AI is like the office worker who’s the nephew of the CEO. They’re never going to go away, but can be useful for tedious work, so long as someone checks behind them.

During the early '00 flight sim fans were enjoying a Russian game called IL2. The other offerings from Microsoft and Janes just couldn’t compete with the level of detail in the flight models. Turns out, the people working on the game were all trained in aerospace engineering. The guys who went to school to work for the famous Russian aviation firms were making video games instead because it paid better.

Systems are not the sum of the individual actors who participate in them. Systems can influence and even control individuals back. Therefore, individual flaws in character or intellect are necessary, but not adequate to explain why systems are flawed.

Consider the future imagined in the movie “Idiocracy 2005”. Society is collapsing because people are dumb. This is the explanation for all problems in that society. Capitalism, Resource extraction, environmental degradation, political corruption, and a rather authoritarian government are all blameless. The implication is that capitalism an authoritarianism are good if we could just be smart about it.

This is a big difference between left and right thinking. Republicans argue problems can be solved by reforming individuals; the police are good, there are just a few bad apples. Or that the right individual, at the helm of a system, can clean up all the issues with strength and resolve. This is the central pitch for supporting Trump.

This is a Neoliberal anthem: rights are for citizens; employees need to sit down and STFU.

Why do we reject tyranny.gov, but embrace tyranny.com?

IQ does show differences between the races. However, this isn’t evidence that white supremacy is correct. It’s evidence that IQ testing measures culture when it’s supposed to be measuring biology.

Race is constructed. Genetic, evolutionary, anthropological, and archeological evidence all point to shared ancestry and kinship. All the people’s of the world aren’t separated by near enough distance or time to explain a significant biological difference. And that’s ignoring the wide interbreeding that was always a thing. Remember Rome was cosmopolitan empire. Many of those Roman soldiers who marched down the first paved roads of London were swinging black cocks.

So what can we make of a so called “objective” measure of a “biologically determined” trait that hews to culture above biology? This isn’t just a bias that needs to be tweaked, the whole concept of biologically determined intelligence is a reification fallacy and IQ as an instrument is hopelessly broken and should be abandoned.

No, because the vegans are right, eating meat isn’t justifiable. You can’t “both sides” morality. The attempt is an admission that you’ve lost the plot.

Consider the possibility that your feelings of guilt or being judged is a call coming from inside the house.

This is not because of an executive order from Biden. This is because of the murderous war perpetrated by the criminal Putin.

If the whole Linux project died out, it wouldn’t be on the top 10,000 important things that have been destroyed by Russia.

I suspect that this is a smart TV being used as a monitor.

OK, the Utility is getting a loan against expected future payments by Microsoft. So, if all goes to plan, MICROSOFT IS PAYING FOR THIS!

Where is the extraordinary claim? Pigs have been unmasking bitcoin owners for years. And the tools they use wouldn’t be out of reach for an amateur detective or journalist.

There are laws and regulations to keep people out of your Visa statement, but the bitcoin ledger is pubic for anybody who cares to look.

Through no intervention or design, the market creates perverse incentives that only benefit a few. So the solution is to fiddle with the incentives?

Ya ever notice that “market reform” schemes always seem like negotiations with an angry god? Sometimes I think that ancient civilizations would be much better understood if we stopped referring to the “priest class” and started calling them economists.

There are two kinds of people, the kind who’ll read this and think, “This is science working”, and others who’ll think “Well, you can’t trust science”.

I love it that even among Linux users there are proselytizers that annoy everyone else. You’d think that switching to Debian or something would inoculate you from pretentious nagging to switch OS, but NOPE!

(I’m just salty because Valve didn’t pick my fav distro.)

Preservation is an invasive and destructive process. Recreating the experience of watching ‘The Daily Show’ in the 90s or early '00s is already impossible. Language and culture mildew and rot just like leather and wood.

EDIT: People don’t seem to understand what I’m talking about. Even the people who are responding in good faith seem confused. That’s on me. So I thought I’d try to clarify with an example.

Take the Mona Lisa. Perhaps one of the most preserved objects in history. It’s so well preserved that it’s impossible to see. Sure, you can look at it, but you won’t see it. Taking a picture of the painting is encouraged, but you can’t get a look at it in your camera roll either.

If you saw the actual painting hanging on a friend’s wall, your first thought would probably not be “what a masterpiece”, but “why didn’t they remove the default print that came with the frame”? If you go to Paris, you can wait in line to have the “Mona Lisa experience” but the painting you saw wasn’t hanging on the wall, what you’ll see is the Mona Lisa you brought with you.

(yes, I stole this example from ‘were in hell’ youtube channel)

The individual explosives were probably 15 or 20 grams of material that could be disguised as part of the case, components, or battery. Plastic explosives can be molded, painted, and wired to resemble almost anything.

IDK for sure, it could be as you describe, but I doubt it because the pagers were in place for months and many of them were likely disassembled/repaired in that time.

What toppings? Are we talking fresh Moz? White sauce? This is very important.

The problem with this “econ101” thinking is that it insists that the whole system runs on the choices of actors in a deterministic system.

I’d rather have an Israeli pager than an NFT Tamagotchi.