domain:philippelemoine.com
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
15m ago
I mean, yeah, obviously the solution to AI risk is to not build hostile superhuman AI. Just pointing it out.
@RandomRanger I figure this does double duty as a reply to you.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
18m ago
I agree that shutting GoF down would be good, and also that COVID was very far from the upper end of the badness scale.
But I have to be contrary here.
an incompatible-biochemistry alga with reduced need for phosphate and a better carbon-fixer than RuBisCO Release this, it blooms like crazy across the whole face of the ocean (not limited to upwelling zones; natural algae need the dissolved phosphate in those, but CHON can be gotten from water + air), zooplankton don't bloom to eat it because of incompatible biochemistry, CO2 levels drop to near-zero because of better carbon fixation, all open-air crops fail + Snowball Earth. Humanity would probably survive for a bit, but >99% of humans die pretty quickly - and of course the AI that did it is possibly still out there, so focussing only on subsistence plausibly gets you knocked over by killer robots a few years later.
All of the algae in the world, combined, pull down a total of about 2e14 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere per year. The atmosphere as a whole has 2e15 kg of CO2. All living things on Earth, combined, contain about 5e14 kg of carbon. So you're positing that there is a new species which rapidly becomes the largest source of biomass on Earth over the course of a decade or more (probably much more, carbon capture gets harder as co2 concentration decreases), and during that time, nothing natural or engineered figures out how to eat it.
I don't buy it. I think using a biological agent to permanently wipe out the biosphere is a much harder problem than either "kill all humans" or "wipe out the biosphere by any means possible, including but not limited to Very Large Rock Dropped From Very High Up™".
FtttG
28m ago
You're absolutely right. I noted in another comment that, during the period, Sweden had fewer excess deaths per capita than the EU average.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
31m ago
In Russia, Yeltsin shelled Parliament with tanks during a massive economic depression killing over 100, with a an unstable new government. No civil war. The military obeyed Yeltsin.
Also in Russia there was the Prigozhin failed coup, still no civil war. The military obeyed Putin.
Either Russia is an inherently stable country (unlikely) or it's just very hard for an urbanized, industrialized, well-developed country to have a civil war.
I think the US would need a massive military defeat and an economic depression for a civil war. Maybe, maybe Trump's assassination attempt succeeding would be enough but I doubt it. Civil war needs more than just discontent, it needs parity between the sides. If they blew Trump away then, it'd be a pretty convincing deep state victory: no civil war just a smooth continuation/consolidation.
ulyssessword
32m ago
Your tone sounds like it's dismissing the concerns, but your claims are the furthest thing possible from reassuring.
Who's funding terrorists on American soil? How can the US claim to protect their allies when it can't even protect their staff? Who would want this outcome (okay, that's kind of a long list)?
A "reassuring" way for embassy staff to be shot dead is random crossfire from an unrelated crime. State-sponsored assassination or terrorism is the worst scenario.
HalloweenSnarry
44m ago
But at the same time, is it not true that the fighters of the Syrian Civil War were an utter minority compared to the total population of the country? And yet now the old government is gone and the country may well be in utter chaos that dwarfs the civil war.
What I'm saying is, don't discount the potential of the left in inciting a civil war, the critical mass needed for a social breakdown may be smaller than you assume.
functor
49m ago
Israel bombed an embassy a few months ago and has a long history of fighting dirty. They shouldn't be surprised that they get the same treatment back. The expectation can't be that they can finance terrorism, assassinate people, and bomb embassies and then not get the same back.
GBRK
51m ago
They have such little force projection that even terrorism would likely be kept within Democrat strongholds.
It's worth remembering that from the democratic perspective, they only actually need to control the democratic strongholds. That's where the preponderance of the nation's money and services are generated. Primary and manufactured goods are a different matter, but between the coasts, border with mexico, and great lakes, leftists can plausibly trade for those.
The federal government derives the legitimacy it uses to bolster its tax-collecting authority from being broadly popular in blue areas. If that stops being the case, blue areas can still ensure that their citizens receive welfare and medical care, but red areas can't ensure that blue areas will contribute to their economies or enforce their morality. The sanctuary city stuff is a clear-cut example of that. Blue areas wanted a cheap labor force, so they got one, regardless of red areas thought about being undercut.
HalloweenSnarry
1hr ago
Isn't the term "custodian?"
Botond173
1hr ago
Isn't it important to ask in this context what was the last time a popular Republican was assassinated? Because I have no idea.
Hieronymus
1hr ago
I hadn't seen this, so I wanted to read the statement. I found an ANC statement (not technically the government, I suppose) on reddit. I couldn't find it on the terribly-organized ANC website, but I could confirm its legitimacy by finding a copy on a regional ANC Twitter account.
And wow, it's even worse than you said:
Let it be categorically stated: there are no Afrikaner refugees in South Africa. No section of our society is hounded, persecuted or subject to ethnic victimisation. These claims are a fabrication and a cowardly political construct designed to delegitimise our democracy and insult the sacrifices made by generations who fought for freedom. ...
What the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but impunity from transformation. They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality and accountability for historic privilege.
The misuse of refugee protections to shield right-wing, anti-transformation elements is a violation of the spirit and letter of international law. ...
I am particularly struck by the phrase "impunity from transformation."
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
They have separate drinking fountains and lecture halls "for whites only"? I kinda find it hard to believe, any documentation to that?
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
Why would the US have suddenly given in because Vietnam went Red?
No, you approaching it with the wrong end. The US that would willingly give up Vietnam to the reds, without trying to do anything, would also give up without trying Poland, Afghanistan, and many other things that together brought the Cold War to victory. By itself, the loss of Vietnam obviously weren't fatal - obviously! - but becoming a type of country that doesn't even try to fight may be fatal for the chances to ultimate victory.
We can tell because US prestige declined after the defeat in Vietnam!
You are comparing it to the situation where US won in Vietnam. Compare to situation where it didn't even try.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
You are correct that the violence is currently sporadic and unlikely to escalate. What you are missing is that a precedent is being set here for the level of background violence "we" are supposed to tolerate, but that standard is being set largely by social institutions that are predominantly Blue and are sympathetic to Blue violence. At some point in the not-to-distant future, I think it is likely that it will be Reds committing the sporadic violence. When that happens, the Blues are not going to want to tolerate it, and the Reds are not going to accept an abrupt demand for a return to order and decorum. That is when things will go sideways.
I'm confident we could game out how the conversation goes, right here and now. Sometime in the next five years, a popular Democrat gets topped by an assassin. Someone comes in here and says The Culture War has Gone Too Far, we have to get a handle on the violence guys, sure things happened in the past, but now it's serious, it's time to crack down on the hate and radicalism! How do you think that conversation goes?
2D3D
2hr ago
Agree, but this also means that the lesser threats of breaking civil society due to the rampancy of low level crime is ignored, leading to a tautological ouroboros whereby the lack of reporting about crime is itself taken as proof of the lack of crime, rather than the ubiquity of said crime.
If its easy to close ones eyes to the death spiral of tolerating petty crime when it happens far away, it becomes easier to close ones eyes towards the violence committed by your ideological allies even when close by. The gays for palestine will not sway from their support for violent islamists, the hijab appreciation day brigade will not notice the cries of the Iranians being tortured, the Robin diAngelo book parties will not notice the monochromity of supermarket theft in their midst.
By social pressure, westerners see it more important to forgive foreign rapists and murderers of their kin than to enforce laws blindly. Reality might reassert itself in time, but recency bias overweights the cultural milieu of the 2010s even till now.
anti_dan
3hr ago
What are these non government groups that have demonstrated this ability? Everybody seems pretty bad at this role.
2D3D
3hr ago
There is no actual population mass willing to engage in active actions that exists to delegitimize external authority beyond their local sphere. There are cheerleaders for violence like Black Lives Matter, pro-palestinians, Jan 6 (though the motive was seizing power rather than juvenile chaos) that will celebrate violence that reaches escape velocity but are largely unwilling to travel outside the start point of violence to continue it. There are local resistances like CHAZ, Black Hammer, Koresh, technically the various Mormons, that carve out a local territory for themselves and attempt resistance against state authority, but they seem content to self implode rather than actually wage violence against society. And of course you have all criminal gang wars that exist in the space between state capacity and extractable resources, where violence is waged against each other in lowsec but never attempting to attack the state.
In none of these circumstances do we see, at least in the USA, any appetite for mass movement of violence that would see either armed revolution or enforcer defections. The Days Of Rage of the SDS in the 70s was perhaps the last time the intelligensia thought they had the mass of society on their side that simply was waiting for the chosen ones to lead the way, and they got smacked down by reality when not a single normie joined their revolutionary uprising. Even the Black Panther Party failed to significantly mobilize the Black Middle Class who were still extant (this Black Middle Class now has turned into normie whites, living entirely seperately from their co-ethnics).
The above impression of equivalence between leftist and rightist violence is due to categorization of intent, not scale or capability. Should rightist violence truly emerge, it will utterly dominate and show the hollowness of leftist rhetoric. Leftist agitators are keyboard warriors happy to cheerlead the violence spilled against their enemies, taking credit for the violence being proof of their ideologies salience when convenient and staying silent when not. The vanguard of revolution is happy to proclaim their inevitability and act as such, despite their subreddit members not being able to leave the house to get a sandwich let alone lead a charge.
Speaking from a different fight sport, your idea of going to other open mats is a good one. I think you’ve said you’ve gone to other gyms before when you travel, and traveling to fight different people and see different styles is awesome. You can get significantly the same benefits by just hitting every other gym in town occasionally, which is convenient.
Alert your partner that you want to roll intensely, if they want to negotiate you down, try to stick to your guns and cone to some agreement, like “Our third roll will be competition caliber.” Then do your best to just crush them (with technique and your natural gifts.) Maybe you win, maybe you lose, but you will eventually get a better feel for rolling in your top gear.
Also, not saying you specifically are doing this, but I see it in fighters sometimes. They get to be friends with people at the gym or the club, and then they develop a bit of a mental block about really just smashing their friend/opponent. It’s okay to crush their dreams (on the mat, with technique+natural gifts.) Just keep being the same you before and after, and they will more likely than not love and appreciate the challenge.
Iron sharpens iron or some such cliche but also true BS.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
3hr ago
Bob Jones is already buck broken. They’re 10% minority now and haven’t restricted interracial relationships for a quarter of a century.
They even let women wear pants these days.
stuckinbathroom
4hr ago
And as an opening policy, Shipman, and the most direct Bollinger-era Board proxy yet, votes to dissolve the Senate.
with_thunderous_applause.gif
WhateverHappenedToNorman
4hr ago
Man, at this rate we might get back the Falklands by Milei's second term.
UK pays Mauritius to take administrative ownership of strategic Indian Ocean base: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-set-sign-deal-ceding-sovereignty-chagos-islands-mauritius-2025-05-22/
LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) - Britain signed a deal on Thursday to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after a London judge overturned a last-minute injunction and cleared the way for an agreement the government says is vital to protect the nation's security.
The multibillion-dollar deal will allow Britain to retain control of the strategically important U.S.-UK air base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, under a 99-year lease.
Legalism gone mad, nobody is capable of taking Diego Garcia off the UK/US. Mauritius is a very poor and weak country and can be safely ignored. A quick glimpse at a map also reveals that Mauritius is thousands of kilometres away from Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands, there's really no reason to pay them to take over the area just so the base can be kept just because they were once classified as part of the same British Indian Ocean Territory.
Some element of the British decisionmaking process seems to be based on a need for international legitimacy, that paying Mauritius makes them more holy and virtuous: https://x.com/echetus/status/1841815818700492945
What changed official attitudes and broke the logjam were international judgments, the loss after 71 years of the UK seat on the ICJ held by Sir Christopher Greenwood in November 2017 and UK isolation in the UN bought on by the UK's perceived diminishing reputation for upholding international law and the UK stand on Russia's invasion of Ukraine which exposed HMG to charges of hypocrisy
Someone needs to tell these Brits that they're a P5 power. They cannot, by definition, be isolated in the UN and have anything bad happen to them other than condemnation. If you don't like an ICJ order, you can just ignore it. No such ICJ order actually happened, so Britain doesn't even need to ignore them. The US told the ICJ to get stuffed when they said 'don't go in on Nicaragua'. Israel couldn't care less what the ICJ says, they're not suddenly going to give the Palestinians East Jerusalem, let alone pay reparations. The Security Council are the ultimate court in the UN and the UK enjoys a veto there.
Soft power like the British state seems to yearn for is nothing without real power, it's a pure longhouse concept. Real power is concrete: boots on the ground, bridges built or bombs dropped. Unfortunately, the longhouse is very real if you believe in it.
The financial component of the deal includes 3 billion pounds to be paid by Britain to Mauritius over the 99-year term of the agreement, with an option for a 50-year extension and Britain maintaining the right of first refusal thereafter.
The base's capabilities are extensive and strategically crucial. Recent operations launched from Diego Garcia include bombing strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in 2024-2025, humanitarian aid deployments to Gaza and, further back, attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in 2001.
Some have alleged that there's some kind of corruption behind the deal, Starmer is known to associate with all kinds of subversive elements like human rights lawyers, some of whom are associated with Mauritius. But then he is a human rights lawyer, so that's to be expected. Who can tell the difference between corruption and treachery? Showing weakness here also opens up other problems for the UK in Gibraltar and the Falklands.
https://x.com/G0ADM/status/1925609246101807510
Sending billions to a foreign country is also perverse given that the UK is in a poor fiscal position and must impose painful cuts or tax hikes to stabilize the situation. One can observe a hierarchy of needs in modern British governance:
- Housing asylum seekers
- Paying foreign countries to take your land, so you can keep a base you already have
- Taxiing 'disabled' children to and from school (a mandated expense that's bankrupting councils and enriching taxi companies)
- Equalising pay between the sexes working different jobs at market rates, at the whim of random judges (also bankrupting major cities and resulting in third world sanitation disasters)
- Maintaining a vast social housing system in expensive parts of London housing, amongst others, the First Lady of Sierra Leone.
Very far down the list is anything associated with economic growth or military power.
If they are doing it for reasons related to wanting attributes of the other sex, and admit it, then they are trying to be a woman after all, they are just trying to be one partially (…) The same people who object to people trying to change sex also object to crossdressing, for similar reasons, so this doesn't materially change the scenario.
I reject the validity of that framing. Sure, conservatives object to crossdressing as well - for separate reasons. At least if they have any sense. By way of analogy: no doubt telos-brained conservatives object to eccentric transhumanists who want to become actual flesh-and-blood anthros. And that can certainly be grounded in teleological thinking. But they will also typically object to women putting on Playboy bunny-girl costumes as a form of sexual foreplay. And they might have coherent, respectable reasons for doing so (ie "it encourages sinful lust and fornication")! But "it goes against a human's telos to try and become a rabbit" would be an outrageously stupid reason to be against sexy bunny costumes. That's just not what those are about. Good old-fashioned drag queens aren't trying to become women, falling short, and lying about what they want. They're just men who think it's fun to cosplay as women. And again you might have moral objections to sexually-motivated roleplay, but I don't see how you can object on teleological grounds unless you think all forms of disguise and pretend are immoral even if it's children playing dress-up at the playground, or indeed, in a school play.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5hr ago
Sweden's population density is comparable to the UK's population density if you treat the British Antarctic Territory as actually belonging to the UK. In an alternative timeline where the UK annexed the British Antarctic Territory in 2019, do you think this will have reduced the transition rate of COVID?#
The population of Sweden isn't concentrated in a region that makes up only ~13% of its total landmass, as the British population would be if we were to include its Antarctic Territory in its land area.
Sweden, Finland and Norway owning a bunch of tundra does not affect the population density that the average person experiences. That tundra cannot perform spooky action at a distance and affect what happens in Stockholm.
People living in the middle of Stockholm, as well as in Sweden's other two core urban areas, will experience a high level of population density, but most Swedes are spread out in the sparsely populated regions between these cities, and they will experience a much lower population density than most people living in the UK.
I don't have strong feelings about lockdowns either way. But as someone who's lived in both countries we're discussing, the much sparser nature of the population in Sweden compared to the UK is very obvious no matter where you are in the country.
A somewhat interesting Orson Scott Card (cowritten) book on a hypothetical civil war had some ideas (but is mostly just a thriller, notable for (major plot spoiler) >!the main character dying halfway and replaced by a promoted side character!<). Basically the President and VP were assassinated (using leaked military red team plans intended to strengthen security - a mortar team and a dump truck into a limo respectively), followed by a revolt in a few densely populated cities essentially led by a high tech private militia backed by a super billionaire or two. It doesn’t end up working, really. Although at the end they pull a “it was a plot all along” by some other cabinet member to take power and become a strongman after elected President. It’s not entirely convincing that the military would actually be infiltrated as much as it was, or the militia grow that powerful without a check, but the core idea of a motivated billionaire with at least some demographic support seems more likely as a civil war case than some of the other ideas I’ve seen. I guess I could see a state national guard get into a minor standoff or skirmish, but hard to see that ballooning. Either way, I agree that civil war concerns are like, 3 decades too soon at the minimum.
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