domain:worksinprogress.co
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
12m ago
Ahh I just read his Children of Time series which was pretty good.
I certainly did not have "total formalist victory" on my agenda. What the hell.
This will probably end up fizzling out, but having a well defined list of all crimes is a good principle. It's what the law is supposed to be in the first place. Some seem to think that ambiguity is the necessary font of power. It's not. It's the font of a certain kind of power. One that America, a top 10 laywers per capita country, scarcely needs more of.
Down with foxes, up with the lion.
Hieronymus
25m ago
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
Fair enough. I think that's a pretty base level definitional difference with Christianity.
2rafa
54m ago
The miscalculation was not only that Trump actually believed in tariffs, unlike abortion, immigration, trans whatever, where he was always malleable. It was that Trump’s career record displayed regular, bone headed conviction to make and stand by dumb decisions (which is why the business declared bankruptcy multiple times during the largest multi-decade property boom in history) principally around the casinos in Atlantic City. It’s relevant because that whole project (directly responsible for 3 out of 4 of his bankruptcies) was the result not only of great ambition but also of steadfastness in the face of many advisors, bankers, fellow developers, partners etc no doubt telling him he was making the wrong decision(s).
On this basis I assumed that while Trump would fold eventually on the tariffs, he would persevere until the economic situation deteriorated considerably. When thinking about why he caved before then, I have a few ideas. The first is that Trump thinks of himself as a genius, especially in real estate, but he does allow for the existence of other geniuses, and I think he does accept that at least in domain terms other people are smarter than him (Elon Musk with ‘computer’, Jamie Dimon in finance etc), and they were both against tariffs. The second is that he’s easily persuaded by flattery, which is a classic Chinese art form, and while Xi was publicly posturing I do think there has been some suggestion that the diplomatic approach was softer. Lastly, I think people Trump likes personally like MBS and Meloni who both deal a lot with the Chinese and are in many ways economically reliant on them told him the tariffs were bad, and Trump has something of a sense of loyalty, at least in certain situations, provided someone (eg Cohen) doesn’t cross him publicly.
2rafa
1hr ago
I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.
The South African government is a coalition between the ANC and (effectively) the white party, with many white ministers including the minister of agriculture (most directly relevant to Afrikaner farmers). The main party that displays intense racial animus toward Boers is a small minority party whose appeal is limited for a variety of reasons.
Corvos
1hr ago
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a novella rather than a series but happens to fit both of those labels nicely.
This is just simply not in the realm of things answerable by simple slogans. It's all about the details (alwayshasbeen.jpg).
I can't help but always circle back to the relatively uncontroversial example of the car salesman. If he tells you a car is "a great bargain", you don't just take him by his word; You look at the technical details of the car model, you take a look at the actual car right in front of you whether it shows signs of deterioration, repair or even manipulation, you ask around for the reputation of the salesman or the greater dealership he is part of. And you only buy if it looks like at least an OK deal based on the totality of the evidence.
You ought to do the same for any claim. "Temporary migrants" are only that if there is a mechanism to get rid of them, otherwise they're just migrants, likewise with asylum. "Developmental aid for [country/location]" is often, in practice, mostly free money for whoever is currently in power of that country. And more on topic, for the police and the DA, they absolutely love the justification of just protecting the innocent and helpless, a baby being about as archetypical as it gets. Do they do that? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
That said, I actually mostly like the training exercise, at least as a very first test of character. It's clearly contrived (IANAL though), who uses a wicker basket for fishing? In the middle of the night? And it's just about looking into the basket, not a full-on house search or anything other more private. If you can't even muster the bravery for this, you're not fit for the job. It's about mindset; Police and DA should have thinking that is directed towards catching criminals while infringing on rights as little as possible, but not necessarily zero. Just looking into a basket is about as minor as it gets, compared to the severity of the possible crime and in consideration of the sketchy circumstances.
But you shouldn't consider this training a good reflection of real cases you're going to work on. They're probably going to be much more complicated, which I hope gets reflected in some later training.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
1hr ago
I'm no theologician, but I'm fairly certain that the New Testament espouses the sentiment that helping some people is still better than helping no people, even if those people are not the most deserving. My memory on this is fairly vague though; I hope someone better-read can correct me here.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
1hr ago
FWIW, any protestant sermons in my little village church are usually about one part unspecific feelgood Christianity and four parts green-red political rally.
benny
2hr ago
Thanks for the recommendation! Would you also recommend books by those two authors you've mentioned? I'm mainly interested in addressing an inner critic and not so much real trauma.
NunoSempere
2hr ago
I applied for an org that was 50% the same objective 50% emergency response. I am very unlikely to join FRI so they do a good job; if I quit my current thing I'm more likely to go into the private sector
FtttG
2hr ago
Would I be right in saying Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were not personally responsible for the genocide of any ethnically distinct Native American tribes?
NunoSempere
2hr ago
The stated reason was that at the time we also had an emergency response team, which reportedly was less of a fit for forecasting specifically. The actual reason is complicated/less discernable, but I get the feeling that they took a look at me and said: nah.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2hr ago
Take two of the regulatory and legal standards that libertarians hate most - the definition of tax evasion and the definition of wire fraud. Detractors are completely correct that both are extremely vague (the former is essentially ‘anything that violates the spirit of paying your fair share of taxes’ and the second is ‘lying about anything that might lead to any gains for yourself through any medium of communication’), but their vagueness is largely organic and downstream from the fact that any stricter standards would make the enforcement of the rules pointless because any intelligent lawyer or other actor could rules-lawyer their way out of it.
Does this EO touch either of those? I am pretty sure that crimes of wire fraud already require mens rea, unless someone has invented exciting new forms of emergent autonomous wire fraud recently.
That said, the other regulatory standard that libertarians hate the most is KYC/AML, and those do seem to me like they fall squarely in the crosshairs of this EO. Those are the primary reason I'm tentatively excited/optimistic about this order.
What security guarantees did Trump give to Ukraine through the mineral deal? Under what circumstances will Trump send troops to Ukraine?
The anecdotes aren’t necessarily something you should rely on, and it’s a mistake to draw your conclusions on that basis alone. Men are harassed more across the board, but the methods through which one would seek to piss off the sexes differ. Women aren’t necessarily targeted just for being women, but bringing up their femaleness is a sure-fire way to set women off, and so it gets used as a vector of attack when the target is female. But you can’t conflate that with “women are targeted for being women”, especially when it requires one to rationalise the incoherent statement of “men are harassed more but women are harassed because they are women”. If women suffered additional harassment for being female they should be harassed more. But they aren’t.
That being said, the belief that “women are targeted for being women” is usually not soluble to any kind of argument, evidence or really anything at all. Look how the discourse around street violence has proceeded with the presumption of woman-as-most-at-risk when nothing could be further from the truth. Women are always justified in their endless self-victimisation, even when they are not.
FtttG
2hr ago
You will find that people in mental health find the current paradigms on these matters to be extremely deleterious to human development and flourishing.
Just because the people who work in the industry think that these paradigms aren't conducive to human flourishing, doesn't mean the paradigms in question didn't ultimately arise within that industry. I'm sure there are Catholic priests who have misgivings about this or that component of Vatican doctrine, or people who work in the gambling industry who feel guilty about how they've been complicit in ruining so many lives.
Competent therapists will emphasize this early and often and actually do it.
Of course, but lots of therapists are incompetent and aren't weeded out quickly enough, if at all.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2hr ago
The problem with all this nonsense (yours and @WhiningCoil's) is the projection of the degenerate American condition where somewhat organized 20th century things are next to impossible to do, so you have to rely on Bronze age factors like the proportion of – to a large extent functionally illiterate, obese, criminal and unhealthy, but at least physically mobile – population to kick the can down the road. Infrastructure cannot be adapted. Automation cannot be done, that's fake news, that'd require, like, electric engineering and other nerd shit that doesn't offer good P/E for the financial fraud class to get fat off. The olds will consume the surplus, or else revolt, because you cannot do anything against pensioners (eg provide very cheap industrialized welfare to have them shut up, or as @veqq says, just let them live out their lives in the naturally cheap countryside). Housing bubble will crash and bury the economy, because of course, the debt is secretly much higher than it seems, because Communists always lie with their fake statistics, we learned that from the Soviet Union, the previous “champion” of electronics exports and gacha games.
It's surreal to watch how their nation-scale companies like BYD operate, compare this to the shambolic, truly late Soviet bullshit going on in the US, and then observe all this Gordon Chang tier punditry. Their working age population is right now just short of 1 billion people. They're, it seems, overall higher quality people too, they live longer, ask for less and work harder. Tighter margins all around, higher efficiency of converting revenue to capex… There is, admittedly, a lot of population locked in agriculture and low-productivity sectors, so fine, the effective discrepancy in workforce might be “only” 5x. Do you seriously imagine that economies of scale in a nation with 5x the American workforce will amount to Wile-E-Coyote running off a cliff. Okay, I'll keep watching how it goes.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
According to the anecdotes, while men are often harassed in games for the perceived reasons of being bad, standing out, picking the wrong character, etc.; women have "sounding female on mic" on top of that.
Lizzardspawn
3hr ago
That is stupid test, made by people who think they are smarter than they are.
Ways to improve it - first instead of baby in the basket are drugs. A policy of - we save the baby and if the cost is letting a drug dealer go - well they are too stupid to take the warning and we will catch them anyway.
Second - the officer could just play some loud screeching noise and try to wake up the baby. Hear the baby cry and we are golden. Or he could kick the basket. Or he could just walk next to the person in the basket for as long as needed.
Third - the basket is the murder weapon. If the serial killer was called lumberjack harry killing his victims in central park - because he killed people with felling axe while wearing of those signature shirts, no court would say that patting down every recreational deforester in the area is infringing on their rights.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
3hr ago
Tbh I'm primarily familiar with the catholic vs protestant split in germany, but here that distinction is very much real. I know several (university-educated) women holding official positions of power within protestant church offices who have explicitly told me that in reality they do not believe except for some undefined spirituality. One even hired a non-christian into the church office, despite a christian denomination being a requirement to be hired. Worse, I don't even have the impression she is worried about being caught, there seems to be a widely shared culture of just not caring. Not coincidentally, these are among the wokest people I know.
I'd have to take you on faith that liberation theology is different, but at least some of the more explicitly communist/marxist-aligned seem to me like the same type.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3hr ago
To establish ground truth facts: All that is left of Liberation Day tariffs on China is minimal 10% “against humanity” tariff, reciprocated by 10% as well. 20% of “Fentanyl tariff” (lol) came in February, and China reciprocated it with asymmetric tariffs which are also in power. So it's somewhat more equal than 10% for 30%. Also, China has not repealed their global export controls on rare earth elements which is in fact terrible as there is no way to quickly ramp up production elsewhere, stockpiles will run out in months, and much of the imagined American revival (eg industrial automation, so robots) requires REEs. Though there's cope.
Chinese imports of ≈$500B add far more to American GDP, maybe on the order of $2T even naively accounted (eg not considering the costs of unmaintained infra if trade were terminated) – they're a large chunk of all consumed goods and inputs to almost all industry, they retail for much higher value, and create a lot of economic activity. Since the gap with the rest of the world is just 20%, China refuses to cover the tariffs on their side and there is, in fact, no ready substitute to most of their products at acceptable volume and shortages would have caused crisis and panic, most businesses opt to pass the price to consumer or just cut margins. So the main effect of this in the short term will be slight reduction in bilateral trade, slightly (because the markup of US distributors is insane) higher prices of everything for Americans, and redistribution of wealth from businesses and consumers towards their state.
I've been wrong with my usual doomerism, predicting that neither side will fold. I mainly overrated Trump's ego strength and isolation from feedback. China kept playing this with surgical game-theoretical precision, consistently demanding respectful and equal treatment and insisting that they will not be intimidated but in principle oppose trade wars as lose-lose scenarios. Trump toadies initially made some smug noises about “isolating the bad actor”; then, when Chinese retaliation succeeded in preventing quick submission of others, particularly emboldening other largest trade partners (EU and Japan), improved ties with ASEAN, and precluded any such isolation – course-corrected, through some opaque drama between courtiers it seems. They started begging for talks (in a bizarre Oriental manner of requesting that Xi calls first, to save Trump face, maintaining the optics of “they need us and our Great American Consumer more than we need their cheap trinkets”), and eventually signaled willingness for equal deescalation that the Chinese side has been expecting. We are here.
What has been learned? First, that indeed, the US just does not have the cards to push China around, much less rally “the world” against it. That trust and respect is easily lost. That even nations highly dependent on the US security umbrella and on trade with the US can refuse to bow, and barter for their own interests:
Regarding the tariff negotiations between the United States and the United Kingdom in which an agreement was reached to set tariffs at 10%, including on automobiles, Prime Minister Ishiba said on a Fuji TV program, "It is one model, but we are calling for their abolition.We cannot say that 10% is okay."
That the South-East Asia is probably not a viable platform for any “choking” or “Malacca blockade”, like, just look at this statement.
That the EU has sovereignty, that Canada has sovereignty, that… basically, that the US is not a big scary hegemonic superpower it imagines itself to be and sometimes laments the wages of being. It's just a very powerful country, with large but decidedly finite leverage, and that runs well short of getting everyone to play along with American King's unreasonable imagination. The US can not credibly maintain the pressure on a determined adversary the size of China. Now, some half-dead vassals like the UK will make unequal concessions. But that's about it. Others will drive a bargain.
It's been a moderate economic shock for everyone, and a significant loss of credibility for the US.
Idk I have never played retail past wrath, but that's what I've heard! They just added a one button rotation where you just press a button and it auto casts the next spell you need so... sounds like it...
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