xablor
7mo ago
I'm actually a little surprised that someone hasn't tried to displace him to cash in on his silliness with an aggressive article like "Sit Down Mr Macgregor, It's Time to Stop Talking". Maybe there's enough grifting niches out there that there's no need to usurp an incumbent, just set up your own pitch next door? Maybe it's unexpectedly high risk and an attacker needs to build a network of allies before making an attempt? Maybe it's just too much work to thoroughly compile a list of failures and mistakes - there was that one guy who became "the global expert on Moldbug", with more than enough material to discredit his theories, and he didn't make a move. Maybe it's easy to take someone down, but uncertain that you'll be the one to pick up the freed niche.
Presumably there's people willing to say a message - they may even believe it! - and people who want that message said, and a finite budget allocated to getting those things said. Or maybe there's a finite amount of attention in the world to hear the mess. In either case it seems like, assuming there's an equilibrium to disrupt by discrediting someone already in the ecosystem, there's money to be made. So why hasn't someone made a move? What are the dynamics of this grift economy?
xablor
7mo ago
I'm seeing speculation that it's leverage in a labor dispute. Since the union brought the proposal, they can withdraw it at will. Therefore the hotels should accede to their demands or the hotels will risk the proposal getting put to a popular vote.
Apparently union construction labor is known to bring lawsuits against projects that don't use them, in the same vein.
xablor
8mo ago
You might be encouraged by recent work in current-gen small modular reactors. Oak Ridge National Labs is standing up 6 of them, a few efforts got approved to start construction, and the US military is obviously interested given their focus on expeditionary logistics.
xablor
1yr ago
Is this a game for people with compromised shoulders? If I can't do an overhead press without subluxing, will driving stress that failure point again?
xablor
1yr ago
Is there a pinned thread somewhere for feature ideas/requests/feedback? My Motte-fu is weak.
xablor
1yr ago
"Interactive Theorem Proving and Program Development: Coq'art: The Calculus of Inductive Constructions", and it's kicking my ass to a humbling degree. I'm spending, conservatively, 15 minutes per page, in chapter /one/. I don't know if I'm dumber since I was in undergrad, or if this is my true info onboarding rate and I did undergrad wrong, or what, but this isn't boosting my ego at frigging all.
xablor
5d ago
Hm. Proposal: bare links thread exists, but it's only one bare link per day, first come first served? Small-N bare links per day, first come first served? I don't know how easy bot integration would be so it doesn't weigh down the server.
xablor
1mo ago
This has bugged me too, to the point of asking in the past why Blue and Red teams didn't coordinate to both get what they want: money and a makework program for Blue, better voter ID for Red, more faith in voting infrastructure for both the Uniparty and the plebs.
xablor
3mo ago
FVEYS might be the one group in the world that actually doesn't spy on each other.
I thought this was known to be false, as another layer of end-run around restrictions on SIGINT against citizens? If eg MI6 spies on an American citizen on American soil and relays it to NSA with the expectation of reciprocation, it's not NSA doing the spying, and therefore totally in the clear.
xablor
4mo ago
Personal bugbear: Superior Labrum, Anterior to Posterior. The labrum is a bowl of cartilage that provides passive stabilization of the shoulder joint, which in humans is significantly less structurally sound in exchange for a greater movement envelope. The labrum can be torn by heavy exertion at the edges of the envelope or by the proximal head being driven through the labrum, as in holding your arms rigid during a car crash.
xablor
5mo ago
Haven't read the replies yet, but I'd like to point out that your incompetence theory holds water again if there are factions within CIA with differing capabilities. My glance over Legacy of Ashes suggests that the analysis/research and operations groups are culturally quite distinct centrally, meaning de-facto siloed. Only the analysis/research groups are at risk if the WMD claim is revealed to be bogus, and only the ops groups are able to convincingly plant evidence in the field. Shit rolls downhill onto the specialist team evaluating WMD risk in MENA/AFRICOM, skipping the chain of command above them, so there's no incentive for a figure to arise who can make a market to resolve in bridging them.
xablor
6mo ago
You can't control a process if you can't measure its parameters and outcomes. Record yourself during interactions and review later, if you have warning. Maybe jot down notes about encounters that you feel went especially well or poorly?
xablor
7mo ago
"The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra", and I hate myself a little more with every page I turn. I'm going to complete it, because I want the knowledge and the skills, but the process constantly rubs my nose in my lack of bandwidth in onboarding even basic definitions, much less keeping abstract structures in my head well enough to even see their implications, much less their interactions.
Related, and secondarily, a video course in convex optimization (is that out of scope? If you lot can brag about classic literature I figure it's on to brag about forcing myself through technical content.) I won't detail it except to say it's humbling; playlist at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8WsPW41L6l7rviIGvIkY0-jn-tM3YSNi if you're curious.
I've rediscovered the US's official congressional record, at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/crec . For whatever reason it's compiled as being distinct from the hearing transcripts, at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/chrg . It's a weird mix of infuriating and humbling, seeing the egoistic grandstanding around things as subtle and varied as the BUILDER act, substantially modifying the National Environmental Policy Act, and as tiny and high-context as tribal treaties from the 1800s interacting with permitting to add a convenience store to a reservation casino. Something about the scale of impact vs the scale of the people involved? These aren't great souls, whether in Congress or the experts they bring to testify, and they're largely not able to make sweeping impacts due to the combined momentum of history, lobbies, budgets, and a few hundred Congressional cats to be herded.
I just wanted to see Jamie Tucker say "shitter" on the record, man.
xablor
7mo ago
There really aren't ANY apps that just pass the API costs on to users? It's been months, surely that's enough time to figure out an instrumentation layer and a payments provider integration.
xablor
8mo ago
What compromise could the right offer the left that they would want?
Did you actually read the (offhanded, I admit) proposal? It was short. It involved creating a state-level capacity to locate disenfranchised (read: poor, illegal, disabled, low-executive) people and extend state services to them. Inside five years it'll be the premier way to access lumpenproles to buy votes from them. What compromise is possibly better than actually, actively, implementing your opposition's agenda for them?
EDIT: You reacted to it, so you must have. I am confused.
xablor
1yr ago
I bet the Naltrexone is prescribed daily? You might consider using it per the Sinclair method (protocol when you're defending it to your doc), where you dose an hour before drinking. This blocks the reward from drinking more intensely and more precisely than once-a-day dosing.
xablor
1yr ago
An excellent summary is given here .
Tldr, largely copypasta:
-
The American Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses a model of damage to humans by radiation called Linear No Threshold, in which no amount of exposure to radiation is safe. This contradicts casual observation (we live with and robustly tolerate background radiation), observed cellular mechanisms (detection and repair of small DNA errors is routine), and a small number of human longitudinal studies and animal studies.
-
American nuclear reactor operators are as a consequence required to minimize the risk of even innocuous, low-level radiation releases, which makes cost reductions as a result of the usual learning curve and technological advancement impossible.
-
Culturally, there is little education on the risks of small and medium-scale nuclear incidents, and so public opinion is by default against radiation leaks out of proportion to the actual risk. The book being summarized contrasts this with airline accidents, which kill hundreds and are handled as a risk to be minimized, not eliminated.
-
The NRC is incentivized to run the approvals process as long as possible, since it collects fees from license applicants, rather than number of nuclear power plants under oversight or number of GW-hrs generated by nuclear power per year. This naturally drives up the costs of site licensing and design approvals.
-
There are many avenues for anti-nuclear activists to cause delays in the construction of a nuclear power plant, causing massive uncertainty in construction schedules and costs.
-
A model reactor must be licensed before construction begins, but model reactors are often invaluable in experimentally finding failure modes to be accommodated, but all possible failure modes must be addressed before even a model reactor is approved for construction.
-
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima incidents have accumulated massive cultural scar tissue opposing more nuclear power plant construction.
Tldr of tldr: ignorant public, regulatory incentives, uncertainty in capex and opex spend.
xablor
1yr ago
The goal here is storing energy for use later at a net loss, not harvesting energy for "free" like a dammed river reservoir that sometimes gets rained on. Inefficiency is acceptable, although to be minimized.
xablor
1yr ago
I haven't gone and found the paper, I'll admit; I'll give it a shot ASAP so we can argue productively.
I've casually found:
What gives? What are you reacting to to call these your needs? This smells like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem .
That said I used a commodity offering from Sony back when they offered them; they're closing their eReader line down, so it's moot-ish.
More options
Context Copy link