Friday
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2yr ago
I somehow managed to get out of a major months-long slump. Still not sure how. Salient aspects below, but most of them may be cause or effect and I don't know which.
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Winter ended. It's warmer and less dark. Switching time zones is annoying, but I do appreciate summer time. I probably do get a major case of the SADs (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in winter, not that I'd ever go to anyone who might diagnose me. But psychospeak aside, I hate winter. I hate the cold and the dark and the denuded trees and the grey skies and the soggy ground and the feeble sun and the shortness of the days. I can get comfy at home, but it still feels like some kind of half-hearted afterlife with the best parts of living gone and not coming back for many months. It's still too cold to go swimming or cycling, but I'm planning to go on as long a hike as my busted knees will take to take in the springtime sights as soon as there's a sunny weekend.
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Had some modest but tangible successes at work. It's been a slog before, and I'm still not doing anything praiseworthy, but right now I'm managing without needing to rope in others to help me out. Maybe I just lucked out and picked some easy tasks for once, but it's nice either way.
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Managed to fix up my own codebase. I was immured by bugs of my own making from having been too sloppy, overambitious or just plain distracted in the past. Couldn't do anything without it falling apart thanks to the shamefully low level of code quality. Just about everything failed one way or another. I considered scrapping some features, quarantining others until I might fix them, and simplifying the rest until I might manage. I considered just trashing it all and starting over. I considered trashing it all and never starting over. Instead I sat myself down and did the only right thing - wrote tests. Wrote a lot of tests. There are still large swathes of code that are unusable right now, and it does take me serious effort, but it bears fruit. Bugs are getting fixed. Functionality is restored. And I even manage to add some new things and see them work out.
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Marriage is much more harmonious. I get along better with the wife and we even managed to talk about some difficult topics without it devolving into pointless arguments. Wife has more patience for the child. Child is much more agreeable than she was a few months ago. We went on a trip and had a good time. Nice.
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Successfully extricated myself from work-from-home for once and spent a day in the office. It was productive and I got a lot of workplace socializing done. The 4-hour commute sucks, but once in a while it's absolutely worth it. I try to make it once in a week, but so far I've been held up. I hope to get there again soon, maybe spend a night, get in a few hours of exercise and even meet some old friends.
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Finished playing Cyberpunk 2077. See https://www.themotte.org/post/449/friday-fun-thread-for-april-14/88260?context=8#context . Mostly when I play games it's just to unwind, or to challenge myself, and I have a hard time justifying the waste of time. This one, for once, actually had me along for the ride purely for the story. I normally scoff at storytelling in video games - stories in games universally suck, why not just read a book instead? - but in this one case I'm convinced that it was actually well-served by its format. I'm still thinking about it days later. Still listening to related music (https://youtube.com/watch?v=p4cqqUUfy3A). Maybe I'm just impressionable, but somehow it's been a good impression and I feel that playing this game has somehow done me good.
None of my fundamental life problems are fixed, but somehow in spite of them it's going ever-so-slightly uphill right now. If it really is seasonal, then I hope very much that I manage to get as much as possible out of this season, and to prepare as well as possible for what comes after.
My health is in a somewhat dire state for the last few days. Heres a timeline for what happened.
Friday
4PM onwards: Extreme dizziness, Fever, Sore throat
Took Paracetamol and slept.
Saturday
Too fatigued to leave the bed. Fever. No sore throat., Blocked Nose
Fever broke at night.
Sunday
Relatively alright, almost no symptoms, mild tiredness, Gastritis
Monday
4PM onwards: Extreme dizziness, mild fever again, vomiting, Gastritis
Fever abated in an hour or so, and dizziness reduced after vomiting, but still somewhat dizzy.
Visit doctor at night. Administers blood test (complete blood count and CRP) (Both returned everything normal. Lymphocyte % is below reference range but the absolute amount is within range. I was on an empty stomach because of the vomiting so that could have affected it )
Sent me home with paracetamol, and a proton pump inhibitor.
Tuesday (Today)
Extreme dizziness and fatigue, No Fever, Slightly blocked nose, no gastritis.
What do I specifically tell the doctor in my post blood test followup today?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2yr ago
"You fast, but Satan does not eat. You labor fervently, but Satan never sleeps. The only dimension with which you can outperform Satan is by acquiring humility, for Satan has no humility." -- Saint Moses
I struggle with a lot of the same feelings. I don't know that I have an easy answer for you, but I'm trying very hard to be humble and to think about why other people do the things they do rather than just attributing it to their essential failures as a human.
I want to share a moment when I felt like I succeeded last week. I know I'm committing some complicated meta-sin by being proud of my humility, but I can't help it. Good Friday one of our tenants knocked on my door and said his shower drain was draining slow and could I call a plumber. He lives down the street so I walked over. "Draining slow..." the septic system was backing up into the basement bathroom. It had to be snaked, I had just had it pumped so it was almost certainly clogged. So I had to come back on Easter Saturday, when my in laws were on their way and I had a million things to do, and run a power snake down the clean out. Of course the tenants claim that they never flush anything bad down the toilet, but as I suspected it was a tampon from the teenage daughter. Inevitable.
I started to get mad at the fucking idiot that flushed a tampon down the toilet on a holiday and dragged me out there, then I remembered: her parents had gotten divorced a couple years ago, and it was just her and her dad now, her mom had moved back to Puerto Rico. No one was around to teach her not to do that, her dad probably either didn't really know what to do with a tampon or didn't talk to her about it. And once I realized that, I just felt sorry for her, and tried to explain it to her father without getting her into trouble. And you know what? It felt good, it felt much better than getting angry, I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
Still are, but we used to be one, too.
The Friday Fun Thread included a discussion of Heinlein, which lead me in turn to one of his most famous quotes.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Which suggested Springsteen's Rosalita as the greatest Rock and Roll performance of all time.
My original criteria if we want to recreate the thread:
I think the greatest rock and roll song of all time would have to: be recognizably Rock and Roll to the majority of Rock audiences throughout time, I want something that Wolfman Jack would love while still having pushed and developed the genre further, so however much I love Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal it's out. From a great rock and roll band as an aspect of "career achievement" so one hit wonders are out. Can't be too obscure, the all time GOAT should be recognized by mass audiences, so anything by the Queers is out. A great upbeat car-radio song, so ballads and such are out. Covering classic rock and roll themes of teenage love and freedom and joy, so something too political like Eve of Destruction or too weird like Iron Man is out.
Looking back on it though, I give the win to @netstack who suggested Hendrix's performance of All Along the Watchtower. Hendrix is the essence of burning out at Forever-27, Dylan getting a Nobel at age-one-million is the essence of fading away; Hendrix is rock's greatest guitarist, Dylan is its greatest writer. That pick is perfect, it encapsulates the genre much better than Rosalita.
@pusher_robot deserves credit for suggesting Sweet Child of Mine at the time, you two should be friends.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2yr ago
Some time last year - I believe it was before the exodus from Reddit - there was a post in the Friday Fun Thread asking the question: “What is the greatest rock song of all time?” I can’t find the post now, but the OP was asking whether AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” is the correct answer to the question, and various users submitted different interesting arguments and alternative answers. Most people seemed to agree on certain baseline criteria: Would early rock & roll musicians such as Chuck Berry recognize the song as being within the same genre as the one they were writing in? Does the song contain the specific elements of rock music - not only the familiar instrumentation, but also the lyrical themes (sex/romance, rebellion, partying, strong emotions, etc.) - that have given the genre such a mass appeal? Is it well-known, influential, timeless, and broadly popular with a wide audience? (i.e. It’s not too heavy, too abrasive, or too proggy to make it off-putting or inaccessible for a general audience.) The OP’s choice of song seems like a very promising one, but many other good answers were given, as were many arguments why “You Shook Me All Night Long” either fails one or more criteria, or is otherwise not the best answer to the question.
For my part, I missed the boat on the thread and only saw it after it was too late to meaningfully contribute, but I was surprised to see that (unless I overlooked it) nobody brought up the song that I would have suggested: “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns ‘N’ Roses.
Now, let’s see how this song performs on various metrics:
Is it well-known, influential, timeless, and broadly popular with a wide audience?
Obviously, yes. We’re talking about a multi-platinum-selling single, consistently ranking on various publications’ lists of greatest songs of all time. This song is ubiquitous in many different radio formats and is catchy enough to be played at weddings and in grocery stores, while still maintaining credibility among the snobbier rock critics. I am supremely confident that in fifty years, people will still be bumping “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, and that it will not be considered overly dated or cheesy at that point.
Does it have the elements of rock & roll that people find appealing, in terms of lyrical content, melodic/structural content, and instrumentation?
Again, yes. It’s a romantic song about loving a beautiful woman, but doesn’t feel cloying or juvenile. It’s mid-tempo, pulsing enough to dance to or even bang your head at times, but not too fast or heavy to turn casual listeners away. It is beautifully melodic at times, but has some heavy glam-metal kick, especially in the final minute or so of the song, once they kick things up a notch after the “where do we go now” section. Pop-hating 80’s metalheads and genial melody-loving grannies and kids can all enjoy this song.
Is it recognizably “rock and roll” and would Chuck Berry agree with that categorization?
This is the metric where, arguably, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is pushing the limits. First off, the song is long - almost six minutes! Most prototypical rock songs are much tighter and more compact; “You Shook Me All Night Long” is a brisk three-and-a-half-minutes long, pretty much the golden mean for a rock song. “Sweet Child” is also more complex than the classic rock formula; it arguably doesn’t have a traditional “riff”, and its structure is more varied than the classic “verse-chorus-bridge-chorus” structure of early rock songs. It straddles the boundary between “rock” and its offspring genre “heavy metal”; it’s soft enough and melodic to be played on mainstream rock or even pop radio stations, but its guitars are at times heavy enough, and Axl Rose’s vocals piercing enough, to almost push it over the line into a genre that Chuck Berry would think has “gone too far”. So, going strictly by this criteria, “Sweet Child” has failed the test and has to be disqualified.
However, I would argue that “Sweet Child O’ Mine” strikes the perfect balance between pushing the limits of the genre while still remaining rock and roll at heart. This song is challenging to perform - the famous guitar intro was originally a string-skipping exercise that guitarist Saul “Slash” Hudson used to play as a warm-up/étude to keep his chops up, the vocals are outside of the range of most male singers, with Axl Rose wailing out, if I’m identifying the note correctly, an E5 at a couple of points, and don’t sleep on Duff McKagan’s limber, syncopated bass line - but does not feel show-offy or intentionally overcomplicated in the way that a lot of instrumentally-difficult rock music often does. This isn’t something that your average group of teenage neophytes and musical amateurs could get together and play in their garage, but it’s something they could aspire to learn without having to go through music school and years of meticulous training to master.
It’s miles ahead of “Sweet Little Sixteen” in terms of creativity and musicianship, but it’s not trying to be Dream Theater and isn’t primarily about showing everyone how great they are at playing their instruments. The average non-musician listening to the song might be vaguely aware of the impressive musicianship - Slash’s solo definitely shreds, in a way that’s obvious enough to impress non-guitarists - but it’s not the main takeaway or the main point. It’s just a kick-ass, catchy, anthemic rock song, and I’m personally willing to say that on all of the relevant criteria, it might well represent the pinnacle of the genre.
Anyway, that’s my contribution to a months-old, dead conversation topic, the OP of which will probably never see this and can’t respond. I thought it was a fun enough question to maybe resurrect here for another go-around, though.
roystgnr
2yr ago
I reread most of the Heinlein juveniles with one of my kids. They weren't all winners, but I think on average they hold up better than most of his adult novels (Moon being a clear exception, along with Stranger in a Strange Land and Job, as well as the IMHO "in-between" Starship Troopers and Double Star). Citizen of the Galaxy would have been worth re-reading even for an adult. Friday, not so much. She wasn't even a mechanical android, was she? ISTR genetically-engineered.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
I recall a commenter on the old SSC site doing reviews of all Heinlein's juveniles. His social perspective shines through, even in children's fiction, though it hadn't developed into the hardline anticommunist stance which would color his legacy. All in all, even if I wouldn't want to read them as an adult, I was reasonably impressed.
I do love reading older fiction. When I got to Michael Moorcock's Elric stories, I was amazed 1) at how much had become cliché by merit of influencing later heroic fantasy, 2) what passed for overwhelming angst. They were good reads, unapologetically schlocky, but vivid and stylized.
As a complete aside, I read Friday a while back, which was more in line with Moon or Starship Troopers. It also featured uncomfortable rape-as-humor. Specifically, the protagonist is an android, highly skilled in combat and infiltration, but able to pass in every way as a human female. Captured by enemy soldiers, she is interrogated and then gang-raped. Fortunately, being an android grants immunity to any potential consequences, including psychological trauma. So she intentionally pretends that she is starting to enjoy it, noting that this is the most reliable way to spoil their fun. Yech.
Mewis
2yr ago
I've booked a week off work starting on Saturday (well, Sunday technically because I'm doing a night shift on Friday night). However, as it approaches, I don't really know why I bothered. I don't really have anything I want to do, and if anything, I'm worried I'm going to spend the whole week sitting around feeling depressed.
Other than work and the gym (which makes me hate myself as often as not), I find it very hard to actually care about anything or feel motivated. I feel basically no desire to talk to my friends, or to meet new people either. I don't really have any desire for sex and I don't have any hopes of having a relationship either.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2yr ago
Ode To The Kettlebell
I spent most of the winter on barbell lifting, with mild success, I was happy with how finally running Super Squats consistently went. But in the process, I bulked up a little bit. So to switch things up in the spring, I'm back to the kettlebells. (@PracticalRomantic will kill me for this) What I love about Kettlebell work is that it has all the things I love in any workout, the explosiveness and the challenge and the feeling of athleticism and the standards to measure my quantifiable numbers by; while encouraging me to work in ways that other weight workouts don't tend to. High reps, conditioning are things I normally prefer to skip.
-- Kettlebells encourage you to own the weight before you move on, for the simple reason that they're really expensive and go in big jumps anyway, so I tend to get them one pair at a time and only buy a new pair after I've totally run out of things to do with the old pair. My 50lbers lasted me six years before I bought the 62lbers, and those went through thousands upon thousands of reps before I impulse bought a single 36kg. Where with the barbell I am constantly trying to add weight, constantly trying to squeeze another 5lbs out of my muscles, with kettlebells I'm using the same weight in the same exercises for years at a time. This encourages me to really get my technique grooved, rather than to try to cheat up a weight bigger than I can actually use.
-- Kettlebells are great because they sit around my house, and it is easy to just grab them and pop out a few exercises. I can do at least a light set with any of my kettlebells with no warmup, maybe not a max set, but even with the 36kg I can pop out some swings or a few long cycle presses on a whim. I realize this is controversial among bro-scientists, but I do believe that it is possible to train the ability to have "on tap" strength as opposed to "warm up" strength. While I have a kind of respect for those who have consistent forty minute warm up routines before they start lifting, similar to the respect I have for champion bass fishermen, if all your strength is only accessible to you under ideal circumstances do you really own it?
-- Kettlebells stand for the idea of being "strong enough" conceptually, of seeking a balance between strength and endurance. Where the barbell urges you to bigger and bigger weights, forever and ever, until you hit the world record or, more likely, pull something. The classic kettlebell workout path for a man is work your way up the 24kg or the 32kg bells, then try to hit crazy reps with those. When I first got started the gold standard was 100 reps of the kettlebell snatch in 10 minutes to pass some mythical secret service test, nowadays it inflated to 100 reps in 5 minutes to make the grade as a Strongfirst instructor and on to absurd numbers for Kettlebell Sport. For the most part, if you can snatch a 24kg kettlebell and clean press two 24kg kettlebells, for reps, you're probably a pretty strong guy. I've never met anyone who could hit the old 100 snatches in ten minutes standard who wasn't in great all around shape.
-- On the other hand, as those rep standards at set weights have gotten higher and higher, we now have a new kettlebell sport even craze, the pentathlon! Where the Snatch/Jerk/Long cycle bi/triathlon have gotten crazier and crazier, the pentathlon goes the opposite way: five different 6 minute events with max rep numbers and the score is worth more per rep the higher the weight you use. Get to a good weight, then worry about reps. Then get to a max number of reps, and try to increase the weight. You always have something to pursue, but not too much of either, bring a balance to it.
Last year I tried to hit a 10m Biathlon with my 28kgs, and got up to a 131 at 190# bodyweight, which I was happy with, then I (finally) got Covid for the first time and that kind of blew up my cardio for a month which sucked. I decided to get back at it, and I'm eyeing up training the Pentathlon for a month to get back into it, then going back to trying to hit a cool number on the biathlon. I really want to hit CMS and get 160 total points on the Biathlon.
Side note: The one criticism of Crossfit I think is 100% valid is that the "American Swing" is the dumbest fucking thing in the world of fitness. Just learn the snatch you ingrates. Although every Easter I wonder if this is the year that some Crossfit gym will put together a "Stations of the Cross" WoD for Good Friday. Extra points for the Cross-Shaped improvised loaded carry implement.
Are large chunks of AI text valuable to this community?
I’m not talking about commentary on specific snippets (like Scott’s Alex Rider post) or about AI text passed off as human input. I mean posts where the big block of text, and maybe its prompt, is the focus. Examples: rewording other comments, comparative philosophy, whatever this is.
I realize it is rude to call these out rather than just minimizing them. My gut reaction is that they are not interesting. I can rationalize this by noting 1) they are dead-ends which discourage user interaction, and 2) they have a high ratio of volume to effort, like image macros. As such, I feel justified in arguing against them rather than merely opting out.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
This would be more appropriate for the Friday Fun Thread.
Imagine knowing a great guy, he's really very swell, a scholar and an athlete, helps everyone in need; a bit neurotic and guilt-ridden though, and drinks more than a bit. Adorably, he's mad in love and talks of his wife often. You get invited to the 20th anniversary of their marriage, and for the first time see her; she's less than what one might think he deserves. Pudgy and high-strung, adorned with weird new age artifacts, woke, visibly obsessive and controlling, and once he starts musing aloud about some high-minded fancy, she pinches him quite viciously. They withdraw; you happen to overhear her berating him in a shrill voice, and even hitting him with a frying pan, Acme-style. Then in the open, bloodied a little – «I just stumbled!» – he gives a speech where he tearfully attributes all peaks he has achieved and all the good he's ever done to her. She's fuming, but accepts it as a given, and snorts that he should focus more on charity and less on greatness: she still has work to do; if only he could neuter his pride and listen more, and perhaps donate all that they owe to her guru, publicly committing now.
How would you feel about his confession?
You may assume I'm talking about, say, Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner or my own family or whatever, but my point is that sunk cost fallacy is a thing, and that people can have false consciousness. People grow invested in their partners and ideologies, especially if they can't sever the relationship; and religions in particular are partners of civilizations that are so molded by selection pressure as to consume the logos of the people under their yoke; to teach those people to construe their virtues as following from religious practices and precepts, and their vices as failures to comply. In an attempt to avoid incoherence, Christian scholarship interprets non-Christian civilizations too as created by their religions, and holds that any major social form is downstream of some founding creed (with «good» creeds of successful forms tending to be Christian in their ultimate origin). This is generalized transubstantiation, and it should be suspect for any unbiased observer.
It's a chicken and egg question: did the Church build the West, or did the West create Christianity that can be taken seriously? Hlynka's motivated reasoning is as good an example as any, he deeply wants to tie what he likes about the West (actually just Red-Tribe USA) to Christianity, and it doesn't matter for him how accurately he gets the details (just as it doesn't matter for him whether everything he loathes, from progressivism to HBD bros, is truly part of the same bundle); what is clearly Christian of all these proceedings is, perhaps, only Hlynka's obsessive thinking in absolutes and morally laden dualities.
Liberalism and the concept of natural, individual and human rights - inventions of Western civilization - have their clear origins in Christianity theology - we are all made in the image of God, and everyone is a sinner.
Do they?
One of the most misunderstood parts of Genesis, I believe, is Jacob's wrestling with God. ISV 32:28 «“Your name won’t be Jacob anymore,” the man replied, “but Israel, because you exerted yourself against both God and men, and you’ve emerged victorious.”». I happen to like the inaccurate Russian Synodal translation more. «И сказал: отныне имя тебе будет не Иаков, а Израиль, ибо ты боролся с Богом, и человеков одолевать будешь». «And said: henceforth your name will be not Jacob but Israel, for you have wrestled with God, and will be overcoming humans too».
It's undeniable that Christianity has influenced the West. And people can grow tough through wrestling with their faith. But the interesting aspect of such supposedly academic inquiry by theists is that they never ever assume the root of their success lies in some compensation for the trauma, or in ugly aspects of said faith: it's only ever the most noble interpretation of its words, applied directly.
I fear this is unprincipled charity.
Galkovsky on Rome and Christianity:
There are three features of Christianity that catch the eye of any open-minded observer.
The first is the gloomy, depressive nature and fixation on the subject of death and the deceased. The basic religious ritual of Christians is a funeral; funerals are the crowning glory of the Christian saint, and his life itself is the PREPARATION OF THE CORPSE. [...]
Of course the motives of death and barbaric veneration of corpses are subdued in churches before the congregation. For example, relics are often kept «under wraps» - in closed boxes. But Christianity as a whole imparts on the culture an incredible longing and sadness. This finds expression in everything – in architecture, painting, music. Sometimes it turns out solemn and even bittersweet – because tears can bring relief and can be an expression not of physical pain, but of nostalgia, of love, of high sorrow. […]
Secondly, Christianity is a very short and narrow religion. The entire content of the Christian legend amounts to one medium-sized ancient myth. They try to conceal this by turning the Bible into a telephone book or by supplementing it with stories about the saints. But these additions are artificial, uninteresting, and even as such they already create great problems for the basic legend. In general, no one knows them. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in the «Ineffabilis Deus of 1854» is the bureaucratic apotheosis of such «improvements». It is not artistic creativity, but rectification of paperwork by an office of cadaver accounting in a morgue or city cemetery. Take just one minor myth of ancient religion: the myth of the radiant Eos.
Eos is a beautiful girl with pink fingers. Every morning she ascends to heaven in a chariot drawn by Lampos and Phaeton and illuminates the Earth. Eos is a very naughty girl, so her cheeks always blush after the night. When Eos's kingdom comes in the morning, men get erections. Eos is kind, but forgetful. She fell in love with the beautiful young man Tithonus and married him, asking Zeus to make him immortal. But she forgot to ask to keep him young, and Tithonus eventually turned into an old man. In order not to see him, Eos locked Tithonus up in a separate room, from where he complained in a squeaky voice about his unhappy fate. Then, out of pity, Eos turned Dmitri Evgenievich into a cricket.
It's just ONE little story, and this story alone creates a massive opportunity for successful human contacts. It's AMUSING. You can joke about it, you can innuendo, you can relate – to teenagers, to young people, to mature people, to old people. You can laugh, and if you want you can cry too. In moderation, without cruelty.
Now, what can a Christian tell? Well... An attendant came home from the morgue, decided to entertain his wife with a cool story.
– So the old fart got rolled in on Friday, he had been lying at home for two days already. Okay, we put him in the freezer, and on the weekend the power went out. And what do you think, on Monday I opened it, and he's as good as new! Only the toenail fell off.
A normal person is shocked. And the Christian goes on:
– So I brought the toenail with me. Wanna see?
This is… HARD. Very.
The only plausible upside to all this is that Christian culture is quickly causing the secularization of society. People avoid talking about religious topics in everyday life, they stop using religious analogies, and they avoid contact with cult servants. It is no coincidence that it is bad luck to meet a priest in the street. A lot of icons in the house is bad luck. A vacuum quickly forms around a person who is preoccupied with religion. People scatter. The religious community and the state strive to substitute the sacred functions of priests with institutions for moral preaching, statistical accounting, medical and social assistance, art and philosophy – anything but Christianity itself. «Anything but the toenail».
This is why atheism originated and gained the significance of a coherent doctrine only in the Christian world. Other cultures just don't get it, can's see the problem. Imagine an uncle who runs around school plays and combats the belief in Santa Claus. He shouts from the audience: «Don't believe it, kids, it's all a lie!» or he writes a complaint to the Local Education Authority. Or even pounces on poor Santa Claus with his fists and tears up the gift bag. In general, he acts like a complete fool and a retard. But if Santa Claus is furtively showing the children a dried cat from his bag, then we can empathize with the strange man.
Third, there is a ridiculous confusion in the basic doctrine of Christianity that discourages neophytes. […] Christian theologians are literally lost between three pines with their doctrine of Trinity. How this is possible is completely incomprehensible. This creates enormous difficulties for initial propaganda. No other world religion is so difficult for neophytes to grasp. With great effort, the European empires in the 19th century converted a pristine Africa to Christianity at a power ratio of 1000:1. And what? Now Islam is successfully supplanting Christianity there. […] While the Muslim doctrine is very clear. One god is Allah. His prophet is Mohammed. And there are two witnesses for conversion into Islam. PERIOD. A person can be converted in one day and that conversion is honest and strong. […]
In fact, it is unclear how a religion with such a defective doctrine could have spread quantitatively. Chain reaction is difficult in Christianity. This religion conducts effective propaganda only when it already has political and military dominance and is funded by the state.
07mk
2yr ago
Friday, I couldn't retweet or see replies to a tweet that had a substack link. Yesterday, I was able to do both to another tweet by the same person with the same substack link.
ymeskhout
2yr ago
Earlier this year, the Indian government asked Twitter and YouTube to take down a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both complied. Two weeks ago, Twitter also complied with a request from the Indian government to block 122 accounts supposedly critical of India's actions in Punjab.
I don't run an international social media company but I imagine there are no obvious choices to make when a government makes a demand and threatens to jail your employees if you don't comply or has police raid your offices. You could close up your offices and not have any employees anywhere in the country, but then you risk having the government retaliate by just blocking access completely, as several countries have already.
Google also dealt with this dilemma in China. In exchange for access to a potential market with 1.3 billion people at the time, Google agreed in 2006 to offer a version of its services that hewed to the CCP's severe censorship requirements. They gave up in 2010 after they found out that several Chinese activists had their Gmail accounts hacked (presumably by the CCP). From a purely financial perspective, it probably would've been in Google's best interests to dutifully continue complying with CCP's censorship regime and just look the other way. That they didn't is commendable from a principled perspective, but it's also not obvious to me whether China's population would have been better off with a hobbled obedient Google versus nothing at all.
Despite the hostility in India, (old) Twitter wasn't a total doormat and did pushback against censorship efforts by suing the Indian government over its takedown law. This lawsuit was something that Musk specifically complained about while he and Twitter were lawfighting about the sale, as stated in the counterclaim he filed:
¶ 181. In 2021, India’s information technology ministry imposed certain rules allowing the government to probe social media posts, demand identifying information, and prosecute companies that refused to comply. While Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should “hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates.”
¶ 182. As a result of India’s new rules, recent public reporting suggests that Twitter has faced various investigations by the Indian government, requests to moderate content, and requests to block certain accounts.
¶ 183. India is Twitter’s third largest market, and thus any investigation into Twitter that could lead to suspensions or interruptions of service in that market may constitute an [Material Adverse Effect].
Musk was clearly worried that (old) Twitter was rocking the boat too much in India. Even as a free speech maximalist, I don't see an obvious choice here. There's an obvious tension between standing on principle while also not jeopardizing your wallet at the same time. One has to give, and there's nothing inherently embarrassing about that given the stakes at play.
Fast forward back to the present, in the context of India's recent takedown demands, I wouldn't have an objection if Musk came out with a statement that said "Although we disagree with the demands of the Indian government, we are exploring our legal options but have no choice but to comply in order to avoid jeopardizing access to 1.4 billion people." That's regrettable from a free speech perspective, but what else can you do? But as far as I can tell, Twitter has kept quiet and refused to say anything about its role in facilitating government censorship.
In contrast to the delicate diplomatic game Musk has to play in India, Musk faced no such concerns when speaking about the US government's efforts to take down information it didn't like. Matt Taibbi covered exactly this topic in Twitter Files No. 6, describing how the FBI made several removal requests to Twitter, not all of which were complied with.
Since Musk was the source for the Twitter Files documents, it's reasonable that as the owner of the company he would have a sharp financial interest to be extremely selective about what gets disclosed to journalists. Similarly, since Taibbi was one of the journalists handpicked by Musk to receive such a scoop, Taibbi might have an aversion from criticizing the actions of Musk-owned Twitter too strongly. So when the news about India's removal requests came out two weeks ago, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan sarcastically tweeted "I'm sure Taibbi is all over this.", referencing the conflict of interest at play. Taibbi responded "Why don’t you invite me on your show to talk about it? Since you’re so absolutely sure of what I’ll say." and Hasan complied.
In terms of how this specific question played out, you can see for yourself at this timestamp. Hasan asks if Taibbi is willing to criticize Musk for complying with the Indian government censorship requests and Taibbi declines, claiming he doesn't know enough about the story to have an opinion. It bears repeating that the whole reason he asked to be invited on Hasan's show was to talk about India's censorship! Not knowing enough to have an opinion is fine, but this apparent gap in Taibbi's knowledge seems rather suspicious. Given his reporting, he clearly has an interest in reporting on the relationship between Twitter and censorious government requests, but apparently his curiosity stops at this particular line?
Taibbi's was clearly not happy with the interview but his follow-up statements kept avoiding the central reason he asked to be interviewed, the censorship by India's government. He pivoted instead to talking about the numerous mistakes MSNBC has made over the years which, sure, ok, but a dodge is still a dodge.
Consider a parallel scenario, involving TikTok employees. It's the easiest own maneuver, but watch how the CEO of TikTok transmogrifies into a human pretzel in front of Congress when asked about Uyghur persecution in China. The same thing happened to TikTok's Head of Public Policy last December, where he kept trying to backflip out of his skin. The evasion in answering the Uyghur question is reasonably interpreted as strong evidence that TikTok executives are afraid of being fired for acknowledging something so verboten by the Chinese state. A clear demonstration of how much control the CCP has over the platform.
So with that in mind, I think the best conclusion one can draw from the evidence above is that Taibbi feels constrained from criticizing Musk because Musk is too valuable a source. That on its own does not negate or render false the Twitter reporting he has already done, but it seems obvious that he's not playing with a free hand. Journalism is especially reliant on credibility and trust because so much of it happens behind curtains. For whatever cannot be corroborated by outside sources, we have to trust that a journalist is engaging in enough due diligence in vetting sources and investigating claims. Taibbi is seriously jeopardizing his credibility here, and I can't see how the pay-off is worth it.
[P.S. While writing this, Taibbi announced that he will leave Twitter after the platform started blocking links to Substack. That fact that he is willing to speak up against Musk/Twitter slightly mitigates my overall criticism of Taibbi's integrity.]
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2yr ago
Does anyone have any recommended foundational books for the philosophy of Risk? N.N. Taleb's Incerto I've read and I'd like to move beyond that / get a little more technical / get some divergent opinions from Taleb (he is notoriously bullheaded).
I know that's not a "Friday fun topic" so, as penance, please consider my favorite academic paper of all time:
roystgnr
2yr ago
Hooray for the /comments page. It's a shame there's no "/comments, but just the ones replying to two-week-old threads, since everything else is easier to read threaded" page.
Man, I could put up a whole new effortpost about how bad Rom-Com TV shows are at writing happy marriages.
I'd love to see this in Friday Fun some time.
... especially if you've got any thoughts about "Mad About You". I barely remember it now (though now I find out there was recently an 8th season, produced decades after season 7!?!), and what I remember does include a few "idiot ball" episodes, but I remember thinking decades ago that it really stood out from the crowd of implausibly-drawn-out "Sam and Diane" "will they wont they" romantic melodrama subplots. The main characters were a happily married couple from episode 1, the show A plots were about their interpersonal issues with each other and family and friends, and yet IIRC they managed to get several seasons out of that without most of the spousal issues being ridiculously foolish or melodramatic. IMDB says there wasn't much quality decline until halfway through season 6.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2yr ago
Quality post. I don't have any factual or analytical quarrels, just a different point of view based on experienced-influenced shifts in value prioritization.
I once had a 90 minute each way commute for about a year. That's 3 hours in the car Monday to Friday. I hated it. Traffic is a stress machine; you have to be vigilant constantly in what is a boring situation with high stakes (even a fender bender has long term impact on your insurance premiums, what if the other guy doesn't have insurance, wear and tear on your car compounds, etc.) Especially on the drive home, I would get back feeling far more drained than I anticipated and this would sap my energy and motivation to do much more than sloppily prepare a Bro Dude dinner and veg out in front of the T.V.
For most of my career after that (even pre-COVID) I had either sub 30-minute public transit commutes, or a healthy mix of WFH mixed with 1 - 2 times weekly sub-30 minute driving commutes.
Without an ounce of doubt, the public transit experience was worse than every other mode including 3 hours daily. This is because it makes you tired and weary of people.
In any major American urban city with public transit, for going on close to a decade, daily riders are confronted with antisocial behaviors ranging from the mild yet still inexplicably annoying (those folks who play music on speaker instead of using headphones) to the low level criminal (open drug use or exchange ... panhandling) to the worrisome (erratic enough behavior that you must become vigilant in anticipation of potential threat) to the just .... disheartening (fare evasion by someone who obviously could pay it but understands "hey, no one is going to stop me" is now a policy in many cities). The compounding effect is that you have a constant availability bias. I can remind myself all I want about bad mental models and cognitive biases, but if I saw another homeless dude taking a shit on the platfrom this morning, I'm probably tipping a little lighter, I'm probably scoffing a little harder at a "therapy instead of jail" article in the Atlantic.
The "public space" is only public insofar as there's an understood order and general preservation of the space by the public. Otherwise ... it's a No Man's Land with a random free-ride-machine punching through it. There has to be some sort of collective respect and even pride in the thing itself. Public transit should be more than a competitor to private cars, more than a utilitarian cost-per-mile exercise. A ride should be considered part of the experience of that locale, that city, that city's culture. But ... if the current lowest comment denominator of that city's culture is open air drug market / improvisational lavatory / au-plain-aire insane asylum / literal free rider problem Illustrated ... then that public space and that public good (the transit system) is no longer what I would call capital P Public. It's a state run shitty service through Thomas Hobbes' human ant farm.
I'll let the wonderful Mottizens debate specific policy, but I'll die on the hill of this larger point - public spaces without genuine daily public support (in the form of prosocial behavior) and an understood order of things become lawless lands. It is the job of Government to reasonably encourage the prosocial behaviors (posters and the like) ... and decisively enforce actual law breaking. I do not understand how any public servant, especially elected ones, can look at fare evasion and go "oh well. It's not like they're killing anyone!" No, I suppose they aren't stabbing Cash App cofounders to death (oh wait .... sorry, too soon?). The suicide of citizen cohesion is done in slow motion and one cut at a time.
Roughly a month after hammering out the Windsor Agreement to settle Northern Irish trade, the United Kingdom has also finally joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What a bizarre trajectory the nation has travelled through from Brexit back to fulfilling David Cameron's hopes of joining the Asian multilateral trade deal.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the move early Friday, hailing it as a historic move that could help lift economic growth in the country by £1.8 billion ($2.2 billion) in the long run.
“The bloc is home to more 500 million people and will be worth 15% of global GDP once the UK joins,” Sunak’s office said.
The CPTPP is a free trade agreement with 11 members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. It succeeded the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the United States withdrew under former President Donald Trump in 2017 . . .
As a member, more than 99% of UK exports to those 11 countries will now be eligible for tariff-free trade. That includes major exports, such as cheese, cars, chocolate, machinery, gin and whisky.
In the year through September 2022, the United Kingdom exported £60.5 billion ($75 billion) worth of goods to CPTPP countries, Sunak’s office said in a statement.
Dairy farmers, for example, sent £23.9 million ($29.6 million) worth of products such as cheese and butter to Canada, Chile, Japan and Mexico last year, and were set to “benefit from lower tariffs,” it added.
The deal also aims to lift red tape for British businesses, which will no longer be required to set up local offices or be residents of the pact’s member countries to provide services there.
Services made up a huge chunk — 43% — of overall UK trade with CPTPP members last year, according to Sunak’s office.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the deal to say much intelligent, but was hoping people could share what they think the implications the new deal will entail.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2yr ago
This is the second time in a short while I've come across something interesting about Finnish drinking culture. Do you know more about it? Apparently, you don't drink casually on weeknights but then Friday/Saturday it's literally (I think they have a term for it) "drink until you shit yourself" time?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2yr ago
On account of you committing to the bit and some posters being supportive of it – though in a welcome twist, fewer than in 2021 on the orange site – I'll treat this copypasta as a sincere criticism of atheism from a Christian perspective.
Hi, a (qualified) atheist here. I have pondered such arguments and have deemed them, although problematic for atheism, insufficiently good to accept religion or really even the agnostic ambiguity about any religion being possibly true. This post by @aaa sums up all of the following nicely so you can skip it.
consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory… just a category error
I am fed up with both sides of this argument for the exact reason you point at: smug, blind faith that their parochial assumptions are universal truths, and that blind spots of the opponent validate their specific assumptions. But it's bold to insinuate that the faithless are the worst offenders here – or more «relativist».
On one hand: yes, absolutely, we are not owed a Universe which is no more complex (in personally consequential ways, even!) than our tools allow us to discern. This unwillingness to see past the edge of the Occam's razor has irritated me to no end in the New Atheism era, and I've written and translated a bunch of stuff on it, and on the relation of metaphysics and religion. (People unfavorably compare my writing to ChatGPT lately; I'll link to some old posts to check if there's been any degradation).
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On metaphysical interest as the pinnacle of human exploration drive.
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«agents can plausibly force metaphycics to comply with contractual ethic beneficial for them»
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Dugin on the American Logos: «Utilitarianism (for example, Jeremiah Bentham) is loathed by the right and the left alike, because according to it the criterion of truth is usefulness, and the meaning of life is the search for pleasure. It is disgusting and humiliating not only for a man, but even for an animal… But … American philosophy is pragmatism… how can one live in such a world that is completely open from both sides? The only criterion is: "it works" [in English]. It works and it works great. This is the basis of pragmatic ontology. It doesn't matter who we are, it doesn't matter what kind of world is around us: what matters is the success of the interaction of these two arbitrary sets - conventionally "internal" and conventionally "external". It works ergo sum et ergo est. … It is not just retardation, it is retardation raised into metaphysics, retardation which, by the way, liberates.»
In short: the refusal to entertain non-plainly-materialist metaphysics even as hypotheses does look like either a cognitive deficit – or perhaps rational irrationality, the choice to not ask certain questions so as to not lose your grounding.
But on the other hand. What you are doing here is what I've seen many smart theists attempt to do. You try to turn the objectifying, diagnostic lens that atheists have used on your team back onto them, but you commit a similar category error, so it flops, again; and your rhetorical judo would've been equally stilted had you written it from scratch. If atheists mistake methodology for metaphysics, you mistake metaphysics for theology – moreover, your own brand of theology. Is proving that Occam's Razor cannot dispel non-empirical beliefs equivalent to proving Trinity, transubstantiation, resurrection and propitiation? No, it doesn't follow. Endorsing a particular faith is a much more self-serving sleight of hand than the mistake of atheists; so ceterius paribus it is worse. You can read the convo here for some more arguments. As I've said back then: «At this point I just think theists have a short-circuited higher-agency-detection system». A cognitive deficit, just a different one.
And finally, crudely, for Christians there is the problem of Jews. Jews, like Adam Conover, ruin everything – by being okay; so okay it causes Christians to revise their doctrine now. Jewish wretchedness, homelessness and seeming abandonment of their tribe by God have been underpinnings of Christian rhetorics for millennia (over which your psyches have been shaped by Church-specific pressures). Today, when someone like Randy smugly says that a polity can't have nice things – a functioning society, basically – without God (and this ostensibly proves the truth of his faith), he also says «without Christ». But it seems you can have much nicer things if you assume that Christ is boiling in excrement in Hell. Israeli economy is booming, as is their population, as is their ability to secure their future; while Christians are dying out and secularizing, Jews grow more Orthodox and «trad»; and they'll become tradder yet in your lifetime. Could you give any single compelling reason for an Orthodox Jew to convert? If not, why would you expect anyone else to be swayed by your denomination specifically?
And curiously, this tradness is not really dependent on wacky metaphysics. Adorno in «The Authoritarian Personality» has said that one reason Jews and Judaism are so hated by the oppressors is their freedom from superficial delusion: «Happiness without power, wages without work, a home without frontiers, religion without myth». I suppose this is a bit too flattering, but it is at the very least possible for them. It is not quite possible for you. Orthopraxic religions are only tangentially connected to metaphysics; yours is pretty wholly metaphysical, it's a matter of belief. And this focus on impractical beliefs, frankly, is a much bigger cause to suspect mental illness. In you and me both.
…In the end it's an issue of constitutional difference, I think: brains of theists are literally wired so as to tolerate implausibility of religion, while my brain is wired to tolerate _senselessness_of the observable world_».
ulyssessword
2yr ago
Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:
This week, Nature Human Behaviour publishes a study suggesting that Nature’s 2020 endorsement led many supporters of now former president Donald Trump to lose trust in science and in Nature as a source of evidence-based knowledge.
[...]
Participants who were Trump supporters did not view the summary favourably and, compared with Trump supporters who had been shown text on a different topic, had a lower opinion of Nature as an informed and impartial source on science-related issues facing society.
The growth of activism in ostensibly-neutral organizations is old news, particularly since this event took place three years ago. What stuck out to me is that they seem surprised by those findings, and have to reach for esoteric explanations like the "rebound effect". The simple explanation works just fine, and Bret Devereaux put it best: "Public engagement is how you build support for the field; activism is how you spend support for the field. Yet the two are often conflated; spending is not saving.".
Also notable is the primacy of feels over reals: Nature literally is not impartial, and Trump supporters correctly identified that fact based on the evidence they were presented. They didn't even pretend to grapple with the base reality: Instead of looking at trustworthiness, they look at feelings of trust. More broadly, instead of looking at personal finance, researchers and reporters look at feelings of stability and instead of looking at crime, they look at fear of crime.
I already used GPT-4 to create a /r/themotte post featured here (after all, its database ends in 2021 - the sub was back on Reddit then.) I would guess this sort of a thread, if actually made would get a fair amount of pushback here for being exactly the sort of bland lib stuff that sounds, well, very Reddit.
I also used it to simulate other forums. It created a "typical Something Awful post" that I, having been a goon myself, could only characterize as "GBS as fuck", and a Kiwi Farms post that I couldn't recreate again in the same form (ChatGPT doesn't show previous threads and I might have deleted it) but was, indeed, about the challenges of running a farm in New Zealand. The funniest one was a post for the notorious Punk in Finland forum which was in Finnish so it's no use linking it here, but it simulated exactly what a 60-year-old record company exec trying to push a new band "organically" on a punk forum would sound like. ("How do you do, fellow punks?")
Anyways...
A while back, I learned that years and years ago the Finnish version of 4chan had discovered a Finnish message board for Los Serrano (*Serranon perhe *in Finnish) fans. Los Serrano, in case you don't know it (and I would guess most don't, being American and all) was a Spanish slice-of-life sitcom that aired in 2003-2008 and was also shown in Finland. It had a modicum of popularity back then - I remember several friends going "You gotta watch the Serranos, it's so nice and pleasant!". I watched a few episodes, but nice and pleasant slice-of-life sitcoms aren't really my bag, so I havent thought about it ever since...
...until I learned of the message board for the Finnish fans of the series. Already back when the Finnish version of 4chan had discovered it, it had tens of thousands of posts, and it now has more, with discussion continuing to the present day. This is already highly unusual for a Spanish sitcom that last aired 15 years ago and wasn't really that big a deal here, at least for the entire five-year period. Imagine a highly popular forum for Everybody Loves Raymond fans, expect it's only Everybody Loves Raymond fans in the state of Minnesota, or something.
Naturally, the Finnish anons were intrigued and delved deeper. They soon discovered that much of the forums posting was highly autistic, characterized by repetitive phrases by similar users, extremely intricate "forums contests" on arcane stuff and similar fare. Quickly the Finnish anons deduced that, even if the forums might have had real users back when Los Serrano was on air, it now appeared to have two or maybe three users.
One of them was the guy (probably) who runs almost all the accounts, including the mod and admin accounts, sets up the "contests" between their endless sockpuppet accounts, and, at least years ago when the whole setup was first discovered, posted hundreds of messages, some of them 5000 words long, mostly to themselves daily. Oh, and they also ran another forum for some series that I don't remember right now with similar rates of spam, and they posted screencaps from their forums on Photobucket, and they had forums accounts on other Finnish forums, and they had intricate avatars and gifs for their users, and so on.
They also found out that the forums had at least one other user, thought to be a shy and possibly developmentally disabled girl, who was endlessly banned or otherwise sanctioned by the power user for minor strange infractions, but still kept returning to the forum.
As you might guess from the years, the forums continue running ever now, though I am not deep enough in the lore to know which accounts are which - ie. is it still just this one guy posting to himself or if the other person is still involved or what.
I guess the point here is that even if we could have AI's simulating a bunch of posters, it's still just simulating something that you already get if you get a human who is committed, crazy and autistics enough. "Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power..."
dasfoo
2yr ago
For my part, I try to read or skim several articles from one of a few news aggregator sites every morning
For an unrelated reason last night I went looking for daily podcasts that cover the day's top headlines in several broad categories -- like the sections of a newspaper -- in a few minutes. I found a couple, but there are shockingly few of these.
For about a year I've been listening to the BBC's global new report, but it has too much magazine-like filler, is too keen on pushing narratives, and releases several episodes per day. I was hoping to find 2-3 more compact headlines+lead paragraphs only podcasts from different sources. I have yet to go through the ones I found, but I think there's a market for something like this:
Monday-Friday, a 10-minute podcast that goes through 5-6 top news headlines from one source. The source changes everyday, rotating through 5-10 sources, so you get some different perspectives on the same big stories. Maybe on the weekend, 10-20 minutes going through some niche subject headlines, like sports, entertainment, tech, etc.
I don't know if this is "fun friday" material, it's a video of an ongoing war that includes real people visibly dying; but I think it will be interesting to people here, and it's not culture war* or appropriate as a standalone post. Anyways,
Some of the most incredible combat footage I've ever seen, posted today: Battle of Honor Company for the last road to Bakhmut
* there is culture war content in that Da Vinci Wolves is Right Sector, and the leader of Honor (not sure if the perspective guy in the video) has old social media posts celebrating Hitler's birthday (and pre-war Vice articles about that); keep that in mind as this frontpages on Reddit, but it is besides the main point of posting this
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