domain:streamable.com
FtttG
1hr ago
The other week I mentioned a brewing controversy surrounding the hip-hop band Kneecap, being investigated for supporting proscribed terrorist organisations (namely by yelling "Up Hamas!" or leading audiences in chants of "Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!") during live performances.
One of the band's members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (who goes by the stage name "Mo Chara" meaning "my friend") has now been formally charged with supporting a terrorist organisation by the Metropolitan Police, namely for waving a Hezbollah flag during a live performance last year.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
His post continued to ignore the fact that governments seem to have info that they buried that supports the lab leak (eg Germany).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
The term was coined by Chuck Marohn at Strong Towns, who absolutely does not want to eliminate cars - at the point where he founded Strong Towns he lived in a suburb of Brainerd MN (micropolitan area population 99k) which even urbanists don't think is going to be a transit city. It is also geographically small enough (the contiguous built-up area around Brainerd proper is <10 miles across) that slowing the traffic in the city and inner suburbs to 30MPH isn't going to add more than a few minutes to anyone's journey. If you live in a town the size of Brainerd, there is no need for anything intermediate between city streets and the main road from Brainerd to the next town over.
Given Marohn's published views on stroad repair, I suspect he sees the Texas solution - use part of the right-of-way for a limited-access road and part for "frontage roads" (which are actually streets in Marohn's taxonomy) and only allow access between them every few miles - as the correct one if you have enough traffic to justify that much tarmac. US-19 north of Tampa Bay - identified by various people as the worst stroad in America - looks like an example where there is enough space to do this.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
1hr ago
I didn't mind books 1-2 dystopian dark comedy style at all - quite the opposite, that is one of my favorite settings. I think that all ultra-large/monopolist organizations can easily go down terrible paths, and that obviously includes megacorps. Even in book 3, it started to become obvious to me that the author really hates capitalism in general, but it was still somewhat easy to ignore. But in book 5 the core plot itself is very much about how amazing the feminist environmentalist communist etc. preservation alliance is, how everything bad in the world is because of evil profit-maximizing companies, and how SecUnit just has to join the Klassenkampf to bring forward the great revolution and everything will be great. Also, I'd say that SecUnit is if anything somewhat constrained, it's the humans from the alliance who are worst.
Also, the author herself is openly very far left and has in interviews quite clearly talked about the anti-capitalist messages in the murderbot series.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Scatter plots of measures of lockdown strictness versus disease impact tend to look like shotshell patterns. That is, no correlation. The lockdowns were on the close order of completely useless.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
And we have herd immunity now.
We do not (except perhaps to specific extinct strains, which is mostly practically irrelevant). Herd immunity is a state in which spread has stopped because there are enough immune individuals that an infection chain cannot be sustained within the herd. We have that for measles, excepting a few communities with low vaccine adoption who are being hit. But COVID is now endemic; it continues to spread through the population. It's just far less deadly now, likely because most of those especially susceptible to the disease are either dead or recovered with an immune system now better able to handle the disease. Because COVID doesn't usually harm children greatly, as long as it is endemic we can expect death rates to be low, because children will be first infected when they are at their least susceptible and this will prime their immune system for later infections.
Crowstep
1hr ago
The Scandinavian countries have low levels of population density because vast tracts in the frozen north are empty, but that doesn't mean the people are spread out. Excluding city-states, Sweden is the 8th most urban country in Europe. It's significantly more densely populated than Germany by that metric.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
I’m not suggesting that is the primary benefit. But if the stated rationale for the human rights violation doesn’t produce any benefits as evidenced by Sweden, then that’s even stronger argument against those violations.
2rafa
2hr ago
I'd either go for a run or play some vidya.
Running I can understand, but games? Even the best can put me to sleep if I’m actually tired.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
Scott had an extraordinarily in-depth lab leak post in 2024, I'm not sure there was anything more for him to say on the topic unless he'd changed his mind about it. Naturally, saying "everyone knows that gain of function research caused this" is putting it way too strongly: Scott isn't convinced and neither am I. But I think about this very often -
(…) for the first time [this debate] made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate acrimonious for years to come.
…and it does follow that we should probably treat gain-of-function research as if it had caused COVID, because "we can't ever know for certain if it caused COVID, but the two hypotheses are neck-to-neck" is bad enough if we're talking about future caution.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
By national law, not until you have 50 employees. State law may be more strict.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
2hr ago
Sweden and its neighbours are much less densely populated than most of Europe, meaning the virus generally has a lower transmission rate in those countries. I'm not sure lockdown lessons from Sweden can necessarily be applied to e.g Germany.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Why would it be the responsibility of the Capitol police to handle an unprecedented riot better than the rioters themselves.
Because they're the police. Rioters are expected to be irresponsible, it comes with the territory. Police are supposed to handle them, it comes with the job. And no, a riot at the Capitol is not "unprecedented".
The fact that Trump had given orders to protect the rioters
He gave no such order. The order he gave, ahead of the protests, was
"Fill it and do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators that were executing their constitutionally protected rights"
The "it", in this case, was a potential request by the DC Mayor to bring in the National Guard. The Guard was not, in fact, brought in until long after the demonstration became a riot; I do not know whether this is because the Mayor did not make the request or the order was not followed, but in any case this is just the opposite of Trump trying to cause or exacerbate a riot or keep the Guard away, and it is dishonest to imply otherwise.
HaroldWilson
2hr ago
mostly old people died now so low QALY losses compared to say, Spanish flu
He literally talks about this in the post.
You forgot massive self-inflicted economic damage (inflation, shuttered businesses, layoffs) caused by the lockdown ands insane money printing. All for basically nothing other tha our leaders indulging their "don't just stand there, do something!!!" impulse. I think about that every few days and I'm still angry about it. Really fucked up my plans, and I think I got off better than most.
Oh, and the insane powegrabs by literal-whos at all levels of federal, state, and city bureaucracy. Pencil necked losers in gubmint jobs suddenly issuing edicts about what free citizens of republic can and cannot do. And people obeyed. I will never be able to unsee that.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
2hr ago
I agree - but to them, the situation in Gaza was sufficiently bad that it doesn't count. It's just a fairly simplistic moralistic view that doesn't really account for agency on the alleged victims side or pragmatic solutions.
Dean
Flairless
2hr ago
Such purges of the digital past are an increasingly common part of the American electoral cycle.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
It’s damning for the state enforced lockdowns which most other states were eager to implement. I think a lot of states used it as a compliance test *just how long can we get people to obey arbitrary rules and be shut in their homes without creating a backlash. Rather frightening to now understand that if you make the situation sound bad enough, you can get this sort of thing to go on for a long time. More than a year.
And other states were actually pretty upset that Sweden didn’t go along because it did provide an alternative to arresting people who dared to leave their homes.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
3hr ago
I'd actually consider cutting down on coffee and seeing if that helps. Could be a caffeine crash.
sun_the_second
5hr ago
Why would you call God "good" if it's explicitly not the same thing as human good, and you explicitly cannot understand what God's version of it is? When a blind man hugs an elephant's leg, is he right to conclude that an elephant is like a cylinder, except perhaps not the same kind of cylinder that we know?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
This article is a good top level summary. This post was unverified but the reasons seem to match other reporting that the most recent model is a massive sunk cost. The head and VP not only both resigned last month but also asked their names not to be put on the eventual release. “Most of the team” probably overstated sorry. I accidentally took out of context the still notable fact that 11 of 14 of the authors of a major paper on the fundamental AI research team at Meta have left since publication and formation in 2023. Either way, Meta is behind absolutely but everyone is slowing. IMO we need another theoretical leap, probably about implementing “memory”, to keep progress rolling.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5hr ago
Not to forget being primed before that by loads of disease-related apocalyptic fiction (sure, that stuff generally doesn't show lockdowns as something that works, but there's still indications that they would work if you just locked down earlier and harder).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5hr ago
The closest comparison here is the influenza vaccine, and I don't recall anyone saying that the influenza vaccine makes you immune from influenza.
Hah, referring to Disney?
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