domain:npr.org
HalloweenSnarry
29d ago
I am going to join the others in disagreement and point out that it definitely seems like the Japanese have been pretty anti-war since 1945. Now, sure, attitudes can change, the Japanese aren't ignorant of the rising tensions and potential threats of the current age, and there isn't exactly a political monoculture, but one needs only to look at the freaking cartoons they make to see that the population seems pretty inoculated against the more warlike tendencies they had in ages past.
MathWizard
formerly hh26
29d ago
I read a comment on Reddit by someone who talked about posting Flat Earth stuff as a creative writing exercise. You get to think up clever arguments and find loopholes when arguing against people who are objectively correct, and not worry about getting your ego hurt if you're proven wrong because you're not actually taking it seriously. I browsed the Flat Earth sub for a bit after that and tried to figure out who was serious and who wasn't, though with no way to test that I have no idea how successful I was.
I think the main issue I'd have with actually participating is the propensity to delude naive and mentally ill people into joining unironically. The more people who are involved and having fun and aren't lunatics, the more legitimate the movement seems. Although on the other hand it's a relatively harmless conspiracy for people to believe, so maybe it helps steal thunder away from more dangerous conspiracies that mentally ill people might fall into, so maybe it's useful, I dunno.
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
What do you mean that ChatGPT doesn't possess understanding? How would you even determine that?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
29d ago
Just get rid of the regulations! It's insane. In Australia, nuclear power is illegal - we're actually trying to buy US nuclear submarines because they're superior to conventional subs in range. But no, we can't have nuclear energy for civilians despite having by far the biggest uranium reserves on earth. Our geography is stable and technology is quite advanced. We have a research reactor. We should be a nuclear energy superpower, mining and enriching and building reactors.
Stalin blamed Soviet economic problems on 'wreckers', workers deliberately sabotaging machinery, undermining morale, giving false orders. Ironically the wrecking came from the top down, in incentives, laws and institutions that undermined performance. That's the problem the West faces - industry taking body blows from regulators on housing, energy, production and so on.
07mk
29d ago
Oh yeah, for manufactured pop bands, of which Kpop is perhaps the perfected version, I feel like they're appreciated more for their performance abilities than for their song recordings. So fans might insist on actual human dancers and singers (I don't know how much lip sync is common in these performances; do fans insist they actually sing into the mics while also doing complicated/strenuous dance moves in concerts?), even if they don't care about the AI writing the songs or even "performing" the music. Virtual concert performances like the Crypton Future Media Vocaloids might gain traction, but I also imagine they'd have to be some rare major figure like a Hatsune Miku or perhaps some popular Vtuber (whether human or AI-controlled) for fans to actually want to come out to watch such things.
But with AI songwriting, that's the kind of thing that real human songwriters could employ and just lie about pretty easily, to get the best of both worlds. If Taylor Swift used ChatGPT extensively to write her lyrics or used Suno and reverse-engineered its melodies for her own melodies and just lied about it, no one would ever know, and fans would get the enjoyment of genuinely believing that they're hearing songs that came pouring out of Swift's heart or whatever.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
Now I have an America-hating ex girlfriend! That much hasn't changed. She failed her exams, not that we broke up because of that. We had issues, and I can't point my finger solely at her.
I did love her a lot, if that wasn't obvious, but at least I won't have to cajole her into moving with me, assuming that ever happens. For now, the UK it is for me, for the next 3 years at the least.
The most damning evidence in the OJ trial (barring DNA which was little understood by juries at the time) wasn’t the glove, or the record of Simpson’s movements, or the police interview. It was the fact that his defense could not provide any alternate account of what happened to Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman whatsoever.
Why was this a big problem? Because the bodies were discovered at the crime scene. Investigators scientifically studied the scene of the crime, documented evidence found at the scene, performed autopsies of the victims in order to scientifically prove the occurrence of a murder at a precise time and location, along with a cause of death.
The physical evidence found at the scene, and immediately investigated by authorities using standard-operating forensic practices, narrowed down the possibility space of "what happened to Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman" by 99.99% compared to the counterfactual of no bodies being found, no forensic investigation of the scene of the crime, no murder weapon, no witness reports during the occurrence of any crime.
In contrast, at Treblinka, we have no bodies, we have no murder weapon, we have no contemporary witnesses, we have no documentary evidence. There has not been a single excavation or forensic study of any mass grave at Treblinka- ever. It has not - even remotely - been proven that approximately 900,000 people were murdered at that site. In fact, there is no evidence at all that even 2% of that number of people were ever at that site at any point in time.
If there were no bodies, no murder weapon, no witnesses, no forensic investigation of any crime scene, then there would never have been a trial in the first place.
But it gets even more bizarre.
Let's say that in the Simpson case there were no bodies ever found or autopsied, or forensic evidence ever presented. Then let's say that some witnesses come forward and say, years or even decades after the fact, that they witnessed the murder and know the precise location where the victims were buried. Can you even fathom that there would be no attempt to excavate the remains of the victims in order to procure the evidence that was so crucial to the case in the first place - the evidence you just flatly take for granted in your comparison? It's beyond the pale to imagine that prosecutors would say "we aren't going to excavate the remains or provide autopsies, because that would be disrespectful to the victims."
Your comparison fails, because in contrast with the Simpson case with Treblinka we have:
- No bodies.
- No autopsies.
- No murder weapon.
- No proof that the alleged victims were even at the site claimed (i.e. no transport documents establishing those people were ever even brought to that camp, at any point in time, in the first place).
- No contemporary witness accounts.
- The prosecution claims to know exactly where the victims are buried, but they forbid excavation or forensic analysis of the alleged mass graves.
- The case is entirely reliant on witness testimony, with the earliest (and therefore most important) witnesses demonstrated as absolutely unreliable.
In contrast with the case of Treblinka, in which the Mainstream claims that they know exactly where the mass graves of 900,000 are located but have never excavated or proven the existence of a single mass grave of any size at any point in time, there is another case of a mass execution in which sound forensic practices were utilized: the Katyn Forest massacre.
When the Germans discovered the mass graves of the Katyn Forest massacre they:
- Invited international observers to oversee the criminal investigation, and they released American POWs who were tasked with reporting on the integrity of the German investigation to the Western Allies.
- Excavated the mass graves, performed autopsies, attempted to identify victims and cause of death, and of course documented everything they found.
- Identified the weapons used to perform the executions, and used circumstantial evidence like the clothing worn by the victims, and the state of putrefaction of the bodies, to prove time of death as under Soviet occupation.
In spite of the lengths the Germans went to in order to scientifically investigate the scene of the crime, they were still accused of the Katyn Forest massacre by the Soviet Prosecution at Nuremberg, which produced witnesses to attest to the fact the Germans committed the crime. The authors of the Soviet investigation of the Katyn massacre, which falsely blamed the Germans for a crime that they had actually committed, submitted their report as evidence in the Nuremberg trial (USSR-54), and they were the same as the authors of the Soviet report on the investigation of Auschwitz (USSR-8), with the addition of Trofim Lysenko as a signatory to the Auschwitz report.
Soviet investigators denied access to Western observers during their own investigations of these alleged "extermination camps." As mentioned before, initially there were claims of "death factories" with gas chambers in both the camps liberated by the Western Allies and camps liberated by the Soviet Union. But Western observers investigated those claims and proved they were false. The Soviets denied any access to Western observers during their own investigations, and those are the only camps where those claims exist today.
I sincerely hope, at this point, you are genuinely wondering why there has never been a single excavation to even prove the mere existence of a single mass grave at Treblinka. The answer to that question is that Jewish authorities forbid any excavation of any mass graves. They use the exact same excuse as cited by the perpetrators of the Kamloops Mass Grave Hoax. Genocide deniers ask: Where are the bodies of the residential schoolchildren?:
Where is the actual evidence of the 215 bodies discovered at the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School? ...
Most of us know where the bodies are. The search at the Kamloops site that once was an orchard was prompted because of a discovery of a child’s rib bone. This gruesome find was not a surprise to those whose memories of being woken up in the middle of the night to dig graves were a part of witness testimonials — similar to most testimonials — about the evils that befell Indigenous people.
After Kamloops, dozens of sites called for similar inquiries. This week, a geophysical examination at the former St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School observed 93 “reflections” through ground-penetrating radar.
I wonder if the word “bodies” has now been changed to “reflections” possibly because such findings have been called into question by the aforementioned commentary. In turn, this commentary was most likely spurred by published articles, including one by a university professor, and social media postings that challenge the validity of the evidence.
This kind of questioning is the status quo of what Canada has nurtured for the better part of 200 years — the idea that the Indigenous people’s existence, but mostly their disappearance at the hands of settlers, is something that can be flamboyantly denied.
But. Where. Are. The. Bodies?
They are where they were buried — in those secret or official graves. At this point, nobody is going to be digging up those children to satisfy a bunch of white settlers’ points of view as to what we should be doing with our tragically deceased little ones.
Currently, we don’t have protocols in place yet (that I’m aware of) on how to sensitively deal with the graves. However, we are taking our cultural beliefs into consideration, which go against unsettling rest spaces. This call for bodies is nothing more than a racist rant bordering on genocide denial.
How far will a denier go? When no longer able to refute the absurdly massive physical evidence, Holocaust deniers started to appeal to more “scientific” data. For example, they claimed that the chemical analysis of hydrogen cyanide compounds showed the amounts were not sufficient enough to kill people in gas chambers. Posing as tourists, these “scientists” would gouge chunks of plaster from the walls of gas chambers to send them for analysis.
What happened in residential schools is not about the evidence.
This is the -exact- same reasoning used by Jewish authorities to forbid any scientific investigation of the alleged mass graves of Treblinka. If they excavated the site it would immediately disprove the hoax - in both cases, so they cite cultural sensitivity and denounce anyone who expects a bare minimum-standard of scientific investigation as a "genocide denier."
It's unfortunate I was banned and couldn't respond to you in a timely manner. But your example falls completely on its face for the simple fact that the Simpson case had a crime scene and bodies which were forensically investigated, and there has never been any attempt to forensically investigate any mass graves at Treblinka! There isn't even proof that the alleged victims were even at that location at any point in time. There are no bodies. There is no murder weapon. There are no contemporary witness reports. Jewish authorities forbid scientific investigation of the site using the exact same logic as the perpetrators of the Kamloops hoax, a legal maneuver which would be unconscionable if the reported location of Simpson and Goldman was concluded by prosecutors, but the prosecutors blocked any attempt to scientifically prove that the victims are buried where they are claiming.
You have no grounds to compare the two cases here, only to prove the importance of the body of physical evidence in the Simpson that does not even remotely exist in the Treblinka case.
Felagund
29d ago
Be prepared to spend $ to keep up with the meta-game though.
This probably depends pretty heavily on what level you're playing at and what particular deck you're playing.
I have an Imoti deck that I built for like $12+shipping+sleeves that had a much better win rate, back when we were tracking, than several friends' decks who spent hundreds. That's an extreme case, but the principle (you can make capable decks under budgetary constraints) stands.
MathWizard
formerly hh26
29d ago
I really like MTG Arena, because I am addicted to screens. In particular:
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It's free to play. If you want to get all the fancy cards you have to pay real money, or play the game regularly in order to complete enough daily quests to get card packs, or be good enough at drafts that you can win more stuff than you lose. But if you're okay with being slightly-underpowered, or if you scrape together enough to make one good deck and keep playing that deck, you don't have to pay a cent. And I never have. Back when I played physical magic I had to pay real money AND be underpowered compared to my friends who paid more than me.
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You can just pick up and play with someone, instantly, at home. As someone without a lot of friends, and who doesn't like going out and doing things, it's convenient to just feel like playing Magic on a whim and then a few minutes later after the game boots up I have someone to play against, and then I can stop when I'm bored, and then play another match a few hours later. It's really convenient. I guess if you and your son are playing together that's less of an issue.
But everyone is different and your situation is quite different from mine.
As a side note, how do you make things fair when playing against your son? Do you just go easy on him? Do you give him a way better deck than you and then trying to overcome the difference? My fiance and I have not had much success playing together because I've played a ton and she's played almost none and I'm too much of a tryhard I can't figure out how to avoid utterly destroying her except with incredibly patronizing handicaps, and it ends up no fun for either of us.
The older sister thing is a common story. Happened to my mom as well, she got married because her younger sister fell in love with a grad student, and they were planning to tie the knot before they moved to the States. My mom wasn't one for romance, barring some traumatizing incidents where I accidentally read her Mills and Boons novels out of boredom as a kid lmao.
The main issue is that in some more conservative parts, people get suspicious if the older sister (not a brother) isn't married yet, because it raises concerns about why that hasn't happened. Is she a bad egg? What's wrong with her? And those concerns can hamper the younger one, even if it's for entirely benign reasons.
In actual India, this isn't a big deal, not most of the time, especially if the family has a decent excuse, such as the older daughter still being in grad school, doing a PhD, being in a committed relationship and so on. But if they emigrated a while back, they probably still have older cultural attitudes ossified in them, all the more if they're explicitly looking for an arranged marriage (most Indians abroad don't do that, as far as I'm aware, it's usually acceptable for them to find their own). I'm not condoning this, I find it rather sad, but that's my understanding of the issue.
She was also talking about matchmaking sites where all sort of criteria are included, like skin tone. It was problematic that her older sister was darker skinned than she was. Wild stuff.
Ah, Indians of all castes and creeds are obsessed with skin tone. The fairer, the better as far as they're concerned. Skin lightening creams of dubious utility have been raking in billions, for decades.
This is an issue for both men and women alike, but a bigger deal for the latter.
Hell, even I internalized this as a kid, and until I was secure in my own skin, dark as it is (hardly the darkest, but still obviously brown), I used to be deeply jealous of my younger brother who happened to be both fairer and otherwise more classically handsome. But that's a thing of the past now, and has been for a while. I have my own personal appeal, be it when it comes to looks or otherwise. But I know I look fine. He's certainly still more handsome, but motherfucker needs it, given how bad his ADHD is, I'm praying he ends up bagging a sugar-mommy so he doesn't have to work for a living heh.
Now this hasn't changed, it's been a cultural obsession since before living memory, and I don't know how well glutathione skin lightening creams work, but if there's something coming out that obviously makes people fairer, it'll make more money than Ozempic does.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
That's a good while away. While I'm on the wrong side of my 20s, I'm still relatively young and probably younger than most doctors at my level, primarily because I got into med school on my first try and smashed all the million exams I needed, here or abroad, to keep progressing, with the only notable delay being maybe 6 or so months lost because I was waiting for my ex to pass an exam I managed on my first try and she didn't.
Guys don't hit walls till they're well past 35, maybe well past 40 if they take care of themselves. I'm not waiting that long to settle down, 2 to 4 years is what I have in mind. And for me, the most pressing issue would be losing my hair, which I have a 80% chance of suffering given my dad had male pattern baldness. But he got married at 33, and he had a full head of hair then, and I remember being old enough to recall him starting to lose it.
Then again, I do know what to do about it, namely minoxidil, or a trip to Turkey or India to visit the hair transplant surgeons. It's not a pressing concern by any means, and so far, I've only gotten better looking with age, and most girls do like a guy older than them, even if I have a thing for older girls.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
Well, I can't imagine an ELO calculated from views and match rates wouldn't serve as the "ground truth", regardless of how they rate themselves.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
India has like at least 30 distinct ethnicities, and people from the different corners bear about as much resemblance to each other as a Norwegian does a swarthy Spaniard with Moorish ancestry. Or they do to with a Pacific Islander or Australian aboriginal, or the fucking Chinese. People from the North Eastern regions are far closer to the Thai, Nepali or Bhutanese in terms of looks than they are to me.
It's a fucking diverse country, not that I expect Westerners to be able to make out finer distinctions than North vs South Indian, or maybe Punjabi if they're wearing a turban.
So yes, Pakistani girls, while overlapping with Indian girls from across the border (said border being largely arbitrary at the time of independence), do look notably different, and what else but genes would account for that? I think they're super hot, but it's not like I don't know hot Indian women from my own particular ethnic group or any other.
SwordOfOccam
29d ago
Wow. There are no bodies?
Cremation couldn’t have been involved, perhaps?
How do you feel about the archeological efforts that have been done?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp
Like, it’s remarkable you bring up the apparently fake Canadian graves, when the same technique was used at Treblinka and they found stuff.
Is what they found made up? The reinterred remains faked? The confessions of Nazis like Stangl just irrelevant?
You’re not dealing with evidence cited on Wikipedia for Christssake. Your writing here seems to implicate you’re not even aware it exists as a claim—even if you think you can show it’s BS.
Try to at least be aware of evidence you claim doesn’t exist:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna66241
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unearthing-the-atrocities-of-nazi-death-camps/
Mantergeistmann
29d ago
The problem is that we can not build them in the USA. Out of the last 4 units we tried, two of them ran up construction costs approaching $30 billion before they threw in the towel and got canceled. The other two at least got built, but again, with a cost of some $30 billion. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5x as expensive as wind or solar.
We can’t talk about nuclear without acknowledging that the USA, as a country, can’t build nuclear anymore. Anyone who who even tries goes bankrupt. I don’t mean there is a lack of political will, though there is that. I mean we don’t have the manufacturers, contractors, designers, or financial sponsors that know how to do it. It’s really sad.
If I recall, the MIT study on the matter even straight up said that it's not the cost of the nuclear portion that drives up the price, it's the general construction and horrible project management of the rest of the site.
SwordOfOccam
29d ago
I’ve joked before we should mass produce aircraft carriers.
Can solve energy and housing problems with one stone.
And what are the odds they're going to breakdown on me and require the same sum in servicing? I don't know how much of that is a meme, or how expensive it'll get.
BMWs are rather expensive here, like, you know someone in India has broken out of the UMC if they drive one. Most cars not manufactured here have their prices literally doubled because of import tariffs. So even a brand new one is far more expensive and it's a far poorer country. It's why Musk never launched Tesla here, he couldn't get the government to budge, and probably realized that the market willing to pay those prices for an EV would probably be picking up a Porsche, leaving aside the difficulty and cost of making supercharge stations.
My family could definitely afford one new, here, but we couldn't when I was growing up, and we have nothing to prove in that regard. Our money is mostly tied up in sensible things like investments or real estate.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
Isn't the median car price in the US like $35k? But you lot are certainly fond of overpriced pickups and massive SUVs used to ferry the kids to school and pick up groceries.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
Oh driving is waaaay easier in the UK. When I have relatives who either learned to drive there or became accustomed to it return to India, they have conniptions at the sight of our roads, let alone the other vehicles. Hell, even as a pedestrian, I once got into an involuntary standoff with a car at an unmarked crossing. I was waiting for him to cross first, and it took me a good minute to realize he was polite enough to wait for me to go first. We were both smiling and shaking our heads at each other when I did figure that out. I'm used to running madly across the road in the middle of traffic. Not that bad, we all do it, and nobody I know has died yet.
And I'll be traveling down sedate suburbs and if I'm unlucky, some lovely rural countryside (I'm a city guy, sadly), so I don't expect to be engaging in illegal street racing.
Saloons/sedans are - at least in my impression, maybe other Brits would disagree - pretty deeply uncool for a young person and associated with balding professionals
@2rafa thoughts? Because I'd be pissed off if it's true, a little. Because I personally prefer the aesthetics of sedans and saloons, though I obviously care at least a bit what others think.
Not that I think estate cars or crossovers look bad, I strongly dislike SUVs for how impractical they are, and a hatchback just screams broke motherfucker to me here, even if it's different elsewhere. I guess I'll get over my hangups if I have to. Thanks!
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
Oh right. Kind of a stupid question on my part, in retrospect.
Nah it's not a stupid question, quite a lot of people don't even realize that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were once continuous and you couldn't tell you were somewhere else until you were several hundred kilometers past the border.
A lot of the changes was people fleeing in the tens of millions during the Partition, but even then, the populations across the border don't diverge that much. But at least if you go far enough west in Pakistan, you can tell they're closer to Afghan than what you'd think of as Indian.
ThisIsSin
Personal corporatehood
29d ago
But you lot are certainly fond of overpriced pickups and massive SUVs used to ferry the kids to school and pick up groceries.
Small trucks are functionally illegal to sell in the US, so that's a gimme. As far as the SUVs (and the jacked-up station wagons we call "crossovers") go, I believe the reason people want them is sure, for utilitarian reasons, but there are a bunch of usability things that SUVs have over normal station wagons:
- Way easier to climb up than down, especially in tight parking spaces, or for people who are fat and/or old
- HID/LED headlights mean vehicle height is an arms race for visibility
- Extreme standards for rollover and crash protection mean you need all the height (for visibility) you can get
I will point out that it can be a viable strategy to get something older for cheaper and pay for preventative maintenance; your TCO may be less in that instance though after some years (15-20 in drier climates, but being close to the ocean brings salt in the air) you need to also start worrying about rust. I'm not sure if it's functionally illegal to have an older car in Scotland.
You want something fun that's also going to last... why not a Subaru WRX? Fuel economy with them could be better but isn't bad; just avoid the naturally-aspirated models older than 2012 or so because their head gaskets are wear items in ways not true for the turbos. Available in a sedan, practical enough, good for the occasional snowfall.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
29d ago
I understand that there are people who do buy them for utilitarian reasons, but the majority of drivers seem to be suburban soccer moms, or at least that's what other Americans online like to claim. I haven't been in the States since before the NYC skyline looked very different.
Hmm, the WRX sedan variant doesn't look bad at all, I'll look into it too, though I don't know what the fuck a head gasket is (I know what a gasket is).
The point is getting ones who correctly estimate their rating, just publishing it serves no reason.
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