domain:ymeskhout.substack.com
quiet_NaN
14hr ago
Friedliche DeBoer
On substack, he calls himself Freddie deBoer, while WP calls him Fredrik deBoer.
"friedliche" would be a declination of the German adjective meaning peaceful. If this is a honest mistake, please fix. If this is meant to mock him, I do not think it will land for most people.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
14hr ago
I don't see any exposed flame near the flag. That's the only potential issue, if the queens don't stop grinding on each other.
Holy fucking shit
Right as I write, one of them mentions that the fluorescent lights are heating up the drinks to unpleasant levels. Time to call the fire department, or the police, due to impersonation of Royalty.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
14hr ago
or better yet, a skilled human editor
I'm not made out of money! The day I can expect to make more than pocket change from my Substack is not clear, and it only just crossed the hundred-subscriber threshold. But I would use an LLM to help me figure out what to trim and keep, so I was planning to do that myself.
"It reads like AI and I don't like it" is equivalent -- I'm trying to be more constructive than that, but you don't want to hear it.
I appreciate that, thank you, but I still genuinely disagree. We will have to chalk that down to a difference of opinion.
You have not -- as practice for your next draft, can you explain this in four sentences or less, such that your thesis is clearly distinguishable from those of Messrs. Scrooge and Swift?
"Some deaths appear imminent and inevitable, and involve a great deal of suffering before they bury you. In the event that we can't actually resolve the problem, it is laudable to make the end quick and painless. Most people die complicated and protracted deaths (as will be illustrated downstream), and hence, among many other recommendations, I say it is in your best interest to support euthanasia, and will aim to reassure you regarding some common concerns. I think this is a public good, but even if the government doesn't enter the business itself, it should, like in Switzerland, hurry up and get out of the way."
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
15hr ago
There are some fun similarities between Cicero’s Rhetorica Ad Herennium (90bc), which is a treatise on rhetoric and memorization, and the Passion narrative in the gospels. Cicero explains how to craft the most memorable mental scene, one that can be recalled with fidelity in the future:
since in normal cases some images are strong and sharp and suitable for awakening recollection, and others so weak and feeble as hardly to succeed in stimulating memory, we must therefore consider the cause of these differences, so that, by knowing the cause, we may know which images to avoid and which to seek.
If we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember a long time.
All normal stuff. Now the examples he provides next:
A sunrise, the sun's course, a sunset, are marvellous to no one because they occur daily. But solar eclipses are a source of wonder because they occur seldom, and indeed are more marvellous than lunar eclipses, because these are more frequent
We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.
These elements are all explicit in the Crucifixion:
-
the solar eclipse (the earliest manuscripts actually specify that it was a solar eclipse, rather than a darkening of the sky)
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the crown
-
the purple cloak
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the disfigurement (“many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind”)
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the blood (the beating, scourge, then crucifixion)
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the comic effect: the irony of the actual king being mocked as a fake king
-
all the things which Cicero mentions earlier, combined (and the usual subject of sermon): base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable
The crown and robe are also brought into the narrative in a very peculiar way in John:
Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man”
The word behold here is ἰδοὺ, can be is translated as see!, or look!, remember! and similar interjections. Essentially a call to pay attention.
gattsuru
15hr ago
How's the health and safety compliance look?
Mantergeistmann
15hr ago
There's also demographic concerns to keep in mind as well. Like discipline, a school absolutely does not want a situation where a legally protected demographic does worse than a cohort.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
15hr ago
As bars go, I had previously found this one by serendipity, it's next to a barber's, and close to my bus stop. I've grabbed a pint there once before, and was inclined to make it a regular feature because the drinks were cheap and the music decent. The last time I was here, I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman with severe OCD, and we bought each other a round. Everything else about it seemed bog standard.
Today, I flew into Edinburgh, and caught a very long and stupidly expensive bus back home (it cost as much as two-thirds of a EDI-to-London flight) and decided I might as well grab another drink. I walked in: business as usual, but the bartender was new and exceedingly tall for a woman. Or perhaps the back of the bar was elevated, I've seen that before.
Then two gents, one of them in a wife beater showing off a whole bunch of tattoos, went up to the counter next to me. His buddy draped himself over his shoulder, and asked, in a very lispy voice, why his darling wouldn't dance with him tonight.
A rainbow flag the size of a mainsail hung above me. I had somehow missed it on every prior visit, which suggests either a) I'm catastrophically unobservant, or b) the flag has grown, like a well-watered plant, since my last appearance.
A person I had classified at a distance as “cute girl absorbed in phone” spoke to the bartender, and the timbre recategorized them instantly.
I might very well be the only heterosexual person here, on a Saturday night. Oh well, I might not swing that way, but the drinks are still cheap and the music the kind of Valley Girl pop that I find mildly nostalgic these days. I've frequented worse. I genuinely don't mind the decor, and now I'm pretty confident they must make killer cocktails.
After writing the above, I took a proper look around. There are more Pride flags than bottles of booze. I might be going blind in my old age, or the two hours of sleep in as many days is catching up with me. My bed beckons, but so does the cheap booze.
erwgv3g34
15hr ago
hydroacetylene
15hr ago
It's also worth noting that the median post on /r/teachers seems to be perfectly ordinary discipline or dealing with admin problems with canned answers that often boil down to 'yeah that sucks'. It's just stuff like 'I had a fight break out in my class' and 'my students won't keep track of which pronouns I use which day of the week' that gets the most attention for reasons that seem obvious.
jkf
15hr ago
At the end of the day, it's a morbid and difficult topic, and I am not fully satisfied with it in its current state.
Ironically it could probably be greatly improved by asking the LLM (or better yet, a skilled human editor) to edit it for brevity -- I am confident that you could communicate everything you set out to while reducing the length by a good 60-80%.
I already intend to rewrite it, add a whole bunch of additional data points and a deeper examination of MAID systems.
That is unlikely to make it better -- if you are going to do that, the first step would be to cut the current piece to the bone or deeper. It is bloated.
I invite you to find another comment claiming that it lacked clarity; none of the people raising issues with it other than you have said so.
"It reads like AI and I don't like it" is equivalent -- I'm trying to be more constructive than that, but you don't want to hear it.
"Society" allows buses and trains. It occasionally also provides buses and trains.
Unlike 'MAID', busses and trains do not usually homicide their users (in spite of notable exceptions on the "trains" department) -- additional scrutiny seems warranted?
since I have made the case that access to euthanasia is a net public good.
You have not -- as practice for your next draft, can you explain this in four sentences or less, such that your thesis is clearly distinguishable from those of Messrs. Scrooge and Swift?
zeke5123a
15hr ago
Agreed. I would think stating eloquently that they are evil while at the same time dying with dignity will have more affect compared to a man who seemingly is weak.
wayfarer
15hr ago
ruin Alex Jones
very worthwhile goal
and if Alex Jones is alternative then I am taking modern mass media as preferable
even Hamas press releases are better
tried
wait, has it sadly not worked?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15hr ago
I found it - it's not so obvious now that I reread it, but after reading @Hoffmeister25's post about his suspicion, this post struck me as such classic hlynka in style and tone and proud sense of humour, plus the overt familiarity with the motte's inner workings, that it felt obvious.
hydroacetylene
15hr ago
The goal of the US public school system is not necessarily education. Employment, local sports, social engineering all come before and all pale before the true goal- spending money.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
15hr ago
What drives such a belief? Do you think that drugs care about the moral pulchritude of those taking them? We discovered semaglutide in the saliva of Gila Monsters, which aren't known to be particularly discerning moral actors.
The drugs don’t care about morality, and I don’t see it as immoral to want to fit into a wedding dress. But if it comes to light that there are serious side effects, then the FDA is going to tighten the regulations on who can be prescribed the drug because a 19 year old trying to lose 20 pounds to fit in a dress should not be taking drugs that have serious side effects that far outweigh any benefits she gets from losing those 20 lbs. if she ends up with a permanent injury to her digestive tract, or a heart condition or something along those lines, it’s tragic.
Such risks might be worth taking if the person in question is obese enough to have the choice of risking those problems or dying if they don’t lose 200 pounds. We do that all tge time with other problems. My grandmother was on blood pressure medication that was slowly making her blind. The alternative was she has a heart attack. Blindness is bad, obviously, but when compared to a heart attack, not intolerable.
If someone with high blood pressure takes antihypertensives, their blood pressure falls. If someone with a normal BP takes them, theirs falls too. I would obviously prescribe them to the first case, and not the other two (at least for the control of blood pressure), but the mechanism remains the same.
Yes, and having blood pressure go too low is dangerous in its own right. This is why I don’t think it’s going to be prescribed as often as people think. The use case depends on how bad the person’s obesity is, both in absolute weight and in the difficulty of losing tge weight. Depending on the costs it might be much lower than what people are expecting. And as such I think touting ozempic as a miracle cure for obesity is vastly overselling it.
My expectation is that ozempic will mostly be a last resort drug used much like gastric bypass surgery is today — reserved for serious cases of morbid obesity.
FistfullOfCrows
15hr ago
Nah, they are making the frogs gay, the elite ARE fully bought into the Malthusian catastrophe meme and would love to slash birthrates and start disposing of large swathes of the population if they could (what he refers as soft kill), and finally you can't convince me hilldawg isn't a literal demon smelling of Sulphur.
Throwaway05
15hr ago
I don't know a single person in clinical medicine who wants to eliminate opioids and while I'm sure there might be some crack pots that's an extraordinary claim that requires some evidence to be taken credibly.
Reactive under-prescribing in some outpatient settings is certainly a problem but that's not really your claim.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
15hr ago
Hlynka doesn't come remotely close to meeting that description. He basically forced the mod team, many of whom called him a friend (beyond me what makes them do that) to hold the gun to his head. He then began yelling "shoot me if you dare, motherfucker". I do not recall if there was time for a surprise Pikachu face when he got shot.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
15hr ago
he stopped being a mod
Point of clarification, he didn't merely resign, the other mods removed him. I think that's unprecedented in all of Motte history.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
16hr ago
I’m in full agreement that it should never happen that a kid who can’t read and do math on grade level should not be moved to the next grade. The problem lies in the vested interests that almost everyone involved in public education have to bury systemic educational failures. Schools lose funding and prestige if kids don’t at least appear to be learning. Teacher and administrator pay are tied to kids being able to go to tge next grade and kids passing standardized tests. As such the pressure to cheat the system at tge expense of the kids is high. Once you add in the irate parents who will storm the school if little Johnny gets held back and you can pretty much expect “social promotion” to happen with the tests fudged to hide the evidence.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
16hr ago
Got a link handy? I must have missed all the drama, this ban came as a total surprise to me. Even in hindsight, the main commonality I recognize is atrociously bad takes on AI.
WandererintheWilderness
16hr ago
If you really believe that begging might save you, there is an argument for it, but otherwise, no, I can only despise the "morality" you advocate.
You expressed skepticism earlier that it would inflict guilt-ridden nightmares upon the executioners - but supposing it provably did, would your stance change? Or what if your death is to be witnessed by the public? If you think you're being unjustly put to death, it stands to reason you dislike the regime doing this to you, and want to use what little agency you have left to raise the odds that it'll be toppled or reformed. This is to say, it stands to reason that you want to make yourself a martyr. All else being equal, making as much of a stink as possible when they drag you to the gallows increases the odds of your death having consequences for your killers, whether it makes them second-guess themselves or drives public opinion against them.
Notably, this needn't take the form of whining and blubbering; you could also try and make an impression on the basis of fighting spirit, struggling and cursing your murderers until your last breath, to try and inspire others to show the same rebellious courage - even if you have ~0 odds of actually freeing yourself or injuring your captors. Much manlier, but also very different from "facing death with dignity".
I guess it depends on what kind of role you have the look of. e.g. if you're a nebbish-looking student protestor, or a woman, you'll probably make a more memorable martyr if the cameras capture you as a weeping victim slaughtered by merciless monsters. If you're a big strong guy, going out as a fiery revolutionary might be inspirational and make you look the bigger man, while a sobbing breakdown, rightly or wrongly, might indeed look pathetic.
(To be clear, none of this is about Hlynka's behavior, I'm just curious about the meta-argument.)
Tree
16hr ago
I think you know what I mean – there’s a tension between liberal egalitarianism which you generally support, and your traditional view of manhood as special protectors and providers, paying for everyting before going to the gallows with a smile. You foist plenty of duties on men you would never foist on women. They’re not even allowed to make a fuss on their last moments on earth when they’re wrongfully executed. By contrast you indulge women their tears in every situation, and tend to view them as innocent victims, like your idol feminist JK rowling (I’m not talking about the "anti-trans" stuff, which is fine and compatible with liberalism).
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
16hr ago
You know, I genuinely didn't suspect this was a Hlynka alt. Well-played to him, if true. I suppose my anger at people who write bad takes/highly faulty explainers about AI extends to both his incarnations.
Hmm.. What else?
A pathological inability to accept that they're wrong, or acknowledge error? I suppose that's Bayesian evidence. I, @DasIndustriesLtd, @rae, and probably several others wrote detailed explanations of why he was factually incorrect on so many points regarding the function of LLMs, and heard only the chirping of crickets (I will grant that he made an 'attempt' to address some criticism, but at the cost of only revealing even more fundamental confusion in the process)
You weren't kidding about that subreddit. Just browsed a thread where they were complaining about having to hand the ten commandments in the classroom, and a commenter literally recommended hanging the 7 tenets of the Satanic 'faith'. You can't make this stuff up. https://old.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1miopbb/its_over/n76x3d5/
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