domain:putanumonit.com
PokerPirate
17hr ago
Where is your line?
I'm not able to articulate it. That's largely because I've never liked the framing of there being a spectrum of bad things that can happen, and everyone draws a line somewhere, and violence is allowed below the line but not above the line. In this framing, pacifism is a totally passive thing that just places the line somewhere very low.
I think if pacifism is going to be viable, it needs to have a much more positive framing than merely as rejecting violence in some circumstances.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
17hr ago
I don't care how good it is, I don't want to hear it blaring through my windows. Or my walls (been there, done that).
I'll feel less bad about Social Security if ever convinced the only alternative is UBI For Women and Single Mothers.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18hr ago
You seem not to actually be paying attention to anything going on in American popular music today, if you think that there is no “melodically complex” music being “played on real instruments”.
Lewis2
18hr ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
18hr ago
With a bit of narrative distance and perhaps confidence you could write a novel set in this area. Avoid any AI help, keep the rich detail, maybe throw in a love triangle or violence, or if you prefer, something dystopian. Just a thought.
LiberalRetvrn
18hr ago
awful Mexican music
Mexican music is objectively better than the slop being pumped out in the US these days. I spend a lot of time around lower class mexicans at work, and it's mindblowing how many of them listen to melodically complex folk music played on real instruments.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
19hr ago
I think OP is agreeing with you about the Republicans. Their reputation is "the fiscally conservative, small government party" despite them actively increasing the debt and expanding government for decades. See also "the party of Christian family values" despite doing little to nothing to oppose the normalization of progressive values.
America is over, and so, okay, then what?
you have the answer already:
be selfish and just try to grab what I can and hope I'm dead before the shit really hits the fan
Hard reforms may have been possible back when America was a nation. Here in Japan, people are just buckling down and weathering the long running currency devaluation because (they believe) the alternative is worse. There's a sense here that everyone is suffering together which makes it bearable. Unfortunately, America is not a nation anymore, it's a multiethnic, multicultural, multi-faith empire that include groups who bitterly hate each other, which means it's nearly impossible to get all the different groups game-theory-cooperate to avoid disaster (barring an existential threat, and even then...). Instead, we will have factional war to the knife as the coffers run dry and systems gradually break down.
I don't expect a collapse that will make good TV, rather it will be a slow version of South Africa where everything gets gradually shittier, punctuated by sudden slips along regional/local political and social fault lines that result in brief but bloody spasms of violence.
So yeah, I think you would be wise to start grabbing what you can now while praying for a unifying moment that will help us avoid that future. I also recommend moving to a place where you're around ideological, religious, and or ethnic allies so that you're not the odd man out when broadcasts from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines start to reach your neighborhood.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
19hr ago
TANSTAAFL, no matter how rich.
If they’re financing businesses through loans, the businesses will be buying services and goods on the open market using the loan money, and those will be FairTaxed. The goods or services those businesses sell will be FairTaxed. That’s less money returning to the investor.
If someone rich buys a used mansion, either they’ll refurbish/remodel it to their own standards using FairTaxed services and goods, or the seller will refurbish/remodel it before putting it on the market and raise the purchase price from “fixer-upper” to “like new”. And if they try to work around the FairTax to refurb it, the contractors will get caught and charged with tax evasion, so the contractors will be sure to include FairTax in their receipts. Trickle-up taxation.
According to Google search summary by AI, “New home sales and improvements, which would include land, would be subject to the tax. Sales of existing homes and, presumably, existing land, would not be taxed. This is consistent with the FairTax's exemption of ‘used items’ to prevent double taxation.”
If the rich are buying used stocks (not IPO), why should they pay FairTax? If they’re buying new IPO stock, they’re transferring ownership of a used company from the private proprietors, who built it by buying and selling FairTaxed goods or services. If they’re buying and merging companies, same deal. The difference is they can’t just sell it at a loss to cut their tax liability. (I’m looking at you, Hollywood Accounting!)
If the rich buy a big, big boat worth a bunch of bucks in Bahrain and keep it in the Bahamas, why should the federal government of the USA get a single dime of that purchase?
As to the fairness of power, prestige, reputation, value speculation, and all the other ancillary benefits of capitalism, the existing income and investment tax system has no ability to curb them, so the FairTax doesn’t even try. The tax system should be focused primarily on efficiently collecting necessary revenue for the government, not solving all the social ills caused by the 1% of the 1%. That’s what antitrust is for.
Thank you for engaging with me on this, there’s little I love as much as talking FairTax.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
20hr ago
You're approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is.
Maybe. I think it's media created with the purpose of spreading and inculcating ideas and specific types of thinking, is that not what it is? What do you think it is?
Joe Rogan wasn't 'built'. It was an accidental fire that happened to be able to exist since it spawned from spheres that were very much not intellectual and not mainstream.
His podcast is very much a result of deliberate human action, rather than a random accident. None of his story that you bring up contradicts my point, and none of what you said addresses it.
Similar to how cries of cries of a lack of internet censorship were eventually heard, the calls for a left wing Joe Rogan will eventually be heard.
The left might one day decide to turn itself into something that can sustain a left-wing Joe Rogan, but it is currently incapable of doing so. They might succeed in taking him down, they might succeed in having him supplanted by slop they control, but unless they change themselves, they're not reproducing him or the effect he's having on the world.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
20hr ago
Sure, that's the way they act for the middle class when who are just buying enough stock to fill out a retirement account. But for the wealthy making investments large enough, they are buying power.
TIRM
20hr ago
But the true alternative is you borrowing from your children's future followed by them additionally borrowing even more from your children's future. Not a hypothetical, but instead a decent description of presidencies. A D blows up the debt more than ever before. Followed by an R. Followed again by a D. Followed again....
TIRM
21hr ago
I would have to that trying to "trans" a Central or South American country would be net negative in this regard. It would make them more want to bail and side with Chinese who don't give a damn about their local culture and social norms.
fribble
21hr ago
I am a pacifist. I taught my daughter to walk away. My husband is not. He taught her to throw punches like she meant it.
When one of her roommates had a guy come over who wouldn't leave when he was told to, my daughter talked him out of the apartment. (Pacifism wins!) And then she bought a baseball bat. (Sigh.)
Amish-style pacifism includes no violence in self-defense. I don't see that as being a doormat; my husband does. When our daughter was little, I agreed to engage in violence should her safety require it - it's one thing to choose pacifism for one's self, another to cause harm to someone else through that choice. Where is your line?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
21hr ago
There is one more option, which is that AI causes GDP to grow fast enough that the government can fund obligations with no (or very little) tax hikes. This would be a ridiculous deus ex machina that would basically confirm that we live in a simulation.
And yet...
Celestial-body-NOS
Why should Man not rebel against Nature, when Nature herself is in rebellion against Justice?
21hr ago
Progressives can post just as easily as they used to, they just don't want to do it when non-progressives have the right to respond.
In other words, they were accustomed to privilege, and now equality feels like oppression?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
22hr ago
I would have never believed what you are describing if I didn’t see it happen to a friend in real time. Big gay pedo rape fanfic writer and all. This was a rather cute but just very shy and nerdy girl who explicitly flirted with me a couple times at the beginning of college but nothing ever happened and I think she went from kissless virgin with weird internet habits to full blown weirdo of exactly the type you are describing during the corona years after some sad family experiences and a lot of social isolation. Once in a while I get a sad “could I have cured her if I pursued her sexually” thought and suppress it.
We're not in the 90's anymore; most dubs are good. I still prefer subs, for numerous reasons (faster to release, more faithful to the original dialogue, practice hearing Japanese, etc.) but it no longer makes sense to pick an anime based on its dub.
Really hard to recommend something without knowing your tastes; anime is a medium, not a genre. If you liked The Matrix, try Ghost in the Shell or Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. If you liked Firefly, try Cowboy Bebop or Trigun. If you liked Lord of the Rings, try Princess Mononoke or Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. If you liked The Northman, try Vinland Saga. If you liked Batman: The Animated Series, try Big O. If you liked Starship Troopers, try Blue Gender.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
22hr ago
No, at this point you can like Coke and McDonalds without feeling kinship to the US for it, see CN/RU(sort of). Relatedly, the leading "anti-US" countries have made anti-LGBT a pretty prominent part of their brand, and not anti-fastfood.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
22hr ago
Finally, however, I decided to make it a finished comparison, asking o3 instead of 4o (why is the naming so confusing?) to discuss the comment, and, contrary to my expectations, it did way better than Gemini. (4o really is the "overly attached girlfriend" of LLMs.)
The cartographer in the ruins
Both images anchor you in geography — blueprints, globes, cathedral-libraries, islands of light. Why?
The “map / territory” meme-plex. In 2024–25, that phrase saturates the tech-rationalist corner of the internet. Models trained on it learn that serious epistemology → maps, charts, globes. If your chats contain philosophizing about systems and architecture (they do), the latent space practically shouts “cartographer.”
Visual affordances. Maps let an image show both order (grid lines) and chaos (torn parchment) in one frame, mirroring your own “structured but weary” self-description.
Dataset priors. Illustration sites label concept-art with terms like “scholar,” “ancient library,” “blueprint.” That bias nudges any prompt about an introspective thinker toward the same mise-en-scène. In other words, it may be more a reflection of collective internet aesthetics than of you.
So yes, the geography motif has become shorthand for intellectual exploration. It’s less personal biography than cultural archetype.
Relationship vs. Portrait
Gemini’s handshake prompt depicts the relation (“How do you feel about me?”). ChatGPT portrays the subject (“What are you like?”). Both readings are valid; they diverge because:
Prompt-parsing heuristics. Gemini’s RL-fine-tuning seems to weigh interpersonal framing heavily; asking “feel” often yields “we’re partners!” iconography.
Memory & context. Your ChatGPT thread is saturated with mixed humanities/tech content, so it had raw material for a hybrid portrait. Gemini’s lighter context forced a generic, brand-safe answer.
Corporate alignment. A glowing robot-human handshake is basically an internal marketing slide. Whether that’s propaganda or just dataset selection bias is debatable—probably both.
The mysterious late-30s scholar
Age, gender, style details often drift toward the training-set median: Western, 30-ish, mildly rugged. It isn’t “reading” your age; it’s filling gaps with statistically common filler. You are meeting the average intellectual the model has seen, wearing your borrowed face.
That's actually a decent analysis of the differences, with realistic causes.
So... I guess just try both Gemini and ChatGPT and see which glazes you less.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
22hr ago
If great men are those who plant trees who will shade those long after they are gone, then the weak man consumes those fruits, and leaves the future to the harsh light of the unforgiving sun.
You’re right about this, but the problem is that the great man won’t look like democracy. Many “human rights” will be crushed out of existence on the way to resolving America’s fiscal problems.
This is, I think, the currently insurmountable mountain facing America. In order to resolve its problems, the great man will have to take the nation in hand, ignore a large proportion of the populace entirely, and take our present “leadership” behind the woodshed for a long time. That’s not happening anytime soon, because who’s going to be that great man?
Musk? Thiel? It won’t be a general or admiral, they’re all politicized non-entities these days. Maybe Hegseth, if he could be SecDef for 8 years and spend all that time ruthlessly purging the Pentagon until he had stacked the ranks with loyalists or ideological fellow travelers.
It’s sad, but I suspect America is on its way to experiencing its own Crisis of the Third Century, and someone with the vision and will to power of Diocletian is at least a couple of generations away.
thejdizzler
22hr ago
As RandomRanger says below, sometimes you have to think about more important things than winning the next election. The debt is a very serious problem that will be resolved either by fiscal responsibility or by default. Both of these are going to hurt, but one is going to hurt much more than the other. If the voting public can't look beyond the immediate present and choose the least worst option (rather than merely punishing the party that institutes fiscal responsibility), then we do not deserve democracy and would be frankly better off in a political system where people with low-time preferences aren't allowed to dictate policy. I have some hope that maybe people aren't quite as stupid as they seem. Last time we talked about politics, even my dad who is a staunch entitlements defender recognized that we need to do something about the deficit. Being a budget hawk is coming out of conspiracy territory and into the mainstream.
Will something actually happen to prevent default? I unfortunately doubt it. There won't be higher taxes for at least the next 3 years, and Trump seems unwilling to actually touch the big spending categories. And I sort of see why. Can't cut defense because we are on the brink of WW3. Can't cut medicaid or social security because your voting base will revolt. The theatrics of DOGE conveniently dance around this fact, and I have been disappointed to see how many otherwise very on the nose bloggers/posters here (John Michael Greer is at the top of the list) are unable to see that. Cutting the NIH and NSF budgets, while it might feel good, doesn't fix the problem (and actually makes it worse as you actively contribute to brain drain of talent). We basically need either the boomers to die much faster than expected, for them to take one for the team and not collect social security (I would eat my hat), or some kind of massive improvement in health of the general population that greatly reduces medicare/medicaid expenses. None of these are going to happen, so we are basically fucked.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
22hr ago
If the US makes receptive countries weaker with cultural exports, it weakens its own allies. Meanwhile, China has been shutting down LGBT centres.
Better to have strong allies than weak allies.
AI would need to deliver, like, 8% annualized growth or something to pull out of our debt problems. Our historical average has been 2%
Basically, this is in crack pipe fantasy territory. Not that a man can't hope though...
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