domain:acoup.blog
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
Which would equally demonstrate that having a summer job doesn't preclude learning an instrument, which was the original question in this debate.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
I agree with @Sunshine. This will make lots of noise in the usual places, but absent rock-solid proof that Trump banged underage girls (and not just "barely illegal" underage, but like 12- or 13-year-olds), it will just add to the growing pile of things that Democrats say prove Trump is a monster unfit to be President and Republicans say are a bunch of unfounded smears and whattabout Clinton.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
Though note that Costco was the first first-world supermarket foster-kid Iomedae saw - she isn't comparing it to the rest of modern retail. The Soviet Union was a lot richer than a sword-and-sorcery fantasy setting, and a random suburban Randalls was sufficiently mind-expanding to flip an important Soviet politician in a way which would eventually lead to the fall of the Soviet Union.
It isn't Costco that is special - it is the abundance of food that a first-world supermarket represents. Given the consistent failure of grocery retailers (Costco included) to compete outside their home countries, I don't think there is a final boss of supermarkets, and if there is it would be Walmart.
Sunshine
2hr ago
I'm putting my money on Nothing Ever Happens. If there was bombshell proof that Trump is a pedophile it would have been leaked years ago. In the absence of that, this will just be yet another lawsuit Trump gets embroiled in for years. People will forget about this in a week.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
Welp, it finally happened. However often in the past ten years we've heard about the writing being on the wall (which were coincidentally also closing in), or the other shoe dropping, it's always turned out that Teflon Don was able to escape more or less unscathed. Even January 6th, which by all rights should have ended his political career for good, turned into something he could make hay out of, blaming Democrats for overreacting to what was essentially large-scale trespassing, and playing the what-about game. 24 hours ago I thought the Epstein thing had more legs than any of the other scandals, but I didn't see it as having the potential to end things. Trump had handled it poorly, but there was still a chance that some distraction would arise and the whole thing would blow over.
With the filing of Trump's lawsuit against the WSJ, that chance has ended. With the full understanding that I'm making quite a bold statement, I think this may be the biggest unforced error of Trump's presidency so far, that if Murdock was looking to destroy Trump he played the whole thing beautifully, and this has the potential to bring down the entire presidency (though I'm not predicting that it will). It's almost as if Murdoch set a giant, obvious trap and, spying the bait, Trump ran headlong into it without even stopping to investigate. The correct way for him to have handled the whole Epstein thing would have been to shut up about it. It was a lame conspiracy theory that his base bought into but that had little purchase among anyone important. All that stuff about binders being on Pam Bondi's desk was only news among these people, and even Elon's Tweet didn't move the needle much. It wasn't a major scandal until the DOJ published the "nothing to see here" memo. From there, Trump's totally unnecessary denials only added fuel to the fire. He could have fired Bondi and delayed the whole thing for a couple months while a new AG was confirmed, during which time the matter could have died. But he instead doubled down on her pronouncement, calling half of his base losers in the process for caring about it. The WSJ thing wasn't even particularly damaging considering what else had been out there. So Trump may have sent a bawdy drawing to Epstein containing an oblique message that could have alluded to pedophilia. The story might not have survived the weekend if Trump would have just denied having written it and moved on.
Instead Trump had to sue. Because Trump always has to sue; he can't leave well enough alone. He could have taken the weekend to consult with advisors and attorneys on the best path forward. Any kind of reflection would have made it clear that this was a bad idea. But Trump is impulsive, and wasn't going to wait until Monday to file, wasn't going to give himself a chance to cool down. Get it out Friday. Now he has opened himself up to a world of hurt that he couldn't imagine beforehand. Since WSJ's defense depends on proving that their publication of the material wasn't malicious, proving the authenticity of the alleged letter is paramount. And the best way to prove that Trump can't meet his burden is by getting as much information as possible about his relationship with Epstein. Trump will have to turn over ever email or other communication with Epstein that he has. Trump will have to sit for a deposition where he will be grilled about their relationship. He will have to turn over documents. Everything is on the table, and courts give a pretty wide latitude for discovery in civil matters. And the process proceeds slowly enough that there will be a steady drip of documents that the WSJ will gleefully publish as soon as they get them. This could drag on for years, with new stories monthly about how Trump did this or that with Epstein. I'd be surprised if they don't livestream his deposition.
Unlike previous legal issues, Trump can't claim persecution here since he initiated the proceedings. While this means he also has the power to pull the plug if things get too dicey, it doesn't take much of an imagination to see how that would look. Even now, withdrawing the lawsuit is an admission that the letter is authentic. Dropping it at a later date makes it look like he has something to hide that he doesn't want coming out in discovery. Even the best case scenario, where it is revealed that the letter was a complete fabrication, isn't that great for him, as all he has really done taken one inconsequential piece of "evidence" off of the table. It doesn't make the whole Epstein Files mess disappear. But it will be a tough case for Trump to win, and it will be any tougher for him to prove enough damages to have any effect on News Corp. Is a jury in Miami really going to buy that Trump is 10 billion dollars poorer as the result of that article? But that's unlikely since the legal standard Trump has to overcome is the high as the journalistic standards of the WSJ. Murdoch is no babe in the woods, and he isn't running Buzzfeed. If the WSJ runs an article, one can assume that it was vetted properly, especially if they ran it by Trump for comment first. I don't know how this ends, but this suit just put things into overdrive.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
2hr ago
Hes a hananianite libertarian who is butthurt that they couldn’t co-opt the right from the conservatives.
And rightfully so. Back then the left were acting crazy so it looked like the right were the only place for sensible, moderate and logical discussion. Turns out the inmates are running that particular madhouse too...
Crazies to right of them,
Crazies to left of them
Crazies in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to post and sigh;
Storm’d at with spit and yell,
Boldly they reasoned well,
Down that partisan well,
Into a private Hell,
Went the once hopeful.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I have to wonder if this is a part of the success formula for Big Bang Theory- Sheldon's mother may not be everyone's favorite, but she definitely has redeeming qualities and listening to her is usually a solution for the character's problems.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
He's a sneering anti-Trump libertarian who has a history of some politically incorrect racial views but now claims to oppose political correctness on the basis of colorblindness. That's not a totally inaccurate representation of his schtick but he also has unkind things to say about rural people, women, etc. He's very very pro-abortion and thinks the winning formula is 'aesthetics and rhetoric of Bush era democrats, but without the concern about race, hyper-neoliberal economics'. As a political formula this is, regardless of how well it would work as a governing formula, almost actively delusional; he combines most of the least popular positions in the modern US. He's also aggressively anti-Trump.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
The largest single non-British ethnic group in the UK is Indians at 2.9%, and they are fairly well-behaved. The largest problematic group is Pakistanis at 2.5%. The idea that there is a single "Islamic" ethnic group that have any shared interest other than pretending to care about Palestine is obviously false if you are familiar with the politics of either the Islamic world or ethnic-minority communities in the UK.
If the UK had the political will to deal with difficult ethnic minorities, they would be easy to defeat in detail. The only people who lump non-whites together are establishment lefties, who while not all-white are noticeably whiter than the census.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
And? Maybe violin is different (practically kids don’t have big enough hands to play guitar) but maybe starting insanely young isn’t actually necessary to be a virtuoso as demonstrated by two of the best guitarists of all time.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
The real bullshit is something like the London blitz containing black characters.
I find this perspective a bit baffling. Have people forgotten how the artifice of fiction works? The idea that what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe, hidden-cameras style, in every detail, is a very modern idea and a pretty dumb one. It's how you get people making convoluted theories about code-names and plastic surgery to explain how James Bond turns into a different guy in-between movies. It's just a recast, bro. The 'real' James Bond looks neither exactly like Sean Connery nor exactly like George Lazenby. They're actors. Stand-ins. Race-blind casting in historical dramas work in the same way. A black actor is playing a character who, "in-universe", the audience is expected to understand wasn't actually black.
If you find this sort of thing immersion-breaking, fair enough. I certainly understand the appeal of television which leans really hard into hyper-researched realism; Rings of Power must particularly rankle because the Jackson films were built on this sort of thing. But complaining that black RAF pilots are "historically inaccurate" makes about as much sense as complaining that if Kermit is supposed to be a frog, he shouldn't look like he's made out of felt.
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
It's not "ego death". That's a bullshit term used by people who don't understand anything about awakening.
I've attained anatta (not-self) insight and I didn't lose anything I would have wanted to keep. You lose a delusion. You see that the "self" was just a peculiar form of content in your consciousness, consisting of a combination of physical sensations, feelings, images, and a very strong and convincing belief/concept. You see it as being a mirage and a process, a verb, rather than a noun. I'm still a human being with a body, mind, consciousness, feelings, perceptions. I just don't get fooled by combinations of phenomena in those aspects of human experience making up a "self". I still have an ego, I know who I am and the difference between me and other persons. It's kind of like, after having played an MMO with an avatar every day of your life thus far, you see it for an avatar, rather than a real physical thing that could somehow ever have inherent existence.
So when you realise that you don't exist, that's just about dropping a false belief and seeing the truth: that feeling of being a self was never born except as a mirage-like construct of the mind, and cannot die because it never truly existed. That's a relief. You still take care of your body and mind. Chop wood, carry water.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
St. Elsewhere and its copy, ER (or was it ER that copied St. Elsewhere? I can't remember) were preachy at times and full of Very Special Episodes, but in the 80s and 90s conservatives could sometimes be depicted as sympathetic characters. (If they remade Family Ties, Alex Keaton would have to be a Never Trumper with a trans best friend, and West Wing would have to make all the Republican characters except the outright villains members of the Lincoln Project.)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
An interesting idea. I think it's not being actively pursued because, companies like OAI don't see the economic value in such niche specialization unless it's for something as lucrative as say, producing a superhuman programmer. There's not much money in winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.
They also seem to me to be hoping that it's better to have general capabilities, and then let the user elicit what they need through prompting. If you want high-brow literary criticism, ask for it specifically, but by default, they know that mid-brow LM Arena slop and fancy formatting wins over the majority of users. Notice how companies no longer make a big deal out of the potential to make private finetunes of their models, instead claiming that RAG or search is sufficient given their flexibility and large context lengths. Which is true, IMO.
OAI did kinda-sorta half-arse personalization with their custom GPTs, but found no traction. Just the standard model becoming better made them obsolete.
I am skeptical that optimising for maths and engineering ability will produce intuitive social machines because, well…
Heh. Good one. However, look at Elon Musk or Zuck for examples of people who definitely lean more on technical abilities instead of people skills.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
What's the moral of the tale, to you?
Be sure to pay the piper if you want to call the tune.
Corvos
3hr ago
Broadly, the Hanania perspective is:
- Woke identity politics and the takeover of important positions by unqualified tokenism has been a disaster. Running the world’s premier empire and scientific machine requires strong competition to acquire and promote very intelligent, very knowledgeable people.
- Therefore we need a correction.
- Trump and his voters are not that correction. They don’t like woke identity politics and minority tokenism, but they want to replace it with rural white identity politics and affirmative action for the deluded. This is even worse than wokeness.
- Woke correction will not come from the left. Therefore attempt to destroy the MAGA right so that a smarter right can rise in its place. This right should encourage coloyrblindness, high immigration, low taxes, eugenics and globalism, and discourage white identity politics, conspiracy theories, religion and nationalism.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
Can you point to the post where we said "being abrasive and antagonistic are totally different things, so see, darwin didn't admit to anything banworthy"?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
Okay, come on, this is just pure reddit-tier boo-outgroup.
You are better than this.
Corvos
3hr ago
Oh, I agree. I spent a big part of last year trying to create a personal assistant and the biggest reason for its failure was that I had no real way to judge its output.
What annoys me is that they seem to have ignored all of the ways you might optimise for this, let alone produced different products that you could trade off against each other. I would love to have one AI optimised for being lauded by literary critics, one for maximum mid-wit upvotes, etc. And you could always mix and match weights afterwards.
I am skeptical that optimising for maths and engineering ability will produce intuitive social machines because, well…
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3hr ago
doesn't involve continuous high-intensity ground combat between armies.
Did our war in Afghanistan involve "continuous high-intensity ground combat between armies"? For that matter, how about the Yugoslav wars?
GBRK
3hr ago
You're requiring undue burden of proof.
"Undue" relative to what? Again, I'm not arguing that intelligence isn't mediated by genetics, I'm just arguing that we laack sufficient evidence about specifically race-based genetics. And as per your other comment, while larger sample sized would be nice the problem remain the potential for confounders. At the root of the problem is the fact that races are essentialy pre-confounded; we know for a fact that people of different races lead different lifestyles of consistent but largely non-genetic reasons; any of those things will interfere with any attempt to say a particular trait is caused by genetics. Hell, take skin tone for example. We know unambiguously that genes mediate skin tone, but we also know for a fact that any attempt to survey ethnicities by skin tone and attempt to precisely predict the genetic effect would be confounded by the effect of distribution over latitude and likelyhood to tan.
But it looks like most of in-population variation is just slightly broken gene variants of ideal brain devised by evolution for current moment.
If you actually believe this, you should be more skeptical of hbd, not less. if there's one perfect brain, and iq is just about how close you are to it, the only selection pressures that would matter would be demerits for isolated populations with tight social structures that allow people with genetic defects to survive and breed. That looks like the exact opposite of the smart-jews HBD hypothesis.
think that if you were posting this from pro-HBD pespective, someone could write: A Racist Poster Compares Africans To Wolves By Implication.
I'm not on the motte because I'm interested in being politically correct.
It would make sense to compare teams made of people with similar IQ than than loners.
That we should be testing groups is well taken, but the "similar iq" part i disagree with. Even most nuclear families have significant IQ variation. In particular, I think that when resources (food, parental investment, status) are scarce, groups end up adopting tactics that concentrate iq gains in a few individuals (like by feeding the chief's firstborn son better food and working hard to educate him) while the rest are allowed to be dumber. Also, the "smartest" genes are probably relative to body dimensions... Maybe a gene that causes you to grow more neurons on average is best when combined with genes that predispose you to have a big skull, but actually gives you iq reducing mental illness if poor nutrition or being born female gives you a small head.
2rafa
3hr ago
Right, LLM writing is all about preference, but I find the Chinese models relatively witty.
birb_cromble
3hr ago
I don't have a Twitter account, and I don't go out of my way to follow twitter e-celbrities.
Maybe you can help me out here. What's this "Hanania" guy's deal?
Everything I see about him here on the motte seems to suggest that his entire schtick can be reduced to "poor people are gross moral failures and I'm clearly not poor. Are you poor? Are you a gross moral failure?"
Am I missing something here?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
Gary Marcus failing to beat the stopped clock benchmark of being right at least twice in a day:
American libel and freedom of the press laws are also really strong to the point that it's mostly going to be on Trump and his team to show that the WSJ knowingly made specific claims they had strong reason to believe were fake. Given how cautious the WSJ article is already with wording like "It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared." hedging for possible ghostwriters/forgery by Epstein for blackmail/etc, Trump doesn't have much chance here.
It's an uphill battle for politicians trying to silence media, and that's part of the reason why over and over again they keep filing in states lacking anti-SLAPP laws because even they know it's mostly frivolous and for headlines/supporters, while they quietly drop it later on.
I think as Coffeezilla pointed out though, this reaction itself is meaningful and suggests the Trump admin also views the contents as damning if real.
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