domain:aporiamagazine.com
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7hr ago
K. I meant the royal we, there was a thread a while ago where everyone many people were reminiscing about Hlynka, in which I thought Tequila basically came right out and said 'yeah gang, it's me!' in different words. And everyone many people reacted so nonchalantly that I thought it was already well known and I was just oblivious.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7hr ago
But being the enforcer made him bitter (like it does to everyone who assumes that role)
Eh, more like jaded.
He did get "special treatment" but we never hid that; we have always given more slack to people with a positive record. However, that slack is not infinite.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7hr ago
On what grounds? Your idea of 'manlyness'? You're generally liberal, but the sex stuff is your achilles heel.
I don't even know what you mean by "sex stuff" here. I despise cowardice, weakness, and lack of dignity and self-respect.
Right, but I don't think Hlynka thinks he's been justly punished for his actions.
Actually, he was pretty straightforward about his disagreement with Zorba and acknowledging that this disagreement necessarily led to his being removed as mod and then banned. We had many conversations with him: I don't know that he necessarily agreed that he was "justly punished" (obviously he wanted to keep doing what he was doing and he did not want us to make him stop) but he knew what he was doing and at the time seemed to accept the consequences.
Personally I don't consider most of the permabans the mods hand out justified.
This does not surprise me.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7hr ago
I genuinely do not consider you the modal case of the Parrot-apologist I dislike.
Thank you for saying so. I would say this conversation stopped going anywhere a while ago, and I think our philosophy on AI is much more aligned than you think, but... I'm not trying to start anything again, but I won't let philosophy get in the way of practicality if I don't think there is a moral component. Which is how I see this situation.
jkf
7hr ago
Why do many people object to LLM usage? Why do even I draw a distinction between good usage of chatbots, and bad/value-negative behavior?
It can be a substitute for independent thought. It can be used to gish-gallop and stonewall. It can have hallucinations or outright distortions of truth. It can be boring to read.
Boring to read, ineffective at getting your points across, way too long -- the AI is making your writing worse.
Nobody cares how hard you worked (well, some people might, but I don't) -- the clarity of communication in your post was very bad, even though the chosen topic is interesting. I think you are high on Sam's supply, and should probably consider that if you are getting negative feedback on your writing methods, your self-assessment may be flawed.
I do not like the idea of killing people. That's usually the opposite of what a doctor seeks to do. I think that in some circumstances, it aligns with the wishes of those involved, and is a kindness. I would prefer everyone sit tight and try to wait it out till we cure most or all disease, including aging itself. That aspiration (which I consider pretty plausible) is of little utility when a 90 year old woman is dying in agony and asking to go out on her own terms.
There's the motte, yes...
The Bailey, which I am willing to defend, includes far less obvious cases, but that's informed by my firm opinions and professional knowledge, and once again, I would prefer to cure rather than kill. But if cures aren't on the cards, I think society should allow death with dignity, and I would take on that onerous task.
Society should allow it yes -- but should it provide it?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7hr ago
This forum has a ton of lurkers and users who at some point switch from only posting sporadically to suddenly becoming more active. It’s very plausible that TequilaMockingbird is one such user, and that seeing Hlynka banned inspired him to “take up the mantle” of defending the cultural/ideological corner that Hlynka had previously occupied. There has always been a contingent of users here who (bizarrely) found Hlynka’s posts profoundly insightful and important, and who thought he was fighting the good fight against the (imagined) “Blue Tribe” consensus of the community.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
7hr ago
The LCP seems to be well before my time. I wasn't even in med school when the program officially wrapped up. And I've only been in the UK for almost exactly a year now.
The most obvious of the critiques that stands out to me is that paying the local trusts for adherence to the policy is potentially misguided. It is standard practice to award funds on the basis of performance. Paying local trusts for adherence to an end-of-life protocol sounds like ordinary KPI management. We pay for sepsis bundles, maternal mortality reductions, time-to-thrombolysis, all the usual dashboards.
But the object-level signal here is different. If your target is “percent of palliative patients on Pathway X,” you create a reward for moving people onto Pathway X. In stroke or obstetrics, the KPI rewards rescuing people. In end-of-life care, a superficially similar metric can look like a reward for getting to the end faster. Most clinicians will ignore that perverse reading. Some will not. Families will presume the worst when outcomes are bad. This is not a moral condemnation. It is a predictable human response to incentives that look ugly from the outside.
Some lurid stories of people visiting sick relatives and noticing another patient begging for water, claiming to be thirsty, and being ignored by nurses, and when the visitors asked about it, they were told this person was 'nil by mouth', they were unresponsive, they were DNR, and it was none of the strangers' business, and so (it was claimed) they were being let die of dehydration by stealth.
I find this hard to believe. In the hospital I worked at, it was often the case that palliative patients were put NBM, but usually because they simply couldn't tolerate it. They presented severe choking risks, leave aside complications like aspiration pneumonia. More common was simply attempting to feed them as much as they could manage, usually manually and by means of thickened fluids. A lot of these palliative patients simply can't eat enough to keep them alive, and options like NG tubes or parenteral nutrition were decided against: dying patients often can't tolerate them, and they provide maybe a few days or weeks of life at the cost of reducing QOL even further.
NBM does not mean “no comfort.” People receive subcutaneous or intravenous fluids when appropriate. They get oral care, ice chips, and we do our best to ameliorate the sensation of dryness, which is different from actual dehydration. From the corridor, it can look like neglect. From the notes, it is usually a documented risk-benefit tradeoff made by clinicians who do not enjoy saying no to water.
My point? The first time would have been wrong to let him die. The second time would have been wrong to try and keep him alive. And both times, the hospital was trying to nudge us towards the death side of the equation. That's the lack of trust in medical experts that is at the heart of the debate.
I'm glad your father survived the initial hospitalization and gained many years of healthy life. However, I think both your family and the doctors did the right thing. We're not omniscient, patients who seem unlikely to die can pass away overnight, and in rare cases, those we judge to be on death's door might just not answer when the Reaper rings. We try our best to make hard decisions with limited information.
I've mentioned elsewhere a patient of mine from not long ago. Physically healthy as an ox, we thought, even if his brain was riddled with holes from the dementia. Then it turned out the previous hospital was negligent, he'd had a hemorrhage in his cranium, and deteriorated overnight. We even did the palliative paperwork, and were ready to provide end of life care as seemed inevitable.
I went away to India for a few weeks, and genuinely thought he was a goner. I came back, and found out that he was back on his feet, and as chipper as ever. The nurses seemed happier about that than they were about my return. I'd call this truly unexpected, as every single one of the doctors at the hospital genuinely expected him to die. It's a shame that he didn't get the benefit of such a reprieve from death while his brain was still healthy, but he might live another year or two yet.
Yet, he is the exception. In 9/10 cases, a patient like that will die regardless of what we resort to. The process of resorting to everything (including escalation to an ICU) is normally worse than keeping them comfortable till the end. Escalation to ICU can mean delirium in a bright room, tubes in places you do not want tubes, and no family at the bedside. Even the young and hearty do not enjoy their stay there, let alone the aged, frail and dying.
The lurid anecdotes make sense if you only see the sip denied. They look different if you see the swallow test, the chest x-ray, and the conversation the team had with the family yesterday. Perverse incentives make suspicion easier, which is why tying money to a pathway box is a bad idea even if it probably helps more than it hurts.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7hr ago
Hlynka was a mod from back on reddit who took care of troublemakers and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder from growing up poor (like most of us who grow up poor) that he used to fuel the zingers he would level at troublemakers. But being the enforcer made him bitter (like it does to everyone who assumes that role) so at some point he stopped being a mod, but his former mod status gave him leeway to continue making zingers. But people were less willing to tolerate it when he wasn't using it for the good of the community and people started to feel like he got special treatment (he did). But I think to him he just felt like he was being the same person he'd always been, and it just kind of made him angrier and eventually he flamed out.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7hr ago
Ok, so we're back to all teachers being the problem then?
Tree
7hr ago
Yeah, one is banned from the digital world, the other from the analog world. Astral plane, mortal plane. Hard to tell which one hurts more to lose, soul or body.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
Yes thé normies are indoctrinated- because they’re, you know, normies.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7hr ago
It's not the mockery. In fact, it's specially that it isn't mockery. It's a genuine, straight to the white viewer plea, so do something about Trump, because something must be done. The mockery I can handle. The "clown nose off" moments are when I turn off the TV.
He was a user who predated the Motte even on reddit. He stood for a particular kind of Ur-American conservatism and that made him stand out somewhat from all the Dissident Right people, but ultimately he was an evangelist here to save the lost sheep rather than a debater here to chew the fat. Like most of the evangelists we get here, he ended up eventually flaming out in fury that most people didn't want to buy what he was selling.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7hr ago
Well, that was fast.
I got a second game of Hands in the Sea in last night! We switched sides with me playing Carthage. I came out the gate swinging, cut off Roman supply out of Italy using my starting fleet of warships, recruited some cavalry to raze their colonies while I had them bottled up, and just generally kept the pressure on while I leisurely expanded. Won in 4 turns with an automatic victory based on being more than 25 VPs ahead during the scoring phase of a turn.
Rome's biggest problem was with supply being cut off, they could start a battle with Syracuse (which is a vital supply point in Sicily), but they couldn't reinforce the battle to win it which requires supply lines, until they disrupted my naval blockade. They wouldn't need to destroy my fleet, they'd only need to build at least one warship, and then contest control of the blockade. That's enough to re-establish supply for reinforcing a land battle. After they take Syracuse, they'd have a local supply point on Sicily and could have ground me down with their legions. Unfortunately, Rome was caught flat footed by the dire consequences of being out of supply, and instead of building a fleet and contesting control of the waters, spent time recruiting legions they couldn't send, and pursuing deck optimizations that lacked actual bite in the conflict. There was an attempt to finally break my blockade, and it bought Rome a single turn of supply in Sicily. But it was insufficient, and I sank their fleet in short order. By the end of the game Rome was drawing their entire deck into their hand every turn... without having valid or meaningful actions they could use all those cards on. Alas.
We're already planning another rematch, where I will probably take Rome again and need to resist the strategy I just absolutely dominated with. Wish me luck.
jkf
7hr ago
600 people per year being deliberately killed in a population the size of Canada seems significant to me, regardless of how many other terminally ill people are killed. (which I'm also uneasy about, although if they want to DIY it that seems fine, and certainly there are some cases where it seems like a mercy)
Typically there are 6-700 murders per year in Canada; these are normally considered undesirable and kind of a big deal. So you need to do some work to convince me that this new category of homicide is totally cool and no problem.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7hr ago
To be clear, I have never been nostalgic for Hlynka and have been glad he’s gone since the second he caught his ban.
NYTReader
7hr ago
Is this egregious by South Park standards? Didn't they regularly mock minorities in episodes prior to this one?
phailyoor
7hr ago
The illegal streaming website I looked at accidentally uploaded s1e1 in the spot of the latest season episode 1. While the latest episodes are funny enough, they aren't even close to what the series had at the beginning. Though I'm sure it's not all due to the Trump effect but partially just due to them running out of jokes and the series going downhill in general over 27 seasons.
Also doesn't help that it's a super long multiple-episode arc, which I think isn't always the best. Alot of gags felt repetitive and filler-ish like the face, dogs and the debater gags. They were funny once but then pretty whatever after they do it 3+ times across the episode.
ChickenOverlord
7hr ago
A post ban edit 5 days after you got banned? Must have really struck a nerve
I’m not offended, more genuinely curious- what makes you think my politics are similar to Kulak’s?
To elaborate, Kulak wants a violent overthrow of the existing system to be replaced by ‘?’. He doesn’t have any particularly consistent reasoning for this; he can be a white identitarian, an ancap, a fascist, ultra-mysogynistic, etc. The common thread is that he wants short term violent action. He’s also some kind of pagan but not in the sense that he, like, believes in literal gods(I believe in his gods more than he does- specifically, that they are demons who at one point convinced Northern Europeans to worship them as gods). There is a bunch of historical fan fiction that he uses to tie this in with his generic pro-terrorist vibe and AFAIK he is a Canadian who makes his money entirely through internet media- whether this is from people finding him interesting or genuine believers.
I am a rad trad Catholic in the sense of actually, literally believing in my own religion. And I believe that the existing system will collapse under the weight of its own degeneracy without the need for violent action; the important thing is to be building parallel societies which grow by functioning better, to enable a slow replacement of existing power structures with patriarchal, religious, virtuous ones. I expect this to proceed as existing power structures shred their human capital through things like low fertility rates and retarded equity pushes which force them to rely on functioning parallel societies more and more. I believe a set of conspiracy theories about apocalyptic prophecies which guarantee that this will actually take place so long as me and my tribe do our part; the cathedral likes indoor plumbing a lot more than it hates rum millet, even when that rum millet is slowly overtaking it. Violence is thus counterproductive.
Tree
7hr ago
but otherwise, no, I can only despise the "morality" you advocate.
On what grounds? Your idea of 'manlyness'? You're generally liberal, but the sex stuff is your achilles heel.
Also, your example is of someone being unjustly and arbitrarily executed, not someone being justly punished for his actions.
Right, but I don't think Hlynka thinks he's been justly punished for his actions. Personally I don't consider most of the permabans the mods hand out justified.
DimitriRascalov
7hr ago
but my confidence was fairly low then and remains a bit shaky even now.
Can you explain why? Similar to you, I also thought that it was Hlynka four months ago, but with much higher confidence. What convinces me then as now is the last point from my post: TequilaMockingbird talked in the way someone deeply familiar with this forum, its history and connection to Scott Alexander would.
There plausibly are many other people with beliefs similar to Hlynka, so TequilaMockingbird having exactly the same views (and rhetoric! seriously, the Steve Sailer thing isn't the first time he's let his old ticks shine trough) on every single issue as him isn't dispositive. The fact that an account with such beliefs is created three months after Hlynka's ban and immediately participates in discourse as an old regular would, even calling out specific users' post histories and ideologies, is though, especially when no other well known long-time poster was missing/banned at the time. It was very, very obvious that he was Hlynka from the start.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
8hr ago
Was this when we were all nostalgic for Hlynka and he was joking that Hlynka might be JD Vance? Because I thought he basically came right out and said it lol. I thought everyone else had already figured it out and known for ages.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
He was a former mod, greatly respected by many members and absolutely hated by many others. He was eventually removed as a mod for being too antagonistic towards people he despised, and then when he wouldn't amend his behavior, he was banned entirely.
I'm so sorry. I truly don't understand how anyone can have a functional use of math if they didn't at least learn basic arithmetic by rote. These alternate ways I see of doing addition, subtraction, division and multiplication out of common core are bonkers to me, because of how intensive they are in terms of the number of steps they require, or how much scratch paper you'd need for all the intermediate parts. They look more like academic proofs of how basic arithmetic works than how a person should be expected to functionally work with numbers in the spur of the moment.
I mean shit, just yesterday I was playing a game, figuring off the top of my head what the odds of a single 5 or 6 were off rolling a pair of dice. Came up with 20/36 in fairly short order. Although I will be marginally embarrassed if my off the top of the head work turns out to be wrong after all that.
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