netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Christ.
It's good to know he didn't actually do it. Apparently any of it. And that justice, ultimately, was served.
Not so good that it took two years and a "seven figure" lawsuit to clear his name. I can hope that the relevant outlets get around to their mea culpa, but like you, I am not optimistic.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Ever seen a non-technical employee try to automate something in Excel? Not even VBA; I mean column formulas or conditional formatting. It’s depressing.
The limiting factor on adoption isn’t what a tool can do. It’s whether the user will actually engage with it. As it stands, people fail to do so even for tasks that take up much more than 10% of their time.
I could see this changing as AI gets better integrated I/O. The chat interface is a decent example. It’s good at user-defined tasks, but the process of defining them is going to be the roadblock for most jobs.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Other commenters are missing the point of GDP by labeling slavery as non-investment spending. Money changed hands, so someone saw material benefit from slavery. The question is whom. These foreign trade charts suggest we mostly exported crude materials until the late 1800s, but it wasn’t much of our GDP. On the other hand, this essay notes that US cotton provided something like 75% of British textiles. That’s potentially a lot of money flowing into the US.
But I suspect it’s a moot point. “Built on slavery” has legs because of the ideological gap between American founding principles and the peculiar institution. It’s an attack on Jefferson, Washington, etc. who saw personal benefit. Any overall economic effect is less important given the particular reverence of the American right for these figures.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I’m with hydro. You’re mistaking a (vocal, well-heeled) corner of the fiction market for the broader category.
Grab a random NYT bestsellers list from recent years. Here’s Dec 2021. It’s got Where the Crawdads Sing, but also John Grisham and David Baldacci. My God, Nicholas Sparks is still alive and publishing. Thrillers and romances aren’t winning those awards, but they are making a lot more money.
a lot of classic literature
There’re interesting philosophical arguments to be had here about art-as-transgression and about how structures of oppression are natural inspiration for a compelling plot. I think having that conversation would, again, kind of miss the point. I don’t believe those themes are really all so common; you’re getting a selection effect.
People collectively have rather vanilla tastes. That’s why it’s called “vanilla.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I don’t think that makes for a workable definition of cancellation. There has to be a difference from mere criticism; it would be ridiculous to say Kanye’s original comments were cancelling Jews.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Option 1: the time doesn’t actually predict it, because “polarization” is not the same as “discord.”
Option 2: massive advances in information storage and search have stifled innovation. No need to write sci-fi speculating on gender roles when Ursula K LeGuin has already done it for you. Harder to make novel music when you have to delve into microtones instead of just slamming down a blues progression.
Option 3: “lol”. People do make weird sci-fi, complete with gender commentary. They do vicious, post-ironic synthesis satirizing previous generations. Adventure is out there. Oh, and
[the 60s were] the last time you saw many black musicians and guitarists be better than their white counterparts
I see you truly value the contributions of Vanilla Ice.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I remember hanging out in a fraternity basement with a bunch of fellow engineering interns. Several were gathered surreptitiously round one guy with his laptop. They were excitedly discussing the latest newsletter from ISIS.
It was incredibly professional. Clean graphic design, good typesetting, tasteful imagery. This wasn’t shock content, but the more refined propaganda of a well-funded movement. No sketchy scans and OCR here. The articles were multi-page tracts on Islamic principles, two columns, twelve point font. Each ended, naturally, with the conclusion that this particular group would be the one to bring down the West.
Fascinating indeed.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I just spent half an hour doing research and napkin math about WWII naval vs. aerial bombardment. This was related to suggestion for a Hearts of Iron mod. Partway through the ensuing discussion, one of the devs steps in with his own estimates. They are based on some flawed math, but more importantly, they are a screenshot from Google Bard.
Observation one: it is absolutely insane that you can give a computer word problems and have it spit out formatted, plausible answers, complete with hypotheticals. There were caveats about how the guns were never designed for the proposed use and a table of how the answer would change with lower rates.
Observation two: it is completely insane that you can do this and have the computer lie to you. Not with any malice! But it will give you a wrong, even incoherent answer with the exact same confidence as a correct one. Those symbols get strung together all the time in its training data, after all.
Observation three: well, the third type of insanity ought to go unremarked. I’m not upset that the dev leaned on this AI. I got the impression he was just tossing in his two cents, not defending the position. It does raise the question—
Is it possible to raise the general level of skepticism about AI answers, rather than AI technology?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
In doing so while the general state of DC law is much less permissive. A private citizen is definitely not allowed to do this.
I don’t think it’s actually a gotcha, since there is always a gulf between private and state violence. But I suspect it’s got the right optics, the right “gosh look how bad things have gotten,” to make the rounds.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
Prior to her death last month, my grandmother spent about two years in a retirement home. They struggled with staffing constantly. I’m not even talking about technical employees giving care, though I’m sure they were hard to find too. I’m talking about cooks, cleaners, and receptionists.
Quality of service fluctuated noticeably. Each time someone quit, the remainder of the staff were more stressed, and the inhabitants were more cranky.
The overall impression was that wages weren’t keeping up. I think the management might have cut them mid-pandemic? Either way, they could not or would not afford to crank up wages. There were rent hikes, but old people are a strange customer base. While they have lots of sunk costs keeping them from moving, they are particularly inclined to raise hell when something goes poorly. Or to just ignore a rent increase—what are you going to do, sue them? I could easily see this become a death spiral if morale got low enough to push out new clients.
Thing is, I don’t know why this would be limited to elder care. Was there a particular reason—COVID restrictions, or some regulatory regime—pushing staff to other industries? Or does every service job in Dallas have a similar level of churn? Is this post going to start another fight about inflation and lived experience?
Since she passed, I haven’t spent much time at her apartment. I doubt that they’ve reached a happy equilibrium. There’s a complex web of rents and reputation pulling against wages and property taxes and material costs. In better days, maybe a vacancy in the kitchen was easy to fill. Today, if frictions really are higher, maybe that gap pulls everything else down with it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
Contrast Banks’s Culture.
As I recall it, sex changes are casual and fully functional. People transition over an extended period of time when they feel like it, and they can and do switch back and forth. It can be a fashion, idle curiosity, or a sense of obligation. Not that the Culture would admit to something so primitive as obligations, but apparently, one of its deep-seated norms is that each citizen fathers one child and mothers another. I can only assume this is part of its casual dismissal of Malthusian growth.
As an aside, omnisexuality is normalized in the Culture. Naturally, none of the male protagonists seem to go in for it. Whether this is author oversight or an intentional surrogate for his male audience, it’s almost conspicuous. For that matter, I can’t think of any characters, male or female, who are exclusively homosexual. The classic Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism isn’t actually all that gay.
I don’t remember any mentions of gender identity, dysphoria, or affirmation. (Caveat: I’ve read about half the series, with a bias towards earlier books.) Perhaps this is to be expected given their publication dates. I’d go further, though, and argue that gender essentialism is incompatible with Culture metaphysics. This is an aggressively materialist setting. The godlike machines which can swirl around your constituent atoms at will have found no evidence of a soul. Gender, as it might be formulated today, is relegated to a preference.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Small-scale question was one thing, but this is getting ridiculous.
Two threads here. One on SSC. The MR comments, the Twitter mentions, I'm sure ACX has an open thread for it. All of them devolving, immediately, into referendums on her fuckability. I don't care, and you shouldn't either. At least not here, in the Culture War thread, made for talking about the Culture War.
Oh, joy.
Given my time spent in the state I feel obligated to keep an eye on this. I can only hope that it remains somewhat sane.
Demonstrators were let in by Oklahoma State Troopers and Capitol security staff. Each person walked through a metal detector…
Capitol security staff was in contact with the leaders of the protest and on multiple occasions, the leaders were giving direction to the crowd about where they could stand (how close to the House chamber door) and even telling the group to be quiet once the State of the State began.
By the time Governor Stitt concluded, the crowd had dispersed and gone home.
Huh. Looks like everything was aboveboard, perhaps even legal. I don’t see how this can be spun as particularly dangerous or militant. Consider me pleasantly surprised.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I wish the /r/dune mods had done that post in character.
Anyway, regarding Google's downranking: I assume that's pragmatism in the fight against SEO spam. Google operates in a bizarre hellscape dominated by Goodhart's Law. Blanket-downranking AI text might well be efficient at separating the wheat from the chaff. Sure, that's conditional on being able to detect it at all. But SEO isn't about sneaking AI content into human repositories. It's about exploring the attack surface of Google Search and, upon finding something promising, guzzling as much algorithmic attention as possible. Athena, unfolding fully clothed from the mind of Zeus. I'm...not terribly bothered by the prospect of filtering more of that out.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I could have sworn there was some Motte debunking about this particular theory closer to the actual arrest. Camas search doesn’t give me anything, though.
My prior for a wealthy English socialite trolling around on reddit is pretty low. It’s such an odd situation that I wouldn’t expect to reason out why she did(n’t) disavow the account. As such, going on a comment-history deep dive is not particularly informative.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I googled this show to see the premise and ran into the same independent article. Glad you wrote this comment and saved me some trouble.
Netflix is teeming with programmes that fall somewhere between being knowingly pulpy and outright schlock.
I miss Deiseach. Her brand of sarcastic indignity would be the perfect response to such a claim. Who could believe that pulp entertainment is enjoyable, even popular?
Netflix too often seems to operate under the amoral ethos of the free market: if people will watch it, that’s reason enough to make it.
Well, at least it’s a capitalist critique rather than the Guardian’s crusade against racism.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I sure hope no one reading this paper forgets the difference between correlation and causation.
“The mere fact that you have such a worldview meant that you were also more depressed and anxious," says Lahtinen.
Out of curiosity—why’d you go see it?
Your observations are in line with a Hollywood that is choosing such plots out of opportunism rather than strategy. I assume whether a script gets optioned is more due to estimates of butts-in-seats than expectations of social impact. This isn’t a claim that Hollywood is apolitical; such a process leaves plenty of room to smuggle in bias. But I think it’s a mistake to interpret movies like this as engaging in cultural myth-creation.
In other words, Hanlon’s Razor applies.
At risk of starting another airing of grievances, I have to mention Rings of Power. It’s nakedly playing with modern American politics, but is it trying to construct a broader narrative? Do the writers actually think making villains parrot modern immigration slogans will turn high fantasy into a progressive on-ramp? I’m inclined to believe that they are instead targeting those little feel-good bursts of tribalism. In a saturated market, the goal isn’t to make art that lasts a lifetime, but to cash in on whatever sentiment is on hand.
For an older example, consider a classic of “Lost Cause” filmography: Gone with the Wind. It unambiguously romanticizes antebellum plantation culture; its source material is even more explicit about framing the KKK as noble protectors. Yet it remains more acceptable than a certain other Lost Cause film because this messaging is viewed as a side effect. Southern belles and hard times gripped the public consciousness in the ‘30s, so the film leveraged them. This is the essence of a “product of its times” defense—the argument that art followed culture rather than the other way around.
Modern political pandering is subject to the same forces. A chunk of the market demands (or is assumed to demand!) this aesthetic, and by God, Hollywood is determined to step up. If that means bolting progressive dialogue onto existing settings, or implementing more diverse casting, or hiring nobodies out of JJ Abram’s cadre, then that’s business as usual. The other relevant law here is Sturgeon’s.
Side note: All of these assumptions go out the window in the presence of a genuine auteur. There’s enough slack in the budgets for AA productions of ideological media, and a sufficiently determined (and skilled) writer or director can command a following all of their own. For the biggest of blockbusters, though, studios will continue to choose the safe road of gesturing at their idea of the zeitgeist.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Well, that explains why the study below used such an expansive definition of DGU. This is obviously in the broader category, and it also is a clear example where having the gun changed the dynamic entirely.
The alternative was something like locking the doors, trying to talk the guy down through a wall or window, and waiting for the police. I think there’s a valid argument for letting them do their job. For those inclined to grand theories, it sets up a tidy dichotomy between (cowardly/responsible) collectivism and (responsible/vigilante) individualism.
More practically, it illustrates that not knowing is a big part of the problem.
The “right” decision changes if the cops are 2 minutes out vs. 20, if the pastor is confused or murderous or intoxicated, if he realizes the barriers of the porch or the door. Without some sort of weapon, your options collapse down into “confront unarmed” or “hunker down.” Without perfect information, those are awfully unappealing. Your weapon (and level-headedness) enabled a more proactive stance and, perhaps, the best outcome.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
Props to you for sacrificing several minutes of your life to test this theory.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
I’ve been desperately trying to find people with whom I can share this. It’s weird enough to make that difficult, but god, I just keep laughing at it.
You can just hear Trump’s voice coming through on his dialogue. Incredible.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
Always has been.
The Nazis got to power by forming a coalition with Catholic monarchists. Everyone was invested in fighting the communists, who in turn "openly announced that they would prefer to see the Nazis in power rather than lift a finger to save the republic.”
Strange bedfellows have always been present in politics. I’d argue that the ability to accommodate bizarre coalitions without immediately imploding is what has given liberal democracy such a competitive advantage in history.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9mo ago
I want to pick at your vision of history, because I think you are romanticizing both the monastic traditions and their role in a subsistence economy. How many of those monks were voluntary wordcels, vs. second or third sons with no particular aptitude for religion? But I realize this doesn’t address your problem.
Set aside an hour each day. During that period, do not use the Internet. Practice the craft of something you find beautiful. An instrument, a particular painting technique. Whittling. Meditation, even. If it requires reference material, print it out or buy a book so that you can separate yourself from the infosphere. Practice its fundamentals.
No one will pay you for this Art, when they could get something better and cheaper from an expert or a robot. It doesn’t matter. This is about you. The great artists and writers and programmers aren’t opting out of society. They are opting in to something else they value.
No, it didn’t.
You are mistaking correlation for causation, here. Look at previous drops in the rate. Was 2002 particularly globalist? Was the mid-80s? Interest rates are raised in times of inflation and slashed after a recession, forming one of the fundamental control systems of the economy. The industries which grow in that space depend on other trends.
If you are correct that woke culture is downstream of globalist and/or narrow-margin products, those are a consequence of our transition from manufacturing to service industries. That’s driven not by the Fed but by comparative advantage with other countries. Back in the 50s we had the edge in tech, raw materials, and not being bombed to hell. Now India and China can compete on price, so we’ve shifted more towards intellectual and interpersonal labor. This would have happened regardless of the interest rates.
I don’t think you’re correct, mind you. Consider Wal-Mart. Narrow margins, global supply chains, and a completely different approach than Silicon Valley tech. It makes money by connecting producers to consumers. The network effects are subject to measurable market forces. In contrast, parts of fintech and all of social media aren’t competing on price, but on brand. You can’t eat Facebook’s lunch by undercutting them. What’s left but weird political signaling?
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