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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2277 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 10, 2026

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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There’s this relatively well-known (I guess) online trope that goes something like this:

Girlfriend who is breaking up with you just now: “You’ll never find another girl like me!”

You (in your head): but.. you literally look exactly like every other girl (recalling a scene you’ve just seen on the street the other day, where a bunch of college girls looking exactly the same were hanging around the street corner)

The joke here is mainly that the college girls featured in this trope are all wearing these gigantic, baggy, light-colored jeans and also completely similar tops. Can anyone explain where this style originates? What’s the story on this? I’m aware of the usual answers: women are like a dumb herd, fashion does not need to make any sense, it’s just a fad etc.

I can only assume that the modern average middle-class single woman, acculturated in 3rd wave feminism, is reluctant to wear either skirts or those tight-fitting low-rider jeans from the turn of the millennium because she assumes it’d draw the attention of shithead patriarchal dudebros.

What happens if China takes Donald Trump hostage?

Realistically, it would be such a gigantic insult to the US' standing in the world that, even though a large fraction of the country and of politicians would be happy about it, the US' leaders would feel compelled to take strong measures. Chinese nuclear weapons and enormous conventional arsenal would, I think, prevent the US from launching a full-scale conventional war against China (but full-scale war is not out of the question). The US would immediately detain every important Chinese citizen and PRC-connected individual on its soil and in territories under its control. The US would also begin a full-scale naval blockade of Chinese shipping. The question with the blockade would be, how close to Chinese soil would the US risk moving its naval forces. In any case, given geography and US naval strength, the US could certainly effectively end China's overseas trade.

It's an extreme hypothetical, however, since China has little to gain and much to lose from taking Trump hostage. Vance, whatever he privately feels about Trump's China policies, would feel politically compelled to not only continue, but even to expand on Trump's anti-China moves in response to China taking Trump hostage.

JD Vance would become president.

Yeah, but then what? Do we launch a full nuclear strike? A conventional war? Just a blockade?

An irresistible smile would fall upon JD Vance's face. A weight hitherto unknown would be lifted from his shoulders. A dream realized.

Under the 25th Amendment he would be only the acting president, not the actual president.

Ir wouldn't be formally announced. China would keep Trump off camera and the CCP would make some statement that he was enjoying an extended visit in private.

Newsrooms around the world would privately celebrate their good fortune in covering the ongoing story.

A certain subset of the American public would begin "You can keep him" campaigns, probably with hats and T-shirts, etc. These would be all over TikTok. This in the vein of the tendency of many Americans to want to mash a self-destruct button.

Democratic politicians would make statements of feigned outrage beginning with "We disagree on everything, but.." Some would suggest peaceful negotiations.

The UN, after a long session , would make a solemn statement about how such behavior in China's part is unacceptable. Then do nothing.

Markets would go into freefall. Allies would mobilize for war with an unclear objective. Even more interesting times would ensue.

Not a question but something for mothers day, sort of.

I've been working on a side project, that will hopefully develop into a side-gig but it was feeling a bit too much like work.

I'd recently taken one of those online silly quizzes, I'm a 'Ray', I could have told you that without the quiz. /images/17785143470161815.webp

Distracting myself from my side-project with this holiday appropriate, not at all fun online quiz that is relevant to my life for 'reasons'.

https://avocadopanic.github.io/FourMothers/

Since the end of lent and no longer fasting from caffeine, it's been especially stimulating.

So, what are you reading?

I've finished The Handmaid's Tale. It's a book I'll have to read again sometime, since there's clearly a lot which I haven't noticed. Can't say it ever came together for me, but maybe that's because I didn't really understand its thrust. The tone throughout was sterile, which was probably intentional, given the motifs of waiting and idleness. The world itself never made a convincing dystopia; it was way too lax in just about everything, and the sense of fear of reprisals or of other people never became more than a literary suggestion. The writing was quite good.

It proved as curious as Atwood, who has not been a predictable simpleton when it comes to politics. On the one hand, it could be read as a screed against the religious right, but the picture is always muddled by something, like the quoting of the communist from each according to his ability. The last chapter muddies the picture even further, making us wonder to what extent this is to be taken as history or myth. As a myth, it may be something of value, something worth a closer look. As a history, it is laced with what seems like old arguments among old activists which seems to limp on eternally, even up to paranoia over viruses.

Going to try some Agatha Christie next, which perennialy seems to be collecting dust on my shelf.

Re-reading How Not to Write a Novel. Not really for the writing advice at this point, but because it's genuinely entertaining, especially the snippets of deliberately bad writing throughout.

Oh man, I've worn out multiple copies of that book. I'm constantly recommending it to people as worth reading even if you have zero interest in writing a novel or fiction of any kind. I can quote so much of it from memory.

  • A sex scene that is only half right is like half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten: it is a bloody, godawful mess.
  • This particular kind of ending is called a deus ex machina, which is French for "are you fucking kidding me?"
  • This particular kind of plot twist is known at the folie adieu, which is French for "are you fucking kidding me?".

Great book.

I started reading The Moving Target, thanks to a recommendation from @RoyGBivensAction.

Mishima's Runaway Horses.

I unexpectedly ended up enjoying Spring Snow, so I quickly picked up the next part of the tetralogy. It's also quite good, though I can understand why people generally praise the first book over the second - having a conspiracy instead of a romance as the main plot probably didn't have as wide an appeal, and right-wing terrorist as the main character was probably a bridge too far for many. I can more easily identify with the protagonists in Runaway Horses: Reactionary fencers obsessed with death and middle-aged white-collar profressionals, and everybody's an autist. Yeah, that's my cohort alright, more so than the effete noblemen of the first book.

Haven't quite finished it yet, so please don't spoil it.

Also from it, RE everyone's favorite culture war topic:

Isao had never felt that he might want to be a woman. He had never wished for anything else but to be a man, live in a manly way, die a manly death. To be thus a man was to be required to give constant proof of one’s manliness—to be more a man today than yesterday, more a man tomorrow than today.

To be a man was to forge ever upward toward the peak of manhood, there to die amid the white snows of that peak. But to be a woman? It seemed to mean being a woman at the beginning and being a woman forever.

I think relatively intelligent women are also aware of this and it is a source of frustration and resentment for them. A beautiful woman has innate value to society pretty much no matter what she does – that’s rather obvious. But the thing with innate worth is that, well, it’s innate and constant. You’ll be valued as a beautiful woman for sure, but not for anything else or anything more. You can try proving your intelligence and abilities but everyone will just assume that it’s only your pretty face that gets doors opened for you. You’ll never be more than you already are. This does not apply to men who, on the other hand, have no innate worth to society.

True in a romantic way, but in real life I think the difference is less than is suggested by Mishima.

To be a man was to forge ever upward toward the peak of manhood, there to die amid the white snows of that peak.

To be a man is mostly to be born, work, marry, have children, and die, old and frail and weak, unless you are either unlucky and die young at the hand of fate or kill yourself, like the author. Gay men have the most romantic notion of masculinity because they both worship it and can play act an extended adolescence that lasts through to middle age, when many of them wither or sink into deep depression.

Women have more ‘innate value’ than men, given their society, class, other demographics etc, yes. But the ‘given’ is doing a great deal there. A poor man on welfare in a very rich country like Switzerland or Denmark has far more ‘value’ (in the sense of a system looking out for him, providing for him, a safety net, the ability to coast through life) than an average woman in most of the world, for example.

“You will never be more than you are” is interesting. I don’t think that’s true literally, but even if it was I think this kind of deep life satisfaction, an identity as someone who has made something of themselves, is much more psychological, internal than it is external. There are people who achieve middling success who believe they have climbed mountains, and those who have done the same who consider themselves abject failures. The difference is in the head, not beyond it.

I suggest two thought experiments.

  1. Let's assume that Denmark goes into a serious economic crisis and consequently the government decides to cut down own welfare spending? Which demographic is most likely to lose their handouts first, if not poor men, especially single men?

  2. Take a 20-year-old pretty single woman from the poorest region of Ukraine and take her to a Danish town. Compared to a 20-year-old poor but handsome local man on welfare, which of them do you think is more likely to receive more attention, time, money and resources from Danish society?

/////////////

Also, is your argument then that homosexual men romanticize the concept masculinity because they are unable to experience their own masculinity by being a husband and father?

This is arguing the ‘intrinsic’ point where I agree with you anyway. Stripped of all possessions, social connections, class, citizenship, wealth, and any other designator of value, the young woman has more ‘innate value’ as a womb than the young man, all else equal. So yes, if you take away a billionaire’s wealth and they’re just a penniless old man, their social capital is far diminished. But in the real world, where social capital includes all of those components, this is just a thought experiment.

Take a 20-year-old pretty single woman from the poorest region of Ukraine and take her to a Danish town. Compared to a 20-year-old poor but handsome local man on welfare, which of them do you think is more likely to receive more attention, time, money and resources from Danish society?

Neither necessarily. If anything Denmark’s increasing conservatism on immigration means the citizen will get more support, although Ukrainian refugees have received plenty. If you mean ‘in the dating market’ then sure. But of course most pretty twenty year old Ukrainian women don’t make it to Denmark. They’re either in Ukraine or maybe Poland.

Also, is your argument then that homosexual men romanticize the concept masculinity because they are unable to experience their own masculinity by being a husband and father?

That may be the case but I think it’s a small component of it; some romanticize straight family life but far more common is as with Mishima or BAP the romanticizatiom of the warband, the troop, the master and commander fantasy of all-male life at sea. Part of its sexual, all these otherwise straight men encouraged by circumstance implicitly into male company; gay men are attracted to the most outwardly masculine men, deepest voices, bulkiest muscles. But I think when you’re attracted to something you romanticize all aspects of them, they romanticize male camaraderie too.

Read the four years ago, like many enjoyed the first most. Mishima--I tell someone I've read a good deal of Mishima--and they sit up, impressed. If I say I've read a dozen Murakami novels they shrug. What I have to then admit is that I read in translation, in English. Mishima's kanji and word choice is apparently miles away from Murakami's more accessible prose, and to read Mishima in Japanese suggests a strong command of the language. Like comparing say Thomas Pynchon and Stephen King as an English reader. I say all this not knowing if you're reading in Japanese, English, or German.

I am glad I read the books, though, without spoiling, I will say they did get weird. Then again Mishima was, by my reckoning, a pretty big nutter, and I use that term in the Commonwealth sense of "fucking nuts." I do enjoy much of his writing though. I recently lent a friend a copy of Ai no kawaki or Thirst for Love and I believe his response was "Wtf did I just read?"

I wonder if Mishima had Italian and German (so post-Axis) contemporaries, with the same sort of experiences and talents as he had.

I feel like Mishima's particular form of narcissistic suicidal homosexuality would be difficult to percolate anywhere.

I'm reading an english translation. Much as I enjoy reading works in their original language, I stop short of learning new languages entirely just to read a handful of books.

Manuel Marrero's Bodycount. Borderline unreadable, and certainly less of a novel and more of a rant. But the man runs a good press.

Rambo van Halen's Hollywood Samizdat. It's just his twitter threads. He's a good enough writer that it's still a great read, and if you're interested in modern film industry and not on twitter it's worth buying, but also hard to call it a novel.

Ezra Pound's poetry. How does anyone achieve this boldness, this daring? It would be worth going mad to write like that.

Alternately bouncing between "The Making of The English Working Class", a very interesting history book, albeit colored somewhat by the authors Marxist sympathies and "Too Like The Lightning", a mid-to-near future science fiction mystery-thriller. Between the two of them, I think I prefer the history book. It's quite long but feels, for lack of a better term, very real in way the sf doesn't. Lest this sound like a dig, I should emphasize I give full credit to "Too Like The Lightning" for trying to envision a plausible near future that is different from our own world yet plausibly derived from it. The author is swinging for the fences; it's just that the price of trying to swing for the fences is sometimes you miss.

To be honest, I got about ten pages into that book a decade ago. Read the bit about how their society considers it taboo and obscene to gender people and noped right on out.

Eh, it's definitely done in more of a thought experiment way than a give-me-sjw-points way. Part of the subtext is that people are constantly falling into gender roles whether consciously or not, and the narrator draws attention to this.

Then perhaps I was harsh. I still don't think it's really for me - the 'isn't gender interesting' stuff palled for me halfway through le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness when I was 21 - but I take your point.

I still have to read that one! Is over-rated or as much a classic as people say?

The Lies of Locke Lamora. The writing smacks of the fedora, if you catch my drift - but the plot is engaging enough to keep me interested.

Although I can't help but wonder why the Thiefmaster needed dispensation from Capa Barsavi to whack Locke, but apparently didn't need it for Viselin and just killed him and his buddy on the spot.

The first is the best of the series, sequels are just less coherent retreads.

Oh thanks for letting me know. I'd been vaguely meaning to read past the first one for like the last ten years so it's nice to be relieved of that.

As with nearly all heist novels, the books have a chronic lack of actual heisting. Why would you take an awesome premise like "Ocean's 11 set among the villas and back alleys of fantasy Renaissance Venice" and immediately throw it away to write a half-baked pirate adventure and a nonsensical political thriller?

The writing smacks of the fedora, if you catch my drift

Reddit certainly loves it, yes. Read it on recommendation from one of the SF subs, and hated it. Its main weakness is that Locke is such a Mary Sue. I find characters that simply excel at everything annoying. Other than that, it's decently written Fantasy James Bond with forgettable world building.

Would not recommend.

I really enjoyed it back when I read it ~15 years ago. I started the sequel but got bored and dropped it near the beginning. I don't especially remember why. I've always kind of wanted to go back and finish it, except the author went George R.R. Martin on us and it's been 13 years since book 3, and I don't want to get re-invested in a series that might never conclude properly.

So, what are you reading?

I just started Platform Decay. Murderbot is comfortable science fiction, to me. It's not groundbreaking work, but it is smoothly executed and enjoyable. The series definitely does a bit of anti-capitalist pandering but this never does successfully undermine its meritocratic undertones. The TV adaptation was also watchable, though strictly inferior (and more inclined to lean into the pandering).

Devouring Man Eaters of Kumaon.

Upvoted for word choice.

I tapped out on Les Miserables at page ~500 due to its unsatisfying filler:killer ratio and read the synopsis on Wikipedia instead. Can't win them all.

Now reading some Will Self short stories.

Honestly, audiobooks are great for those long 19th century novels. I just tune in for the interesting parts while driving/doing chores/whatever. Whether this counts as reading is of course a matter of perspective

Nothing in my life at the moment but SPMM notes for the MRCPsych Paper B and the book I'm meant to review for ACX. One of these is significantly more pleasant company than the other.

Well, the end is nigh. Another week and change, and I won't have to devote quite so many irreplaceable neurons to remembering which antipsychotic is least likely to make you piss yourself in your sleep (risperidone, at a relatively continent 6.2% rate of nocturnal enuresis, versus clozapine's stately one-in-five). Or to remembering whether male British prisoners are more likely to be antisocial assholes or drug-addicts (the former, I think, given that roughly 47% of male prisoners across surveys meet criteria for ASPD; the massive overlap with substance dependence being something the syllabus and I have agreed, by tacit treaty, to disregard).

I'd appreciate recommendations, by the way. God knows I'd like to have something to read once I'm done and dusted. The first Paper A made me depressed. The second Paper B is pushing me towards a psychotic break, which would at least have the dignified completeness of a full syllabus run-through. The system makes me understand how the forensic system works, so it can drive me nuts and admit me for a firsthand tour.

A stupid syllabus full of inane questions, then further mangled by SPMM into a form whose clinical relevance is mostly aspirational, and my sorry ass parked somewhere in the middle of it. At least I'm not a gynecologist.

Since you're looking for recommendations after this, I would think that Heidegger's essay "The Age of the World-Picture" would be very fitting.

You know what you've done. Soon, my psychiatrist will know what you've done too.

I have actually browbeaten all of my physicist friends into reading The Age of the World-Picture plus his essay Science and Reflection, and the uniform response has been "he gets how it really works." Having Werner Heisenberg to bounce ideas off probably helped. Someday I will write some effortpoasts on continental philosophy of science for rationalists - Feyerabend is the one everybody knows, but Heidegger, Junger, and even Deleuze are closer to what I hear from actual scientists about the process of research than anything from analytics.

at a relatively continent 6.2% rate of nocturnal enuresis

Per dose or per patient?

Per patient. If it made your piss yourself that frequently, it would be a shit drug. It's still a... not great drug, but it's better than untreated schizophrenia.

Of course. I just read and wondered if some patients had an innate susceptibility to side effects while others never did. Would be interesting if so.

As a lay person, it’s always complicated looking at lists of side effects. Take a side effect of:

Very rare: stroke.

Does that mean that every time you take it, you are rolling a 1:10,000 chance of stroke. Or is it 1e-9 for a young healthy person and 1:10 for a very elderly person who’s already had one stroke? And so on.

The BNF provides a way to convert from intuitive explanations of risk to quantifiable forms. Common is like >10%. Very rare is like 1:10,000. That's not in terms of every time you take the pill, it's what you'd see in a patient who is taking the pill for prolonged periods of time.

And yes, patient demographics do change things. The elderly are particularly annoying, they'll collapse if things aren't dosed just right.

Yes, I see. I remember being very worried when I was doing the paperwork for my heart op and saw that risk of death was perhaps 1:200 to 1:100.

Then I got to the ward, looked around at my fellow patients (all over 70 and mostly very frail) and thought ohhh... And I felt better :P

I wish I understood the nature of resilience in general, really. The fact that the brain continues to work essentially as normal when doused in brain-altering chemicals like alcohol is really staggering when you think about it.

Sky Pride on royal road.

The description felt very generic eastern cultivation story. But I finally gave in and read it because of its long tenure in the top stories. Even though it is generic and plays standard tropes quite often I feel many of the elements are done well.

What I feel it handles best is the ugliness of a cultivation world. Or at least having a non psychopath OP that finds the psychopathy of the setting horrifying and trauma inducing.

Been following this with a few friends since November last year - quite good, I second the recommendation.

Entertainingly, it does pretty well on the daoism front. I tested this out against a few people I know who were in the middle of reading the Zhuangzi and it took much longer than I expected for them to figure out I was pretending at knowledge by aping a webnovel

I gave it a very fair shake and was mostly disappointed. The prose leans purple, the protagonist is... okay, but "quirky" in a manner I do not find charming. He's painfully earnest, and the feral child being resocialized deal overstays its welcome. It's been long enough that I've forgotten much of my criticism, but I'd describe it as a mid novel at best.

That's a shame, because To The Far Shore is up there in terms of novels I've read on RR. Post-post-apocalyptic Oregon Trail, with radiation magic and fallen civilizations rediscovering muskets and the ruins of hyper-advanced civilizations that came before? You bet I enjoyed it.

Both are by the same guy, which is annoying. It means Warby can write. He just can't write this.

Consider the starts. Mazelton begins media res, he arrives at TTFS ready to fire: paranoid Ma assassin with an almost pathological lack of empathy, an inventory of opinions about everyone in the room, instincts honed by a clan that treated "eat carrion if you must" as parenting advice.

Tian arrives with nothing. The opening arc is the author manually installing a soul, one trauma-recovery beat at a time, and the prose is straining for emotional registers the protagonist can't yet supply. That's where the purple comes from. Lavender adjectives are what you reach for when your POV character is still booting up.

Xianxia compounds it. The genre wants a genuinely virtuous MC so cultivation breakthroughs feel earned, which makes "sweet boy from the trash heap" the obvious play. It is also rather played-out in the genre, and once Tian commits, his available range is roughly Pure to Slightly Less Pure. The supporting cast keeps trying to drag him somewhere more interesting. They were losing, when I gave up on it.

My favorite of his is https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/83045/weeaboos-unfortunate-isekai-the-necromancers-gacha - charming and macabre.

It's funny I was thinking of tagging you, since you are one of the only other cultivation enjoyers I know. But our tastes consistently do not align. To the point that I should be getting reverse recommendations from you, asking what you hate to find something I like.

I'm not sure I agree with the "purple prose" accusation. I do find there are stories where I will just skip over things and feel that I'm not missing anything. This isn't really one of those stories.

One thing that is described quite often is the elemental cycle. If you know the cycle already I can see how this feels like purple prose. I do not, and constantly forget it. The in text reminders are helpful not extraneous for me.

I also struggle with Eastern names. The author does seem to go out of their way to reintroduce characters or at least make it very clear who they are. If you don't struggle with names these parts would also be wasted on you.

The main character's earnestness is one of my favorite parts of the story. Psychopath MCs are incredibly hard for me to stomach, but so are whiny bitch MCs. It feels like Tian is far from either of those pitfalls.

It's been long enough that I'm not 100% sure if my memories of the prose being purple are entirely reliable. But I do remember feeling like it was overwrought, that Warby was trying too hard. I think a common thread in media I don't particularly like is being too "tropey". If I can predict pretty much exactly what's going to happen in a story arc without even having to read it, yeah, why really bother?

There's only instance in the section of the book I read where I was went "oh, that's cool". It was when he got sent off to whack a demonic cultivator, and decided to risk his life to save civilian prisoners. So far so basic, but then I think it turned out that his senior brothers were monitoring him all along, and if he'd done things in an utterly ruthless way, they'd have killed him for being a potential future demonic cultivator himself. Good idea.

There's the loveable senior brothers thing, where you just know what's going to happen. The tsundere female foil of privilege, where you can sleepwalk into knowing they're going to end up friends/lovers. I could go on for a while, or I could, if I remembered more of the story. C'mon. All I ask for is more originality than that. It's not an awful book, God knows there's some serious horseshit on RR, but I'd give it a 6/10 at best, below my threshold for sticking with it in the hopes of it getting better.

On a semi-related note, I think only the Chinese write good Xianxia. The Western knock-offs just don't capture the vibes, it's even worse than when the Japanese try to depict a Western school in their media. That Greco-Roman "Cultivation" story on RR, whose name escapes me? Holy fucking shit was it bad. Great concept, execution so mediocre I could cry.

There's the loveable senior brothers thing, where you just know what's going to happen.

They ground him, eventually adopt him. He is nearly broken when he has to watch some of them get killed in what feels like a pointless war with a heretical sect.

The tsundere female foil of privilege, where you can sleepwalk into knowing they're going to end up friends/lovers.

Turns out she is not actually privileged, or that she is basically at the bottom tier of "privilege". They do become friends. Turns out later that her mentors use his ass whooping of her as a teaching lesson for her to be less of a loud mouth. The mentors point out that you never know when someone might be a hidden dragon or have a powerful backing so you should always be polite and courteous. Which is something so blindingly stupid and obvious in a cultivation world, but it seems rare that any story actually mentions it and notices it.

The main part I think you would have liked is the depiction of war. The MC is a thirteen year old in a war zone. Once he manages to distinguish himself a little they try to get him a slot as a hospital orderly which is relatively safer. Its safe from violence but not from Trauma. He is watching his senior brothers and sisters get murdered and mutilated in horrific ways. The heretics they are fighting like to use poison, necromancy, and gu (insects/parasites). The war also seems to be very pointless from the MC's perspective. Certain practices by the sect he is in are very callous towards the lives of the lower sect members.

Its very much a "shit is getting real" moment for a xianxia. Which is very much not the typical vibe for any xianxia. Which is part of why I thought you might like it more. Xianxia vibes can get very wishy washy about human tragedy. Exterminating families, including the children. Blowing up whole cities. Horrific wars with massive casualties. etc. And these things typically don't feel like they have much weight to them.

I also hated the greco roman cultivation story. Because it seemed like it would be a lot of navel gazing and gay wrestling without much power progression.

About to start Shatterdark: System of Nil book 2 by Tim Paulson. Still would rate the first as 3/5, but want to see what the author does with the world and the characters he created. Of course, I had to devour Out Law: A Dresden Files novella by Jim Butcher, since it just dropped, and I'm happy to recommend it to fans of the series.

Finally, shout-out to @FtttG, who let me beta read the book they'd been working on. Fun!

One chapter in to GB Stern's The Matriarch.

Going to try some Agatha Christie next, which perennialy seems to be collecting dust on my shelf.

If you haven't read either already, I would highly recommend And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

About to finish Mage Errant. I'm liking it, but it has definitely slipped from a 4/5 to a 3.5 over the course of the last book so far. It's a shame, because the series had a lot of potential. Too much filler and random side character action right after a cliff hanger for my taste though, it's absolutely relentless during this book.

Why hasn't USA and Israel cut the cables that connect Iran to the rest of the internet. I don't see any downsides for them and it is a nice way to counter the state imposed blackout.

Which cables, the cables in the straits of Hormuz that Iran is busily enacting new rules for the control and maintenance of, mandating that Iranian companies must be selected for work there, fees must be paid to Iran? The cables that carry a huge chunk of global data?

The US can't play cards from the Iranian deck, cables are an Iranian card. The Iranians have the cards here!

Why would you cut off cables to a country that's already under internet blackout? Many have already been cut/damaged by various wars. The ones Iran still has are at a small fraction of capacity right now. Cutting them does tiny damage to Iran and Iran will counter by cutting cables that do a lot more damage to the Gulf and the West.

"Well, officer, I saw he had multiple stab wounds, so I broke a couple fingers. Helps to counter the bleeding."

I don't think this would accomplish what you seem to expect.

Right now Iranian elite have internet while the plebs no. It is the same as with the US imposed blockade. For the US interests is best if no one has internet in Iran than only some. Aka showing that it is on US terms.

It would probably be bad PR

To play devil's advocate: neither administration has expressed much concern with PR up to this point.

I don't think that's true - I think the USA and Israel are both intensely concerned with PR and constrain themselves accordingly, at the same time they have massive structural disadvantages that make losing the PR battle inevitable. This tension is part of the at times incoherent strategy we see.

For example: the Trump administration clearly wants the Iranian people to rise up (and they likely do want to rise up) so their hands are tied with respect to certain kinds of action that would reduce that possibility. They won't be given any media credit for these decisions, and that media credit is part of what is supposed to circle back to create interest in rebellion in the country.

I really do think that anti-Trump and anti-semitic media bias is worsening and prolonging the conflict.

Circling back to OP's comment - the black out isn't total. I'll be vague for OPSEC reasons (not because it's actually necessary but because the Iranian's involved are intensely paranoid about their government and I will respect that) - certain people in certain industries that aren't really personally or professionally regime aligned are still given access to the outside internet. This allows them consumption of foreign propaganda and communication with members of the diaspora abroad. Some of the those with access are absolutely the kinds of people you might suspect as being aligned with resistance elements.

You'd also have to imagine the U.S. government is taking advantage of this.

So no, shutting off the internet does have downsides, even if some of the benefits are not materializing.

I've just started to read an historical book, which was written in 2014 and updated in 2021. And the book, understandably, starts with a preface by the author. In which the author chose to give an insufferable sermon about how much we should worry about the climate change (of course, nobody is going to print a book without a quote from Lenin sermon on climate change) and, since it was 2021, about profound and civilization-changing consequences of COVID (the topic of the book itself has absolutely nothing to with either, btw).

Now it is 2026, so I find myself compelled to ask - were there any civilization-changing consequences to COVID? If so, which ones? To kick it off, I can give a list of what it changed for me personally:

  • I have lost significant dose of respect and hope for institutional knowledge. It's not that I doubt The Science (C) (TM) (R) knows a lot of things - I do not doubt that. What I doubt is a) that all those things are true, and b) that the institution as such really cares about as many of them being true as possible. I am now certain that institutionally there are no mechanisms that would preclude institutionally inconvenient truth from being hidden and institutionally inconvenient falsity from being accepted (and enforced) as true - at least on the timeframes comparable with my lifetime. I also am convinced the role of the press in the equation is significantly negative.

  • I no longer think that the US - as a society, as a culture and as people - have immunity to tyranny of any sort. It has somewhat better resistance than some other cultures, maybe, but the barrier after which all the lofty ideals of freedom are going to be gleefully trashed is awfully low and very easy to overcome, and can be overcome on literally days' notice by the government, with no significant resistance. We are all walking on a very thin ice, freedom-wise.

  • Personally, COVID events also gave me the necessary kick in the butt to finally get out of California. While it felt uncomfortable for a while before COVID, I could be succumbing to inertia for a long time yet, but COVID overthrew all my routines anyway, so the change came much easier.

  • On the personal level, I also realized I may not have as much time as I thought I have, with regard not only to my personal health and well-being, but also for all the framework that I enjoy as a member of Western civilization. Any part of it could disappear for reasons I can't predict, so if I want to do things, I better start doing things I want and not delay them to some vague future when I have more time and energy.

  • Job market drastically opened to remote work (in my area, of course) - what used to be a weird ask, became a standard offering. While there's RTO pushback now, remote work is a standard option and asking for it is no longer a niche request but a solid, respectable preference, that has its own ample market to work with. If anything, in-office work now begins to be seen as an add-on instead of the default.

None of that is civilization-changing though. Maybe the last one is a little economy-changing but it existed very much pre-COVID too. Any civilization-changing consequences I did miss?

Remote work and mistrust in institutions are civilization-changing in the long run, but it's not as if they wouldn't have happened without The Experts just openly lying to back up their narrative on Covid.

Look, I've talked to continentals who relocated over the virus restrictions. The USA is far and away more resistant to tyranny than other countries with functioning sewage systems. Yes it got bad here but not as bad as in Holland or France. I put way more importance on gun rights and accept much higher casualty rates for their sake than I would have prior to the 'pandemic'.

Yes, gun rights. Of course. I mean, I'm all for it. I have guns myself. One of the (many, many) reasons I moved out of California was how inconvenient California tried to make having guns and regularly practicing with them (no comparison to Europe, of course, but I never considered moving to Europe). But: when do gun rights come into play? I mean, I hope to never find out, really, but I also think, if they could lock up the whole country for months (while cruelly mocking it by allowing mass riots to roll unconstrained, just to make it clear how much of a power play it is), destroy the livelihoods of thousands of people, permanently hamper the education for millions, to say nothing of the long list of lesser indignities and humiliations, and the gun rights didn't come into play, I can not help but wonder how much farther they can go yet. Again, I don't want to actually find it out empirically, but the skeptic in me also asks - what if the premise that the gun rights are a barrier to tyranny is just a myth and we're actually soft and lazy enough to be salami-ed into anything?

Too late for voting, too early for shooting -- we're at an awkward moment, but it will work itself out one way or another...

The US did a lot better and rolled back restrictions much earlier than comparable countries, and guns are plausibly a big part of it. Like the French burned down cities over the issue and it didn't work. The US pretended militias were kidnapping a governor and we got a lot better.

That kidnapping thing is not a good example - I am about 95% certain it was done by the law enforcement with the explicit goal of destroying the right-wing groups, in which they had a lot of success, by the way - groups like Proud Boys or Oath Keepers were mercilessly squashed, and the only serious protest from the right (you know which one) led to everybody even in the vicinity of it ground into dust with an overwhelming force. I don't see it as "the Right threatened to kidnap a governor and the Machine run away in fear", I see it as "the Machine absolutely crushed anybody on the Right that could pose any threat of resistance, before they were able to pose even minuscule threat, and successfully used fake plots like kidnapping a governor to give it legitimacy in the eyes of the normies".

I think the USA didn’t so as well as we like to tell ourselves on resisting tyranny. It was months before there was any serious pushback on restrictions. And even then, it was pretty minor. We still allowed the government to impose vaccination as the cost of leaving the house and having a non-remote job. We still allowed the government to — without even a hint of an end-date — to shut down public venues, close schools, close businesses (that the government itself got to decide were not essential enough to be allowed to do business at all). There were no protests for weeks or months. There were no cases of people going to those places and opening them in defiance of the government fiat. Obeying and then changing your mind later isn’t resistance. Obeying and then changing your mind when the costs affected you personally is buyers remorse. There were no members of any government in the USA that objected to shutting down until … whenever the government defined the country “safe enough.” They never thought that they were laying the foundations for the next crisis and creating the precedent that it would be allowed to interfere with people’s lives indefinitely.

This worldview is incomprehensible to me. Do you believe the government should never enact any restrictions as a response to an emergency? If you’re a principled libertarian, I suppose it’s self-consistent, but the majority of people aren’t. Temporarily closing non essential businesses, social distancing and vaccination orders are all standard, reasonable responses to a pandemic and aren’t some new form of tyranny, there were similar responses during the Spanish flu (minus vaccines which weren’t as developed).

There were curfews in London during WW2 to protect civilians from bombings, do you view those as tyranny as well?

I’m not totally anti-restrictions, but those restrictions, should be either voted on by publicly elected representatives in open sessions, or be done only in extreme emergencies, and even then must have a date or publicly acknowledged end condition at which point the restrictions lift. The Covid restrictions were not voted in open sessions of the legislature, nor did they have an officially declared ending condition or date. The public was locked down and restricted by the fiat of the health departments and had no public end. The end of those restrictions would come when an unelected government official accountable to no one outside the department decreed that the “free” public would thus be allowed to resume their lives.

The public was locked down and restricted by the fiat of the health departments and had no public end.

Not sure how it worked where you lived, but in most EU countries the parliament had to pass a law to give the executive branch emergency powers to respond to the crisis.

must have a date or publicly acknowledged end condition

Yes, isn’t that what happened? At least where I lived, all emergency powers had a built-in expiration date and a vote had to be passed every few months throughout the pandemic in order to extend them.

If you live in an authoritarian country where the executive branch can enact a state of emergency with 0 accountability and have it persist without requiring any votes, that’s another problem entirely. In functional democracies, suspension of civil liberties was not done without significant scrutiny and legislation.

There were curfews in London during WW2 to protect civilians from bombings, do you view those as tyranny as well?

Yes. But certain limitations of freedoms is expected in the middle of a war, with the understanding that as soon as the war ends, those will be gone, and everybody tries to make it shorter. Something that is clearly driven by enemy action - if there are bombings, there is curfew, if there's no bombing, no curfew anymore. And yes, the war can very much be a roadway for tyranny - just look at Russia, for example. With the war though, sometimes you have no choice - if a person is outside and a bomb falls, that person has a very high chance to die, and it's not a very controversial statement. But if the government says we must jail everybody who says anything critical about the Generalissimo because there are bombings - that's clearly tyrannical.

are all standard, reasonable responses to a pandemic and aren’t some new form of tyranny

Oh, it's definitely not new - there's little tyranny-wise that can be really new, people tried to take power over other people for millennia, there's not a lot of new you can invent there. Well, maybe making people wear aquariums on their heads wasn't tried much before, but otherwise a lot of stuff is not new at all. "Reasonable" though is quite different beast - is it reasonable to arrest people for walking alone on the beach, while encouraging mass riots? Is it reasonable to impose night curfew to fight a viral infection? Is it reasonable to impose random restrictions not based on any empirical data because they look like the government is doing something? Is it reasonable to lie in order to get the citizens to behave in the way the government thinks they need to behave? Is it reasonable to suppress criticism of government policies because the government thinks allowing criticism will lead to less compliance? Ultimately, that's the essence of the problem - the freedom encroachments become bigger and bigger, and it's very standard and natural - if the government wants to do something, it's clearly easier if nobody would disagree and everybody would shut up and do exactly what they are told to do, but we also know where this road is leading, and it's not a good place. There must be a stop somewhere, and the recent events showed that we can go quite far on this road, much farther than we thought before, with little resistance on the way. That makes one question - is there a stop at all? How far is it?

Re: WW2 there was full male conscription and rationing of every foodstuff except bread, heavy propaganda, the works.

“Tyranny” has a moral valence one can agree or disagree with but it was extremely authoritarian. And as with COVID it was very dangerous long term because certain segments of society loved it - Labour tried hard to make rationing a permanent feature of British life long after food shortages had been resolved.

I imagine what it would all look like if the Black Death struck again, in 2026. The workable solutions to any of this would be tyrannical in nature. “Free and open” is a recipe under trying circumstances to give natural selection free reign to determine the course and outcome. Maybe some people want to live under that paradigm. Normal human beings do not.

I remember reading a history book on the effects it had on Britain in the 13th century. One natural consequence that fell out of the havoc it wrought across the country was that the whole society became younger. It was a horrific time to live through, but the social transformations that co-evolved in the wake of the pandemic were amazing to read about. It made me reflect on history in a way I’d never considered before.

We still allowed the government to impose vaccination as the cost of leaving the house

I must have missed this part of the pandemic response.

Can any of the tech nerds on this site recommend a reasonably high-powered computer? My laptop died two weeks ago, and my 10-year-old desktop just isn’t working out for me. Despite commenting on a Rationalist-diaspora forum, I’ll admit to my shame that I know almost nothing about computers, and I’ve pretty quickly become overwhelmed by the staggering number of options for each and every component part.

What I’m looking for is a machine that can ideally simultaneously handle several open Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, image files, and PDFs, one or two PowerPoint presentations, an ungodly number of open tabs spread throughout multiple windows and likely across several browsers (including several active windows that are absolute memory hogs), a CAD program, SoundCloud, and a couple of other minor programs on a rotation basis. My budget is roughly $1,500–$2,500, though I’m open to being told that I need to increase it. I basically want a machine that will handle everything I throw at it and won’t die or get completely bogged down at any point in the next 15 years.

I don’t mind buying either a desktop (in which case I’d supplement with a cheap laptop for those few occasions when I’d need one) or a laptop. In either case, I’ll be hooking up several monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse. Also, I know it’s a bad time to be buying a lot of memory, but that unfortunately can’t be helped. Finally, without any additional information, I was planning on just picking one of the recommended gaming desktops on a review site, but I’m hoping someone here can tell me if that’s a good idea or not.

Framework is what all the cool kids use now.

What I’m looking for is a machine that can ideally simultaneously handle several open Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, image files, and PDFs, one or two PowerPoint presentations, an ungodly number of open tabs spread throughout multiple windows and likely across several browsers (including several active windows that are absolute memory hogs), a CAD program, SoundCloud, and a couple of other minor programs on a rotation basis.

These are completely understandable requirements, but I will note that I chuckled at your list -- Office documents and PDFs, along with even many browser tabs, are definitely a solid set of real-world work computer requirements, but they're also not that demanding. You could get away with a comparatively modest system for this, with some wiggle room for memory requirements. Then you had to throw a CAD program in there, and boy does that add considerable expense to what you need. But if that's what you need, that's what you need.

Right now is possibly the worst time of all times to need a computer upgrade, so I feel for you. Memory and solid state storage are at ludicrous levels, close to plaid. Unfortunately that means these are going to make up a much larger chunk of your costs than they ought to. My feeling is that 32-64 GB of RAM would be the target; I had a system with 16GB, and even without the CAD requirement it desperately needed a memory upgrade. My advice would be to go for a set of two 16GB sticks for now, which would put you at the recommended level for a lot of CAD software and gives you room to grow based on your needs.

The lower GPU requirements that gattsuru talked about are actually a blessing here -- that's another huge cost center, and you can shave some of the cash that gamers have to spend on graphics and allocate it to memory. Generally people doing CAD work would have a pre-built, possibly workstation-grade computer from a major manufacturer bought by their workplace as part of a large contract deal. Those are expensive because they're calibrated for businesses to expense them. I would not, in general, recommend a gaming-oriented pre-built for your needs, and I think your willingness to try your hand at building is the right call. You'll have to keep us updated!

I'll also join gattsuru in saying that unfortunately even in today's world a computer won't last 15 years, even if you spec it out. That's particularly true if you're doing CAD work or trying to keep up with the web.

And Microsoft might not even give you the option: my 9-year-old system works great, especially as I've continued to upgrade the memory and SSDs to higher-end components over the years, but Windows 11 cut off support for it. There are ways around that, but they're hacky and unofficial, and if you're using a computer for work you want it to work and be properly supported. Linux keeps it going though.

You shouldn't feel bad about your level of knowledge -- you have a great awareness of your needs, you can explain them well and in a way that makes it easy to understand and give advice, and you have opinions on the software you use for the work you do. That's solid.

Thanks for the advice! I did feel a bit silly mentioning the first set of requirements, as I would normally expect any decent computer to be able to handle them without any issues; however, my previously reliable work computer has proven unable to handle even as few as 150 tabs without crashing ever since the company forced everyone to upgrade to Windows 11.

The CAD usage is for free-lance architectural consulting, and I may be able to get some of my clients to help cover the cost of extra RAM. If not, it’s good to know that 32 GB should be enough for now.

however, my previously reliable work computer has proven unable to handle even as few as 150 tabs without crashing ever since the company forced everyone to upgrade to Windows 11.

Wow, I thought I was a tab user. 150 tabs! My man!

And based on the other replies to my comment, sounds like 11 really did mess with a lot of people's performance. I had to buy a new PC for 11 so I experienced it as an 'upgrade', but Microsoft's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is unmatched.

Office documents and PDFs, along with even many browser tabs, are definitely a solid set of real-world work computer requirements, but they're also not that demanding.

In the days of XP, or even early on for Windows 10, this was the case.

The latest versions of Office and Windows are brutal performance regressions, with CoPilot and phone-home services making everything slow to a crawl. I say this as a big fan of Microsoft software, which I know is profoundly uncool to be.

Office documents and PDFs, along with even many browser tabs, are definitely a solid set of real-world work computer requirements, but they're also not that demanding.

A better way to think about it is that web pages and apps are ridiculously ineffective while Office and PDF viewers are if not optimized, at least not 1000x pessimized by design simply due to having decades long history, no time for rewrite from the ground up in "modern" languages and generally the core is written by people who have at least some idea what they're doing.

A general rule of thumb I've found is that it's flat out impossible to have too much disk space if you use the computer for any sort of entertainment or hobby stuff beyond web browsing and the right amount of RAM is to take your initial estimate and double it. Hence me using this 2018 model laptop for C++ development, photo editing, running AI audio tools etc without problems because I made sure to upgrade to 64 GB ram and many TBs of SSD storage.

Can you say what the CAD program is? SolidWorks has drastically greater requirements than FreeCAD which has greater requirements than OnShape, and the closer you get to (or above) the first side of things, the more it's going to control your requirements.

For RAM, I'd suggest a minimum of 16GB and ideally 32GB for your use case, with a minimum of two sticks (because of how DDR works, there's a significant performance penalty to 1x32GB vs 2x16GB). Given current RAM prices, I'd personally want to wait for later and upgrade when RAM prices drop - it is the single easiest component to upgrade - but I recognize that may not be possible for your use case. Still, be aware of things like how many slots your motherboard has and what max memory the CPU supports: a motherboard with support for four sticks of RAM gives you a lot more options even if you think your starting value is good.

I'd recommend the desktop-and-disposable-laptop combo, unless you have strong business requirements for CAD-on-the-go. You can get a well-refurbed ThinkPad T480 or E15 around 300 USD; getting a powerful desktop's equivalent specs on a laptop will cost you much than that, and will be a much worse use experience at the desktop, and be harder to maintain.

I'd also consider whether you want a pre-build, or want to build your own. Most prebuilt gaming machines are going to optimize for a use case that isn't yours: gaming generally favors more GPU and less RAM than even the SolidWorks use case will want, and many CAD programs are (still) extremely single-thread-heavy in ways that gaming has largely moved away from. That said, there's not a massive price penalty compared to the same CAD performance in new workstation machines. Building your own can save more money (though it will probably take some careful looking at mobo-cpu-ram combos right now), but it does mean following the instructions or video guides carefully, and using a tool like PCPartPicker to keep an eye on compatibility problems.

I'll... also caution that trying to future-proof for five years is doable and probably easy, ten years is plausible, and fifteen years is an exercise in frustration. The Computer Of The Future in 2011 would have involved a 80GB-256GB SSD for your operating system drive, a first-generation Core i7, and 8-16GB RAM. I actually managed a handful of these for office work, and even without the CAD requirements, they bogged down bad by 2020, and that's with repasting, cleaning, dusting, drive upgrades, and psu replacements.

Thanks for the detailed response!

I have previously been using an old non-subscription version of AutoCAD, but I’m not sure the budget will support paying for a subscription moving forward, so I’ll need to switch to something free/cheaper. I was thinking most likely FreeCAD.

Also, I’ve never built a PC before, but the actual process doesn’t seem very difficult; rather, it seems that the difficulty is in knowing what parts to pick. Between your and others’ advice, netstack’s link, and PCPartPicker, that aspect seems to largely be covered. I’m open to either buying a prebuilt or building from parts though.

I will second going for 32gb of RAM. I also do love X1 Carbons, the physical hardware is good, even if Lenovo's software is not.

I have previously been using an old non-subscription version of AutoCAD, but I’m not sure the budget will support paying for a subscription moving forward, so I’ll need to switch to something free/cheaper. I was thinking most likely FreeCAD.

This sounds like light hobbyist use, like for some 3D printing? Any laptop from the last 5-7 years will have no trouble running that. Unless you're designing large assemblies or planning on doing simulation work on your designs, I'd just get >16GB of RAM and call it good.

I'm a firm believer that nothing important has happened in the PC space for the last 15 years (Apple Silicon is another matter, but it didn't sound like you're interested in that). We did everything you want to do 15 years ago on Windows 7, and it was fine. Because we suck at software design, doing the same thing now needs more RAM, so we gotta buy that. Done.

If my current PC dies, I'm getting another Thinkpad X1 Carbon, probably 8th Gen (those are from 2020 and go for around $500 when getting a good condition business lease return, and sold for >$2000 6 years ago). Matte full HD screen, good keyboard, solid build. X series Thinkpads have lasted more than 10 years of hard use under my care historically, and I would expect this one to continue the legacy.

But really, any PC from that era will do fine at your workload. I'd choose on price or other secondary features. If you get a desktop tower, spend your money on a nice display/mouse/mechanical keyboard and maybe passive cooling instead of compute.

I'm a firm believer that nothing important has happened in the PC space for the last 15 years

There is one exception to this: A gpu that can run local AI models. Not LLMs or image generators but the sorts of custom neural networks that have become quite common for eg. photo noise reduction, audio stem separation etc. In those cases even a fairly low end "good gpu" will do fine (such as this ancient NVidia Quadro P2000 Mobile aka Gefore GTX 1050) but the difference between "have" and "have not" is massive.

Interesting, does the software integrating those non-LLM AI functionalities offer to run this in the cloud for you? My experience with both image generation/manipulation and local LLMs has been that its almost always better to run those loads in the cloud - either directly from the big AI labs, through a vendor like openrouter.ai or on a rented GPU like runpod.io.

You can very well do it all locally, but it's a pointless toy with 8GB of VRAM, semi-interesting with 16GB and you're finally cloud-independent with 24 GB of VRAM. And you can get many hours of GPU time on runpod.io for the price you'd have to pay for this much VRAM.

But yeah, I haven't worked with audio models and the things Photoshop can throw at a GPU.

LLMs and other generation AIs are much more HW intensive than domain specific neural networks. 500M - 1B parameters is plenty when the model doesn't have to understand instructions or global context (hell, there are some task specific audio models in wide use that can fit in just a couple of megabytes while performing well). Sure, a more powerful gpu will run the models faster but when you're doing noise reduction on a dozen culled and selected photos it doesn't really matter if it takes 15 seconds or a minute to run the process when on cpu it would take half an hour. Likewise stem separation taking a few minutes is a non-issue when you only need to run it once or at most a few times for a song (such as when remixing or isolating instruments for practising the lines).

There are apps that can run in the cloud but they're (expensive) subscription or credit based and having to pay $30-$50 per month per app gets really expensive. Not to mention they tend to have ridiculous censorship (think photos of people on a beach where you want to remove some distractions and the cloud version complains that your content breaks the terms of use).

OK, all good arguments. Maybe I'll have to take a deep dive on what's possible in open source land on that front (I refuse to touch Adobe/Abelton et al.). Do you use commercial models/implementations or do you have a recommendation where to start if I want to set it up myself?

Not to mention they tend to have ridiculous censorship

That's the nice thing about just renting a VM on expensive hardware from runpod. They don't care at all what you do, because you provide all the software yourself.

Do you use commercial models/implementations or do you have a recommendation where to start if I want to set it up myself?

For photo noise reduction I've used Lightroom and (free but specific to Olympus / OM cameras) OM Workspace. I don't think there are good open source models as the models are camera specific due to different sensor and bayer filter characteristics (and why they can produce really impressive results - check the OM-1 original vs denoised comparison here where the original is far from what I'd consider usable while the Lightroom one is perfectly fine).

For audio stem separation Ultimate Vocal Remove is my tool of choice (you can download the models from the settings page). I start by removing vocals with MDX-Net / Kim Vocal 2, take the residual and remove drums with Demucs and then possibly remove the bass from the residual of that. Be aware that if you just split the stems from the original they will not sum to 100% and thus you want to go the recursive route. I'm sure there are some newer models that you can install manually but I haven't used those as the existing ones work well enough for my purpose (removing distracting vocals or emphasizing instrumental part to better hear what's happening).

You're running Windows, I presume? Is portability a concern for you?

I am quite happy with my Asus Z13 Flow with two exceptions: it's quite noisy under load and it eats through its battery quickly even when idling. However, it can handle anything you throw at it.

My laptop was a Mac and my current desktop runs Windows 10. I have found over the years that are very few occasions when I actually need a laptop, so portability isn’t much of a worry. I’ll have to look into the Asus though.

I'm similar. I have a desktop and a chromebook, and that covers all of my needs. Before that, I had a beefy laptop that sat under my desk, plugged into a full-sized keyboard, a mouse, a bigger monitor with good ergonomics, and speakers. It baffles me when I see people with a dedicated space to work on a laptop that's set up like a laptop.

Framework Desktop has the same guts in desktop format, but you can get a better or cheaper desktop if you build it yourself. I agree with @netstack's assessment that the 1500 and 1700 tiers at LI are good.

My own build started from https://www.logicalincrements.com/. The idea is that each row of the table consists of parts which are roughly aligned in performance. Everything within the row is cross-compatible, so if you find a sale you can swap it in. I’d look at the $1500 or $1700 tier; it should manage your use cases just fine.

Thanks for the link! That looks extremely helpful. I also appreciate the advice on which tiers to examine.

Why do people care so much about the hantavirus outbreak? The ship is still all over the news and social media. The WHO director-general went to the ship personally, which further indicates that this is a really important matter. It is constantly being compared to covid. Officials keep telling people to calm down, but the way this is covered, the warnings have the opposite effect. The public response seems frantic and only serves to create more uncertainty.

And yet, it just doesn't seem that serious. Sure it can be deadly if you are infected. But from what I understand, Hantavirus mostly spreads to humans through ingestion or inhalation of fluids from rodents. There seems to be no evidence that human to human infection is something the virus is really capable of, and even if this is a strain that mutated to do that, it also doesn't spread through the air.

The most likely scenario in my mind is that hygiene issues on the ship led to a rodent infestation which infected the passengers, and that there is basically no chance that this spreads to the rest of society. It seems about as serious as a hotel giving its residents food poisoning. Terrible for those involved, but irrelevant to the broader world.

But the constant coverage makes me wonder if I am missing something important. Or is this really just a case of the media selling news by appealing to pandemic trauma?

I'd chalk it down to post-COVID hypersensitivity. It's not like those years have faded from popular memory or discourse, and another scary-sounding viral outbreak can be reasonably expected to get many people going.

I'm not worrying about it. Less because I've done the kind of review that @Throwaway05 might have done (I know very little about HV beyond the high mortality rate and proven H2H and zoonotic transmission), and more because I'm tired boss.

Living through one global pandemic and then the overzealous measures around it was enough for me. Even if there's a new outbreak, until it gets much, much worse than Covid ever did, I'll still have to come into work. Perks of being an essential worker.

If we've got neo-Ebola-plus-plus, then I might seriously consider taking a career break and sitting indoors. Like, >2% CFRs for my reference class is my standard for "oh dear", and if it crosses 10%, I'm handing in my badge and going to the Winchester to wait for it blow over.

Otherwise, I'll start caring when we're talking >10k people infected, in multiple countries, in the span of a month or two. Caring isn't the same as doing anything in particular, that's just my personal threshold for sitting up and taking proper notice.

From my understanding (which is not based off of exhaustive review) the outbreak is effectively over (come laugh at me later if it is not).

People are sensitive because of the great trauma which....sure.

I can't imagine how much of a freakout the 2014 Ebola outbreak would have caused these days.

The Coming Plague, well before 2014 (early 90s?) certainly made it sound feasible. That was an interesting book. The girl I was seeing at the time (then yet-to-be-a-med-student, now a fairly reputable doctor) used to go on and on about it. I think pandemics or their possibility are what got her into medicine, though apparently she's not now an epidemiologist. Edit: Nevermind

I know panican is kinda a joke term, but it does describe real people, and they're very overrepresented in the media.

Even the NYT is telling people not to worry unless they were aboard the Hondius, flew with someone who was aboard the Hondius, or live among rodents.

This is the same stuff people were saying about Covid well into March 2020

That only reinforces my point - that people don't much care about this.

or live among rodents

Bay Area LessWrongians most affected.

Stop, you're making me want another cat.

Media looking for something to sell is absolutely part of it, the bigger part is a poor information environment -

  1. Hantavirus is very bad.
  2. Yes H2H transmission appears present.
  3. No this is not actually novel for Hantavirus.
  4. Other aspects of the disease makes it a poor pandemic agent.

On Meddit everyone seems aware of all the pieces and therefore concern is low, however elsewhere (including here) people seem to be missing or misunderstanding one or more of these pieces.

That can easily breed fear. For instance some people in gen pop think this is a possible pandemic. No not really. Some people here think this could plausibly be a bioweapon no not really.

But if you are concerned about either of those things panic and discussion seem reasonable enough.

On Meddit everyone seems aware of all the pieces

FWIW, that has been the approach of the Finnish media. "This is very unusual and a deadly outbreak but there is no reason for concern as human to human transmission is very inefficient and thus risk of any sort of pandemic is very low".

Basically the same as if there was an Ebola outbreak on a cruise ship. That'd be newsworthy and reason for cautioning travelers who may have interacted with people from that ship but otherwise just "stuff happens abroad, evening news as usual".

There seems to be no evidence that human to human infection is something the virus is really capable of, and even if this is a strain that mutated to do that, it also doesn't spread through the air.

Scientists are pretty sure the Andes strain is capable of human to human transmission. It's not particularly transmissible though since it requires either transfer of bodily fluids or exposure to respiratory droplets. A cruise ship with lots of people in close, prolonged contact is probably the worst case for transmission which would explain the mini cluster of cases.

Last I had heard, they thought the patient zero was a Dutch birdwatcher who visited a rodent-infested landfill with his wife.

This probably won't blow up into a global pandemic, but it's novel, scary (50% fatality rate), and like you said, people still have COVID trauma. Maybe the coverage is a bit overblown but I don't think it has been too egregious. Eg. Some of the cruise ship passengers exposed hopped on airplanes immediately after disembarking, which is another great enclosed space for human to human transmission... It's possible we might see cases pop up elsewhere if any of those passengers were infectious at the time.

Are you American? I've personally seen very little about it. Iran seems to largely be sucking the air out of the room, news-wise.

Why do people care so much about the hantavirus outbreak?

They do?

I’ve seen more denials here on The Motte than I have seen any actual caring about the outbreak in the news or other forums. Obviously an outbreak of such virus on a cruise ship is newsworthy so there have been a few articles in local papers about it and one about two locals who were exposed on an airplane but that’s it. No alarmism whatsoever because hantaviruses just don’t transmit between humans well (or at all depending on the specific virus).

I think there is more demand for alarmism (that can then be used to point how ”the establishment” is overreacting) here on The Motte than there is any actual alarmism in the news or from officials.

Our feeds must be very different. I have seen zero discussion about the virus on The Motte, but stories keep popping up in my news feed while I have seen various subreddits bringg it up over the last few days, including today. And of course, the WHO currently has multiple articles about the virus on their front page. This seems like a lot, but it could of course just be the algorithms screwing with me.

Our feeds must be very different.

Probably, as I have zero interest in American media or general purpose forums, what with living in Finland and all that. It is possible that the American media is sensationalist but The Motte is an international forum so a generic "why do people care" is going to be taken as "why do people everywhere (in the west at least) care" to which the answer is "actually they mostly don't seem to care".

This is the latest news here about the virus (article is in Finnish and text copy pasted here in case paywall goes up - you'll need to use google translate or something). It seems to have a very "This is very interesting but it doesn't have any effect on us" sort of approach to me.

Top story on the BBC today, as well. I also don't know why. But I stopped trying to fathom the news cycle years ago.

I also don't know why.

Imagine there was an Ebola outbreak on a cruise ship. That would obviously also be story even though there is no risk of global pandemic or spread in western countries.

A deadly virus (in the very literal sense) outbreak in such situation is always newsworthy even though there is little risk of it spreading further.

It's not just you. It's the top story on APnews this morning. It's been one of the top stories on there for the past week.

And one of the stories this morning is alarmism about the CDC not getting involved, which is a nice 2-for-1 of virus and Trump alarmism.

If it really is just alarmism, it just seems so irresponsible to me. I understand that the incentive of a capitalist society is to profit at any cost. But I also believe that journalists have a duty to accurately inform the population and not poke at their anxieties for no good reason. If they go too far into sensationalism and making baseless claim, they lose their purpose and reason for existing. The value they provide to society will degrade until it is completely gone.

You're not wrong, but I will admit slight surprise that anyone is only now, in this particular news cycle, realizing this. I've had nearly a verbatim thought for, oh, twenty years or so now.

My take matches yours, except I'm not really curious about it anymore. The only risk would be if this virus had been modified to spread easily by aerosol. Widespread AI usage makes this somewhat more likely to happen in the coming years and decades. Some cunt with a serious grudge against society, or simply sociopathic curiosity, could weaponize a deadly virus such as this hantavirus and make it way more contagious. Or some jackasses in a Wuhan-esque lab could be tinkering with GoF with a supposed view to creating vaccines - or simply bio weapons - and humans being humans they'll be lax with security at some point and leak it.

But so far I see no reason to expect that's what's happened this time. I would lean towards the media selling news explanation.

Bird flu has been close to causing a human pandemic for years already. One unlucky mutation is all it will take. Yet the media attention has been small all along. Go figure.

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