yofuckreddit
No bio...
User ID: 646
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I have to admit that Musk's overall accuracy has fallen off a proverbial cliff, from my view. Previously he'd drop some redpill truths that others wouldn't touch but were ultimately factual. Now it feels like a coin flip as to whether or not what he's posting is real. That's not super different than the hit rate for the journalistic / expert class but it still feels lower.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I'm glad you can vouch for its "authenticity." I've always known that the romantic rhythms in Ireland are different from those where I grew up, and seeing them represented in a novel is one of the reasons I really liked it.
I finished the two novels I started in Feb a couple weeks ago.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I picked this up digitally after seeing @SubstantialFrivolity 's review. I largely agree with what he wrote but have some additional observations:
Conversations with Friends
After having such a great time reading "Normal People" I decided to dig into this one. In short, a disappointment.
Compared to the first of Sally's books I read, this one had far more unlikeable characters and dug into more culture war crap than I had hoped. The protagonists are insufferable Irish college students (two of them spoken word poetry phenoms if that gives you any indication of where this is going) and basically details a couple of unrealistic relationships in a group.
I can't help but wonder how much Sally knew these people sucked. I get the impression she's pretty into lame, midrange-for-the-uk political views and just got lucky keeping her opinions to herself in "Normal People".
On the plus side, the protagonist is a 21-year-old girl and is actually as stupid as we all were at that age (making immature and emotional decisions, etc.), so that at least felt realistic. As always, the sex scenes are pretty nice, and the build-up to them is paced well. I don't feel like I wasted my team reading it but there are better books out there for sure.
Next in the Queue is:
- Cryptonomicon
- My Brilliant Friend
- Anathem
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
This is interesting to hear since Trump ultimately defended Zelensky not wearing a suit before the blowup.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
The first half of this post filled me with Dread. I have always considered BJJ and to hear the positive side of it, I was convinced I'd have to do it.
I've always been, frankly, scared of stepping into combat sports. I am not a winner at any sport - consistently Luigi to someone's Mario. That's bad enough in things as trivial as racing - applied to combat sports it just sounds like too much of an emasculating exercise.
Then there's keeping to a rigorous schedule which seems impossible with my work and children.
Between that and the potential for injury that would affect now essentially 3 sports I..... Think this is a safe pass on something to take up?
Despite all this I've always considered it so irresponsible to have no martial arts prowress. I'm extremely bad at carrying regularly and your body is a weapon you have with you all the time.
I guess I'm asking a bit for your take on it given all that
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
The interview was conducted in his home in this case
No, not really, it's actually kind of a thing and always has been, to @ChickenOverlord 's point.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
Because the cruelty is the point?
I truly don't understand this argument. The DOGE has canceled government-funded-ism (through DEI), which is cruel in itself. The mass firings of worthless bureaucrats elicit glee from yours truly because they're so obviously needed. I take no joy in their suffering, even if they are the type of people incapable of replacing a smoke alarm battery. The contribution of these people to the debt is significant, and only getting worse as pension obligations balloon. Attacking the workforce is an incredibly valid tactic, and these games of pretending that nobody can unlock bathrooms if anyone gets fired only confirms my suspicions.
Then Elon and Trump appeared initially quite serious about fixing the deficit.
I don't think either of the two campaigned on keeping taxes high while slashing medicare/medicaid and setting an end date for social security benefits. It's political suicide because Americans are stupid and selfish.
Was it dishonest for them to pretend like they'd permanently fix the problem? Yes. Am I happy with any cuts at all being possible, even if my Javier Milei fantasies are ultimately no closer to reality? Also yes.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
Late to the party, but I've been thinking about this this week. Near where I live there's a playground with a dedicated area for a 40 yard dash (it's sponsored by the local football team). I normally jog it with my kids, but a few days ago I decided to try. At one point in my life I played soccer, I now do long-distance cycling.
I sprinted ~4 times, hard enough each time to have to catch my breath. Ends up that being able to bike regularly without breaking a sweat doesn't translate well - my legs were pretty fucked afterward.
But the thrill I got from that violence of action was enormous. I'm a big object. My body having the power to launch that meat and bone with significant velocity is amazing. I've had similar rushes of amazement after my first 100+ mile bike rides. Notably, I didn't when I was gaming 2,000 hours per year.
If you're interested in enjoying your body, I'd suggest trying to hone it on at least some level. I'll also second the advice to pursue bodily pleasure - being outside at night with a summer wind, hopping in a hot tub, having sex.
Finally, don't get me wrong, I'm also interested in experiences that transcend our mortal coil. The problem with signing up for VRMMOs is that I'll always only be renting those experiences. The physical body is something you own.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
While I always appreciate being corrected, you're arguing about a detail in my language about the countries themselves instead of NATO in aggregate. From your link:
If we take into account only the 23 EU member states that are also members of NATO, defence expenditure was 1.99% of their combined GDP in 2024 and is expected to be 2.04% in 2025.
So, put another way: Trump demanded they start pulling their weight 8 years ago, but they're still not hitting the 2% / GDP target, despite an active, major war in their neighborhood they supposedly care deeply about (?!?).
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
That IRA court ruling is one of the most insane things I've ever seen. I'm not exactly an expert in The Troubles but... wow.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I have two friends who were actually present at the Munich Security Conference last week, and both of them said Vance's address was the most shocking speech they'd seen in their respective diplomatic careers
The problem here is that I listened to that speech. There was nothing angry or unpleasant about it. In fact, it was one of the most refreshing public addresses I've seen in my memory. Is English your friends' second language? Do they have any understanding of American culture at all? Debate club? It was lightyears away from that - simple, direct language, delivered clearly. A real message from a politician instead of the same endless fucking vapid platitudes about democracy while jailing people for "hate speech".
I think many Americans just don't realise how visceral and close and frightening the Ukraine war is for many people in Europe.
Ok. Fine. Yes, it's far away. Let's pretend I haven't seen the visceral footage of men disemboweled, flayed alive, and burning in the fields of Ukraine. If it's so real, why can virtually no countries in Europe maintain their commitments to NATO spending? Is it perhaps because they're busy gloating about how morally superior their welfare state is while it's endlessly subsidized by the US of A?
I actually don't think Zelensky meant for this to pop off the way it did. It was uncomfortable to watch aggression and dominance toward a man who (to me) seems to be trying to keep his country and people from annihilation.
But I don't see how the established rules of the Lilberal International Order benefit the American taxpayer. I'm tired of watching my children's future being sold while being sneered at. If it takes someone as uncouth as Trump to man the Bailey while Vance stays in the Motte, then it is what it is.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
More detailed terms pertaining to the Fund’s governance and operation will be set forth in a subsequent agreement
Yeah so it says nothing about what the fund will do. Also the Ukranian government, famously corrupt, is going to be pretty squishy about how revenues earned from monetization are going to be calculated and distributed.
To steelman: While there aren't security agreements here, the US won't get any of these resources if Russia conquers the entirety of the country or the land with the most valuable resources. There's still incentive to keep them in Ukraine's borders and under their control.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
Ok while I have you here.
There is a major subset of American men who will never be able to love soccer the way they do Football, and it is because of flopping.
Basketball has the same problem in a more minor way.
It is excruciating to watch grown men fake injuries for the advantage of a foul. I played the sport for more than two decades. I could never stomach doing it and I can't watch pros do it.
The regional differences in how floppy teams are in the world cup is hilarious.
Do you agree that it is a problem? At all? Would you change it? Could you?
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
LLMs != AI. Critical here - the models for understanding physical feedback while cutting aren't going to be built from scraping Reddit.
One thing I will concede is that these hyper specialized machines are going to have other physical advantages. A humanoid robot will take up humanoid space. When you compare it to these automated cutting machines elsewhere in the thread, the latter has more throughput than a humanoid interface would at even superhuman speed.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
We're all speculating here. It's all going to depend on the timing and use cases. But imagine a factory that's sunk millions in capital for their human driven processing.
They can re-do all that with hyper-specialized machines, dozens of vendors, the nightmare of IT/OT interactions (doing a project on this right now in bottling actually). Which they probably do every couple of decades.
Or they can wait for a humanoid robot with these capabilities and drop them almost completely in-place.
Humanoid robots work with existing interfaces. With sufficient image recognition quality and human-like sensory capabilities, they're going to fit in way more jobs. Think of the difference in outlay between training a single humanoid robot to cut chicken legs (which is doable by illiterate illegal immigrants) compared to the expense of developing and deploying a hyper-specialized machine.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I can outperform the market, but only if I am paying close attention. My full-time gig requires sometimes 100% of mind for multiple days at a time, and if you're not doing your own research and able to execute on Bloomberg alerts, you'll miss out on big swings. I did not play as long or as successfully as WhiningCoil, but after 5 years of my $10k play fund performing identically to my bigger funds attached to indices, I decided to focus on my family and job.
My minimum investment into a stock is generally going to be that same $1,000 mark. You ultimately want enough position slots to keep you interested - I.E. 10 slots would be $10k. One problem I ran into is that instead of closing a successful position and moving it to something else that excited me, I would just invest more elsewhere and divide my attention, then miss the previous win turning into a loss.
All that said, it meant I could use that fun money as a way to avoid buying some physical crap. If I had extra money in checking I would buy stock instead of some frivolous bike part. Since this is already trust fund money you can't physically touch, that's of no use to you.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
Couple things stick out:
- Are you sourcing these on your own or finding them in an adjacent forum? I look forward to these every week.
- This happened on an indian reservation - not sure how relevant that is.
- Amazing to have your best friend of 26 years and his daughter sell you down the river. Amazing to have your wife and child beg for a Jury not to convict you of a crime against one of them, and then they do it anyway. I wonder how often abused family members do this, my passive observations suggest it's uncommon but possible.
- One problem is that these niche cases don't provide any pictures. Frankly if I were a juror they would perhaps have moved me in one direction or the other, though the fact this literally only happened once is more evidence it was just some ridiculous mistake.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
It is, helped along by Microsoft's crappy junk mail filter
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
While the capabilities seem impressive, I can't help but notice the difference in quality between those two machines, and legitimacy of the demo video.
The second has simpler, non-moving parts that probably degrade the quality of the product, jump cuts, and is moving pretty slowly. Can't believe that selling an expensive machine like that isn't worth paying an American a couple of bucks to read a script instead of just some shitty TTS engine.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I've butchered meat before - nowhere near at the level of a professional processor for Tyson, but enough to have the basics down.
You've correctly itemized many of these challenges. Still, when I see the primitive human robots of today and apply our current rate of technological process, these all seem eminently solvable very soon.
Likewise, I will bemoan missing the occasionally overstuffed Taco Bell burrito the blazed-out-of-his-mind fast food worker occasionally serves me. But I'll appreciate that my order will be ready when I get there 100% of the time and the missing flavor of subtle racial animus.
To me the edge cases are going to be home services for a while longer yet, where tight spaces (the ability to suck in your gut) and ingenuity/hacking are going to require that human touch a little longer than food factories.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
I think giving up that early would have emboldened Russia or required enough compromises to make it effectively a vassal state. Not a foreign policy expert, just my impression.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
You're correct that we don't know, and I suspect the value of the war to Ukraine reached its apex earlier than today. Unfortunately I also agree with the rest of your post as well.
I suppose as a baseline though I still believe the value of Ukraine standing up for itself made it a net positive at some point in the past few years.
yofuckreddit
10mo ago
This was an extremely common argument on this board just before and during the early stages of the Ukraine war.
It would have resulted in fewer overall deaths but has plainly been disproven by what actually happened.
The longer the war drags on the worse it gets for Ukraine, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they made the right call to fight.
Well I put $450k into the market at the same time. Proceeds from a real estate sale. I'm only down 6% but....
Hopefully that puts it in perspective. I'm frustrated at the same people you are, it'll end up in the wash!
More options
Context Copy link