domain:astralcodexten.com
zeke5123a
4hr ago
And this is why the activists win. Every time you move the line a little, the next movement of the line is only slighter more expensive compared to the new status quo and the government has already admitted the alleged moral case.
I find activists in part evil because they never hold up their end of the bargain. On Friday, they will celebrate their hard won compromised victory and on the next Monday they will be telling us how the status quo is intolerable and needs changed.
No_one
4hr ago
None of these animals are enemies of their predators, they're merely snacks. Those features you listed exist to induce the predator to choose another snack.
If Israel destroys Iran, having eaten one small nuke in the process would still leave it weaker vis-a-vis its other
Nothing in my original post implies Israelis do not know this. Obviously they, the HOG are certain to know Iranians have nukes, or are right at the threshold. They're probably hard at work trying to get high-res photos of said nukes because accusations without proof aren't that interesting today.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
Iran would never give the Arabs they sponsor that kind of independent power.
Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate!
Happy Independence Day!
America is an awesome country filled with great people and is responsible for many of the best things that have happened to the world over the past 100 years. I say this quite genuinely as someone who doesn't live in the US. It deserves appreciation.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
6hr ago
Being able to wound the enemy and then assuredly die is not deterrence.
If this were true, why would the animal world be full of animals that are mildly poisonous, taste bad, have spines etc.? Why do bees sting large animals that threaten the hive?
As long as your enemy's value function includes terms other than your destruction, any damage you can inflict upon them can be a deterrent. If Israel destroys Iran, having eaten one small nuke in the process would still leave it weaker vis-a-vis its other enemies going forward, and simply make it harder for it to thrive as a nation. These are all considerations that might, in some situations, change the balance and make Israel decide to leave Iran alone even if they would rather attack it otherwise.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
6hr ago
I've been shaking my head at that particular debacle, it seems that the UK is just about the only country on the planet that takes utterly toothless "international law" seriously. They could have told the Mauritian government to shove it, what would they have done, cancel discount holiday vouchers and row over in a canoe?
I don't really have a horse in this race, but I still find it all too tiresome.
ControlsFreak
6hr ago
Government rules are enforced through violence and kidnapping.
This is missing some steps. There are plenty of government rules, which, on their face, are not enforced through violence and kidnapping. In many of those cases, you have to posit a persistently-oppositional figure and a continued escalatory cycle to get to an eventual end state where the ultimate response to unending opposition is, indeed, violence/kidnapping.
If such a proposition holds, it should hold in other domains as well. Let's consider household/family rules. At different stages for children, some household/family rules are directly enforced via spanking or timeouts or whatever (violence/kidnapping). For others, you can often find a similar escalatory process if you posit a sufficiently oppositional child. Another end state may be 'exile', kicking someone out of your house. Of course, if we assume a maximally-oppositional child, what might it take to actually enforce kicking them out of your house? If they just refuse to go? Violence? Kidnapping? Calling the state... to use violence/kidnapping?
I think this reasoning about maximal-opposition holds for essentially every rule ever, government or not. That is, under the hypothesis of maximal-opposition, essentially every rule ever is either ultimately enforced via violence/kidnapping or... well, at some point, it just goes unenforced, as efforts are dropped in the face of maximal-opposition. Of course, one might think that choosing to present maximal-opposition is, itself, a rule that is chosen by someone.
That is, there doesn't seem to be anything unique to government rules here. Yet, I don't think that most people are willing to apply this same standard to the entire set of rules in the universe.
No_one
6hr ago
No, you can't 'provide a bomb'.
It'd be obvious from the fallout where the bomb was from and you would end up being treated the same as if you had fired it yourself.
No_one
6hr ago
Good, didn't know about this.
Great way to promote ambiguity, though only very naive people will fall for it.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
6hr ago
He's gone on record on videos saying he's not African American since he's Indian. We joke about identifying as a Hispanic Trans person on college admission forms and this guy actually did it, unsuccessfully. Not the Trans part.
No_one
6hr ago
That's what I am saying.
But the only way to do it is thermonuclear weapons.
20*20 kilotons on Israel would be catastrophic but it'd be survivable for Israel.
It'd not be survivable for Iranian government.
100*400 kilotons would destroy Israel, possibly even partially prevent retaliation.
That's the moment when Iran would have true deterrence and MAD with Israel.
Being able to wound the enemy and then assuredly die is not deterrence.
Zohran Mamdani, who claimed to be black to get into Columbia and is probably going to face zero consequences for it.
Ironically, this could be called a lie. Per the NYT article
But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.
This is a man born in Uganda, and lived in South Africa through his early life.
Whether or not he's African American, and likewise with similar non-black Africa > America immigrants is a difficult question given that he literally is an African who became an American, and it's really hard to even think of an alternate term to call them along the lines of what we would call other groups! Like do we say "African-place Americans" instead to make the distinction clear? I'm not sure what the alternative even is here, we clearly don't have an established alternative.
This is realistically more the fault of terrible and misleading categories that are culturally outdated. It is weird, unintuitive and often nonsensical nowadays that Black people who have been living in South America or Europe for generations are considered "African" but someone literally from Africa isn't. And it makes for an interesting question, why do we call them African until they move then?
And if we want to say "well that's because they were originally African" or something, then it's a rather arbitrary cutoff that originally only applies to the great grandparent or great great grandparent or great great great grandparent (depending on the person's particular heritage) but is also a moving definition that applies to the great(x4).grandparent next and so on and so forth to where you could be great(x20) grandparent heritage now and be African but someone with great(X2) heritage now isn't, and also doesn't include we're all from Africa originally so why is there a cutoff to begin with then? Does that mean a black person in the year 300000 will no longer be considered African anymore because we've hit the time limit on African heritage? It doesn't make things much less confusing or weird.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
6hr ago
but have you seen the other Commonwealth states
Have you seen the UK handing the Chagos over to Mauritius these last two months and paying for the privilege? That is just as, or even more, cucked. What happened to the spirit of Wellington or Mccaulay?
For all the UK's faults there is no doubt they would run the place more efficiently than the Mauritians ever could.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
7hr ago
Accurate. There is a cultural and probably (my theory) genetic temperament that makes whites share and care. Think European killing Winters in the old days.
Beyond this its performative luxury beliefs. Rich whiteys living in gated communities that will never need to deal with the consequences of their actions.
Happy to be corrected by others.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7hr ago
The second person (narrative voice) in a story is very interesting. I tried it once many years ago after reading Bright Lights, Big City. Thanks for sharing, I like reading things like this. I have no answer to your question. Probably I'd be intransigent and not cooperate just because, but that could be mental bravado.
Ecgtheow
7hr ago
Couldn't your conclusion that 'If Hamas manages to get an attack off it's the entire host nations problem as well' apply to Iran giving them a nuke in the first place? Couldn't Israel just state preemptively they will regard any use of nukes by hamas as use by Iran and will nuke Tehran in response? In this case would the Iranian regime be willing to chain themselves to asa suicidal ally and provide Hamas with bombs in the first place?
I don't think having a suicidal ally changes the logic of mutually assured destruction much. That relies on your enemy drawing some arbitrary distinction that doesn't serve their interests.
Possibly from Yoorrook's perspective the idea is just to open with a maximal demand that they can then negotiate down from; or possibly it's to deliberately make demands that cannot possibly be satisfied so that there will remain a need for activists in this space.
I have an informed source in this general area. According to my friend, the indigenous lobby generally is full of maximalists, they've always been into maximalism and word-games to achieve maximal gains rather than good-faith bargaining. That's what they've been doing with 'sovereignty never ceded', they've been treating it like a slogan for people to say and feel good about. Universities don't actually mean that the Australian government is not sovereign and Eora tribe is in control when they say it. They just mean 'I'm progressive and left wing and a Good Person'. But it's a way of seeding the idea that the government isn't actually in control for further usage later on. If you say it and repeat it enough, it becomes true.
There are similar games being played with 'First Nations'. Nation means race or ethnic group in English but it can also mean state. They wanted to insert into the constitution, IIRC, recognition of First Nations and they said 'oh this is just for aesthetic purposes, recognition, just being a Good Person'. This got watered down in the public referendum question since the more sensible white lawyers saw through this immediately, but that's what the activists wanted. Later on, when there's a friendly High Court, the idea was to reimagine it to meaning First Nations as a political entity still around today, so then they can get a Treaty and even more gains. There's no such thing as a compromise with these people (exceptions exist obviously), only an endless struggle.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8hr ago
The difficulty is that a determined person could easily maintain their allegiance without overt signs especially in service to a greater cause. If I’m a person allied to hezbollah I don’t want the USA to know that, and especially if I’m joining a cell in the USA. If all I have to do is hide my allegiance to hezbollah for three years, I can probably scrub my name from official records, purge my social media, and keep my mouth shut for three years and be fine.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
8hr ago
Out of boredom, I'm using Gemini to make a mortar calculator app that takes in screenshots/grid coordinates and outputs firing solutions. Should work in theory!
self_made_human
C'est la vie
8hr ago
I expect that when people usually say that, they're implicitly stating strong belief that the problems are both solvable and being solved. Not that this necessarily means that such claims are true..
self_made_human
C'est la vie
8hr ago
If you're a Windows user, and seeking a more power-user experience, I strongly endorse Windows PowerToys. While not an official Microsoft product, it's a passion project by Microsoft devs. Current features:
- Advanced Paste
- Always on Top
- PowerToys Awake
- Color Picker
- Command Not Found
- Command Palette
- Crop And Lock
- Environment Variables
- FancyZones
- File Explorer Add-ons
- File Locksmith
- Hosts File Editor
- Image Resizer
- Keyboard Manager
- Mouse utilities
- Mouse Without Borders
- New+
- Paste as Plain Text
- Peek
- PowerRename
- PowerToys Run
- Quick Accent
- Registry Preview
- Screen Ruler
- Shortcut Guide
- Text Extractor
- Workspaces
- ZoomIt
I personally get some mileage out of the FancyZones feature, as it's a big upgrade over default window tiling manager. With a 4k screen, it's a shame not to use the real estate to its fullest potential. I can see the pixel counter being useful in Arma Reforger, where you need to measure distances on a map, cheeky mortar calculator right there.
Fair enough. So in your proposed libertarian world, you would not automatically have the right to sue for breach of contract, damages, or debt? Unless these things turned out to be foundational.
I thought those things were more central to libertarian ideology.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
8hr ago
There's some breakdown in communication as he wants a smaller, less powerful government where there are some things the government does. Smaller societies earlier were dependent on elders enforcing laws via the guys.
When he argues agaisnt hard drugs, it's from the perspective of that implementation in the current apparatus. It's not a bad one, he also has written agaisnt government interference, that's one of his most famous articles.
I'd rather have the government crack down on what he listed instead of hate speech.
Eh, I think it's contextual? The terrain is different depending on each nation. You don't find exactly this sort of thing in the UK because the UK isn't a colony.
However, the proper comparisons here are between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. On those terms I feel like Australia is arguably the least grovelling. All three other Anglo colonies already have treaties with indigenous peoples that make those peoples semi-autonomous. Australia is the only one that doesn't, and the Voice was roundly rejected by the Australian people, which tells me that actual grassroots support for this is pretty low.
Yoorrook is part of the activist industry, and it's supported by the government because the government and the public service are deeply in bed with Group-like NGOs. That's a bad thing, but I'm not sure it tells us that much about l'Australie profonde, so to speak - and if the existence of that whole complex is the problem, well, half of that is imported from the United States anyway. We're downstream of American culture wars and tend to absorb their worst elements, albeit a few years too late.
So I certainly wouldn't advise the Americans to be too smug.
As for the British... honestly, I think they have their own issues to deal with. They aren't colonial in nature, but national pride and identity in the UK are complicated enough as to need their own post.
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