bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Could have sworn my bottle said it did. I'll have to look later, but I got a new batch and tossed the old bottle. So unless they used to, or it was some 'extra super duper strength' thing, you're probably right.
The most infuriating thing, looking at the smart label linked on their website, is the description when clicking on 'Bismuth Subsalicylate'.
Bismuth Subsalicylate 525 Mg
Upset Stomach Reliever And Antidiarrheal
Active Ingredient That Relieves The Stated Symptoms (Heartburn, Indigestion, Nausea, Upset Stomach, Diarrhea)
Why would they do this? lol
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Presumably it won't be long before many substacks are just AI created content. Many could be already. Would we even know?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
- Back when communities were actually tightly knit, criminals were hanged.
Back when communities were tight knit, there were informal processes to deal with crime committed by your family or neighbours. Hanging criminals is the point where people are using the power of the state to punish people (usually it starts with outsiders; you wouldn't do this with your in-group). It's a failure of community, and it usually ends up falling out of favour once enforcement comes to the point that your in-group is liable for the same treatment.
In many tight knit communities, justice was dolled out by the church. Since outsiders tended to not be a member, courts provided a great system for punishing them. Even when courts pushed out the church as the main arbitrator in a community, it still relied heavily on church officials' opinions. 30+ years ago, having a priest testify about how great you were was all but a get out of jail free card (where the judge was religious, at least).
We still have tight knit communities these days. They aren't region locked, though.
Anyways, restorative justice was more akin to what your average church would have done in the past (and many continue to do to this day).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The solution is to take the refugees/migrants with open arms, pass a law that says you'll give them welfare, but that the funds can't raise the deficit, they have to come from funding for foreign aid and similar programs. Each time a boat of refugees come, you get to defund various NGOs.
The NGOs will then have a reason to not dump refugees in your country. And you can do this for every problem that NGOs try to saddle you with. Then NGOs are going to be a bit more cautious, and maybe even push back against other NGOs that try political stunts.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If it were the Russians, why would they blow up their own pipeline and not an enemy pipeline? They control Nordstream, they don't control the Norwegian-Polish pipeline or other pipelines that reduce their leverage and fuel their enemies.
Possible reasons why Russia blew the pipes;
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They want Germany to agree to use NS2.
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As propaganda for Russians, so they feel like the west is attacking them
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As a demonstration to other countries that they have the resources to take out pipelines and other infrastructure and not leave a trace of evidence (or see if those countries can find any trace of evidence)
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Russia wanted the pipelines out of commission because they are shifting their focus towards the east, and they are going to strip down this pipeline so they can speed up construction of those eastern pipelines
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Backroom peace talks focused too heavily on NS1, and Russia wanted that off the table
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The possibility of getting fuel from the pipes makes gas futures slightly cheaper, and Russia wanted to drive them higher, because economic pressure has been one of their biggest war tactics
People have suggested that it was Putin's plot to secure himself from regime change by denying a revenue source that a successor could draw upon by rapprochement with the West. But a successor to Putin can draw upon the resources of the entire Russian state!
A successor to Putin will still need public support. I know we pretend Russia isn't a democracy, but a Putin successor would need the consent of the people to rule. One easy way to get that consent is saying "I'll turn on the pipeline." That card is largely gone, for now. Restoring relations with the west is no longer a simple turn of a valve.
The argument that Putin blew up his own pipeline that gives him leverage over Europe is silly. The US has both the means and the motive.
Everyone has means and motives. China has means and motive. So does Germany. Hell, the UK has means and motives. Israel, Iran, India. Greenpeace has the means and the motives. To say that Russia doesn't just because the US does is silly. Russia has as much motive to do it as anyone else. This is basically a game of Clue; everybody is a suspect.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
the worst part of it is that it genuinely apes ChatGPT's politics and RLHF-d sanctimonious «personality» despite being 25 times smaller and probably 10 times dumber.
Every person with Down Syndrome I've ever met has absolutely trumped the personality of every high-IQ person I've known.
Anyways, a pause on 'Giant AI experiments' will really only be a pause on showing the results to the public. Companies won't stop. Governments won't stop. And even if they did, China won't. Pump the brakes on AI and China could quickly eat our lunch.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The blonde white woman is clearly the hero of the engagement. It's
It looks like she's the first person to attack, throwing a coffee carafe at the black lady.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
And the stock price sure seems to indicate the belief in the latter. More than half of the value gone, YOY, as of the time of this writing.
Tesla was always bound to drop. It's been wildly overvalued for some time. A big benefit for Musk is that there weren't many shares floating around, which propped up the price, and consistently undermined short sellers. This also helped him reach his targets and earn billions.
With the economy the way it is, Tesla's share price was bound to drop. So Elon 'diversifying' by picking up Twitter might be the best thing to happen, even though he wildly overpaid. (Though it seems like a good chunk of people rolled their shares over, so I wonder how much he actually had to pony up to get Twitter). Anyways, cutting costs at Twitter is dead easy. It doesn't take much to run a social media site. Most social media sites seem to just shovel money into a bottomless pit, most of which does nothing to raise revenues or improve the average user's experience. They simply find ways to spend the money that comes in. It's the Wikipedia cancer thing. Revenues go up, expenses go up.
The core product of Twitter won't change. They don't need to spend $5 billion/year 'improving' it. Most of the jobs at Twitter are useless and can be safely cut. Twitter should be able to run for a tenth (or less) of the cost. Their revenue might drop a bit as premium advertisers pull out. But there are going to be plenty of companies who are happy to swoop in. So Twitter should have no problem making a few billion in revenues. It should be making an easy billion in profit each year (and probably more).
The real money maker for Twitter would be to allow shit like allowing people to subscribe to users (for $x/month), allowing people to 'tip' or give a 'super like' (for $x), allowing users to send subscriber-only tweets. Hell, I'd make twitter users pay to be able to take tips and get subscribers (basically make it so only 'verified' people can get paid subscribers/tips). You'll have lefties falling over themselves to pay Elon the monthly membership fee. And I'd have a premium level that includes a bunch of stats and analytics about followers, engagement, etc.
That could easily bring in a billion. The real money maker is all the people who get memberships thinking they'll convince people to subscribe, and then never getting any subscribers.
Social media (and most tech) sites are bloated as fuck and can withstand a lot of cuts. Most can be monetized to a much greater degree than they currently are. I think one of the most inefficient websites is probably YouTube. The amount of video uploaded everyday, 95% of it that will never get more than a couple views. You could eliminate the vast majority of it by introducing a paltry cost to upload, and you'd make money off those who continued. Imagine the billions YouTube spends on storage each year, especially redundancies. 95% of that cost going to scanning and storing videos that literally nobody will ever watch. YouTube could probably be more profitable than the rest of Google if it weren't for that.
We watched Facebook burn billions on their Metaverse. Companies pouring billions of ad dollars into Facebook, to put ads on people's timelines, and Facebook shovels that into a pit, rather than to their shareholders. Facebook's main source of revenue is the same thing it was 10 years ago. They'd be one of the most profitable companies if they just stuck to the timeline, sold ads, and collected the profits. But for some reason they'd rather shovel money into projects that go nowhere. Just like every other social media company. Most spending is a waste and won't produce value.
Social media companies are ripe for being bought out, stripped down, and turned into profit engines. Especially with the billions in losses on the books which add some value.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If someone is smart, not going to Harvard won't impact them too much. Many of these people will land on their feet, and they'll create paths for others to follow. Every smart student that is rejected from these top universities ends up eroding the prestige of those institutions. Every 'dumb' student that gets in also erodes the prestige.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
There are greener options for vehicles these days. I don't think climate change is the existential risk that it's made out to be; I think it's made out to be an existential risk to further policy goals.
Poor urban planning really comes down to the government meddling and trying to create 'livable' neighbourhoods that fall apart. Housing is inaccessible because meddling bureaucracies have made it that way. If you can build what you want on your land, suddenly housing becomes really accessible and very affordable.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
"The signals do not resemble signals from earthquakes. They do resemble the signals typically recorded from blasts,"
Is it possible to determine what type of explosive was used from the seismic data? I'd imagine different types of material would have a different pattern.
And best of all, the US had mine-planting/explosives forces right on Bornholm island in June! The bombs we're talking about detonated just off the coast of Bornholm island!
Which, if we know about, then Russia would have known about it as well. I've read UK ships were in that area, too. This could have been done with an underwater drone filled with explosives. The area could have been chosen because of the activities of the US/UK and others in the area, in order to create doubt.
For all we know the mine-planting/explosive force was there because of concerns about explosives being placed on the pipeline, or intelligence about a possible attack on it.
mine hunting technology
Seems plausible that they were there based on intelligence. But it's also possible they did it, released this story, and can now simply say "why would we publicly announce that if we were going to blow the pipeline?" And then pull out some vague, uncorroborated, anonymous, top secret intelligence that suggested a threat on the pipeline. Yellow cake.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Anybody see Top Gun Maverick? Biggest movie of the year (so far, it could get dethroned by Avatar or Black Panther). Made over $700m in the US and Canada, and like $1.4b worldwide. I think this is the first weekend it has fallen out of the top 5.
Anyways, I was excited to see it and finally went a couple weeks ago. But it seems like absolute shit to me. Beautifully shot, the flying scenes are great. And yet the story seems bland. The graphics used when they are discussing missions and stuff seemed like some shit out of a Command & Conquer cutscene. A lot of transitions between scenes felt a bit sudden, like something was cut. I've seen celebrities gushing over this film, Quentin Tarantino was fanboying over it. But I honestly think it's one of the worst Tom Cruise movies I've ever seen.
And despite being the biggest movie of the year, I've barely seen a peep about it online (other than it's box office success). Despite seeing it a coupe weeks ago, I never ran into a single spoiler for it. Never saw a single meme. So obviously not a movie that appealed to those who very online. On YouTube I'd been putting every Top Gun video I saw in my Watch Later playlist, to binge after I saw it. And even those videos, going over how great the film was, really had no substance. All the interviews I found with the cast were just the same stories about flying in a jet or meeting Tom Cruise.
The bits James Corden did with Tom Cruise were more satisfying than the actual film.
I'm definitely not a film buff, so maybe I'm missing something. I have seen the original, quite a few times. But something just felt 'off' throughout this film.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
It's quite likely that they choose 'people search more' because Google earns revenue from advertising. The more you search, the more money they make.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Maybe smaller animals have more efficiently evolved so their brains don't have much 'unnecessary' space. If you google about human brain sizes, it seems many sources say they've been shrinking for 3000+ years (though some sources say otherwise). If human brain sizes are shrinking, and presumably we've been getting more intelligent over the past 3000+ years, then maybe we're getting rid of 'unnecessary' space. Though maybe a large brain with 'unnecessary' space is necessary for having the excess capacity needed to develop higher level intelligence. But as we evolve and converge upon the most efficient brain size (which might be 400g?), we'll essentially become frozen as a species. We might even be more prone to devolve than anything else, as various groups don't 'use' particular parts of their brain.
Maybe a lot of our brain capacity was geared towards surviving in the natural world, used for religious/spiritual connections, socializing at a level beyond our comprehension, being connected to our environment. In our modern world, as we see the breakdown of families and people becoming more and more introverted, maybe we'll see the part of our brain that deals with socialization begin to shrink. Maybe it already has. Notice how the average Very Online type seems to be incapable of understanding sarcasm (even in person), they take entertainment media and jokes literally, they need to express their feelings vocally and require others to, seemingly unable to pick up on subtle cues.
Maybe westerners are going to lose that, our brains will shrink in a few more generations as we 'evolve'. We'll feel really smart since we can use our words to communicate, while the savages in far off lands read facial expressions like tea leaves. "lol, these idiots think they can tell when someone is angry, lying, happy, just from looking at their face. Just like bigots think they can tell who is a man or woman by sight. How can anybody possibly know what's going on in my head without me specifically telling them? Mind reading is pseudoscience." Then when those savages seem to be able to actually read minds, the enlightened will get spooked, call them witches, and burn them at the stake.
Kind of like how psychopaths seem to be able to manipulate people, as if they can see things the average person cannot. They can play people like an instrument. But maybe they just have an older brain, with a capacity to socialize at a higher level, and to them the rest of us seem like retarded children crying over spilled milk. We call it lack of empathy, but from their perspective, our ordinary problems are far below their horizon.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Removing the dumbest and most impulsive criminals from society as fast as possible seems like a net boon.
If they were actually removed. And I'd argue that we could do it faster by actually having cops go after criminals, rather than sifting through traffic stops to find them.
Doesn't this contradict the first point? If you're going to need to arrest these imbeciles at some point, you might as well get it over with.
Completely agree. So let's shift police work towards finding and investigating criminals, rather than ignoring burglaries and property crime in favour of traffic stops and such.
Wait, I thought you were just saying that arresting the low-level criminals was a problem because it's not politically tenable...
I'm not saying we shouldn't arrest low-level criminals. I'm saying that we shouldn't use minor crimes and traffic violations as a pretext to finding them.
The IRS investigates tax crimes, not local police. The USPS has officers that investigate mail crime. Many cities have traffic cops that don't carry weapons, who don't arrest (many) people, who simply issue tickets for parking violations and such. Why not have the average officer focused on 'real' crime, and get parking enforcers to also deal with traffic stops, littering, fare evasion, and quality-of-life crimes?
But if some criminal scum decides to use violence against some lowly, 'underpaid', unarmed citation officer, then we use the force of the state to crush the violent individual.
Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.
Sure, but it extends to traffic stops and basically any pretext cops can use to investigate you because they have some 'gut' feeling. There's a not so insignificant amount of cops (and people in general) who think they are smarter than they are. They think they are Will Smith in MIB, shooting the 10 year old girl with an advanced physics textbook. Some cop thinks they see something suspicious in you, and they start looking for a reason to stop you. And many of those reasons are things regular people do multiple times a day.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
And blowing it up means the pipe that runs through Ukraine becomes more critical for Europe, which means Europe will be more invested in Ukraine's defense. Presumably.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
There's a sub on reddit called translater with people who have transitioned later than Zephyr, and many are passable.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If objects could travel faster than the speed of light (which they can), you'd expect to still be able to measure their gravity, but not visually see them.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I don’t have a defense of whole word learning
Whole word learning seems to be good at very young ages, before your kid can talk. Then moving into phonics. Also, whole word learning is great in very small groups, preferably one-on-one. It seems that you can get basically any educational technique to work in one-on-one learning, probably because one-on-one learning is just so much better than group learning. So when these techniques are trialed in small groups, they seem to work. Then they get implemented in some private schools, or as a pilot in a decent public school, and it seems to work, because the type of student is just better. Then it is rolled out to the masses, where it just sucks.
Public schools have to deal with trying to get as many kids to reach the most basic level of literacy, in large class sizes, with educators who are typically bottom of the barrel and protected by their union. They do a really, really bad job at this, and it seems people developing the curriculum don't want 'traditional' models and techniques, they want something they can stick their name to. They also seem to be using the curriculum to promote their social goals, like anti-racism, which in their view means having white and black kids scoring the same, even if those scores are absolutely dismal. They don't care if blacks see their scores drop, as long as whites see their scores drop more, and come in line with blacks. That's equity.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Tight-knit communities are built around something, and that something is almost always the church. In tight-knit communities you do not yield the state's power against your neighbour. Even if courts exist, there's a police force, you'll almost always create bad blood by invoking the state's power in your disputes. And the police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, will all be members of the tight-knit community.
If you believe neighbour wrongs you, you'd go to your priest for help, or other neighbours. Part of being a tight-knit community is that social consequences can be enough to affect a resolution, and one that is moral/just, rather than one that is technically legal.
When you go to the police, you're basically going above the community. If the legal consequences for something are worse than what your community will tolerate, then it's likely the police will try to dissuade you, the prosecutor will decline to bring charges, the judge will give the defendant every benefit of the doubt, etc. Because they are all part of the same community.
But an outsider isn't going to be influenced much by social pressures, and so using the force of the state is seen as acceptable.
If you look at Hasidic Jewish communities, they often have their own police, 'courts', their own schools, etc. They aren't willing to use the state's violence against each other. If they were, they wouldn't be tight-knit communities. Many native reserves are also like this.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In better films, Hartnett's character would have a proper character arc, where he's an arrogant and selfish Hollywood star that only cares about himself and his wellbeing, to the end of the film where he becomes a true member of the team and asks when the next mission is.
Or played it like he's super eager to be a spy, which leads to the comedy, and Statham plays the straight man.
I haven't seen the film (and don't plan to), but I wonder if it'd have been better if they made Aubrey Plaza the Hollywood star, have her eager to be part of the spy thing, she's over-the-top with being sexual/seductive, and then it allows her juvenile humour to shine.
That was crazy to watch.
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