ulyssessword
No bio...
User ID: 308
ulyssessword
2yr ago
It's probably innocuous, but now I'm wondering if Dragonsteel Entertainment was created as his backup plan.
For those who don't know, Dragonsteel Entertainment is Sanderson's company. It has ~60 employees, including a few of his friends and family, spread out over editorial, continuity, merchandising/publicity, and administrative roles. It has almost exclusively been for Sanderson, but he's starting to publish a couple of others as well. It was the main force behind his "Secret Project" set of novels coming out this year, so it's made at least $40 million in sales already (approx. 5% of one of the "big five" American publishers, or about 0.05% of all books everywhere).
Combine that with his opposition to Amazon's monopolistic audiobook practices, and he might become largely unCancellable. Regardless of whether it was his goal, I wish him the best of luck.
ulyssessword
4mo ago
The reason this is being done so crudely is because every less-crude attempt made in the past was stopped.
My thoughts throughout this Presidency (all three weeks of it) has been a mix of:
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Damn, Trump is reckless, unprofessional, and vain.
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How the fuck does he have so much ammo?
There's a plane crash? Air Traffic Controllers were hired under a racist system. Foreign aid? Transgender operas in Colombia. Funding basic science? >60% "administrative overhead" tacked on. Threaten Canada with tariffs? Suddenly our border security is a valid issue. Random whatever? $20M in subscriptions to the Associated Press, and another $1.6M to the NYT.
It feels like a weird mirror to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: He gives every indication of shooting blindly, but there has actually been a bullseye where he hits all along. That could be luck or good spin, but the most compelling story is that everywhere is that bad.
(Related joke: There has been a shooting at a peaceful protest! A child molester, a sexual assaulter, and a convicted felon illegally carrying a gun are the only people injured.)
I still don't think he's doing a good job, but damn does he have a strong narrative.
ulyssessword
4mo ago
Science has its flaws, but it’s still the secret sauce of western societies’ success and a key part of the economic engine.
One of its flaws is political activism that shatters any semblance of neutrality or objectivity. See here for an earlier discussion of a scientific institution taking on a political cause (Nature endorsing Biden).
Your spokespeople and champions are anti-Trump, and you get tarred with the same brush.
Good luck A) fixing the reputation of science-in-general (preferably by fixing the actual problems instead of by spreading effective propaganda), or B) distancing your field from science-in-general (as Computer Science has already done). I don't see a third option.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
If there are a negligible number of them, then what do you gain by locking them out?
"Sorry Bobby, we want a racially-pure program, so we won't help you" doesn't fly with me even if it's only targeting one student.
ulyssessword
11mo ago
There's a problem with this inability to recognize evil as evil that is endemic here.
A felony is a kind of serious crime.
A felony is words on a page. I don't let the Word of God bypass my moral reasoning (I'm not a very good Catholic), and I definitely won't let the US Criminal Code bypass it either.
Let me turn the question back on you: If/when Trump successfully appeals that verdict, will your moral judgment change? He literally would not be a felon, and you are placing a lot of importance on that. Assuming that his felony-free status wouldn't change your mind, why would you think that his felony-convicted status would change anyone else's?
For a lighter story about how the law can be misaligned with morality, see this article:
And even though it might be the morally right thing to do, Der said breaking into a car is still considered property damage, which is a criminal offence — even if the person's intention is to save a pet.
There's a certain debate strategy that gets on my nerves. I'm sure there's a formal term for it, but I call it a "prohibition on reason".
I see it here, with "felon = evil". I saw it during the pandemic, where public health measures were treated the same as risk factors ("The virus knows if you're sitting or standing, so it's only safe to sit unmasked in a restaurant"). I saw it in cancellation campaigns where an activist NGO is treated as infallible ("The 'okay' handsign is a white supremacist dogwhistle. The trucker should be fired.")
ulyssessword
8mo ago
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses?
One (unfortunately) underappreciated way to build trust is to be trustworthy.
At least some of the claims about fraud are at least superficially plausible, so any plan that doesn't acknowledge and fix that is just more effective deception.
ulyssessword
8mo ago
Notice anything?
I noticed that you listed accounts like that. I have no idea what the base rates are.
By the Chinese Robber fallacy, you could have literally a million examples of something and still have no point (more like hundreds for Twitter pay, given the population size).
I respect random Motters more than journalists, but still not enough to take you at your word here.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
That doesn't answer the core contradiction. Why is sexual assault the only topic that "victim blaming" is used for?
Over the years, my local police (and a few nearby and/or related organizations) have put out information on protecting yourself from break-and enter, carjacking, bike theft, scams, mugging, and incidental gang violence. None (or at most a few) of those were paired with substantive actions, and none drew serious accusations of victim blaming.
Given that the organizations in charge of societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) routinely give individual-level advice with negligible pushback, what makes sexual assault so special?
ulyssessword
4mo ago
We have gotten to an odd place where people can nonchalantly talk about fighting police weekly and utilizing millions of dollars of public resources as "rights".
Get on our level. British Columbia got into a bit of a kerfuffle when it tried to ban people from injecting drugs in playgrounds. Apparently it would cause "irreparable harm" if they had to shoot up elsewhere, so the BC Supreme Court filed an injunction against that amendment.
(They eventually got it banned, eight months after their first attempt. Having Health Canada do it instead of the BC government was the secret sauce to make it stick, because it matters which government is violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or something.)
ulyssessword
6mo ago
For the unfamiliar, it's a temporary suspension of the Federal sales tax on this subset of items.
It came into effect three weeks after the initial announcement, and will end two months later. Retailers are responsible for categorizing children's LEGO (intended for those under 14) separately from adult LEGO (intended for those 14+) because only the first is tax-exempt. Or they could choose not to participate, in which case they would collect and remit the tax, and the customer could file to have the GST they paid on exempt items refunded (like anyone is going to do that).
It's a horrible amount of effort and confusion for a tiny amount of tax cuts.
ulyssessword
3mo ago
I don't think "fake it 'til you make it" is a very good basis for a legal system. Continuously breaking the law for years is worse than breaking it for days, all else being equal.
ulyssessword
10mo ago
If you weren't talking as a mod, then it's a low-content comment. That's what the downvote button is for.
ulyssessword
11mo ago
Yeah, sometimes security really is that bad.
For a less serious example, "somebody" walked into the phone store, asked for a replacement SIM for my account (providing the phone number and possibly my name, but no other information), and walked out a few minutes later with the old SIM deactivated and the new card in their possession. That person was me, but they had no way of knowing that because they never asked or checked.
I think elections should at least be protected against that level of fraud.
ulyssessword
11mo ago
Kamala Harris's insane questioning of Brett Kavanaugh
Wow that's a bad clip. For those without 8:00 to spare, the summary is:
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Harris: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone?
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Kavanaugh: Yes, with fellow judges.
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H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?
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K: I don't remember, but if you have something you want...
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H: Are you certain you haven't?
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K: Is there a person you're talking about?
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H: It's a very direct question. [repeats it]
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Committee Member(?): Objection, you can't expect him to know everyone who works at a specific law firm.
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Harris: Have you ever discussed Bob Mueller or his investigation with anyone?
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K: Of course, he was a coworker.
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H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller or his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?
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K: I need to know who works there.
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H: I don't think you do. You can answer it without a roster of the employees.
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K: No, I can't, particularly when you switched from "and" to "or" after the objection.
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H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?
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K: I don't remember.
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H: So you're denying it? I'll move on, clearly you won't answer the question.
If anything, I'm being charitable to Harris. I cut out a bunch of repetitions, insinuations, and opportunities to clarify. (I also cut out some misconduct from the crowd and quibbling by one of her allies(?) because that's not her fault.)
ulyssessword
10mo ago
Or here's a billion dollar idea, just turn on a goddamn windows machine locally with your patch before sending it out. This patch broke ~100% of windows machines it came across, so you just needed to have done 1 manual patch of 1 fucking machine locally to have discovered this bug.
That brought it home for me. Our IT department (a total of three people, one of whom never touches these projects) created a bug in their software and only caught it on the "trial" rollout. That caution might have saved nearly a dozen man-hours of workers waiting for them to revert the changes.
If we can get that right in a small company that barely touches software, how could a multibillion-dollar corporation that focused on security fail?
ulyssessword
2yr ago
"Nowadays, I do most of my programming using an extremely-high-level language known as 'Undergrad'"
- Some computer science professor, when asked about how he creates programs.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
So in order to justify the cost of these officers they are going to need to ticket between 470k and 970k people.
Wait, you were being literal when you asked about the Return on Investment? I'm sure that the 11 Insanely Corrupt Speed-Trap Towns have great ROI figures for their police forces.
The "return" for proper policework is non-financial.
ulyssessword
7mo ago
As a side note, I remember the onion being much more relevant sometime in the past. I wonder if its decline is related to it becoming just another mouthpiece for the democrat agenda, or if I'm totally off track.
Babylon Bee feels grounded in a way that the Onion isn't. Practically all of their articles start with an actual piece of news: The CEO of Polymarket was raided, Matt Gaetz was appointed, Cabinet picks were protested, etc.
The Onion relies more on completely-fabricated articles (1, 2, 3) which simply don't have the same impact. The ones that do contain factual content are unbearably blunt at promoting the establishment (or farther left) stance on the issue.
Relatedly, I couldn't find a single Onion article against the Left, while Babylon Bee articles against the Right are a dime a dozen. That type of hardline political stance turns me off, and I suspect it does the same for others.
ulyssessword
8mo ago
Prediction: "Generation Z" and "Zoomer" will be given a false entomology of "person who used Zoom to attend school during the COVID 19 pandemic" within the next couple decades.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Here are some general arguments for why women are choosing bear over men, trying to not strawman to the best of my ability:
I think I can do better: The framing of the question sets it up as an obstacle, so the respondents are treating it as one. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a guidebook to local plants?" then people would recognize it as a choice between types of assistance, and (more likely) choose the man. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a bear or a guidebook to local plants?" then they would just be confused because it's obviously trivial and arbitrary. If the man could help you in this hypothetical, then why are you even asking the question?
ulyssessword
1yr ago
I can't wait for another judge to rule that an inkjet printer isn't a press, therefore (many) newspapers aren't covered under the First Amendment. Or that we aren't currently in a "time of peace", therefore the Third Amendment isn't in effect. Or maybe we can keep violating the Eighth Amendment until those punishments aren't "unusual" anymore, then they would be retroactively permitted.
This is somewhat tangential to the culture war, but WD-40 will soon be banned in Canada, despite what the headline of the linked article says.
At issue is a 2021 piece of legislation that comes into force on January 1, 2024. It limits the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in many products, setting the limit for "multi-purpose lubricants that are not solid or semi-solid" to 25% (Listed in Schedule 1, Item 26(i)). Needless to say, this is much lower than the 65% VOC concentration listed on WD-40's MSDS pages (website link) for the classic product.
WD-40 Company responded to talk of the ban by evoking the spectre of Fake News, and didn't mention how they would comply with the regulations. I've sent them a message asking if the MSDS info will be valid into 2024 (because I don't trust journalists, particularly when they can't find the "VOC" entry in a table and don't understand that "low vapor pressure" means less volatile.), and I strongly suspect that it will be reformulated by replacing at least 40.1% of WD-40's composition with substantially different chemicals. EDIT: They've answered, and it will be reformulated.
This ties into the same issues as @some's top-level comment on food names: I don't think that breaded tofu is "Chicken" (or even "Chikn"), and I don't think that a >40% new lubricant is "WD-40".
See also: PYREX vs. pyrex
ulyssessword
2yr ago
Not OP (and neither as quick or as sure), but I had a similar reaction from reading his work. It's mostly just a feeling, and "Mormon fiction" forms its own particular sub-sub-genre. It I had to guess what tipped me off, I'd say:
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PG13-esque writing: Violence is mostly constrained to battles, unprovoked assault is rare and shocking, and torture/abuse only exists offscreen. Sex is only between married couples, and barely even implied.
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Noble nobility: The nobles (or equivalent) are better in some way, and they have the genuine desire to help the people they rule over. See Dalinar, Wax, Elend, both the prince and the priest from Elantris, and one guy from Warbreaker.
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When the previous principles are broken (which is fairly often), it's only by bad people doing bad things.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
Space is a black void with a few resources we can mostly find on earth. It can never replace the Wild West, the frontier. It is empty, and it can never be home to us. This is where we have evolved to live, and to die.
The Earth vs. Moon and African Plains vs. far Arctic are differences of degree, not kind. Both the moon and the arctic are inhospitable environments that will quickly kill unprotected humans, and lack easy access to essential resources. And yet, with sufficient adaptation and technology, we've managed to create self-sufficient populations in the far north.
We've gone beyond "where we have evolved to live, and to die" once already. I wouldn't count us out yet.
Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:
The growth of activism in ostensibly-neutral organizations is old news, particularly since this event took place three years ago. What stuck out to me is that they seem surprised by those findings, and have to reach for esoteric explanations like the "rebound effect". The simple explanation works just fine, and Bret Devereaux put it best: "Public engagement is how you build support for the field; activism is how you spend support for the field. Yet the two are often conflated; spending is not saving.".
Also notable is the primacy of feels over reals: Nature literally is not impartial, and Trump supporters correctly identified that fact based on the evidence they were presented. They didn't even pretend to grapple with the base reality: Instead of looking at trustworthiness, they look at feelings of trust. More broadly, instead of looking at personal finance, researchers and reporters look at feelings of stability and instead of looking at crime, they look at fear of crime.
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