domain:betonit.substack.com
cjet79
just now
Yes, the alternative is prison.
There has been an ongoing debate between enforcement and cleanup.
Enforcement is mean. And it looks expensive on a per incident basis. But the main benefit over cleanup is that it stops additional people from adding to the problem.
Time and again people have opted to drop enforcement thinking that the current cleanup costs aren't as high as enforcement, only for them to be completely overwhelmed by cleanup costs when there is zero enforcement.
In the case of California cities they are now drowning in human shit on their sidewalks and streets as a result of this decision.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
1m ago
Honestly, I found it thoroughly unremarkable.
Now, it's been a long while (20 years?) since I watched the old Shogun series, so I certainly have some rose-colored glasses on, but somehow I didn't really enjoy my the new one like I expected to based on my fondness for the old one.
The plot seemed to meander meaninglessly, with the intrigue too opaque to make sense to the viewer, and the characters too guarded and game-of-thronesy for their motivations to really shine through.
The visuals were...decent, I suppose, but the desaturated and heavily filtered appearance made it look unreal and cheap.
The characters, oof. Yabushige was fun but too cartoonish. Omi, Nagakado, Saeki, Hiromatsu, Buntaro, Tsuji and Fuji were enjoyable, relatable even, but seemed to have very limited agency. But ultimately the whole tale revolves around Toranaga, Mariko, Anjin and Ishido. Ishido, meh, good performance but is mostly just there to act as a less-competent foil to Toranaga. Toranaga I don't know about; I just greatly preferred the Mifune version. Mariko and the Anjin were outright painful to watch, with Mariko being so wooden her husband wanted to kill himself (I guess that's the point) and getting too much attention by half, and the Anjin just being an overdramatic clown.
Overall it's just...mediocre. There were production values, some decent performances, but in the end it needs to measure up to Rome, and no, it's not Rome.
bolido_sentimental
7m ago
Honestly, I haven't looked into it because I am now conditioned to assume that all new works of visual media are going to be woke in some abysmal way. It's a surprise to me now if one isn't. This was honestly a serious shift in my life - for example, I genuinely have not watched a new television series in six or seven years. When I was a teenager (the 2000s) I really enjoyed television.
I will say, I was a huge fan of the book. Just very immersive and exciting, and I could not predict the twists. Maybe I'll give the show a chance.
ControlsFreak
16m ago
A beggar/bum has a strong incentive to be as close as possible to the largest number of people with disposable income in their pockets (and places with free services, like public parks w/ restrooms, libraries, and charities.) This is in tension with most people's desire to be able to use the public goods their tax dollars pay for in the way they were intended, and their desire to be left alone while walking from place to place.
Man, can you imagine a Grand Experiment, almost like in The Wire? Rather than trying to force people out with the stick, draw them to an alternate, via the carrot. It's well-known that many of the folks who are, I'm not sure what the current descriptive term is, serially-homeless let's say, are willing to migrate for nicer weather and more of these types of things you describe. How much would it cost to set up a 'city', away from all the normal cities where people live, with some nice parks, some libraries, charities, maybe even some literal money fountains that kick out dollars at a stochastic rate too low to be worth sitting at for folks who can manage to hold down a regular job, but just high enough to be attractive to a guy who is used to sitting at an intersection near all those folks with disposable income. All the libraries/charities can be run by the same social worker types who normally deal with them in the city, anyway. Sitting at an intersection is basically a stochastic money fountain, so make a big push to tell the normies that they can assuage their conscience by donating to the charity's stochastic money fountains, still giving them literal cash, but in a way that draws them closer to helpful resources.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
18m ago
Opinions on The Shogun? We just finished it, and I quite liked it all around. Solid plot, good visuals, great characters like Toranaga and Yabushige and Mariko (and acting performances), the Anjin grated me a bit at first but I got used to it. Probably the best miniseries of such kind in a long time...
...and yet, I don't think there's been an inlength discussion on it here. I suppose that's what happens when something is good; it's not as notable as when something can be complained about, especially since there's precious little of anything that might be seen as wokeness here. I haven't read the book (I tried some time ago but got sidetracked pretty quickly), but I haven't seen complaints about major deviations or deviations from (lightly fictionalized) actual history.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
28m ago
Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?
Oh, yeah. The Pope can't say "The Brazil nut is the one and only official nut of the Catholic Church and anyone consuming any other nut is going straight to Hell". There's wiggle room. If he's going to change teaching, he better have a dang good reason and an entire team of theologians backing him up (this applies to any pope, I'm not picking on Francis in particular here).
MathWizard
formerly hh26
38m ago
Seems like this depends entirely on what aesthetic the game is aiming for. Would The Matrix have been a better film if it were in the style of a Miyazaki film? Or as an animated version of a Leonardo da Vinci painting? From a certain perspective you might consider the Mona Lisa to be "better art" than The Matrix, but being real people with some minor CGI added worked for what it was going for and made a fantastic film.
We're not there yet, but if we can reach the point where hyper-realistic faces in games can actually be mistaken for real actors, there's a huge range of applications where it would actually be useful and better than a stylized game character because it fits the aesthetic the game intends, even if such situations are the minority.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
38m ago
First time?
Everyone in the Culture War has this experience sooner or later. It sucks, but eventually the realization settles that this is how it is and it's not going to change, so you make your peace with it and move on with life.
For me, it helped to realize that most people who talk about politics and culture aren't actually engaging in analysis, but rather an informal group-bonding game built around call-and-response meme-trading. This doesn't make them stupid or irrational, any more than posting dogespeak memes means they don't understand proper grammar. They aren't trading John-Oliver-tier (or steven crowder tier) talking points because they're interested in pursuing objective truth, they're doing it because it generates a feeling of togetherness. Sure, it's alienating to you, because the pings they're generating are pings your brain rejects, but that's not really their fault. People are different, is all.
Reading that post about the Liberation Pledge makes me sad, because here is a perfectly nice person with good intentions who only wants to do good and reduce harm, and they might as well be an alien from another planet when it comes to understanding ordinary people:
And, on a larger scale, we hoped that if we all joined together, we could create a world where eating meat is stigmatized: a world where someone would ask, “Does anyone mind if I get the steak?” before making an order at a restaurant (or maybe even one in which restaurants would think twice before putting someone’s body on the menu).
That right there from the start: it's not a body, it's a carcass. And it's not someone, it's something. An animal is not a person. Plus, I get the distinct impression that were this a report on an Oceanian tribe that practiced consumption of the remains of the deceased as a ritual of respect, we'd get the whole "we should not impose Western moral values on others" about something that really was "putting someone's body on the menu".
From where I stood, the biggest effect of the Pledge was for advocates to lose relationships with family members who didn’t comply. Upon taking the Pledge, a close friend at the time experienced a years-long estrangement from their family, including those who were already vegan while many others decided to skip birthdays, weddings, and holidays with family. It’s possible that all of this added stigma around eating animals. With these relationships broken down, we don’t know.
You know where the added stigma was? I'm going to take a wild guess and that it wasn't on the part of shame-faced carnivores around "eating animals", but rather "that stupid notion that made Jenny refuse to attend Granny's last Thanksgiving before she died, the last time the family all saw her, just because of a dumb turkey dinner. She was Granny's favourite grandkid! And we all knew Granny wasn't doing so good! And she just would not come because of that vegan rubbish, she cared more about some dead turkey than about Granny!"
The problem is, veganism is a moral judgement, and nobody likes moral judgements. The same people who would be horrified about some bigot telling a gay family member that they were sinful and in need of having their soul saved has no problem telling meat eater family and friends that they are damned souls going to carnist hell.
As the article points out, the Pledge backfired because it involved breaking off relationships with family and those close to the vegan; the moral purity being not "He eats with tax collectors and sinners" but "They eat with meat-eaters".
ares
41m ago
I do not have any experience with Linux certification programs. I do have experience with Linux, programming, sysadmin stuff, and government jobs/roles/contracts that require certifications. I also have experience with hiring, and with convincing large organizations to pay for training. With those caveats, I think something like Linux Foundation Certified IT Associate would be worth looking into.
Benefits:
- From a reputable org, so has some value on a resume
- Not too deep for a new-to-tech employee
- Covers the basics of what you've described
I would not count on the credential to be especially useful to your company unless you know of a project or customer who requires it already. The trend I see is for organizations to focus a lot more on actual ability rather than certifications until the org get really big, and often not even then. Government jobs/contracts are the exception, but if you're doing those then you would already know which certifications to work towards.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
41m ago
You’re kind of touching on two questions.
The thing about images is that the map is not the territory. Concerns like pixels—resolution—only sneak in to quantify the limits of that map.
A mathematical construct like the Fourier transform doesn’t have that problem. The transform of a pure sine wave is the Platonic ideal of a pair of points. But you can’t make such a pair out of samples. You’re forced to approximate, which gives you a resolution.
So question 1 is “do we have a map to quantify smell?” The answer is yes, but no one can agree which is best. Here’s a more recent study which has a bunch of cool charts showing the perceptual space. There’s also the classic OChem Smells Chart.
Question 2 is how good the resolution is for any of these models. For sound and sight, we’ve done experiments to identify how small of a difference can be recognized. Presumably, something similar has been tried in the smell literature. In theory, you could use one of the Question 1 schema to choose several components of smell. Say “edibility,” “temperature,” and “irritation.” Then test different substances on each axis to estimate resolution. That’d give you a map of possible, distinguishable smells.
I’m going to be lazy and assume the same is true for taste.
ControlsFreak
47m ago
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
49m ago
RHCSA, but if they’re non-technical and this is really an aside, consider Linux+.
ControlsFreak
56m ago
I can't find the original Scott-post, but I found an old comment of mine that linked directly to this on his old website, which was presumably there because of a post he made.
My priors on this sort of thing are similar to my priors on weight loss studies - that there is a Hlynka-sized hole in the discourse. It's a multi-agent environment; other agents get to make choices, and there is no way for you to impose your idealized study protocol onto their entire life and choice set. If you can selection effect your way to people who will take agency and apply focused determination to solving the little problems along the way, it actually won't be that hard to find solutions to those problems, and a variety of "methods" will probably work about equally well (though individual circumstances may result in differing folks somewhat preferring differing methods), but if not, than basically nothing other than raw physical/biological force will cut it.
sliders1234
1hr ago
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The 5k per day is way too much. Combined with the Presidency getting to suspend the act for I believe 60 or 90 days. Then courts would have to get involved. So you can run high to get to the trigger then ignore it for 45 days. Tell the immigrants you back to not come for a month. Run some to get to the trigger. Ignore it for 45 days. Just not enough teeth that they would ever close the border.
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It’s further formalizing that 5k a day asylum seekers are fine. We should honestly just ban asylum at the border which we can do. Make them file at an embassy and have true causes. We have virtually zero true asylum cases at the US border. They are safe in Mexico. They can email Senators/Lawyers etc for asylum cases outside the country.
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This entirely depends on the courts. Conservatives are not good at controlling those type of asylum claims. If you get liberal judges on those courts who accept not being American makes them a little poor and boom asylum claim accepted then the act does nothing. And again asylum should not be initially approved inside the country.
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Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans. This is obvious we did NOT have these issues under Trump and no laws have been changed in the interim. Like you say above Trump closed immigration doing things that were “trivial to repeal or ignore”. Electing Trump is what we need to close the border. He’s done it before. Biden could do the same thing.
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Which brings up the big problem with the bill. It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open. There were no teeth in the bill to force a Democrat to close the border.
If you disagree with the “teeth” then please quote in the bill the “teeth”. How would this bill limit President AOC to 10k “asylum” seekers per year?
SteveKirkland
1hr ago
I know, it's just that I'm finally hitting my breaking point. Mostly it's that a few people who were generic libs but mocked "the weird ones" have suddenly gone all-in on quoting reddit posts, with seemingly no sense that their perspective has changed.
I've always put up with this kind of thing before, but I'm this close to cutting back my circle of friends to a handful of shared hobby autists and redneck coworkers.
It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.
Shrike
1hr ago
Yes. I just think that in large parts of Europe you're not free to behave counterculturally. In some places (e.g. France' laïcité policies) this is explicit.
Spookykou
1hr ago
I don't see how the example here represents some sort of unique turning point or even a particularly good example of the set of, 'Progressives seem to hold totally contradictory values'.
They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.
Trump disrespected the troops by saying stuff that a 'properly cultured' blue-triber would never say, like calling POWs losers for getting caught.
The people at protests waving flags, still don't like Trump for being uncouth in those ways. Also, I would guess less than half of them even know what Beirut is. Still, even if they did know, they mostly wouldn't care. They are perfectly happy to hold both the idea that Trump says rude things to the troops and that is bad, and also the idea that the American military-industrial-complex is a global oppressor and any and all resistance to it is justified. This isn't even a particularly contradictory pair of ideas to hold compared to their beliefs around gender.
More generally, you are making a liberal complaint to a progressive. Liberals care about being principled and consistent, creating generalizable rules, and all that other great civilization building philosophy junk that got totally abandoned as the internet and government student loans expanded the marketplace of ideas to include midwits.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
You can train yourself out of it. Into a new autonomous pattern. It'll take a month of daily practice. 20 minutes each morning would do the trick. Lay down on your back. Breathe deep into the area below the belly button, engaging the diaphragm muscle, almost like a pump drawing in air. Work on just fully filling and emptying the belly area of air at first. You can place your hands there for emphasis. Later, work on filling the belly area sufficiently before filling the chest. Have one hand below the belly button and one hand on the chest.
charles
1hr ago
That's not a bum, its a tramp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp
SSCReader
1hr ago
Massive, well-funded efforts to develop Determinist methods of controlling or engineering individual humans repeatedly fail, and those failures not only do not cause an update on peoples' priors, but are completely forgotten.
Certainly from the point of view of surgery they have failed so far. But if something can be done naturally, it doesn't mean we have to have the ability to replicate it, (experimental science is powerful, but observational science is also important). But I think it does demonstrate observationally that physical changes, make people behave differently. Even drugs and alcohol are the same. You are correct that what we can't do is fine tune control someone's mind (or at least as far as I am aware). But just as I am confident that I have my own free will, I am also confident very drunk me, makes different choices than sober me, even in the same situation. Again, seeming to show that physical changes impact my free will, (though of course I generally am making the choice to drink in the first place!).
Now I would also admit, that I am not certain Determinism is true, but probably we are just either side, I think it is probably true but am not certain, and you think it is probably false but are not certain? I would say there is some evidence some kind of determinism is true, but it certainly isn't irrefutable or 100% by any means.
My own internal experiences suggest to me that changes to my body, do impact on the choices I make, such that while I also experience making choices freely, some choices appear to be more free than others. I think some people would call that willpower or something similar and suggest that we have a certain "supply" of that which allows us to make choices against our biological urges perhaps? If I am hungry for a long time, or tired, I start making choices I know are bad and after the situation is resolved, I look back and wonder what was I doing? It feels in the moment that I making free choices, but in retrospect it appears I was not. Being very tired makes me snappish and irritable, so the physical processes seem to be doing something to impact my decision making.
Bartender_Venator
1hr ago
Here's hoping that Scottish girls are notably less psychotic on average
Scottish girls in my experience have extraordinarily high variance. You seem to be good at spotting the dysfunctional ones, and they get extremely dysfunctional, but the remainder of the dating pool are extremely sensible and down-to-earth while remaining endearing. Chance of meeting the latter is significantly higher in the countryside, set your radius wide and learn to enjoy a scenic drive.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1hr ago
I think so. I think its worth questioning how much of the issue is premature marriage to the wrong person and how much is detrimentally weak commitment to the right person.
Depending on your priors, you might think that a given divorce is the result of either failure state or a combination. And they merit different sorts of solutions. Better matchmaking, vs better relationship norms and counseling. I'm in the both camp.
...
This reminds me that as a minister I have something of a responsibility to the couples I marry.
It seems I'm reading your linked articles now.
I nominated this for an AAQC.
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