domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
Long time lurker, first time poster on the thread. I'm currently halfway through learn python visually. I know the python parts, I'm doing the book to get a different sense of programming. My mentor wanted me to see things from a different side. So far I'd state the book is a great tool for anyone young who wants to learn programming because making things go off on screens is a fun experience.
The hardest parts are the non programming ones, it's a mild detour, knowing the math behind things is a plus for me. I'll start data structures in python after this.
Also gophercon is happening in my hometown this year in September, so if any mottizens write go or may be panning to visit, do lemme know. I'll be there for all three days.
I use ratatype for typing and my current keyboard is a terrible sub 6 dollar piece of trash where using the pinky finger to press enter or backspace would mine in sub 5 minutes. I keep missing a lot of keys on that side since I have to reset my hands anytime I use backspace or enter. Any suggestions beyond getting a split keyboard. I'll get a new slightly better mechanical keyboard soon which should ease this a bit.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
18hr ago
Sounds pretty good. I'm a noob engineer so can't offer any feedback whatsoever. My only experience with llms and pdfs was when we tried to build something that dealt with large pdfs and the biggest hurdle was the tables. I've heard pcr got better in the latter half of 2024 and I stopped my startup LARP right about that time.
That won't save the party alone. It might save the name.
The Tories in the UK are basically in that spot right now. They have a machine and no shot at relevance. Therefore everybody expects Reform to essentially buy the machine and maybe the name attached to it, as has happened before (they are after all officially "The Conservative and Unionist Party").
I doubt that happens to the Dems because Americans have their two party system bolted down to the institutions pretty solidly so there's little path for a takeover, but you can't run a party on machine politics alone, not a government party anyways.
Another trajectory is what happened in Malta, another famous two-party system where one party just consistently wins and another consistently loses but not by large enough a margin as to make the loser party politically irrelevant. And essentially you just start seeing the winner party leadership make deals with the loser party to keep power, in a classic example of the high-low vs middle mechanism.
All that said, it seems very early to call the Dems permanent losers at all. They're in disarray but I don't think they've been dealt a killing blow the likes of which the Tories got. I can totally see a Clinton or Blair type figure come up with a novel coalition formula and reinvent the party.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
18hr ago
Right, I did mean to mention how Cuomo was basically hiding because he was so sure the name-ID and perceived experience/steady hand/moderation would carry him, but I forgot. But to be honest, usually that strategy works! Also, great point about heat, I did see that mentioned in the lead-up as something that would hurt Cuomo, who is stronger with older folks. Will have to wait for numbers to see how much of a difference that may or may not have made.
Despite thinking Mamdani's (general) election to office would be a disaster, I'm encouraged. I absolutely hate political dynasties, despite thinking they often result in decent governance. One of the few exceptions to my rule, along with poor personal judgement of the candidate. Cuomo basically illustrates that dilemma perfectly: exactly the kind of establishment figure even an avowed moderate, "the establishment actually kind of works" person like myself would normally favor, but where my hate for dynastic figures and corrupt individuals overpowers what would normally be my main interest. I would definitely be a Brad Lander voter (maybe a Mamdani 2, followed by blanks?) though this is double moot because first I don't live in NYC/don't intend to ever, but secondly locally still refuse to register with a party even in my own area, so I'm not ever voting in primaries anyways. Is this somewhat contradictory with my position as a pragmatic moderate who thinks working within the system is almost always the best choice? Yes, for sure, but I like to think I more than offset that by actually volunteering for campaigns (usually state, occasionally local, seldom national) with some regularity. I do sometimes wonder how many people actually to fit in my same boat, though. Probably not many. Though the electorate is far more diverse than most pundits give it credit for, so less-predictable people like me (but on different issues than mine) I think are more then norm than party-line types.
watching pornography, playing video games, engaging in "devil worshipping" activities like D&D, and not being married
Eh. We've heard enough about neckbeards, pick-me's, and incels not to buy that line.
Nobody's being honest here. Just waving the old carrot and hoping it's not rotten...
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
18hr ago
Vans or, it must be pointed out, it's pretty darn common for a pickup truck to have one of those pop-up covers (some of them extremely stock or permanent-looking). I'd say the actual contractors get a nice cover more often than a van, especially if it doubles as a personal vehicle. True minivans are basically reserved for secondhand purchases by the illegal immigrant.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
18hr ago
Oregon: Ask the locals where the good tidepools are at! Washington has some, but there are some great ones in Oregon too, and poking sea anemones is never not fun. Also, dress WARM, and prepared for rain just in case. The beach is often cold (and windy), though not always; the water is always super-cold, wetsuit territory, suitable for "how long can you stay in" competitions. Kites are fun for the wind! And the scenery is pretty, and you can still do sand castle things if that's your jam. Speaking of wind, if you want to try wind or kite surfing and are in the right spot, the Columbia gorge has some of the best in the whole world, but there are a few places on the coast that do it too. And yeah, of course there are great hikes everywhere, including waterfalls.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
18hr ago
The traditional argument is that US voting systems are mostly first-past-the-post (aka FPTP, single winners on plurality), and this naturally creates a two-party system due to fears about third parties just being spoilers/wasted votes (see Duverger's Law for the poli-sci theorizing). However, there is a counter-argument in that some other countries did not turn out this way despite similar voting systems, like Canada or India (for now). The traditional answer to that is that the US selects a president directly, while the PM can be chosen via some more indirect process. This is on purpose! Historically, although Parliament was kinda-sorta democratic, there was this weird interplay with the King. Baby America vehemently hated kings, and was trying to challenge the whole idea altogether! A directly-elected president is the ultimate rejection of a king-model. The modern reality of directly elected presidents being more powerful than confidence-of-Parliament heads of state was a bit unforeseen.
However, I want to make a different appeal, beyond structure: it might just be the way history shakes out! Remember the US is inventing representative democracy almost from scratch! Now-common ideas like political parties weren't even concepts yet, much less actual practice. The specifics of history have had very strong impacts on how the vote has gone. The first two pseudo-parties formed pretty early on over a mix of national vs state power, with a dash of foreign policy disagreement, pretty natural. One collapses and you get a brief mega-party period. Then Jackson shows up and is Trump-level controversial, setting up Democrats vs Whigs, partly stylistic but economics plays a big role here, and this starts to create more noticeable party-level mechanics as well (beyond voting blocs, you start getting them more involved in vote-getting, persuasion, and financing). Worth noting that at this point voting also starts to expand to non-property owners. Slavery eventually guts the Whigs a bit more than the Democrats, and you almost get a three-party scenario developing, or even a four-party one. It was probably the most likely electoral outcome for a while!
...and then a literal Civil War happens instead of waiting to let elections resolve things. At the end of which, you get two parties again, and surprise surprise for a while these line up neatly with the boundaries of the two actual contenders of the war. And yes, one of the two (the winner) is more powerful for a while. Also, every time an international war happens, you tend to get dominance by a party in the nationalist afterglow (sometimes backlash), and the US has had semi-regular wars. Since then, many of the issues have been packaged in such a binary way that arguably the "need" for a third party wasn't super strong. There's an interesting scenario where the Civil War doesn't happen and you do get some more regional powers competing, maybe even forming individual parties. However, circling back to one part of the "structure" argument: only one person can win the Presidency outright, otherwise the decision goes to the House. This happened, but was messy and unpredictable, so no one really wanted that to happen again. And remember, the president is increasingly powerful, and drives the big issues in politics, rather than reflects it! So there's motivation for regions to group together if only for convenience.
Since the US was first, many other democracies formed since then sometimes deliberately structure their democracies to be multi-party, such as via proportional representation or so such. Historically, though, again the US was first, so not only was our system the only one in town, but parties had to be "invented"! It took like 40 years for them to start to take shape, and the issues that became big deals in the US were also often of a very specific flavor: how to use the national apparatus to help specific local regions. Thus state-level and national politics are very intertwined. Also, due to the historical structure of state government, as well as state loyalty and identity, municipal power would very rarely be competitive with state power, so those elections were often done in tandem. And national issues almost historically have very often driven voting enthusiasm more than municipal issues (!!), so splinters in local approaches within one party almost never lead to local-only splinter parties. Furthermore, state and national candidates have to come from somewhere! If you have ambitions to be a bigger fish, why would you join a smaller party? I buried a lede for voting expansion in the earlier paragraph. It's my (weak) understanding that some important "third-party" groups in Canada formed in the aftermath of increasing suffrage. In the US, these new constituencies were often rapidly absorbed.
India is the other major counter-example of the FPTP theory. Duverger notes that FPTP works on a district-level, and this is low-key the case in India. However, India has also had extreme local social, religious, and economic stratification! This pairs with fewer major wars and international crises (we are in the post-WWII era exclusively, remember), which also means that there are fewer overpowering national questions. To some extent, there is economic motivation to create more national party-coalition blocs, but local identity politics is very strong to this date. While in the recent decade the BJP is showing early signs of a dominant party, it is yet to be seen if and how that might trickle down to state and municipal contests. Finally, India has a president, but they are also chosen indirectly, and are mostly ceremonial, but it's still worth pointing out how they are chosen: members of parliament (!) combined with locally elected leaders (!) use a secret ballot (!) of RCV-IRV ranked voting (!). The president in turn works basically like the Crown does for the UK, where the PM is chosen, again indirectly, via a confidence-based coalition approach (and can lose said confidence), and then basically appoints all the top level executive branch themselves.
So in short: I'd argue history mostly, which has heavily involved the president. A typical political scientist might say it's structurally all FPTP, with the constitutional role of President being relevant as a tiebreaker. Furthermore many modern democracies deliberately construct themselves to be different than the US in some way, despite the obvious influences, so it's not really a fair comparison in the statistical-causal sense.
TIRM
19hr ago
Agreed. A single instance of tit for tat is impressive. Almost all the way there.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
19hr ago
You are listing 90s and 2000s culture war topics.
Right, and there are a lot of people who want to go back and re-litigate those same fights. Some of them are in this thread.
lollol
19hr ago
Here are my thoughts on the race:
- The people of the current era want fighters to represent them, no matter the political ideologue. Cuomo didn't have as much appearances or events as Zohran. This is similar to the dynamic of Biden, then Harris for a little bit, vs Trump. The people can sense when someone is putting in the work for their vote.
- Unlikely but Eric Adams still has a chance like Joe Lieberman did in 2006. Lieberman is at least respectable though, unlike Adams, which seems almost every New Yorker has some level of distaste for.
- I solidly believe the heat made a difference as elderly people are less likely to turn out to vote, this would be the first election I know of where climate change matters.
- This is going to be like AOC in 2018, tomorrow this news will be across the world. Lots of eyes, and resources are going to be pouring in.
- Yes, absolutely win for grassroots campaign.
- There are some talks going around how if we look at the geographical breakdown, it's a separation between transplants (Manhattan LES, Brooklyn Williamsburg, etc.) vs natives (Bronx, deep Brooklyn, deep Queens). I still want to wait for the full numbers though before more speculation.
Arguably, the manly dignity and self-reliance aspects were a side effect of feudal Europe, or at least an older, aristocratic way of thinking.
I can't really speak to "manly dignity", since I'm not really sure what that means, but self-reliance was never an aristocratic value. It is an eminently middle-class one. One of the notional justifications for aristocratic arrangements was that it enabled the aristocrat to pursue higher callings without having to be bothered about the sordid necessities of life.
yeoman farmers (landed gentry)
Yeoman farmers are pointedly not landed gentry: they might have farmhands, but they work their own land. In a sense, they are agrarian petit-bourgeoisie. The gentry by contrast, manage estates (or, more likely, have it managed for them) of tenant farmers (or slaves, in the pre-ACW US). The idea of doing their own farming would've been seen as distasteful.
I note this not to be pedantic, but to point out that there is a massive, yawning gulf between a nation of yeomen and shopkeepers on the one hand, and an aristocratic one on the other. The former is one that at least permits the idea of universal dignity; the latter is one that sees dignity as a zero sum affair.
Hadad
19hr ago
Everyone involved in an ongoing conflict is usually pretty justified in pursuing the conflict to its conclusion, yes. Especially between states. If a grudge is big enough to motivate a war, it's big enough to motivate winning that war.
So I went into the Casino with the commitment to "only" risk $400 at most. That was my whole budget.
I sat down at the Blackjack Table with a $15 minimum bet size. I hit what the gambling community calls a "Hot Streak" and within like 10 minutes I'm up by $500. I pocket $400 worth of chips, Now I'm playing with house money.
After a bit longer, suddenly I'm up like $1500. I'm placing bets worth $500+ per hand. i.e. I'm betting more than the whole budget I had set out on single hands of blackjack. Its feels pretty awesome.
"Why don't you just cash in your chips and take the money?"
Well I wasn't there to make money, i was there to have fun. And its FUN to risk a whole day's salary on the turn of a card, its FUN to have the other players going hype over your success, its FUN to tip the dealer like $10/$20 at a time, its FUN to imagine somehow hitting it huge and walking out with $50k, it is FUN to have drinks delivered to you as you 'lock in' to try to keep the streak going. It is even fun to LOSE a big amount, when you still have a whole stack of chips to burn.
After, I dunno (literally, you lose track of all time), 30-45 minutes total, I force myself to take a break to 'cool off.' About then I notice my pulse racing and hands shaking. Not aggressively, just the little tremor. I've got about $600, plus the chips I stashed earlier. I stash another $400. Now my day is profitable regardless.
I wander for about an hour, then come back to the same table. It feels right. No rational reason for it, but why change? I put down my $200 in chips. And lose it all in, no joke, about 5 minutes.
Just like that.
So I leave with about $800 and one hell of a dopamine rush.
And for weeks I kept thinking back to that rush, and my brain keeps saying "holy cow remember how awesome that hot streak felt? I bet you could hit that again if you went back." My rational brain is able to quell that. "The house wins this is precisely how they get you," but neurochemicals are a helluva drug.
I could see myself doing something like that every week. Go in with $400-500, make it last as long as possible. Some days I'd lose it quick, some days I'd lose it slow, some days I'd double or triple it, and I'd be having tons of fun but it would basically be an addiction at that point, and I'm not sure I could keep myself limited to a small budget once I was hooked.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
20hr ago
A much better set of citations is Colossians 3:8:
But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth.
And Ephesians 4:29:
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
20hr ago
Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:
Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?
We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)
In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.
My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.
Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?
The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.
Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?
First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.
Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
20hr ago
· Edited 19hr ago
Hm, I’m wondering if this is highly regional, or maybe generational. The Christians I know take offense at swear words and would be likely to describe them as minor sins. In my household, you got a stern talking to if you said “shit.”
I have also never met anyone who has said a racial slur of any kind unironically in my presence. I think I’m from the region and social class that is least likely to use profanity.
ulyssessword
20hr ago
crushedoranges
20hr ago
I am constantly reminded day after day that although the right has a very good understanding of what the left wants and thinks, the opposite is not true.
Suppose I told you that Democrats want to make abortions of unrestricted term legal on the federal level. Then, you would say, that is not true: that only certain extreme activists would say so, that they are a minority within a minority: that democrats in general absolutely do not celebrate abortions or attempt to sacralize it as some sort of female right of passage.
But yet, knowing this, you apply the broad brush to Republicans without the nuances or the understanding. All of the logic and reason of the previous paragraph falls out of the back of your head, and you say: "Republicans want to ban abortion federally."
Be honest with yourself. Are you being generous with your political enemies, or are you close-minded and prejudiced?
(After writing this out, I realize you could be referring 'they' as evangelicals, but the basic observation still is the same. Which ones?)
BreakerofHorsesandMen
20hr ago
Agreed, Virginia probably will get redder as a bunch of deep blue government workers find greener pastures in other states (although that has knock-on effects depending on where these people wind up.)
But, where are you getting your thoughts on Minnesota? As great as it would be to have the land of our most “Uff da” saying people rejoin the Red fold, this seems like the reversed version of Blue Texas always being just around the corner.
faceh
20hr ago
If they can't get bans at the state level when they have control of the governments, it'd be a real tough sell to make it happen Federally.
They can of course push for it, but winning the fight to remove the Constitutional 'right' to abortion was the gift that also made it so the issue doesn't need to be fought at the Federal level.
DirtyWaterHotDog
20hr ago
Starting a greenfield project to build a stable software environment for ai coding. I can't think freely when operating within legacy codebases. So starting from scratch to build my ideal ai-native scaffolding.
I'm starting with a tool to auto-redact pdfs. Simple, useful, well constrained. Would appreciate suggestions on software paradigms that have worked well for ai development.
Stack:
- Python FastAPI backend + Streamlit Frontend + Sqlachemy ORM over rel-db
- uv for packaging + environment
- firebase for cloud provider + github actions for ci/cd
- prefect (or something similar) for orchestration
- Openai codex + github copilot as my LLM coding friends
- Dockerized deployments
Some ideas:
- Monolithic codebase to make it easy for agents to operate on it
- Minimize implicit everything (state, side effects)
- Maximize explicit everything (types for everything, explicit validators)
I have a basic demo ready. Codex is already raising PRs. The redacted bounding boxes are off. And the LLM redaction logic is wonky. But, so far I am impressed at the LLM's ability to build a greenfield project by itself.
I'm a serviceable software engineer. Cracked engineers of the motte, what are some software systems paradigms that you think I should play with ? I would especially like to know paradigms that make it easier for agents to understand, write & verify auto-generated code.
anti_dan
20hr ago
I wouldn't be above 10% predicting any of those things, all of them combined I'd be under 5%.
Democrats just resoundingly demonstrated they have an incredibly high floor. Harris-Walz got 75million votes. On those non-existent (probably negative) coat tails they were just -4 in the senate with a very tough map given the Montana and WV retirements, while actually receiving more total votes for their candidates, and actually gained 2 house seats. They also managed to hold steady in governorships, even with the crazy North Carolina guy somehow holding on in a reddish state.
They don't need popular policies or politicians. Those are outdated. They have vote-harvesting operations, which is what matters.
You forgot pushing Intelligent Design in schools!
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