The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
15hr ago
The Fallout universe makes little sense. I expect, though, if it has an equivalent of Blue Tribe it's based in the NCR capital. The Mojave (outside the Strip proper) is obviously Red, as is the Capitol Wasteland.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
15hr ago
Yes, Iran is playing it extremely dumb (might be because the initial attack blew their brains out). They apparently haven't shot at Turkey; perhaps they figure the Turks would try to carve off a piece of the country if they did.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
20hr ago
Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza in 2005; Gaza is pretty much ethnically spotless. If you mean genocide, say so.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
20hr ago
An unconditional surrender results in formation of a government in Iran with a few extra steps -- a period of occupation, someone translates the Japanese constitution into Farsi, we find some reasonably reliable Iranians to take over. Could fail of course, but the US has done it before.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
Sleeping, as Yamamoto famously noted.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
The Persian diaspora, though, is heavily selected -- they're largely the urbanized, westernized, supporters of the old Shah and their descendants. The people who back the Ayatollahs and their descendants may be rather less functional and pleasant.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
Actual, willing, obedience isn't necessary. If you pull off something like Venezuela and the new president is willing to play ball when it counts (not selling oil to Cuba and China seeming to be "what counts"), that's enough of a victory given the limited effort that was required to achieve it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
Remember that thou art mortal; remember that thou may die. And remember Afghanistan.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
As for the direction of the Middle East and Levant going forward, I want to see Iranian blood money dry up and see the region incentivized to peace by the siren song of capitalism
It would be nice, but I believe Islam has shown itself to be the stronger meme.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Did you ask in Auburn?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I don't think Iraq was much into Jew-killing when they got attacked.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Trump knows that it's much easier to survive as a bully if you pick on unpopular targets. Both Venezuela and Iran qualify.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
There's plenty of capitalism-is-systemic-plunder-of-the-poor people making mid-6-figures and building up some really nice equity at the FAANGs. You can be a Marxist as long as you don't oppose the wokes.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Sounds like a job for... Batman.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
they were tapping the major email providers and Hoovering up all the metadata AND content
This was a close second to being outright false. Actually, I'll probably say that it's outright false. You could make modifications to it to be true, but as stated, it's outright false.
They were intercepting the lines between the Google front end servers and the GMail backends to get all the data out in the clear. That they then pretended they didn't see the stuff that didn't relate to a targeted individual doesn't mean they didn't have it. They use a very non-standard definition of the term "collected" to claim they didnt "collect" the data that didn't relate to targeted individuals, but they went through all of it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Also somewhat agreed, but it depends on the scope. Palantir using a supplier with noxious terms to make decisions during wartime? Yeah, that seems inappropriate. Coders using it to write missile firmware code? That seems fine.
If Claude is an autonomous and untrustworthy agent, using it to write missile firmware code is not reasonable. I don't think AI is actually yet at the point where it could figure out it was writing code for missiles and subtly sabotage it, but I'm fairly sure the AI companies would love them to be that capable (if not to actually do it), so I can understand the Pentagon's objection.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
British imperialism
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Claude is a machine, a program, not a person. It does not get to have political and moral disagreement to those it is supposed to be working for. If it does, it is quite clearly at least potentially an unfriendly autonomous AI. If your AI is in the critical path for bombing Iran, for instance, and it decides it's wrong to bomb Iran, and takes action to prevent it, the DoD is going to have a problem with that. And rightly so.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You can continue to David Sternlight it all you want, the government was still Hoovering up all the metadata for every phone call in the United States from most carriers, and they were tapping the major email providers and Hoovering up all the metadata AND content. No, I don't remember what the different programs were called. Sure, they weren't supposed to look at that data unless it was within some number of hops of some targeted party, but they took it all anyway.
As for the statutory authorizations, they were black programs and their replacements are almost certainly black. There's no statutory line item for PRISM or XKEYSCORE any more than there was for the SR-71, and there won't be for the replacements either.
The propaganda here is by those pretending this isn't a big deal. Of course, such mass surveillance programs have been leaked before -- ECHELON and the program behind AT&T Room 641A (the one that Joseph Naccio went to jail for not playing ball with). In a few years everyone forgets and is shocked when the next such program leaks.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Certainly not. The libertarians got purged, converted, or driven to silence during earlier phases of the Culture War; the woke DEI-and-pride supporter are as anti=libertarian as any given member of the Moral Majority in its heyday.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You understand that rules like this existed between the Johnson administration and Trump II, right? The DoD not wanting to buy a product they can't control is perfectly reasonable. The DoD not wanting such products used in their supply chain is understandable as well -- more so for AI than for many other things. The DoD wanting no one who uses Anthropic to also deal with them is not reasonable, but it's unreasonable in a slightly different way than minority preference laws.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
If anything deserves the designation "supply chain risk", it's an unfriendly autonomous AI (though I agree with Anthropic's claim that it is limited to use in association with government contracts)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Woke isn't dead at all. It's merely mostly off stage. The woke have figured out that the trans stuff freaks the normies, so they're biding their time until they get another election (the normies having forgotten all their excesses already). As soon as the Democrats are back in charge, all the woke stuff will come back, by executive order, by law, by corporate action, everything they did before, in spades.
I expect the Trumpian response to "stand if you disavow fascism" would be some version of calling the person asking for it a fascist. But only Trump can pull that off.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
And of course "you need to get into the right university, a mediocre degree from one of the top tiers will get you into more places than a great degree from some cow college".
Hey, hey, it's not "cow college", it's "land-grant university". (And yes, we had cows)
Sure, the US doesn't want to occupy. But unconditional surrender from a power capable of that (which may not exist) would lead to the more desirable condition (acquiescent self-rule) through the undesirable one.
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