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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2069 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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In July, @coffee_enjoyer cited the testimony of a former US Army Green Beret named Anthony Aguilar, who claimed to have witnessed the IDF indiscriminately shooting at people seeking famine aid at their distribution centres. @P-Necromancer earned themself an AAQC by arguing that Aguilar's testimony didn't come off as terribly persuasive.

Today, Quillette published an article called "Gaza and the Collapse of Truth-Seeking", which adds further wrinkles:

In late July, a self-described “eyewitness” finally emerged—a former US Army green beret named Anthony Aguilar, who had been dismissed as a security contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. News organisations (including the BBC and PBS), websites, and numerous podcasts carried interviews with Aguilar in which he was described as a “whistleblower” and permitted to allege “barbaric” tactics and “war crimes” on the part of US security contractors and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Nobody seemed to mind that the accompanying footage from Aguilar’s body camera [emphasis mine] showed not a single killing. Aguilar’s most heart-rending story—in which he claimed to have been kissed by a grateful Palestinian boy whose killing he then witnessed—was later found to have been fabricated in every detail. The boy was never shot and remains alive. At the time of writing—four days after Aguilar’s claims had been fully discredited in early September—neither the BBC nor PBS had amended their earlier coverage.

I think you meant to post this in the main thread.

I’m not yet convinced that Israel is being truthful here. No journalist has met this boy in person and it’s been a week since the story was published. Fox News is using weasel words when they report how they obtained the video, saying things like “answered questions provided by Fox News Digital through a GHF translator” and “according to a translation verified by Fox News Digital”. In other words, no one from Fox News got to meet the boy and his family, which begs the question of why Israel wouldn’t even let their most stalwart defender interview the boy. The only other outlet that has received a video of the boy is Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire.

I would like to see a reliable journalist interview the boy and his family, first to see if it’s real (faking a video is a fun Saturday afternoon project for Mossad) and second to ask them about their experiences at the aid distribution site. It’s bewildering that they wouldn’t let a single journalist see this kid, given that the story of Abdul has been published on every major news channel and newspaper.

faking a video is a fun Saturday afternoon project for Mossad

There it is.

It’s bewildering that they wouldn’t let a single journalist see this kid

Almost as bewildering as Aguilar's original claim that, of the 2,000+ Palestinian civilians shot dead by the IDF at aid centres, not a single one of them was caught on video by the body cam he was personally wearing.

Yes, I require independent corroboration for the allegations of the Israeli government, because they have a history of manipulating and lying to my country, like when they planned to bomb Americans and blame it on Arabs during the Lavon Affair, or when they posed as CIA agents to pay terrorists to kill Iranian civilians in the Bush era, or when they tried to convince us that their geopolitical foe was building nuclear weapons every year since Reagan. Or when the head of Mossad threatened the family of the ICC prosecutor. “Let a respected American journalist interview the family” is the tiniest of asks when we’re talking about a story of this magnitude.

Aguilar's original claim that, of the 2,000+ Palestinian civilians shot dead by the IDF at aid centres, not a single one of them was caught on video

Aguilar provided a video of the soldiers shooting into the crowd, then cheering and saying “I think you hit one”. Did you watch it? Or do you mean why he didn’t record corpses? Do you think it could be because, when your friend or even a stranger is shot in front of you, you don’t bring the guy over to the one who shot you, but to the nearest hospital? This is why the hospitals have reported on the dead they receive from the aid distribution site. But the statements of doctors have always been ignored since the start of the conflict, even when they’re the most respected in their specialty and crying in a sworn testimony to the House of Parliament.

Aguilar provided a video of the soldiers shooting into the crowd, then cheering and saying “I think you hit one”. Did you watch it?

Yes. In the segment of the video I watched (in which one of the soldiers says "I think you hit one"), no civilians are visible on camera when the soldiers begin firing. When one of them says "I think you hit one", it isn't even clear what the "one" he's referring to is - certainly the soldier saying this doesn't accompany footage of a civilian being shot. I find this very suspicious. Do you mean to tell me that, of the 2,000+ Palestinian civilians allegedly shot dead at these aid distribution sites, not a single one of these was captured on video? Not by any of the soldiers wearing bodycams, or by any of the Palestinian civilians who presumably have smartphones on their persons?

So this place is kinda dead now eh? What happened? There’s a ton of stuff happening in the culture war and the main thread is wildly boring with posts not at all topical

Guys, I think I found the suspect.

Get back to poasting or see what happens

Who the hell do you think you are, DuoLingo?

Maybe someone should post the charlie kirk assassination. Sounds like a culture war.

When was your last top level post in the CW thread and what was it about?

So this place is kinda dead now eh? What happened? There’s a ton of stuff happening in the culture war and the main thread is wildly boring with posts not at all topical

"Willing to comment, not willing to effortpost" syndrome.

I have no doubt that if someone made a toppost about the train stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, it would generate hundreds of comments in response. But that requires someone to do the work of writing a summary and well-posed take, first.

EDIT: @Ademonera bit the bullet.

Yes that’s the exact topic I was looking for. Thanks

Then post something I guess?

I’m a mobile user and effort posting is really hard. If the mods were more relaxed about making simpler posts then I would be more willing.

Israel lures all of its enemies' leaders to a meeting and blows it up for the 4th time is kind of tired.

More evidence that everyone has already made up their mind about in the Epstein case was released.

Got an interesting take?

More evidence that everyone has already made up their mind about in the Epstein case was released.

I actually haven't. I don't know if the Trump birthday letter to Epstein is real or not, for example. My hunch is that it is, but I'm not sure.

I've been a combination of too busy and too lazy to make a worthwhile post about it, however.

This might be one of the issues with the Reddit-style format of forums. On an old-school style of forum, you could just dig up a relevant Epstein thread from the past, even if no-one has posted on it in weeks, and post on it. This would automatically bump the thread to the top of the forum. And if your post is interesting enough, the thread might come to life again. So you wouldn't have to make a brand new one. But with the Reddit-style format, this is a lot harder, since making a new post on an old thread doesn't bump the thread up to the top of the forum.

Well that, plus almost nobody on TheMotte posts anywhere outside of the Culture War thread. If there was a dedicated Epstein thread that actually had significant engagement, that would also address the issue.

I actually haven't. I don't know if the Trump birthday letter to Epstein is real or not, for example. My hunch is that it is, but I'm not sure.

It seems real but not like a smoking gun or anything. Trump admitting to being a perv just like Epstein and also winking that Epstein likes girls under 18 is not a great quality but on its own I don't think it means Trump knew Epstein was a massive underage girl sex predator and that he also participated in it.

I think lots of people look the other way on underage dating if it seems like the people involved are mature or aren't being harmed. I had a high school music major friend that was 16 who was dating like a mid-30s something pianist guy. Seemed outrageous at first but she was mature enough and we didn't think too much of it.

It appears the SSC subreddit is now pointing here to define their rules on Culture War. Does this mean we won? https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1nb6zqe/the_culture_war_rule/nd0741j/

Has anyone else experienced the paradox of choice with LLMs? There was a tine when ChatGPT would suggest several follow-up topics after answering my question. I would usually pick none of them. Now it offers just one suggestion, and on softer topics I just say "please go on" 80% of the time. The suggestions are still not this useful when I'm asking a technical question, though.

I find this general problem to be one of the more interesting (though not necessarily strong) flags that LLMs will struggle to be truly ‘agentic’. As much as AI agents are the rage right now, the ones I’ve seen in the wild at work follow very narrow and defined business rules or require significant human intervention.

I don’t know and haven’t thought enough about why this might be but for all of an LLMs contextual intelligence, I see it falling down on making follow up decisions or inferences based on recent past.

Use an interface that lets you fork the conversation, and explore several branches.

Why can't I explore several branches in the same conversation? The limited context window?

For most of my use, the context window is more than large enough. I use it mainly to prevent context poisoning.

If a LLM goes down an unhelpful path (it locks onto information that is either too specific and in the wrong direction, or to general, or I catch it hallucinating), I find it very important for performance to remove those tokens from the context entirely. Saying "no, that's not what I mean. Let's go more towards X" is far inferior to just purging the previous answer and directly supplying X.

It depends on the exact implementation, but most frontends have to provide the LLM all or a large subset of the previous conversation as an input for a conversation to meaningfully continue. Where context windows are small, they'll have to truncate early portions, use summarization tricks, or use tricks like rag. Even using those techniques, or for LLMs with very long context windows, an LLM given both 'forks' as an input will usually seem very incoherent very quickly, as it will put information, requests, or status from the 'other' branch -- even the best-case scenario would be much more similar to asking the LLM option A and then option B in sequence, rather than separate branching options.

That said, even LMStudio supports just branching a conversation with a single click. I think you can technically do it with ChatGPT/Grok by abusing the Share function and just using that linked conversation as a separate branch, though it's a little more annoying.

even the best-case scenario would be much more similar to asking the LLM option A and then option B in sequence, rather than separate branching options.

That's what I meant by staying in the same conversation. Not forking it and trying to splice it together, but just adding "thanks, not let's go back to option B and discuss it as well".

I think you can technically do it with ChatGPT/Grok by abusing the Share function and just using that linked conversation as a separate branch

ChatGPT just added a "branch in new chat" option last week.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I haven't really tried Grok before, despite starting to use (paid) ChatGPT for work, and regularly testing new (free) ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini versions on my own personal benchmark math questions. I should rectify that. On my first try, the free version took nearly 5 minutes thinking, which I was hoping was a good sign - paid ChatGPT will take 3 minutes to answer something that free ChatGPT answers instantly, but the paid answer will be correct and well-sourced or at worst "I don't know" where the free answer will be nonsense that it proceeds to try to gaslight me about if I question it. But the Grok answer after 5 minutes made a sign error of the sort that the other free LLMs stopped falling for several months ago, and when notified it started in on the gaslighting.

Grok's... weird, performance-wise, especially compared to ChatGPT. It (and especially 4) are heavy thinkers, and from local use with Qwen I'd expect it to have a bigger beneficial impact, but there's something weird going on with whatever RAG-like they're using that makes it go wonky at times.

It's very prone to math errors, even by the low standards of LLMs, both 3 (free) and 4 (paid) still hallucinate and gaslight pretty badly, especially when you get even slightly off the beaten path (compare this to this on the IMU implementation: Viture does actually hide their documentation in a bad pdf, so it's not surprising that neither could find it, but it is disappointing that Grok hallucinates a non-existent class).

On the other hand, Grok's been surprisingly good at handling 'real'-world questions, where others at best seem to give okay answers. There's a risk of landmines because it does still hallucinate and it's (ime) more persuasive than ChatGPT or Claude when it does, and it doesn't stop you when you ask a stupid question (ie, dollar/GB is a really misleading metric for almost all use cases), but my experience is that you need to keep that in mind for pretty much every LLM. It's been a much stronger tool for helping teach, if a bit verbose, even for coding questions.

I dunno if I'll stick with it, and especially for coding-focused use cases I can't really recommend it. But if you don't mind how verbose it gets, there are some types of questions it does better.

I remember seeing a story posted here or perhaps elsewhere.

It is by Scott Alexander

The intro to the story is a person finds a jewel - he puts it on and it tells him "it would be better for you if you took me off"

After that, more stuff happens

Anyone know of the source of this story? I am unable to find it now.

The Whispering Earring: https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/2012-10-03-yvain-thewhisperingearring.html

That is it - thanks!

Cool story.

So, what are you reading?

Still on a bunch of things. Trying Durant's The Story of Philosophy again.

I read Jules Verne's book Village in the Treetops and enjoyed it immensely. This was my first Jules Verne novel and I was amazed how similar the writing was to that of Michael Creighton from a century later.

Painting Abstract Landscapes by Gareth Edwards and his daughter Kate Reeve-Edwards. In general, I like it. Somewhat poetic writing, but also straightforward technical suggestions, and nice clear prints. Worth enjoying as a physical object.

I finished Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, and man this was a good book. It reminded me a bit of Into Thin Air in how, as doomsday approached, the author got right down to minute-by-minute conversations and events. The Space Shuttle program was fraught with danger throughout the lifespan of the program. There were multiple components in the Space Shuttle that engineers estimated would fail maybe once every thirty flights. And some of these components, if they failed, would lead to immediate death for the crew. Flying in a Space Shuttle was nothing like flying in a plane - there was significant risk that the Space Shuttle launch would fail.

It is also wild how precisely the engineers of Morton-Thiokol nailed the risk of the solid rocket booster o-rings failing in cold weather. They literally predicted it the night before the launch and attempted to cancel the launch. Thiokol had multiple last minute meetings with NASA literally the night before launch arguing against launching the Space Shuttle because of the risk of the o-rings failing. And their predictions came 100% true the next morning. Just a wild story.

If you have any interest in engineering disasters or NASA in general this book is a must-read.

Now I'm onto Interpreter of Maladies. Want to knock out a quick fiction book before diving into The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

The Oldest Starfighter by Jamie McFarlane. I've read this book before, just with different characters and a different angle to the whole, "humans are technologically inferior but," style of Sci Fi.

At the recommendation of herself, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Reluctant to read it on my lunch break in work for fear of bursting into tears.

I've asked this question a few times before and never gotten an answer approaching the thing I was asking about- are there any European gun owners on the motte, and if so, what's your experience dealing with the bureaucracy surrounding it?

Now, to be clear, what I am not asking is 'I live in x European country and here's a summary of the relevant laws from wikipedia, no I don't own guns and don't intend to, and nobody around me does or wants to either, but here's my opinion on these things'. What I'm asking is the experience of dealing with bureaucrats around this issue. Do they take for granted that gun ownership ought to be strongly discouraged and treat you with hostility, as blue states in the US are reputed to? Do they basically assume that if you're applying for a license you have a legitimate reason and are box-checking to make sure you aren't a criminal? Something in between? When I asked this when we were still on reddit I got an interesting comment about the politics of the situation in France, does someone have a commentary about actually going through the process and how government officials treat you? Is fingerprinting done through sympathetic government contractors as Texas CHL licenses use? If you had interview and character reference requirements what was that like? Is the license application processed faster or slower than the normal speed of bureaucracy in your country(Texas approves CHL licenses faster but actually prints them slower compared to most licenses with actual requirements).

Do they basically assume that if you're applying for a license you have a legitimate reason and are box-checking to make sure you aren't a criminal?

I think broadly this? Depending on demographics? The people I know who have guns are upper-class, semi-rural people of the huntin' shootin' and fishin' variety, who are culturally expected to own guns and be responsible with them, and none of them ever complained of any difficulty with bureaucracy.

What country?

UK. I asked in a bit more detail and the matter is broadly evaluated on a spectrum from enthusiast devices (antiques, breech-loading shotguns) on one end to personal security devices (automatic pistols) on the other end:

  • Getting antique weapons from > 150 years ago requires no application, nothing.

  • Getting a breech-loading shotgun for pheasant or equivalent - easy if you're the right kind of person (rural farmer, country squire) and have no criminal record. You might be asked for a reference. These guys quite often make their own ammunition and there's no problem with that AFAIK. If you live in the city you may get probing questions about when and how you plan to use this thing.

  • If it's a rifle you will have to do a lot more work to make the inspectors happy but if you look like a plausible deerstalker you can do it without too much issue. My school had these for training cadets, but we had to count bullets in and out and account for all shells fired.

  • My friend knows one person who was allowed to have an automatic pistol. He was a banking family scion who could plausibly argue that he was under serious security risk, and he needed vast amounts of paperwork, checks with the local police, regular medical and psych evaluations, and even then he had to lock up both the pistol and the ammo separately and so it was almost useless to him. He just did it for fun.

I tried, but couldn't make it happen. Getting a hunting license is too expensive, and I don't have enough free time to go the sport shooting route. I still want to, but it's unlikely to happen in the forseeable future.

Getting a hunting license is too expensive

Interesting, do you have a rough number? I know quite a few German hunters, some I'd clock towards lower middle class.

I tried to get mine a few years ago (2020, just as my world was about to end), and just getting the lessons, examination etc. necessary to acquire the license itself would have cost me around 3000€. Actually owning a gun comes with additional costs, including getting your individual guns licensed and getting a safe that fulfillfs the legal requirements. The least expensive part is actually buying the gun and ammo, though as with everything in Germany it's not actually cheap at all, of course.

I have a few friends who are either hunters or at least gun enthusiasts who got their hunting license in order to be able to own guns. Most of them are also middle class, though generally not lower.

Interesting, is it much easier to get a gun license for hunting than for sport shooting?

tl;dr: Not necessarily easier; it requires a different investment and the license you get works differently. But you can just get both.

Getting a Hunting license requires a course (about 80h worth, either spread over several weekends or done in two weeks) and an examination, in which the examiner has liberty to let you pass or fail as he sees fit. After this you can get several guns, of any type that you can convince your local buerocrat are useful for hunting.

Getting a sport shooter's license requires constant activity in a sports shooting club; you first need to be shooting in a given discipline for some length of time and for a minimum of X hours, then your club head needs to verify that you're a good'un, and then you can apply for a license which allows you to own a very limited number of guns that exactly suit the discipline you compete in.

And in either case, you still need to get an approved safe for storage, and a permit for each individual gun.

And from then on the police is permitted to search your house when they deem fit.

And if you break any law no matter how small, or none at all but your local buerocrat thinks your otherwise unfit to go armed, they can revoke your license.

Alright, so it's about comparable to motorcycle riding (another popular (lower-)middle class activity), rather than horse riding or private aviation. Thanks!

Swedish gun owner:

I have never really had to deal with them. I filled in my application online and a few weeks later I got a license in the mail. I have bought four guns from a store and in those cases the staff in the store filled out the forms and I just waited a few min for them to do the paperwork before I signed it.

A lawyer I know got fired from the police where he was processing licenses due to him being a gun lover and asking too many questions. The lawyers who work there not at all knowledgeable about guns and mainly go after what the gun looks like. They are obsessed with guns looking old.

For my handguns I had to get my shooting club to sign my applications. They required me to spend a few weekends working on the range and use their position of power to get applicants to work for free. However, I genuinely like the officials and the gun club. They are a trustworthy, friendly and have excellent taste in hobbies. They would make the best neighbours. A big part of the Swedish sport shooting licensing system is built on the clubs filtering people and only co signing applications for people they want as members. This is an effective way to filter people who seem like trouble but have clean records. On the other hand, nepotism is rampant and there is little equality before the law as our system gives licenses based on personal relationships to gun club chairmen.

When I had more time I used to help train people to meet the gun club requirements for licenses and I helped people get gun licenses. I want more people to get guns.

People who live in hot countries and have air-con at home, doesn't the dry air bother you?

I've found that whenever I try to sleep with aircon on holiday my throat gets incredibly dry, but obviously it's still better than sleeping in the heat.

As far as I'm aware, the rapidly growing Sun Belt isn't full of people complaining about dry throats at night, so clearly I'm missing something.

Is this when you are traveling overseas? Perhaps you are just getting a mild respiratory infection from cold viruses you are not accustomed to.

Having experienced both, I've found that I much prefer dry heat over wet heat.

The dry air never bothered me much, but I admit I was merely visiting as opposed to living there for a year at a time.

Some people buy personal humidifiers, and keep them beside their bed. I grew up in an extremely hot, dry desert, and probably just acclimated. Also, we switch off between an AC unit and swamp cooler. As a kid, we had a swamp cooler in most of the house, and one room with an AC, and my parents were constantly telling us which windows we needed to open or close accordingly.

Is this a wall/window unit or central air? We have our wall units deep cleaned about once every two years or so. I don't know if it's planned obsolescence (or a racket) but the thinking is that Japanese wall units get a lot of crud that needs flushing out and otherwise gets breathed in and can cause irritants to those sensitive. This even when you run the self clean mode and/or clean out the removable filters.

No. A properly sized air conditioner should actually raise the humidity because the same amount of moisture in a colder air is higher humidity.

Now obviously theres air conditioners that are not properly sized and mess up the humidity. But in residential(disclaimer- I haven’t done residential that wasn’t a favor in 7 years) it’s more common to have the opposite problem, where the AC drops the temperature faster than it pulls moisture out.

As @ToaKraka says this is the inverse problem most people have, but you can just run a humidifier in your bedroom. They're cheap and you just fill the water tank every 1-2 days and clean it out once a season.

According to my copy of ACCA Manual J (Abridged Edition), which specialists use to design HVAC systems:

  • The target for comfort generally is dry-bulb temperature of 75 °F (24 °C) and relative humidity of 50 % (absolute humidity around 65 gr/lb or 0.93 %).

  • Houses often have uncomfortably high humidity during the cooling season and uncomfortably low humidity during the heating season. What you are describing is the reverse of the typical situation.

  • "Adding a humidifier to the heating system moderates [the problem of low humidity during the heating season], but if a humidifier is installed it must not produce a visible or concealed condensation problem. See section 27 [of the unabridged Manual J, which I do not have] for more information on this subject."

I don't live in a hot country buy whenever it's hot here and I run out AC I've never been bothered by a dry throat, neither have I while on vacation.

Perhaps this is you problem? Perhaps you breathe through you mouth when you sleep? Maybe you could try using tape?

No I definitely breath through my nose when I sleep. Probably it's just that my body hasn't got used to air con air since I live in frigid northern Europe.

So do I.

What are your favorite versions of classic songs/folk tunes/jingoistic drivel/any song or piece that's been covered many times over the years? I find some versions of these songs nigh unlistenable, but one inevitably ends up being 'the' authoritative version. In particular, prompted by the fact that I hate the Sinatra version of Moon River, but I've been subjecting my family to the Melody Gadot version for weeks now.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic (although the version by Jon Batiste is also interesting).

Will the circle be unbroken (shoutout to the Bioshock version).

Unchained Melody.

This version of La Marseillaise.

Hit me with anything you got that's even broadly related, I'm curious what I've been missing.

The Foggy Dew - The Dubliners

Some personal best versions, though I think both from the early 70s so not modern remixes:

Oh My Darling Clementine - The Nashville Ramblers
My Way - Honolulu Elvis

And a bit different: Down in the river to pray - Colorado All State Treble Choir (this goes semi-viral every few years since 2019 I think)

And a bit different: Down in the river to pray - Colorado All State Treble Choir (this goes semi-viral every few years since 2019 I think)

Love it! Thanks so much. My family has never been religious, but I've always been sucker for a good choir.

Laura Wright's Last Rose of Summer(https://youtube.com/watch?v=LqtSmj7zxmw), and also her version of Drink To Me.

I've been obsessed with the Unleash the Archers cover of Northwest Passage for years.

There’s a whole genre of Irish Republican songs from the War of Independence and the Troubles. History and politics aside, a lot of it is really good folk music, and it’s all free on YouTube. For any single song you can probably find dozens of covers from the 1960s to the present.

Not a rebel song, but Parting Glass by Luke Kelly. Luke Kelly is going to show up a lot on lists on best versions of trad/rebel songs, as likely will Ronnie Drew.

If you're into soul at all, check out the Isaac Hayes versions of Joy and The Look of Love.

The Johnny Cash version of you are my sunshine comes to mind.

This is probably the link you meant to send. Yours is for a YoYo Ma recording of Bach.

Thanks :)

If we're counting historic songs that I like that have gone through a lot of versions before ending up in its current form then i would point you towards Björneborgarnas marsch. The melody was probably written in France, the melody was then popularised in Sweden by the famous Swedish troubadour Carl Michael Bellman and was subsequently adopted as a marsch by the Swedish army. 70 years later, and post Sweden losing Finland to Russia, a Swede living in (and naturalised citizen of) Finland wrote a poem that became the lyrics to the song of called Björneborgarnas marsch. This was eventually translated to Finnish and became the anthem of not only the Finnish armed forces but also their president and Estonia's armed forces.

For me, it's the instrumental version published by Naxos in the album Swedish March Favorites, which was included in the soundtrack of Victoria 1.

But then you're missing out on the wonderfully jingoistic lyrics!

For me it would have to be the Loudon Wainwright III version of Carrickfergus, from Boardwalk Empire.

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