domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
Depends on what infrastructure people want. If everyone has septic tank, you don't need central sewage. If people want central water treatment, but don't want to (or can't) pay the taxes for it, then you have problems. There certainly are examples of sprawling suburbs (or cities with lots of suburban area) that either go into bankruptcy or depend on state/federal bailouts, or where the low-density areas of a city are effectively subsidized by the higher-density ones.
Well what about the New York Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/collection/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&classifications=any&date_begin=Pre-1850&date_end=2023&with_images=1&on_view=1&page=&direction=
The first three paintings look like they could be done by AI, or some 13 year old. There's an abstract bunch of shapes. There are some photos of some doors. Maybe 1 in 7 has something interesting going on.
Sakimichan does basically the same thing each time. But so does Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe: https://www.moma.org/artists/134447
Edit: /r/stablediffusion is nothing if not diverse
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
Is this a failure?
If your goal is to reduce congestion, which is typically a major stated goal of these projects, then yes, it's clearly a failure.
And the market makes more money!
I don't think this statement means anything, but also there is no "market" here. The state government just wants to build more highway, regardless of costs or benefits.
a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to'
I don't know why every time I end up in a discussion about roads on here, all of the car enthusiasts use the same analogy as if I don't understand that more people driving means that more people are going places. That's not the question. The question is how this particular use of space, money, and time compares to alternatives. It's like offering starving people 1,000-dollar truffle mushrooms as food, and then when someone points out that 98% of them are still starving because you could only afford to feed 2%, you pat yourself on the back because, well, you fed some people, right?
Plus, you can't just completely ignore everyone except for the group who benefits. What about the businesses and homes that would be subsumed by the wider freeway? Are they better off? What about people who live in East Austin and would like to be able to get into downtown without driving? What about people who can't or don't want to drive?
GematriaUnlimited
dependariat
11mo ago
Warning: CNN link, John Durham's investigation into the Trump-Russia investigation has been released.
I think it's clear that the politically motivated investigation found nothing but did a lot of damage. It was an early instance of the two-movies-on-one-screen phenomenon becoming a deep division in our political spheres. If there's one thing I wish I could get my remaining left-aligned friends to understand it's that their reaction to Trump is worse than anything Trump could have said or done.
Even after the Mueller nothingburger they still talk with utter seriousness about Russian interference in our elections and I don't know how this divide in our country can ever be bridged.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
11mo ago
The market in this case is utility enjoyed by people living where they prefer.
curious_straight_ca
11mo ago
I'm pretty sure they (descriptively) shamed public displays of sexuality much more, tbh. E.g. - wouldn't approve of even showing the 'bad shit' on screen in the ad.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
...what? I have no idea what you're trying to say. This is just a non sequitur.
The memes/jokes write themselves—
Budweiser: We just had a disastrous marketing campaign designed to advance the careers of our marketing “thought leaders” rather than appeal to our customers
Miller: Hold my beer
If I were a large shareholder of a Food and Beverage company, the last thing I’d want is to have the word “shit” getting mentioned anywhere near our products, including in censored form. We want our customers, and potential customers, to think of “shit” when consuming (or thinking of consuming) our food and drinks? If this happened in Mad Men, fans would have complained that such a marketing campaign is an unrealistic weakman for Don Draper to knock down.
Especially if I were a large shareholder at an American beer company, where our product is already regularly compared to piss or pisswater. This type of principal-agent problem should be unacceptable, where the progressive marketing types are feeling themselves too much, enjoying the smell of their own farts, resume-building using company resources. "Heads, spikes, walls" should be the figurative consequences as GoT Tyrion remarked. Concentrated benefits vs. diffuse costs strike once again.
Although YouTube comments are generally pretty basic, sterile, and devoid of wrong-think nowadays, that Miller Lite video has some zesty top comments (“spicy” would be too strong, as they’re more chives and onion rather than serranos and ghost peppers):
> "I always look for lectures to be given by public companies, (such as Gillette, Budweiser, or Miller Lite), in the form of commercials, to help me see exactly how I am living life with the wrong opinions, and to help guide me to change those opinions or actions to be a better person!" -Said No One Ever
> Love being lectured by a beer company for something I had nothing to do with.
> Considering the spokesperson is the type who benefits most from beer goggles, you would think she wouldn't upset the applecart too much.
> If women brew beer as good as they tell jokes, it's going to be a rough road ahead.
> Yeah, whoever runs the marketing for these beer companies needs to be fired and blacklisted from the industry.
> Did the beer companies all decide to start doing fentanyl back in March or something? How did we get 2 of the best examples of having no clue who your customers were 2 months in a row? Now notice how I said "were" and not "are".
What jumped out to me was the spokeswoman declaring: “They put us in bikinis.” As if beer companies somehow coerced women into being sex objects—rather than it being women’s revealed preferences, that many of them rather enjoy being sex objects.
By their revealed preferences, many (maybe more like most) women enjoy being sex objects to the extent they can. One isn’t supposed to Notice or point it out though, lest women feel less wonderful.
#GirlsWhoWorkOut are often in the gym face-painted, in just sports-bra and compression shorts. Music festivals and Halloween are thinly veiled, plausibly deniable excuses for women to dress up in slutty outfits to take photos of themselves and bait male attention. Instagram/TikTok/SnapChat are full of female selfies, bikini pics, lingerie shots, dances. “Hostess” jobs, ring-girls, and cheerleading squads are never lacking from a dearth of female applicants. Women's sports often serve as feeder leagues for e-thottery (and sometimes OnlyFans), ranging from women's volleyball, tennis, to MMA. Many a #WomanInSTEM treats their job as but a playground for looking cuUuUute. Every preekend in the US, undergraduate girls get dolled-up, slap on their high-heels and slinky cocktail dresses to deliver themselves to the supposed hives of scum, villainy, misogyny, and toxic masculinity that are fraternity houses. Female celebrities might complain about the alleged sexualization of women one moment, but eagerly sexualize themselves the next.
Good for women. Love what you do and you won’t ever have to work a day in your life, to paraphrase the classic quote.
I’d posit a large portion of the seethe caused by The Fappening was it unveiled that women—including famous women—enjoy being sex objects and taking sexualized, submissive photos/videos of themselves, despite presenting otherwise. It’s somewhat less plausibly deniable and #Girlboss-y when you regularly take ass, tits, and pussy shots of yourself for the male gaze, and perhaps have photos/videos floating around of yourself getting facialed like WWE Paige or Jennifer Lawrence.
To circle back on “they put us in bikinis,” it appears that women don’t like to take accountability or ownership of their decisions, their preferences. It's a common form of Merited Impossibility in mainstream discourse. Women hate being sex objects, but if they do love being sex objects it's only due to socialization. And it's not necessarily restricted to the specific topic of being sex objects:
To the extent women aren’t always strong, independent, wonderful #GirlBosses, it’s due to socialization. It’s not their own choices, not their own tendencies, not their own preferences, not their own constitution. Women are socialized to sexualize themselves, socialized to wear make-up, socialized to be preoccupied with fashion, socialized to like wearing sexy underwear and lingerie, socialized to prefer people over things, socialized not to approach men, socialized to be passive rather than active in dating, socialized to prefer tall, high-status men. Their actions and revealed preferences are only due to some exogeneous influence, like society or the patriarchy. Not their fault! They’re just victims in all this.
Socialization is a fully general boogeyman (entity of boogeytry), as if it were an Act of God or extraterrestrial intervention. “Feminists are the real misogynists,” some on the dirtbag left or dissident right might meekly insist, in trying to point out the horseshoe touching between mainstream feminists and outside-the-Overton-window red/blackpillers when it comes to absolving women of agency.
One can, of course, in dating take advantage of the female penchant for being sex objects. Living at and/or renting a nice place with an expensive-looking pool/hot-tub is a great way for getting young women to come straight over to your place, so they can have some plausible deniability and get more bikini-pics for social media. Otherwise they might put up some resistance against coming straight over, and instead push for dinner dates and/or group events (where you can court-jester and monkey-dance for her and her friends and still not get laid).
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11mo ago
Nope, outdated view
For over 200 years, Gibbon's model and its expanded explanatory versions—the conflict model and the legislative model—have provided the major narrative. The conflict model asserts that Christianity rose in conflict with paganism, defeating it only after emperors became Christian and were willing to use their power to require conversion through coercion. The legislative model is based on the Theodosian Code published in AD 438.
In the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty–first century, multiple new discoveries of texts and documents, along with new research (such as modern archaeology and numismatics), combined with new fields of study (such as sociology and anthropology) and modern mathematical modeling, have undermined much of this traditional view. According to modern theories, Christianity became established in the third century, before Constantine, paganism did not end in the fourth century, and imperial legislation had only limited effect before the era of the eastern emperor Justinian I (reign 527 to 565).[1][2][3][4] In the twenty-first century, the conflict model has become marginalized, while a grassroots theory has developed.[5][6]
According to Stark, the rate of Christianity's growth under its first Christian emperor in the 4th century did not alter (more than normal regional fluctuations) from its rate of growth in the first three centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Christianization_of_the_Roman_Empire
Also a poor argument from common sense. Rome was already very diverse, and already had many diverse gods which usually got together fine. State-sponsored Christianity would have caused considerable and significant division in the Empire, like it would in America today, whereas tolerance and a pantheon and appropriation would have kept the Pax Romana. So the argument doesn’t even require evidence to disprove
Will AI bring back beauty?
Currently, it is popular to hold that AI will soon be able to do everything. If this is the case, it trivially follows that it will be able to "bring back beauty" too - not to say that it would, but simply that it could do so, among many other things. Ignoring hypothetical scenarios of godhood however, I currently see no evidence that AI is advancing the cause of beauty in any meaningful way, and indeed I only see evidence that AI is contributing to its increasingly rapid erosion.
Your last sentence seems to indicate that you embrace the following distinction, common enough in popular discourse: on the one hand we have "the people", who are in touch with "true beauty" (either because they understand it intuitively, or maybe because true beauty just is whatever the people want, or however you want to explain it); and then on the other hand we have "the art community", who, for reasons unknown, have chosen to make a bunch of ugly crap that doesn't mean anything to anyone and has no worth.
I don't wish to defend the current art establishment tout court - they really do make a lot of crap that doesn't mean anything to anyone and has no worth. We agree on that much. But still, I think those high-falutin' art snobs do get some things right (it would be weird if they were so dysfunctional that they got everything exactly wrong). I want to take this opportunity to respond to (what I think is) your conception of beauty, and explain some of my reasons for dissenting from it, as someone who's coming from "the other side of the fence" so to speak.
What really first unlocked my thinking on issues like this is the idea of comparing work in the arts to academic work in other fields. You can imagine a physicist who thinks that classical mechanics is just like, the shit - and not even the parts of classical mechanics that are still the subject of active research like chaotic systems, but specifically stuff like Newton's original laws of motion. He just only wants to solve high school physics problems all day, maybe collect some observations that confirm your standard high school physics equations, and... that's it. And if anyone tells him that if he wants to stay relevant and get grant money, he really should consider working on contemporary problems in string theory or condensed matter, he just responds with "nah, you lost me with all that abstract modern stuff; I'm only into the real good stuff, the classical stuff".
Everyone would think that he was rather missing the point and that he wasn't living up to his proper function as a physicist. The proper job of a physicist is to discover and invent new things, not just repeat what's already been said. This is a reasonable standard to hold for most intellectual activity, and the "art cabal" simply thinks that it should hold for art as well. Yes, that's a very fine painting of a sunny landscape/a woman in a trad dress/Jesus being crucified/whatever, we all agree that it's quite nice, but it's not new. We already know how to paint things like that and make them "beautiful". It's well-trodden territory, it presents no conceptual challenges, it has no capacity to surprise or perplex. It was new at one point - it used to be crucial, cutting-edge work - but now it is no longer new, and there comes a point where you simply have to move on.
Venturing into what is new and unexplored in art will inevitably bring us into contact with all that belongs to the tragic dimension of life - loss, regret, ambiguity, disconcerting feelings of all sorts, in other words all that an untrained eye will initially consider to be "ugly". But such a circuitous route can in fact reveal to us new types of beauty that remained invisible at an earlier stage of development. One of my favorite examples of this sort of "finding of light in the darkness" has always been The Ambassadors by Holbein the Younger - I could have selected a really out-there example to really drive the point home, like say, pretty much anything by Jeff Koons, but The Ambassadors works well as an example because the painting has a foot in "both worlds". It's an immaculately executed work of traditional realism, but it also gestures towards something strange and unsettling.
The painting's claim to notoriety is the giant distorted skull floating in the middle of what is otherwise a physically ordinary scene, seemingly unexplained. I think it is crucial that we take the flat 2D representation of the painting at face value; of course the trick is that the skull is anamorphic, and that if you stand in front of the painting from the right angle then the skull will appear as a full 3D object and will no longer be distorted, but this is one case where looking at a photograph on Wikipedia is actually better than seeing the painting in a gallery. In my view, the distortion of the skull is crucial for the overall aesthetic effect of the painting. Innumerable questions immediately present themselves: who are these guys? Where are they? No seriously, why is that skull there? Why is it compressed and slanted? It looks like it's kind of floating a bit? Does it even exist on the same plane of reality as the rest of the scene? The more you think about it, the more claustrophobic you start to feel - and of course there must be no comforting answer that the skull is "just" an anamorphic illusion that the painter included as a memento mori for discerning observers; that would deflate the tension, and above all our goal is to preserve the tension.
This sort of experience comes close to describing for me, not only beauty as such, but the aesthetic experience as such - this dawning realization, as you puzzle more and more and your attention gets more and more diverted, of "...what is that?". This is the experience that "aesthetic adrenaline junkies" are always chasing after, this feeling that you just got your head rearranged by the work. What separates kitsch, decoration, finery, mere objects, from capital-A Art, is that the former tend towards producing a reaction of "ah, that's nice". Art, on the other hand, "cuts into you", as Todd McGowan succinctly put it, the same way that the skull cuts into Holbein's painting. It's not supposed to be all sunshine and roses. It's supposed to take something from you at the same time that it gives.
Anyway to answer your question the answer is "no", plebs using AI to fill up the world with pictures of epic viking dudes staring straight into the camera is as far removed from beauty as the worst atrocities of the modern MFA/gallery system.
ymeskhout
11mo ago
That was a very funny blunder from the deposition. The best explanation on this front remains that Donald Trump is functionally blind. He frequently misidentifies people right in front of him and all the notes he's seen actively using are written in a comically large font size. I don't really understand exactly why a billionaire can't use contact lenses, lasik, or whatever other space age vision technology is available, but it's funny how much legal liability he's willing to endure just to avoid being filmed wearing glasses.
GeneralElephant
11mo ago
No one gives a shit - unless you pull out a gun I doubt the cops will care.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
11mo ago
The problem is that people really like their single houses and are quite reluctant to change it. And unfortunately YIMBY-sm just doesn't have answer to that.
Nobody cares if someone want to live in a SFH. The problem is nimbys telling other people what they can and can't build on their own property.
ymeskhout
11mo ago
My point was broader than just the scenario of calling the accuser a liar, I was highlighting examples to illustrate how unconvincing vague general denials are. If someone levies an allegation that you deny, the natural reaction from bystanders is to wonder why an accuser would lie or otherwise be wrong about something so serious. A denial is much more credible if you can offer some sort of explanation to that burning question.
GeneralElephant
11mo ago
I own one suit and one tuxedo but about 7 blazers and sport coats. I wear the blazers and sport coats frequently but the suit only a few times a year .
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
11mo ago
The real question: what is the musical equivalent to Corporate Memphis? Is that what NSync really represents?
No, the equivalent would be generic royalty free stock music. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AIxY_Y9TGWI
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I scrolled through Rembrandt's Wikipedia page and there were exactly two paintings that I wanted to look at for more than 3 seconds. (Belshazzar's Feast and Pallas Athene).
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
11mo ago
You obviously do not know where Coyote Valley is. It is six or so miles from the center of San Jose. It has a light rail line going to within a mile of it. It is not Livermore, which is over a mountain. It is right there, and people will not build because they are BANANAS (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.) It is actually really near San Jose.
Coyote valley is nowhere near six miles from downtown San Jose. It's more like 19 miles. It's actually closer to Gilroy (18 miles).
It's also in a fairly narrow mountain pass that's about four miles wide (eyeballing the map).
Livermore by contrast is located on a huge open space, although access to the cities on the bay itself is limited (especially with the demise of the bart extension).
Claiming Cupertino is the center of the bay area is an, uh, interesting claim as well.
anti_dan
11mo ago
Some of urban hollowing out earlier on was because the urban core was so shitty. There was pollution, literal shit, poorly constructed dense (and tall) housing structures, etc. That is fixed in most cities nowadays. The true urban commercial hub areas like Manhattan, The Loop, etc are dense, almost fully utilized, and extremely expensive.
If we had the technology for Blade Runner style flying cars or something I would support them. If helicopters were quiet, affordable and reliable I would support them. I would certainly not accept an argument along the lines of "mini super helicopters are bad because they let people live in single family homes outside of the urban core". Just as I don't expect the government to hand out free helicopters.
I'm not asking for the government to buy me an SUV. I am going to vote for a very small portion of my taxes being used on basic infrastructure such as light rail in the urban core and a robust freeway network.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
11mo ago
True, but they donated and spent a lot too. Today's top tech billionaires hold on to their wealth much better it seems, but some billionaires have pledged to give away all fortune and leave none or little to kids. Also, the oil, rail, coal, industries faced major headwinds in the 20th century that I don't think big tech will suffer. The rise of highways hurt rail for example.
Let's say we add the new lanes, and congestion stays the same, and travel times stay the same. Is this a failure?
Let's say you have a single supermarket in a town. It's too crowded, the lines are always long. A second supermarket opens in a town. There's enough demand that, now, both supermarkets are too crowded, and the lines are too long. Is this bad? No, it's strictly an improvement - more people are buying food now! And the supermarket makes more money!
The same is true of 'induced demand' - the goal of 'reduce congestion' wasn't accomplished, but a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to' was. The extra people who drive on the new highway are benefitting greatly from the change - they can now get to places they couldn't before!
That's ... not a net decrease. That's a 'suboptimal policy'. It's only a net decrease if those resources would be used more efficiently elsewhere absent the highway. Which, I think you would agree when looking at the rest of the city budget, they're not likely to be any time soon.
A net decrease would require comparing that 'dealing with additional traffic' to the new jobs or new activities the people the additional traffic brings, or the economic benefits from the businesses employing / serving the additional traffic. And ... I can't see how that comes out net negative. Having your property sized does suck, yeah, and I'm not sure how to factor that cost in - but that's basically a universal cost of development, so it doesn't obviously bring the total negative.
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