domain:badcyber.com
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
This is a super interesting comment.
On a first read, I totally agree. If I'm zelensky, I'd infinitely prefer to be the leader of "the remaining 75% of Ukraine" versus "the shattered remains of the country once known as Ukraine".
But then that completely undermines the entire concept of deterrence. If your neighbor, who you have a long and shitty history with, is invading you with the full might of their army with the goal of totally capitulating you, isn't a high enough bar to use nukes, what is?
Further, it's really interesting to consider the history (or lack thereof) of nuclear war. The USA and the USSR were locked in what I'm sure felt like a profoundly existential struggle to determine the forward looking economic/social paradigm of the human race. One in which (until the maturation of SLBMs) the first mover's advantage could realistically result in complete victory for one side, and nuclear genocide for the other.
And yet, despite all that pressure, and moments where it seemed credible the other side had or was about to launch, the actual human(s) in charge of pushing the button always found a way or a reason to not do it.
And it raises an interesting question about the game theory and logic of deterrence. Under the framework, it's extremely "logical" to both ensure your nation state opponent believes you'll nuke them if they push you too far. It's also "logical" to actually nuke them if they do push too far, otherwise they'll realize you're a phony and they'll fuck with you as much as they want. But! As an individual enjoyer of industrial civilization who enjoys having their friends and family alive and not vaporized or starving to death, it's also extremely "logical" to absolutely not press that button. Sure, maybe someone else will, but hopefully when it finally comes time to do it, they'll think of their families too.
As an enjoyer of industrial civilization myself, I'm glad the second group seems to have been around when it counts.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
Your link is dead. Not sure how it happened in an hour, but try to link to images directly rather than their google images display.
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
Agreed. And that highlights a contradiction in the original post
General artificial intelligence could be capable of synthesizing the perspectives and contexts of every place and time into one universal viewpoint. Mapping out the elephant of the world with more objectivity seems more plausible than ever before.
The second sentence, with its "than ever before", is a nod to LLMs. But while LLMs are obviously intelligent, it is not the kind of intelligence that we were hoping for. LLMs flip between the different narratives that the blind men have written about the elephant. The LLMs do not have their own perspective on the elephant. They haven't felt it. They don't have hands. They don't even know that there is an elephant, or that what people say about the elephant ought to agree (because it is an elephant (real), not a unicorn(fictional). They just know that there are lots of words about elephants and how to generate more of the same.
There is a least one big breakthrough still to come before General Artificial Intelligence. If there are two big breakthroughs needed, the period in between them, will be fascinating/fraught. Half the world will believe AI's uncritically, half the world will notice that AI still isn't quite here yet,...
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
Just noticed my typos, apologies, they are so embarrassing.
There's a point where free speech bleeds too far into norms of civility, and this guy crossed that line when he said "Jews must be abolished by any means necessary."
FWIW "Abolish whiteness" was an extremely common slogan during the Floyd Great Awakening, and the term itself was coined by a high-status Jew in the Academy, Noel Ignatiev:
He was best known for his controversial theories on race and for his call to abolish "whiteness". Ignatiev was the co-founder of the New Abolitionist Society and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor, which promoted the idea that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity"... His academic work was linked to his call to "abolish" the white race
The point is, when you criticize Jews in any capacity you are crossing the line too far into norms of civility, whereas Jews criticizing Whites is extremely prolific and high-status across all cultural and academic institutions.
A lot of the surge of anti-semitism is coming from the rejection of the notion that Jews deserve this special treatment, where the "norms of civility" means they are beyond any criticism in any similar measure they give to Whites.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Apprentice jobs pay a meaningless amount more than other construction jobs(which is what they are). Journeymen make much more than other construction workers, and this is true even when the journey license is not strictly enforced. There are lots of plumbers in a truck on their own with an apprentice license and they get paid like journeymen.
Tradesmen earn a premium mostly because they are more highly skilled. Labour in the USA is just really expensive, and reliable labor with any skill at all particularly so. Unionized tradesmen earn an additional premium because of the union but even non-union tradesmen are generally making a good living.
Tiber727
1d ago
This sort of demand is basically trying to set up an impossible task, as no one here is going to be able to just apply magic to accomplish intermediate steps, and any proposed intermediate steps will be responded to with, "...then why haven't you already done that?"
No one is asking you to divine the future or mind control the public. To give an example, the Democratic party knows they are deeply unpopular right now. They are putting a bunch of money into trying to figure out what they can do to win the public back. No one has any future knowledge whether they will take any lessons to heart or that it will work, but if the discussion were about whether the Democrats can make a comeback, it's a discussion point to argue how they might. They aren't just sitting around and hoping the public randomly becomes receptive to the same message.
Is there any group out there doing that for abstinence/marriage?
But yeah, "genies" have "gone back into bottles" before (what a shitty, loaded metaphor). I made a long list in my last comment and everything.
You cherry picked historical examples of cultural shifts to prove the possibility. The theoretical possibility was never in doubt, the question was over whether the odds are high enough to be worth discussing. It's theoretically possible that in the future society decriminalizes murder, but I'm not about to make a writeup exploring the possibility.
True enough. It just so happens to be that we don't see a world where the lack of slavery is causing all sorts of real world problems for individuals and societies. Plus all the good moral arguments and everything.
That is an example of how the abolitionists succeeded in forming such a winning message that you don't see a counterargument. People did argue that slavery was a societal good (if only because no one wants to be the villain). They argued that back in Africa black tribesman were either lazy or fighting each other, and over here they are productive and safe (so long as they don't provoke the master of course). If you could bring a southern man from the past here he'd probably look at urban black culture and tell you they were better off slaves.
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether it's an issue that will shift, won't shift, will stay perpetually divisive (e.g. abortion), or whatever.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell" is a way to frame the discussion to throw out the need to discuss. It's similar to consensus-gathering but for an argument. I can articulate the reasons why no-fault divorce became popular:
-
It appeals to the modern liberal belief system of associating or not associating with whomever you want.
-
People are hard-wired to like sex and believe that contraceptives and abortion allow them to have that consequence-free.
-
When parents stick together despite hating each other it creates a toxic environment that leads to mental health problems for children.
-
It leads to needing to prove abuse in order to escape abusive environments.
-
Arguments for marriage are often rooted in Christianity which is on the decline.
If you want people to marry and abstain from sex the biggest hurdle is going to be primarily those top two arguments. From where I'm standing it looks like those arguments resonate greatly.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
I constantly see adds for these cute little pocket emulators, but when I see what is obviously the same hardware showing up again and again and again by different companies with sketchy websites, I nope out hard.
But a part of me is very tempted to take something like a MiSTer FPGA system at the high end, or a Retron 5 at the low end, and put them inside a case inspire by old wooden transistor radios. But that is a project for a distant day.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1d ago
This is obvious and expected behavior. The training data for generating russian language will naturally consist of russian language sources, english of english sources, french french, etc...
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
I agree that it's hard to look at the current state of global conflict/deterrence and not concluded that having nukes is the dominant strategy for maintaining sovereignty.
But Ukraine couldn't keep the nukes. They didn't have the launch codes, they didn't have the economy to maintain them indefinitely. They definitely didn't have the economy to build out the other two legs of the nuclear triad (especially SLBMs). And finally, there's a 0.0000% chance the big dogs were ever letting them keep them.
Ukraine could trade the nukes for a "deal" or they could give them up later once they got sanctioned into oblivion, at a time their economy was already imploding.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1d ago
No, no, you're right. I did say it was a bad pun. As a doctor in a very socialist medical system, SSRIs for everyone!
cjet79
1d ago
I'm wondering if we watched a different Iraq war.
I remember nothing but breathless exhortations about him definitely having WMDs. And that there was evidence because of yellow cake refinement. I don't even really know what that is. But then we invaded Iraq and there was a two or three year search for WMDs that then turned out to be totally fruitless. The only thing approaching WMDs were the defunct chemical weapons stockpiles we gave to them to fight Iran.
For a lot of people it was a huge black pill moment on media credibility.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
I haven't read his paper, but given the novelty of the argument, if it were well-written and had appropriate citations, I can see why a professor might give it an award. After reading 1000 papers of "um ackshually the constitution is like, really racist and bad," something that far from left (or right) field would be an interesting change that might get a professor's attention (especially one willing to get contentious).
I also appreciate that the NYT is following their classic framing: white people using speech to say something unpopular is violence towards minorities and it's necessary to devote many paragraphs to exploring how terrified the minorities are by that speech (and you shouldn't remember how many times the NYT has claimed that actual violent rioting by minorities is the "language of the oppressed").
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Prior to the last week, I would have assumed Iran was a hard target and thus somewhat untouchable (smaller strikes/assassinations being the limit of messing with them). It's surprising how hard they've been slapped.
But also in some ways, they are still. No one is going to be launching a ground invasion, and the regime is not looking hot right now, but still has power.
It blows me away that despite a close connection to Russia, and increasingly China, they had such terrible IADS. If you can't get invaded, the only way your adversary, who has one of the world's best Airforce's, can cause you serious issues is by air striking you into pieces.
They must have thought their missiles and proxys were a deterrent, which they were at one point. But man it kills me. In PvP video games, if things are going well/fine, you should always be asking yourself "how do I lose" and it doesn't seem like the gang in Iran did that at all.
That being said. It's not hard to imagine a world in which Israel's air campaign culminates eventually as they run low on munitions and a deal of some flavor is worked out. Then Iran spends the next 5 years rebuilding and furiously fortifying. Maybe they get some tips on anti-espionage purges from the Chinese. And then in 2030 were right back to two weeks ago status quo but this time Iran has hardened everything.
This is a devastating tactical victory for the Israelis, the strategic outcomes remain to be seen...
HereAndGone
1d ago
There’s a huge amount of trouble in learning to program the right way, where “right” goes from the seemingly-trivial “works without bugs” and “runs pretty quickly and cheaply” out to the trickier “can be easily maintained and extended” and “can be deployed without taking out double digit percentages of the world’s Windows servers.” That’s what I do, and what I aim to be good at.
So, in your view, is the current advice about "if you don't want to be laid off in the next round of IT job cuts, make sure you're promoted into a management role" since that seems to indicate "just programming on its own, no matter how good you are, is not job security"?
I do take your point about specific knowledge, but the problem there too is that if you know all about how to keep the janky, tricky systems of Company X running, little of that transfers over to Company Y which has a totally different tricky, janky system.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
I agree, but I wasn't necessarily referring to politics. I meant things like: should the person get a new vaccine, should they try a new medication, should they follow the vaccination schedule for their children, should they send their children to public schools, is this food item being sold at the store safe, etc. The FDA says red dye #whatever is safe to consume and won't make your kids adhd lunatics. Can that be trusted? Every little question related to food or medicine now is up for grabs, and people are unsurprisingly going in all kinds of directions.
Barfknuckle
1d ago
Obama and Trump 1 failed nuclear non-proliferation by not helping Ukraine in the 2014 Crimean war with everything they can, under the context of Budapest Memorandum. If the Budapest Memorandum failed to protect Ukraine's border, what is the point of giving up nukes?
The Budapest Memorandum doesn't suggest anyone do anything more than complain to the UN when triggered. It's a meaningless pinky-swear to avoid attacking them, not a guarantee of their defense. When someone brings it up at this point, years into the war, I just assume they're a support-maximalist who hopes no one knows what's actually in it.
Ukraine never had launch codes for "its" nukes and when Russia demanded them back its choices were to either comply or have the world force them. They never had any actual leverage and that's why the Budapest Memorandum was a worthless cumrag from the start.
I'm not saying he was a Dem agent, but that is something that he himself stated and it is something which should be investigated with transparency and honesty which is something I do not see forthcoming from the establishment or the media.
I think he probably started off basic Democratic voter, then whatever happened to crack his sanity he went off into his own little land of 'this all ties together in the Grand Unified Plan'. I don't think he had any ties to Walz apart from the kind of "nominated to a public board that is one of the business community tie-in things", but that doesn't mean that in his mind (and in his mind alone) he wasn't working on behalf of Walz.
I think this may be more fall-out from the last presidential campaign. If he was already cracking, and if he was a Democratic voter from Minnesota proud that their governor was the potential next VP of the USA, and he believed all the stuff about Trump and MAGA and the GOP are fundamental threats to democracy, Project 2025, tyranny, fascist nazi etc., then the defeat would only have convinced him even more that drastic action on behalf of the nation needed to be taken, and that Walz was the man they needed to put into a position of power where he could influence events (e.g. get him elected to the national Senate). It makes it even more unintentionally embarrassing that Walz came out with "this is politically motivated assassination" instead of keeping his mouth shut and just releasing an anodyne statement about "we have to wait until further information as to this tragedy comes out". Yeah Tim, politically motivated on your behalf, even though you didn't know or intend anything of the kind. Probably he was working off the same assumption that "this is a Republican guy and this will embarrass them and Trump in particular politically, which is good for our side".
If anyone can figure out how to turn the temperature down under the stockpot, please let us all know, because this boiling over of extremism is the biggest threat of all.
veqq
1d ago
is this guy not worried at all about his future employment prospects?
I've known many who openly state such views, who simply get jobs in the Middle East, Latin America, China or Central Europe. Many places are apathetic or friendly to such beliefs. (There are plenty of justifications, often internally consistent, often not, which vary by situation.)
HereAndGone
1d ago
I mean, I was looking at his Linkedin early on after someone provided a link online, and it went from "working in food production and large-scale retail" to this Red Lion Group very fast, as in "last job working for Walmart" then "now I am CEO of my own company in the Congo". (May not have been Walmart, but that kind of thing).
So with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the guy getting delusions of grandeur and going off the deep end. But that still would give us no clue as to whether he was left, right, centre, or upside-down pineapple cake, politically.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Worth note that North Korea didn't have nukes for a long time, and they stayed safe even though they did a lot to piss of the US and all their neighbors. And they still only have a few shitty low-yield nukes.
It seems like you you just have to be seen as a hard target. NK did it with mountains a ton of artillery. Ukraine was seen as a much weaker target by everyone.
It's well known that the far right nazis love muslims because muslims love to kill jews. I don't see what's surprising here. The horseshoe theory is right yet again.
Edit: also to be clear I don't necessarily agree that muslims love killing jews but it's a motivation cited by many far rightists.
phailyoor
1d ago
I admit that his writing style is weird, but there is little reason to believe it's AI generated. There are no solid tells and the only AI image he posted is a repost of the one Tucker posted. Also, his pinned tweet is something that no off-the-shelf LLM would generate in a million years.
Get better at detection. The people who see AI everywhere it isn't are just as bad as the ones who see slop and see nothing wrong.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1d ago
How would you feel if your daughter turned up on your doorstep on the arm of a McKinsey consultant or a white-shoe lawyer (who we affect to similarly desipse)? If most people's answer is positive, it's prestigious and the haters are just jealous.
If you or OP were to look at the X account, the pinned tweet makes the analogy to Ignatiev directly.
More options
Context Copy link