domain:parrhesia.co
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I've always been indifferent to sports. Team sports kinda bore me, and for the American ones, like baseball or handegg, I can't even comprehend the rules, let alone understand what's going on in the field. Individual competitions look pointless to me - after all, jumping 2.40 or 2.42 high looks exactly the same. I mean, I understand how much it means to the athletes, but it doesn't excite me. And the combat sports look too cruel - I'm not a pacifist but I can't really enjoy so much pain being purposely inflicted on a person that didn't really deserve it.
However, some time ago, the Facebook algorithm, for reasons known only to it, started to suggest to me a lot of sumo content. Initially I just ignored it, as I ignore most auto-suggested stuff. I never thought much of sumo, and considered it being rather comical. But, after watching a few bouts out of idle curiosity, I discovered, to my big surprise, that I am actually enjoying it. So I looked for more, and turns out I like the sport! It has everything I want: it's competitive but not cruel (yes, it can be quite traumatic at times, but they don't try to hurt each other intentionally). The bouts are short (2 minutes is considered a long one, though lower leagues have longer ones but never seen such a long one in the top league so far) so I do not get bored. The rules - at least the basic ones I need to understand what's going on - are extremely simple. The participants are varied - everyone has its own style and approach. It has a lot of tradition behind it and also has varied and sometimes complex technical aspects.
During the last two basho - May and July - I found myself checking the results each morning and watching the highlights each evening, which I never ever did before with sports. I totally did not expect it but it looks like I became a sports fan. I definitely will also follow the next basho - in September one - closely.
There were plenty of cases like that back during Trump I, and nothing happened. Admittedly Trump himself was a lot less agentic back then, so maybe he would do something if such a case came up this time, but I don't know if they aren't happening anymore, or if they just blended into the background.
EDIT: After watching the video - wow that's extremely mild. I'd be really surprised if these things weren't regularly occurring at universities for all sorts of MAGA people, even now.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
5d ago
The combination of better automation, simpler missions (and in particular not going behind the Moon and therefore potentially having to carry out manoeuvres while out of comms with Earth) and more payload meant that the Shuttle could afford to carry passengers in a way that earlier missions could not.
2rafa
5d ago
Why do we think the Trump admin wouldn’t grandstand in this way if someone wearing a MAGA hat was embroiled in this kind of thing with an annoying woke-presenting individual saying “Fuck Trump” or whatever?
thejdizzler
5d ago
I'm not sure Tesla and SpaceX are actually "effective". Tesla did certainly do a lot of good in making electric cars "cool" but the product on offer is far shittier and more expensive than Chinese or even US automaker electric cars. SpaceX is a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. It can't even do something the US government could do in the 1960s consistently.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5d ago
Personally I'd be up to rolling the tanks for all of them, but most of the time the authorities won't roll them when the attacked person is on the wrong side of the zeitgeist.
iprayiam3
5d ago
genetic screening doesn't make it available to anyone who otherwise had an issue. Those people just don't get to be alive.
marinuso
5d ago
That's completely orthogonal to embryo selection though. We don't magically gain the tech to accurately scan these things from your DNA.
And even if we had it, and decided to use it, we'd look at people's actual results, and we could do that with naturally born people in the same way. Even if they would in general end up performing worse than people born from selected embryos, you'd still not have Gattaca, even though it would be dystopian in its own way. There's no incentive to start discriminating specifically against natural-born people specifically and checking that everywhere.
We already rank people by their traits and abilities, we just do it in a more fuzzy way. For sports it's the easiest. We have them compete and see who's best. Even if we could perfectly predict this using their DNA, nothing would change.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5d ago
Of course, since he bought twitter, he has had a ton of negative impact on the world as well. Since xAI, I wish that whoever is writing Musk's role would try to write a realistic villain with actual coherent human motivations instead of just a Sieg-Heiling comic book caricature.
Huh? Buying Twitter is one of the few things where he had an actual positive impact on the world. Most of his other companies are pure hype, and are slowly dissolving anyway. xAI is no worse than all the other AI companies.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Choosing it to place it where health outcomes are worst is taking into account health equity. Again the term may be new but the reality that you have to allocate scarce resources and who should get them is old.
But the term isn't just about "allocating scarce resources and who should get them", it's "allocating them in such a way, that you are predictably causing more deaths than an alternative, traditional allocation".
If they're going to roll out the tanks for every instance of woke on anti-woke violence, I'm here for it.... but surely you see how doing so for that specific group in particular, and much of anyone else, has somewhat unfortunate optics?
quiet_NaN
6d ago
I might be typically-minding, but I think that most big tech companies are seen at least slightly negative by rats in general.
Apple and Google are obviously rent-seeking with their digital walled gardens. Apart from that, Google is an ads company, while Apple is making hardware for a slightly cultish consumer base. I prefer Android over iOS because the former is mostly open, but recognize that OS X is less of a walled garden than most Android devices are. Microsoft did a great job of becoming mostly irrelevant for me personally, which is much better than I expected. So far, they have failed to completely ruin github.
Reddit is a cautionary tale about what happens when you let a single company control a bit platform. Facebook was always mostly terrible.
Musk deserves a paragraph of his own. For someone who made his money with fucking PayPal, he really did some good for a time. Both Tesla and SpaceX were exactly the kind of companies society should want. Hell, he was Scott Alexander's go-to example of "high positive impact human" a decade ago. Of course, since he bought twitter, he has had a ton of negative impact on the world as well. Since xAI, I wish that whoever is writing Musk's role would try to write a realistic villain with actual coherent human motivations instead of just a Sieg-Heiling comic book caricature.
Speaking of LLMs, there is a sentiment among rats that many AI companies are actively working on extincting humans. Personally I hope that we will get wiped out by 'Open'AI with its callous disregard for safety rather than by Musk trying to build Grok from his own ego, the former seems slightly more dignified. Anthropic is probably one of the better ones as far as alignment vs capabilities is concerned.
Uber and Amazon are providing a useful service for customers, but it is apparent that their prices are caused by having people work in terrible conditions.
Most companies which I actually consider net-positive are not tech giants. Substack is filling a useful niche. Discord is still slightly useful despite working hard on enshittification.
I agree that monopolies are bad. If a company wants to grow from 0% market share to 5%, its incentives are likely aligned with broader society. If it wants to grow from 30% to 90%, the opposite is the case.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
SSCReader
6d ago
Letting people die for "health equity" is so high brow it's left the head entirely.
Not at all. If you have a certain amount of resources you have to decide who is going to get them and who is going to get them first. That kind of thinking is centuries old (if not older!) The presentation might be new but it's exactly the same sort of decision you have to make when deciding to build a hospital in London or Bradford. Do you put it in a poor area or a rich one?
Choosing it to place it where health outcomes are worst is taking into account health equity. Again the term may be new but the reality that you have to allocate scarce resources and who should get them is old. Probably as old as deciding if you should give food to the old toothless elder who may die any day or to the hunters in your tribe.
SSCReader
6d ago
So the term is created by academia, but it's a word for an already existing concept. Cisheteronormativity (refers to the pervasive societal assumption that everyone is cisgender and heterosexual, and that these are the only acceptable or natural ways to be.)
So if you asked an average person in 1840 and asked them "Hey, are women ,women and men men? Is being homosexual wrong?" He will likely give you an answer that is compatible with the concept of Cisheteronormativity. He understands the idea behind the term even if the term would be gibberish to him. Because it's the water he swims in, he probably doesn't think about it, but he is passively aware of the idea if you were to draw it to his attention and describe it to him.
Academia names the thing, but the thing existed prior to academia and would exist without academia to name it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Can one hope that this whole thing introduces a new generation to the magical world of BitTorrent?
Corvos
6d ago
I would guess they thought that weed would make them more relaxed and therefore more capable. Like the Ballmer Peak but with a different drug. I have no experience so can't say if it's plausible.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
6d ago
There are people, including lawyers and lawyers-to-be, who go through their entire days stoned. I have met them. They do things like take vape hits from THC pens the entire time they are awake. Someone getting high during the bar exam surprises me not at all.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
6d ago
While we're on the subject of bar exams, I had an idea when I took it called the Mount Everest of Lays. There may be more difficult situations to get laid in, but I haven't though of one that has the same combination of a necessarily limited time frame, situational inappropriateness (without being too inappropriate), and theoretical availability of women. The idea is getting laid on the evening between the two days of the bar exam with someone you met at the bar exam.
Entirely different profession, but I almost managed that. I had just given the first of the two exams needed to get licensed as a doctor in the UK. Funnily enough, the same buddy I was supposed to come visit in London was with me, and once it was done, we were both gassed, deeply anxious about the results, and in dire need of a stiff drink.
We set off for a nearby pub, and were just about done discussing and drowning our sorrows when a pair of pretty ladies came up to our table.
They said they'd recognized us from the exam center, and evinced an interest in going out dancing. I can't dance to save my life, but I was several drinks in and willing to give it a go, especially when a pretty woman was asking.
That was a night to remember. I probably danced six hours straight, till maybe 4 am. For once, I wasn't the worst dancer on the floor, as my friend thought standing on the spot and autistically stimming up and down counted. He had a six-pack, so I'm sure it wasn't a deal breaker.
I would have gotten laid, if I hadn't been honest and told them that I was taken while we were riding an elevator up to the clubs. I resigned myself to being a good wingman, but even on the dance club, I'm sure that if I had fewer scruples it would have worked out.
Once even the girls, who absolutely could dance, were done (or the club kicked us out, I don't remember), we caught a cab. Ah, good times. Even if I didn't get laid, the mere optionality had plenty of value in my eyes.
Corvos
6d ago
The original flights had to work, right? They were America's way of showing superiority to the Russians and to Communism. Now that it's just another tour of service, albeit an unusual one, I'm not surprised standards have been relaxed.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
For all the hype of the selection process for the first astronaut class --- The Right Stuff is a fantastic movie --- I don't think the current process is anywhere near as physically rigorous. They're probably still fit relative to the populace, but it's no longer quite the standard of perfection they started with. Deke Slayton of the Mercury 7 was grounded at the time for a minor heart issue, but got to fly later, and John Glenn was pretty old (77) when he flew again on the Space Shuttle in 1998.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Not at all. I'm not Blue Tribe. I just live with them and educate their kids. Academic justifications follow belief systems not the other way round.
Cool, thanks for sharing your experience, but I have my own, and I see no reason to accept yours over mine.
Having said that hydroacetylene also said the same thing above and he is a Red Tribe conservative (as far as I recollect), so someone in a very different milieu than I am is seeing the same things.
Saying "I'm deeply familiar with the Blue Tribe, and that's not what I've seen" makes sense as an argument, but I don't see how "this guy is Red Tribe, and he agrees with me" makes any sense in the context. I think he's also wrong, and responded to him. The bottom-up vs. top-down view of society is a disagreement that's (literally) orthogonal to left vs. right.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Well no, because an idea can't take over anything.
Do you really, honestly, can't possibly imagine what this could have been a shorthand for? I'm happy to explain if so, but if this is just being pedantic, and I have to phrase my post like I'm talking to a lawyer looking for any loophole to get out of a contract, that's not going to be fun for me.
Is just a fancied up academic way of justifying already existing belief sets, the ideas and beliefs go way back beyond the 1920s.
Sure, and it was distinctly unpopular in America until recently. You don't have to go back very far, just watch some TV shows from the 80's and 90's, read some blogs from the 00's, and it will become clear that the Blue consensus at the time went against Critical Theory.
You're working from a perspective where people have their minds changed by theories,
No, I'm not, though my theory differs from yours. I'm arguing from a perspective where people have their minds changed by status and authority.
So no Critical theory did not take over the Blue Tribe
It absolutely did. It was an idea so unpopular that it was deemed a strawman whenever a concerned Blue Triber tried to raise concerns over it. A lot of it was happening on this very forum.
Lizzardspawn
6d ago
Check how many of Hollywood's elite kids are trans (fad of the day) and answer yourself
Source got an econ-minor at a no name school. Econ major will know calculus. It's the business Majors that have to take econ classes beyond macro that struggle.
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