netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
And I notice that I usually hear the “prosperity gospel” argument made by people living extremely comfortable lives. Does this mean people who actually experience good things tend to find meaning in them?
Conversely, dead nonbelievers can’t really write books.
I don’t believe that the existence of traumatized converts says much about the rate of conversion. It definitely doesn’t show that they were right.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
You could use that to justify anything.
I think models with epicycles are strictly inferior to models which don’t need them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
This rests on an implicit understanding / expectation that 'reason' / God's Plan should result in good things / not-having bad things in life, including not dying.
I think this is a common if not universal understanding, yes. It’s a corollary to giving Him credit whenever those good things happen.
I understand that there’s a theological motte where the praise is for His goodness in designing the world that included such temporal happiness, or that He only chooses such interventions insofar as they bring glory to His Church. I don’t believe this is what the average, lay Christian thinks when he wins a lottery ticket. You raise people on an entire Old Testament of transactional worship, a New Testament of miracles benefiting Christians, and two millennia of Whig history? They’re going to see God’s hand in worldly matters.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Speak plainly. Make your objections clear.
There’s nothing wrong with including a link to support an argument, but you actually have to make the argument first.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
hold up do any militaries achieve that last one? They’re not getting it from exercises. I guess OCS and the specialist schools are filters for personality traits that might signal competence. But it’s not like they’re anonymous, and they definitely don’t keep sending officers back to Ft. Benning every time they’re up for promotion.
I think it sounds rad. Like an alternate-universe set of Metal Gear Solid sequels.
Little bit of Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead, too. Makes sense as it’s like cyberpunk but for necromancers.
Act III might be a bad fit for a game since it relies on taking away player agency, at least until the final decision. Visions of the Mass Effect “Reapers go away” buttons, except in that series, your character has always been making a difference. There’s a real risk of not just nihilism, but unfun nihilism. I remember almost dropping A Fire Upon the Deep, despite its amazing premises, because of how bleak it felt for the protagonists to run and run with no expectation of a turn. This kind of plot can be done, but it’s not trivial!
I can’t think of much mainstream fiction which handles that sort of AI race plot. Maybe Marathon approaches it on a very fantastical, seed-that-instantiates-the-AI level. Reminiscent of Hyperion Cantos, I guess.
For less mainstream stuff, uh.
Animorphs: the reckoning . The fact that fic of a children’s series veers into AI value alignment is, like, several layers of spoiler.Pokemon: the Origin of Species , ditto. Actually, it might be spoilers that it dips into organized conspiracy territory, too.The World as it Appears to Be , a bizarre Overwatch fic. I don’t even like Overwatch, but this was unreasonably interesting. Probably the closest to your Act 2/3 plot.Ra, by qntm . Double extra plus spoilers that this one involves AI at all.
I’d say these are all amazing on their own merits, but I have weird taste. For all I know you’ve already read half of them if you hang out on /r/rational. I also never read any of the Twilight or Madoka Magica rationalfics, which have a good chance of conspiratorial AI takeoff plots.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
How so? It should be just as 501(c) immune as before.
Actually, it looks like Trump enthusiasts would like to raise the existing tax on endowments established in the 2017 tax bill. So yes, I could see Trump adopting that as a vendetta.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
The rest of your comment doesn’t make sense!
@Gillitrut gave you the U.S. law which governs this situation, the act of Congress which established it, and a Supreme Court case specifying that yes, §1231 applies.
What “other parts” disagree?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
An extraction shooter marketed to fans of boomer shooters.
Wait, Bungie has that covered…
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Reminds me of that mecha game where you have no joystick, no mouse, just the keyboard. It’s command-line only.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Yeah, but being Donald Trump was off the table.
To be clear, my guess is that parole was chosen as the easiest bleeding-heart-compatible overcrowding strategy. They wanted to handle the logistical problem without disincentivizing arrivals.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
CHNV, discussed here.
I think @SteveAgain is wrong about the terminology. “Inadmissible” was used, as intended, to describe someone without any of the immigration protections of a refugee or temporary resident. You can see it used the same way on the current dashboards like this one. The inadmissible numbers include anyone given a Notice To Appear under various laws…but not CHNV, which uses a different law.
Beneficiaries of that program were inadmissible and “parolees.” This was a separate status handled through USCIS instead of CBP.
Given the immense pressure on the border through the Biden presidency, it’s not hard to guess why ~530,000 people were granted parole. About 400,000 were flown from their ports of entry to other sites, mostly in Florida. Again, this didn’t affect their immigration status, but it sure did make it harder to count them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
The U.S. Code is, quite literally, the law of the land.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
We did spend an awful lot of time and effort making it harder for them to do so, yeah? From English common law to bodycams. Incentives matter, and the incentives for the federal government to avoid deporting citizens ought to be pretty strong!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Agreed. We rode that high for a decade. Then we decided to retool everything for flattening hill villages and surviving IEDs. It’s fixable, but not trivial in the slightest.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
The former. I thought specifying “First” would distinguish from the Coalition invasion, which was definitely an outmatch.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
An initial blitz by a superior opponent. Immediate slowdown and a transition to entrenched warfare. Brief offensives and counteroffensives failing to stop the enemy. Inability for either side to secure the airspace. Huge reliance on foreign arms.
Key weapons have changed, but that doesn’t mean everything has.
Doctrine can’t be the same because they’re trying to accomplish different things. All else equal, the guy who’s entrenched has an advantage. As evidence I present all of WWI.
More specifically, consider a town defense like Khorramshar. The Iraqis were forced to expose their armor to RPGs and Iranian tanks if they wanted to get anywhere. As a result, they suffered much heavier casualties despite a numerical advantage.
Actually, I suspect the First Gulf War Iran/Iraq War would provide a lot of insight into the Ukraine invasion, but I’d need to do a more careful reading.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I wouldn’t mind seeing more about those serious estimates. The one you linked is methodological and doesn’t provide a total.
Other than that, I generally agree. Trump’s personal aesthetics don’t really care about foreign casualties. He’s going to manage Ukraine in whatever way serves his domestic politics, so previous support is probably a high-water mark. It’s not going to get any harder for Russia.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Self-imposed, as with the last few of his accounts.
I’m not up to date on it. Was there a pivot after BLM? Or are you referring to the popularity of bodycam footage among a subset of the right wing?
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