dr_analog
razorboy
No bio...
User ID: 583
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I think it's probably worth a penny, at most?
Anyway, my research suggests these goodrx.com coupons are actually drug manufacturer rebates to the pharmacy off of their wholesale purchase. The manufacturer is effectively using this channel to quote much lower prices to uninsured poor people who would otherwise be forced to go without.
dr_analog
razorboy
7mo ago
Well, it's fraud if you do that on purpose. It's a mistake if you have an accounting accident. And, as per Matt Levine, I agree your accounting accident is not sympathetic if you were also spending lavishly on yourselves. Where did FTX fall here? I'm slightly inclined to believe in the accounting accident story, but only because I've made multi-million dollar accounting mistakes before, which we thankfully discovered immediately. More than once. And I wasn't in a "move fast and break things" grow to the moon kind of place that FTX was.
I realize SBF arguing "accounting accident!" doesn't sit well with people amongst all of his other horrendous behavior. Poor slob.
dr_analog
razorboy
23d ago
From a game theory POV I would think you'd want to hit back much, much harder to discourage future retaliation in the first place?
dr_analog
razorboy
2mo ago
Fair enough, perhaps my sense of humor is too dark and absurdist. Should I delete?
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Yes, this completely. Smaller platforms, including things you'd use for self-hosting, are very easy to fool with (e.g.) completely forged subpoenas.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Going to jail forces them to mostly stop being floridly actively addicted for a bit. Those few months where they can think some thoughts aside from how to get their next hit of meth/fentanyl 100% of the time is the valuable opportunity here. Jail has bad parts too: person's re-integration in society becomes harder because they have a record, and they meet a lot more criminals who can teach them to do more crime.
But, this forced sobering up might also be the only tool our society has that stops them from being a junkie destined to overdose in the near future committing crime the whole way.
dr_analog
razorboy
4mo ago
As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers
The Hash is humorously known as A Drinking Club With A Running Problem, with the preferred beverage of consumption being beer.
But I just meant that if you gave the population 30-60 minutes of busywork a day, like exercise, that made it really hard to do self-destructive things like drugs, drinking or smoking at the same time, that might be a significant health gain even if there was no direct benefit from the exercise itself.
I wasn't being that extreme.
But also, chess is pretty superfluous to living a good life? Whereas money often directly affects the quality of your life?
Sure some people achieve enlightenment working as humble ferrymen deep in the woods but that's not the norm by far.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I did not say lets also become an authoritarian dictatorship at the same time. I am specifically criticizing privacy warriors in the US.
See also the bottom of this other comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183628?context=8#context
Is your debate partner an underdog fetishist?
Someone here (or maybe on /r/themotte) opened my eyes to this idea. I'm sorry I can't find the post and credit you, various searches aren't helping me find it.
There exists an apparent mini-moral philosophy of always siding with the underdog. On the surface this has good feels: always side with the weak against the strong. In every conflict, between individuals or between nations, find out who the strong one is, and find out who the weak one is. The weak one is the one you should side with.
This is not as ironclad a moral imperative as it appears on the tin. The most extreme and simple form of the imperative's flaw is such:
Suppose Mr Rogers and some random homeless guy get into a fight.
These are the facts and they are not disputed: the homeless guy demanded Mr Rogers’ wallet and he said no. So, the homeless guy attacked him. Shocking everyone, Mr Rogers fights back ferociously, sending the homeless guy to the hospital. Mr Rogers escapes without a scratch.
Digging into the homeless guy's background reveals that he has been in and out of prison a lot. For theft and minor violent offenses, except he was most recently imprisoned for pushing random bystanders off of train platforms onto train tracks. He had been arrested before anyone died. The homeless guy was released from prison a few days before he got into a fight with Mr Rogers.
Mr Rogers is a saintly widely beloved media personality with a legendary benevolence towards all.
So. Should someone here be penalized?
An underdog fetishist might say yes, Mr Rogers should be penalized because he’s actually a member of an elite class whereas the deranged homeless guy is a member of an underclass. This is a perfect example of class struggle.
In my experience, most people consider the Palestinians the underdog here, but not everyone. Some consider Israel the underdog being propped up by the US.
Anyway, while I consider it morally confused, I contend people who would condemn Mr Rogers exist, and that if you're going to spend time debating an extremely nuanced complex situation like the Israeli/Palestine conflict with others, it's valuable to at least first figure out if your debate partner would always (e.g.) side with the homeless guy against Mr Rogers.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Not specifically. I was aware of it on a "how to deal with the police" tactics based level: law enforcers looking at emails requires a warrant but documents you have sitting in Drive may not.
The first few Quakers who took a stand against slavery were pretty annoying too. In reading about their early forms of activism one can’t help but be struck by how PETA-like some of their tactics were.
Anyway, there really isn’t really a non-annoying way of telling someone a message equivalent to “Hey actually, to all animals you’re more evil than Hitler. Animal lives matter. Have you considered being not animal Uber-Hitler??”
Even with your explanation it still seems preposterous to say African-Americans aren't real Americans.
Does realness require being happy about it? Are Irish Americans no longer Americans if American culture takes a turn they find hideous and they start feeling proud of identifying as Irish-American?
Shibboleths abounds.
IMO, as a child of immigrants, I think most people take the awesomeness of America for granted. To apply your standards, I could determine most white Americans who have ancestors born here going back hundreds of years aren't real Americans because of how much they whine and complain about capitalism and consumerism or whatever.
Why can’t the ID situation be solved by
- Must create account to view porn site
- Must complete crypto-style Know Your Customer challenge to activate account. Basically hold your ID up to webcam, then take picture of yourself on webcam in several poses to match ID
This is exactly what crypto exchanges are required to do.
I don't mean to condemn people who are doing it for fun. Or securitymaxxing as art. As a cybersec person I 100% appreciate the beauty of a blog tech stack that's pure OCaml all of the way down to the (virtual) metal and have fantasies that one day we will go further and synthesize bespoke hardware from the type graphs and there's nothing black-box between your code and the net. Holy shit, so good.
I'm specifically trying to grab and shake the person who, when setting up their new phone, sees the [x] use cloud backups/sharing for safety and convenience? option and unchecks it because they believe they're so subversive or outrageous that the state (or big corporations) are looking for them and they can't afford the risk of centralizing their photos and documents. And then they go further and get to work on their GrapheneOS game and turn off push notifications because of side channel attacks and really want to live in a world where they don't get your message until they take their phone out of a faraday sleeve, get on WiFi, open Signal and have it pull messages.
This is a type of person and they're afflicted with something and I'm surrounded by them and I don't fully understand what's going on. I understand liberals and conservatives and libertarians. I can change the sliders on my values and see how my thinking can have me end up in one tribe or another. But the amount of paranoia that I'd have to add to end up in privacymaxx zone seems untenable. Surely something else is going on.
dr_analog
razorboy
6mo ago
This is basically all I seem to be hearing. Nobody knows what Israel should do (or rather: they have some sort of vague shopping list of 'hearts and minds' and 'developing Gaza'* with no idea how to make it happen in reality) but everyone apparently knows what it shouldn't do.
I basically go up to everyone condemning Israel and say "zap! you're now the PM of Israel. what's your next move?" and I generally get a range from "Israel should follow international law" (hand wave hand wave) with no specifics on how they protect their security and sovereignty doing that, all the way to something the Heath Ledger version of The Joker would say.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I was not holding it up as a loss in particular, just pointing out it's the only visible scar from all of that self-flagellation.
The only way to help these people is to force them into institutions that will treat their mental illness and addiction against their will.
Even three months in jail (for possession) would probably work miracles. Break their cycle of compulsive using and let them sober up and give them a chance to try being something other than a junkie living in a tent in a park.
(The public thinks of jail as a fate almost like death but they’re not that bad. The best jail is probably better than the worst public school)
If I was prowling a school with a gun and they announced "active shooter! all male and male identifying persons are encouraged to form wolfpacks and destroy anyone holding a gun that's isn't a cop. this is not a drill. show no mercy" I'd consider myself done. An entire building full of teenage boys given permission and encouragement to kill you sounds like you have approximately a minute tops before you're beaten thoroughly to a bloody pulp.
dr_analog
razorboy
15d ago
Have you see Hamilton, the musical? I have. I really liked it. I did think it was odd that almost everyone was black (except for the King of England) but it was also pretty awesome and I didn't mind.
On the other hand, I find hamfisted movie/TV diversity silly. This character is historically male, but is portrayed female, but otherwise acts completely male? Black elves? Okay whatever.
I suppose the difference is with Hamilton it's the entire gimmick, so it's fine, whereas with a LotR series it's more like... shameless kowtowing?
But if you are a business owner considering opening a new branch and you need, to know, say if workers or buyers will do something complex or buyers attempt to steal from you,
Business owners already suspect this and want to act on this. We call this behavior racist. Why would the general acceptance of race-IQ change this dynamic?
That is, racism doesn't necessarily stop being racism just because some of the stereotypes are true.
Touched on here: https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183560?context=8#context
I'm not denying it doesn't happen, it obviously does sometimes. So, that said, what's the argument in response? Because parallel construction could happen (and sometimes does), that means the government therefore should not have access to these tools without a court order ahead of time and if it wrecks their ability to counter terrorist plots or organized crime or handle fast-moving cases, so be it?
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