faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
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User ID: 884
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
For reference, from the link, the questions were
- Overall, how do you think each of the following affects people’s ability to be successful where you work (Being white / Being black / Being hispanic / Being asian / Being a man / Being a woman): (Makes it a lot easier to be successful / Makes it a little easier to be successful / Makes it neither easier nor harder to be successful / Makes it a little harder to be successful / Makes it a lot harder to be successful / Not sure / No answer)
- In general, do you think that focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly… (A good thing / A bad thing / Neither good nor bad)
- When it comes to how much attention your company or organization pays to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, would you say your company or organization pays… (Too much attention / Too little attention / About the right amount of attention / Not sure)
- Regardless of how diverse the place where you work is, how important is it to YOU PERSONALLY to work at a place that… (Has about an equal mix of men and women / Has a mix of employees of different race and ethnicities / Has a mix of employees of different ages / Has a mix of employees of different sexual orientations): (Extremely important / Very important / Somewhat important / Not too important / Not at all important / No answer)
- Regardless of how accessible the place where you work is, how important is it to you personally to work at a place that is accessible for people with physical disabilities? (Extremely important / Very important / Somewhat important / Not too important / Not at all important / No answer)
- How well do each of the following describe the place where you currently work (Has about an equal mix of men and women / Has a mix of employees of different race and ethnicities / Has a mix of employees of different ages / Has a mix of employees of different sexual orientations): (Extremely well / Very well / Somewhat well / Not too well / Not at all well / Not sure / No answer)
- How accessible is the place where you work for people with physical disabilities? (Extremely accessible / Very accessible / Somewhat accessible / Not too accessible / Not at all accessible / Not sure)
- As far as you know, does the company or organization you work for have any of the following (A staff member whose main job is to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Trainings or meetings on diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in hiring, pay or promotions / Groups created by employees based on shared identities or interests / A way for employees to see the salary range for all positions): (Yes / No / Not sure)
- What type of impact do you think having each of the following has had where you work (A staff member whose main job is to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Trainings or meetings on diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in hiring, pay or promotions / Groups created by employees based on shared identities or interests / A way for employees to see the salary range for all positions): (Very positive / Somewhat positive / Neither positive nor negative / Somewhat negative / Very negative)
- Are you personally a member of an employee affinity group or Employee Resource Group (ERG) – that is, a group created by employees, based on their shared identities or interests such as gender, race, or being a parent?
- In the past year, have you participated in any trainings on diversity, equity or inclusion at work?
- Overall, would you say the diversity, equity or inclusion trainings you have participated in at work have been… (Very helpful / Somewhat helpful / Neither helpful nor unhelpful / Somewhat unhelpful / Very unhelpful)
Who are these 53% of people who think that their mandatory DEI trainings through their employer are helpful? That result makes me pretty doubtful of the results of this survey as a whole.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
How much of my frustration with these people boils down to a kind of deep-rooted envy, that I must labor while others take their ease, simply because I do not have a gift for grift?
There are about 25,000 GoFundMe fundraisers created per day. My best estimate from scraping GoFundMe is that about half of fundraisers earn exactly $0, and among the remaining half there's a very long tail - perhaps 2,000 fundraisers per year earning $100k+ and 300 per year earning $500k+. Most of those are "little 8 year old Timmy has cancer" not "CW grifting".
Do you also have a deep-rooted envy of lottery winners, because you do not have a gift for sheer dumb luck? Because I'd estimate about 10x as many people make $100k from lotteries than from GoFundMe virality.
It's on the news because it's rare.
Yeah. I remember there was a big thing a few years back about whether or not leather should be welcome at pride, because pride has become a family thing for some people and there are kids there now. But that's a matter of "should leather be pushed out of a space because kids are entering the space".
But bringing leather into a space that is specifically for young kids is beyond the pale. Enough so that I would expect that even the majority of the queer-and-proud population would be against it.
WTF was the school board even thinking here?
Edit: or am I just being gullible, and the books the school board pushed didn't have leather except in the literal sense that one of the characters in one of the books wore a leather jacket?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
53% of the people in this survey said that their employer-mandated DEI trainings were "very helpful" or "somewhat helpful". That's the baseline against which all numbers in this survey should be judged.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
This year, get your parents the gift of Linux. Conventional wisdom says that for happiness, experiences are better than possessions. I hear Gentoo is an experience.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
I do see the difference, but moral panics over "think of the children" have a history of having the reactions be cures that are worse than the disease, and I see no particular reason to think that this time is different. Do you have a reason to think that this time is different?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
- Before 2001, most people had never cared about airplane cockpit security.
- Before 2008, most people had never cared about mortgage-backed securities.
- Before 2020, most people had never cared about coronaviruses.
- Before 2025, most people had never cared about tariffs.
Why is 4 different from the others?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
I can't take claims that the Trump admin is trying to decrease the population of illegal immigrants in the US seriously in the absence of any attempts to expand the scope of e-verify.
But focusing on employers through an already-existing program wouldn't let Trump grandstand and vice signal.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
Look like puberty blockers were prescribed for trans reasons to about 1400 kids in 2021, with that number increasing by about 200 kids / year. Puberty blockers were additionally prescribed to about 20,000 kids in 2021 for central precocious puberty (puberty starting before age 8 for girls or age 9 for boys).
As a point of comparison, about 3100 teens between the ages of 12 and 19 died in car crashes in 2021.
Is there a reason you think that puberty blockers, specifically, are a big problem?
Sure, I buy that the school board just rubber-stamped this book without much thought. That part is not surprising to me. The bit that's surprising to me is that they decided to double down, and then double down again, and continue until they're now showing up in front of the supreme court. This case (edit apr 24: as described in the top-level comment) is a giant gift to social conservatives, at a minimum in the court of public opinion and I expect also in the court of law. So I wonder if the school board just doesn't realize that, of if they do realize that and just don't care - I just have a burning curiosity as to what their thought process was when they decided to escalate to this level.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
I agree that shutting GoF down would be good, and also that COVID was very far from the upper end of the badness scale.
But I have to be contrary here.
an incompatible-biochemistry alga with reduced need for phosphate and a better carbon-fixer than RuBisCO Release this, it blooms like crazy across the whole face of the ocean (not limited to upwelling zones; natural algae need the dissolved phosphate in those, but CHON can be gotten from water + air), zooplankton don't bloom to eat it because of incompatible biochemistry, CO2 levels drop to near-zero because of better carbon fixation, all open-air crops fail + Snowball Earth. Humanity would probably survive for a bit, but >99% of humans die pretty quickly - and of course the AI that did it is possibly still out there, so focussing only on subsistence plausibly gets you knocked over by killer robots a few years later.
All of the algae in the world, combined, pull down a total of about 2e14 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere per year. The atmosphere as a whole has 2e15 kg of CO2. All living things on Earth, combined, contain about 5e14 kg of carbon. So you're positing that there is a new species which rapidly becomes the largest source of biomass on Earth over the course of a decade or more (probably much more, carbon capture gets harder as co2 concentration decreases), and during that time, nothing natural or engineered figures out how to eat it.
I don't buy it. I think using a biological agent to permanently wipe out the biosphere is a much harder problem than either "kill all humans" or "wipe out the biosphere by any means possible, including but not limited to Very Large Rock Dropped From Very High Up™".
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Are normies, even somewhat intelligent ones, incapable of distinguishing the most obvious stinky smelly chatgpt output?
Yep. That just looked look 100% organic free range human journalist slop to me on first read. TBH even though there are a few suspicious passages it doesn't seem super AI-sloppish to me even when I'm keeping in mind that it has been accused of such.
"Quoted stuff the person didn't say" is a pretty strong tell, but if I watched the talk, why would I also want to read clickbait journalism slop about the talk I just watched?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
Take two of the regulatory and legal standards that libertarians hate most - the definition of tax evasion and the definition of wire fraud. Detractors are completely correct that both are extremely vague (the former is essentially ‘anything that violates the spirit of paying your fair share of taxes’ and the second is ‘lying about anything that might lead to any gains for yourself through any medium of communication’), but their vagueness is largely organic and downstream from the fact that any stricter standards would make the enforcement of the rules pointless because any intelligent lawyer or other actor could rules-lawyer their way out of it.
Does this EO touch either of those? I am pretty sure that crimes of wire fraud already require mens rea, unless someone has invented exciting new forms of emergent autonomous wire fraud recently.
That said, the other regulatory standard that libertarians hate the most is KYC/AML, and those do seem to me like they fall squarely in the crosshairs of this EO. Those are the primary reason I'm tentatively excited/optimistic about this order.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
3mo ago
Wait, so he wasn't granted asylum, just a stay of deportation to El Salvador specifically?
If I'm understanding right:
- He applied for asylum from El Salvador in 2019. The immigration judge denied his request for asylum, but granted him "withholding of removal," which specifically prohibited his deportation to El Salvador due to the risk of persecution there
- ICE did not appeal this decision, and he was released.
- The withholding of removal meant he was still removable from the US, just specifically not to El Salvador. The government could have legally deported him to any other country willing to accept him without violating the court order.
- The "administrative error" was that ICE deported him specifically to El Salvador in March 2025 despite being aware of his protection from removal to that country, violating the exact limitation imposed by the court.
- And now the Trump admin is saying "yeah we did the thing we were specifically ordered by the court not to do, but now it's done and even though we could fix it we won't and you can't make us".
- And the Trump admin is probably correct on the "and you can't make us" part, because in the end a court order is a piece of paper and someone still has to enforce said court order.
- This doesn't actually set any legal precedent that this method of deportation is ok though, it just adds to the growing pile of divergences between what the law says agencies must do and how government agencies actually operate in practice.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Man, I don't even know. Because "the stock market crashed and a bunch of retirees are mad because that's their nest egg" is, I think, a significant part of the signal Trump is looking at. But the market is considering the impact of tariffs times the probability that Trump actually sticks with them, so if the market stops believing Trump, the market impact of the tariffs stops looking so large, which makes Trump less likely to change his mind, which increases the chance they stick around... feels like one of those cursed anti-inductiveness/self-defeating-prophecy dynamics.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Excellent post. One thing jumped out at me:
Look at the lead time for something like a modern fighter jet. What's the chance that the guy who originally greenlit the program is still around to be 'accountable' if/when it's actually used in a hot conflict, such that its performance can be assessed against the competition? Do you handicap that assessment at all? He made his decision a decade ago, seeing a certain set of problems that they were trying to solve. A decade or two later, your adversaries have also been developing their own systems. Should he be punished in some way for failing to completely predict how the operating environment would change over decades?
Punishment for failure seems like exactly the wrong way to handle accountability for a project that has a low probability of success. The motivation to reduce a 99% chance of being punished in 20 years to a 95% chance of being punished in 20 years just isn't going to be that large. This is especially true if the people involved are self-selecting into the position - nobody is going to self-select into a position with a near-certainty of punishment in 20 years unless the benefits now outweigh even a certainty of punishment in 20 years, so the punishment just can't be that severe.
Talk about rewarding the guy who made a prescient prediction 20 years ago, on the other hand, and I think the dynamics flip. Going from a 1% chance of collecting a $10M prize in 20 years to a 5% chance of collecting that same prize is substantial and motivational. Think of how hard scientists chasing Nobel prizes work.
Flip the probabilities (i.e. a competent person would have a 99% success rate on a project and an incompetent one would have a 95% success rate) and I think the argument for accountability in the form of punishment makes more sense than accountability in the form of reward. That's sort of how it goes with professional licensing, and it's a pretty solid strategy in that context.
But yeah, "we should abandon accountability" sounds bad and counterintuitive but I think Tyler is right to call out "accountability" in the specific form of punishment for failing to achieve highly uncertain outcomes.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Yes. I will die on this hill.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
3mo ago
It's not that you should care about this dude. It's that you (presumably, given your comment) live in a country with a legal system that primarily makes decisions based on precedent, and "this one weird trick lets the government sidestep due process requirements" is a terrifying precedent to set.
If the "administrative error" argument actually stands up in court, that is.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption
Which specific claims are you talking about here? Hunter Biden? Stolen election? Biden's "fuck all y'all I'm pardoning everyone" end-of-term pardons? The congressional insider trading thing? Or is there some other specific, credible, and concrete accusation of corruption that you are referring to?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
It sounds like the SIL is legally in the united states. With notarized parental consent letters on both sides and the 2 year old's passport I'd be surprised if there was any major issue in having the SIL pick up the kid and bring her back to the US to dad.
I doubt the notarized consent would be easy to get from mom, but that's because this sounds to me like a custody battle.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Well that sets up some fucked incentives for illegal immigrants to skip bail. Not the judge's job to try to fix that though.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1mo ago
Rephrasing - is it a big enough problem that the disease of having ~1k kids/year go on puberty blockers is worse than the "cure" that would be implemented by the political apparatus would be? Being realistic about what historical political "solutions" have looked like.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2mo ago
Alcohol makes the deliberate thinky bits stop working as well, so the behaviors exhibited by drunk people are less likely to be part of complex and deliberate social maneuvering. Behaving desirably while drunk is a costly signal of actually being desirable and not faking it.
Saying this in so many words is discouraged unless you dress it up in euphemisms like "lowered inhibitions".
New executive order just dropped.
This seems, on first glance, wildly better by my libertarian sensibilities than anything I ever expected out of the Trump administration. I am slightly in shock, which is not unusual following an EO, but this time it is a good shock, which is unusual.
So a couple of things
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