Kwakigra @ Kwakigra @beehaw.org

Posts

32

Comments

537

Joined

2 yr. ago

Rats are known to be more intelligent than us. When it comes to problem solving in as short a time as possible they win. Humans are not the samrtest animals, we are the animals capable of learning through abstract means. Our brains can encode lessons and decode them with nothing more than language. That's what separates us. We thankfully have less need of intelligence than other animals. Despite appearances, we are the wisest animals rather than the smartest.

Satirical, fake AI-generated clips show Rishi Sunak declaring, “Please don’t vote us out, we would be proper gutted!” and making unevidenced claims about how the Conservative leader is spending public money - including how he will send his “mates loads of dosh”.

I thought this article would be making a case against TikTok.

I think the main issue with 5E is that it's so dominant and well-known people have been trying to make 5E into the game they want rather than seek a system more similar to their desires. 5E can be difficult, but at the many tables I've played at it's almost guaranteed every party member will survive almost everything to preserve the narrative. It's a system as forgiving as the table wants, and the table usually wants it to be forgiving.

It's easy for one person to learn an entire system, but it's easier for a DM to find players who already know 5E than to find a group of people willing to learn a new system. It can make people feel trapped by 5E.

Personally, I love the system but hate what Hasbro has done to the RPG community. While I'll still probably play 5E since I've already had it for years, any purchase I make in the future will be from a third party or from a different publisher.

The most recurring theme is that I took Melatonin before bed and I can't remember them. I just wake up drenched in sweat with my heart racing, so I assume what I woke up from was a nightmare. Have never had a nightmare otherwise.

And shockingly, no central command compound just beneath it. Another "mistake" by the idf resulting in the deaths of men, women, and children.

Cool, I only ever watched Ghost in the Shell but have recently seen some of the creator's other work which was also great. Appleseed is next on my list.

It's an intersting contradiction trying to square what seems to be two completely different approches to housing. You seem to be mainly concerned with having stable housing on your own terms as your priority. This article seems to be targeted toward those whose priority is capital gains. While you and I see a house as a place to live, the market sees housing as a financial asset and the main financial asset available to the average person. Through that lens, this article demonstrates that one could actually lose money on their investment instead of gaining it implying it would be better to invest elsewhere.

The own nothing and like it model works very well for plutocrats since what they "own" are valuable financial assets which can be leveraged to borrow as much tax-free cash as they want for as long as they live, using their unlimited credit to borrow more cash to pay back the loans until they die. A step below that are people who understand that it's always better to risk the bank's money than one's own and live their lives on credit as well. That's all the capitalists who can basically live through arbitrage. The model breaks down a bit for us workers who are expected to behave like capitalists but without access to the credit that comes from the social classes described above. There are some people who luck out doing this, but this system was not made for regular people. I personally would rather live like a person with a house.

I thought it was moral dissonance. I'm at least glad that in youger generations mass murder is coming to be seen more universally as evil even when committed against groups who are not white. I'm sorry about whatever happened to you to make you this way.

From your initial comment it seems like the main misunderstanding is that nation states unilaterally declared by European powers in Africa and Western Asia from the nineteenth century until around the middle of the 20th century have been utterly disastrous to those places rather than being the only source of order in those places. Although these nation states are seen as legitimate by the powers which established them, in the opinion of many of the victims of these European powers whose population is much larger and much more relevant since they are physically present for the consequences of this establishment, tend not to consider them as legitimate and more of an encroachment. Colonization is not a neutral or natural process but an act of aggression by parties with superior military might on parties vulnerable to that might. If your view is that might makes right, then the issue here isn't in historical misunderstanding but more of a moral dissonance. If that isn't your view I'd be willing to entertain a more detailed conversation.

Veritasium endorsed a known racketeer and as a consequence some portion of their audience is now going to be defrauded in an economy where there's not a lot of room for that especially among those in need of therapy. Watching Veritasium videos causes the channel to have greater exposure, increasing the risk to the general population if engaged with by anyone. Therefore, engaging with this channel in any way is harmful to others.

From CNBC:

The charges against Trump are Class E felonies, the least serious category under New York law. Each count carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Experts tend to think it is highly unlikely that Trump will face any jail time as a result of the hush money verdict. “I’d be shocked” if Trump is sentenced to jail, Bachner said. He added that a sentence of probation would be normal for the average defendant convicted of the same crime. [Judge] Merchan has made clear throughout the trial that he is mindful of Trump’s unique political status, and he has previously expressed reluctance to put the ex-president behind bars.

Gershman told CNBC that a jail sentence is “certainly plausible,” and that it “would not be out of bounds” for Merchan to sentence Trump to some time behind bars. But he acknowledged that, due to the immense and complex challenges of incarcerating a former president, the judge might instead opt for a sentence of house arrest. “This case goes to the heart of our democracy, according to the judge,” Gershman said. “He views this case as very, very serious.”

There are probably more obstacles to my daydream than I'm aware of. That being said there is nothing static about science. Comparing what we're doing now to what we were doing a century ago, two centuries ago, and three centuries ago we might as well be comparing completely separate enterprises based on almost completely different fundamentals. Academia has never been as organized and wide-reaching as it is today so it may seem like a monolith, but it's a new monolith which I'm not sure will remain exactly as it is for long (relatively). I think there's some room for experimentation.

Fortunately I don't need to have all the answers in my imaginary journal. I imagine it more as a cooperative enterprise among scientists who have become disenchanted with established academic paradigms and are looking to do the research and experimentation in that zone which is of interest to scientists themselves but not necessarily supported by the need to publish in the areas most emphasized by the academic establishment. This is not anything against what exists and what is being produced which I personally consider to be important, only to provide additional avenues to serve science in ways it's not currently being served.

You're right that credentials in this model are fuzzy. At least at the beginning it would be composed exclusively of scientists already working in their field who would want something like this. It could be possible that these scientists answering only to their immediate guerilla journal peers may see fit to support the research of an individual with no doctorate but who has demonstrated their self-education has made them capable of designing an experiment which can be quantified, criticized, and re-produced. Whether this standard would be agreed upon by the greater community would certainly be controversial with plenty of politics involved, but that reality it outside of the scope of my daydream.

As for the sustainability, it's as in question as any open source project. It lives and dies based on peoples' desire to do it only because they want to do it and others want to support them doing it. This couldn't be a career alternative to academia because making it into a business or non-profit would defeat the purpose as it would attain the same vulnerabilities to a much more severe degree than the much larger and stable existing model.

Not necessarily. Just because my theoretical journal wouldn't be subject to the existing academic establishment it does not mean it would accept everything. This journal would be more rigorous because it would be composed exclusively by fidelity to the scientific process. I am not anti-academia, only acknowledging that the existing structures are so large and composed of so many egos that there is necessarily over-focus on some areas and under-focus on other areas as a consequence of the structure. My pretend journal wouldn't be for everyone rejected from those institutions for explicit reasons of incompetence, it would be for those scientists who want to pool resources to do work that would not be easy to support on the current academic model.

I often fantasize about guerilla science done by serious people outside of official channels. While there are plenty of crackpots who desire this for political reasons, I would really like to see an open-source "journal" by and for those scientists who are in it purely for science and have become disenchanted with the current model which is compromised in some ways that prevents progress on certain concepts.

This is interesting to think about because I might be one of the last generations of people who existed physically with one another more often than we would text or message one another. Since my old man hat is on, back in my day if you let one fly like this there were immediate social consequences. Everyone would go silent and look at you in disapproval and the person who was really invested in expunging the word would, at that moment, explain why saying that word was unacceptable. The person who said it of course wouldn't have a change of heart, but they would learn that if they wanted to participate socially they would have to watch their language.

Now that it costs $100 to leave the house and most socialization takes place behind in a non-rich communication medium there isn't really a consequence like there used to be. In most online "communities" no one is actually in community with one another and have no reason to be pro-social other than wanting to be pro-social. Trolling has always been a problem, but now that more of the population in general is communicating primarily on the channels where trolling is happening, trolling is now a political and social problem.

In 2016 Hillary Clinton funded the Donald Trump campaign in hopes to bolster elements of the Republican Party so dangerous that voters would be forced to vote for Democrats under duress. This is the culmination of the DNC strategy since now under duress we must materially support genocide to prevent immediate physical danger from a lawless rogue government who would also continue that genocide.

In 2010 the ability for the United States to exist democratically was ended through the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision. Democracy can't withstand the full unimpeded force of capital determining the potential candidates for the people to vote for and writing the bills those candidates vote on. This is aside from the fact that the better funded congressional candidate wins election over 90% of the time, and while this correlation does not prove causation, a different correlation is that congressional voting behavior strongly correlates with the desires of campaign funders and correlates not at all with the polling of their constituents.

Voting for Biden under duress at this time is probably necessary (at this point it seems clear losing the election to Trump is not their greatest fear), but unfortunately if we hope to salvage this system more is required of people than voting. I'm not sure if actual non-fictional human beings are capable of what is required right now, so hopefully whatever this system turns into can eventually be overcome and not replaced by something even worse.

All this to say Trump being a king bastard doesn't negate Biden also being a king bastard who has probably done more damage to peoples' lives and the health of our society just with the Crime Bill than anything Trump did. Trump has promised to do worse than any president of the last few decades has done and since the ever increasing stress levels in our culture are causing more of us to lose our minds, explicit fascism (Christian Nationalism is our openly fascist movement) is now a possibility in addition to our existing issues of racism and capitalism. Preventing the worse case is not saving anything and also won't prevent the possibility of a worse worse case in the future. Everyone voting for Biden is doing so against their will. Trump, having cult charisma, has a number of delusional sociopaths who support him. Winning this election means winning the prize of more of our humanity being commodified and a continuation of old fashioned school of "do it or I'll kill you" in international relations with countries with a non-white majority. With the internet, information is freer than ever and that appears to be having some effect, so if I have any hope it's that we will hit a tipping point which causes the majority of us to peacefully transition into a system less vulnerable to corruption.

Your comment made me re-think this a bit, because I happen to know that the origin of "dad-bod" wasn't patronizing but a word used by some straight women who find this body type attractive in men. I wonder if "short king" may have initially been used by people who were attracted to the attribute in men and wanted a nice sounding way to describe it. I'm totally with you when these phrases are used like you described, but I wonder how many people using these terms are genuinely attracted to the attributes they're pointing out.

This is a tool derived from that report which directly shows how the user's local environment has changed. Kind of trippy to see that the environment of my childhood is not the same as the environment I'm living in now. It's a good educational tool.

"Put your affairs in order" say the people that have their affairs managed by a team of servants.