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These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included that Mrs Macron was born a man, stole another person’s identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte

That another person is her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux who supposedly disappeared but in fact transitioned.

Ive read 'Gaza is starving' since 2023 end Oct. Hell I've seen that headline since 2013. First time I've seen starvation cause population expansion.

This IMO places them solidly on the "insect" side of the perceptivity + reactivity spectrum.

What you are saying is just wrong. It is wrong for the reason that nobody is harnessing the intellectual skills of orangutans or insects to produce billions of dollars in revenue. We do not see monkeys on typewriters functioning in the workplace. If AI truly were unintelligent, then nobody would be using it for commercial processes like writing code. Not in a 'search engine/autocorrect' way like normal software but a 'here is what I want, do this, fix this error I see, that looks bad change it to this' way like one would work with a human. That alone is sufficient to disprove what you're saying.

You have more credentials than me. But I don't need credentials to be right and credentials cannot save you from being wrong. It just isn't the case that an orangutan is smarter than Grok. If an orangutan were smarter than Grok then why wouldn't we be breeding them for intellectual labour? Why aren't there any Ape Intelligence engineers?

There's an important kind of intelligence that apes lack but LLMs possess. This isn't something up for debate, the market has already decided and the decision is final.

This limited context window is also why if you actually try to play a game of chess with Chat GPT it will forget the board-state and how pieces move after a few turns and promptly lose to a computer program written in 1976.

the ability to fill a page with text is indicates the ability to perceive and react to a changing situation is an example of anthropomorphic bias

OK, how well does the orangutan do at Chess then? Or filling a page with text? Shall we compare like to like?

Imagine you see a military commentator saying that the Ugandan military is stronger than the American military. It's obviously wrong, right? But he makes the case that the US military has all these problems, lost against the Taliban and militias in Iraq, procurement is very poor, ships crash at sea and burn down at port, there's a drug and suicide crisis. The Pentagon is constantly being hacked and secrets are stolen. Ugandan ships don't crash at sea! Uganda hasn't lost a single strategic bomber because of bad weather. So on balance, the Ugandan military is stronger.

But Uganda doesn't have a navy, it's landlocked. Uganda doesn't have any strategic bombers to lose. The Ugandan military doesn't have any secrets worth stealing. The whole argument isn't valid, the US losing some aircraft is bad but they can also do so much that Uganda cannot. They are on a completely different level in size and sophistication. Turns out it was just obviously wrong.

The orangutan is nowhere near Grok 4. It's ridiculous to compare them. Grok can produce meaningful, useful text. People get it to write out smut for them, summarize articles, write code, answer hypothetical questions, decrypt codes, do advanced mathematics, assess nuclear strategy... It and other modern LLMs have a degree of intellectual generality that far surpasses calculators and chess programs that might beat them at a few specific tasks. Why would we want an LLM to do excellent mental arithmetic when it could just call a tool instead?

LLMs are intelligent. Their intelligence is flawed in some significant respects but it is intelligence nonetheless. This is a critical point that underlies trillions of dollars in market capitalization. It is the difference between Deep Blue's relative irrelevance and ChatGPT's great significance. Paths to ASI are still up for debate but if you cannot get the basics right it's hard to see why your opinions about superintelligence should hold any weight.

I keep talking about the Arab telegram channels that livestreamed slaughter of children to heart eyes and cheers, but it really just seems to be screaming into the void here. Azzam Pasha can declare his intent to slaughter jews, Hamas charter calls to slaughter jews, Quran 5:51 and Bukharin 2925 explicitly call for the distrust and killing of Jews, the list of attacks against Jews in mandatory Palestine is a long chronology of terrorism, Arab states expelled jews and confiscated property the moment Israel was created, but its the Jews who are the evil ones.

No one cares about the Yazidi or Armenians or Copts because they were successfully extinguished as viable populations by muslims. Justice is not the objective, fulfilling the demand for a Recurring Bad Guy like a saturday morning villain matters. Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi are dead so no one cares about islamic terrorism. Wait that example doesn't work Jalani is alive and Bedouin slaughter of Druze is ignored. Islamic fundamentalism exploits the meta of sympathy where grievance is automatically legitimate and self defense is oppression when successful recompense when not.

I still stand by the claim that AOT is very good! I would expect that, past the age of 5, no red-blooded boy would be negatively affected by any of the themes of the story. Jurassic Park has many a person being eaten by titanic dinosaurs, and it's a fan favorite in that age group.

At 16? If he can't handle it, you need to roll him up in bubble-wrap to avoid the risk to his glass bones. He'll be fine, and you should watch it yourself.

Ghibli is amazing, and they're all so different. I've no qualms with Ghibli.

My youngest boy was watching Attack on Titan the other day. I was watching in horror as what I assumed was the hero was... eaten. This continued several times until I asked what was up, not wanting to be that dad who just lets his kids watch anything. Apparently my older boy had seen the entire series, and explained to me various spoiler things I won't reveal, but in general I was left with a rather empty desolate feeling and wondered where the hell I had been when my oldest (now 16) had been bingeing the series. I'd probably also have watched it back when younger, but the arc of that story is not exactly an upper.

I agree that criticism of your writing seems a lot more personal when you make your writing your job. But I'd go further and add there's also an element in the lifecycle where some of these people made their writing about themselves- specifically their own moral self-perception- and that criticism stings all the more when you publicly fail to meet your own publicly espoused ethics.

I don't remember ymeskhout burning out, but the other two at least had high-profile moments where they failed to meet the standards they claimed, and then rather clearly disliked that standard being held against them. When you make an unequivocable moral standard about why others are wrong to act in a certain way, and then equivocate about it when you do it yourself, the substack paywall becomes a the most generous sort of affirmation. On the other hand, a diverse audience of many contradicting and even disagreeable views who will scorn your self-image of yourself as a morally superior person for free.

On the other hand, you have an audience that is largely composed of people who like you and your position enough to give you money.

Candance Owens was a hot star in conservative commentariat - a black well spoken conservative woman. She built her own following then was also part of Shapiro's Daily Wire until they went their separate way after conflict about Jews/Israel after October 7.

As for what is happening - did you ever crack some edgy jokes in your friend group, maybe something like "Hitler did nothing wrong" etc. only to find out that this one guy actually took it literally and did not get it as a joke? That is Canace Owens for you when it comes to some of her stuff including Obama/Macron being transgender. It is a meme going on way back like when Joan Rivers offhandedly had a remark that Michelle is a tranny.

Large portion of Christians? The Gaza Christian population is about a tenth of a percent (potentially something to do with how the locals have historically treated members of other religions). Israel's population is about a sixth Islamic, who for the most part live in conditions a bit worse than the Jews but still rich, affluent, educated and healthy compared to the rest of the Middle East.

The Israelis have been holding the wolf by the ears for 77 years and it looks like they are shifting the hands to the neck. I understand their position: they sincerely believe than any bargain with the Palestinians will only be a stepping point to the final item on the list:

  • recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state
  • two states with the borders drawn by Israel
  • two states with 1968 borders
  • two states with 1947 UN borders
  • two states with Peel commission borders
  • single state with the Jews owning only the land they actually bought
  • Arab state with the Jews owning only the land they actually bought but not having citizenship
  • Arab state with the Jews not owning shit
  • Arab state without the Jews

The real problem is that no one is willing to step up and threaten to glass the country that will violate the peace terms first. This means both Israel and Palestine are completely free to defect, unlike Yugoslavs in B&H.

This is a funny kind of idiocy, in the sense that not only is it objectively and very obviously false, but that it also obscures a more interesting controversial element. It would be like if someone's main criticism of Trump (being otherwise a generic liberal) was that he was not an American, but actually Burmese. (edit: on further reflection, what is actually quite similar is the claim I see pop up on reddit that the attempted assassination where Trump was grazed by a bullet was entirely faked, and he was not shot, or shot at, at all)

I only tangentially know who Owens is but I strongly suspect, like in many many other cases, this is another instance of social media-induced psychosis

Yeah. Having lived up in Darwin for a year I'd love to see how the Israelis would have approached certain local issues compared to the Australians, plus that's genuinely a super high potential piece of land that could have led to a prosperous and strong state.

The lives of peaceful Israeli Arabs are on average some of the best in the region (especially if you take out all of the 'oh we have oil and support a 10%-citizen population with infinite money cheat'), peace deals have been offered previously, the best case scenario for independent Palestine is Lebanon 2: Electric Boogaloo. Any semi-rational person is surrendering.

There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years

What is that reason?

I don't have a particularly strong view on the conflict but I do feel that the Israelis have a far greater chance of establishing and running a functional state than the other side.

It doesn't matter because they don't actually believe a lack of support alone would suffice.

That's why they call for South Africa style sanctions and boycotts.

The aid point is just the first step, and a way to deflect the charge that they care disproportionately about Israel due to antisemitism. And fair point on that I guess. But it is just the thin end of the wedge.

Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like

Doesn't this go immediately in reverse if there's any meaningful Muslim success. Like at the moment it's just very child-level oppressor/oppressed stuff from the majority of Western audiences, but if the boot was on the proverbial other foot it would be even uglier.

I feel like within 24 hours of the first meaningful strike against Israel by a local belligerent the whole artifice would just spin up in reverse at which point Israelis were the oppressed not the oppressors and the current Western Palestinian Aficionados would just reverse their judgements.

They could find some plot of land in Africa or Latin America with a far lower population to resettle to.

Should've sold them Gascoyne, seriously.

It’s just the reality of living in modernity. Let’s suppose you’re a Midwestern middle-class or precariat normie and you have female cousins. One of them lives in a different town and you’re on good terms; she’s known as an average decent young woman. However, in reality she has engaged in sugarbabying and escorting on multiple occasions while in community college. She’s also a serial monogamist / is in an open relationship with some cuck and has one-night stands. Maybe she’s also camwhoring from time to time. You don’t know about any of this because she’s discrete about it and your social circles are overlapping only partially. You’re ignorant about these activities as a whole because you’re a normie. The only way you’re realistically ever going to learn about her antics is if someone tells you about it. But who would? Your other female cousins or your mother definitely won’t reveal it to you even if they know about it. Her long-term cuck boyfriend if she has one isn’t going to talk about it to you either. What gives?

What you described are factors eroding men's incentives to to fulfill their traditional masculine roles as initiators, providers, husbands etc. The factors I described do the same but in a different aspect. Potential rewards are decreasing while potential costs are increasing.

Look at it from the perspective of Hamas. Their victory condition is to destroy Israel and build an Islamic theocracy in its place. They might be fanatics, but they are not stupid to the point that they realize they have no chance to defeat Israel on the battlefield.

Before the Oct-7 attacks, Israel was in the process of normalizing its relationship with Arab neighbors. An entrenched peaceful coexistence would be the death knell to Hamas ambitions. While killing Jews is always seen as a good thing by Hamas, I think the real objective was to provoke Israel into destroying Gaza.

I think that on a grand strategy level, everything is going according to plan for Hamas. Gazan kids are getting killed through bombs or starvation, but that it just their purpose in this war, they become martyrs (which is a pretty great outcome for them, if you believe the nutjobs) and while Israel has certainly killed a lot of Hamas fighters (again, not a bad outcome for the nutjobs), they have barely made a dent in the population of Gaza. Now Israel is in charge of the caring for a civilian population which hate them and can not feed itself. This is a pretty sweet trap to place your opponent in. Sure, the IDF can start genociding in earnest, but likely even Trump's MAGA base will have enough before they are half-way done. Meanwhile, their support in the rest of the West is evaporating.

If the IDF wanted to enact an Endloesung to their Gaza problem, the best thing way to accomplish it would have been nuking Gaza directly in response to Oct-7. Most of the Western world (apart from the glider-button minority) was still in shock. People are generally scope insensitive, their reaction to "the IDF killed 2M in a day" will not be that different to them killing merely a few k. It would have been a PR disaster (nukes!) and likely cost them most of their Western support, but any way they try to genocide their way out of the Gaza mess now (starvation? targeted bombing of civilians?) would cost them a lot more support. Not that I think that genocide is the answer here, obviously.

I think that the two responses which would have been reasonable by Israel would have been to either not do much (drone strike a few Hamas commanders, rescue a few hostages) or to go into Gaza with the goal of occupying it for a few decades (in the knowledge that they will get a lot of their soldiers killed in the process).

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal…that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset.

The “West” has done the kind of thing Israel is doing within living memory. One could easily argue Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more directly targeted at civilians than any major Israeli action in Gaza. (And the motive was the same, to force an unconditional surrender.) Personally I don’t believe Western civilization started in 1970, but I suppose if you do then you can make that argument.

Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia.

All three of those conflicts were winnable. South Vietnam was too corrupt, the other two had settler populations with homelands to return to. Most Israelis don’t have that, and while Israel has plenty of corruption it isn’t yet close to South Vietnam tier.

massacring starving Christians

0.13% of the Gazan population pre-war was Christian. You might indeed ask why the vast majority of Christians have been driven out of the Middle East since 1913, from Egypt to Iraq.