domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
Not really, no. It has some right angles is all.
Seconded, "looks like a swastika" is nonsense.
ArmedTooHeavily
6d ago
How exactly do you propose you would use an aircraft specifically designed to be stealthy as a decoy? The whole point is that the real thing is nigh-on undetectable. Either your decoy is also stealthy, and therefore is a shit-ass decoy because nobody notices it, or your decoy isn't stealthy and therefore obviously isn't the real thing.
So saying "oh fighter fell off bc evasive maneuver" smells like BS.
Concurred. I was onboard a carrier while it performed emergency maneuver drills after a shipyard period (max speed ahead to max speed reverse, full speed turns, exactly the sort of things you'd do as "evasive maneuvers"). None of the motion was violent enough to have caused a plane to fall off the ship during towing unless the person driving the tow vehicle was completed retarded. Carriers are huge and change directions very slowly.
That being said, I can also report from my time in the Navy that retards were very common and unbelievably expensive and unbelievably stupid accidents definitely happened.
ArmedTooHeavily
6d ago
which given the speed at which those hunks of metal can move and turn, is incredibly plausible (also the pilot recovery with zero issues)
Disagree, see my comment here.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
6d ago
I'm listening to the audiobooks (narrated by Patrick Tull back in the 90's, and highly rated on the relevant subreddit). He has excellent pronunciation and while his accents aren't perfect, they don't break suspension of disbelief. Highly recommended.
If you have trouble sourcing the audiobooks, the subreddit is a good place to go spitting on your hands and raising the black flag looking.
AnonymousActuary
6d ago
I think the USA's current healthcare system actually looks pretty good when you adjust for our terrible demographic/cultural headwinds (we are fat, love shooting each other, going fast in cars, drinking, and combining all 4 activities). People come to the US for top tier care (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic). We drive huge amounts of pharmacy innovation.
We absolutely spend a ton of money on it, but some of that is just we have a bunch of money to spend.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Gwern has done the public service of archiving the old OKCupid data blog. Still the best resource online for how people actually use online dating, deleted for its honesty. You'll have to adapt that to swipe apps, of course, but a lot of food for thought.
sockpuppet2
6d ago
Get rid of Medicaid. It maybe made sense at one point, but it's current incarnation is, as far as I can tell, such a disgusting mess for all involved parties that it's better to just kill it with fire.
What, other than benefit cliffs, is bad for Medicaid recipients? Hospitals would rather the reimbursement rates were higher, but what hospitals are saying that it's "such a disgusting mess for all involved parties that it's better to just kill it with fire?"
sockpuppet2
6d ago
the optimal quantity of flooding deaths is not zero
"Lying For Money" is a good book, but this turn of phrase is bad. The optimal quantity of [bad thing] is 0; the question is what trade-offs are optimal, given the available options for reducing bad things.
sockpuppet2
6d ago
I wrote back in January about how the TikTok executive order President Trump signed on his first day of office committed whoever the Attorney General would be to take that first position about the meaning of the statute (which should’ve been reason enough for any principled lawyer to refuse nomination to the office, and for the Senate to refuse to confirm any nominee). But it’s the second claim—that the President, through the Attorney General, has a dispensing power—that is even more extreme; that is not even required by the executive order; and that, if it becomes a precedent, would turn the separation of powers (if not the rule of law itself) entirely on its head.
...
Late last week, in response to FOIA requests, 21 of those letters were made public. The letters are worth reading in their entirety (in some cases, multiple letters to the same company sent at different times were included). But to summarize the highlights, across those letters, the Attorney General of the United States memorialized some variation of the following three conclusions:
- Companies that continue to support the TikTok app are not, in fact, violating the TikTok statute;
- The TikTok statute is “properly read” to not “infringe upon . . . core Presidential national security and foreign affairs powers”; and
- The Department of Justice is “irrevocably relinquishing any claims the United States might have had” against the recipients of the letters for both previous and ongoing violations of the act.
Each of these three arguments is ludicrous. The first argument is inconsistent with the literal text of the statute—which is not exactly ambiguous about what it prohibits. Unless TikTok’s Chinese owners divested by January 19 (and they didn’t), U.S. companies are barred from:
Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
Of course, “providing services” to distribute, maintain, or update the TikTok app is … literally what these companies are doing. Thus, there is no plausible argument that these companies are not violating the TikTok statute; they are continuing to do exactly what it bars.
See, also, Alan Rozenshtein in Lawfare.
Should the Senate have refused to confirm any nominee who committed to using "dispensation?" What is the appropriate response to this kind of corruption?
DefinitelyAnAlt
6d ago
I love hosting events. I usually have candid photos from there. Hiking is my other main source. Gotta take a photo at the summit. Anything from the last 3 years is game. I was obnoxious about asking to be filmed when climbing just so I could get a cool jumping-photo. Was also obnoxious about asking to be filmed when playing music at a community event. Needed a playing-music photo.
In dating you have to be forward. Similarly, be forward about asking to have your photo taken at every social event. You only need 1-2 trust worthy friends who'd wingman for you. Trust me, they understand. We've all been there. In my experience, every friends group has a photography hobbyist. They will take your photo, develop it for you and send a perfectly edited photo for free. Find this person. You will never run out of photos.
If nothing else works, yes, I recommend a photo shoot.
The audiobooks can carry you along with the narrator's tone doing a lot to provide context. Some people claim that they didn't get everything out of the books on their first 'read' but were pretty well versed by the end of the series. They then understood more on a re-read. Also some concepts aren't explained until later books where O'Brien often uses Maturin as a scrub land lubber stand in for the reader to have a sailor explain all things naval.
That might sound daunting, but if you can make it through Master and Commander things get easier (and more enjoyable).
I need to confess I still don't understand where all the sails are placed and for what purpose, but in general I understand that too much sail can tear the rigging (carrying away like a kite with a snapped line, even including ropes, beams and 'top men' ) or even crack a mast.
No_one
6d ago
Carriers are huge and change directions very slowly.
Seems it can make a 90° turn under 30 seconds, but acceleration is likely sluggish so evading anything but torpedoes seems... questionable. Anyway, carriers can tilt up to what looks like 15° during tight turns... I guess the planes /decks / towing equipment aren't designed to not slide when at maximum tilt.
https://old.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/1ka8nsu/updated_information_about_todays_hornet_loss/mpkdmng/
I believed Dr Dre … I don’t believe Kendrick Lamar.
This is actually funny (and I think a case in point), because there's no reason to think Dr Dre is any more credible about his subject matter than Kendrick. Dr. Dre grew up in a similar environment as Kendrick but he wasn't a gangster. He was just a musical talent. Ice Cube also wasn't a thug. Eazy E was probably the closest to living what he rapped, because he actually was a Crip.
In essence, Dr Dre and co. faked it till they made it: it was the money that brought in people like Suge and his affiliated Bloods.
As for Kendrick himself, at best he's about the same as Dre. Maybe, depending on how deep you dig into his old catalogue or random signs and hints he throws out, he was also affiliated. He's certainly cool with the gangs today, but he is massively famous.
Dre is not any more "real" than Kendrick, he's just not (publicly) woke and endlessly praised for it. But even Kendrick is just the latest in a long line of conscious rappers who've always been contrasted with the other strains of hip hop that are seen as hedonistic, anesthetizing and assimilationist (this tension is essentially why the hip hop community has basically contrasted him with Drake forever). What he says may not be true, but it resonates with people who already believe it to be true. That's why he's popular
I’ve always felt black Americans are Americans, just black. More recently I feel like they’re trying to be in some way more so.
A fraught relationship with the American identity isn't new. Artists like Coogler being suspicious about being assimilated or "selling out" isn't new. People pandering isn't new. The final act is pure pandering, but it's no different from the movies Tarantino is parodying when Leo DiCaprio's character roasts a bunch of Nazis in his 60s films.
I would sympathize if this was about playing the "black national anthem" or trying to move the founding date of America to revolve around slavery but what's the actual specific beef here? Was it the voodoo shit ? The Asians as middle-man minority? Characters pontificating on not being free in the 30s?
Because I have to wonder if, like @Skulldrinker, people are just fatigued with certain subject matter given everything that's happened since 2020 (I would also not trust movie reviews from people who sound like they'd wear a Notorious RBG shirt btw). The last thing was notable to me, but only because everyone still complains like that in movies made today. It's not that I don't expect people of the past to make certain noises (though my model for black southerners isn't particularly deep), it's that I hear it too much today when it clearly doesn't apply to not twinge in annoyance.
I'll give my own beef: I don't get Remmick. The movie tries to draw parallels between Remmick/the Irish and African-Americans and their relationship to Christianity but Remmick is implied and explicitly said to be very old, predating racial categories. If he was there during Ireland's original conversion it wasn't exactly like what happened to blacks. Or are we supposed to take him lamenting being forced to learn the Lord's Prayer to be about learning the English version?
ArmedTooHeavily
6d ago
From the top working down:
why cover up losses of the Bin Laden raid, even from a helicopter crash?
That's not the only thing about the raid they're covering up, the official story is almost certainly not completely true. Just as an example, the only reason we know they were using a stealth blackhawk, or that the stealth blackhawk even existed, is because they screwed up the landing and crashed one and then failed to sufficiently destroy it to render it unidentifiable. Had they not crashed that helicopter, the official story would be completely different and we'd never know. Why are there no pictures of Bin Laden's body? The official story is that after shooting him, they flew the body out to the iirc USS Harry Truman in the gulf, ran genetic tests to identify it, and immediately chucked it overboard. That strikes me as being incredibly weird, that no proof of his death has ever been offered and they destroyed the only conclusive evidence within 24 hours.
General killed by missiles
You could cover this up without involved more than a dozen people. You'd need to get his body out of Ukraine, into his quarters, and then not let anybody see it after it's "found" except an examining doctor you'd brief in to what's going on. His immediate family would probably find out, but immediate family of military killed in secret missions are generally very trustworthy, when was the last time you heard about some SEAL's wife blowing the lid off a secret mission?
faking missile hit on a ship by calling a collision
Agreed here, everyone on the ship would know what happened and that's too many low-level sailors to keep the secret.
covering up special forces killed during some off-the-book op
This is not uncommon, and there are declassified stories about doing this sort of thing from wars past. The cooperation of the dead soldier's comrades is more or less guaranteed, weeding out people who can't be trusted to not spill the details on how their friend died is one of the basic requirements of elite special forces selection and training.
No not at all. "Suspension of disbelief", as if you were hoping that you could be "taken for a ride" if you could only make yourself believe that the story really was a window to another world, is an immature way of approaching art (immature in the sense of pre-critical, pre-reflective, pre-self-consciousness).
The fact that a magic trick falls apart if you look at it too closely doesn't mean that wanting to see a magic trick is immature. Sometimes the point of an experience is the visceral immediacy of it.
Thinking that wanting to be immersed in a fiction is the same thing as that fiction being real is how a lot of media gets ruined by people who now feel they have to manage your perceptions.
I recently watched F1. The movie, like Top Gun before it, is bullshit in its specifics. And there's probably an interesting critical take to be written about what it says about the generational conflict in the West right now (both movies represent a rejection of the need to pass the torch, which is itself a backlash against "woke" reboots which also functioned as forced retirement for the Boomer celebrities and their IPs)
But I don't give a fuck about any of that, because I wanted to see fast cars and improbably skilled and handsome people in an IMAX theater. I wanted to be so engrossed I didn't care. And I was. Mission accomplished.
aqouta
6d ago
A random person in real life described Sinners glowingly then talked about how it was about how evil white people are. Im disinterested watching it now, I'd rather see Near Dark again.
It really wasn't tbh.
I find a lot of this skepticism unwarranted. It doesn't take into account that this sort of thing has been par for the course when it comes to military propaganda. The examples that come to mind my mind are the British publishing fake stories on what ships were bombed during WW2. Or repeat claims by western powers that Russia is the one doing the lying about casualty numbers, or accusation to the contrary by Russia. Which makes sense and seems rather straight forward from a military propaganda standpoint, even if it's not honest with the truth.
On top of that, the military isn't a democracy. You don't go around asking questions or digging into graves looking for answers. Not to forget that the US armed forces have covered over bigger events than the ones mentioned here, like the USS Liberty. And that was just for political reasons.
I would find it odd if there aren't internal protocols in place for how to deal with death reports, and how to those are publicized or not in case they might divulge information the armed forces don't want out there.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
Assuming the armed forces does not lie about who dies, how when and where seems... silly. The most obvious reason being that you might not want your enemies to know what is going on.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6d ago
I see what you're saying... I guess it just seems implausible to me that anyone except a diehard true believer is going to filter out even the most tepid signs of conservatism (as mentioned in the OP). And for someone like that, they aren't going to accept anyone less committed than they are. But if indeed there are otherwise moderate women who are filtering so strongly, then I agree that hiding your power level could work.
aqouta
6d ago
I thought it was pretty good until it it was very evident the writers decided they didn't want to write an ending. The exact moment(spoilers obviously) was when the Japanese lady suddenly and randomly invited the vampires in. At the exact moment it just became stupid. Up until that point the character were interesting and they managed to avoid it being overly preachy. But then it just became a series of pretty dumb scenes. I will say that it wasn't stupid in the way I worried about after the early reveal of the klan involvement. I didn't even really mind the gratuitous KKK slaughter at the very end because it had already jumped the shark.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
It's not about the system, it's about the people.
Low income, high obesity, non-White or non-east-Asian will topple any system.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6d ago
Oh, it's you again. Your first few posts weren't so obvious this time - good job upping your game a little.
Now get a life.
Throwaway05
6d ago
Yeah you can absolutely get some things done faster by heading over to the U.S. but keep in mind that the times where it's really useful (ex: cancer workup, need a new knee) it will become cost prohibitive and unreliable very quickly.
I assume the reality of the situation is Canada is not as bad as some of the stories would make it seem but those stories are still quite alarming.
It's also worth noting that while US care is expensive EMTALA and others things ensure you will get care for most types of maladies even if you become bankrupt afterwards. Many countries don't ensure this this outside the affluent west.
It still seems like a mistake to me bc..can't phalanx intercept 3 mach objects? Don't carrier groups have SM6 to get rid of this ? Worst case it hits, it's maybe a 250 kg warhead, probably not even armor piercing, would just smudge the deck no?
And this here would depend on the seeker having as strictly very limited range of searches so you could get out of it by sailing those few minutes.
But we don't really know anything firm and they won't say so.
More options
Context Copy link