site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3626 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 26, 2023

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Anyone else feel a bit guilty when you start an interesting discussion here on the Motte and a bunch of people reply to you but you don't have the time/energy to reply to all of them, so you kind of pick and choose which comments to reply to based on semi-arbitrary reasons?

None whatsoever! You’re all just ghosts in my phone.

And we're judging the hell out of your browser history.

I have a standing donation to Nick Bostrom's Future of Humanity Institute. I just got an email from them cancelling my donation, explaining that the Institute is being shut down, although it hasn't yet been announced publicly.

Considering his Vulnerable World Hypothesis paper, good riddance.

What do you find so objectionable about it?

In the policy recommendations, the peace and safety aspect of it all reminds me of Thiel’s comment on the slogan of the Antichrist. This, like climate change, is not an actual existential threat but rather a coordinating mechanism for globalists to consolidate their power. Why would I agree to any hostile body of pilpul intent on subjugating and ruling over me? It must be resisted violently.

Any stated reason why?

None.

For the last few years it’s been primarily funded by Moskowitz, right?

No idea to be honest.

For reasons I've gone into before on here, I say absolutely not.

The most likely scenario where a Republican is President in 2025 is Trump with small GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. In this case Project 2025 definitely can be implemented - and my read is it probably will. Having skimmed the Project 2025 policy book, I don't think that the Supreme Court will block anything the admin does, and they have playbooks for dealing with Deep State or Congressional GOPe obstruction. I don't think a seriously implemented Project 2025 which is somehow foiled by Trump's opponents to be a likely outcome - it is more likely to fail due to self-sabotage.

The major ways this could happen are:

  • Trump chooses not to implement it, and instead do something else. In particular, the Project 2025 policy book is mostly about things with big long-term consequences that can be done relatively quietly by executive order while looking like a normal conservative administration. The whole point is not to engage in highly visible abuse of power in a way which would unite people against you. Invoking the Insurrection Act on day 1 and sending troops to take over the NYPD is the opposite of this.
  • Trump starts implementing it, but gets distracted by a shiny thing in a way that throws the project off course. The most likely shiny thing would be revenge prosecutions, particularly if he goes after Republican politicians who have been insufficiently personally loyal to Trump. A senile do-nothing Trump does not derail the project as long as he gets a few key senior people (who have already been identified) into post who can run the project while he watches gorillas on cable TV or whatever. An active-but-distracted Trump will in turn distract the people who need to focus to make Project 2025 work.
  • Heritage staffers have snuck enough GOPe figures onto the list of possible appointees that the key part of Project 2025 (appointing 100% MAGA Republicans to several thousand key posts) doesn't happen. I was not paying sufficiently close attention, but my read from a distance was that GOPe political appointees did more to sabotage Trump's first-term agenda than the Deep State did.
  • There simply isn't enough legibly loyal MAGA talent to staff the administration and the list ends up full of duffers. Basic stuff doesn't get done because the people who should be doing it are lazy/stupid/corrupt and the substantive plan doesn't move forward.

Yes, but I would expect the states to suddenly realize how much power their governments are supposed to have and challenge the broad intepretation of the Commerce Clause in court.

I am searching for non-fiction books about industrial production and manpower mobilization in modern wars. Something like the Wages of War by Tooze (very good book, despite the awful politics of the author), but I am having problems in searching them.

Any idea?

Arthur Herman's Freedom's Forge is excellent.

I went to check my list of books-to-acquire and found…Wages of Destruction. Well, that’s no help.

Most of what I already own for the period is either autobiographical or outright reference material (charts and lists) rather than explanatory. Heller’s Utopia in Power has a chapter on Soviet engagement in WWII which fits the bill; it’s so rabidly anti-Soviet that I would not take its figures too seriously, but it does cover mobilization, production, and strategy.

Let me know if you find anything good!

Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars discusses those issues in some depth.

Why don't Palestinians just convert to Judaism? Most of their ancestors used to be Jews and it would gain them the right to return to Israel, where they could live much better lives. If the answer is that they are devout Muslims and Christians, then do we need to save them from their own irrationality by either somehow getting them to convert anyway or by forcing Israel to give in to their demands so that they don't suffer the consequences of their bad choices?

If this happened at a mass scale, would Israel not allow it? I suppose they would doubt their sincerity and make it more difficult to just convert so that you can move to Israel.

Is this just hard to coordinate on a mass scale? Invidual Palestinians may not want to convert and immigrate and leave their communities. But that still leaves open the question of how bad things must really be if they don't do it anyway. Israel may be an ethno-state, but I think it's the only country in the world that anyone can immigrate to if they're sufficiently motivated to convert to a belief system.

Conversions by Palestinians are generally not accepted as sufficient for Aliyah by Israel.

This is primarily because of the compromise between the Israeli government and diasporic Jewry to allow reform (and other non-orthodox) converts to move to Israel even though the rabbinate doesn’t consider them halakhicly Jewish.

That, in turn, leaves open the door that some progressive Jewish organization might deliberately convert large numbers of Palestinians to Judaism on paper or through some expedited process, and then bulk apply for them to settle in Israel (whereupon they would presumably just join the local Arab Muslim community). For this reason, Palestinian converts are generally denied Aliyah rights.

If the answer is that they are devout Muslims and Christians, then do we need to save them from their own irrationality by either somehow getting them to convert anyway

This is how Christians felt toward Jews for many centuries (forced conversion or expulsion) and it is widely considered to have been a Very Bad Thing. But also, this “irrational” belief is what enables them to exert their will to survive despite reduced quality of life. Can you imagine 21st century Americans behaving like the Palestinians if the Chinese decided to occupy their nation? I can’t. Their “irrational” faith along with its privilege of martyr status and expectation of post-life reward have actually resulted in a evolutionarily rational decision: fighting zero-sum against an arguably ethnic supremacist enemy. Religion has coincidentally allowed them to pursue their evolutionary motive with greater rationality.

Can you imagine 21st century Americans behaving like the Palestinians if the Chinese decided to occupy their nation? I can’t.

If you asked me this question four years ago, I would’ve replied the exact opposite. In elementary school, we were still taught the version of the story of the American Revolution with Paul Revere’s Ride and No Taxation Without Representation and free men casting off the yoke of Albion. I thus always went through life assuming that Americans, even 21st-century ones, were freedom-loving enough to respond violently if necessary to any infringement upon our fundamental rights as outlined in the Constitution and its amendments. Oh boy, was 2020 a wake-up call. I like to believe that those fabled Americans still exist in states redder than mine, but I can’t say that I have the same faith anymore.

Anyway. Sorry for the unrelated blogpost; you just triggered a little thought.

Can you imagine 21st century Americans behaving like the Palestinians if the Chinese decided to occupy their nation? I can’t.

It's an interesting what if. Neither the Americans nor the English have the experience of living under a foreign occupation, at least not since William the Conquerer. I hear this pointed out a lot to explain why American and English perspectives on ex-colonial nations seem so out of touch.

While they were never under a long-term foreign occupation I think the Ulster Scots would be very likely to hold to that type of irrational faith that is necessary for nation to survive under a foreign government. If Ireland ever unifies I don't expect them to stop being more British than the British themselves, and if America ever loses territory I don't expect their counterparts over there to give up either.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-requests-for-conversion-rejected-outright-official-says/

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, director of the Israeli government’s Conversion Authority, spoke about his organization’s handling of requests by Palestinians to convert on Tuesday during a discussion on conversions at the State Control Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, the news site nrg reported.

“The threshold requirements” to be considered by the special cases panel, he said, “are that applicants be sincere and that they are not foreign workers; infiltrators; Palestinian or illegally in the country.”

Most of their ancestors used to be Jews

Were they? My understanding was that modern-day Palestinians traced their ancestry back primarily to ancient Canaanites, not Jews.

Jewish ancestors (the ones they base their claim on Israel on) were Canaanites as well.

Why don't reactionaries and conservatives convert to progressivism? After all progressives control all the institutions and have most of the power, they're the ones winning... Come get your email job organizing diversity and inclusion at Megacorp 39! Give up all your values, friends and family for material luxury and the dubious contempt of those who will still see you as foreign for the rest of your life!

Class and ideology is positively trivial compared to race and language. I'm pretty sure Israelis and Arabs can tell eachother apart readily, even if we can't. Plus Judaism is one of the most ritualistic and complicated religions in the world, it is very unwelcoming to converts.

People don't like changing their national/cultural identity, especially not to become like those they despise and have been in bloody conflict with for many years. It does happen but only over the course of many decades, if not centuries.

Why don't reactionaries and conservatives convert to progressivism?

Well, there is Karlin, although one might doubt his sincerity.

Because 1) they hate jews and 2) Israel is very picky about the conversions to Judaism it accepts, and could easily somehow prevent it by declaring ‘not real Judaism’.

Forced conversions are on the wrong side of a long-standing Schelling fence.

Heavily-encouraged conversions might be on the right side, but have a pretty bad reputation. I personally find them very distasteful, despite being an outright atheist.

What do you think you could do that would convince a Palestinian to renounce his culture, family, and long-established personal beliefs?

Was listening recently to Orwell's biography, and while they discussed Orwell's service at the time of the Spanish Civil War, I realized that most books I've read about the subject were from people either directly or indirectly supporting the Communist side (Orwell, of course, served on the red side and was wounded pretty gravely there). While I am not saying what they wrote were lies, their sympathies inevitably colored how they approach the matter. So I wonder - can anybody recommend some good works about the period which aren't written by leftists? I am not looking for right-side propaganda, but for an honest effort, just not from the left side, because I already seen those and now want to see something different if possible. Can be fictional or documentary, but I don't want a dry historic "this happened, then that happened, then that happened" but something more narratory, engaging and explanatory even if it's a documentary.

The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical, Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism by Bryan Caplan

In "Looking Back on the Spanish War," George Orwell writes, "I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." The same remark applies with equal force to much of the recent debate about the behavior of the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. Seeing that it was very difficult to unravel the truth behind the conflicting accounts and citations, I decided to look at the evidence for myself. The following essay is the product of my investigations. Quotations may sometimes seem overlong, because I avoided cutting them whenever possible to eliminate any suspicion of creative editing.

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it may be interesting. It focuses on anarchism.

So this article has some recommendations: https://theworthyhouse.com/2019/04/16/on-francisco-franco/

You want to look at biographies of Franco to understand where he was coming from instead of just a book about the war.

Franco: A Personal and Political Biography, published in 2014, by Stanley Payne

Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator, by Enrique Moradiellos, 2018

I can vouch for the one by Stanley Payne. It's centered on Franco but still gives a lot of background info on Spain going back to the end of the monarchy.

Antony Beevor’s book on the Spanish Civil War is excellent and comes from a relatively neutral perspective

Beevor's book was pretty heavily slanted towards the Republican side imo.

Maybe Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War by Peter Kemp? I haven't read it, but it seems to be more of a personal narrative about Kemp, foreigner who joins the Nationalist Army and becomes an officer, than it is a tome of history. It's been a big thing on dissident right twitter for a while, to the point that the edition I linked is a reprint by "Mystery Grove Publishing", a "far right publishing house". "Everyone on right-wing twitter loves it" is, if anything, negative evidence about the quality, but it seems to have good reviews from other normal people who wanted to see the other perspective.

Peter Kemp is like the mirror George Orwell. Both left interesting accounts which are valuable as primary sources, and they both get recommended incessantly by extremely online right-wingers and leftists respectively when books on the Spanish Civil War are requested. But if you're trying to actually understand the socio-political background/context of the SCW reading Orwell or Kemp will probably leave you less informed than you started, because both were Englishmen who knew next to nothing about the country or the war they had just volunteered to fight in and had a tendency to just uncritically believe propaganda from one or the other side.

Orwell does have a long and tedious chapter on the political side, mostly focused on the POUM faction that he fought for. It reads a bit like the "People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front" but in Life of Brian.

Kemp barely mentions politics. His motivation was reading about the communists raping and murdering nuns and being so incensed that he decided to volunteer. He even met Franco personally but skims over it in a couple of paragraphs.

In terms of personality they were very different. Kemp was optimistic, confident and adventurous. I like him a lot more than Orwell even though Orwell was a better writer

I've been pondering an effort post about those two for a long time. As an outsider it feels like the English national character today is descended entirely from the Orwells and the Kemp archetype died with the Empire.

It’s been a while since I read either one. I just remember a part where Kemp repeats the Franco line about Guernica having been burnt by the republicans on retreat.

https://samkriss.substack.com/p/live-from-the-hate-march

It was Armistice Day last weekend. One hundred and five years ago, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the First World War ended. They’re very pretty, all those upright ones. A good piece of trivia for schoolchildren to learn. But the armistice was actually signed at 5 am that morning, and to get that nice symmetrical figure the war had to keep going for six more pointless hours. The Germans had asked for hostilities to end immediately; they were refused. So shortly afterwards, an American unit tried to cross the Meuse under heavy fire. British artillery corps, reasoning that it would be more expensive to lug their shells home than to simply fire them all now, spent those last six hours unleashing one last hellish barrage up and down the German lines. French soldiers stormed occupied villages, and many of them died. Nearly three thousand men died on the 11th of November, considerably more than on any average day on the Western Front. Most of their graves say that they fell on the 10th instead. Better that than the indignity of dying for no reason, for no objective, for nobody’s advantage, to change nothing, in a war that was already over but still kept on churning, kept chewing through its victims, simply because war is what there was, and it needs no other justification than that. Those six hours were war in its purest form: no politics, just total sourceless hostility. The moment was coming when the people in the other trenches would simply get up and walk home, and to fire a shot at them would be murder—but right up until that moment, you could still get your sport or pleasure from pinching out a stranger’s life. Perform the rites of the White God. There were generals who wanted their last chance at glory; soldiers too. The last man to die was one Private Henry Gunther, an American. A few months previously, he’d been knocked down from sergeant for complaining about conditions on the front; he wanted to get his pips back, and he didn’t have long. Alone, he charged a German machine-gun nest with his bayonet. At first, the gunners tried to shoo him away. But he kept running at them, so in the very last minute of the war they shot him dead. Afterwards, his rank was posthumously restored and his corpse was issued a citation for gallantry in action, along with the Distinguished Service Cross. Maybe the worst thing about war is that sometimes, you really can get exactly what you want.

Mostly it's just great writing, but it doesn't belong in the main thread because I have nothing to add (edit: also, now that i've actually read the rest, it doesn't belong in the main thread anyway, and I don't agree at all, but it's insanely good writing). It almost seemed too grimly poetic to actually be mostly true - that was, initially, going to be my Small Scale Question, or maybe "is it misleading somehow" - but it checks out to like 2 minutes of research.

So, uh, genuine small scale question: If someone wants to post something here that doesn't quite fit into one of the themed threads, but where they can't muster a full toplevel post, where does/should it go? Are we missing a whole class of posts like that?

(The rest of the article is more directly CW about palestine protests, and also quickly devolves into lurid hallucinations)

It's idiotic because it's wrong. An armistice is a cessation of hostilities, that's all. The Armistice was not a permanent peace - it was initially only for a month and was extended multiple times when peace negotiations took too long. But then Sam Kriss was never one to let facts get in the way of a good story.

I think the point is that it was an obvious prelude to peace, and further fighting forseeably ended up accomplishing no military objectives whatsoever, which strongly implies pointless deaths that could've been easily averted.

Would that have been obvious to the men on the ground?

Attrition of the enemy was then, a valuable military objective, just as it is today in Ukraine. Would the Ukrainians really miss an opportunity to reduce the number of enemies?

From what I vaguely know and from skimming the wikipedia article, I'd guess that it was obvious to men on the ground, but not certain. So some fighting did happen because they wanted to push forward in case the war restarted, but it was obvious that wasn't the most likely outcome. Even granting that point, one can still blame the leaders, who had the option to pause earlier but chose not to. And it's not just my position that this wasn't necessary:

After the war, there was a deep shame that so many soldiers died on the final day of the war, especially in the hours after the treaty had been signed but had not yet taken effect. In the United States, Congress opened an investigation to find out why and if blame should be placed on the leaders of the American Expeditionary Forces, including John Pershing.[41] In France, many graves of French soldiers who died on 11 November were backdated to 10 November.[38]

and also quickly devolves into lurid hallucinations

I started reading it, and stopped when I got to that point. The basic idea seems to be sneering (in an extremely florid and ornate fashion) at people who have even the slightest amount of sympathy for the Israelis, which, okay, fine I guess, but it's not terribly interesting to read.

I disagree with enough of the content I've read that I've fully separated my appreciation of a joke/piece of writing/etc's technical merits from my appreciation of its accuracy. Also, it's quite fun, and very informative, to try and see if you can inhabit the mindset that produced stuff that's that wrong. This also (but less so) extends to other writing styles.

I get you, I can laugh at a joke even if I don't agree with the message underpinning it. E.g.:

Where does a mansplainer get his water?

From a well, actually...

I like some of the things Kriss has written, but this one just seemed a bit rambling, laboured and dull. I stopped reading for that reason, not because I disagreed with it.

This is a good spot. But yeah I loved this piece, it was quite entertaining.

Question for any war nerds: why are dummy drones and dummy vehicles not being used in Ukraine? Shouldn’t these be a feasible way of wasting enemy resources and determining their location?

Eg you dress up a shitty $500 plastic RC to look like a tank and you attach it with a $100 speaker to sound like a tank; enemy wastes a MANPAD and more importantly a hidden drone overhead can see where attack was launched from. Eg you create a larger / more visible drone with no payload on it and wait for enemy to fire at it.

I also don’t understand why “sound warfare” tactics aren’t being used. I saw a drone video from a few days ago where a tank shoots into a building a dozen times before leaving; 30min later Ukrainians pop out and retreat from their fortified position. The tank was ineffective at hitting them and inefficient at causing them to flee, but dropping a bunch of extremely loud screeching and beeping “speakers” above their position would be unbearable and force them to retreat. Annoying sounds were used in American torture programs for a reason.

Lastly is there any cost effective way to introduce a “Chinese stratosphere balloon” strategy? It takes expensive weapons to shoot down but you can fly nine dummies and one payload over Kiev and then just drop a bunch of small munitions, or no?

They do use decoys, but you’re not going to fool your modern drone operators. They usually use two drones, one for observation and one for the attack. It’s unlikely that after observation at >720p for a few minutes that anyone bar the drunkest Russian would be fooled.

Annoying sounds are great for torturing people who can't stop you. They're less relevant on the battlefield.

Eg you create a larger / more visible drone with no payload on it and wait for enemy to fire at it.

Wasn't that more or less how Moskva was sunk? They sent a drone to its seaward side that drew the attention of its CIWS and hit it with an anti-ship missile while it was distracted.

I don’t know what anti-tank weapons are used in this conflict, but modern ones include things like infrared sights. Even a purely visual system can be enough for the operator to decide that it’s a fake! But yes, it’s useful enough for people to try it.

Armies have played around with sonic weapons for ages, but you still have to overcome the standard defense: earplugs. Which are standard issue for troops operating firearms. I’m sure it’s possible to cause injury or discomfort anyway, but at a certain point, why not use normal explosives? The standard US frag grenade can be thrown like a baseball, costs $45 to make and will injure anyone within 49 feet. I don’t know that you can make a sonic weapon more efficient than that.

Finally, a saturation attack with balloons is possible, but I wouldn’t expect it to be efficient. You’ll have a hell of a time hitting any specific target from a drifting platform. Get low enough to have any precision, and you’re back to normal rifle or at least helicopter range!

Question for any war nerds: why are dummy drones and dummy vehicles not being used in Ukraine? Shouldn’t these be a feasible way of wasting enemy resources and determining their location?

I was under the impression that both sides use decoys, yes?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-decoy-himars-launchers-entice-russian-missile-strikes

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/tu-95-decoys-are-being-painted-on-russian-air-bases-apron

Yes, inflatable/blow-up decoys are used massively and are rumored to be the source of the comical Russian reports of destroying more of a particular system or type of armament that existed in reality. It's not that Russians just invented it - somebody likely destroyed a decoy and reported about it upstream, where the figures are aggregated, only they destroyed a cheap wooden box or balloon. Most hits aren't easy to conform and also the low level soldiers have low incentive to do it - who wants to turn from a hero who destroyed a million-dollar American war machine to a doofus that spent expensive ammunition on blowing up a cheap painted balloon? There are numerous interviews online with manufacturers of these decoys, some of them look pretty convincing on video. Russians seem to be catching up on the game too, so I expect by now it happens on both sides with some frequency.

Do you have a method for ensuring or increasing your chances at getting a piece of hardware, let's say a GPU, from an online store when supply is short?

During the darkest crypto/pandemic/scalping days, it seemed that only those with scripts or some other method were able to get one directly.

I need a new one soon, might be able to wait for the 4000 Super series, and I'm expecting them to be torn off the digital shelves quickly at launch and then prices will rise.

I need a new one soon, might be able to wait for the 4000 Super series

Go to eBay, buy a 3090. Today. Honorable mention to the 3080 12GB (Ti or not), and if you only care about games, the 7900XT/XTX.

They're cheaper or the same price as new cards of equivalent compute power, EVGA ones still usually have a year's worth of warranty on them, and 24GB of VRAM means it's exactly as capable as a 4090 is for ML workloads (sure, it'll be half as fast for about 40% the price, but it can run models that the 4070 and 4080 will never be able to).

Anything else that isn't either a 4090 or a 100-dollar 1080 is a waste of your time and money. The 3060 and 4060 are barely outperforming 1080s for 3x the price, 3070s are just 2080Tis but with less VRAM, the 4070 and Ti are just a 3090 with half the VRAM, and the 4080 is just too expensive to not have 24GB of VRAM (the reason why it doesn't is because, if it did, it would cannibalize 4090 sales to prosumers who are buying them for ML workloads) and if you're only looking for gaming performance AMD's 7900 series is better in the gap between the 3090/4070Ti and 4090.

Price per FPS is not coming down significantly any time soon thanks to TSMC having a monopoly on all advanced nodes (which they will enjoy far into the decade)- sure, the Super series might result in the eBay 3080s dropping in price by 10%, but the days of faster silicon for the same price are definitively over.

I have a 3060 Ti currently. I want a solid upgrade on it, performance and vram-wise. I don't want to buy used, so 3090 is out. I don't want AMD because they suck at the 3d rendering I like to play with. It's a shame that the 4080 only has 16gb, and that the Super won't increase the vram. Would have been great with 20+ gb. Also it's pretty insanely expensive, but the 4090 costs +50% and gives only +27% performance, and would necessitate a new PSU too, so that's not very tempting either. That's why I'm eyeing the 4080 Super, depending on price.

EVGA's transferable warranties are nuts; it's a pity they've gotten out of the market. I'll caution that in addition to the risk of getting a bad card, you're also just going to get an older one. Be prepared to replace fans in a year or so, and recognize that you're probably going to get an earlier or lower-gaming-performance model like a 1080 SC than a 1080 Ti FTW3.

That said, there is a performance benefit to some less eye-watering intermediate upgrades that won't show up in the simple frequency check or G3DMark score, even without raytracing, especially when comparing to the simpler model 1080 SCs. It's not a huge difference, especially at the price point, but for many newer and especially VR games it's the difference between a great experience and a moderate or unplayable one.

Agreed that AMD has a number of more cost-effective options for purely gaming performance points, and at more than just the gap between the highest ends.

There are also some ML models out there that can fit into 12GB VRAM but not 8GB, though I expect anyone with that use case is already aware of them, and some rendering use cases where the difference between a 30- or 40- series card and a 10-series card is pretty (bizarrely) large.

4060 Ti has 16gb of vram for 13b/20b LLM models with certain quantization. I can’t find a peer card that isn’t used with the same capacity.

Yeah, that's fair. Most of the stuff I've seen with LLMs either pushes for tiny models at low quantization for speed, or goes all the way to 65b on CPU for intelligence, but I'm sure there's a lot of use cases in the middle.

It's not a huge difference, especially at the price point

True, but that's kind of the thing: unless you can get to a 3080, I'd argue upgrading to anything else (other than a bargain bin 10/20 series if your card is somehow even older than that) is pointless outside of those specific niches. The 3060 and 4060 are so hideously awful from a price/performance standpoint compared to everything else that I'm amazed they even exist at all, but I guess it's just a tax on people who really aren't paying attention to the reviews and/or don't trust buying used hardware.

Seriously- it's twice the price for a 20% gain (between used 1080 and new 3060/4060), but for 3-4x the price the gain is 100% (between used 1080 and used 3080). Something something Boots Theory; the high-performance cards really are that good, and that's the entire problem with them (and the reason reviewers bitch and complain about every new release that isn't the card everyone actually wants to buy, which is "a 3080 for 400USD"). Unfortunately for them, I figure next-gen consoles are probably going to stick with 4060-tier performance (like they've done for the past 10 years with their respective GPU generations) since that's the only way they'll meet their 500-dollar target price point, so the prices on the highest end cards are probably going to stay high for a long time (inb4 the 5090 is another doubling in performance over the 4090, but this time for 3500USD).

Supplies have gotten more robust, even if prices are still a little top-heavy. If you're dead set on a specific version from a specific vendor, you might have to do some shopping around or bending over backwards, but if you're just looking for a specific chip and just want a moderately competent cooler on it, you're much less likely to have a problem. Price increases after launch have been more limited to the top end and been modest even there. And nVidia has been doing some price drops or 'relaunches' shortly after initial release for a few of the 4000-series, most awkwardly the 4080 12GB 4070TI.

A lot of stores have physical inventory, albeit sometimes with per-household sales limits. MicroCenter, if you have one near you, is the obvious go-to, but BestBuys and even some WalMarts (wtf) have started stocking mid- and high-end current generation cards, and sometimes been able to keep them in stock. Note that some stores will not have all of their inventory out in the display cases, even if those display cases seem bare; I just picked up a 3060 a few weeks ago, and the MicroCenter in question only had display slots for 4000-series cards -- normally asking staff to check 'in the back' is a waste of time, but this is one exception.

That said, unless you're doing a lot of cutting-edge ray-tracing-heavy gaming at 4K or in VR, some very high-end (and given the prices, paid) rendering work, or some very specific AI/ML use cases, or have money to burn, I'd also caution against immediately going for the cutting edge. At the simplest level, there's just been a number of 'new' cards with little or no performance benefit for steep price increase, most famously nVidia's 4060's nearly at par with the 3060s, or in AMD/ATi land the 7800XT being a rounding error with the 6800XT.

That's doubly the case if you're looking at a 4070/4080 Super, which are the only cards with rumored near releases. You're probably looking at 800+ USD at the low end at MSRP, if not closer to 900 USD, and buying by a script on launch date means you'll be buying before the review embargoes fall. I don't expect them to be complete stinkers, and current SKUs aren't the worst things we've ever seen from nVidia (have you ever heard of a GTX 800-series card? had to explain the 16-/20-series bullshit?), but even if it's a reasonable wager, you're still betting a pretty sizable stack of cash on nVidia not doing something stupid.

All that said, for scripts, the tools available vary, though (given the increased availability since late 2022's crypto crash) a number would need to be updated for new cards. In essence, they're little more than a scheduled task or cronjob pinging a web page with a given search query at a specific interval; this is Python101, or if you wanted to be miserable you could do it as a curl and a painful amount of piping. It's deciding whether you want this to just ping you, or to autobuy, that's harder... but that's hard as a strategic challenge, rather than practical one.

Guess I'd settle for an autoping for a few good stores I don't mind buying from. I live in a small country, and can't buy from abroad, so there's only a handful of options lol.

I didn't have much trouble getting a 4090FE at launch simply through conventional means (make sure you have a store account setup, payment attached and working, etc) and being ready with my F5 key. Getting a PS5 ~6 months after launch was considerably more annoying -- I ended up sitting in stock tracking discords waiting for pings (because you'd never know when a new shipment is going to drop, or on what site) and usually those would clear out within 30 seconds or so. Which is totally doable if the ping hits while you're at your computer, less so if you're literally anywhere else.

Why not just use a script?

Which one? How? If I knew that, I wouldn't have posted the question. :)

I just used a simple one that a friend made that checked the inventory of local online retailers and sent an alert when they were in stock.

At least where I am retailers limit purchasing of graphics cards so if you do something rudimentary like that it was more than enough to get a card at msrp.

Do the big two American parties have back-up candidates? I am assuming that Trump wins the GOP nomination and runs against Biden. What will the parties do if one of them kicks the bucket? They are both old enough that this is a real possibility.

Does it matter if this happens before or after the DNC/RNC officially names their P/VP candidates?

After poking around in the rules of the Dems and the GOP it appears that the Democrats will have a meeting of the national committee, and the new nominee will be selected by a majority vote of the committee, one person, one vote. The Republicans will do the same, but members representing each state will receive the same amount of votes their state had during the convention. The replacement will be selected by a majority vote.

In neither case is it a rule that the Vice Presidential nominee will automatically assume the Presidential nomination.

Bernie Sanders! This is the year!

No, I don’t know who is a credible candidate. I can’t even tell who’s pretending to try for the primary yet.

I can’t even tell who’s pretending to try for the primary yet.

That's easy, every republican candidate who isn't Trump and every democrat who isn't Biden is only pretending to try.

No, I mean I don’t know which Democrats have bothered to announce a candidacy.

RFK and Marianne Williamson IIRC.

Rep. Dean Phillips of MN has declared. I believe that RFK Jr is now running as an independent.

The parties have no formal chain-of-succession to the candidacy, to my knowledge. If there is one, I've never heard it discussed, which would be odd as this would be a matter of significant public interest/importance.

If they died before the convention, the convention would select a candidate using the existing procedures for dealing with a candidate who had pledged delegates dropping out/being removed/dying.

If they died after the convention, the VP candidate would be the strong presumptive choice in most people's minds. Insiders might "know" that everyone hates Kamala Harris, but actually admitting that everyone hates Kamala Harris and running someone else is probably a losing choice for the Democrats. Backing down publicly from your previously chosen candidate is a death-wish kind of move on the part of a political party, so there would be a significant cost to picking someone else. Especially for an incumbent, as Kamala would be the actual president at that time.

Past the VP, I'm not sure what happens after the convention.

Trump's death would be highly idiosyncratic, as he has no natural heir to his ideological positions. There simply isn't anyone similar to him, in terms of ideology and in terms of having the trust of "his" people. The RNC might have a real pickle trying to find a candidate who doesn't alienate most Trump superfans after his death.

I would assume that Kamala Harris would be the backup Dem.

Probably not, given people don't really like her.

Leaving aside the question about whether a VP has ever been more popular than their president2, it’s remarkable how little enthusiasm there is about the prospect of a Harris candidacy or presidency. I’m not particularly well-connected among Democratic Party establishment types — it’s just not my crowd. But between the conversations I have had with people in those circles and my “normie D” friends, I don’t think I ever heard a single person advocate that Biden should settle for one term and let Harris run instead. Hell, even in her column that did advocate for Biden to step down, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg — who I find to be a consistently thoughtful reader of progressive sentiment — conspicuously mentioned that the alternative didn’t have to be Harris, citing Harris’s poor polling.

... It’s also a pretty consistent pattern; Harris polled worse than Biden in literally every poll that I could find. And I’d note that it’s not just a matter of Harris performing worse against Trump because she’s less well-known and so more voters flow into the undecided column. Instead, Trump actually gained vote share against her, getting 46 percent of the vote against Harris as compared to 44 percent against Biden.

... However, Harris has run for president before and it didn’t go well — it didn’t go well at all. Considered one of the frontrunners5 for the Democratic nomination when she launched her campaign in January 20196, Harris wound up dropping out of the race in December, well before the Iowa caucuses. It was in the Scott Walker/Jeb Bush/Phil Gramm/Ed Muskie/Rick Perry tier of epic primary season flameouts.

Whatever process got her into the VP slot is disconnected enough from those polls that it might still apply today.

Ugh. Biden, please hold on for the rest of your term!

Is it bad that I kind of want to see a Trump-Kamala matchup?

And the backup veep?

The only way it would be Harris is if Biden dies after winning the election, at which point it would be generally expected that 'his' electors would choose Harris in December. If either candidate dies between the conventions and the election, the DNC or RNC can choose a new candidate, and again the expectation would be that states would make sure that said chosen candidate could run.

If Biden dies before the election the exact order of events depends on when in the primary calendar it happens, but I'd expect that Gavin Newsom would become the candidate. If Trump does, the field will be much more open, it's hard to say what would happen now or what the RNC would do.

How would you lessen or "cure" transphobia in an individual?

  • -10

If you mean a real phobia, there's probably whole bookshelves already written on how psychiatrists treat phobias. Any competent one would know at least where to find these bookshelves.

If you mean political disagreement that is called "phobia" because of the desire to present opposing opinion as some kind of abnormality ("only a deeply sick person could have an opinion different than mine!") then there's nothing to cure, and the best way to lessen disagreements - though in no way a guaranteed one - is to respectfully and logically present your argument and respectfully listen to the other side's one.

One sentence is all it takes:

"Some trans people are right-wing."

Most distaste for trans people from the right is actually just distaste for the left. Just like most distaste for Mormons (or whatever, there are many possible examples) is actually just distaste for the right.

I obviously can’t speak for all right wingers, but I would prefer the company of cis normie democrats to trans right wingers.

This is the internet era, who you would prefer to interact with in person is as irrelevant as who you would prefer to converse with by telegraphy.

(somewhat joking)

Most of the locals here are what most progressives would describe as transphobic! "Physician, heal thyself."

Personally disagreeing with an idea doesn't really make me worse at arguing for it, though. I think the most effective 'cure' is having social exposure to trans people who are reasonable and friendly. Other than that, recommend highlighting stories of trans kids being kicked out of their homes by their parents when they were outed and the emotional pain of individuals' personal struggles with gender dysphoria.

edit: Oh, I read some of the below replies. Frankly, trans people aren't any more viscerally disgusting than fat people, and you'll be exposed to a lot more of those in most parts of America. Like anything one finds disgusting (justified or not), you'll rapidly learn to ignore it after being exposed a few times (and that doesn't have anything to do with your political opposition to trans), so I wouldn't worry at all about it. Also, unless you spend a lot of time in the rationalist community, you probably won't run into enough trans people to be worth noting.

Why do you feel disgust at trans people? Is it disgust at the concept of being trans, or the uncanny appearance some of them stereotypically have? Many trans people look perfectly normal. Trans men especially just tend to look like short effeminate men and it’s very likely you’ll interact with them without noticing they’re trans if you don’t know what to look for.

Tbh it’s the same as with any minority. Once you get to know them as people and realise they’re not the caricatures the media portrays them as, the disgust and hate tends to go away. What Daryl Davis did would probably work quite well for trans people as well; if you’re not familiar with him, he’s a black man that befriended members of the KKK. Many left the organisation as they couldn’t reconcile what they’d been taught about black people, and the normal human being they were talking to.

It's been remarked on here before, but it seems nobody particularly cares about FtM trans people. They blend in easier and - more importantly - don't seem to threaten anybody either in physicality or status. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable sharing a dressing room with one, but I wouldn't be eyeing an immediate exit either. The 'disgust' phenomenon seems mostly localized to MtF.

I think Silverdawn's question is assy. But as somebody who is more anti than pro on most trans questions, I don't think increased exposure to trans people will resolve my problems with the movement. My feelings are less 'Enemy Mine' and more 'TNG: Chain of Command' in that people are trying to make me digest and parrot what I regard as an obvious untruth. No amount of positive experiences with trans people will change that I do not see them as their declared sex or gender, and whatever positive experiences I accrue could be suddenly outweighed by negative ones should my stance be revealed and unmoved.

It's been remarked on here before, but it seems nobody particularly cares about FtM trans people. They blend in easier and - more importantly - don't seem to threaten anybody either in physicality or status.

This used to be true, but in the past few years "our female children are being abused by teachers/the medical system/tiktok and transitioning and mutilating our breasts" has become a huge thing.

Fair point, but it's worth noting that issue is under the larger umbrella of concern regarding mistreatment and misadvisement of children. Are more girls seeking treatments and surgeries than boys? That could be enough to justify the intensity of the spotlight. And critics of the medical and educational institutions are clearly against the whole program. It's not like 'indoctrination and mutilation of boys' is expempted from judgment and ire.

Outside of that - and excepting a can or worms like Audrey Hale - when's the last time there was any kind of national furor or argument over a trans man taking a 'real' man's spot? The only time I see trans men given any kind of attention lately is in regards to how tough being a man is, apparently. Whenever these debates come up, they're given a kind of perfunctory acknowledgement before people go back to arguing about what's truly on people's minds: an uninterrupted parade of MtF Dylan Mulvaneys.

I think there's obvious reasons why this is so, but I'm guessing we're all somewhat aware of the talking points.

The key distinction here is that FTMs are generally viewed as victims (for instance, in your example) while MTFs are generally viewed as aggressors/perpetrators. This seems to be what DTulpa was getting at by saying that the former “don’t seem to threaten anybody”. As such, at least in my understanding, transphobia or feelings of disgust towards trans people or what have you is primarily directed towards MTFs.

The same way that that American female politician who claimed she was Native American, or that regional NAACP female head who identified as Black both aroused ire, but Black or Hispanic people downplaying their ethnic background are, if anything, considered tragic victims of internalized racism.

There is nothing to be gained by being a man, while women benefit from being thought of as Wonderful.

You'd have to define "transphobia" here. If it's just generic hostility towards trans people, faul_sname's suggestion would probably work fine. If it's about people not wanting to use preferred pronouns, declare that trans women are women, accept trans people in bathrooms, sports, etc. etc. etc., you're talking about trying to change someone's fundamental worldview. It can be, but there's no formula that will work on every person.

Okay, I can give a bit more context. It's very likely that I'll travel to the US and live there in the coming years.
I feel a great deal of disgust at the mere thought of having to coexist with "trans people" and possibly having them as coworkers. I can't simply ask companies if they have any working for them because the mere question is a faux pas.

There are a lot fewer trans people in America than the media would have you believe, and America does not have a workplace culture which mandates being friends with your coworkers. You have to be polite, of course, but you don’t have to buddy-buddy with them.

Also, I have known several trans people (and worked with some on various stages of transition) and none of them were those flaming antifa provocateurs one sees on the internet so frequently. None of them brought that part of their identity to work (I knew only because I have known them pre and post, so it was hard not to know but if I didn't I may not have known at all), none of them were doing anything different from any other guy or gal, in fact. Maybe out of work they were living a wild life, who knows - I certainly did not and neither did the rest of the coworkers. I can't say how many of the trans people are like that and how many are different, it's just a few anecdata points, but I suspect there are much more such people than the militant flamboyant types. So if the OP isn't going to dig for it, he'd likely would never know. Of course, if he plans to do romance at work (bad idea anyway) then maybe more care is required, but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much.

I'd echo "touch grass" for this, though it sounds a bit snarky. I live in a big blue city, NYC, and I work for a large tech company that spouts all the usual platitudes about equality etc. Even so, the presence of trans people is wildly exaggerated by both pro and anti trans media. Presuming you aren't going out of your way to go to LGBT+ events, it's pretty rare to even see a trans person. I don't think I've ever actually worked with any.

On top of the numerical rareness, the vast majority of trans people act like ordinary people most of the time. If you interact with them, you'll be talking about whatever work you're doing or some pedestrian hobby or something, their gender situation doesn't really come up unless you go out of your way to ask about it, and most would rather avoid or minimize any discussion of it anyways. If they look a little strange or unpleasant, well most people are able to talk to men and women who are just ugly but not trans without spontaneously yelling out about how ugly they are, so you can probably handle treating actual trans people the same.

No need to let the admittedly poor behavior of a tiny minority of a tiny minority (and the disturbing excusing of it by activists...) cloud your mind about people around you who behave reasonably.

Some aspects of it may seem a little weird or gross, but I could name like 10 categories of people I find much more annoying going about my life in this city. I'm far more grossed out by the dude shooting up on the sidewalk or sleeping on a subway grate in filthy rags than the guy walking around and buying a sandwich with a 5-o'clock shadow and beer gut, but also a dress and high heels (yes, all things I've personally seen multiple times).

Good point. While I was living in California and visiting San Francisco, I have seen very flamboyant gay and trans types, and I am not personally a huge fan of that. I also have seen people sleeping on the streets, shooting up on the streets and defecating on the streets. To be honest, the latter types bothered me much, much more.

Touch grass. I think a fair amount of gender ideology is concerning, but the main risks are a) biological males in women's spaces like prisons and sports leading to danger for biological women, and b) children getting permanent medical decisions made that they will regret.

For you personally, there really aren't any downsides to working with trans people. Sometimes you have coworkers who are lazy or who are assholes, and those are both much worse than a coworker who's trans

I can't simply ask companies if they have any working for them because the mere question is a faux pas.

In the interview, when the interviewer(s) asks you if you have any questions for them, you could ask them if the workplace fosters an LGBTQ+ inclusive working culture, as this is something which is very important to you personally. Of course no interviewer will say "no way, we hate gay people and think they're scum", but if they seize the opportunity to give a lengthy spiel about how they celebrate Pride month and encourage staff to include their pronouns in their email signatures, that should tell you everything you need to know. They may even explicitly tell you that they have one or more "out" people on staff.

Two points:

  1. You are extremely unlikely to work with an "out" trans person. Given the amount of attention the trans issue gets in the media and popular imagination, you could be forgiven for thinking that 1 in every 5 Americans is trans, but even our resident trans posters acknowledge that the amount of attention the issue gets is radically disproportionate relative to the size of the population. Most estimates of the number of trans people in the US put it at less than 1% of the population, typically in the region of 0.4%. Of all the aspects of American culture that you'll find strange and alienating trying to adapt to, I wouldn't put the trans issue in the top ten.

  2. I don't think this should be a deal-breaker. I have my share of disagreements with the basic tenets of gender ideology. I'm actively opposed to many policies pursued in the purported interests of trans-inclusivity. In my previous job, I actually got into an argument with the head of the marketing department when she requested that we put our pronouns in our email signatures. I will even cop to a certain level of discomfort when I'm expected to address an obviously male person by a woman's name, which I'm not entirely proud of. All that said, if I was offered my dream job, the presence of a trans person on staff wouldn't be a deal-breaker. Even if you get hired by a company with a trans employee, they may work in a different department and you'll only have to interact with them a few times a year, if at all. You may feel a bit silly referring to them by their preferred pronouns, but I doubt the situation will arise very often, and if it makes you uncomfortable you can use circumlocutions to avoid doing so without giving offense (e.g. exclusively referring to them by name rather than using gendered pronouns). Trans activists love to talk a big game about how "you don't even know if you work with a trans person" but this is a bit of a cope, and most trans people don't pass very convincingly (not to mention the especially irritating phenomenon of "transtrenders" who make no effort to transition or even pass as women, but demand to be addressed with female pronouns anyway). But "most" is not the same as "all", and I've certainly met trans men who to a first approximation you might just assume were short, nerdy, dweeby men with narrow shoulders and reedy voices - so in the unlikely event that you get hired by a company with a trans person on staff, it's possible (if not likely) that you don't realise one of your colleagues is trans until they actually tell you.

It's so interesting that you and JulianRota say that this person is unlikely to work with a trans person. Perhaps it depends on what industry you are in, but in tech I've worked with quite a few trans women. Go to a "women in tech" conference and it will be half the crowd (ok, not really, but it sometimes feels like it).

I have not worked with any trans men, so it's likely they are all in non-profits somewhere.

To fill in some more details, I'm working in tech too, at a medium-large company. Not super hip and not one of the tech majors, but in the business, maybe like 1-1.5k developers total. The department I'm in has maybe like 10 or so female engineers, i.e. whose job is primarily writing code, and another few dozen in testing, product, and project management roles. Near as I can tell, all of them are ordinary straight biological women. I mean, I haven't like had sex with any of them or done medical exams or whatever, but all the ones I've seen certainly look like ordinary women, and most of them have normal-looking husbands or boyfriends and quite a few have been pregnant at some point. If any are secretly trans, I would be quite surprised. We have had a few gay men, but not any gay women that I know of.

There is exactly one person total at the company I am aware of who I suspect might be a trans woman. This person works in a completely different department and lives in another state, and I have never seen her in person or had any professional contact with her. I'm only guessing due to her face looking kind of masculine in a Slack profile pic and being oddly interested in pronoun declarations and other such woke things.

I've met a few (not that many, like 4-5 in total) of either at university, and in my experience trans individuals interests predominantly match their birth sex - so FtMs are mostly in psychology, social science and such.

That's a good point, it depends on the industry. I had no idea what field Silverdawn was looking for work in, so my reply was based on the proportion of trans people in the general population. If I'd known Silverdawn was looking for work as a software engineer or something, I would've adjusted my response accordingly.

I have not worked with any trans men, so it's likely they are all in non-profits somewhere.

Or their parents’ basements/the service industry- this is a spectacularly unsuccessful crowd that skews young.

Oh my, that's not quite what I imagined. Well... exposure therapy is a thing, so I'd still bet on faul_sname's idea here.

Ensure that they have lots of neutral or positive experiences with trans people, ideally in contexts where transness doesn't matter (e.g. building some cool open source tool as part of a team that includes someone trans).

Changes the question from "is trans bad" to "is Piper, who built the state visualization tool we all use, bad".

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Zurayk's The Meaning of the Disaster, which established the term Nakba (ie. the disaster) related to the Palestinians. I've seen it mentioned several times in articles by pro-Israel writers, typically to point out that the "disaster" was that Arab countries failed in their war against Israel, and not just the unprovoked displacement of the Palestinians. I wondered how the source text itself would read.

It is refreshing to read a foreign opinion on the topic, however dated. One does wonder if his take on international Jewry, which reads a lot like conspiracy theories of the West, was an indigenous one born from dealing with the West from the outside, or an imported one.

Also picking up Herzl's The Jewish State.

Started listening to Little Women on audiobook. It's quite nice so far, it's a very sweet and cute depiction of somewhat old timely family dynamics.

I haven't really had enough downtime to read something long, so I've been listening to audiobooks recently on my commute. I finished The Martian a few weeks ago, then picked up the Rob Inglis narration of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I'm getting close to finishing (left off today just as the party left Lothlorien). I'd never read The Martian before and the last time I read LOTR was around 2008.

The Martian was great, solid recommend. No book review or anything, I'm just happy to be fitting fiction I haven't been algorithm'd into back into my life.

Has anyone read any of Yahtzee Croshaw's books? I have Differently Morphous on audiobook but haven't really prioritized it yet. Just wondering if anyone has any favorites (or dis-favorites I guess).

Reminder to anyone reading this: If any of these books sound vaguely interesting, you could be reading one of them in approximately 90 seconds! Go to https://annas-archive.org, type in the name (and author if the name isn't specific), click the right one, click one of the links to pdfs or epubs under 'slow external downloads', and then get to reading! Don't feel bad about piracy, you weren't going to read it otherwise, and some of the authors are already dead. You can always buy a real copy later.

Actually, you may need an epub reader application on windows, I don't think it has one built in.

Picked up Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup after a hiatus. It's a light, informal history of the French wine industry during the Nazi occupation.

I'm reading Camille DeAngelis's Bones and All, having enjoyed Luca Guadagnino's film adaptation far more than I expected to, to the point that it's my favourite film released in 2022 aside from Tár. (The film of Bones and All incidentally represents a massive step-up in quality from Guadagnino's previous collaboration with Timothée Chalamet Call Me by Your Name, about which I still cannot understand the hype.)

I'm about 80 pages in and it is a gut-wrenching read. DeAngelis is doing an incredible job of creating a character who is both completely fantastical and truly monstrous (a sixteen-year-old girl with an uncontrollable urge to kill and eat young boys her age) and making her surprisingly plausible and achingly sympathetic. The descriptions of Maren's murders are nightmarish and nauseating, and yet in spite of that, all I want to do is give her a hug and tell her everything's going to be okay. I thought this might be a case in which a director takes a silly pulp novel and adapts it into something which transcends its roots (e.g. Hitchcock), but so far it seems like the film producers had some very strong source material to work with.

Started on the second book of the Aubrey Maturin series (the books the Master and Commander movie was based on). I've heard it described as Jane Austen at sea but since peace broke out and Jack doesn't have a ship it's been more like Jane Austen on land so far. I'm liking this one more than the first one so far, maybe because it has less of a wall of nautical terminology to get through.

You'll pick up on the terminology as you read the series. Very fun read, I hope you enjoy it!

I've been working my way through the series for the past couple years and also struggled with all the naval jargon at first. Something that really helped me out was a pair of reader's companions by Dean King: "A Sea of Words" and "Harbors and High Seas." I've got both on my kindle and constantly switch over to them to check out sail plans, maps, vocabulary, etc. Both cover the entire 21-book series.

A deep dive into the feasibility of Drexlerian nanotechnology. I haven't had the time to read much fiction, or even work on my novel, if anyone noticed heh.

God knows this blog post is long enough to be a novella at the very least

the unprovoked displacement

What "unprovoked" displacement? Local Arabs had been fighting Jews for several decades by then, and had several successful mass murders under their belts. What does the word "unprovoked" mean in your dictionary?

Of course, the "disaster" was that the goal that they - local Arab population and outside Arab countries - set out to achieve, which is, in modern terms, genocide of the Jews and ethnic cleansing of Israel's territory - not only has not been achieved, but led to significant worsening of the situation for many Arabs. It is a completely accurate description of the result of their decisions to reject a peaceful coexistence and go for the war of elimination instead. That ended in a disaster for them.

You misread me. The articles were by pro-Israel writers who were arguing that the Nakba was related to Arab aggression and didn't just happen by Israel's choice (ie. wasn't just unprovoked).

OK in this case I am sorry for getting it wrong.

No worries.

Does listening count? Currently listening to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, Darryl Cooper's ~25 hour long podcast on the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict. About 5 hours to go. It's really good. It does sometimes feel like it gets bogged down in detail but if you like detail then that might be a bonus. And it certainly answers the "what is these people's deal anyway" question for both sides of the conflict. Probably biggest highlight for this space is at one point he mentions Scott's essay Meditations on Moloch.

Does listening count?

It always counts.

Goldsworthy's 'Rome and Persia'. Key takeaways:

  1. Armenia was ungovernable and a source of endless pain
  2. We know very little about Persia (especially in the Parthian period). Most of what we do know comes from Roman sources.
  3. Rome and Persia eventually converged to the same archetype - smallish field armies dominated by heavy cavalry, professional siege corps, long fortified borders covering a wealthy near-defenceless core territory, endless difficulties with invading nomads.
  4. Succession was really difficult for iron age empires.
  5. Nearly all Rome-Persia wars were limited wars, waged for loot, to gain prestige and avenge previous losses. Both Rome and Persia claimed to be paramount rulers of the civilized world, so they had to keep one-upping eachother. Complete destruction or subjugation of the enemy was too hard and too risky nearly all of the time.
  6. Sometimes relations were quite warm, with Roman emperors hosting Persian heirs and being pleasant to eachother. Trade flowed freely except in wartime, neither state really had an economic policy.

An interesting read, though it feels a bit like getting on a treadmill with all these names flying at you, only for them to disappear in a few pages.

I have an old and very good buddy with some extremely unsavory politics that have only gotten worse over the years. This has affected my life/our friendship virtually not at all, but they're about to move back to our hometown because they've just been hired as a da/pd.

I'm frankly unsettled, and looking for advice. They are quite open about their politics - the da/pd's office hired them because of their politics not in spite of them. It's one thing to 'know' the da/pd offices are hiring proud marxists who openly cheer whenever someone white suffers, it's another thing to know your local da/pd offices have just hired your buddy who you know is like that.

Is it weird that my first thought was to move somewhere else? What would you do in my situation?

What would you do in my situation?

If this person's job puts him or her in a position of power and you are that concerned to consider moving away, start creating a dossier of his or hers problematic social media posts. When the time is right, find someone, preferably your friend's boss or boss's boss, and send it to them with written context and a warning it'll go to the media if nothing is done to address those posts. People have lost jobs, public support, or some combination of both for simply liking the "wrong" tweet or posting the "wrong" thing on social media.

they've just been hired as a da/pd.

It seems to me that it might make a huge difference whether he has been hired as a PD or a DA. I can guarantee you that there were more Marxists in the criminal defense bar 40 years ago than there are now.

I'm reluctant to say which to leave some veneer of opsec but am curious to hear your thoughts on both cases

Well, I am not sure it actually matters if a PD or DA is a Marxist. But if he really "cheers whenever someone white suffers," a DA might treat a defendant differently depending on the defendant's race or the race of the victim. Given the enormous discretion DAs have in the criminal justice system, that could be a problem. It would be less of a problem for a PD, because PDs have little power. Either way, if you are truly concerned, you should make a report to your state's bar assn or other atty disciplinary body.

I can't rat out my buddy =\ But thank you for the candid advice

If you legitimately think your buddy will use his power corruptly and/or in a way that violates the civil rights of the people he is sworn to serve, I think you may have a moral responsibility to the people in your town (and to yourself, frankly) to report him to the bar. People welding government power don't get the protection of the "no snitching" rule.

Well, uh, is this a change in pace, continuation of existing trends, or representative of somewhat of a plateau in the local DA’s office policies? Logically ‘the DA’s office has been like this for a while, but the new guy is in person proof’ shouldn’t change your opinion much.

I amount of attention I've paid to local politics is near as makes no difference zero, so I honestly couldn't say. But I can say it doesn't feel safe to know the people in charge of our local justice system think my buddy belongs anywhere near it.

It's pretty hard for me to say a first thought is weird, per se. So long as you realize that it's probably not worth moving over.

Compared to a garden-variety moderate, is your friend going to do their job differently?

Yes. I probably should have mentioned they're currently a da/pd in a different county and they've spoken at length about how their politics directly affects their job

Assuming that I survive the Hock, how do you think the experience will change me as a person? Do you think it would make my judgment worse, or make me more likely to try crazy shit like this again?

  • -14

Reading this book or watching the movie could be beneficial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty

Tell you what - if you survive, let us know, and I will unban you. I'm banning you now because you've been warned and at this point you seem to just be trolling for attention, and frankly, I don't want to indulge you any further in your strange suicidal fetish.

All the questions you ask aren't really questions because you don't actually listen to what anyone says.

Mind if I still post occasional updates about his progress?

Wait, did you ban him? Quincy sent me here so I might be missing something, but there's no hammer next to his name. I want the hock stuff to stop too, but I think he should get a warning before being banned, especially if you're banning him indefinitely.

Yes, he's banned. Not sure why there is no banhammer icon.

He was warned, repeatedly.

Cripes I forgot how long he'd been doing this. Fair enough.

I've heard on the ACX discord that he's been doing this for years, and he's banned there too.

In his stead of Hock I am developing something that I term the Fock, wherein I will embark on my own parallel expedition to intercept /u/SkookumTree and have my yet-to-be-disclosed way with him.

It may or may not have the benefit of resolving his virginity question, depending on interpretation of my forthcoming but cryptic journal entries.

I kindly ask the mod team to not interfere with my own salacious status updates which I hope to share with TheMotte periodically during slow news days to maximize engagement.

It may or may not have the benefit of resolving his virginity question

I doubt Skook thinks this kind of virginity loss counts for his purposes.

You know, it's really a shame because with a little more effort, the guy could have taken this in so many interesting directions and still kept up posting. e.g. an earnest training log, or better discussion starters about what makes a 'Hock' or a literature review to look for any precedence, etc.

But it's clear at this point, these posts are just a lazy masterbatory exercise. I do feel for the dude. I suspect these posts had become a parasocial avenue for emotional engagement, to be cared about to some degree and evoke some sense of desire for his well-being.

Might I request that you only ban him until the end of the year? He (supposedly) takes off in mid-February, and as roped into his exhibitionist sympathy bait as we are, it's worth knowing whether he went out and his state of preparation and mental fitness. I think many of us would rather suffer a few January posts from him and provide him some last human empathy and discouragement, rather than go on wondering whether that one guy from that forum ended up killing himself.

Seconded.

Looks like everyone here is no longer willing to give you any constructive feedback. Consider presenting your case on https://rdrama.net, some people might mock you, but at least you'll have engagement.

Use https://rdrama.net/signup?ref=2481 for signing up btw, I'll get a badge for referring you!

I don't think this makes any sense as a question. If you die, obviously you won't try it again. If you don't try it at all, you can't do something again that you haven't done once. You're really just asking how likely you'll do it again assuming you survive.

Pretty much, or is it going to fuck up my judgement and lead me to consider drastic Hock like shit in the future. Assuming I'm around to consider drastic Hock like shit.

I think you'll probably die if you try this. Given that, my answer would depend on whether it is more likely that I am wrong about that or whether it is more likely that you just get very lucky. In the first case, I think you'll have some confidence that will increase the likelihood of your trying it again. In the latter case, I guess you'll be scared off of doing something so stupid. I think both probabilities are low and so it's hard to judge which is higher.

All that said, I think if you planned this better (e.g. do not bring skis), you could survive this. It would be very challenging and very risky, but from the small amount of research I've done, doable.

You've already gotten explicit answer to this question every time you've brought this up. At this point you're clearly getting off on the attention and using the board to milk it. I find it off putting and exhibitionist. Kindly cease.

It won't make you less interesting, and it's cool to subject yourself to things like this. That having been said, I'm not sure you want to create a narrative where something like this is just going to change everything you don't like about yourself. It can, however, be the start of that, if that's what you want.

Edit: All that said, I think we'd be better off if more people did crazy stuff like this. Go for it, have fun, learn something about yourself, and try not to die like the dumb kid who poisoned himself in Alaska

So when's the date again? There's nothing really left to discuss. I rather dislike you milking your intention and/or announcement any more; you've done it more than enough already. I'm looking forward to hearing your report upon your return, though.

I had a friend who had done some kind of cold wilderness survival challenge thing before I met him. In general I liked him, but whenever he talked about the survival thing, it kind of stalled the conversation, because it wasn't very relatable, and there wasn't really anywhere to go other than "yeah, food stress does sound stressful, yeah" which felt lame and awkward and I felt a bit socially anxious. So I would predict you would be weirder and less approachable than if you spent a comparable amount of time working with a volunteer organization or something.

It would be difficult to relate to, but I think I'd like to pick the brain of someone that did this sort of thing regularly.

Possibly I'm wrong, I haven't been following the whole saga. I'm mostly basing this on the tone of the posts I've seen, rather than their content per say. People who go out exploring or on vision quests or something can be interesting, as long as they focus on something, anything, even inside themselves, other than just pure survival in itself.

I do like, say, Wind, Sand, and Stars a fair bit, but he's not actually talking about mountains or dunes or snowshoes, or anything to really grab a hold of.

I think it is unlikely that the Hock will lead you to a healthy and stable romantic relationship with a woman you desire. If the need for a romantic relationship remains unmet then I think whatever thought process that caused you to think the Hock is a solution will manifest again with other unorthodox approaches to your romantic struggles.

It is clear that you have written-off the traditional approaches to resolving your romantic struggles. If the Hock doesn't solve the issue, then I don't think the experience will cause you to revisit the traditional approaches that you have written-off.

Assuming you almost die, but ultimately survive, you will probably be much more likely to avoid considering doing dangerous things again. You could end up with PTSD. Maybe you will become more spiritual or something.

Just to make it clear I in no way endorse the Hock. The benefits are miniscule (or net negative), the risks are enormous, and there are many safer and potentially more effective approaches that you have failed to give serious consideration to.

How many times have you posted about this nonsense? I think everyone is pretty tired of it. Shit or get off the pot.

I'm certainly not going to engage with that topic any longer, everything worth saying has been said, either he'll note the several megabytes of text telling him to find something better to do with his life or he'll go off and potentially kill himself.

If the entire thing was a troll to see how much effort we'd spend engaging with a silly but elaborate hypothetical, it'd have been a huge success.

Also a big point towards having a BLR or more toplevel posts or something, because there's clearly a lot more demand for stuff to reply to than supply of stuff to reply to.

How would we be able to tell if the USG secretly had what is currently considered state of the art AI twenty years ago?

They probably wouldn't have incredibly crappy computers today. I know this is more in the C4I sector than AI but the Pentagon that has super-advanced AI capabilities would surely have half-decent computers for its workers and a remotely decent IT backbone:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/28/us_dod_computers/

making computers so useless that nobody can hack them is not a strategy (they hack them anyway). Fix our computers.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/03/usaf_chief_software_officer_quits_angry_post/

10 years behind is more accurate than 20 years ahead.

After binge-reading the Astro Boy-derived manga Pluto, I have to say it fits the bill. It’s not a subtle story, but it’s a good one.

Cyberpunk aesthetics: Near-human robotics. Robot racism. High technology in every part of daily life. Huge institutional power. Surveillance states. A population struggling with the radical pace of technological change. 39 wars in the Middle East.

Heroic corporations: I don’t know if there’s a specific corp named, but it’s basically a Stark Industries situation. Most of the main characters either personally invented or are actually made of setting-defining technology. It’s like if Bill Gates personally solved the need for fossil fuels. New inventions don’t get hoarded or exploited; they’re immediately rolled out to the general public.

Police are treated as an unabashed positive. Criminals try to exploit the robot inability to kill—but technology is so good that the law can win anyway. There’s a Minority Report level of data available to the state, and it’s basically only used for good. This isn’t a story about authoritarian overreach or crumbling institutions, but about personal growth and the limits of humanity.

Also, wow, the Great War on Terror was a hell of a drug.

Would a fursuit satisfy Islamic requirements for female modesty?

https://islamqa.info/en/answers/121231/wearing-masks-or-costumes-of-animals-at-childrens-parties

For the first, check out Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling.

In your opinion: is it any good?

I have that book on a shelf right now. I read the first 15 pages or so and bailed because it didn't hook me, but I'd give it another shot based on a true recommendation.

It's hard to say, since it's been almost two decades since I read it. I do recall it was a slow burn. Also, I've never found Stirling to be as engaging as Gibson. But he is one of cyberpunk's definitive authors.

Would a fursuit satisfy Islamic requirements for female modesty?

By allah, are you questioning the chastity of the martyr Farfour?

Would a fursuit satisfy Islamic requirements for female modesty?

This question has painted a picture in my mind of a very different world, and I have to thank you for providing me that vision.

Would a fursuit satisfy Islamic requirements for female modesty?

What school of interpretation?

Tvtropes says Inception counts. Thinking about it, I could see Interstellar, too. Should pro-establishment super teams like GI Joe count? I’ve failed to think of books which don’t cross over into straightforward futurism.

No comment on fursuits.

As for AI, I would look for top personnel with a background working for the government. Look at what Feynman, Fermi, and others did after the Manhattan Project. Records are a lot more available now than they were in the 50s.

Not a book, but would Wall-E count? Buy'N'Large appeared to be extremely effective at delivering what humanity wanted, regardless that humanity wanted questionable things, and arguably all the protagonists and their resources are products of the corporation. (The villain, too, but not as an avatar of the corporation specifically.)

These are the kinds of questions we need more of

Is there a good book with cyberpunk aesthetics, but where the corporate are protagonists and heroes?

This is sometimes referred to as "post-cyberpunk". Where the technology of cyberpunk is a thing, but the characters aren't rebels against it because technloogy can be good.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats