domain:slatestarcodex.com
hydroacetylene
2d ago
The year is 2100. The US, China, even Brazil- all, faced with declining populations, they drain their hinterlands- not exactly demographically healthy themselves in lots of cases- for workers to maintain their economies. Vast swaths of Latin America are empty; the world's largest hippo population is now in lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, having expanded from their range in Columbia since the human population left the place empty, having walked to the US or Mexico or Brazil for better economic opportunity cleaning bedpans and pouring concrete and sewing jeans. Venezuela itself has not a single soul under fifty; they export all of them to be hired by Exxon and Pemex and then expat in their home country extracting oil. In China, Tajik and Kazakh workers earn a good wage in the factories, they fly back to their home countries on the holidays to build better hovels they'll retire in. The taliban still holds on in Afghanistan, having deported their entire Hazara population to Iran, desperate for young shiites to prop up the country.
India can no longer fill its sweatshops; Pakistan has attained conventional military superiority due to having more young people and retaken Kashmir. US backing is sufficient to keep Pakistan from expanding further south. In the middle east, Israel regularly conquers territory from its neighbors with declining population, and partners with Ethiopia to occupy Yemen and keep Egypt occupied. Further south in Africa, the megastates launch grinding trench warfare over resources they can trade for Russian or American or Canadian or Argentine grain. A small handful of western mercenaries can turn the tide for million man armies; the Afrikaner breakaway state in South Africa secured international recognition by acting as backer in several cases.
Wave_Existence
2d ago
brutal benefits cliffs
Very true, and in some states it's a cliff on both sides of the coin. In some states that didn't adopt the medicaid expansion portion of obamacare you can't get government insurance in a situation where you don't have a job yet if you had anything other than the very lowest paying job possible you wouldnt qualify anyway.
I understand the reasoning behind not wanting to subsidize jobless bum's insurance, but it isnt hard to imagine a case of a non bum falling into this crack and having to go into medical debt over a broken arm or whatever.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
That's a valid enough point. I checked for the governor, but didn't think to look at the legislature.
Regardless, there's no reason to think there's a connection to Trump and the OBBBA based on that article. This was decided at the state levels months before the bill passed, or was even finalized.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
One problem with family law cases is that the guiding standard is often "the best interests of the child." It's about as vague as one can get, and unless a state legislature has clearly laid out what counts as best interests and how to weigh factors against each other, it leads to judges speculating and pontificating on what those best interests are. Knowing the biological father, not knowing the biological father when knowing would upset the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship, avoiding the appearance of illegitimacy, taking the kid away from this dysfunctional trio and giving him to a high-income, photogenic couple who has already successfully fostered 3 kids, and a dozen other things could all be in the best interests of the child, but somehow judges are supposed to sensibly pick among them.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR
Uhh... Fertility is a coordination problem. Coordination problems are hard.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
At the time of filming he was a 43-year-old playing a 37-year-old character: looking at his face, I got the distinct impression that he's undergone a lot of Botox and/or cosmetic surgery to maintain a youthful appearance.
... That's not all that big of a gap. The average person would probably have difficult reliably telling those ages apart, and especially so when looking at Hollywood actors who presumably take good care of themselves. A 43yo playing a 27yo, or 53yo playing 40yo, would start to be more obvious.
Also, I had to look up who he is, because apparently Chris Evans, Chris Pine, and Chris Hemsworth are all different people but my brain had combined them.
Sadly, Johnson and Evans have very little chemistry with one another.
I wonder how much control a director (vs the studio) has over this kind of thing (that is, the casting of the main actors). A movie about romantic love with two leads with no chemistry is quite the miss.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Who said anything about concentration camps? All most people want is to be left alone. Stop taking my money to provide for them, leave them to their own devices, stop creating a dependent population with excessive charity, and the problem, if it doesn't go away on it's own, will at least develop some sort of homeostatic boundaries.
But if we insist on having a welfare state... well... then we need to pretty aggressively determine who deserves to be a part of it.
Crowstep
2d ago
I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass
An asymmetry, sure, but I'm not so sure we can definitively come down on either side. I find catcalling at best trashy and at worst threatening, and I like seeing semi-naked women on the street, but then I'm a guy who got laid when he was younger so I expect that affects it.
But for a lot of men I imagine seeing a semi-naked woman is like a homeless guy seeing me light a cigarette with a 20 dollar bill. Sure, I'm not hurting him, and he's not entitled to my money, but I can see how it would be painful for the homeless guy. In the same vein, rare is the woman who is relieved when she reaches middle age and men stop paying attention to her. Instead she desperately clings on to her youth and tries to stave off invisibility.
I think it's a mistake to see dressing in provactive clothing as a passive act, which is how a lot of women frame it. It's an act with plausible deniability, perhaps, but when a woman dresses like this she does so in the full knowledge of the effect it is going to have on men. All men, not just the ones she's interested in.
My suspicion is that a large part of the dislike of cat-calling (at least among adult women) is the offence that a trashy low-class man thinks he has a shot, as opposed to fear of violence, although certainly that's going to be common, particularly for teenage girls. What I really want is a truthful survey (probably impossible) on how many women feel like this.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
Is there a law mandating that women-owned businesses must be X% of businesses?
Yes / no. In the YIMBY / NIMBY realm that I'm active in, a housing project will only receive funding (tax breaks, grants, etc.) if it can prove that a certain number of its contractors are women-owned businesses. So while it's not a law per se, it's the direct result of legislative action. You will miss out on business if you're not female-owned, which leads to the cliche loophole of wife-owns-husband's business.
My point is that this^ type of legislative action is different than creating scholarships for women that help them get the credentials that are seen as barriers for entry into leadership positions. Ends vs. means. Grouping all of it together as DEI is too broad of a brushstroke for me to not argue against it.
A lot of rural welfare users simply don't vote. It's extremely common.
The rural poor also understand that they're a peasant class and hate everyone who's in line ahead of them, which to be clear is most people. Given the economics of rural areas these people are a lot more dependent on local elites(who are very solidly republican) than the poor elsewhere; and a condition of that dependency is voting correctly.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
How is this different from general misanthropy?
I could also define my own measure of utility for a person a declare anyone under a certain threshold as "dragging us down". My measure wouldn't be by skin color, of course, so it would be a lot harder to implement punitive measures for anyone below that threshold. E.g. I could say that all obese people have an extreme negative impact on the public welfare, but that doesn't trigger our tribal primate brains so no one is out there blackbagging obese citizens to alliteratively-named concentration camps.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Rural republicans are mostly people who are stuck 'in the gap' where they don't have medicaid to begin with- they make too much. Rural medicaid users might vote republican if they voted, but alas, they do not.
You are forgetting that medicaid is not actually universal healthcare. It's entirely possible to go without healthcare in the US because you don't qualify for welfare. There are some pretty brutal benefits cliffs.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
But Nestle and coca-cola are already losing a fight with the Trump admin; obviously someone can outcompete them if need be.
While they're not currently a net positive financially, there's a lot of invisible societal gains even for thin people.
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Less fat people in general means a better looking world. You'll see less chubby kids with chubby parents while at the mall or the park or other public spaces and more attractive looking people. You'll have more hot women and men available for dating, no longer having to settle as much on looks for someone with a good personality match.
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Less fat people gives gains elsewhere like not ending up sitting next to a fat guy on a plane or being able to do physical activities with your formally fat friend. All sorts of little small annoyances and issues that will be alleviated by a thinner world.
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Resources can benefit even more from economy of scale when we can start assuming people are within a certain size range more often. For example clothing stores can offer larger selections in your size and not have to spend as much space on having XLs and XXLs and the like because the market demand for those will be much smaller.
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Your family and friends who are fat will be healthier and prettier and that's just a good thing too if you care about your family and friends.
And that's just on top of not currently a net positive financially. We might be able to improve on it more and get to the point where we have a world of thin hot people for cheap.
mildly_obsolete
2d ago
Side note, but the paradox communities' acceptance of "save scumming" as an acceptable part of the game, but console commands as "cheating" absolutely sends me.
Depths of stupidity on brand for Paradox paypigs. Console permits you to tailor the experience to your liking, resolve balance issues, and save AI from itself mechanically, tactically and strategically. Imagine not using it.
magicalkittycat
2d ago
and nobody other than the local residents has given a shit.
That's not true at all, there's programs like the rural health fund and the the start of rural emergency hospitals program in 2023 and stuff like that being created to help keep them open and functioning.
Rural healthcare struggles to break even yet alone turn a profit, even more would be shutting down if it wasn't for Medicaid/Medicare and programs like that.
And there's extra benefits even within these programs like how sole community hospitals get higher rates
Sole community hospitals (SCHs) are hospitals that are the only source of short-term, acute inpatient care in a region. Medicare reimburses some SCHs at higher rates than they would have received under IPPS, including based on historical costs. Since 2006, CMS has also increased OPPS rates for rural SCHs. SCHs receive $0.8 billion in higher payments annually (including low-volume adjustments to SCHs) according to a 2022 MedPAC report.
It's arguably not enough, but it's definitely helping rural healthcare stay afloat when they're literally just given more money.
Could you explain how this is different and why I should be more concerned?
It's not different, we are doing stuff to try to help our rural hospitals already and we should keep doing that stuff and help more.
Or, for that matter, why people who aren't from here and didn't care then should care now?
Rural communities and urban communities depend on each other. Urban zones might be the main money areas but they need things from the rural areas still like food or that high quality quartz.
Also ya know, empathy, religious duty, etc other general reasons to help out others in need.
Also keep in mind these cuts aren't impacting just the rural areas anyway. Less funds for mental institutions and the like will have an impact on the urban areas.
roystgnr
2d ago
This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR.
Easy ... how?
Countries have tried in both recent and historic times, but AFAIK the only time a national policy has significantly increased TFR (from sub-replacement to above 3) was in Ceausescu's Romania, via "outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, taxes on childlessness, and legal discrimination against childless people". Lots of countries have tried various "carrots" to little effect; it seems like only such big "sticks" work. You'd think China would be uniquely positioned to be that oppressive today, but even for them it might not be possible soon - they only ended the One-Child Policy a decade ago, and it'll be embarrassing (and hence politically risky) for the old guard when they have to admit that continuing it so long was a mistake big enough to require a similarly hard push in the opposite direction.
Even in Romania, fertility didn't stay above 3 for long, though - it was below 2.5 in a few years, and dipping below replacement again well before the policies ended - though it plummeted to 1.5 after, so it's not like the polices weren't still doing something, they just weren't doing enough.
The strongest correlate to fertility is probably the inverse correlation with years of education for females, but I don't know if China is the type of brutal to try fiddling with that. They're certainly not a gender equality utopia, but in higher education women there now outnumber men, despite solidly outnumbered by men in that age range.
3472094371
2d ago
I'm curious how easy this riddle I recently found myself spending days to solve would be for professional software developers.
A fictionalized description of the situation: I'm in charge of a cadre of robots, whose working shift is from 6 am to 5.50 am next day. Every time they assemble a batch of Dyson swarm units, a database entry with the size of the newly born batch is created, amounting to hundreds of rows per robot per shift. To report on the process, by midday I need to submit a table on the previous shift numbers, but unfortunately my interface only supports exporting data from 00:00 to 23:59 of a given day. Nobody pays much attention to the shift tail end's results, because even robots slack after midnight, but the results for the previous day, which actually matter, are seriously truncated after downloading, let's say 20% of the expected amount of data. After random messing with filters in the interface, turning something off, maybe turning it on again, I am able to download something looking like the full data set.
I reverse engineer the REST API of the web interface, and try to replicate that random tinkering in a script. For example, exclude those robots assigned to assemble catgirl bots instead of Dyson bots, or do two downloads, of the robots painted red seperately of the robots painted blue, or some other even more convoluted approaches. Each approach works exactly once, as if there is somebody on the other side of the API, blocking every approach he encounters.
What was (apparently) happening and how did I (hopefully) prevail?
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Luckily it didn't escape everyone's notice: https://theonion.com/sherwin-williams-triumphantly-reports-nearly-half-the-p-1819566493/
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
I am not sure that it will still be true at the end of his administration, depending on how bad his policies will get.
You're assuming the horror stories about the effects of Trump's policies are going to be both true and one-sided. This may not be the case. If his policies hurt Republican "takers" but help the working class (according to their own perceptions), that's probably a net win for Republicans. Republican takers are probably one of the least-reliable voting blocs (especially since Republicans lack the ground game to get them to the polls), and the working class has only recently turned Republican.
So, the problem I've run into with partners in industry, and you'll see this in the github issue I linked, they read the GPS_RAW_INT.alt_ellipsoid field, thinking it's the height above the WGS84 ellipsoid. It is not. It's the height above the EGM96 geoid. MAVLINK does not consider this a bug. It results in a lot of confusion over and over and over again with people insisting adamantly that they are providing the "raw WGS84 height above ellipsoid from the GPS unit".
I keep that github link handy to escape the endless cycle of "But it's the alt_ellipsoid field!" Which is understandable. If I were reading a field called alt_ellipsoid I'd assume it was the altitude over the ellipsoid as well. This is usually caught when they are 100' off a known ground level.
theincompetencetheorist
2d ago
The question if GLP-1 drugs are a net positive financially for the medical system is extremely cynical.
Well I agree that it is cynical. But I also find the view that it is a pure plutocratic exercise of who has the most lobbying dollars as equally cynical. Those who are interested profiting the issue that Semaglutide solves is not only McDonalds. It is is a whole host of US domestic companies that extract profits by providing both the cause and management of the symptoms as a result. A weekly shot from a Danish company is a threat to the bottom line of fast food, healthcare providers recurring visits and lifelong medication by domestic pharma. Maybe the politicians gives patriotic rebate to the lobbyists?
quiet_NaN
2d ago
I do not think a significant number of Republican voters believe that bad things (for them) will result from Trump's policies and are willing to suffer for them. You can tell because Trump doesn't talk that way, more or less ever. They think that the policies Trump is pursuing will result in the instant improvement of their lives.
This might have been true at the beginning of the year, and still be true for a majority of people who will be badly affected by his policies. I am not sure that it will still be true at the end of his administration, depending on how bad his policies will get. He got a trade deal with the EU which will increase revenue and not directly hurt US industry (but I am less optimistic about the long term effects for the US hegemony). However, a trade war with China still has the potential to wreck the economy. Likewise, cutting medicare has the potential to be ruinous for a lot of his voters.
Most people have some awareness of their relative economic situation under different administrations. They suck at attributing it to specific policies (and often make off-by-one errors when policies take long to yield results) and economic effects unrelated to government policies, but they will notice if they are better or worse off. A few idiots will double down on their partisan preferences when things go badly for them, but I am hopeful that many will not vote for the leopard eating people's face party after having their face eaten for 3.5 years.
I was referring to Alligator Alcatraz, and how much of the most public support is brazenly transparent about how the current push against immigration is about race and genetics - and not just illegal immigration, but immigration of all types.
This seems to be a bedrock of how you feel about this topic. How did you first form this opinion, and what keeps you feeling this way?
I personally don't think that many people create much value for society. Big David Graeber fan over here. Furthermore, I think a lot of people who think they create value for society are in the best case simply leeches on the public welfare, and in the worst case actively harming society. I see eye-to-eye with many of the posts on Hacker News lamenting that an entire generation of our greatest engineers were gobbled up by big tech in order to serve hypertargeted advertisements - with a sprinkling of all the negative externalities that the attention economy creates.
It's funny, actually, as I think some of the work that (illegal) immigrants do create the most directly positive value for society, like harvesting fruits and vegetables and building and improving housing stock.
I don't really see much difference between Reagan's welfare queen and the Walton family, whose business is only viable because the government enables them to pay below-livable wages with their welfare programs. Both parties simply exploited a bureaucracy.
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