Friday
yunyun333
6mo ago
Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected
Last Friday evening, Steven Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, called from Qatar to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides that he would be coming to Israel the following afternoon. The aides politely explained that was in the middle of the Sabbath but that the prime minister would gladly meet him Saturday night.
Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus in an unusual departure from official practice, the prime minister showed up at his office for an official meeting with Witkoff, who then returned to Qatar to seal the deal.
In fact, Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year. Hamas has not budged from its position that the hostages' freedom must be conditioned on the release of Palestinian prisoners (the easy part) and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (the hard one). Netanyahu rejected this condition and thus was born the partial deal proposed by Egypt.
It's hard to know how Netanyahu feels about this aggressive behavior. While it provides an excuse he can give to his base, he may resent being dragged into an unwanted deal that will end the war and possibly lead to political upheaval at home. His propaganda machine is pushing the no-choice narrative that it's Trump. On Monday, laments began to be heard on Channel 14 that Trump isn't what we thought. "I'm surprised all the senior officials in the U.S. administration are saying the same thing," Yotam Zimri said on the Patriots program. "If this doesn't happen by the time Trump comes in, Hamas will understand what hell is. I don't understand the Israeli interest in at least not waiting for Trump." Yinon Magal answered," It's because Trump is pressing to do it! That's what's happening."
Trump declared repeatedly that if the remaining Israeli hostages weren't out by his inauguration there would be 'hell to pay'. Most people assumed this meant that MIGA Don would fully back more aggressive Israeli military action, but instead he's willing to pressure Israel into a deal they don't want. Israeli finance minister Smotrich called it a 'catastrophe' and if he quits the government it would collapse Netanyahu's coalition.
Details of the proposed plan can be found here:
Both sides agreed that Hamas would release three hostages on the first day of the agreement, after which Israel would begin withdrawing the troops from populated areas. Seven days later, Hamas would release four additional hostages, and Israel would allow displaced people in the southern to return to the north, but only on foot via the coastal road. Cars, animal-drawn carts, and trucks would be permitted to cross through a passage adjacent to Salah al-Din Road, monitored by an X-ray machine operated by a Qatari-Egyptian technical security team.
The agreement includes provisions for Israeli forces to remain in the Philadelphi corridor and maintain an 800-meter buffer zone along the eastern and northern borders during the first phase, which will last 42 days. Israel has also agreed to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including approximately 190 who have been serving sentences of 15 years or more. In exchange, Hamas will release 34 hostages. Negotiations for the second and third phases of the agreement would begin on the 16th day of the ceasefire.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7mo ago
Dean
Flairless
7mo ago
Drop your thoughts in a Friday Fun thread when you finish, and drop an @ when you're finished. I'd be interested.
Honestly, one of the fun things of being anywhere adjacent to the franchise as a hobby is watching new people get involved.
Two anecdotes about language barriers:
Baseball's Carlos Beltran, the Mets slugger and Astros cheater, complained when he was part of the MLBPA union reps that Japanese players like Ichiro Suzuki got translators paid for by the team, who staid with Ichiro at all times and translated all questions in interviews. This despite the fact that Ichiro, by the end of his career, he spoke decent English, although many players weren't aware of it. Meanwhile Latin players like Beltran, many of whom had educations that effectively ended in the eighth grade when they were signed to a minor league contract, were expected to just learn English, and forced to give interviews in English on the field after games without any help in a language they barely spoke. As a result, Japanese players typically came across sounding the way Ichiro did: "He crafts his public portrayal similar to the image he projects on the field: a technician, a warrior, a Ph.D. in stoicism;" because he was able to carefully consider his answers as they passed through a translator, which were then relayed back to the interviewer in perfect English. While Latin players often came across stupid, dimwitted, smiling and athletic but not particularly bright. Beltran hated that he had all these thoughts about baseball, and couldn't express them to anyone, and when he was a prominent star he pressured the league to start providing Spanish language staff on each team to help Spanish speaking players get more comfortable giving interviews.
When Elie Wiesel's Night came out, it was written in both French and Hebrew. In theory, they're direct translations, made by the author himself. But, the devil, as ever, is in the details. For example, when the camp is liberated, the English (which was translated from the French) contains an incongruous line about the young boys going to the village to "sleep with girls." Meanwhile, in the Hebrew, the boys go to the village to "rape German shiksas." Wiesel preferred one meaning for his Jewish readers, and another for the Gentiles. Who knows which, if either, is the truth, it's hard to picture recently liberated concentration camp victims getting up to much either way. But it sure changed my opinion on Wiesel's veracity.
Either could be the case here. Going through a translator gives Zelensky an extra couple seconds to think, and collect his answer before giving it. It helps him sound the way he wants to sound. Further, if they were using Zelensky's translator, he would use Zelensky's preferred language choices. If they did the interview in Russian, then presumably the English translation would be produced by Friedman himself, who would choose how to present Zelensky's words. Or, it might be that Zelensky prefers to present different information in English than to Russian speaking audiences. Not that it won't be translated into Russian/Ukrainian, but fewer Ukies will consume it, and if they get offended at what he says, it can be put down to translation.
I listened to a good amount of the interview while plowing snow today, before I got too tired of it. I like Lex, but he beclowned himself in this one. If you want to tell the guy he lost the war, fine, but I couldn't stand his stupid "But all I want is PEACE" bit, or his ridiculous "I just have a FEELING that Putin wants to talk." Why do Americans all seem to have this weird thought that they know what Putin wants to do? The translation also seemed terrible, the whole thing was disjointed. Zelensky was...fine I guess? Pretty boring.
I still have yet to have heard a peace plan better than my plan:
RETVRN TO TRADITION: Why NATO should seek to install Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on the throne of Ukraine
War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase 'with the addition of other means' because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace -- Do I really have to attribute this one?
The government of Ukraine cannot end the war with Russia in a position where Russia could renew the war in the future. As the permanent neutering of Russia is impossible or inadvisable, most commentators want to provide Ukraine with some kind of security guarantee from the USA/NATO/PRC that will prevent future Russian aggression, but negotiated in some unspecified way that it isn't just adding Ukraine to NATO, which it is basically assumed Russia wouldn't accept unless, as above, Russia was permanently neutered, which, as above, is impossible or inadvisable. Another problem being that Ukraine tried that shit once already, with all nuclear powers guaranteeing the integrity of Ukraine's borders, and we've seen how much that was worth when the bullets started flying. Given that Ukraine had non-alliance security guarantees in 2014 and in 2021, it does not seem like they would successfully repel Russian aggression. So how do we tie Ukraine to the NATO powers in a way that is genuinely credible and will be viewed by Ukrainians as a binding guarantee, but isn't article 5?
Let's look at how the Concert of Europe in the 19th century handled this: Constitutional or absolute monarchy was held to be the best form of government, and when a new country was formed, they would simply install a monarch from another royal family. The monarch's had no necessary special relation to their new domain, the first king of Belgium was originally considered for the job of king of Greece, which went to another German monarch instead. King Charles and his sons are descended from the Greek royal family [through a switch in royal houses en route] on his father's side, so it's family tradition to say: Prince Harry should form a mercenary corps, join the UKR forces and take Crimea, then Harry and Meagan should be installed as Grand Prince and Grand Princess of Kiev while naming Archie as Ilkhan of Crimea and heir while engaging him to the daughter of Ukrainian General or politician.
Harry does have some military experience in combat, and he's still young enough at 38 and popular enough, that he could credibly recruit a military force of thousands of veterans from the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia to join him in this venture. I think there's still enough weird tradition to get guys from the Commonwealth countries to want to ride out with a rogue devil-may-care prince into combat. He could get the money to fund their equipment and training from his friends Oprah and Tyler Perry and by selling the TikTok rights, or the CIA could fund it covertly, whichever, just get all the money for the full shebang of western toys. Take his fully equipped brigade of western veterans, go to Ukraine, and put up a good show. I don't think Harry is actually that bright, but he could find a bored retired general to handle the actual conquering for him.
At the end of the war, like our ancestors before us, the international community gets together to name Harry and Megan Grand Prince and Princess of Kiev. Now if Russia invades again ten years from now, do you really think that the UK is going to sit idly by and watch their King's son, their heir's brother, Diana's son, get thrown out? Maybe the UK public doesn't much like Harry and Meggan, but watching a close relative get deposed is just getting cucked as a kingdom, no way [Keir, or whoever] lets that happen. And is the US public going to let a celebrity BIPoC diverse prince and his valid mentally suffering actress mum get tossed in the tower? No way. We often mock the 19th century Royalists obsession with installing monarchs, but this was the purpose. It tied the new country to the international community by blood. In the same way, by creating a British ginger king and a halfrican American queen, Ukraine can guarantee that the two most important countries in NATO will have their back. And we'll be free of their podcasting project.
You're welcome, Lex. Propose it at the start of your next talk with Zelensky. It'll make for a better episode.
gattsuru
7mo ago
For the most part, modern Linux problems with power management, regardless of distro, tend to revolve around putting the computer into the right sleep states, or powering down newer CPUs to just their e-Cores, rather than high idle utilization. Fancy systems like hypr will have more idle cpu utilization than minimalist ones like DSLinux, but on a mainstream processor from the last ten years it's going to be a wash.
As in the post KingOfTheBailey linked, I'll usually point to Linux Mint to most newer users. It's not hyperoptimized at any one thing, but it'll give you the most reliable on-boarding experience. Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and just plain Debian are all other good options for most cases, and for people attached to the Windows/Mac UI paradigms, Elementary or Zorin will work.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7mo ago
Sam Altman Is Super Excited for a Great 2025
Yesterday, Sam Altman posted this short personal blog post. The material takeaway is summarized in this paragraph;
We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.
"AGI is right around the corner. Seriously, we mean it this time." Okay, I'll believe it when I see it and if that means I'm not worried enough about "alignment" and "safety" that's fine. Our robot overlord will smile upon me or he wont.
Sam's explicit assertion here will be debated on all the normal forms and tweet ecosystems. Thought pieces will be written by breathless techno-bros, techno-phobes, and all others. LessWrong is going to get out the Navel Gazer 6000.
None of that is particular alarming to me.
What is; the first 2/3rds of Sam's blog post.
This is because it is an amazing amalgam of personal-corpo speak that is straight out of a self-congratulatory Linkedin post. Here are some highlights (lowlights?);
Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstanding abound.
The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm.
This three were particularly triggering for me:
Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago.
I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges. Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.
My biggest takeaway is how much I have to be thankful for and how many people I owe gratitude towards: to everyone who works at OpenAI and has chosen to spend their time and effort going after this dream, to friends who helped us get through the crisis moments, to our partners and customers who supported us and entrusted us to enable their success, and to the people in my life who showed me how much they cared.
I think one of the points of near consensus on The Motte is a general hyper-suspicion to this kind of disingenuous koombayah style of writing. It's "Everyone love everyone", "we're all in this together" , "we made mistakes but that's okay because we care about one another."
This is exactly the kind of corpo-speak that both preceeds and follows a massive round of brutal layoffs based on the cold equations of a balance sheet. Or some sort of change in service to customers that is objectively absolutely worse. I am deeply surprised that it seems Sam has truly adopted this at his most personal level. This was not a sanitized press release from OpenAI, but something he posted on what appears to be his personal blog. Sure, many personal blogs become just as milquetoast as corporate press releases if/when a person gets famous enough, but, in the tech world, a personal blog or twitter account is usually the last bastion for, you know, actual real human style communication.
I had another post a few months ago about OpenAI. One of the things that came out of the comments was a sort of "verified rumor" that Sam Altman is a pure techno-accelerationist but without any sort of moral, theological, or virtuous framework. He simply wants to speedrun to the singularity because humans are kind of "whatever" in his eyes. This blog post, to me, provides some more evidence in favor of that. He's using the universal language of "nice to everybody" which is recognized - correctly - as the sound the big machine makes right before it thrashes you. This follows a pattern. OpenAI was a non-profit until it wasn't. Mr. Altman went to congress in 2023 to beg for totally not-regulatory capture for his own company but for, like, you know the good of everyone.
The technical merits and viability of AGI aside, the culture war angle here is that while many other groups are having meaningful open discussion about the future of economic, political, and social life with AIs/AGIs, Altman (and a few others like him) are using the cloaked, closed, and misleading language that has become the preferred dialect of the PMC. As I said, it is especially abundant right before they screw you over.
KingOfTheBailey
7mo ago
Rov_Scam
7mo ago
I think it's because everyone simply agrees that Mahomes is the best QB in the league and his success is therefore deserved. It's hard to remember this, but the Patriots weren't supposed to have a dynasty. Even after winning three Super Bowls, Brady wasn't considered the best QB in the league. That honor went to Peyton Manning. It was supposed to be the Colts who had all that success, they just choked in the playoffs every year.
But it goes deeper than that. Even when they were good, the Pats were mostly an afterthought in the Boston sports landscape. The 1985 and 1996 teams made the Super Bowl, but even their own fans viewed them as frauds and weren't surprised when they got blown out. My uncle has always lived in Pittsburgh but has at various times had jobs that were technically in other cities and required him to travel a lot; in 2001, his job was based out of Boston. Throughout that entire season, he never got any heat from his coworkers. Even on the Friday before the Steelers played the Patriots in the AFC Championship game, there was no heckling, no one wearing Patriots gear, no one even said "boo". He returned to Boston the following week and found his coworkers had decorated his office with Patriots gear and spent the day jawing at him for the Steelers losing.
Now, my uncle has a tendency to think that everyone from every city he's ever had the displeasure of working out of is either a weirdo or a moron, but he holds the people of Boston in special disregard. They can't even do fairweather fandom right. If you're going to be cocky about your team winning, at least root for them all the way during a good season; don't wait until after they've already one and start acting like you were a lifelong fan. The Pats were always the No. 4 team in Boston and while the others had legends like Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Ted Williams, and Carl Yaztremski, they had, uh, Tony Eason? To see already obnoxious fans acting like their first Super Bowl victory was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream when they couldn't name five players on the team a few weeks before was revolting for most sports fans. And it's not like Boston is Phoenix where nobody cares about sports; they had no problem rooting for the Red Sox through decades of futility, but they can't muster any enthusiasm for the Patriots until after they actually win. Most people might not have known this history, but it was pretty easy to pick up the vibes at the time.
JulianRota
7mo ago
Still reading Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
Curious thing - I often try to guess what's going to happen next in books or movies based on how far through them I am. It's usually pretty effective, even for non-fiction books. But here I am 45% through the book based on my Kindle, and I don't really know where this book is going for the next half of it. They've already covered the Good Friday agreement, where most such books end, and have been going on a while about post-GFA issues, agreements and legal battles regarding how to handle people who were "disappeared" and people who may or may not have been involved in such acts. Apparently, despite the amnesty provisions, you can still be prosecuted for at least some crimes committed during the Troubles years, including for being confirmed to be a member of illegal organizations like the IRA.
It's also rather curious that apparently they still to this day can't figure out for sure what the deal was with poor Jean McConville. It's confirmed that the IRA murdered her and "disappeared" her, but they still to this day claim she was an informant working for the Brits, with radio equipment found in her apartment, who was warned once to stop collaborating before being murdered. Meanwhile, the authorities still claim they don't know anything about here being any kind of informant. But nobody can confirm for sure which one is true.
ResoluteRaven
7mo ago
Let's say that if we import 200 million Indians, our economy would be the best in the world forever. If we do this, do Americans “win”? Well, not biologically. We would have won a socially constructed number-based game that has zero impact on our biological success.
This would only be true if Indian immigrants and their descendants never married into the existing American population and remained a culturally and genetically distinct population indefinitely, which is clearly not the case. The children of elite Indian immigrants marry their White, Jewish, and East Asian peers all the time and have children who are about as Indian as Japanese curry powder. There are other countries where this is not so e.g. the UK where British-born Indian Muslims and Pakistanis seem to often get arranged marriages with peasant girls from back home, leaving their children in a perpetually unassimilated state, but even the few arranged marriages I know of in the US occur between two second generation immigrants who themselves are detached from the social networks that would allow them to continue the practice.
Is a person who has mixed-race children less biologically successful than one who has an equal number of children of the same race? From the perspective of a single gene perhaps, but from that point of view the optimal outcome would be to field an army of clones rather than engaging in sexual reproduction at all. I'm reminded of Roman naming conventions here, to wit: "The ideal Roman family was, in effect, one Appius Claudius after the next, each one quite a lot like his father, on and on forever." With all due respect to the Romans, who I, like any man, remember fondly at least once per day, the mere thought of such stultifying monotony makes me want to fedpost.
hydroacetylene
7mo ago
The barn with figurines of Joseph and Maria and the magi is obviously based on the bible, while the date (Winter solstice) and the Christmas tree (as a symbol of something visibly being alive in the depth of winter) seem pagan-ish to me.
The date of Christmas is actually based on philosophical beliefs about great men dying on the same day they were conceived, plus math(Good Friday actually has a known date if you take the bible completely literally- March 25 33 AD). And Christmas trees probably have a real origin of 'it's one of the few things that looks nice that time of year, and Christmas is a major religious Holiday so we want decorations to look nice'.
Likewise Easter: remembering the crucification and supposed resurrection of Jesus is one thing, but the rabbits and eggs seem pagan to me -- after all, Jesus died for mankind's sins, not to restore fertility to the natural world.
Rabbits might be an unrelated folk tradition(but it also might just be seasonal associations- right around Easter is when you start seeing rabbits in Europe), but eggs come from fasting rules in the medieval church. Easter was a huge feast in the throw-a-giant-party sense in the days when Lenten penance was quite a bit more rigorous than it is today, and foods which were forbidden during lent but otherwise part of the diet were a big part of that. Eggs are one example- I believe that in Eastern Orthodox cultures which forbid dairy during lent, butter or cheese plays a role in Easter celebrations. Of course eggs are also easy to decorate and play fun games with.
yofuckreddit
7mo ago
Amazing. Perfect Friday Fodder.
Methinks bro doth protest too much.
Rov_Scam
7mo ago
I think it's the portal more than NIL, at least for teams that don't have a ton of money available. You figure every 17 year-old kid who's being heavily recruited thinks he can just walk into Ohio State or LSU or Clemson and prove that he's worthy of being in the starting lineup and on the fast track to the NFL, and the recruiters do little to disabuse them of this notion ("Well, it's competitive but if you work hard..."). Instead, they find themselves buried on the depth chart behind two other guys, and when they think they'll get a chance at a promotion some other guy comes in to take their place. They only get playing time during blowouts, and the coaches aren't paying them much attention. Then they put their name in the portal and Iowa State or Georgia Tech or whoever comes calling and now they're suddenly in demand at a school that's not as big but big enough to get them national exposure if they're good. Or they're tearing it up at Kent State and have a chance of moving up in the world by transferring to Purdue. Schools that can't recruit as well can still compete by getting the big schools' castoffs and the small schools' surprises.
As NIL and soon, direct payments, become involved, I think this calculus changes. Pitt already saw Jordan Addison leave because USC simply offered him more money than any Pitt booster could match, especially in the early days of NIL payments. I was listening to a discussion on the radio yesterday about how colleges shouldn't even waste money on recruiting when you can just buy a team or get it through the transfer portal. The argument was that you can talk about the history and facilities and campus environment all you want, but they're always going to go to the school that can write the largest check. And if you can't afford to write that check, then sit back and wait for the inevitable transfer.
One thing I would add to my above comment is that while the article points out that the ruling isn't final, in reality I wouldn't expect the court to reverse it. One of the requirements for obtaining a preliminary injunction is demonstrating a high probability of success on the merits, and while the arguments probably weren't briefed as fully as the will be later, an appellate court granting an injunction is a strong indication on which way they're moving. This is in line with the general trend that has seen courts striking down any restrictions relating to NIL payment. One article I read suggested that the NCAA needed to settle all of the lawsuits before they were made completely powerless, but this only delays the inevitable. In a sport where there's no collective bargaining and athletes cycle through every few years, any settlement is only going to apply to a limited number of people.
There are some proposals out there by academic types who claim that the problem would be solved if only courts would rule that student athletes were employees, or if the NLRB would institute rules allowing them to collectively bargain. This is a pipe dream. First, the NLRB can make all the rules it wants, but there's currently no incentive for the student athletes to collectively bargain. Even if we limit the unions to single sports, we're talking about thousands of athletes, none of whom are staying more than a few years, so organization is a problem straight away. Classification as employees doesn't solve this problem but creates more, in that now they have to be paid minimum wage (which wouldn't be that expensive under the current system) and abide by all the other HR bullshit that workplaces have to abide by. Getting back to the incentive problem, though, even if you could bargain, why would you? Collective bargaining units are usually formed when employees have grievances with their employers that can only be addressed by power in numbers. What grievances do student athletes have? There were student athletes in the Northwestern case who wanted to form a union, but that was before the NIL ruling. We're in a situation now where athletes can sell their services to the highest bidder on an annual basis, and courts are hesitant to uphold any restrictions. When commentators say that the mess can be solved by collective bargaining, what they really mean is that it would be easier for the schools to impose restrictions if there were a union to negotiate with. But who is going to form a union for the purpose of allowing the boss to implement more restrictions?
The only way I can see this ever being addressed is if the NCAA were to eliminate the student athlete protections from its bylaws. The courts seem intent on eliminating anything else that isn't related to scheduling or rules or officials, so what do they have to lose? The first thing I would drop is the limits on practice time for football and basketball. They're currently limited to 20 hours per week in season and 8 in the offseason, but if they're getting paid like employees they can work like employees. Schools that want to win will start implementing more intense practice schedules, and the athletes won't be able to do anything about it. If they flunk all their classes, well, that's a fringe benefit; if you're here to get an education, you can pay tuition. Stop coddling them with tutors and lounges and multi-million dollar locker rooms (seriously, the difference between Pitt's locker room and the Steelers locker room in the same building is astounding).
Teams that were serious about winning would accordingly practice more, and with the money involved, some would want their teams at the practice facility the 10–12 hours per day that NFL teams expect. There will obviously be some kids who are dead serious about their careers and will want to spend as much time on the game as possible. But few 18-year-olds with no shot at the NFL want that kind of commitment, especially if they're still ostensibly there to get an education. Taking online classes in a cubicle adjacent to the locker room in between workouts probably wasn't what they had in mind. Not having a social life during the season because you have to get up at 6 am for practice every day except Sunday and Friday probably wasn't what they had in mind. The schedule of the average NFL player doesn't have much appeal to someone who isn't playing football for a living. But any program that adopts such practices will probably have an advantage, and in a market where more wins equals more money, few schools will be content to be left behind.
One possible counterargument to this theory is that some schools will adopt less demanding schedules and use that as a selling point to recruits. But I don't see it happening that way. Such a school would attract lazy players, and, combined with the built-in lesser amount of practice, would make it hard for these school to be competitive with the tougher ones. With so many schools looking for a piece of the pie, and so many roster spots to fill on college teams, it's now a race to the bottom to see who can work the kids to the point of diminishing returns. At this point, the only way out for the athletes is to make concessions about payments and transfer rules, and you need a bargaining unit for that. I doubt this would actually happen, but it's the only way I see collective bargaining entering college football.
jeroboam
7mo ago
Some signs that maybe this Trump administration won't just be more of the same...
So apparently the US government will "shut down" on Friday if Congress doesn't pass a continuing resolution. (I put "shut down" in quotes because of course they will still continue the all-important business of sending out transfer payments and paying bureaucrats. Mostly they'll just close the National Parks.).
To keep the government running, the House Speaker (Mike Johnson, Republican) put forward a 1500 page continuing resolution that had all kinds of ridiculous shit in it, including funding pro-regime propaganda, changing the word "offender" to "justice-involved person", and of course a bunch of pork barrel projects for both parties.
A 1500 page bill right before Christmas is all very normal of course. No one expects the Congresspeople to read it. They just rubber stamp and then go home to their constituents bragging about their $100 million in funding for music tourism or whatever.
Only, this time, something happened. Spurred on by Elon and Vivek, constituents started calling their representatives and complaining. The bill looks to be in trouble. And now, reportedly, it is being replaced by a bill that's "only" 116 pages. At this point, our resident nitpickers will come in and mention that most of the important stuff in the bill is still there. The money for molasses research is just a small drop in the bucket compared to the money for hurricane relief. And they're right. But still, this is important progress. A government for the people and by the people needs to legible to the people.
Bills should be only as long as they need to be and no longer. This bill should have been a single page, continuing existing funding levels. 116 pages is still 115 pages too long, but it's progress.
It's a good sign that the swamp is less powerful than before.
p.s. Grok AI is very useful for getting information on current events.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
7mo ago
Math and Programming
I will be upping my math academy numbers from 2 hours to 3 daily and also aim for 1-3 hours for both boot.dev and HTML and CSS stuff. I have been having the same issues I have always had but no matter how badly I may fuck up, I would at least do math. I feel silly for not having done math more seriously in the past, maybe its the adhd meds (concerta), humility to take the long route or math academy, likely all three but I do like it. I am on their maths foundations course which is basic high school and uni level math (first year). I am on Math Foundations 2 of their 3 courses and will finish it by early Jan if I do bump my pace up to three hours. After that Math Foundations 2 should be done by February and by the end of March I will be through with Math for Machine Learning and can then do things like probability and stats, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, methods of proof and have a base of math for the rest of my life. I may start with hardcore ML once I know enough math, will see and will post so that you folks can suggest stuff.
It is all very convenient too, I don't need a book, just my laptop, the 50 dollar a month subscription and some rough sheets. My immediate circle has close to zero ML engineers and I am unemployed at 24 so I do want to get a job soon hence the webdev stuff (frontend plus boot.dev), I am somewhat confident that having a good understanding of math would help me since this was my undoing in uni. I did fuck up schedule-wise last week so my main priorities are still waking up early and getting to work as soon as I can.
There is some satisfaction in the math stuff, even boot.dev though I have not done much, I can see myself progressing in a very transparent real way, I never did before so yeah. 42 hours a week, sounds like a real job.
Miscellaneous
On the meditation and physical side, I did finally hit a day of multiple short sits (5 minutes) and a long one (24 minutes). My first time doing 24 minutes in a session. I have been rehabbing my shoulder somewhat more regularly, my lifts are still very weak in the gym but I have skipped just one day in three months. Lets see what working close to 7 hard hours for 6 days is like.
I picked up the great divorce by CS Lewis and want to post book reviews regularly, would it fine if I just posted them on the Friday thread or would it be better to make a substack and crosspost here, I do not want to fuck up the quality of the forum. Have a dentist appointment scheduled today, might get my remaining two wisdom teeth removed too
Some words on being grateful
My aunt is visiting our hometown and staying at our house with her former schoolmate, both came for a high school reunion event, and her friend told my mother about her daughter who had an onset of Dyslexia at age 15 and how that wrecked her life, cascading into very real psychological issues since then. She told her family that she is visiting my city because she had to give a lecture as saying that she was going there for a reunion to meet friends would hurt her daughter as she has no friends. Long-time viewers here would note that my brother is not far off from her daughter but he seems beyond normal when compared to people with actual issues. Having your child go through such pain would wreck me if I were a parent. We take life for granted, having kids who are healthy, normal and well-adjusted sounds trivial until you encounter these issues in life. I have always had a soft spot for people with actual mental illnesses, they are outcasted from society and their parents get zero support from society. In case you are a parent and your kids came out fine, please do thank your god.
I visit my psychiatrist once a month, seeing people with severe autism and other ailments causes emotional turmoil. My parents have some sense of pride in me having gone from a complete trainwreck outcaste of an academic failure at age 17 to having done really well to the point where I was featured in local papers by 19. In ways they sincerely believe that I can do enough to make their sacrifices worth it, give them a better life, and have a far better youth than they did. It would be so crushing to not have that and instead be worried sick about what would happen to your kid if you passed away and lost your job.
There is a lot to be grateful for in life, not in some fake religious or self-help gratitude journaling sense. One of the last great saints in Hinduism who I disagree with on almost everything began his work by telling the reader how rare being a human is, of all life forms, you get to be the only one with a consciousness that is capable of experiencing divinity in a real sense. I am very fortunate, despite all the bad things I have done, god is kind, kinder to me than I would be.
jeroboam
7mo ago
Team,
I will be out of the office this Friday. It's a real shame, because we all know what a dedicated employee I am. Navigating icy roads? Doing boring work for hours on end? No problem. I live for that stuff.
But sadly, I am feeling under the weather. For the public good, I am forced to stay home. One can never be too careful with all these new variants! Stay safe, everyone, and I'll see you all after the holidays.
Best regards,
-Todd Warner, logistics.
johnfabian
7mo ago
I would be hesitant to overexplain this as some grand global struggle; I think this is 90% personality politics and the rest is just the cherry on the top. Trudeau seems to be a very bad man-manager: he's had Freeland, as his #2, eat shit for him on a number of different files. For the past two weeks his office has been leaking stories to various newspapers undermining her. He told her on Friday via zoom that she was going to be replaced as Finance Minister, but oh, before you go, on Monday can you deliver our fall economic statement (that we've delayed for two months)? Oh yes, it shows we have a $60+ billion deficit and we've totally blown past the "fiscal guardrails" we had promised. But once that's done and you've humiliated yourself for me one more time we'll shuffle you to a less-visible cabinet position and maybe you won't lose your seat in the next election in what is supposed to be a safe Liberal seat.
Freeland predictably told him to go fuck yourself. Her public letter announcing her resignation (while also admitting she was getting fired) was pretty scathing as far as these things go. To do it on the day you were supposed to give the long-delayed economic update for the country was as pretty direct a knife to the guts as you can do as Finance Minister. I don't think Trudeau will make it to February.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
7mo ago
Reposting another post from last week which @Blueberry put up right before the CW thread switched over:
—-
So any opinions on the drone sightings in New Jersey? Is it just mass hysteria and people mistake airplanes for drones? Are they aliens? Supernatural phenomenon? Just a distributed prank by drone owners?
So far the confusion and appeal to the government is bipartisan:
Lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Sunday criticized the federal government’s response to mysterious drone sightings in the Northeast, as officials emphasize there is no evidence of a security threat.
Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed frustration with the administration’s response to the public. “The government has a real responsibility to put more information out there so people better understand what the real dangers are,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Trump said Friday that the government needs to convey more information and shoot down the drones.
Asked Sunday about the president-elect’s post calling on the government to shoot down the drones, Mayorkas said, “We are limited in our authorities.”
What drives me crazy is that only phone videos seem to exist and phone cameras suck for faraway objects in the night. Is there not one good camera with a zoom in New York/New Jersey?
Edit:
This orb ABC News was puzzled over is really an out of focus Venus:
https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1868052013164134899
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I know many Mottizans think this is all just deep state weapons testing or something, and I’m curious for theories in that vein along with more esoteric ones?
What does the U.S. gain from this? Will Trump meaningfully increase what we know about these drones or muddy the waters?
How much do we not know still about what the spooks are up to?
Shrike
7mo ago
Is there not one good camera with a zoom in New York/New Jersey? At night, even with a good camera, you're just going to see the little lights. Not sure how much you'd see even with an IR sensor with little drones unless you were close.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is pen-testing and/or sending a message, perhaps by a foreign actor. I really think it's hard to counter small UAS and even if you can counter them, hard to finger anyone specific for doing it. This would track with the relatively recent appearance of drones over a number of US bases, including outside the United States.
I guess it could be a classic UFO flap, but the objects seem to be described as being drones, so I'm not really inclined to leap for anything paranormal unless there's a legitimate demonstration of unusual capability.
So any opinions on the drone sightings in New Jersey? Is it just mass hysteria and people mistake airplanes for drones? Are they aliens? Supernatural phenomenon? Just a distributed prank by drone owners?
So far the confusion and appeal to the government is bipartisan:
Lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Sunday criticized the federal government’s response to mysterious drone sightings in the Northeast, as officials emphasize there is no evidence of a security threat.
Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed frustration with the administration’s response to the public. “The government has a real responsibility to put more information out there so people better understand what the real dangers are,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Trump said Friday that the government needs to convey more information and shoot down the drones.
Asked Sunday about the president-elect’s post calling on the government to shoot down the drones, Mayorkas said, “We are limited in our authorities.”
What drives me crazy is that only phone videos seem to exist and phone cameras suck for faraway objects in the night. Is there not one good camera with a zoom in New York/New Jersey?
Edit:
This orb ABC News was puzzled over is really an out of focus Venus:
https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1868052013164134899
This IRS investigation was due to poor accounting, not to any allegedly-exploitative lending practices.
This is the Friday Fun Thread. I posted this opinion to enable people to laugh at the car buyers. Alternatively, you can laugh at the dealership, if you prefer:
Around 2014 Mr. Aboui decided to close HPPO because his family was experiencing serious health issues and because HPPO was unprofitable.… HPPO ceased business by 2018.
Respondent [the Commissioner of Internal Revenue] began an audit of petitioners’ and HPPO’s returns in September 2015. **At that time petitioners’ accountant was gravely ill, and he later died. His death contributed to a lack of progress on the audit. In October 2018 petitioners gave a power of attorney to a new representative who erroneously told the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revenue agent (RA) that HPPO was a cash basis taxpayer and that HPPO did not include the total sale prices in gross receipts in the year of sale. Other actions by the new representative further delayed production of HPPO’s records.** Petitioners later replaced the representative in an attempt to resolve the audit. However, by that time, after working on the case for nearly five years, the RA decided to close the audit.During the audit petitioners produced or provided access to the DMV sales reports and dealer jackets as well as other records. These documents contained sufficient information to determine HPPO’s gross income but likely not HPPO’s deductible expenses. Petitioners delayed providing access to HPPO’s accounting software because HPPO did not retain a license for the software after it ceased business. The RA never had access to the software, but petitioners reactivated it before trial.
Or you can laugh at the IRS:
Because the RA concluded that petitioners did not provide sufficient records or access to HPPO’s accounting software, she went through the arduous process of reviewing thousands of pages of bank statements and canceled checks to determine whether the debits from HPPO’s bank accounts were used to pay expenses related to HPPO’s business.
When the parties were preparing for trial, petitioners offered thousands of pages of records to substantiate HPPO’s expenses and COGS as well as HPPO’s income. Despite encouragement from the Court, respondent did not review the records.
The RA testified that she treated HPPO as a cash basis taxpayer. The Code requires the IRS to use a taxpayer’s chosen method of accounting as long as it clearly reflects income. It is clear to the Court that HPPO used a hybrid method of accounting that reported its gross receipts from car sales using the accrual method and its expenses (and possibly other income) using the cash method. Taxpayers are permitted to use hybrid methods. Respondent has not argued that HPPO’s hybrid method does not clearly reflect income, and we find that it does. Rather, respondent tries to deny that the RA used the cash method even though the RA testified at trial that she used the cash method.
Mr. Aboui was incredibly forthright in this testimony. He admitted that HPPO received cash and used it to pay wages and other expenses. Also, HPPO acquired significant inventory through trade-ins that was not accounted for as debits in HPPO’s bank records. These facts, in addition to the RA’s calculations that show reporting of gross income significantly greater than HPPO’s deposits for 2013–15, make use of the bank deposit analysis to determine HPPO’s COGS and deductible business expenses extremely inaccurate. Furthermore, there is no indication from our review of HPPO’s returns that it deducted the payments from HPPO’s bank accounts that the RA identified as nondeductible.
Throwaway05
7mo ago
Attending physician work life definitely lands more in the 40-60 range "on average." Surgical specalities can still end up in the 60-80 hour range as an adult.
As a resident 60-80 is more common with 80 being the "max" allowed but many places go over that. Neurosurgeons may end up working 100-120 hour weeks more often than not for like seven fucking years.
The devil is in the details though. Most medical jobs require someone to cover weekends, nights, and holidays. How that shakes out is pretty variable but you can be an attending with a relatively normal 60 hour work week.....but a few times a month you work 24s. Maybe you do trauma at a midsized trauma center. If it's Tuesday you actually sleep through the night. If it's Friday you are working 24 hours in a row. That is ass at age 27. At age 55 it is catastrophic.
pissed if I found out that a doctor who was seeing me...
Um.....about that.
If you go to a university hospital (you should if you have the choice) you WILL be cared for by a resident who hasn't slept in a day. If you get a surgery done the person operating on you might be on hour 28 and gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before that long ass shift.
Edit: these days theres a good number of women in medicine who decide to work part time for a pay cut. It is a thing but given how time consuming and expensive it is to train someone it's usually unwise.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8mo ago
Plus, as Parvini particularly pointed out in going over the Lindsay Triggernometry video,
Man, Friday Night Tights got a lot more based than when I last watched them...
name
8mo ago
i went to highschool in the USA in the 90s: there were mutiple parties every weekend at various houses of kids whos parents were out of town, when the weather was good we'd sometimes have huge keg parties just out of town in a sort of nature area. something like the moon tower party in dazed and confused. not infrequently, people would get a hotel room to hang out in. pretty typical to go to multiple stops on a friday or saturday night.
even i, described once by a friend of my girlfriend as being a "cool nerd", knew multiple people who could get me weed, beer or liquor. friends of a friend would rarely show up with cocaine or acid, and i knew of older people using heroin but never saw any.
this type of partying was by far the main highschool social scene, i would guess 40% of kids were part of this including most of the athletes and popular types.
looking back, it seems like a major factor was parents constantly going out of town and leaving the kids in charge of nice single family homes, kind of surprising how much that was happening
Checks out in lubridate, which I'm very confident works back until at least Friday 15 October 1582. I think it might even work before that, but would have to do a bunch of digging to be 100% sure what the first epoch it can check is.
You also picked the golden era where the Gregorian calendar reformations were locked in, but you don't even have to deal with leap seconds, UT1, UTC, ... etc if you want periods down to the second.
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