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toadworrier


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 12 04:23:06 UTC

				

User ID: 1151

toadworrier


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 12 04:23:06 UTC

					

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User ID: 1151

Every time I try to figure out why we're supposed to care about the laptop, it's some amount of 'because look who suppressed the laptop story' and never 'because the following turned out to be on the laptop.'

It's supposed to matter because it's evidence that a former the the PUSA was, in his former role as Vice PUSA, accepting bribes from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. This was hardly a nothingburger then, and in 2022 it's more like a nukingburger.

The government permitted private business to not accept electronic pament under a certain sum,

Is this a tactic for avoiding VAT?

5% of the population are South Asian migrant workers. Perhaps 20% are Iranians. ... The Emiratis are not concerned. Why? Because they’re still in charge.

Sounds right, but it might be short sighted. History has all sort of twists and turns and regimes always eventually change. If that catches them napping, they'll find the largest civilisation on Earth champing at the bit to take revenge for the millennium of humiliation.

the Pakistanis will defend them against the Indians and Iranians.

That's a joke right? Irony can be hard to smell on the internet.

But the open question is whether that minority is well-placed, disciplined or effective. They have some things going for them, but the jury is out.

The East India Company and the Bolsheviks both played the game of violence more effectively than their rivals within the context of empires that were already falling apart. Wokies are playing low-violence politics within the context of a liberal republic with venerable institutions. Wokies are trying to white-ant those institutions, but can they succeed in the face of opposition? Time will tell.

There's a strong history of contact between real Buddhism and German Idealism. Schopenhauer is the most well known of the lot to be influenced by Buddhism. Less well known are the various Germans who just went to Asia, became monks and never came back. Many great works of scholarly Buddhism were written by this sort of monk.

The point is there is a very deep continuum between Buddhism as traditionally practice and the stuff that goes on in corporate mindfulness trainings in the West. The core of Buddhsm always has been a particular lineage of meditation teachings. Anyone seriously investigating those teachings seriously is a Buddhist; whatever the particular cultural-religious penumbra he surrounds it with.

Me.

Institutions matter.

In one of history's little winks almost the first book this happened to was 1984.

Some copyright SNAFU meant that Amazon had distributed the thing when it wasn't allowed to, so they disappeared it off people's Kindles. This wasn't an attempt at censorship, other editions were readily available, but it was a clear case of memory-holing.

So the best strategy is to start from a low base.

I don't think you said anything wrong. What was the worry?

I don't know whether or not they scan Kindle's actively for sideloaded stuff. But there is probably specific pressure to go after you.

I think in the case above, Amazon wasn't acting out of a general programme to enforce copyright, they were reacting to someone with laywer who was upset about a particular e-Book that they had actively distributed.

I expect there is, and I don't know how that affects Amazon's behaviour. That's a generalized thing though. Distinct from "some specific lawyers are going to sue us unless we do this specific thing".

Can someone spell out how this falsification works? Do we actually understand how LLMs parse things? Or if you don't think they parse, then does anyone know what the hell they do instead?

As far as I know, the argument goes something like, attention mechanism, context matters, yada yada. Which doesn't really cut it.

An important question is whether the supreme leadership in China permitted this [gain of function research].

The supreme leadership probably thought they were supporting a bioweapons research program and conning the Americans into helping. Turned out they were sort of right, just not in the way they expected.

It's just a guess. So yes, idle theory.

Oh wow, this is wonderful. Sorry I didn't see it when you posted it.

I'll confirm it's 100% true. We are made to be twisted around the little fingers of our daughters.

Thanks.

I'd like to say I'm going to read and absorb your links, but we'll see if I get time.

Yes, how is it that the US has fixed interest loans as the norm? Is there some sort if regulation enforcing it?

Here in Australia, most people get variable rate. And even a "fixed" rate is fixed only for a small number of years.

Ah yes 1987... a year of great constitutional import when many questions about state and federal powers were resolved via a grand constitutional convention /sarc.

Section 2 of Article IV of the US Constitution (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#4) says

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

A plain-and-simple reading of that seems to agree that the Florida can't refuse the extradition. But there will be centuries case law working out the precise procedural details of how it has to happen. Apparently in 1987 one of the corner-cases got tweaked.

but I find it irksome that there are any remaining novel theories to be had in criminal law

Welcome to complex systems. Evolution's a bitch.

Do you think "Trump Banged Pornstar (at least) Once" is really a secret worth paying millions to keep? I'm half surprised he didn't pay her to make a movie about the incident.

A procedural tar-pit.

The procedural rules are put in place precisely because the bare words of the constitution would allow that kind of shit you name. This is why people pay attention to precedent.

Yeah, I have no idea what the real law of the land is. Ask the real lawyers.

The point is that the 1987 decision upthread is clearly not some activist reach inventing constitutional rules out of whole cloth.

At a guess, it's associated with working class communists. All two of them.

To their credit, the 19th century left ran a lot of educational programs for working men, and so their genuinely was a large cohort of working class people who understood and believed in socialist theory. But their main representative was the Labour party. The Communists must always have been the extremist fringe of the movement.

So I don't think things will change.

Courts around the western world have been remarkably deferential to this nonsense. And the US courts are (uncharacteristically) more timid and deferential than those in other common-law countries. This is driven in part by a progressive belief in an activist, technocratic state and in part by conservative distrust of judicial activism.

Conservative jurists seem to be slowly coming to their senses. And ithelps good if there is a broader groundswell to support them. I'm glad to see your post -- it's part of that groundswell. But don't be too disheartened - there's incremental progress to be made, and you are helping.