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Totalitarianism. What are the good things about it?

(Wikipedia) Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme...

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Single best form of government, if and only if your autocrat is highly competent and selfless. In other words, it’s an awful form of government.

Decisions can be made very fast though, this is why most governments have a mechanism by which they temporarily become somewhat autocratic (martial law, appointing a chancellor, etc). Note that this has been very bad when not temporary.

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no Christmas music allowed until mid December

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If you put a lamp on the front of a train going 100 m/s, does the light coming out of the lamp go C+100?

If yes then the fan will totally blow the wifis all over the place and give better signal

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Caving is fucking stupid

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They make it somewhere else, and pass it off as if it’s made in a region with a protected name. For example, making sparkling wine in California and saying it’s champagne.

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Some. But at firms of even modest size, though, a CEO receives ownership of capital, not just salary, as compensation.

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I wish we could have a union at my job. I do data science stuff and I’m borderline incompetent at it, I think a union would really help me out and protect me. I want what the police have where they can be terrible but still have nice jobs. And I don’t want to get laid off. And it would be nice if there was some guarantee that I could work from home forever. And I want a raise. And if I have to go into the office for big meetings, I want the rest of the day off. And I already don’t work Thursday or Friday but I want that to be official. And it would be nice if nobody could send me slack messages until noon because sometimes they wake me up.

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No I was serious

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I was not shit posting

The Inventor Behind a Rush of AI Copyright Suits Is Trying to Show His Bot Is Sentient (www.wired.com)

The Inventor Behind a Rush of AI Copyright Suits Is Trying to Show His Bot Is Sentient::Stephen Thaler’s series of high-profile copyright cases has made headlines worldwide. He’s done it to demonstrate his AI is capable of independent thought.

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Maybe they should be able to though?

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I would cut cars in half and weld them into the other halves of other cars

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Not jesting 100% serious

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Like imagine taking a big ol dump truck, and putting the back from a regular pickup on it so it’s just a monster pickup. Saw one like that once.

Or imagine a sports car front, with a station wagon back. Like a shooting brake but more shootier.

Or utes like they have in Australia, love those

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Unshaved

Their religion values pubes

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Was Saturn V affordable?

Because maybe the question isn’t whether it’s affordable but whether we are budgeting enough money.

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Smart. People can still rent out an extra room, but can’t squat on an apartment solely for Airbnb.

That’s how airbnbs were when I’ve used them in the past, things like a place where you can sleep on someone’s couch, or a house with a spare room you can crash in. Those kinds of arrangements were way cheaper than hotels and very appealing.

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Do they have a choice?

US needs India in their sphere, in order to help isolate Russia and economically disentangle from and challenge china.

They can’t afford to undermine him, especially with all his fervent nationalist support (on the rise in a world full of economic and cultural uncertainty).

The GDP gap between Europe and the United States is now 80% (www.lemonde.fr)

It was early this summer, before Americans started crossing the Atlantic to savor the sweetness of European life. Prices are very much affordable for them there, and the Wall Street Journal gave the reason as being Europe’s inexorable impoverishment: “Europeans are facing a new economic reality, one they haven’t...

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I was about to say you need to look at gdp per capita not just gdp, but I googled it and the eurozone has about the same population as the USA.

With such a large gdp difference, looks like Americans will be doing a lot of travel to Europe, and even more Europeans may be coming over here for jobs. It seems like half the people I work with are from Germany.

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That is mostly true here as well. From what my German coworkers tell me (and from what I see in job postings), salaries here are generally higher, even after paying for medical care etc. this is in the sciences but I’ve heard it’s true in other fields as well.

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Yes, the whole place is on sale right now. I’m going in a few weeks. Hotels are insanely cheap compared to the states. I’m staying in renovated monnestaries and castles for less than a low end chain hotel costs at home.

Airfare is fucking brutal though, so it’s almost a wash.

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A cnc laser cutter with enough watts so it could cut thin metal but also acrylic and wood and stuff.

I would love to make rc airplanes, and medieval armor, and fun stuff like that

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And their daughter brands. Lexus = Toyota, Acura = Honda. For when you want something flashy.

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USA should have done this to Scientology after they infiltrated the CIA or whatever it was.

At some point you have to be able to do so, despite religious protections. Otherwise “we are a religion” is a “get out of jail” card.

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Who said anything about christians???

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Essays were always shit. People had others write them, parents, etc.

It should be interviews and fewer people should go in the first place.

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No basically all Linux uses gnu Coreurils as a foundation and is therefore best called gnu+Linux. There’s a great RMS rant about this , it’s what the title is referring to.

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Siren noises and airhorns and generally post-ironic soundboard noises. Like remember DJs in the early 2000s? When the radio sounded like

(Tires screeching) Husky overly excited voice: you’re listening (Siren blaring) To the one and only (Red tailed hawk screech) (Machine gun noises) 97.4 (Dog barking) (mgm lion roar) KZRL “Krazy” FM (Choir sings hallelujah) Your one-stop-shop for hits from the 70s and 80s (Chorus from “don’t you forget about me” plays) (Guitar solo from Panama)

All those stupid noises are great when they get shoved into mid 2010s dubstep music, and when they are put into SoundCloud mashups.

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Import vs export economy.

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“We killed our space anomalies long ago. They were more trouble than they were worth”

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There was never a world where we would deflate back to any reasonable dollar value.

The stock market cannot handle deflation, as it would be more valuable to hoard cash than to invest. So the rich would lose tons of value.

Almost nothing will ever really get cheaper.

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  1. Adopting a baby is insanely expensive. More so than giving birth. They are absolutely sold for insane prices, it’s messed up but that’s how it is. There is huge demand, lots of people want to adopt babies.
  2. Adopting older children is seen as a terrible idea because they are “universally fucked up” and will have behavioral problems, mental illness, etc.
  3. Babies happen by accident all the time
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China is communist in name only. They are state-capitalist.

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It’s averaged over the state. So there are places in California where you can, just not in the major cities.

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Way less than I thought for many states. I can’t believe Colorado is less than $60k; that’s way more realistic than I would have thought.

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Sorry to hear you’re struggling.

But it sounds like you have dependents, meaning your number should be much higher than what the article gives - it’s talking about single people. So if anything, it’s evidence that your experience is justified and that you’re right - you have it tough.

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Hi I have one. Grad school was the most fun part of my life, but let me give you some advice:

  1. Your relationship with your advisor makes or breaks grad school for you. Don’t take a gamble.
  2. Research is not what most people think it’s going to be. Almost regardless of field these days, get ready to learn how to write code, and get ready to teach yourself everything.
  3. If they don’t have a plan to pay your salary for at least 4 years, don’t bother. No, you can’t count on external money in this funding climate.
  4. Read the book “getting what you came for”
  5. Talk to potential advisors. The ones you want to be with won’t have time to talk to you. It’s a paradox.
  6. You want to be a person who wants a “hands-off” advisor, and then you want to get one. If you want a hands-on advisor, my advice is to go do some work on your confidence, and come back when you think you’re ready to teach yourself everything.
  7. Don’t go into grad school thinking you know what you will work on. Projects evolve and change based on funding and whims and chance.
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That’s all fantastic advice, thanks for adding to my post! Especially agree about not worrying about broad impact in grad school.

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How is an AI trained on an artists painting, any different from a person who looked at that painting in art school? It’s not like the AI contains all of its training data; you can prove that from the file sizes.

I’m all for what the article advocates, but it’s kind of like publishing a book and saying “you have a license to read this, but not to learn anything from it”

I’m afraid this is going to turn out like “a new contract for typewriter repairmen in the age of laptop computers”

NASA moves a step closer to supersonic passenger flights (www.cnn.com)

In July, Lockheed Martin completed the build of NASA’s X-59 test aircraft, which is designed to turn sonic booms into mere thumps, in the hope of making overland supersonic flight a possibility. Ground tests and a first test flight are planned for later in the year. NASA aims to have enough data to hand over to US regulators...

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Airplanes are public transportation though

TIL The Katy Freeway in Houston, TX was expanded in 2008 to 26 lanes (one of the widest in the world) and 5 years later had longer peak travel times than before the expansion (www.nytimes.com)

For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with 26 lanes....

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The purpose of widening the highway isn’t to make individuals move faster or to solve congestion. It’s to move more individuals, and therefore more money.

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For me, 2 hours of meetings, 1 hour of actual work.

Meetings are so draining, we should get rid of them.

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Yes, I think people don’t like it because they think any time you use a word with a positive connotation (“benefit”), you must be speaking positively.

Another example is “brave”. Let’s talk about the woman who got shot to death while storming the US capitol. If you say she was brave, people will assume you side with Trump and the insurrectionists. But she was absolutely brave. But also deluded.

These mental shortcuts are reinforced all the time, and we really have to force ourselves to think critically (and cynically) to overcome them.

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What the fuck is that, holy hell. Wow I can’t believe that.

Also no wonder his support for the GOP primary is so low, he forgot to use the n-word.

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Not how it works.

It’s just a fancy version of that “predict the next word” feature smartphones have. Like if you just kept tapping the next word.

They don’t even have real parameters, only black box bullshit hidden parameters.

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Exactly correct, I agree. LLMs will change the world, but 90% of purported use cases are nothing but hot air.

But when you can tell your phone “go find a picture of an eggplant, put a smiley face on it, and send it to Bill”, that’s going to be pretty neat. And it’s coming in the next decade. Of course that requires a different model than we have now (text to instruction, not text to text). But it’s coming.

Do political assassinations generally help or harm the cause of the person that was assassinated?

I mean, it’s usually used to undermine a cause by killing their leaders, but their death can also cause them to become a martyr and get even more support. Which is generally true for the majority of assassinations?...

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Well then, when the assassin is doing so in order to preserve some status quo, they win.

Example: MLK. Killing him did a great job of preventing a very very very charismatic leader from bringing white and black people together against their corporate overlords.

Another example is the infiltration and sabotage of OWS.

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The developed world will run out of charity.

We’ve spent the last 300 years essentially looting resources and labor from poorer parts of the world. And when they finally decide that enough is enough, that they want a piece of the pie, they won’t be able to get it.

Climate refugees will be killed at closely guarded border crossings. Fishing boats will be torpedoed. Encampments will be burned.

In “rich” countries, the poor will be gradually cut off. Their labor value will decrease even further, and there won’t be anything left for them. In some places, public housing and healthcare will allow them to limp on, until many are killed by the next pandemic.

The wealthy will enjoy what they have, their lives barely interrupted. The world will not look very different to them.

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The idea is to use it like a battery.

If you use some green or otherwise efficient process to fix CO2 into propane, so what if you turn it back into CO2. You’ve just used it to store energy, and you’re carbon neutral (except for the energy generation itself).

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