fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I see catastrophically bad drivers every time I drive. Running stale yellows, not understanding how stop signs work, literally every single highway merge at 70% the speed of highway traffic, a nice no signal jersey slide right in front of me, driving recklessly quickly through residential neighborhoods
Aren't personal anecdotes fun?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
thousands of jobs that are about to be lost soon
Why are you sad about jobs created by a bubble being lost by the bubble popping? Isn't that just a return to the status quo?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
In the first place, it is not obvious to me how implementing "fiscal responsibility" measures actually results in the country being better-off in any meaningful sense.
Because lots of government debt is bad, so less debt is good
What can be implemented by one government can be overridden by the next government.
Yes but the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that government should never do anything, lest it gets undone in a few years. That sounds like a fucking awful society.
Why invest in defense to preserve sovereignty if the Democrats will just cut it later? Why improve the medical system if the Republicans will rip it up later? Why build this bridge to facilitate commerce if the $OTHER_TEAM might tear it down later?
In the second place, it does not seem prudent to maintain a commons that others have no interest in maintaining and benefit greatly from depleting.
This is true but again if this stance was held at all levels of power you're basically just advocating for anarchy? Why collect garbage and take it to a landfill if other people don't bother to dispose of their garbage properly? Because "most garbage goes to the landfill" is infinitely better than "no garbage goes to the landfill"
In the third place, "my country" is a phrase, not a reality. We are well into the "voting on our rights" stage of the split. Large portions of the country are places I will not willingly visit, much less consider moving to. Increased state capacity is not a benefit to me if I believe that state capacity will be used to violate my rights as a human.
Western nations have gotten pretty cooked, but seriously man you should consider therapy or something because your outlook is profoundly nihilistic, pessimistic, and defeatist. It's making me sad to think about how you think about the world.
Also again, if your beliefs were scaled I'm pretty sure it would immediately lead to anarchy.
How does balancing the budget improve the country's long-term well-being, in concrete terms?
Because perpetual defecits that exceed GDP growth eventually lead to massive inflation, economic collapse, or both? This is bad.
Why is securing this long-term well-being solely the responsibility of the Republican party?
It's not, but I think the defecits feel worse coming from them, hence the focus. They did love going absolutely ape shit over any/all democrat spending during the 2000s/2010s, so it feels hypocritical.
It seems my position has more of a connection to bedrock reality.
Kind of? You're incredibly negative and myopic though, which is a lens you are viewing reality through.
You are appealing to ideals. What evidence do you have that these ideals are workable, and that pursuit of them is likely to lead to an improvement of our actual situation?
That's a good question, but I think you should ask it of yourself. If your ideals were implemented at a government scale, would that make the situation better?
Do you think implementing Fiscal Responsibility will improve Republicans' electoral chances?
Unfortunately not really, I'm honestly kind of worried about our societies inability to deal with anything, but if we give up then we go from "maybe fucked" to "definitely fucked" and I don't see that as an improvement.
Do you think Democrats, having won the subsequent elections, will scrupulously maintain those measures?
Unfortunately not really
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I think this is a really cool idea, and I appreciate being introduced to it. Thank you.
How on earth does it work with buying a house vs renting?
If I buy a house for $100,000 and then sell it for $150,000, is the new buyer taxed on the incremental $50,000? How does that change if that $50k comes from land appreciation vs renovation? What about if you sell a house at a loss?
Does this play as an absurd penalty to rent vs buy? Does renting get 30% more expensive while purchasing used housing stock stays the same price?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
but you can tweak the ages of eligibility and uncap the payroll tax and you have pretty much fixed it.
Like yes, but actually no. Just because the government could raise the age of social security doesn't mean they will. In fact, I am deeply and profoundly confident they never will, unless the country is in active meltdown.
I cannot imagine a better way to get BTFO in a western election.
Although France did it, and it's not repealed yet, so maybe it's possible.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
You have family Civ V games?!?!? Now that is goals... Well done
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I'm a big fan of /r/CredibleDefense , although engagement and post quality have both been on a gentle downward trend over the last year or so
The Austrian military ("Österreichs Bundesheer" on YouTube) also puts up good presentations on Ukraine semi-regularly
Perun and Mike Koffman both good, especially for Ukraine
Admittedly, I don't follow Gaza much
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
The two recent top level CW posts about dating have been kinda demoralizing
They've also been so delusional. Do everything you say you're going to do in this post and you'll be fine.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Has anyone found:
'1) Any actually useful or coherent guides on AI prompt engineering?
or
'2) Anyone who is legitimately good at prompt engineering and can be learned from (they give examples, explain how they do it, etc)?
I find that every subreddit dedicated to prompt engineering is just snake oil blogspam trash. People on twitter like to talk shit that they've developed prompts to "10x" their productivity but refuse to share or elaborate.
The only "good" example I've found so far, is the o3 geoguesser prompt (can see in the Astral Codex Ten article about it https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/testing-ais-geoguessr-genius). The person who wrote this is clearly quite good at this, and reading this prompt is really interesting. But it's hard to learn from one great but specific example how to generally get better at prompt engineering (which does clearly have an effect on output quality, although I doubt anyone can explain which parts of a prompt are valuable and which are fluff).
The big labs also post some stuff occasionally, I am reading this one (https://www.kaggle.com/whitepaper-prompt-engineering) by google right now. But I am curious if there is any more distilled sources of info from users.
I've also been super interested in Pliny the Liberator (https://x.com/elder_plinius) who seems very good at jailbreaking AI's with snippets of text that I cannot believe actually work. They seem to be real/people treat them like their skills are legit, which they must be, but also kind of skitzo and is any of this real?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
My initial response was going to be "no, they were replaced by carrier launched airplanes and guided missiles, both of whom could make things over there explode better than a BB"
But I don't have a good argument for why that doesn't apply to tanks. So good point, I'll have to think about that.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
China has made the supercarrier obsolete
This is a really common sentiment in internet military discussions that is incorrect. Things don't become obsolete in the military because they can get blown up (or blown up easier), they become obsolete when something does their job better than they do.
Tanks aren't obsolete because drones 1/1000th of their cost can make them explode. They are more vulnerable, but they are still useful. Having a giant gun that is armored and can move fast is still useful in 2025.
Human infantry can be killed in ever more creative, precise, and cheap ways. Are human infantry obsolete? No, because we have nothing that can replace what they do.
Carriers are more vulnerable now, the Chinese have a very impressive array of anti ship missiles and sensors to take them out. Does that make the capability of having a floating and mobile airstrip less useful? No. Is there anything that can replace a floating and mobile airstrip? No.
There's also a benefit to having a weapons system even if your enemy can blow it up. It forces them to direct resources into making things that can blow it up, instead of making other things they'd rather make instead.
If militaries stopped using weapons systems every time someone else invented a way to blow them up, militaries wouldn't have any gear, because if you try hard enough you can blow anything up.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Why don't you like LASIK? In particular, what are your thoughts on how age range effects your recommendation?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I can explain the basic strategy to get laid on first/second dates
Curious what this is?
Chances are if you're new to regular online dating you're making mistakes
Also curious what these are
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Civ 5 with the (still being actively worked on) vox populi mod that adds more content, rebalances the game, and most importantly, makes the AI way better at both war and economy
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I need you to unpack the MAID opinion more please, I find opposition to it fascinating and profoundly frustrating.
Because you don't trust the government, you think that if I'm diagnosed with incurable and fatal cancer, I have to suffer a prolonged and painful death because you don't trust the government? If you don't trust the government, you don't ever have to consent to MAID, even if an idiot who works for the government suggests it to you as an option.
The fact that anti MAID people think restricting the freedom of other people to choose has never made sense to me.
I strongly recommend reading this article about the end of life care that doctors receive, versus the general population: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/
What about cutting me off on a highway?
I also meant cars not taking turns at stop signs, resulting in multiple cars entering the intersection simultaneously because people refuse to wait their turn or were not paying attention to who's turn it was.
Finally, the whole point of my comment was to point out that just listing your personal anecdotes about something as if they are demonstrable facts and not pure undiluted confirmation bias is silly and anyone can do it, hence why I started doing it too.
You need an argument stronger than "sometimes I see things that make me unhappy"
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