to get caught". I don't parents think telling High Schoolers not to do highly inappropriate stuff has a history of being effective.
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3mo ago
One of the common failure modes of liberalism is to assume that being good means being nice when the truth is that sometimes the best and most compassionate thing you can do for someone is to tell them "Get your fucking shit together dude"
This calls to mind "The only Theodore Dalrymple article anyone reads", as Scott Alexander described it. It starts:
Not long ago I asked a patient of mine how he would describe his own character. He paused for a moment, as if savoring a delicious morsel.
"I take people as they come," he replied in due course. "I'm very nonjudgmental."
As his two roommates had recently decamped, stealing his prize possessions and leaving him with ruinous debts to pay, his neutrality toward human character seemed not generous but stupid, a kind of prophylactic against learning from experience. Yet nonjudgmentalism has become so universally accepted as the highest, indeed the only, virtue that he spoke of his own character as if pinning a medal for exceptional merit on his own chest.
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9mo ago
Could you point out where in that article (or elsewhere) there is any important insight provided by the mainstream of constructvism? I do not have a positive view of constructivism as a useful way to analyze the world or predict future events, and that article further cemented my view since it mostly seems like a posthoc justification for obviously-true statements whenever it's testable: "Constructivists argue that states can have multiple identities that are socially constructed through interaction with other actors." is untestable, "500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than five North Korean nuclear weapons" is obvious without constrictivism.
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9mo ago
Not to detract from any of your points, but as a 20-year US military veteran, I believe you have a gross overestimation of "military levels of fitness" and "ready for deployment". Add caveats of "specops" or "infantry" or "Marine" and I'd agree, but holy shit you would not believe the fatbodies I've had to work with in a warzone.
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9mo ago
I'll believe it when I see a cop lose their job for a similar donation to someone left-coded.
Hey, what do you know, I just migrated off Gmail last week, and would love to talk about my experience. I'm now using ProtonMail (https://proton.me/mail) with a Proton Unlimited subscription, and have my own domains through Cloudflare. Here's what I did:
Step 1: Create a free-tier Cloudflare account and transfer/buy a domain or three. I have had (mylastname).tech for a while, which makes my email address firstname@lastname.tech, and I like that. But if you want to buy a .vodka or .christmas domain for your primary email, go for it. I was using Gmail and Google Domains, but with Google Domains shut down I had to migrate, and ultimately Gmail doesn't play nicely with Cloudflare so I needed a new email solution. Domains will generally cost $10/year.
Step 2: Create a Proton account and buy at least Mail Plus so you can add your custom domain. You can do parts of this with a free account, but I decided it was worth paying a little for the extra features, especially the ability to send mail from my domains.
Step 3: Proton has a wizard that guides you through setting everything up to receive email from your domain, and a help center article with pictures specifically for Cloudflare. The steps include setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so your emails don't get sent to spam, and enabling the catchall address so that you get all emails sent to your domain.
Step 3a (optional): You can also configure Cloudflare to receive your emails and forward them to your proton mail address. This gives you Cloudflare's protection and tracking. This is what I did, and this is what you'd do at the Proton free tier.
Step 4: You may experience some pain, because you get to change your email address on all your accounts to point to your new domain. I had already done this a while ago. The nice part about this step is that you can create a new email address for every place you interact with. I use amazon@mydomain.tech for Amazon, themotte@mydomain.tech for here, and linkedin2@mydomain.tech because I was starting to get spam at my old linkedin address and it's easy to set a rule to autodelete them now. But it's not actually that painful: you can change a few of your main accounts and worry about the rest later, because...
Step 5: Forward your Gmail to your ProtonMail. I did this in the Gmail settings, but you can also use ProtonMail's EasySwitch tool to do it for you.
Step 5a (optional): Set up a tag in ProtonMail for emails forwarded from Gmail, then rule to automatically set it. Any time you get an email that's not actually from Google the company telling you about your Google account, that's a reminder for you to update whatever account it is. Or, as I'm discovering, a reminder to unsubscribe because why was I actually subscribed to this shit in the first place?
And that's pretty much all I needed to do. I'm creating occasional filters, folders, and tags to sort things how I want, but it's been a very straightforward and easy process. And now I'm not tied to ANYONE. If Cloudflare and ProtonMail go out of business or decide to blacklist me, I can move my domain to another registrar and pick a different webmail host, and my online accounts will remain mine.
Edit to add additional thoughts: I continue to use a KeePass database for password management, and since it's encrypted at rest I am comfortable using Google Drive to backup and sync it. I'm not planning to switch to Proton's password manager since I like the open source option. I haven't moved my calendar yet, and that might involve moving my wife over to Proton since we share calendar items all the time. I may never do that. For now it's easy enough to just open the Google calendar when I want to see my schedule.
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3mo ago
Neoreactionary internet denizen Jim has an old post where he coined the term "generational loss of hypocrisy", and I wish it was used more widely. His given example sucks, which is probably why. I'll try to convey some other examples without waging the culture war or consensus building, and feedback is welcome if I fall short:
- As described in your post, where Soviet politicians give lip service to things because they're expected to, and the newer generation of politicians believe them sincerely.
- Jim's example is people expressing shock that a female prison guard would aid the escape of male prisoners she was sleeping with. He claims "everyone knew women were like this". Personally, I find the leap from "women like bad boys" to "women will break their bad boys out of prison" too large, and that's why I'm sad that there isn't a better defense of the concept somewhere.
- Trends of work and play preferences for men and women. Boys and girls play differently (paywall bypass), but after a generation of trying to remove the stigma of boys playing with dolls, Damore got fired for his memo. Set aside the arguments of the actual culture war issues and look at the "generational loss of hypocrisy": The belief that "boys shouldn't play with dolls" is very dated, and its believers are mostly in retirement homes now. While the Baby Boomers will (broadly) approve of letting children play with whatever toy they want, they also (broadly) believe that there are gendered preferences, and going against those is abnormal. They just don't say that last part out loud. By the time we're to Generation X, there's significant support for equity as defined by the social justice movement, and expressing the unsaid beliefs of the Baby Boomers creates a hostile work environment to the point where you will be fired.
- Some climate change scientists and activists present short timelines for catastrophic destruction. There's a history of extreme claims from environmentalists since, for example, Earth getting destroyed after whales go extinct gets more donations and support than statistics, charts, and threats of "loss of biodiversity" that most people just won't internalize. People in power pay climate change lip service and make a donation, but generally don't behave as if the world actually is going to suffer these catastrophic effects any time soon. Buying houses at sea-level is an example of this hypocrisy. Greta Thunberg took the proclamations at face value and is upset that people in power aren't backing up their talk with action. Criticisms of AOC's Green New Deal include plenty in the category of "You're taking climate change too seriously": if the more catastrophic predictions are correct then it would make sense to take significant economic loss now in order to prevent it.
- Police/prison reform. Though I'm not very knowledgeable on the history of these movements, I think a lot of the older generation knows that some people are just anti-social criminals who shouldn't be free (related study), but the newer members of the movements has been pushing for the actual abolition of prisons and police.
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9mo ago
I'm not educated on these terms and this whole school of thought, and right now the gap between my understanding of how the world works and what you've linked/described about Constructivism is too great for me to understand your points. I do not see a reason why I'm not allowed to conclude that nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea should elicit a different international response than nuclear weapons in the hands of Great Britain without the constructivist need to claim that the nature of the nuclear weapons is different between the two. Like, I can change my opinions, reactions, and decisions between a good adult friend and the 14-year-old across the street when each asks to borrow my car. I'm allowed to do that without needing to believe that my car has changed. And there are inherent truths about nuclear weapons and cars that would be true regardless of social context: nuclear weapons make a big explosion when successfully activated, and cars have 4 wheels. A society that believes the will of a supernatural entity is the only cause of fire is unable to modify a nuclear detonation through prayer no matter how important the supernatural entity is in their society. A society that believes the number 4 to be bad luck and that refuses to allow anything to have that number of wheels is allowed to collectively say a car has 3 wheels, but that doesn't make it true.
Where are you getting your definition of "realists"? In the colloquial meaning of "realist", I don't see why they would conclude that a country whose government has committed genocide would be less likely to intervene to stop another genocide. The obvious conclusion seems like it could be reached by observing the real world, with real, testable things that really exist, regardless of social constructs. Measure: has each country committed genocide, and have they intervened to stop another genocide. Calculate: historically, what's the chance a country that has committed genocide will intervene to stop another genocide versus one that hasn't. Predict: given two countries, one that has committed genocide and one that hasn't, which is more likely to intervene to stop this particular genocide. The answer is independent of social context.
Again, I'm ignorant here. I want to understand why there is any benefit for believing that social context changes the reality of objects, or that we're not allowed to consider any actor as different than any other actor without constructivism. Because the downstream effects of constructivism I see are awful: college professors claiming that aboriginal interpretations of the world are just as valid as the scientific method, and the superweapon of unfalsifiable "lived experiences" that trump rational debate. I want to stop those things, and from my perspective shunning constructivism - making it costly and embarrassing to believe and support - seems to be a good solution. I don't see any loss, because what you're saying constructivism adds all seem like common sense that we could figure out without that structure.
I was pleasantly surprised that ChatGPT was able to produce real court cases where State Courts have ruled on Constitutionality:
- People v. LaValle (NY, 2004)
The New York Court of Appeals struck down the state's death penalty law, citing the Eighth Amendment and the state's constitution. The court held that the death penalty statute violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. - Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (CA, 1979)
The California Supreme Court upheld the right to free speech under the First Amendment and California Constitution, allowing individuals to gather signatures in shopping centers despite private property rights. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the decision. - State v. Santiago (CT, 2015)
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the state's death penalty law violated the Eighth Amendment due to its arbitrary application and evolving standards of decency. - Commonwealth v. Wolfe (PA, 2016)
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed federal Eighth Amendment issues regarding sentencing juveniles to life without parole. The court applied the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama to ban such sentences. - State v. Gregory (WA, 2018)
The Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's death penalty law violated both the Eighth Amendment and the state's constitution due to evidence of racial bias in its application.
Older LLMs would regularly hallucinate with this sort of question.
Edit: link updated to include follow up ChatGPT conversation, which included State courts that weren't State Supreme Courts ruling on Constitutionality:
- People v. Mann (NY, 1992): Ruled on the Fifth Amendment.
- People v. Lovelace (IL, 2002): Applied Fourth Amendment protections.
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12d ago
I do not have any experience with Linux certification programs. I do have experience with Linux, programming, sysadmin stuff, and government jobs/roles/contracts that require certifications. I also have experience with hiring, and with convincing large organizations to pay for training. With those caveats, I think something like Linux Foundation Certified IT Associate would be worth looking into.
Benefits:
- From a reputable org, so has some value on a resume
- Not too deep for a new-to-tech employee
- Covers the basics of what you've described
I would not count on the credential to be especially useful to your company unless you know of a project or customer who requires it already. The trend I see is for organizations to focus a lot more on actual ability rather than certifications until the org get really big, and often not even then. Government jobs/contracts are the exception, but if you're doing those then you would already know which certifications to work towards.
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23d ago
Kulak, I love your stuff, but you're being a whiny bitch. Correctness is important. Quit making excuses. Proper grammar is a gift from the writer to the reader that makes the writing easier to understand.
Pay $20 for Claude or GPT-4, or get an open source one (WizardLM-2 came out today), and feed your posts through it tuned for copy editing. Not hard.
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3mo ago
I do not believe there is broad support for the effects of significantly limiting factory farming: less meat available and far higher prices.
Most Americans aren't political, don't care about broader issues, and just want to hang out with their friends and "watch the game". They care about social signaling, so they'll say they're against factory farming when that seems like what they're supposed to say. I would not count on them to maintain that stance once the effects of significantly limiting factory farming become apparent.
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3mo ago
That sounds like regular old depression. There's plenty of info out there about how to deal with depression. For me, getting some sunlight on my skin every morning and working out 4x/week for 30+ minutes does more for my mental health than anything my psychiatrist recommended.
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3mo ago
That's a simple A or AAAA DNS record to fix. I wonder if that's a Substack problem or a Scott problem.
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7mo ago
The conflict in the Mahabarata, which could be loosely described as a Hindu holy book, is instigated when the evil uncle and cousin lure the emperor into a dice game with weighted dice. The way it's described (at least in the translation I've read) paints the emperor as fairly blame-free as he bets successively more and more on the dice game trying to chase his losses to the point where he loses his kingdom. The responsibility lies chiefly with the uncle and cousin who made the gambling available.
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9mo ago
people are much more likely to pursue the easy path that is sold well than the hard path that actually provides what they want
This is exactly what's described in "The only Theodore Dalrymple article anyone reads", as Scott Alexander said. Without cultural pressure to guide people into a meaningful life, many (most?) people just coast along and find themselves sad when they reach middle age and they realize they're missing something.
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9mo ago
I have lost all faith that the soft sciences, including the philosophy of international relations, actually lead to a better understanding of the world. "Not actually important in the grand scheme of things" because I do not believe that learning the philosophy of international relations would enable anyone (including people actively involved in international relations) to make better decisions or better predict the future. For what it's worth, I do have some ground-level experience with international relations: I was assigned to a US military base in a foreign country. I was fairly senior, and the OIC of my particular area. I dealt plenty with the US State Department, the host national government, and the large government-owned corporation that provided us some services. What mattered was people skills and common sense. Having read the above wikipedia pages, I can say that nobody ever talked about any aspects of those theories, or behaved in any way differently than could be predicted by people skills and common sense.
When there's a claim from academics (which you have relayed to me in this conversation; please don't misinterpret this as an attack on you!) that we would be unable to distinguish our response between British and North Korean nuclear weapons without Constructivism, I think the appropriate response is "Fuck you".
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9mo ago
For anyone following along, some handy Wikipedia links:
- Realism (international relations)
- Constructivism (international relations), which is apparently the type of Constructivism we're talking about here.
I do not believe that Googling Constructivism, IR, or realist would have got me there within 2 minutes, but mea culpa. I should have tried harder to figure it out from context.
I don't care about the philosophy of international relations, so I can't claim an educated opinion on whether "previous IR schools like realism were unable to predict that the responses would be different." That sounds stupid to me as a layman. Other times I have heard that an entire field has failed to notice something obvious, the error has been with the person making the claim and not with the field itself. Gdanning, I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me, but I remain unconvinced that "The mainstream of constructvism has important insights in many fields". If I need to understand the history of the philosophy of international relations in order to see the important insights of Constructivism, then I'm comfortable dismissing its insights as "not actually important in the grand scheme of things", which I will file in the Constructivism folder in my mind next to "that stupid philosophy that people are referring to when they say 'reality is a social construct'".
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Looking up ammunition on your cell phone is completely normal behavior, and I do so occasionally to keep an eye on prices. If I was somehow back in school, where administrators and teachers are stupid and afraid of all things firearm related, then the correct advice is absolutely "learn not to get caught". Why is everyone under the impression that this text message is damning?
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