I would be interested in knowing whether the chart in 1. above reflects a general chaotically-wide-ranging-topics of most men's thought compared to women's, a factor that (to add to the speculation) may be entirely absorbed by ADD prevalence in men.
If you extend the list down to topics of increasingly rare historical impact, are men still thinking about it more, whatever it might be?
The day has come, the time is now, this is the end beautiful friend. The last episode of season two of "The Rings of Power". And my verdict?
It's not that bad.
I'm impressed that they *did* manage to tie up all the loose ends (more or less) even if it did involve hopping around from one location to another like a hummingbird on crack. See what can be done when you don't waste time and just advance the story without a lot of pointless standing around chattering?
There are SPOILERS from here on, so be warned.
The good: the Dwarven storyline remains the strongest, and they started the episode with that. They did reveal the Balrog, which had me pissed off for a bit, but then they hid the Balrog again. So we didn't get the destruction of Khazad-dum, which is sensible (for once) on their parts.
Did I get "Celebrimbor's tortured and arrow-riddled body used as a war banner"? Well, mostly! It was a good end for Celebrimbor (by which I mean a bad one) and I wish they had let his character be like this all along, instead of absent-minded, weak-willed, dodderer.
They *finally* ended the "ooh, is the Stranger Gandalf?" nonsense. Yes, he is, or will be. Did he get his staff? Yes, at long flamin' last. And they *finally* tied-up the Stoor storyline, though I imagine we'll get them and the Harfoots back in the third season. But it's amazing what impetus to get off their backsides and leave that having a Dark Wizard collapse the ravine walls on top of your 'hidden' village will do.
The Dark Wizard *may* be one of the Blue Wizards, or he may be Saruman. I'm still betting on the latter, but they did at least reveal that he is one of the Five Wizards.
The "Isildur's wanderings" storyline is, thankfully, now done and finished. The Númenorian storyline continues to be weak, unhappily.
The not-so-good: the show has written itself into several corners due to changing the lore, the most severe of which affects the Dwarven storyline and the Númenorean one. Prince Durin *knows* the Dwarven rings are corrupted, so no way can he just hand them over to the other Dwarven realms. But this is demanded by canon, so they're introducing the new plot of conflict and possible civil war: other realms are demanding the rings in return for the treasure they sent, as per King Durin's agreement with them, and Durin's brother (still unnamed and unseen) is launching a bid for the throne, as are some other Dwarf-lords. A possible Dwarven civil war in season three? We'll have to wait and see.
LET ANNATAR BE EVIL! Charlie Vickers is good in this episode as well, and Sauron wavers between trying to claim sympathy as a victim, wallowing in self-pity, and then revealing his ugly side when confronted with any kind of refusal or opposition. Even Vickers can't pull off - for me, at least - making it seem that Annatar genuinely regrets Celebrimbor's death, after he just cut a bitch in front of our eyes.
The Downfall of Númenor can't come fast enough. I hate Isildur, I hate his Bitch Sister, I hate Pharazon's Useless Son. I don't quite hate Pharazon, but he's much less effective here than he was in season one.
But overall, they didn't make as gigantic a mess of things as they could have done. Well done show, it only took you two seasons, sixteen episodes, and enormous amounts of money to get there.
Unlike the show, I won't be hopping around from location to location, I'll deal with each storyline as it happens.
(1) Khazad-dum.
As I said, the Dwarven storyline is the strongest. They start with Prince Durin arriving to find Dísa looking after a Dwarf who has been attacked by King Durin. We get a tender moment between them with a passionate kiss (which at least here is warranted because they are a married couple), then the prince heads down to deal with his father. The king is ramming a mini-battering ram into the rock walls to smash it open, and the prince wastes time appealing to dad's better nature to try and get him to take off the ring (instead of bashing him over the head while his back is turned, knocking him out, and taking it off before he can break open the walls). Doesn't work, the walls are broken open, and we see the veins of mithril running through the rock that the king hopes to mine. All is peaceful for about twenty seconds, then the Balrog (who is also down there) wakes up.
Honestly, up to this, I thought it should have been King Durin out there fighting Adar (on his own, even) because he's way more effective than the entire Elven garrison of Eregion, plus relief force of Gil-galad and Elrond's troops, were.
The CGI effects are pretty good here, and even though I was annoyed that they seemed to be going to bring on the Balrog and the destruction of Khazad-dum way too soon, it's not a bad version of a Balrog. I even liked the smoky 'wings' which don't come down one way or the other on the perennial question of "Do Balrogs have wings?"
It's trying to climb out, it lashes out with the fiery whip and catches the king by the ankle, the prince leaps forward to protect his father and is knocked back. This awakens the king's fatherly love and concern, and *that* is what enables him to fight off the influence of the ring and take it off. This scene is really good, because the actor playing the king can act even under a ton of makeup and a beard more luxuriant that Santa Claus's beard, but the music tries too hard and is a distraction instead of an enhancement of the scene. It's also good because we got to know the characters and to care about them, unlike Pincushion Elf girl last episode.
The king attacks the Balrog and their struggle brings down the rocks and thus seals off the opening once again. It's a really good ending for the king and ties up that part of the storyline well.
Afterwards, the Dwarves mourn their king and the prince prepares to become king and offer aid to Elrond and the refugees in Rivendell (we'll get to that, don't worry), but Narvi and Disa warn him about troubles yet to come: since there were rumours the king had not named the prince as his direct/official successor, some other Dwarf-lords are going to make a bid for the throne, including the prince's brother. Also, the Blue Mountain Dwarf-lords are demanding the promised rings in return for the treasure they sent, or else.
This is where the show has created a problem for itself: Durin has his father's ring as well as the other rings for the Dwarves. But he knows they're evil, so how can he hand them over? If he can't convince the other Dwarven realms not to take the rings, what can he do? Destroy them? Hide them? Surely he'll never put on the king's ring himself? That's where they're going to have to solve the problem of "the seven rings for the Dwarves" in season three, and presumably it'll have to involve treachery/intrigue on the part of the brother; maybe he seizes the rings and hands them out in return for support for his claim to the throne?
Okay, that's the Dwarves dealt with for now. Four out of five for a strong performance in the main and neatly tying up this loose end.
(2) Rhun and Gandalf and I DON'T CARE, PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY. Finally, finally, *finally* Gandalf (let's give up pretending he's not, because he is) shows up in the Stoor village by night. How does he know where it is? Who knows, it's not explained, they don't have time for this. The Dark Wizard is there and offers friendship, claiming that Manwe had told him (Gandalf) would come, but he's been waiting a long time. So it's confirmed that both of them are two of the Five Wizards. Gandalf asks about the halflings (yes, he calls them that) who travelled with him, Dark Wizard says they're fine, and shows this by - having his Tusken raiders minions bring them out, holding knives to their throats. He claims he never intended this and was betrayed by the Tuskens, the leader of the Tusken brags that his people used to be kings, and it does *look* like they're acting independently (whether this is a set-up or genuine is left ambiguous). It doesn't matter anyway, as Dark Wizard who knows how to use *his* staff slams him into the rocky wall of the ravine, where he conveniently bashes his brains in and dies.
Dark Wizard tries to persuade Gandalf and the Harfoots to trust him, they don't, and he brings down the ravine on top of them all, telling Gandalf that maybe the pain of losing those he loves will remind him of the suffering of Middle-earth if Sauron wins. Rocks fall but nobody dies, since Gandalf can now use *his* powers even without a staff.
Next morning the Stoors prepare to leave (since their village has been smooshed) and Poppy and Nori will go with them, while Gandalf goes on his own path. They don't really spend a lot of time on the farewell, which I appreciated because I didn't want another long drawn out, sentimental, parting but it did seem a bit abrupt considering how much time had been wasted on this storyline. Anyway, Gandalf picks up a stick from the ruins of the village and realises this is his staff, now. He goes back to Tom and yes folks, it was all a test to see if he would pick his friends over power. Oh wow, no way we saw that coming, was there? Ends with the pair of them drinking tea and singing a duet of Tom's song.
Oh, and yes, he's going to be "Gandalf" because the Merimac Stoor did the "Grand-Elf" name thing again. Oh dear. But at least they've stopped the pretence that the Stranger isn't Gandalf.
That's the end of that, thank all the Valar, the Maiar, the Evil Dark Lords, the Balrogs, Thuringwethil, and of course Eru Iluvatar. At least until season three, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
(3) Númenor. Oh, Lord God Almighty. Okay, let's get this one out of the way.
Elendil's Bitch Daughter is ringing bells to summon the leaders of the Faithful to an audience with Pharazon. The head leader is the High Priest of Númenor, which let me digress to say this is an office that did not exist at the time. Númenor had no official religion of that type. But if it's a vaguel mediaeval fantasy, we gotta have a high priest, yeah? Okay, Pharazon turns up and claims that Miriel has deceived them all and cheated on the test of the sea monster with help from a friend who they all know, someone who visited the island previously. And he has proof, which seems to be something he wrote down, as he hands over a parchment to the priest who reads it.
Galadriel? No, turns out it's Sauron. Now Pharazon makes what I think is a very stupid move here, and seems to have lost some of his political cunning from the first season. He *should* be attempting to sway the Faithful to his side, undermining their support of Miriel, and using political means to win back power and sow doubt. Instead, he goes straight for the purge: his soldiers go through the city nailing papers to doors and declaring the Faithful traitors, as they drag them out of their houses (presumably to haul them off to prison).
Bitch Daughter belatedly realises this will mean Bad Times for dad, so she sneaks out to warn him. Pharazon notices her go, and I imagine is marking her down as Unreliable. She goes to find her dad, who apparently is... working in a tavern as a waiter? Remember, folks, this is the Lord of Andúnië here. The show reduced him to a captain in the Seaguard, but even so, there's no way he would need to find a service industry job. Anyway, Bitch Daughter warns him to flee and guess what? We get a mention of Anarion! Yes, finally they remember Elendil's *other* son who is on the western side of the island, with the rest of the Faithful, and Elendil will go there to him.
There's a scene with MIriel but frankly by now I was so bored I skipped a lot. They're *still* pushing that dumb romance between Miriel and Elendil She won't leave but urges him to go, she gives him Narsil, he rides off (so we get the scene in the palantir of him riding away from the city) and she is shackled (this show sure loves its shackles) and brought before Pharazon while that other guy who supports him reads out a list of charges against her.
The Downfall cannot come soon enough. I'm begging them. End this now, crash that wave on top of them!
On a basic level of political intrigue, Pharazon can (maybe) convince the people to go ahead with a war of invasion against Sauron, the perceived threat to Númenor. But then that makes it a simple clash of power between him and Miriel over who gets the throne, and doesn't get into the dispute about morality and mortality, and of course the alliance with the Elves can't happen because it's been established that the current situation on Númenor is down to accusations of being "Elf-lovers" against the royal family.
(4) Eregion. Finally, something better! And it is pretty good, though not without flaws.
We start off with Galadriel trying to lead a (very small) band of Elven women and children out the secret Dwarven path, while the Orcs run rampant and are killing the remaining Elven defenders. For the lore nerds, this is reminiscent of Idril and the secret path during the fall of Gondolin, and keep that in mind.
They make their way out into the open but oh no it's a trap! A band of Orcs are waiting there (how did they know?) and Galadriel makes a bargain with them: take her to the Lord-Father, let the others go, and she has "nine reasons" to persuade him.
The Orcs do this (this is the last time they're going to be the kinder, gentler Orcs, just warning you) and bring her to Adar, who commands them to leave. Galadriel offers to make that alliance with him he wanted, and he says "how will you fight without your ring?" and shows that he is wearing Nenya.
All this time he has had his back to her, then he turns around and it's another OH FUDGE! moment for me, because Nenya has healed him. He now looks like the Elf he is, or was.
Yeah, this is not possible, but whatever. He gives Nenya back to Galadriel, as he truly wants to be the Father of his Orc children, and reverts to what we've known him as. He bargains that if they fight together and defeat Sauron, he will then lead his Orcs to Mordor and they'll never disturb anyone again, or fight the Elves, and they'll make a lasting peace.
I wish Joseph Mawle was still in the part, but Sam Hazeldene is good, too. He seems genuinely sincere, and Galadriel is wavering and seems on the point of agreement, when more Orcs come in, bearing an Orc on a stretcher-type arrangement. It is Glug, the family man Orc, and they say Sauron tried to make him betray Adar but he refused, and this is what happened.
I have to break off here, even though that's not the end of the scene, in order to show the lead-up to this. After we saw the "oh no it's a trap" capture of Galadriel, the show cut back to Eregion and OH YES! Poor Celebrimbor, I'm very sorry for him, but I was honestly pleased to see canon being followed in some way.
He's lying on the floor of his forge, propped up against a pillar, and as full of arrows as Pincushion Elf girl from last episode (but I care now, where I didn't care about her). And it's Sauron shooting him full of them, torturing him to tell him where the Nine Rings are.
Sauron (may as well drop calling him Annatar) is still doing the mixture of self-pity, 'you made me do this to you'. and general lying about his motives. Celebrimbor is right, he's so good at lying, he has deceived himself. You can't really say "my motives are for the good" when you're shooting someone full of arrows, and Jack Bauer and 24 be damned. He threatens Celebrimbor with the Orcs (yeah, but they're not *your* army yet, buddy), about what Orcish blood-lust in battle is like,and how when Gondolin fell, it went on for weeks and weeks. (See, I said we'd get back to that!) But if Celebrimbor co-operates, then he'll stop it all.
(The city is 95% destroyed by now and the populace dead or fleeing, so, uh, what is left to save?)
Celebrimbor comes back with a line about kingfishers and dang, it isn't whimsical or dumb or inappropriate, it fits with the performance the actor is giving and I have to give Charles Edwards credit here. *This* is the Celebrimbor we should have been getting all along! I wish the show had given us this, but even this crumb now is better than nothing. Both Vickers and Edwards do great work here, and again I have to emphasise: see how writing not hard when you just follow the damn plot as originally conceived?
He manages to stand up and, with the foresight of death, prophesies the death of Sauron. Who is now so pissed-off, he runs a glaive or spear through Celebrimbor and raises him up, and leaves him hanging like that. So yeah, I got the arrow-riddled and tortured body of Celebrimbor hanging on a pole, thanks show!
The one bit where it falls down is that Sauron sheds a tear at the end here, and I don't believe it. Even if he is self-deceived, I can't believe he truly regretted his actions here at the end.
Anyway, a bunch of Orcs bust in (including Glug, the family man Orc) and ask "are you Sauron?" He responds with some obfuscation, but seems to gain ascendancy over them.
(This is something I wish they had fleshed out more; the last time we saw Sauron with a bunch of Orcs, they cosplayed the assassination of Julius Caesar. This time he's able to enthrall hostile Orcs?)
Okay, now back to Adar and Glug on the stretcher. When Adar kneels down to console him, Glug stabs him. OH NO, TREACHERY AND BETRAYAL! And then his children cosplay the assassination of Julius Caesar with *Adar* this time round. It's a good scene and Hazeldene plays it well. I think we're meant to contrast it with the same scene of Sauron's death at the start of the season. Adar here dies smiling, still loving his children. He addresses them as such in the Black Speech, when Sauron pops up and says "they are not children anymore". Adar dies, and I think he's content to die. He doesn't seem full of resentment and anger; maybe Nenya healed a lot more than his body and he regained more of his old self from before.
Well, that's the end of any chance of peaceful Orcs living in their own homeland on good, if guarded, terms with the Elves. Orcs are bad now! Galadriel is understandably shocked, and Sauron sends the Orcs off to raze Eregion, kill everyone, but capture and not harm the Elf leaders, while they have a little chat.
This devolves into a fight (Sauron uses both the crown of Morgoth, which Adar conveniently brought along, and Adar's sword which I think must be the Evil Key Blood Sword from season one, as it looks very like it in the hilt design). He keeps trying to persuade her and switching between appeals and anger as that fails.
Galadriel does *not* girl-boss her way out of this one; she might have been able to one-shot an ice troll way back in season one, but this time Sauron has the edge on her. He then switches into a series of illusions, taking on the form of Halbrand (which had me screaming WHY ARE YOU PAUSING, KILL HIM NOW YOU SILLY BINT!), Galadriel herself, and finally Celebrimbor, before reverting to his own form and stabbing her with the crown. She falls down, the pouch with the Nine Rings falls out of her clothing, and he picks it up.
She manages to stand up again, and he tries to persuade her to hand over her ring. Again, I had to question why? Why not just take it off her hand as she's lying on the ground? Maybe they mean a ring has to be surrendered willingly by the bearer, but the show has not developed this. It *almost* seems to be working, but then she steps backward off the cliff top (yeah, they're standing on a low-ish cliff here) and falls to her death? Maybe?
(Of course not, she's a main character).
Meanwhile, back in Eregion (I'm jumping back and forth here, where the show had the separate scenes all flow as one, but for the narrative it's necessary) the Orcs - as ordered by Sauron - are razing the city and have captured Elrond and Gil-galad. Oh, and Arondir (yeah, he's not dead either, big surprise huh? He's not even mildly inconvenienced from being arrow and sword stabbed last episode, judging by how active he is).
They're piling up scrolls and chairs and artworks and about to torch them, while Elrond (the scribe and scholar) pleads with them not to destroy the work of Celebrimbor. Ha ha, our evil book-burning Orcs scoff (I think the book burning was a bit too on the nose here) but even as they put the torch to the priceless knowledge, hark! A horn rings out! Followed by a fusillade of arrows which pincushion the Orcs this time. The Dwarves have finally come, even if it's a little bit too late. But better late than never, right? And now Elrond can be assured Durin does love him and would never be faithless.
They are rescued, find Galadriel, see the Morgul-knife wound - I mean Morgoth crown wound - and Gil-galad tries healing her with Vilya. But it's not enough, until Elrond takes Nenya off her hand and puts it on (see, Sauron, this is how you do it) and joins in to heal her.
Back at the cliff with Sauron and the Orcs (including Glug, family man Orc) who have come back to report that the Dwarves have kicked their backsides and are retreating with the refugees of Eregion, and if they try pursuing them, many Orcs will - ack! Ack, because Sauron does not take bad news well and has just run Glug through with Adar's sword. The price of betrayal and the reward of treachery, huh, Glug? New papa, step-papa, doesn't love you, either!
Galadriel wakes up in a glade in what will be Rivendell, watched over by Gil-galad. They fill her in on what happened while she was having her near-death experience, Elrond tells her that this place is defended by the Elven rings, then gives her back Nenya. Then Arondir reports on the situation. Sauron is roving through Eriador and they have two choices, says Gil-galad. Take the fight to him, even though they don't have the forces now, or retreat to fortified places like Lindon and here.
Near-death experiences must be one heck of a character-development event (along with the events of this season where she learned how wrong about everything she was), because the first season Galadriel who wanted to push on despite the mutiny of her troops is now "let's follow what Celebrimbor said about light being stronger than strength" and is all peaceful and let's retreat.
So the end of *that* storyline. But where's Cirdan in all this? And Celeborn? Well, I can't nit-pick too much, as I did enjoy the end of the Celebrimbor and Annatar arc, and it wasn't handled too badly at all.
5) Last and *definitely* least, Isildur and Pelargir. I'm going to skip a *lot* of this because I do not care. I do not care about Isildur and his mommy issues, I do not care about Theo and *his* mommy issues, I do not care about the rag-tag rabble of Southlanders and Wild Men, I do not care about Le Epic Romance between Isildur and that wench, whatever her name is, who is willing to drop her fiancé in a heartbeat to go back to Númenor with Isildur for the sake of modern conveniences like indoor plumbing and the other luxuries of civilisation. There's a prolonged passionate kiss between the both of them, which, ugh. The show tries forcing romance without allowing it to organically grow or show any chemistry between the characters.
To make a long story short, Useless Weasel Kemen shows up with a boat full of Númenorean soldiers and is very surprised to see Isildur alive. Isildur, who hasn't a clue about what has happened back home while he was on his gap year, tries to stop Kemen ordering the villagers about. Weasel drops the nicey-nicey facade, refuses to let Isildur bring Wench aboard the ship and back to Númenor, threatens to kill Isildur's horse (gasp! not the horsie, the one sensible being here!) unless he co-operates, and arrests Isildur to come back to stand trial for treason. He then informs the villagers that Númenor will be building a fortress here and they must pay a toll of wood from the forests (this is in accord with canon, where the Númenoreans did build settlements in Middle-earth and used the forests for wood for ship-building, though Pelargir should already be a harbour and settlement now). And that's the end of that: the ship sets sail with Isildur aboard looking sadly back at Wench, while her oblivious fiancé (head of the village) takes hold of her reluctant hand.
The End, thank the Lord, of this stupid sub-plot. The sooner Númenor gets on with the human sacrificing, the better, says I. I hope Weasel and Bitch Daughter are first on the altar, and I only regret Isildur won't be due to being needed in canon.
Now we have to wait for season three, however long that will be!
In another forum I frequent, I just came across a poster who is likely a bot using ChatGPT or the like. All their posts consist of a large block of perfectly formatted text that consists only of vague generalities which are superficially related to the post they're responding to but don't actually contribute anything to the conversation. It's really interesting to see this happening in the wild.
To what end? Karma/like farming? Capabilities testing?
It is nice to see such things in the wild, because of how much they stand out as inauthentic. I know the pro-AI people will come out and say that we just wouldn't/don't notice the good AI, but the fact that the best options currently being used clearly aren't that says a lot.
> because of how much they stand out as inauthentic
From another perspective, the fact that it took an ACX reader to think about it for a bit before realizing it is its own kind of endorsement.
I'm not even trying to be elitist, but what demonstrably passes for discourse on Twitter and 4chan and Twitch and what have you is far far lower than the capability ceiling of what LLMs are capable of, both in info content and in linguistic form. The "Corporate talk" signature that gives corporate LLMs away is not an inherent LLM limitation.
Prepping an account for spam is probably the most likely usage. Some websites/subreddits limit posting for new accounts or accounts without much karma, so building up a history of normal comments helps a spambot pass that filter.
Could just be an experiment. Someone is going to write a blog post entitled "I set chatgpt loose on a forum for six months and nobody noticed or everybody noticed or something"
Does anyone know anything about AI equipped robotics and whether an AI guided, tree protecting quad-copter is a feasible idea given today's tech?
Why I'm interested: I like in a part of the world, the Scottish Highlands, where deforestation has been absolutely rampant for centuries. People were already writing to parliament to bemoan the situation back in the 15th century and so most areas have been denuded of forest for centuries. I won't go into "why this is bad" but of course now, many landowners, the government and not for profits are attempting to reforest. This is incredibly difficult and costly, mainly because of the large, unmanaged deer population in the highlands. We have several species endemic and anybody who knows deer will know that they like to eat pretty much anything. Any saplings that are inadequately protected (and protecting saplings from Red Deer in particular is no laughing matter) will be immediately eaten. The solution to this problem is "deer fencing", a two meter high metal fence, which costs several hundred pounds/dollars per square meter. This severely limits the scope of reforestation. Management of the deer via culling is ineffective and reintroduction of predators is, for the moment not on the agenda but it occurs to me that a network of stationary spotting cameras and quad-copters able to behave in a predator-like fashion could be used to police reforestation areas more simply and cheaply than the deer fencing. Not having a background in any of the enabling technologies, I don't know whether this a practical proposition given today's tech so I'm very interested to hear from anyone who can provide knowledgeable comment.
What about stationary lasers targeting the eyes of the deer? This has fewer moving parts and can be relatively more humane than it sounds like, there’s research on less-than-lethal weapons that don’t inflict permanent damage. Stuff like this https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2721-1.html
The copters behaving in a "predator-like fashion" would only work if they actually prey on deer. They aren't stupid; the deer aren't going to run away from something that isn't a threat. What are you going to do, strap on guns to AI-controlled drones and order them to shoot at anything that looks like a deer?
Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if the actual biological predators weren't killed off, but I'm sure you guys have very reasonable excuses for not reintroducing them. So I guess your only option is to up your management efforts from culling to extermination.
Edit: Now that I think of it, there was a case in Japan where the culling of deer caused them to move to a nearby mountain where they started fighting for food with an endangered species. So killing them in the places where you want them gone does actually drive them away. Leaving the corpses there as a warning will also probably help.
You guys could be right but deer are very timid creatures in my experience and although they don't have any 'teeth' quad copters are capable of displaying a number of intimidating behaviours; swooping, rushing, herding type behaviours should be possible to engineer, as would some supplementary disroienting stimuli; flashing/strobing lights, noise.
Having personal experience, I can say that deer will run away from any "novel" stimulus, such as motion activated outdoor lighting but they will soon habituate if it is not to be feared. However, they never lose their fear of a convincing predator (me in this case). They will always run from humans. I don't therefore have any reason to doubt that they would always run from an aggressive machine.
Current technology should make this feasible on some level, but would be very buggy and need a lot of human interaction and technical services (repairs, reprogramming) to make it work.
Other than a proof of concept, it's likely that having live humans doing the work is cheaper and more effective, even if they're operating the copters. Either way sounds quite expensive for any kind of large reforesting project.
Having a site where volunteers from around the world could log in to operate quadcopters and also post the videos is definitely a perfect option with no downsides and should be implemented immediately
> Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
> This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
> “My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.
It turns out some modern high school English courses only feature short reading passages, like those found on standardized tests.
I think it’s pretty funny that they know how to read but don’t know how to turn to the next page. Maybe they need a whole class for that difficult task.
I'm surprised that it's "top colleges". I'm not surprised about the spoon-feeding in English classes. Sixteen years ago when I was working as a school secretary, the English teacher was providing précis, notes, pre-digested material, model answers and the like for texts. The kids never had to read the entire book at all, and maybe not even a full chapter. So long as they could regurgitate the answers that had been spoon-fed to them about "what are the themes of this novel/play?" on an exam, that was good enough.
Granted, those were the weaker students who weren't expected to be able to cover the material without a *lot* of assistance. And our school library project did a *ton* of work on getting non-readers to read by appealing to their interests and coaxing them along with magazines and then YA fiction and gently getting them to associate reading with "I will enjoy this" and not "Crap, more boring homework".
But yeah. We've had people on here proudly recounting how fiction bores them and they've never read a fiction book, if they read something (and reading text? with your own eyes? pft, what is this, the Stone Age?) it'll be non-fiction. But generally they'll instead listen to an audio book while doing something else, or a pod cast, or a Youtube channel, etc.
'People what read, y'know, entire books and ones with no pictures even' will not go away, but we'll be an increasing minority of weirdoes. Weird isn't bad, despite what the Democratic Party election campaign may say! 😁
> 'People what read, y'know, entire books and ones with no pictures even' will not go away, but we'll be an increasing minority of weirdoes. Weird isn't bad, despite what the Democratic Party election campaign may say!
I wonder! Books for me can convey a lot more nuance than a movie. I think well made podcasts include more nuance than a movie, but a book that took months or years to write is just oozing with little details.
It's like, you can learn a lot of lore from playing the w40k games. But if you read the books, you get tons more delicious little details that add to the flavor.*
*I regret starting the Horus Heresy series 10 years but at least it's finally over and I can move on.
Yeah, my sense of it is that reading novels is slowly losing favor as more compelling forms of entertainment become available. The book trade is, if I remember correctly, a single-digit portion of the entertainment market, with video games and video (TV/movies) being the big dogs in the yard. Not a lot of young people read for pleasure, so reading has become associated with homework.
Yet book sales — nonfiction and fiction — in all formats including print — have been rising. And there's nothing like a popular movie or TV series to spike the sales of the novel it was based on (or spawned).
> A surprisingly large number of freshmen don’t know the difference between fiction and nonfiction, or that novels are fiction. Not a majority, but I was surprised when I first encountered confusion around these points; I’m not any longer. I don’t think the majority of freshmen confuse fiction and nonfiction, or genres of nonfiction, but enough do for the confusion to be a noticeable pattern (...)
Ive encountered a version of this at my job. I'm a software engineer and our recent intern, when asked what we could do to make internship a better experience, remarked that there was a lot, too much documentation to read and that he'd have preferred more onboarding videos.
This stuck in my mind because my team has some of the best docs I've seen in my career. Systems and components are described in detail. And there's a whole archive of design and decision documents that I can refer back to. It's a trove full of treasure.
I know nothing about your work of course, but consider that the intern was really complaining about the "Entry point" problem. It's infamous in Software Engineering docs, immortalized in (what else) this XKCD https://xkcd.com/1597/:
>> This is Git, it tracks collaborative work on [software] projects through a beautiful, distributed graph [database] model
> Cool. So how do I use it?
>> No idea. Memorize those shell commands and if you get into a trouble, nuke the repo and download it again.
The joke, of course, is the lack of a suitable **entry point** to Git's documentation. It can tell you all about the 7 different types of merges or the 69 parameters that `git checkout` can potentially take but it doesn't have a reasonable answer to the newbie's very reasonable question: How... do... *I*... **use**... it.
The emphasis is important. The newbie doesn't care about your beautiful, distributed graph database - even if s(he) should -, or your super-duper-uber efficient networking stack over multiple transport protocols, the newbie just wants to undo a commit they made by mistake, and (s)he can't find a command for that in git's entire command language, and it's making him/her mad and distracted. I know because I was there, and it's incredibly not fun.
The general idea is that documentation is a hierarchy of things that look as if they're the same thing but accomplish different goals for different people at different times https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/.
I would probably teach separately Git commands for investigating the current situation, and commands that alter it. When I alter something, I usually have a good idea about what the current situation is like.
Exploration commands:
git status
git fetch
git diff
git diff --staged
git diff HEAD^ HEAD
git log --graph
git log --graph --all
git branch --all
Modification commands:
git clone
git pull
git add FILES
git commit -m "MESSAGE"
git push
git restore FILES
git switch BRANCH
git switch --detach TAG
git switch --create BRANCH
git branch --delete BRANCH
git rebase -i COMMIT
Probably forgot something. It is not a clear distinction, because "fetch" technically modifies the state (just not the part that I am working with) but the idea is that the confused newbies probably jump to the modification too soon before they master the exploration.
Also, instead of nuking the project, sometimes you just need to backup the recently modified files and do:
Could it be that it was just overwhelming to be confronted with such near perfect documentation?
I don’t have a problem reading a lot of text, but I have been left alone with tomes of “onboarding documents” to study, which is just a really bad way to get going. Especially if you’re a newbie and you have no idea what’s important and what isn’t.
It's hard for me know for sure because I wasnt their onboarding buddy. I will say though, having gone through onboarding myself, that the layout for me made sense because there were map-like features like arch diagrams and table of contents and even very explicit signs of purpose (eg. "This document describes operating X and Y, if you're looking for the design document for X and Y, go here").
But they have no control over the pool they choose from.
A well-researched article would mention which of the two cases this is: Are there not enough book-readers in the population the elite schools choose from? Or are there enough book-readers but the elite schools don't choose them? (Both options seem plausible to me.)
If it's the latter, how exactly does the selection cause this? Is it like the college doesn't care about reading the books either way, but they insist on being X, Y, and Z, and there are simply not enough students who are X and Y and Y and also read books? Or is reading the books actively hurting your case (even if you happens to be X and Y and Z), for example maybe the colleges want students who can sufficiently credibly describe coming from a disadvantaged background, and "I read books" is interpreted as "not disadvantaged enough"? Or is it simple neglect, where adding a question "which books did you read recently" (and giving positive points if you did, and if you can answer 3 simple random questions about the book's contents) could fix the problem?
The big problem with prediction markets is still that it doesn't make financial sense to place your bet much before the end date because you get no return on your money before then. It seems this problem would get worse the larger the bet size one can make. E.g., I'm not going to park a million dollars in Polymarket two months before the election, but I might the day before it. But prediction market enthusiasts might be willing to tie up nominal amounts of money long before the election because they think it's fun to play the market. So the problem is that punters who are willing to put the most skin in the game won't until the last moment, which mostly defeats the purpose of the market as a price signal to society.
My above theory predicts that Polymarket will likely move sharply in the 48 hours before the election. We'll see.
I agree that this is one factor. My understanding is that polymarket also has another factor that pushes markets toward 50%: position limits (or trading limits?) that make it asymmetrically harder to push the market away from 50% than toward 50%.
Note: the time value of money (or mana, or tokens, or whatever) also applies to the other markets if the participants feel that they have positive expected bets they can make on a shorter term than the election bet. It pains me to say it, but 1 month is a long time in these prediction markets.
I disagree. Think of it as 10% of a large sample size bet on the market already. The resulting price is quite close to if the 100% of market views came in. I mean, as a sanity check poly market is around 50-50. Do you actually think the right prediction is meaningfully far from that?
Polymarket has been barely moving, whereas Nate Silver has swung in a few weeks from 61% Trump to 56% Harris, all the while calling that a "near tossup". My guess is a few big fish in Polymarket have anchored it in a tight couple point range around 50/50 - *for now*. If it suddenly moves to something like 56/44 two days before the election, I think it indicates the majority of those with skin in the game were waiting on the sidelines.
I don't see what good an election prediction market does if its resolution is so low that it can't do better than tell us "It's a close race". Everyone already knows that from looking at the polls. What added value are these markets giving us?
For instace, if you believe who wins the election will have a material impact on the economy, it's not insignificant to your portfolio if the odds are 50/50 or 55/45.
The market might be 100% accurate, Think of a the 10% liquidity of all possible betters is the 'true value' with an error of 5%
Well, Nate Silver might be a biased model (say, 3% in some direction) also with an error of X (maybe 1%, maybe 10%)
It's still useful to have a good model with an error of 5%, even if we could in theory have a better model with an error of 3%
I don't think 'everyone knows' anything. If I had to look at the polls, my estimate of who's likely to win could be anywhere from 40 to 60%. Also polls are not the only source of information.
And, in any case, it would take a hundred years (25 elections) to be able to even have a hope of telling if a model giving you values between 45 and 55% is better than a random coin, if all along the true value really was closely bounded to 50-50
Let me retreat from the motte to the bailey (or whatever it is called) since my claim there is probably too strong.
We already had low-stakes prediction markets like Predict It, but prediction market enthusiasts have argued they aren't good enough, we need big money players with more skin in the game to get more accurate wisdom of crowds predictions. Along come Polymarket which has big money and allows big bets. What good is it over the existing small money prediction sites? As you say, maybe we will know in 100 years.
The reason I think Polymarket is failing is that it just hovers right around 50/50, whereas other markets and forecasters move around a bit more, which seems reasonable given that a lot has happened in the world over the past month.
Perhaps it's a resolution bias on my part. If one person tells me the odds of the Mets winning is 50/50 and another tells me it's 55/45 (and I know they are both smart, analytical people who like to handicap odds) I'm more likely to think the latter person has done more analysis on that particular scenario.
Regarding thinking about Rome, is it worth distinguishing between the Republic and the Empire? My reading (and therefore thinking) has tended to focus on the Republic.
We've got similarities to both, so I'm inclined to lump them together for this purpose. Personally, I think most about the last century of the Republic, as it was torn apart and its skin was used to make a suit for the Empire.
Its political system went from one of shared governance to imperial autocracy and that’s certainly a distinction worthy of note. The pillars of its economy remained more or less in place for some time (slaves, agriculture, trade) but predictably empirical rule meant less political participation for the citizens and significantly increased taxation in the later years of the empire. As felt by the average citizen, the effects of the transition probably seemed mild, and once the empire was firmly in place, the people were probably stoked to not have civil war constantly hanging over their head. I’d guess you probably know all this already, though.
That’s a great question. From what little I know, Roman taxation appears less direct (think sales taxes, duties, etc.) and not as extensive because Rome (and more generally ancient civilizations) didn’t provide the public services that are typical in many modern democracies. But I don’t have numbers to back that up. Maybe someone who’s more of a historian could fill in the blanks.
Edit: I dug around a little more and I guess if you're going talk Roman taxes you should mention tributum, which Wikipedia simply describes as a tax imposed on the citizenry to fund the cost of war. But it’s a trickier concept than that because, unlike a simple tax, it could in theory be paid back to the citizens in times of peace.
Sorry. I was pretty unclear. I know that the Republic and Empire are distinct. I'm asking whether, when we consider a meme like "men think about Rome every day," we should distinguish between thinking about the Republic and the Empire.
I see. To me it seems casual knowledge usually starts with Julius Caesar (at least here in the States). So as far as most men thinking about Rome daily, I’d guess it’s the Roman Empire that’s on their mind. That and a lot of folks get drawn into the subject by the stories of emperors that went bananas.
I didn’t mean to imply Julius Caesar was the first emperor. He wasn’t. I guess I was unclear. I tried to indicate that when most people’s interest in Rome starts with Julius Caesar, the republic is already almost entirely in the rear view.
I guess I took it for granted that most people who think about Rome know Julius Caesar is seen as a transitional figure between republic and empire.
I’m really not sure what the average person knows about Julius Caesar. I assumed it was just the Shakespeare play until the “every man thinks about Rome” meme.
But I would say that for people who do know much about him, they’re probably interested in the Republican parts. What’s interesting about Caesar is how used the institutions to build power. The first triumvirate, the Cataline Conspiracy, the Gallic Wars. All good stuff and precedes him becoming a dictator. I wouldn’t really say that it’s in the rear view.
I do think you have a point though that there’s not as much interest before Caesar compared to after. Everyone’s mental image of Ancient Rome is usually the early empire. Marcus Aurelius, for example, is more famous than Scipio Africanus.
Note to horror writers: the US now has almost 100% mobile phone coverage, with the unserved areas commonly being national parks or other similar institutions.
This is a fair point to make, but at the same time, there isn't 100% perfect coverage anywhere. My boss who lives about five miles outside the town in a rural area had to switch her mobile network provider because the service was too unreliable; it kept dropping work calls and even no reception at all.
So there is still room for "we can't contact the outside world" in a horror story, even with mobile phones. Terrain, weather conditions, one service provider's tower not in the right spot, no charge, no credit, etc.
I'm sorry, that map is just lying to you in your face. Where we live, in one of the nearby towns, from the green to at least half a mile out of town, none of our phones have any reception - and we have a phone from at least one of the providers listed in that area. The map says coverage 100%.
Checked a few other places that I know for a fact have no mobile coverage of any kind. Still says 100%, with the providers that I know we use listed.
Maybe they think that US territory is completely flat, and terrain features, like hills and mountain ridges, never block line of sight to towers? That still doesn't obviously explain it, but maybe if I squint at the map enough I would be able to believe it.
I'm skeptical. I live in a midwestern college town. There are multiple places on the main street through town where Siri can't give me directions or play a requested song.
I... don't know what to think of this, it clashes violently with my lived experience. I just drove through a chunk of Southwest (Texas/New Mexico). Coverage was extremely spotty, which I knew to expect, and had all the maps downloaded on my phone.
And basically everyone only uses one carrier, so yes a map showing all carriers combined is misleading. I know of places in rural California, rural New York and rural Connecticut where I have no cell phone coverage.
I know almost next to nothing about military strategy. But based on what I've read in literature it seems like in a land war a big strategy is to create situations in which your troop has a big numerical advantage. I'm guessing the main advantage of a numerical advantage in a particular battle in the context of a war is morale? Are there other advantages? What are other very simple time-tested strategies for winning battles?
Look up Lanchester's Square Law. For ranged combat, the balance of casualties is proportional to the square of the number of units on each side (assuming equal firepower per unit). Basically, the more people you have shooting at the enemy, the fewer enemies survive to shoot back.
Another very common rule is that, before WWI-ish, it's not the battle that kills you, it's the rout. A unit retreating in good order will probably fend off attacks well enough to limp to safety, a unit that panics and scatters is going to get chased down.
I know very little about this, but it seems to me that with modern weapons, if you put too many soldiers in one place, they will simply get killed by a bomb. So if one hundred soldiers oppose two hundred soldiers, what actually happens is that on each side one bomb drops, and most of the soldiers are dead. You need to spread your soldiers wide, but then you lose the effect of the concentrated fire.
The defense strategy is to mine *everything*, put a few soldiers behind the line to shoot at any individual trying to pass, put artillery and anti-aircraft guns further behind the line to bomb any groups or vehicles trying to pass or shoot down the planes.
The counter-strategy -- if you are the right kind of government -- is to keep sending meat waves, about dozen soldiers at a time, so that it would be too expensive to bomb them, but if someone shoots at them, they can shoot back. You can also use civilians from the occupied territory as human shields.
Once in a while, you can do a surprise attack with hundreds of drones, hoping to take out all the enemy artillery nearby, and then you can send the vehicles.
You definitely want to prevent your troops from breaking off to loot the enemy baggage train or camp. There have been a silly amount of historical battles where one side started winning, went off to loot, and then the other side rallied and counterattacked the disorganized looters.
Also, don't let your leaders or officers get hit by a stray arrow and die in the middle of the fight. That's really bad.
There's the Lanchester square law, which posits that an army's combat effectiveness is proportional to the square of its size. In an open field where everyone can see and fire at everyone, if your side is outnumbered 2:1, each soldier will have to on average endure double the firepower while having to kill double the number of enemies to 'break even'. All else equal, the side with double the troops can expect to win with 25% losses. You can test this out in any strategy game. Go into the scenario editor, create two armies, one twice the size of the other, and see how they fare.
This rule of thumb I think was invented mainly for armies standing opposite each other exchanging musket fire. In a modern conflict, especially urban warfare, there is much more concealment of troops and sight lines, so the ability of any troop to fire on any enemy troop is diminished. I believe modern doctrine uses an exponent of around 1.5 instead of 2.
The need to concentrate troops for an offensive is balanced by the need to spread your forces defensively along the front. In any offensive the defender has a first-shot advantage, where they are in a position to fire while the offensive army is moving into range. The defenders will also be more familiar with the terrain they are fighting in. So typically in any offensive you need a large force to be able to absorb disproportionate losses and still fight effectively.
Of course the higher the numerical advantage you have, the fewer troops you're likely to lose. Many offensives of the later part of WW2 involved 10:1 ratios or greater. The tradeoff of course is that it's much more difficult and expensive to organise a successful offensive than it is to merely defend. If ww2 and Ukraine are to go by, it takes nations a couple of years to really learn how to conduct an offensive.
>There's the Lanchester square law, which posits that an army's combat effectiveness is proportional to the square of its size. In an open field where everyone can see and fire at everyone, if your side is outnumbered 2:1, each soldier will have to on average endure double the firepower while having to kill double the number of enemies to 'break even'. All else equal, the side with double the troops can expect to win with 25% losses. You can test this out in any strategy game. Go into the scenario editor, create two armies, one twice the size of the other, and see how they fare.
I didn't know the thoughts I had while playing Starcraft in my childhood had an actual name and practical application.
It depends a lot on the era of conflict and what kind of support both sides have, but in general the attacker wants a 3:1 ratio in their favor at the point of contact.
Other common principles are making use of terrain and water features, building defenses, attacking the enemy’s supply lines, and using the weather (Russian winters in multiple wars, and summer heat during the Crusades).
This is why Russia is generally considered by some to have the upper hand in their Special Operation. And they have been able to push Ukrainian forces back on the heels with massed attacks. But these look like Phyrric victories, so far...
Sound Sense (sound-sense.net) is a nonprofit organization that coordinates low-gain hearing aid trials for people with auditory processing disorder with or without associated hearing loss.
I connected with them a few months ago and got a pair of hearing aids in the mail last week. So far, the experience has been like getting glasses - I am reasonably functional without hearing aids, but with them I have to spend far less time "filling in the gaps" and guessing what people are saying.
The research still isn't settled about whether hearing aids significantly improve APD symptoms. The Sound Sense people think that this is because there's a splitting effect - some people with APD traits really love them and others get no benefit at all. Personally, my experience so far has been a lot of "cool factor" but only a small amount of functional improvement.
Jason Pargin's new novel mentions scissors statements:
"[Physical terrorism and then]...The final stage would involve the release of a false flag manifesto claiming responsibility. This would, in reality, be an act of psychological warfare to sow discord in the aftermath. Our intel says the Russians have been working on this at least since 2014, with the goal of creating the perfect trigger to exploit existing fissures in our society. They have apparently been testing it in various corners of the internet and measuring engagement, gauging which subject creates the most visceral and divisive reaction among the main ideological factions of the American populace. Their goal is to get half of the country sounding like they’re defending the attack, triggering irreconcilable outrage from the other half."
Jason is a fan of Scott's work (I think I first heard of SSC from him in a Cracked podcast?) so I wouldn't be surprised if that was a deliberate reference
Also I enjoyed the book a lot! I thought it treats internet communities (Twitch streamers, Reddit, makeup tutorial influencers) realistically but also captured what's intrinsically hilarious about them. Anyway, do recommend although only if you have a stomach for controversy. SOOO controversial, my goodness. (https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/the-new-book-is-out-right-now-finally)
Does anyone have information on how - I guess I'll call them "permanent creation" tasks - in childhood contribute to adulthood? If you teach a child to craft a bowl or chair instead of just buying one, does it affect their adult life in any way?
Having a foundation of doing creative stuff was a good thing for me. I was led into/led myself into a ton of creative hobbies, forgot about them all in early life, and went back to them around 35. Now I'm approaching retirement age and looking forward to just making things.
My father retired and had no hobbies, as he had always just worked and watched TV. He always seemed sad and at retirement he began a decline that ended with his life. This gives my various hobby pursuits a bit of desperation that they might not have otherwise.
When my son was in very early grade school, he had a class where the kids made beeswax candles. I remember a Christmas where he had a candle he had made of beeswax and he gave it to me and then he said I will have this candle for the rest of my life and the day I will die I will light the candle and watch it burn Until it is done.
I still have that candle stashed away, where I keep my passport and other important things
My dad and I built several (fairly nice!) stools and other furniture things when I was a kid. When furnishing my new apartment, I still defaulted to Ikea. Not sure that there has been any permanent impact on my life beyond a basic understanding that making furniture is hard and buying it is easy.
Two of my most vivid childhood memories are of making real things, with adult help: A brick from some clay I dug up, and some kind of long dress I sewed by hand myself. I'm sure both were very crudely done, and there was adult help, but to my preschooler mind the takeaway was that I had made the first Real Things of my life. I remember them with a feeling I don't have about making pretend things: sand castles, and forts made of a blanket draped over a table, and stuff with kid construction toys. I knew they were real, not pretend. When I got a little older I daydreamed about making a little house for myself in the woods. Thought I could spread a bunch of that clay out smooth and flat for a floor, then fire it by building a fire on top. That wouldn't have worked, but I thought it would be a way to make a Real Floor.
In my teens I taught myself to be a good seamstress, and have made all kinds of complicated things, including costumes for a theater during one era. I can't do fine woodworking, buy have a bunch of tools and can rough together all kinds of things, and make repairs. And I've always wanted to build a house, though I never got around to doing that.
I don't know whether the brick and the dress just really hit the spot for me, or whether making Something Real would have for most kids. I think the important thing with kids is to be alert for something that really hits the spot, and give them a big memorable experience when you realize that a certain kind of thing gives them special pleasure.
Would a parallel universe have identical values of π or e?
I remember reading a science fiction novel years ago that had the characters navigating a wormhole bridge between universes and they had device to continually calculate the value of pi to track where they were in the multiverse and I thought huh that's a cool idea.
Now I'm wondering, wait how would that even work? Like if you brought a wheel from one universe to another would it suddenly be ever so slightly out of true?
This has sparked a memory for me, was it that Greg Bear book? Eon? I remember loving the pi-measuring conceit as well - even if I agree with other commenters that the change in geometry would likely do something pretty terminal to our biological processes (proteins not fitting, cells denaturing etc)
Mathematical constants have nothing to do with the physical universe.
What one could think about changing in a metaphysical sense are dimensionless physical constants. I enjoyed Martin Rees's *Just Six Numbers* as a teen, though I have since read a bit of criticism that it was too credulous towards string theory's metaphysical claims about the multiverse.
Not so sure about this. Math is impossible without a physical substratum of sorts, right? Ultimately the mental states that take place during a calculation or when acknowledging that a theorem is true are physical configurations (if we take a physicalist view).
I'm pretty sure the book is Eon by Greg Bear. I remember a Pi finding device used in that book to find where they were in the multiverse. But ChatGPT's first guess was The Void Trilogy, by Peter F Hamilton.
Pi would be identical in the context of a continuous flat environment, such as the abstract confines of Euclidean geometry. Whether or not Euclidean geometry is a close approximation of the real world could very quite a bit between universes.
Spacetime curvature, for instance, could definitely affect the real-world value of pi, but a large enough curvature to make pi more than a tiny bit different in everyday contexts would probably be inconsistent with life.
Pi and e are computable numbers. You can have Turing machines which run forever, writing digits of them on the tape one by one.
A universe where if you follow the instructions for calculating correctly and end up with other results would be a pretty fucked-up place.
You might as well ask if there are universes where elementary rules of arithmetic or logic don't hold. I can't really imagine such universes, but then again, I am trained by a lifetime of the kind of logic which holds true in our universe. Or you could say that the math which is discover-able both for us and for the inhabitants of flatland is all the math there is, and everything else is at most dream-logic which fails to be self-consistent when closely examined.
What about lim n→∞ (1 + 1/n)^n ? That happens to be e. But if the limit of the sequence is a different number, it would mean that the values for many specific n would also be different. How specifically would that work e.g. for n=2?
One thing I can imagine is the parallel universe having a different geometry. Like there would be no planes, and therefore no circles as we know them. Our equation for π would still result in the same number, but that number would not describe anything about that world's closest alternative to our circles. (And yes, as anomie said, this would instantly kill you, because the chemistry in your body would stop working.)
Math isn't empirical so pure mathematical constructs couldn't be observed like that. It's like asking if meters could be different. The underlying thing the meters measure could be different but a meter is an invented abstraction. For example, pi in base 12 is 3.18 (and on and on) not 3.14. But this does not correspond to a real difference in the empirical world. You can switch to base 12 mathematics and it won't cause any issues in the physical world.
If OP meant by pi the number defined by summing some series then indeed it’s hard to imagine it changing from one universe to the next. On the other hand if he meant “the ratio of the circumference of some physical object to its diameter” that is an empirical measurement. Even in our own universe it may turn out not to be 3.1415926535… Take for instance a very big circle drawn on the ground as an example (assuming flat Earthers are wrong)
I'm not saying Amazon are putting their thumb on the scale when it comes to reviews of "Rings of Power", but here's the reply after I attempted to leave a review on episode seven. My review gave it four stars out of five, if anyone is interested.
"We could not post your review because it does not meet our guidelines for one or more of these reasons:
Profanity
Harassment
Hate speech
Sexual content
Illegal activity
Private information
Please edit and resubmit your review. Before you do, make sure it meets all of our community guidelines."
Now, the review was negative. But it was a lot less harsh than the ones I've left on here, and I didn't (so far as my poor addled brain can recall) do any swearing, sexual content (oh yeah, that's rich coming from you guys that have an Elf kissing his mother-in-law!) or the rest of it. I didn't even threaten to firebomb Jeff Bezos' toy rockets.
So it would seem that you only get to post a review on Prime Video if it ranges from positive to glowing about how magnificent the show is. I'll bear that in mind the next time I see puff pieces in the trade mags online about how the second season is busting all records for being the most watched, most streamed, most popular, most loved show ever 😁
Maybe their system runs reviews through a sentiment checker, and the sarcasm has tripped whatever setting they have for "Harassment"? Amazon's AI work is not known for being top drawer, so I would not be surprised if their analysis amounts to "insufficiently laudatory", the way many deep learning systems end up learning a least squares approximation.
I didn't save a copy of the comment, which I should have done, but I wasn't sarcastic. I was trying to give constructive criticism about what worked for me and what didn't.
There have been rumblings about Amazon doing the same thing with reviews of season one - pruning out any reviews that were three stars and under, so the only reviews people saw were four and five stars, leading them to think "this must be a pretty good show".
I was agnostic about that, because rumours are always flying on the Internet, but seeing that a four star review that was critical but not very negative (you could call it mildly positive as I said that episode was slightly better than the others) got "not laudatory enough" rejection, I'm beginning to believe it.
Well now I'm *really* motivated to review the final episode! 😁
Oh, I am waiting for it with great anticipation, sitting here like one of the new, kinder, nicer Orcs who just want to beat their swords into ploughshares and go till the land (as vegetarian farmers) with their wives and babies by their side 😁
Heh, heh, heh.
They better give me Celebrimbor's tortured and arrow-riddled corpse, is all I'm saying, after their pre-season promises of darker and grittier and gorier.
I honestly have *no* idea how they're going to round up all the little straying sheepies of their various plot threads in the final episode; it'll either have to be three hours long or they're going to leave a clutter of cliff-hangers for season three (e.g. I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf, his staff quest, his 'do I abandon my friends to CERTAIN DEATH?' dilemma, the Dark Wizard, and Tom Bombadil as just *one* of the Really Big Things they need to sort out).
Is the beast that King Durin threatens to unleash:
(a) The Balrog at long last after they've been teasing it for a whole two seasons? Way too early by the lore, but they spit on your lore feelthy nerds!
(b) not the Balrog but the Watcher in the Water (or its grandparent), the creature in the lake that Dísa encountered?
(c) neither of those, it's just Dísa got the night starvation and was making a run to the market to stock up on munchies and you should know by now not to get in her way when she's on a snack run?
Did you properly test your hypothesis? As in, did you find published reviews that are more negative than yours would have been? Maybe post your would-be review here so we can judge for ourselves?
Huh! Unrelated but I just was going on to Amazon to write a review of a book I'd just read and enjoyed and got this:
"We apologize but Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a result, all reviews submitted by this account have been removed and this account will no longer be able to contribute reviews and other content on Amazon."
There does seem to be something odd going on with Amazon's websites. Maybe they're trying to shove in All AI All The Time (Humans Go Home) and the systems are getting indigestion?
I resubmitted a five star review that might, if you squint and look at it sideways with the light behind it, just possibly maybe contains the slightest tinge of sarcasm.
Recent experience that I think might be of interest to the board. I went to Hong Kong recently. For those who aren’t aware, there was significant unrest there in 2019-20, which began with an attempt by the HK legislative council to pass a law enabling people to be extradited to mainland China for prosecution of crimes, effectively enabling the government to get around the “One Country, Two Systems” setup and bypass the protections of Hong Kong’s legacy British-based justice system to move them to mainland courts. Previously, doing that required kidnapping people to the mainland (see, e.g. the Causeway Bay Books disappearances). Hong Kongers understandably freaked the fuck out at this prospect and huge protests ensued. Like, as-many-as 1MM people out of a 7MM population huge. It ended with a combination of leveraging COVID to force people back indoors, and a new National Security/Anti-Sedition Law that was passed in the mainland and pushed onto Hong Kong from there because the HK Legislative Counsel was effectively paralyzed.
The law is pretty much what you’d expect from the PRC, criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign organizations, but worded vaguely enough that it can be broadly enforced. You don’t have to explicitly plan a coup or declaration of independence, technically playing the “Glory to Hong Kong” song that was an anthem for the protests, or wearing a “Free Hong Kong” t-shirt would be enough. Naturally, this chills speech the PRC finds problematic while also allowing them to accuse detractors of being paranoid by claiming it’d *never* be enforced that way.
That’s all backstory though. The *story* is that my recent trip to HK also included a stop at the Hong Kong history museum. Surprisingly, the museum itself was mostly closed, but it had a free, special exhibit about national security and the new law. And man, if you want some real-world Orwell, check this thing out.
“The National Security Exhibition Gallery, with an area of over 1,100 square metres, aims at enhancing visitors' appreciation of the significance of national security, impressing upon all citizens their duties and responsibilities in safeguarding national security, as well as deepening the community's general knowledge and understanding of national security related concepts and issues. Developed around the core of a holistic approach to national security, the Gallery serves to promote patriotism and affection for our country. Messages are conveyed to encourage all citizens to take part in safeguarding national security, and to elevate their sense of responsibility and ownership. The overarching need for long-term security and stability in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's unique advantages of being backed by the Motherland and connected to the world are emphasised.”
The children’s programming was especially interesting. You can see the kids’ video “Young Guardians of National Security “ online, including such gems as butterflies explaining to a ladybug that “law compliance is a must for national security” and unironic use of the phrase “unity is strength.”
The rest of the exhibit isn’t online, but it had a lot of crazy gems, like the section on how awesome the PLA is as a “stabilizing force in Hong Kong,” the dangers of color revolution and how the 2019 protests were the “Hong Kong version of ‘colour revolution’” instigated by outsiders, the dire threats of espionage which are ‘everywhere,’ and how the new National Security law “ends violence and chaos, and restores order” and is “constitutional, legitimate, reasonable, and fair.”
The whole thing was surreal and darkly humorous (if you need a special exhibit on how your anti-secession law is “constitutional, legitimate, reasonable, and fair,” perhaps the lady doth protest too much?), but mostly sad. Seems hard to imagine a way for Hong Kong to really bounce back.
From your description, the exhibit sounds really cringe for anyone who is not already a 100% convinced of the CCP point of view. But then again, being the one voice of reason in some committee to point out "this will seem very silly to anyone not already convinced, perhaps we should not do this" is probably not the kind of statement anyone savvy enough to get onto the committee in the first place will make. And sometimes today's obedient kids turn into tomorrow's disobedient teens, and might question the wisdom of the butterflies' message about national unity. Western attempts to teach kindergardeners about how evil drugs are rarely prevent them from trying drugs later, after all.
I dunno, the current grasp the Party has on how things are expressed and what is or is not crimethink is pretty firm (right now at least).
Imagine if, every 4th of July, all the Hollywood stars and Emmy award winners and anybody famous or admired all lined up to do the patriotic flag-waving and release songs and movies about how great America is and its political systems and how the people, especially the youth, must strive onwards and upwards to uphold the righteousness of the nation.
Now, some American stars may well do that, but imagine it being *compelled*. Or not even compelled overtly, so much as everyone falls in line and produces the online messaging about "Happy National Day and here are the approved sentiments", partly out of true belief (because you've been raised under this system) and partly out of knowing this is how you must play the game, if you want a career (and to avoid ending up disappeared/in jail).
This brought to you courtesy of it recently being China's National Day and seeing a current star very popular with the youth releasing a song for the day. This is just how it goes. The Orwell Museum is all of a whole with that sort of social engineering. "This is what you must believe and this is the version of history that is the only one acknowledged".
You're right, the compelled speech system in the United States is a lot more subtle. The compelled speech in the US isn't openly in favour of the system, it's ostensibly _against_ the system. Please change your corporate logo to black this month and rainbow the other month, in protest against someone who might theoretically exist. The establishment is the revolution, and the revolution will never end.
I agree with the overall spirit of your comment here, but just for avoidance of doubt let's be clear that the CCP system is *much* worse than the US one. It's not just a matter of the US overton window being governed by informal social forces - the punishments those social forces can bring to bear is significantly less.
To take an example - the Hunter Biden Laptop story. The laptop findings were legitimately newsworthy, the Trump FBI warned facebook that it "might be a Russian plot," and facebook de-prioritized the story in the critical month before the election. The story still was broken, however, mainly by the NY Post, and we've got pretty widespread knowledge of it available. If you read only left-media sources, you might still get an unfair view of it, but you at least know that it exists to get that unfair view.
Imagine that story breaking about Xi Jinpeng's kid in the PRC. "Imagine" is even a stretch because it probably doesn't break at all. There's 2 kinds of media available there - state media, which would never report on the story in the first place because it's under direct party control, and independent media, where the story won't break because it's understood that you can be straight up arrested and put in jail for publishing it.
Again, I'd assume that you're probably aligned with this kind of "D's and R's are imperfect but the CCP is still worse" worldview; most people, on examination, are. It's hard not to be, what with the forced sterilizations, mass famines, social credit schema, etc. I just want to throw it out there because often people read these "in fairness we're imperfect too" comments as "to be honest we're just as bad," and that's a bridge too far that I want to make sure nobody takes away.
When an election goes the way an American doesn't want, they generally complain and talk idly about "moving to Canada." I've had multiple people in HK tell me that they or their friends (especially friends with schoolage children) have *actually* left the country, either to avoid the indoctrination their kids are exposed to, or because they or their kids were involved in the democracy protests and they're afraid for their safety.
The US may be on the same "degrees of imperfection" continuum with the PRC in terms of how it treats its citizens, but they are way, way past of us in terms of how bad things are, and we shouldn't accidentally let our own justified self-criticism inadvertently write the CCP a pass.
Putting a couple pieces together, I'm also reminded a Russian concept Mark Galliotti sometimes describes as vranyo (враньё). Where I lie to you, but it's not so much an attempt to actually deceive you as it is an expression of power.
Basically, if I lie to you hoping to get you to believe the lie, that's one thing. But if I lie to you blatantly, and you know I'm lying and I'm not even trying to pretend I'm not, but you have no power to call me on it or do anything about it, and in fact the power dynamics might even compel you to act as if you believe me, it's exactly the kind of expression of power that can crush someone's spirit. Like the famous "there are 4 lights" scene in Star Trek, or the mob boss who knows the cops have no evidence so he looks them in the eye, smirks, and says "of *course* I had nothing to do with that killing!"
Applied to an exhibit like this, I sort of see that kind of pattern emerge. The content, while cringe and littered with falsehoods, (a) makes CCP true-believers in Hong Kong feel good to see, and (b) if you're not a true believer and you see it, you see the message "the 2019 unrest was a colour revolution that foreign powers attempted to impose on China from the outside, but thankfully our righteous heroic government passed a constitutional, legitimate, and fair national security law that saved us from this terrible evil" slapped all over the walls, and you know that any attempt you make to call the lie a lie could land you in jail, so you just have to suck it up and let the statement stand unchallenged, it's dispiriting in exactly the kind of way that would work well for the CCP.
Players were upset enough about this that they hate-mailed the Commander rules committee to the point that the committee resigned and handed control of the format over to WOTC.
The reaction on /r/magictcg was mostly "good riddance" (and on /r/custommagic, making hate cards that specifically target blue/green Bird Wizards was practically a once a week occurence), so I was kinda shocked to hear there was an uproar about this.
The petition linked from your news article makes it sound like it's a mix of "you made these expensive cards valueless" and "weren't those cards made specifically for commander?"
It's largely because of the value of the cards. Everybody I know agree that the cards deserved to be banned, even the ones that are sad that their $100 pieces of cardboard have cratered in value.
That said, I can't think of any other cards with such a hefty price that have been banned recently. I think to some extent, there's a "perfect shitstorm" going on here, where those who are most hurt by the ban are those most likely to have terrible social antennas and send people death threats.
> But why were these bans so unpopular? Were they the wrong things to ban?
I think you're hearing from a vocal minority here. As an ex-Commander player, all I can say is "it's about time". I long ago gave up on playing commander, but these bans are certainly a step in the right direction at least.
Given the history of card bans in the past, I am less confident in this answer than I would be otherwise.
What I'm hearing is that a lot of people bought these cards specifically because they were valuable, like buying silver and gold, and and then the value went away overnight. Card shops, collectors, etc. Players seem to roll with bans and sometimes anticipate them, but if it wasn't the players who were complaining but those banking on the value, that might make sense.
If you are playing casually with friends, sure. But if you are playing competitively or with strangers, they will probably insist on playing by standard rules.
Of course, EDH was originally a community-defined format. The WotC got in on it and rebranded it as commander, likely because Elder Dragon Highlander was not very trademarkable.
Also, Jeweled Lotus was a card specifically created by WotC for Commander. It seems to have appeared in two sets, Commander Legends (2020) and Commander Masters (Released 2023-08-04). Banning a card which WotC put in boosters released a year ago seems controversial. That is considerably less than the about two years cards stay legal in the 'standard' format.
> Banning a card which WotC put in boosters released a year ago seems controversial. That is considerably less than the about two years cards stay legal in the 'standard' format.
Two years is an *eternity* for problem cards to stick around. Bans are normally much faster than that. Heck, even the laissez-faire Commander format has banned a lot of cards much faster than that.
Tibalt's Trickery was legal in Modern for only *ten days*.
A year is pretty long for a broken card, and it's only because WOTC *deliberately* printed broken unfun chase cards to make money that we're even in this position.
Heck, just look at the precedent of Hullbreacher. Hullbreacher was another card that WOTC printed specifically for Commander, and it still got banned in Commander after only *9 months*.
In fact, it's even worse than that. In *the very same ban announcement* as Jeweled Lotus, another of the banned cards was Nadu, which was banned in Commander only *three months* after release.
I work for a company in California that might run out of money soon. We've been around for more than ten years and run an online community with ~100,000 members. No money is involved except for hosting costs. I think it would be a shame if all those people lost their community.
I'm thinking of seeing if I can inherit the community and continue running it but I am afraid of all the legal responsibilities and obligations I might be accidentally taking on. I don't have the patience or the $$$ to start a company to own the community.
I expect, if I go ahead with this, expensive lawyers will be involved but before I get that far, am I crazy to even think it? What should I be thinking about.
I think legal advice is often worth the cost, which is also often less than you think it will be. If it were me, ask around for recommendations (or check google reviews) for lawyers who are experienced with liability/tort/whatever might be relevant and ask for an hour long consultation to discuss your concerns and hopes and what might be required (in terms of time, effort and $) to assume ownership/responsibility, plus what the actual risks of that approach are.
Depending on how complex the situation is that initial consult might cost around $200-500 (but I've never hired a lawyer in California so others might be able to give a better estimate). After meeting with them they should also be able to tell you how much it would take to execute your plan which again, will depend on how complicated it is but I would guess $2-4k.
If you don't like what you hear from the lawyer in the consult find another and repeat the process. If you don't like the advice of the 2nd lawyer either, then it's probably worth reconsidering
Not to mention that, if the group has members in other countries, those countries' laws might apply in some potential lawsuits.
All of this is to say that you should definitely get competent legal advice before going forward, probably from a firm that has expertise in multinational corporate law.
The idea of taking on the infrastructure of a company to preserve an online community seems like a boil-the-ocean solution. Couldn't the community just migrate to some other service, like Reddit, for instance?
Is Disney/ABC an obvious short? I'm biased because I don't care for Disney properties in the first place, but I watch a lot of sports and have witnessed the implosion of ESPN over the past few years. It does seem to be a case of "DEI is the problem". Their top talented white broadcasters (E.g., Jeff Van Gundy) have been booted in favor of women who don't have near the talent of the men they are replacing. The bizarre rise of Stephen A. Smith is something I don't want to know details about.
ESPN seems to think that its brand alone will get them through anything. If you're a sports fan. would you rather watch a basketball game on ESPN or TNT? In a competitive marketplace, the answer to that shouldn't be so clear.
So should we all short Disney? Is it rotting from the head? Or is ESPN some weird special case that doesn't reflect on Mickey Mouse and Goofy?
Disney has gone through many cycles of greatness and decay, it's never been this big and dominant but I think it could till renew itself. I also don't think the DEI/wokeness issue is as clear as people think. Inside Out 2 got a lot of criticism, but it was the highest grossing Pixar movie to date (in nominal dollars, anyway).
My point about wokeness has been taken too far. It doesn't matter *why* ESPN has made such bad decisions (I think wokeness is part of it but the actual reason doesn't matter. Maybe a better way to think about it is: management is either weak or in chaos so wokeness has won by defualt) but it has made many bad decisions in serial. I'm betting against them due to evidence of bad management.
That their current management is incompetent. Their recent stock price history reflects that, but what I see is that the management decisions are getting worse not better.
It's the kind of short I would hold for a year, with the notion that more investors will notice the same over that period. All my other positions are aligned with the S&P to rise so it's a minor hedge in my portfolio and not a huge risk. I like to use about 5% of my money for short positions.
The same point can be made for every investment I make. I believe the EMH is mostly true and mostly long the indexes but it's fun to short a company from time to time. I'm 55% sure Disney is going down over the next year and that's good enough to trade on. If I bet wrong, no biggie.
Is this some kind of momentum reasoning, it's gone down a lot so it might continue? It feels to me as though a short now is essentially a short on the overall index, and there might be better EV plays to short the S&P.
Disney as a whole seems too big to short as an entity. Star Wars and ESPN doing poorly? Just do more Pixar, theme parks, and Marvel. They own so very much that it's kind of hard to imagine it. And even when things are going "poorly" they are probably closer to a small profit and breaking even than an actual loss.
A Marvel movie costing $300 million and only making $400 million is embarrassing, because they've made far more money with less cost and it shows a big decline in their money-makers. But it's still a nice profit and any other industry would think that was amazing. The Marvels appears to have lost money, but even a mediocre film like Thor: Love and Thunder apparently made about $100 million. If it weren't for the social implications of crashing a major IP or the possibility of killing the golden goose, the obvious play would be to make as many of those things as you can as fast as you can. (And obviously try to aim for the more profitable options like Deadpool and drop future Marvels where you can).
As far as ESPN specifically? I think televised sports is in a difficult position, and is ripe for some kind of online takeover. The industry is far too big for someone to just bully their way in (and Disney would be the most likely to try if they didn't already own ESPN), but I think someone's going to try to break into the market soon with something fairly novel and take the legs out from under the current leaders.
They have performed poorly recently and the reason is bad management. Based upon really dumb shit they continue to do, I expect the bad management to continue for at least another year and will short them for that time period.
Stephen A. Smith is much better understood as a shock-jock designed to cause controversy to get people to tune in than anything to do with wokeness. He's been a major ESPN personality since 2005, not 2018, after all.
A much better example of wokeness was in 2017 with the rebranding of the 6pm SportsCenter hour to SC6, hosted by Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. Hill in particular was an outspoken woke liberal. After some controversial comments, Hill was pushed out of ESPN and Smith's contract wasn't renewed. SC6 only lasted 13 months.
ESPN's issues are financial--they rode the cable TV package gravy train and cannot adjust to the lost revenue. Their ploy is clickbaitification (SAS being the prime example). I don't think wokeness has anything to do with it (even the constant push for women's basketball is better understood as a financial move, since they own the rights to the WNBA but not the NBA).
no, the market is rewarding wokeness and "markets can stay sane longer then you can stay solvant"
Die may take a decade to play out and shorts charge interest. Dont mix value investing a day trading, a short is a day traders tool and your making a value claim.
I think the quote is "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Which I think is your point. I sense the fever is slowly breaking though. How solvent are you?
Edit: After looking at a 5 year chart of DIS I don't think shorting it is a good move. Its trading at close to the bottom of its range.
There's never such a thing as an "obvious short", and in fact this post makes me want to investigate going long (this is not at all intended as a dig at you, only a reflection of years of observing this pattern - by the time a stock is an "obvious short" most of the bad stuff has been priced in). Shorting stocks is an incredibly tough way to make money (ask me how I know... nevermind :) ).
The word obvious is hyperbole. i actually think Disney has a 55% chance of declining further over the next year, and that's good enough for me to short. 95% of my portfolio is long the S&P. Disney is my one short which I will hold for a year.
This is technically true, but in practice the upside can be very big, and the downside very rarely goes TTM.
That being said, a lot of short-sellers are apparently jumping ship from the practice, because in later years (due to massive liquidity, meme stocks, etc.) the risk-return profile of the strategy seems to have deteriorated significantly.
It's a hedge against the rest of my porrfolio which is 95% in the S&P. But I always like to take 5% of the portfolio and short what looks like the worst stock out there.
Well if you are doing it professionally you can hedge your short buying OTM calls. I do think there are obvious shorts that come along but it is not something I do. I lack both the patience and the deep pockets.
I would be mildly skeptical of any claims that there are 'obvious shorts'. Disney is a giant conglomerate spanning from Star Wars to Pixar. I am not sure how much of its assets are tied to their broadcasters, and how the market would assess their share value if it decided that all their DEI broadcasters are worthless. Big institutional investors who can spend a few full-time jobs to look at nitty gritty details of Disney finances are likely the median investor. I find it hard to believe that they are all so constrained by ideological blinders that they would not be able to judge the quality of some key employees.
If you had managed to turn 100$ into a billion dollar playing the stock market, I would update my beliefs towards you having a special edge, but absent evidence of that I would not follow your investment advice.
I am not saying that Disney is correctly valued, perhaps it is not and you will make money shorting it, but in my world view that would be winning a gamble, not picking up money from the street.
Disney's original output has declined in quality but they are on to a good thing with Disney+ and the theme parks, for now. Do you mean the company will shrink in size or go bust?
Worth a try. I have 2 kids aged 8 and 5, and while I wouldn't take them to a modern Disney movie, I would absolutely sign up to Disney + and take them to Disneyland, only limiting factor is they are currently really into some shows on Netflix and I don't want to pay for more than one streaming platform. If the theme parks start struggling Disney can sell land in Paris; LA. But none of this means they won't decline this year.
I agree: I don't care at all for Disney's most recent fare, but I have little girls and they love watching classic Disney movies and kids shows on Disney+, and we all love going to DisneyWorld. Or, rather, the kids really love it: I love it a lot less each time we go, because the already high prices keep going up.
Advocates for traditional sex roles commonly insist that they do not believe male traits are superior to female traits. This is trivially true if you’re talking about men and women as objects necessary for reproduction.
But does anyone (who believes the personality and cognitive differences between men and women we see are primarily biological in nature) - actually think these different forms of cognition are on balance equal in value? What would their revealed preferences imply?
I try to work that out in the poll and thought experiment linked to above. Would appreciate your thoughts on it.
I think the idea behind this, and most of the replies below, make far too much out of a population-level difference (which I haven't actually seen any evidence for, by the way. What underlies the conviction that women "don't innovate"?). But anyway, it's something that is a recurring error and I see it a lot, especially on this Substack's comments. Yes, differences in populations are indeed visible - take height, for example. Men are on average taller than women. But that doesn't mean that every man is taller than every women. In fact, if you look at the distribution, it largely overlaps. Or take the link between smoking and lung cancer. It's absolutely real, but not every smoker gets lung cancer. You cannot take a population-level difference and argue from it to the individual. In this case, not only has a population-level difference been applied to individuals, it has then been enlarged again - that's like saying "men are on average stronger than women, therefore a population made entirely from women won't be able to undo jars." Of course some women will. Of course some women will innovate. Plus, brains are plastic and can change and adapt to their environments. Even if women don't innovate as much as men do, in a population made entirely of women, those who do innovate will have even more scope than they normally would.
All of which is a long way to say that I don't think there'd be much difference between the worlds, honestly. Not least because a lot of what we see today has some cultural baggage behind it too, and presumably these worlds would be different culturally (or maybe not? As Deiseach points out, women are just as capable of murder, commanding armies and demanding the slaughter of thousands of people). They might well be different - I don't know much about the concept of convergent culture, if it even exists - but I don't think we can easily predict in what ways they'd differ, or from where that difference would originate.
An interesting alternative to Man’s World and Woman’s World would be to make us hermaphrodites, and of course give us all male brains. Let's hope that as these people thrust their way into the bright, techy future one of the fine, inventive, ambitious, numerically-minded citizens of that world comes up with a genetic tweak that allows people to grow dicks thousands of miles long, so long that they literally encircle the globe and wind up behind their owner’s butt with 6 inches — no, wait, 9 inches — or more to spare to spare. Then these excellent folk can literally fuck themselves.
I think you need to show more of your cards to make it an interesting discussion. For example, is "women's world" just like our world, but maybe with worse video games, less war and less rape? That sounds pretty good! Or is it stuck in early 1900's technology for reasons?
According to our friend there would be a 40% infant mortality rate, so imagine the Monty Python mud-grubbing peasants scenario, since apparently women dumb, no brains, no ambition, only know eat hot chip and lie:
My Own Answer
"I would choose Man World for my daughter. The decision is not even close. And while I can’t know this for sure I think most loving parents; whatever their officially stated views on sex issues would do the same.
Whatever virtuous aspects of female psychology that would be missing from Man World (and yes, would be Man-World volunteers, these do exist!), could not conceivably justify placing my daughter’s future in the hands of a sex which, in general, reveals almost no interest in the basic innovative processes which make human life outside of the total tyranny of nature possible.
Some girls prefer to spend their time around boys. Few, I’d assume, would be socially unfulfilled enough by the relative absence of feminine thought patterns to prefer 40% child mortality rates and the near absence of basic comforts."
And then he wonders why he gets asked "hey dude, are you, perchance, gay?" 😁
So, in Man World there are plenty of women, they just have the brains of men, ditto in Woman World the men have the minds of women. This is a no brainer.
Men and women are wired to need each other - that need is still there even if there's no one around to fulfill it. A daughter sent to Man World is in competition with a planetful of people who do not know how to woman properly. She's gonna clean up. Same with a son sent to Women's World.
The direction you went was, which planet will be the more high tech, successful, happiest, etc. But if I wanted to sidestep that for a moment: a lot of happiness comes from your relative position compared to others around you. Even if there's a broad disparity in the quality of the worlds, I think it might still make sense to pursue your child's unique competitive advantage by sending them to the opposite world.
From our perspective (2024 main timeline), both worlds would have failed by about 1825-1850 or so, by my estimation. I believe that women and men are very different, but complimentary. A world without the benefits of one of the sexes will fall too far towards the other and become a much worse world.
The following are my gut impressions assuming that all men become like Men and all women become like Women and ignoring the overlap in the Venn diagrams between women and men. After a generation or two without the opposing perspective, I would guess that the people on the other side of this change would become very much like the non-overlapping portions. That is, boys raised without any female influence will take on none of the mitigating perspectives and become more and more masculine.
Man World would devolve into aggression games and outright war. Popular conceptions of Sparta are along the right lines. Slavery, oppression, and for those who can be warriors or leaders, an abusive upbringing to make them keenly aggressive and very capable. The Harkonnens from Dune might be another good analog.
Woman World would struggle to feed itself and the economy would collapse. After the slow resulting mass death, the world would become much calmer, but also much more simplistic. Farmer-gatherers living in simple societies that are mostly peaceful and cooperative.
Most of the population would die in either world. Long term the Man World would produce impressive feats of strength - giant bridges, spaceships, whatever while being a miserable place to live. Woman World would be much more pleasant but suffer from preventable diseases, low standards of living, and would be in danger of extinction level crisis.
From my current perspective, I would hate to live in either world.
You genuinely think there would be no female equivalent of Pasteur or Fleming? They were smart but not geniuses or super-geniuses, and while women cluster in the middle under the bell curve, there are still smart, genius women out there. Not as many as men but some.
Before our friend gets too smug about child mortality rates, let him remember Semmelweis' study which demonstrated increased maternal mortality was due to the men becoming doctors and taking over childbirth which had been the traditional preserve of midwives:
"In 1846, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis (1818–1865), who was born in Hungary, was appointed to what was then by far the largest maternity hospital in the world: the Vienna Maternity Hospital, which was divided into two clinics. Doctors and medical students were taught in the first clinic, midwives in the second and patients were allocated to the clinics on alternate days. There was no clinical selection of cases for either clinic. From 1840 through 1846, the maternal mortality rate in the first clinic was 98.4 per 1000 births, while the rate in the second clinic – the midwives clinic – was only 36.2 per 1000 births.
Almost all the maternal deaths were due to puerperal fever. The alarmingly high mortality in the first clinic had defied explanation until Semmelweis was appointed and postulated that the excess deaths in the first clinic were due to the routine procedures carried out in the courses attended by doctors and medical students. Each day started with postmortem examinations of women who had died of puerperal fever. Then, without washing their hands, the pupils went straight to the maternity wards where they were required, as part of their training, to perform vaginal examinations on all the women. By contrast, the pupil midwives in the second clinic did not undertake either postmortem examinations, nor routine vaginal examinations."
I think you misunderstand my perspective (and I'll admit I'm hamming it up with the assumption that how men or women *tend* to act is some kind of biological imperative - in light of the question being asked).
Humanity has grown significantly larger than can be sustained using traditional ways of living. Men push boundaries, including boundaries that should not be pushed. Industrialization is not something most women would pursue, even if they thought of it. It destroys the environment, it destroys individuals, it turns us into cogs in a machine that can never stop running or most of us die. I think a society that suddenly became all female would make a series of choices to alleviate the negative effects of previous decisions up to and through a point of no return where society fails to sustain itself. That's a very different question from "what would society look like if only women-thinking persons ever lived?" I don't think such a society is doomed, and in fact it might be far more pleasant in many ways. It would just be much smaller and less strong (in a survival sense) than a world where the population is pushing boundaries and taking (significantly more) risks.
See, I find that attitude (women would never industrialise, women would not be boundary-pushers) the mirror image of the damn stupid 70s feminist witchy bullshit about the mythical Golden Age of the matriarchy before the mean old men invented sky gods and patriarchy.
All that nonsense about women would never wage war - should have been trashed by the real life examples of Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher - and we'd all be living in the blissful agrarian cottagecore world of peace'n'love and a currant bun under the benevolent rule of the wise elder women.
Bollocks, if you will pardon the crudity.
At least James Tiptree Jr. made a better fist of it with the story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" about what a possible female-only world would look like (and let's throw in Cordwainer Smith with "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" for a possible men-only world while we're at it), but I like the concept as fiction, not as "but the wimmins are all teeny-tiny brain only like babies and cats and flowers, bless little hearts" crap.
Women can be like men, and that includes being back-stabbing violent sons of bitches. Hmm, I think Joanna Russ wrote something along those lines.
We don't *know* what an all-female world would be like, because we've never lived in one, so don't be so confident that "oh all the ladies would be lolling about on their fainting couches sipping tea and not inventing the atom bomb.
"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."
"In fact, Henry trusted Katherine to act as regent while he was fighting in France. In 1513, she oversaw a national crisis when James IV of Scotland tried to invade England, even leaving the safety of London to ride north with over 1,500 sets of armour for her troops. After James’ defeat at the Battle of Flodden, Katherine sent her husband the Scottish King’s bloodied cloak. She wanted to send James’ body too, but remarked that, 'our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it'."
Women have only started to be free of their biological imperatives in the last hundred years or so. In another 50 it could be really different. The economics of reproduction have changed. The world needs babies (I guess) but economically it's not necessarily a good deal for women, assuming they are part of the cohort of women for whom things are changing, so they get to make a better deal. or we have Handmaids Tale nonsense. I don't see why women's personalities and cognitive abilities are any less elastic than those of men. So yeah, they are equal in value. And now that they can go sperm bank shopping instead of settling for whatever they can find..well, its a buyers market.
You're pretty clear how inferior you think women are 😀 Before I got to that little billet-doux part of the article, my hypothetical choices were:
(1) Let the aliens take my daughter away. Even if I believe she is dead and grieve for her after my memory has been wiped, my child will have the chance to be cured and live a normal life. How can I choose to let her die if I can save her and will not be putting her into a worse situation?
(2) I would send my daughter to Woman World. In this context, I don't care what the men there are like. Women there are like women here, and my daughter will be a woman. She will be raised in a society where she fits in. Why would I want to change her basic nature?
But you want a son, not a daughter, because you would change her basic nature. And that's how we get sex-selective abortion and skewed gender ratios in our world, folks!
So you have Man World and Woman World. I.e., Gay World 1 and Gay World 2.
Gays are good as a minority, but I think we benefit from the diversity of women and men versus a planet of one or the other. I wouldn't let my daughter go to either of your planets.
I agree, but the relative value of these traits still says something about which should give way when they come into conflict - which they regularly do.
Looking at your stack... am I wrong in thinking that your ideology and aesthetic is far-right homosexual? Not that there's anything objectively from outer space wrong with that, but it is interesting.
(UK). I was commenting the other day in the context of the crossword just how little sense of the bible's structure and narrative my 20+ kids have.
But is it really so different compared to forty years ago, asked my wife, and she had a point. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I reckon maybe ~5pc of kids at the schools I went to were taken to church; I was one of them until I rather awkwardly began to quiet quit age 15.
I'm going to go with 2024 for most sensible measures. The loss of general biblical knowledge among ordinary middle class westerners is compensated by all the Chinese and Indians who have learned some random Biblical fact from watching repeats of The Simpsons or something.
Not to mention Christianity is growing pretty rapidly in China and India (both are still small as a percentage, but growing fast), and has become pretty dominant in South Korea.
Not yet; india and china airnt christian strongholds and their populations will collapse and drasticly effect any such stat over 30 years(espieally china with communism). The way the world recovers the birthrate is up in the air, but evolution will play out and urban atheists will boom and bust
The percentage of Indians that are Christian have doubled over the last decade, and in China they've gone from 6% of the population to 8% over the same time period (probably more than that, due to the large underground church movement in China it is hard to get good statistics). So with both those countries aimed at a population crash while Christianity is on the rise, I think you're right on the money.
"The percentage of Indians that are Christian have doubled over the last decade,"
do you have a cite for that? I've tried to find 2021 census data for India but it's not easy, and in any case i'm highly suspicious of that number- my general understanding is that conversion in South Asia is quite rare (outside the far northeastern tribal populations who were converting from animism rather than Hinduism, but they aren't populous enough to appreciably affect the national numbers anyway).
I'm really glad you asked! Because as it turns out, I got that number by just Googling "growth of Christianity in India" and going with the top answer that Google provided without checking where that information came from. Turns out it came from a Christian nonprofit website that doesn't cite it's sources well. Whoops!
Having dug a little deeper, I discovered that the question is a bit vexed. According to Pew, official stats have Christianity at around 2.4% of the population in 2021. However, Pew also notes that this likely an undercount because of India's "Scheduled Castes" system. Under that system, members of historically disadvantaged castes get benefits and some preferential treatment: however, that only applies if they're Hindu. Christians and Muslims do not qualify for Scheduled Caste benefits. This leads Pew to believe that Christians are likely undercounted, because Dalits and other low caste members who report on the official census that they are Christian will lose their benefits.
This fits in with a Christianity Today article that cites different organizations putting the percent of Christians in India anywhere from 2% to 9%, and that most of the growth in Christianity reported by missionaries is coming from the Dalit caste. They claim that 70-90% of Christians in India are Dalits, and that seems plausible to me. As the "untouchable" class, a Dalit benefits the least from Hinduism and has the most to gain from Christianity's message of equality before God and the inherit worth of all humans, even slaves.
So thanks again for asking because my initial source was not reliable! Looks like there is either no growth, or a lot of hidden growth. The answer is probably somewhere in between.
Christianity in India also faces some long term issues, because as the Pew data indicates, Indian Christians tend to have lower fertility than other religious groups, and also are more likely to lose religiosity as they become more educated (whereas educated Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs etc. tend to be more likely to hang on to their beliefs and practices).
Thanks for your response and for looking into it! I have a number of responses here- I'm in general quite critical of the perspective that you're putting forward here, although as you say it comes really from the missionaries, not from you, and so no criticism to you personally. It seems to me like more of the self-congratulatory stuff that missionaries in South Asia have been saying for, well, about 200 years now. Every year they think that the masses of South Asia are about to embrace the gospel, and at the end of that time they're about as far away from victory as ever.
1) First of all, the Pew survey (and I should say that Pew is one of the surveying institutions I respect the most, they really are gold-standard even when i dislike their findings) does not indicate that Christianity in India is mostly a Scheduled Caste religion (I prefer the Scheduled Caste term to "Dalit", so i'm going to use that). It says that Christianity is about as Scheduled Caste as the country as a whole, and that Backward Castes are actually *underrepresented*. The people who are really overrepresented among Christians are, as I said, the tribal groups, who are not "at the bottom" of traditional hierarchies so much as they're "outside" traditional Hindu society entirely. (In some cases ethnolinguistically, ethnoracially and religiously as well as socially and culturally).
2) If you really want to find a religion in which Scheduled Castes are overrepresented, it would not be Christianity at all, it would be Buddhism: Buddhists in India are I believe, about 90% scheduled caste. (there are some historically Buddhist groups in places like Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, but those are again very low-population, and most Buddhists in India today are 20th century Scheduled Caste converts). The Buddha himself did not oppose caste in principle, but Buddhism in India was reinvented in the 20th c as a kind of "modernist" religion centered around social justice and liberation from the caste hierarchy.
3) We actually can look at the experience of Islam here, which in its day (and in modern times) has been sold as a religion of equality and human brotherhood, and which was much more successful in South Asia than Christianity ever has been. We can tell by genetic studies that South Asian Muslims were not, in fact, predominantly drawn from Schedule Caste origins. They represented a pretty broad spectrum of the population, who for various reasons were drawn to convert. You can hypothesize that for various reasons that a Scheduled Person would make a rational choice by converting to Islam, but historically that wasn't what happened. In fact we can see this *today*: the beleaguered Hindu population in Pakistan is like 70% Dalit, they face marginalization not just for their caste but for their religion, and they still haven't converted. Because, as surprisingly as this might be to some westerners, people in South Asia today actually tend to believe their religion and to be unwilling to change it for economic or political reasons. (And when they do change it for political reasons, Buddhism rather than Islam or Christianity is the obviously choice, since Buddhism is not culturally 'foreign' in the same sense).
4) Becoming a Christian or a Muslim doesn't actually remove you from the network of caste in the sense that some might think. My grandmother was a Christian (she became a Hindu when she married and then re-Christianized later in life) and I can tell you exactly what caste she was, although it's a little unclear where they fit into the 'hierarchy'.
5) I think the whole thought process here is alien to most people's psychology. Yes, people do often convert to a new religion, but this is most commonly conversions away from animism towards a 'bigger' religion centered around a literate civilization (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.). Most people, once they are within one of these literate and sophisticated religions, tend to actually believe in their gods and to be unwilling to sacrifice what they genuinely believe in in exchange for some social advantage.
6) Finally, I think there's a misunderstanding of Hinduism here- I'm not willing, and neither should you be, to let the philosophers and the Brahmins define Hinduism. I think most Scheduled Caste or Backward Caste Hindus, historically and today, have absolutely seen themselves as the equal of anyone else: rather than convert to a different religion, they simply practice a different form of Hinduism than their social superiors, one centered much more on the "popular" or "folk" aspects of the religion. Hinduism isn't really a single religion, it's much better thought of as two or three. One of them centers around the Vedas and around philosophers' musings on the nature of the cosmos, the other centers around stuff like, as a friend of mine puts it, "dancing around an idol of the tree goddess, then sacrificing a goat to her and eating it" (or as I'd describe it, making a sacrifice to the smallpox goddess when your child is sick and you want them to recover from smallpox). That kind of more animistic, polytheistic religion is almost a separate religion from the religion of the Vedas, the Brahmins and the philosophers, and that's much more the popular or folk Hinduism that is going to appeal to a historically low caste person (and I should say, as someone with both Hindu and Christian ancestry whose religious beliefs have fluctuated over the years, although I've never had any sympathy for atheism, agnosticism or deism, that's also the side of the religion that appeals much more to me).
Hinduism is a big religion, and one that puts less emphasis on orthodoxy than Islam or Christianity (though the importance of orthodoxy is still not zero). C. S. Lewis described it as the religion that makes a place for both the celibate ascetic and the temple prostitute, and while he was saying that as a criticism, I think it works as description too.
>First of all, the Pew survey (and I should say that Pew is one of the surveying institutions I respect the most, they really are gold-standard even when i dislike their findings) does not indicate that Christianity in India is mostly a Scheduled Caste religion
Yes, according to official statistics: but Pew also points out that Scheduled Castes who report that they are Christian or Muslim on the official census forms lose their Scheduled Caste benefits. So Christian mission organizations reporting huge growth of Christianity among Dalits and that growth not showing up on the official census is not in conflict at all. As Pew acknowledges, Christianity is very likely to be undercounted among the Scheduled Castes in the official census statistics because of that economic incentive to hide conversion.
But most literate people in the West were once Christian. The US was the most literate country in the world in 1830 because of the Christian movement to educate everyone to read the Bible. I'd guess the percentage of literate people who are Christian in the West is far down from a couple hundred years ago.
I think the peak must have been at least a century ago and the trick is comparing the number of Christians to literate Chinese and Indians in the same period who weren't Christians.
I suppose we could also debate how many illiterate Catholics centuries ago had Biblical knowledge, but I think they probably had a decent amount if they went to church.
>I'd guess the percentage of literate people who are Christian in the West is far down from a couple hundred years ago.
Yes, but even those non-Christian Western literates have some biblical knowledge, because a lot of them are ex-Christians and the rest live in a society built by Christians where some biblical knowledge is just in the water supply, so to speak.
Well, the IDF is moving into Southern Lebanon and I’m going to admit, I have zero idea what’s going to happen next.
Launching a major offensive one month before the US election is an interesting choice; I don’t know what it means. I hope I live long enough to read the insider accounts someday.
Today I stared seriously wondering exactly what number and capacity of nuclear weapons Israel has. If anybody knows of a reasonably accurate source for that, I am interested.
If I had to speculate, I would guess that their arsenal is mostly tactical fission devices in the ~45kT range. While they certainly have the technological capacity to produce thermonuclear designs (helped by lots of "leaked" info from the US - *cough, cough*) I doubt they would have made many, it's very expensive to build and maintain. But maybe a dozen in the 150Kt range if so. Pure speculation.
"It is quite difficult to develop gas fusion boosting technology like that used in U.S. weapons ... Although radiation implosion weapons could be developed without testing, they would tend to be large and heavy and would perhaps be incompatible with Israel's available delivery systems.
...
Bomb components made of plutonium, lithium-6 deuteride, and beryllium are fabricated in level 5 of Machon 2. They are transported by convoys of unmarked cars to the warhead assembly facility, operated by Rafael north of Haifa.
[Seymor] Hersh reports (without any stated source) that Israel has developed an extensive array of tactical nuclear weapons: efficient compact boosted fission bombs, neutron bombs (allegedly numbering in the hundreds by the mid-eighties), nuclear artillery shells, and nuclear mines. With an arsenal that is quite possibly in excess of 100 weapons it is likely that some of the nuclear materials would be applied tactical weapons. Boosted bombs are doubtful, as are neutron bombs, due to problems with development in the absence of a significant testing program. Neutron bombs also require very large amounts of tritium (20-30 g per weapon) which would impact the production of plutonium quite seriously (each gram of tritium displaces 80 grams of plutonium production). Artillery shells are also doubtful due to their wastefulness in plutonium. Tactical weapons are probably aircraft or missile delivered, or are pre-emplaced mines.
Burrows and Windrem claim (without indicating a source) that Israel has produced 300 warheads, including those that have since been dismantled. They place the current arsenal at about 200 weapons. "
>Killing 90% of current Hamas members (and twice as many civilians)
These numbers are not a given.
I am by no means saying that Israel has a certain path to victory by doing things the way they are doing them. I am saying that making deals with Hamas or Hezbollah is the certain path to defeat for Israel.
I doubt the election has much to do with it, but if so, it's more that the Democrats would be hesitant to loudly call them out on the attack since Israel is broadly popular with the independent middle. If this happened during the primaries (assuming the Democrats had one) it would be much more likely that Biden would have told them not to or even instituted repercussions.
I think it was more that the pager/radio scheme was about to be found out and they had to play that card now, and that they would likely never have a better opportunity to invade than right after crippling their enemy.
There's various levels of "telling them not to" that would have different levels of effect. It's outside the Overton Window, but the US government could even do things like cut off aid or military exports to Israel, or even enact sanctions.
Even something like "we will not sell you rockets for the Iron Dome until you X" would go farther than what Biden's done so far. He's trying to straddle the position between what the far left of his own base wants, and what the nation as a whole wants. It's not that he doesn't have options or that those darn Israelis just don't listen, it's that they know he isn't serious so long as they get the material and diplomatic support they need.
Framing this around US elections is interesting when I don't think it has anything to do with them. Rather, Israel has been more aggressive towards Hezbollah because they have detected weakness from Iran in its capability and/or willingness to escalate, giving Israel a freer hand to degrade Iran's proxies.
It's interesting how the recent hypothetical cease fire with Hezbollah had been reported on, where Israel supposedly agreed to one in principle, then reneging to the confusion and embarrassment of the Biden administration. In any case, I think Israel is doing the right thing pressing the issue now rather than leaving intact a force with a stated goal of killing every Israeli with their considerable military assets.
Biden's administration is perhaps the one guilty of making a political calculation in how they are treating the situation, though their spinelessness is now a well entrenched pattern beyond this theater.
It does have a link with US elections: I think Israel is militarily dependent on US weapons (especially bombs and shells). While a freshly-elected Democratic administration might make concessions to their left wing and pressure Israel, Biden and Harris would lose (or so they believe) it they tried it before the elections.
There could also be internal political calculations. Netanyahu needs to stay in power and going on the offensive (and winning) is a good way to gain support. He can also rightfully claim to defend the many people displaced from the north of Israel by Hezbollah rockets (which has been occurring for nearly a year and was criticized for). And finally, since Israel was already at war, the immediate costs and downsides of doing this were much lower.
Framed like this, it almost shouldn’t have been a surprise…
There is little practical difference between R and D on weapons. AFAIK the only thing Israel is not getting from Biden are 2000lb bombs. With Kamala, her rhetoric may be more ambiguous so as to placate the very sad anti-Israel college campus protestors who, unfortunately, are allowed to vote -- though I doubt her policy will diverge meaningfully from Biden's.
Agreed on the various internal political calculations for Bibi in Israel playing a role, of course. And here is some wisdom from Jared Kusnner on the matter:
I don't see this affecting the US election much either way; Americans don't vote based on their own foreign policy, let alone another country's, and very few American voters are likely to even notice the distinction between ground raids against Hezbollah and air war against Hezbollah/ground raids against Hamas (and the ones who do notice are very highly informed voters, which are basically never swing voters).
There was a point early in the Gaza war when Israel could have showed restraint and protected their reputation. That point is long past and there's no reason they need to care what the US thinks now. Why should they care if they affect this US election? Both current parties are and always were on their side. If that changes in the future it won't be over invading Lebanon today.
>There was a point early in the Gaza war when Israel could have showed restraint and protected their reputation.
Seems like they've shown an enormous amount of restraint, particularly early on. Remember how they delayed the invasion by weeks to allow civilians to evacuate? Delaying an invasion gives your enemy time to prepare, and informing civilians exactly where the war zones are going to be informs the enemy exactly where you are going. They gave up an enormous amount of military advantage in order to protect civilians. Yet, the critics of the world were not satisfied. It seems the only restraint they would have been satisfied with is no war at all.
Protect their reputation? They are trying to protect their country. Reputation is something you worry about after you get a $1 trillion military and considerable strategic depth. This is the huge flaw in how many are looking at this situation. Israel isn't doing this for jollies; on October 6th 2023, they were not bombing Gaza or Beirut.
Additionally, the sort of reputation that actually matters in the mideast is the ability to project force. Sending Nasrallah a bouquet of flowers instead of 80 tons of bombs wasn't going to end the existential threat Israel faces.
> Both current parties are and always were on their side.
While this is roughly true, the left wing of the democrats has decided that Israel is an evil colonial power. On the republican side, you would have to go very far right to find that opposition. Likely the KKK does not like Israel any better than the college protesters do, but unlike the latter the KKK is not a relevant voting base.
Trump is under less pressure from his base to prevent Israel from bombing the shit out of Gaza. It was him who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, cementing Israel's claim to it despite no solution for the middle east conflict in sight.
On the other hand, the Trump administration was also a bit non-interventionist and erratic, which is probably not what Israel wants in an ally.
Still, this might be a deliberately timed move by Bibi to help Trump win the presidency by discouraging the left from voting.
Israel isn't in the grave and therefore should care about its reputation. Just like the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no war for Israel to win in Gaza. A retaliation was necessary, of what size I don't know, but they did go too far. IMO. No reason to argue the point beyond that. I'm no military expert.
You cannot make a deal with someone whose explicit goal is to exterminate you. Hamas plays brilliantly on the empathy of the western population, and is more than willing to see the people they represent used as cannon fodder. The blame for the body count should be laid at their feet, not Israels. Iraq and Afghanistan are not good comparisons, imo. Neither of those wars were existential for the USA. The stakes are very different.
I don't think that Israel can defeat Hamas with air strikes and limited ground operations any more than the Allies could have defeated Nazi Germany through air strikes and taking German cities for a few weeks before retreating again.
Killing 90% of current Hamas members (and twice as many civilians) is not very helpful because in five years, all the youths who are 13 today will be 18 and can fill their ranks again. Besides turning Gaza into a parking lot (which would be a terrible idea for moral and strategic reasons), the only way you defeat Hamas is by removing them from power through occupation. (They might still hang on as a terror organisation, but no longer be in charge of a polity.)
Gaza is not Afghanistan, the US could probably occupy it without too much trouble.
>Besides turning Gaza into a parking lot (which would be a terrible idea for moral and strategic reasons), the only way you defeat Hamas is by removing them from power through occupation
You are probably right. The only issue is "by whom?" It can't be Israel. It can't be the US.
If a Democratic congress in DC were to somehow pass a law making abortion legal for the first trimester nationwide, would that face a serious constitutional challenge or is it obviously constitutional for congress to make such a law?
Trump made a statement yesterday indicating he would not veto such a bill. If you can ignore the ALLCAPS, he seems to be making a reasonable and useful, constructive statement here.:
Alito's opinion explicitly stated that the issue should become a legislative one, and he did not exclude Federal legislation, so I don't think there is a constitutional issue in Congress passing such a law. There is no doubt it would be challenged by certain States, but I am not a lawyer so I don't know on what grounds. There could be a States Rights issue, but the SC would have to do some fancy footwork to get around the the text of Alito's opinion.
It'd certainly face a legal challenges no matter what, but I don't know how serious I'd consider them. The commerce clause is a pretty wide-open door, historically speaking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn - Growing wheat on your own land for your own consumption which will never enter the market is nevertheless within the scope of the commerce clause because it affects the amount of wheat you'd otherwise buy on the (interstate) open market.
So law saying that states can't ban/criminalize interstate sale of FDA approved abortion drugs like the kind suggested by quiet_NaN seems like it'd be a shoe-in, and given how many people post-Roe are required to travel interstate to receive abortions it seems like broader abortion legislation would have a firm foundation as well.
Not a lawyer but I read quite a bit of US pro-life literature. My understanding is Dobbs was quite a thin overturning of Roe, on the basis that the constitution is silent on abortion. So Dobbs not only returns the matter to the states, but to congress too. Only possible challenge would be that the 14th amendment protects foetal persons in utero. John Finnis makes a strong case for that but it's a generation or more away from SCOTUS.
Wouldn't it contradict the tenth amendment? If something isn't clearly constitutionally mentioned or affects interstate commerce then by default the federal government can't pass laws on it and it's up to states, no?
Many would say yes, but that ship sailed a LONG time ago. SCOTUS seems intent on ignoring that amendment for any practical considerations. They don't know how to implement it, so they just pretend it doesn't exist.
Why isn't Google/DeepMind way ahead on AI? Google has ~20x the market cap of OAI, let alone Anthropic, plus access to TPUs with different supply chain bottlenecks from everyone else. They should be able to find enough money under the couch cushions to do 10x OAI's biggest training run. What holds them back?
Since all LLM products seem to have advanced to a similar overall level, it may be that a GPT-5 level product is significantly harder than the jump from 3 to 4 or possibly impossible. That Google caught up to OAI seems accurate, despite starting later. That seems to me an endorsement of Google's capabilities. If OAI releases GPT-5 significantly before Google releases a product of a similar level, I would be surprised. Google beating OAI to a better product of approximately GPT-5's expected level would not surprise me.
My answer would be they are a public company so shareholder value is a big consideration when contemplating a massive loss leader. Reporting a significant reduction in EPS due to CapEx might be considered a violation of their fiduciary duty by some shareholders. Also their current predicament with the DOJ might counsel against such a move.
All the big LLMs were built in a few months by throwing lots of data at a fairly standard transformer architecture, with various tweaks. There are now more than a dozen first and second rank models (several Chinese) that can beat most humans in standardized tests. So maybe building a reasonable LLM just isn't that difficult. However, unlike the contenders, Google also has systems for protein folding (which requires RL on lots of simulated runs), robot interaction, and neuro-symbolic approaches that can solve mathematical problems. Their AI portfolio looks more solid to me than any LLM competitor's. OpenAI instead slaps a draffy brute force search onto their LLM and calls it o1, and everyone is astounded.
Google's problem isn't what they have. It's that they have a massive cash cow and have to try to turn what they have into AI products in the shade of that cow. A common way to solve this problem is to put the new thing into a separate entity where it isn't suffocated by the belches of the cow. I was very surprised that they chose to bring DeepMind in-house, instead.
Same reason Sears didn't get way ahead on ecommerce. Giant, sclerotic company that fell victim to its own internal inertia. Easy pickings for a small, agile startup.
What held back the rich railways from being the first in the airplane industry? Either way it was the transportation industry, but big companies have a status quo bias. Disruption is for upstarts.
While Google search might have fallen prey to enshittification for us plebs, is it not plausible that right now Google search is actually better than ever at making Google money, which is its actual objective? Showing me ads that third parties paid for, rather than the things I actually wanted to see, sucks for me, but does it suck for Sergei and Larry?
People are leaving, which will eventually start sucking for the company, but inertia is a powerful force, so I guess there's a large opportunity window for Sergei and Larry to cash their profits and put them somewhere safe. (Capitalist incentives are not aligned with long-term utility maximalization, exhibit #[a random large number].)
What do you think the result would be if next year Scott had a short fiction contest instead of a book review contest? Interesting, great, disaster? I'm not saying he would even consider it---I have no idea. But he seemed to think that we might be book reviewed out and the competitive collaboration contest he had before it didn't go great.
Perhaps the hardest part about a fiction contest would be ranking the finalists. Nobody wants to read through a bunch of bad or even mediocre fiction. If reviewers were willing to rank something as weak after only a paragraph or two, perhaps it could work, although I get the feeling most readers of this site who rate reviews are too conscientious to do that, even if it's the appropriate way to screen fiction.
Does short fiction need a platform like this one? Might this site discover fiction of high quality that would otherwise find no readership? That strikes me as the key question. Most short fiction appears places where only other wannabe writers of short fiction will read it.
I'd guess most of the submission here would be sci-fi or fantasy, stuff I am generally no fan of although I might be interested in reading it if it appeared here.
People around here don't even like writing reviews of fiction, I doubt the contest would be popular on both the submission and reader ends of the equation.
I don't think the short stories would be as good as the reviews. I think a lot of people here could come up with interesting concepts for a story, but not that many have the kind of interest in other minds that allows someone to richly imagine another person's thoughts and feelings, and the writerly skills to convey sharply what they are imagining.
It's not. I didn't mean it was. I meant it was something you usually need, in addition to a good story idea, to produce a story that captures the reader's attention. A lot of the fun of reading fiction is taking a ride on other minds.
Butting in again on the conversation, I like Asimov (although not the Foundation series, for some reason - never could get into those). His short stories are indeed mostly idea, and they work very well as short stories when, as you have pointed out, there isn't much space to do more than a brief character sketch (although it is still important for the narrative that the character makes sense within their story, and that does require some emulation of mind, even if not very much). But anyway - his long stories have plenty of character in. I don't remember much about the robot murder mysteries he wrote, including whodunnit*, but I remember R Daneel Olivaw :)
* Not an Asimov problem, I was also mystified by every Agatha Christie twice over ;)
I love Foundation, a full length novel, even though the characters are flat because it's really about how empires fall over long periods of time and his interesting idea of psychohistory.
You’re right, I didn’t like Asimov. Lots of people do, and I tried several, and now cannot remember a thing about them — just the feeling of hitting a brick wall of intense boredom. I read lots of Heinlein as a kid, books that I believe were what’s now called “young adult” novels, in fact I reread them so many times I still remember parts by heart. They were basically just good, exciting stories that just happened to be set on space ships and other planets. Also really liked Childhood’s End, which I think counts as a classic. Could not stand the Dune books. Like Gibson’s books a lot, and have read all of them.
I think what does not work for me is using a novel as a vehicle for speculating about science or society. I believe Asimov wrote what’s called hard sci-fi. And Dune seemed to be more speculating about society — building an alternative world, one shaped by the environment — the desert, worms, etc. It’s not that I don’t like science. Math and physics were my favorite school courses as a teen & these days I happily read nonfiction books about fractals and chaos, cosmology, machine learning etc. But I dislike fiction that’s a vehicle for speculating about stuff. When I read fiction I want to take a ride on somebody else’s thoughts, theories, hopes & fears, and hear what steps they take and how it all works out.
>I think what does not work for me is using a novel as a vehicle for speculating about science or society.
See this is what I think is great about science fiction. It's generally the best genre suited to exploring ideas. It always annoys me when I see some high concept idea that is really just character drama. I wonder what was even the point of making it science fiction in the first place.
Because good story ideas are cheap. Anyone can have them and many do. Actually telling a story someone wants to read requires characterisation, because mostly what readers respond to is good characters. They care about the characters, they want to know what happens to them, they like seeing how their favourite character responds to challenges. Getting good characterisation into a page requires a decent emulation of the character in question, hence richly imagining another person's thoughts and feelings (I assume - I am not Eremolalos, please do correct me if I'm misinterpreting you!).
And yes, the challenges faced by the character are required, and are indeed ideas. A good character on their own also isn't enough, but it's far closer to enough than a plethora of fun concepts.
I just disagree with this. Good ideas are not “cheap”. They’re interesting. And most characters are not that interesting. Oh wow, you had abusive parents and that makes you sad. How insightful.
I think the format also matters a great deal. A couple thousands words is not much to work with psychologically. I’m not saying it can’t be done but generally, you need more to really flesh out a character. But that same length is perfect for expressing an idea. That’s science fiction’s but bread and butter because it’s the perfect length to think through an idea on its own. Any more than that and you generally need something else to sustain people’s attention.
That's not a character, that's a concept. A character is someone with a convincing internal life, and that needs simulation. And yes, good ideas are cheap and common. I've done workshops with kids and generated loads. Actually making something of them, whether that's a short story or an epic, that's the hard bit.
It’s hard because writing is hard. But when someone does have an interesting idea and actually does a decent job with it, that’s something exciting. Fictional characters generally fit in to a few slots and aren’t really that interesting on their own. Sure you root for them, but it’s easy to root for a characters. Real people are so much more fascinating because their complexity and contradictions are so vast. Only the best of writers can come anywhere close to that and most who try just end up with stereotypes. Not that it discredits the work, but I don’t think it’s usually enough on its own.
I'm interested in meeting people in Santa Barbara, CA. There are meetups in LA, but it's a 3-4 hour driving investment. Alternatively, I am interested in 1-1 virtual meetings where I can practice having rationalist-style discussions. I spend a fair amount of time reading rationalist-adjacent material, but when engaging in discussion I feel inadequate.
I tried gifting Lars Doucet's LVT book to an interested activist friend, who claimed it was unreadable because Helvetica font is a huge turn-off. Glad to see the project's still going strong. Encouraging the Doing of Things in the world of atoms is always valuable.
AND I looked at a sample page on Amazon, and ran it by a friend of mine who is a very experienced graphic artist, and we don't think it is Helvetica. Looks more like Mundo Serif Regular. Maybe the type face in the digital version is different....
If I wrote a story that took place in a fictional country/world with a medieval aesthetic, but contained no magic, dragons, elves, etc., in which genre am I writing?
* I don't want to call it fantasy, because there's nothing fantastical in the story.
* It *would* be historical fiction if it occurred in a real place.
* It *could* be alternate history, but not necessarily, since it might be a totally fictional world with no relation to the real timeline.
So what is it? (Did I write literary fiction? Ew.)
I'm told (by CS Lewis) that all the old fiction had fantastical elements; they were just part of a story. We moderns like our fiction with fantasy to have the fantasy itself be the (or a) main character. Same for SF. Those distinctions didn't exist once. I wonder how that changes the way to interpret your book.
OTOH, I'm also describing magical realism, defined as straddling the categories of fiction and fantasy, and yet living in its own category.
I'd say the big questions are, "in which section of a bookstore would an average customer looking for your book expect to find it?" and "in which section of a bookstore would an average browser who stumbles across your book be most likely to buy it?" And if this isn't your first book, you might find that anything you write under the same name has a tendency to get filed under whatever genre your previous books were in.
But your description isn't complete enough. You could still fit it into Romance or Mystery or Thriller or Horror or Erotica, depending on what happens in the book. And if you eschew any of those sorts of gimmicks, and compensate for the fictional world with some good but pretentious writing, you could still pull off Literary. But in my limited experience Literary tends to be shelved along with General Fiction, which can include stuff like "Shogun" and "Clan of the Cave Bear" and Aubrey-Maturin.
Is it really useful to think of traditional bookstore layouts, when most books (especially those without previous history) are sold via Amazon? In the Literature & Fiction category of their Kindle store there are many categories but little overlap with traditional ones. Speculative, or Action & Adventure, or possibly Women's, or Dark, might fit the work described.
Pokemon, like Star Wars, is fantasy. (Though, for a great treatment of science-ifying Pokemon, the fanfiction "Pokemon: The Origin of Species" by DaystarEld is great.)
Is it an adventure? A political thriller? A romance? Any of those could have a ‘medieval’ modifier. If it’s not in a ‘normal’ genre, ignoring the setting, then maybe it is literary fiction.
Guy Gavriel Kay has written many books which are basically historical fiction with different names and a few elves or prophecies to keep the nerds engaged.
“Medieval aesthetic” seems like the key word here. If you were writing historical fiction, you would strive to emulate real medieval cultures by focusing your research on one real place, even if the story doesn’t focus on a real event. But as we know fantasy has its own medieval aesthetic, which is not historically accurate. If you mimic those fantasy tropes, I think it’s fantasy.
Thinly-veiled historical fiction is a subgenre of fantasy. Just slap some token supernatural elements on it so you can sell it as "fantasy" and get more money.
I hope I don't sense derision in this comment. I prefer thinly veiled historical fiction over all of the Tolkien lite crap that continues to get pumped out by the publishing industry
Could always call it "Medieval fiction". "Fantasy" is probably still the right call, though, that's the audience who are going to read medieval fiction. (The first Game of Thrones book has very little magic, like, one instance at the very end.)
Pokemon is fantasy. I mean you just said dragons are fantasy, and what is a Rattata if not a dragon.
David Friedman has written a couple of books like this.
I think he called them "fantasy without magic," but I may be misremembering.
He sometimes posts here, so if we're lucky he'll stop by to answer the question himself.
Personally, I would lean toward calling the story "fantasy" if it felt very much like fantasy, with brave heroes and great battles and all that, despite the lack of anything supernatural. On the other hand, if the story felt like rigorous historical fiction despite being in a fictional place, I'd probably call it something like "alternate-world historical fiction."
Or a historical novel with invented history and geography. No magic, no elves or dwarves. And I think I have more than a medieval aesthetic — my oatcakes are out of Froissart (and experiment). I did stretch the trebuchet range a little in one scene.
I have only written one, _Harald_. My other two novels, _Salamander_ and _Brothers_, have magic, although it is very scientific magic.
My favorite example of the genre is _Paladin_ by C.J. Cherryh, who is a much better novelist than I am.
This is probably the correct answer. If you were tagging it with multiple tags rather than restricted to picking a single genre, I'd say use both "fantasy" and "alternate world historical fiction".
Ultimately, it depends on your intended audience (there's a close relation between how a work feels and the intended audience). There's a fine line between techno-thriller fiction and science fiction; Tom Clancy gets put in fiction and Neil Stephenson in Science Fiction because that's where they were most likely to be seen by their audience.
So, I'm trying to figure out how things are going in the Ukraine war and why.
Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from losing the war, but not enough to win decisively. We could be doing vastly more. The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to.
But what I don't understand is whether this very gradualist policy is by some sort of deliberate choice made by western decision makers, or things are just working out that way. Was there a meeting in which the gray heads of the west chose to aim for a draw? Or did we end up with the current policy through some combination of fear of provoking the Russians, industrial constraints, domestic political priorities and general laziness?
The real reason is political. The more aid you give to Ukraine, the more the other party can say "They've given away $BIGNUM to Ukraine, who isn't even an ally, and for what? Put us in power and we can solve it!" So when the appropriation bills go around, politicians are wary of spending too much because they know it will be used as a weapon against them. Yet Ukraine's cause is somewhat popular, so its better to give some aid then no aid at all. So you have this half-measure business. All part and parcel to living in a republic, it's difficult to commit wholeheartedly to a foreign conflict unless we were attacked directly: a Pearl Harbor or 9-11 changes the political calculus, now complaining about money spent on the war is undermining your nation and unpatriotic, and loses you elections. But when it's far away and no Americans have been killed, the more you spend the more your opponent can attack you for it.
You are correct that the West is drip-feeding Ukraine just enough munitions to maintain the stalemate. And "the West" in this context basically means the United States; Western Europe can't realistically provide enough military assistance to change the course of this war unless the US takes the lead.
I'm pretty sure the reason the US is doing this, is that the US national security apparatus genuinely doesn't want to see either side win this war. Which isn't to say that Joe Biden doesn't want Ukraine to win, but Biden is basically Sleepy Jim Hacker in this story; he can vaguely wave his hand and say "make it so", but it won't actually happen unless the Humphrey Applebys want it to. And they don't.
They don't want Russia to win, because that would be a victory for tyranny for aggression, and it would make the United States Government look bad, and because it would substantially increase the probability of future wars - by Russia, or by others looking to profit from Russia's example (e.g. China w/re Taiwan).
And they don't want Ukraine to win, because a Ukrainian victory would mean the de facto end of Russia as a Great Power. Which would be a large and unpredictable change in the geopolitical order of the world. The Putin administration might collapse, leading to civil war in a state with nuclear weapons. Putin might throw a nuclear temper tantrum himself, to try and claim some sort of "victory" in Ukraine (glassified counts as deNazified, right?). Russia could become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which would seriously complicate our efforts to contain China. And Russia not being a Great Power, means that all the people who built their careers as Russia Hands, will need to find honest work. Change is scary.
A stalemate with one or two hundred thousand people dying every year, is just the status quo. The status quo isn't scary, so let's do that. OK, it's unsustainable in the long run; eventually Russia will manage a win. They just have to get lucky once, and/or outlast us. But if nobody has a better plan, that doesn't involve a scary Russian victory or a scary Ukrainian victory, let's at least do the stalemate thing *this* year and hope for a miracle.
Europe is not particularly good at producing reams and reams of military material and can't ramp up the production capabilities due to sclerosis and gridlock at the EU level (ie. countries that are skeptical of further integration opposing taking EU-wide debt to do it, individual countries either playing pass the buck of being too small/poor to make a meaningful difference on their own). US, being the global hegemon, has multiple theaters of operation to watch with the Pacific and Middle Eastern ones being arguably more important to US currently than the European one.
> Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from losing the war
I very much agree with this assessment, especially after its came out the russia ammo stock piles were victims of corruption and fairly explody; given americas well stocked air strike power.
>The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to.
Ukraine's problem is not so much equipment disadvantages but rather the fact that it is a country of 35M people and a fighting a country of 145M people, and a higher per capita GDP. If the US is going to antagonize Russia by going all-in to support Ukraine, it needs to be very sure that Ukraine will win. But that is not the case.
I'm as in the dark as anyone else on the reasons, but the result seems to be a scheme to fight to the last Ukrainian and then wash hands. If so, then this has been very successful - for comparative pennies, the US and Europe have effectively defanged Russia and eliminated their massive stockpiles of old Soviet equipment. Pity the poor bloody Ukrainians, though.
The US/Europe are only able to "fight to the last Ukrainian" to the extent that Ukrainians themselves are willing to do so. To the extent we should pity the Ukrainians, its for the suffering Russia is imposing on them, not for the West somehow tricking them into having a will to fight back by providing them with arms - it's pretty clear they already had the will to resist in spades. Remember the mass mobilization to make molotov cocktails that this whole thing kicked off with?
What else are they going to do, roll over and let the Russians occupy them? They have no option but to resist, and good for every country that has helped then in any way. We're still allowed to complain when the help seems precisely calibrated to keep them in standstill, though.
As much as I think that there is a good degree of self-interest in NATO country behavior, I don't think that "the help seems precisely calibrated to keep them in standstill" is true.
I think it is more likely that the tactical environment favors defense, so the fortified fronts move only slowly and with massive loss of life. If NATO gave Ukraine 50% more materiel, they would not kick out Russia within a few months, nor would Putin take Ukraine if he had 50% more materiel than he does have.
For one thing, predicting how military operations go is hard. "Give Ukraine enough tanks to resist Russia's advance, but not enough for them to defeat them" seems kinda hard.
> "Give Ukraine enough tanks to resist Russia's advance, but not enough for them to defeat them" seems kinda hard.
For example, right now Ukraine cannot take back its own territory, but can take over some territory of Russia, so from the perspective of someone who would want to keep the status quo, they have simultaneously too little *and* too much power.
Hence "seems". While O agree that this war has proven to be attritional and defensive, and that more aid wouldn't necessarily have allowed the Ukrainians to kick the Russians out in one go, the sight of them having to go cap on hand to beg for every little thing is pitiable. And then they get second-hand stuff slated for decommissioning in the provider country, or else lash-ups like franken-SAM. It's a drip-feed, the bare minimum of aid needed to keep the war effort from collapsing entirely. Which makes it seem calculated.
One theory I've heard is that the West doesn't really want to defeat and dismember Russia as it may become a useful ally in a future fight against China and some kind of Muslim or Turkic bloc in Asia. Think Nixon's China strategy in reverse. So now the US controls the conflict by giving the right amount of weapons to Ukraine and prohibiting strikes into Russia to make sure that Russia neither wins and occupies Ukraine nor gets completely beaten.
This kind of explains the facts we've seen over these 2.5 years even though it presupposes an impressive level of competence and long-term thinking on part of the politicians in the US.
> This kind of explains the facts we've seen over these 2.5 years even though it presupposes an impressive level of competence and long-term thinking on part of the politicians in the US.
I don't think that this theory holds much water. You might as well blame clandestine actors (probably the Jews) of influencing the weapon production of Germany and France in world war one so that they would come precisely to a stallmate.
Ukraine will never occupy Russia. At worst, it will bomb Moscow badly enough that Putin drops a nuke on Kiev, which everyone would like to avoid.
Also, if the US wanted Russia as a future ally, would it make sense to make them deplete decades worth of weapon stockpiles and manpower in Ukraine?
The vibe I get from Mearsheimer is that Ukraine is winding down and the primary goal is to extend the conflict to Nov 5th and then try to reach a peace agreement with Russia.
The core driver here is skilled Ukranian military personnel. Ukraine might have more raw manpower it could recruit but it's running low on skilled military personnel and it's not able to train new soldiers to keep pace with military demands. Factually, this I'm unsure about.
What confuses me is the idea that the US could be doing vastly more. America's primary weapon early on was sanctions but those haven't been super effective. In terms of military aid, the issue seems to be that this is trench/artillery warfare and the Russians can just ship out a lot more shells than the US can. You mentioned tanks below but that doesn't sound like the equipment they need.
As for grand strategy...I doubt there's one. I haven't followed closely but my vibe has been that the US genuinely thought that sanctions would be devastating and since then they've been very happy to run it by committee in this gradualist way. I mean, no one on the committee is really going to object to spending billions on more missiles and stuff to send to Ukraine but once you talk about serious commitments or drawing down key stockpiles, various committee members will push back and that will end that proposal.
I dunno, the current thing seems to be doing about as much as the US can without doing something difficult and, frankly, the Ukraine just isn't that important to the US. Don't get me wrong, the only thing I love more that sending Ukranians bullets to shoot at Russians is sending Soviets bullets to shoot at Nazis but if the Ukranian war ends in defeat and Ukranine split in two, no one in Wyoming or SF or Miami will be materially affected in the slightest.
Mearsheimer believes that the Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia and that Putin would escalate all the way to nukes if it comes to that. Maybe that opinion is shared in the State Department.
For some reason the view that the US could unleash the wrath of god on Russia but chooses not to for some 4D chess reasons is really prevalent here on ACX. It represents a rather sad tendency to avoid the most straightforward analysis. The US/NATO is both limited in the amount of relevant material it sends, and the material is not a decisive factor in the outcome of the war.
First, understand that the arms industry is a sclerotic remnant of decades of counterinsurgency operations. Any given US weapons system is generally produced in small quantities by a single bespoke factory. Tomahawks (cruise missiles) are only built to the tune of a few hundred per year. The US was only producing about 10,000 155mm howitzer shells per month before the war, at a single factory in Scranton. Current numbers are at 30,000 per month, but for comparison the Russians fire somewhere in the 3-4 million range of 152mm shells per year, and that was before they bought more from North Korea. There is a single factory in the US that produces military black powder in Louisiana, and it partially exploded a few years ago. There was a single factory in Ukraine that produced all the TNT used by the US, but that has now been replaced by a single factory in Poland. There is a single factory in Watervliet, outside Albany, that forges barrels for artillery and tanks.
You get the idea. The arms contractors in the US have mostly been consolidated to the point that a single manufacturer produces any given product. This is a problem as a single point of failure can cripple military production, and the lack of competition stifles efficiency. I don't know the specifics for all of Europe, but suffice to say their contributions as a continent are somewhat equivalent to the US. The US/NATO could produce more, but it would cost billions to open new factories that might not even be operable before the war ends. Obviously this isn't very attractive for investors.
Second, the primary asset in the Ukraine war is manpower. For various reasons I won't go into here, this war is generally much more static and difficult for maneuver tactics. That means a lot of the battles come down to assaulting trenches with heavy artillery barrages, and attritional fighting for positions in and around urban agglomerations. There are few opportunities to decisively engage the enemy, meaning the fighting is long and drawn out. Whoever has the most men left standing at the end of the day is going to win. Russia has triple the population of Ukraine. It doesn't matter how many missiles or tanks are sent to Ukraine, what they really need is boots on the ground. If you think spending a ton of money on war factories is a tough sell for the West, imagine how popular sending off their own people to die in Ukraine is.
One problem with this theory is that we can look at all the aid the United States has provided Ukraine over the past three years, almost all of which was taken from reserve stockpiles. And we can look at what happens when these weapons are used against a Russian army that hasn't had months to learn and adapt to each new development in sequence. If we had given all of that stuff to Ukraine in 2022, it's pretty likely that the Russian army would have been completely evicted from Ukraine by mid-2023. Instead, we drip-fed the stuff at a rate that let the Russians rebuild and reorganize to better meet the threat.
Then there's all the stuff we could have sent but didn't. As noted elsewhere, we could have given the Ukrainians hundreds of Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter aircraft at least a year ago, *with* trained Ukrainian crews and support teams for each of them, Instead, we have very belatedly given them a few dozen, and patted ourselves on the back,
I believe there's also about two *million* 155mm DPICM artillery shells sitting in storage, and 50,000 old-school MLRS rockets. Weapons specifically designed to annihilate the Russian army as it advances over the European landscape. Weapons we have decided as a matter of policy that we will never ever use because they would make Princess Diana cry, and are just hanging on to until we can afford to safely dispose of them. The Ukrainians have been asking for those from the start, on account of their urgent need to destroy a Russian army far outweighing other concerns. We have, again very belatedly, given them *some* of these, but I don't think it's more than ten percent or so.
I am exceedingly skeptical of anyone making the claim that, gosh, the United States would *like* to help Ukraine win this war, but it's so very very hard and this is the best we can do. If you sincerely believe this, I suggest you question the reliability of your sources.
There are plenty of reasons the US/NATO might not be doing all they can to help Ukraine; that is not the same thing as trying to prevent them from winning. Of course we could spend billions of dollars and open a bunch of weapons factories and hire the contractors to produce bombs and missiles and tanks. We could empty the entirety of the NATO stockpiles and send every last piece of material. We could institute the draft and send millions of Americans over to fight and die in Ukraine.
We haven't done those things because the cost outweighs the benefits. Defense contractors are wary of investing too much in weapons infrastructure that might not have a market by the time it comes online. The US might need those stockpiles to give to Israel or to fight Iran or defend Taiwan or deter any number of potential hostile actors. Russia is a nuclear power and crossing too many red lines might have consequences elsewhere, like Houthi rebels armed with anti-ship missiles or the Iranians with anti-air systems that can shoot down Israeli planes. I'm not defending the hegemony apparatchiks and their foreign policy decisions, there is plenty of room for incompetence or malice. But the idea that they are intentionally drip feeding Ukraine just enough to not lose is too conspiratorial, and there are much simpler explanations. Short of some Pentagon Papers style leak, I don't know why people would consider the idea credible.
Maybe we didn't send much aid in the beginning of the war because the Russians overextended and it looked like the Ukrainians would be able to hold their own. The Congressional system was intentionally made to be slow moving, and actually approving the aid would only happen long after it was clearly in need from a military perspective. A lot of the stuff in stockpiles isn't combat ready and needs maintenance; the armored vehicles we stored in Kuwait had a bunch of rotten tires. Even if we gave the Ukrainians a bunch of tanks and planes day one, that doesn't mean they have the infrastructure to maintain or repair any of them.
Maybe the intel agencies had some old wargame sitting in a file somewhere and it didn't think the Ukrainians could overcome the strategic overmatch presented by Russia's much larger population and resource base. They didn't want to commit too many resources to a lost cause, and angering the Russians too much would make it difficult to normalize relations after the war ended. Whatever. Any of these possibilities make more sense than deliberately undercutting the state fighting our biggest geopolitical rival for 50 years to preserve the status quo uber alles.
It is plausible to me that a perpetual bloody stalemate in Ukraine might be the best geopolitical outcome for the West, from a cold blooded realpolitik perspective. Keep indefinitely bleeding and weakening Russia, without actually spending our own blood or all that much treasure. If the war actually ended, even if on terms unfavorable for Moscow, then Russia would get time to rebuild and rearm, and decide how best to seek revanche. Why risk that?
But that strategy is not very sustainable since Ukraine is also bleeding and is likely to bleed before Russia, simply because its population is 3-5 times smaller. So at certain point you'll need to reach an agreement or put NATO boots on the ground
Sure, but if we grant the premise that "protracted attritional warfare to impoverish Russia" is the US's only objective here, then it seems the thing they'd want to do is keep feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder until every single one of them is dead, and then then give Russia a free hand over the smouldering ghost town that is the Ukrainian Wasteland.
This would be problematic since this outcome would strengthen Russia rather than weakening it. In reality it's never literally until the last Ukrainian (think Germany in WW2) so if Russia occupies the eastern and southern Ukraine (mostly Russian-speaking and culturally closer) it will get many more people than it lost, not to mention the fertile land and some remaining industry.
I am skeptical that control of any percent of Ukrainian territory would actually strengthen Russia (Ukraine wasn't exactly on anyone's high-flyer nations list before 2016, was it?), but let's suppose you're right. Even then, if Washington's geopolitical objectives remain nailed to "protracted attritional warfare to impoverish Russia", then they would still want to maximise the protracted attritional warfare. What happens to Ukrainian clay afterwards is an orthogonal consideration to how much attrition you can inflict on Russia now, and it's a consideration that the Washington may not have the means / stomach to do much about.
Certainly Russia won't get rich conquering Ukraine and stealing their vast wealth. Russia will look like more of a threat to their neighbors and will thus be able to threaten their way into more concessions from nearby small countries that worry they might be next.
I'm not sure I understand you. "Impoverishment" as an objective makes sense if it weakens your opponent.
Economically Russia is probably somewhat poorer than in the counterfactual scenario of no invasion, tens to hundreds of thousand men have been killed and a lot of equipment it had has been destroyed.
On the other hand, it already added many more people than it lost, and its army got invaluable experience about what works (guided bombs, drones, etc) and what doesn't (large surface ships) so overall it's not obvious if the losses outweigh the gains.
>Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from loosing the war, but not enough to win decisively.
Not limited to the Ukraine war, but I don't like how people are so convinced that nothing is out of the states' control, that if we just implement the right policies with the right experts that we have control over the outcome no matter the problem. To put it another way, I dislike how rare it is for people to consider that some things might be beyond our collective control.
In this case, why is there so much confidence that we're God, that we can choose who wins or loses the war simply through giving enough equipment to Ukraine? How could people possibly know how Russia would act in a different reality where Ukraine was given substantially more arms?
>The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to
Do we though? I'm not a deep expert but from what I've gathered we don't have gigantic stockpiles of some of the things most useful to the Ukrainians, e.g. artillery shells/HIMARS/Patriot missiles. And there's a lack of expertise/bottleneck in training for other things like aircraft.
Also I don't think even the biggest hawks in the US are willing to run our stockpiles down all that much. There's still looming threats out there in the near to medium future and we have a somewhat shaky production/supply capacity considering that we largely rely on one of our biggest adversaries for a lot of manufacturing.
The war has shown that there are shortages and deficiencies in production capacity of some things, notably artillery shells. But there are also some vast stockpiles of retired gear out there. This page mentions 3700 Abrams tanks the US has in storage.
Receiving an Abrams tank (while better than not receiving one) is not the same as successfully operating an Abrams tank. The problem of spare parts, logistical chains, and crew training is considerable. And then there is the fact that a drone-saturated battlefield makes armour less effective in general. Also a problem for Russia, of course, but the Abrams, at least without the DU armour configuration, is a bit of a Fabergé egg.
Ukraine already has an infernal menagerie of various weapons systems they're struggling to manage. The ridiculous, over-politicised F-16 caper is probably the best example of how fraught this is in practice.
This is a crap excuse for inaction. If someone with a couple thousand spare main battle tanks and 4th-generation combat aircraft wants Ukraine to win this war, and seriously believes that the reason this won't work is that those ignorant ex-commie peons don't understand technology like our boys, then the winning move is *obviously* to invite Ukrainians to US and NATO training centers to learn how to use those weapons. In sufficient numbers to either saturate our pool of instructors or provide crews for all our surplus tanks/jets/etc, and starting as soon as it' looks like this war might drag on for more than a few months.
IIRC, it took more than a year for the US to invite *any* Ukrainians to come learn how to use Abrams tanks or F-16s, and then only enough for a token few dozen tanks/jets.
And "Oh noes, the drones will make all our tanks useless anyway!", says who? Because last time I checked, the world's leading experts in conducting mechanized combat operations in a drone-heavy environment are, let me check my notes, the Ukrainian army. And they've been saying clearly from the start that they want more tanks and more jets.
I don't know if this is the real reason, but one strategic analysis might suggest that getting Russia bogged-down in a forever war is worse for Russia than just ending the conflict with overwhelming might. The strain on society from conscripting the unwilling from all parts of society and the country could lead to a popular movement against Putin.
Russia has mostly used cash sign up bonuses and high salaries to recruit soldiers after fall 2022 when the last round of mobilization took place. So you are right the mass mobilization would be bad for the regime (that's why they haven't done it) but there is no reason they can't continue recruiting soldiers the way they do now for quite some time.
I recently reread and reviewed Greg Clark's "The Son Also Rises" on my substack. It's probably the most worldview-overturning book I've read in the last ten years.
This is the one where he looks at status high and low amongst various lineages, and finds that contrary to most of the rosy "one generation parent-child" mobility rates in Western countries, which show that child status only has .15-.2 correlation with parent status in the Scandinavian countries for example, and up to .45 in the US, if you look at lineal status over a longer timeframe, the actual numbers are closer to .7-.9 all over the world, and this has been true for thousands of years, with no changes post Industrial Revolution or even post 1950.
One interesting thing I found about the book is that it neatly encapsulates all the "Rationalist" shibboleths - how education is pointless from a "social opportunity" standpoint (despite the trillions we collectively spend on it, it doesn't affect social mobility at all), how following k-selected offspring strategies and over-investing in fewer children has zero benefits in terms of retaining their status (so you should Selfish Reasons just have more and not worry about it), and how Genetics is Destiny.
Yet I almost never see it written about or debated much in Rationalist circles for some reason, and this is despite it supporting all those shibboleths. Is it widely debunked, or simply relatively less known?
Ok, so one thing that confuses me about Clark’s results, and I’m hoping someone can enlighten me here: the long-term correlations would seem to imply a high level of assortative mating. But I’d expect assortitive matting to be made on phenotype, not genotype. And the parent-child correlations are small. So what's going on here?
The way Clark explains the disjunction between one generation parent-child correlations and deeper lineage correlations, is two things:
> Even controlling for parental status, grandparent, great-grandparent and great-great all still have predictive value for predicting child status. And it's stronger than you think (3x stronger than "naive" predictions for great-grandparents, for example).
> When measuring the one-gen correlations, it's always a single endpoint. But "status" consists of multiple things - education, income, occupational prestige, etc. And although they are all correlated, any given generation makes tradeoffs - so you could be a physicist or a quant, and skew the income reading, or you could be Zuckerberg or Gates, and skew the "education" reading, but in a more complete picture, that's just noise.
He also calls out "assortative mating leakage" as the culprit for elite decline. As he puts it, yes people mate in this current generation with others of similar smarts, money, looks, and status (high status phenotype). But one of them can come from a worse family, with a lower baseline lineage quality, and their individual high status is a result of many random perturbations and lucky accidents in life. And so the children of that pairing will regress to a lower mean, because one of the parents was from a lower genotypical status, even though phenotypically they appeared to be of equal status to their partner.
Great post by the way. It confirms a lot of suspicions I have about my place in the world.
I have a great great (maybe even great) grandfather who emigrated from Sicily to Cork EIRE in 1798. His occupation was listed as "Goldsmith and barometer maker. The whole lineage was very unsuccessful materially, up to and including my grandfather, who grew up in extreme poverty and lied about his age to join the British Army in 1914 just because he needed a gig. He spent his whole life in the army which made him luckier than his brothers, who did the same thing and were both dead by 1920.
BUT I did a search of him on Google and there are a few of his barometers in private collections, and they are very valuable. So he had something going for him, and it resonates with me. Funny old World... Barometers went out of fashion I guess.
I guess I should just restate this as I find it weird that people can sort so strongly on genetic factors behind this status heritability given the vagaries in the proxies for status in each generation.
Oh yeah, that really blew me away - especially with some of the really deep time results, like Normans or Kulin Brahmins or Samurai.
The biggest thing I got out of it is "assortative mating is IMPOSSIBLY strong, and people have been taking it way more seriously than I ever have for millenia."
Brahmins is easier to understand, given the caste system and arranged marriages. But the Normans and Samurai? Very interesting, how did they accomplish such tight "lineage status" recognition?
My best guess is that the "true" variance from lineage quality - with a .75 correlation, the .25 descent downward - is representative of the average "luck" component over baseline. As in, it's .75 "real" and .25 "luck" factors that regress more strongly to the mean.
That would just require matching on phenotype - sure, it's a lossier signal than genotype, so you get some drift, but it's not all that bad.
>The biggest thing I got out of it is "assortative mating is IMPOSSIBLY strong, and people have been taking it way more seriously than I ever have for millenia."
That's what the entire feudal system was built on: successful families strategizing to increase their success, with the successful one's becoming even more successful and snowballing their value further. That's why at the beginning of the medieval period you have a lot of small landowners and minor kings, and by the 16th century the Hapsburgs own half of Europe. Those medieval knights were obsessed with making advantageous marriages, because that's how you got and held on to power for over a thousand years.
What are the odds that by the time we started keeping track of things and getting too clever for our own good, people already had figured out that blood is thicker than water? We just don't like it.
To me, it seems like it shakes down practically as "people paying attention to mate's parental occupation / education" too. Which on the face of it, seems really obvious and simple.
But I also don't really see it done much today, by my own social circles when dating? Yes, Phd's date other post-graduate degree holders, and high income people date other high income people, but nobody I know really looks hard at the parents' educations and incomes. So maybe people did that more in the past, and less now.
That's one thing I wondered too after rereading it - it definitely seems like most of the forces (cultural, ethnic, racial, religious) that made people adhere to tighter "marriage bands" have been greatly relaxed recently, and so "true" mixing should be occuring at a greater rate now.
I personally think that this probably is part of the .15 vs .75 disjunction, and a precise enough analysis would be able to tease out how much of it changes in modern mores may account for within that gap in recent times.
The CCP laid low the upper classes by confiscating their property and sending them to farms/reeducation camps. Years later, the upper class' descendants were well on their way to regaining their standing despite the social leveling. Not sure how they concluded that the reason is "human capital within families". Notably they don't mention genetics.
Yeah, he looks at China and Taiwan, and it's pretty wild how you can have literal revolutions that upend tens of millions of people and change their social milieu, breeding pools (Taiwan), social classes, etc, and it still ends up following the familial status pre-change trends (in the lineages that survive the upheavals, which isn't a given).
"Education is pointless from a "social opportunity" standpoint (despite the trillions we collectively spend on it, it doesn't affect social mobility at all)," I don't think this is fully true even with Clark's work although I too felt that for a while when first reading it.
IIIRC, the book is primarily on focused on the tail-end of human capital distribution and its relative ranking, so yes we are unlikely to see huge change in who makes the top decile across societies. It doesn't really say as much about what happens in the lower deciles or absolute changes (as someone mentioned below, it could just shift the curve overall). Additionally, education can play an important role as a societal Sorting Hat in the age of assortative matching or social sorting, especially where societies bring in new dynasties through immigration, etc.
Lastly, I always thought social mobility was less strict than the way Clark defines it. For me, the noisy generations where sons do better or worse than their poor or rich parents IS social mobility, even if it just reverts to the mean over time.
I'd be interested in hearing what changed your mind about education.
On him just focusing on "elites," it's not actually true - he often looks at elites by income or occupation, yes, but he also looks at bottom decile / lower class groups and sees similar persistence, and in many cases, he baselines against "common names" to see median persistence.
In fact, he demonstrates in the book that if you sort by ANY grouping - religion, ethnicity, etc, not just "income tier" or "educational tier," you see these much larger persistence rates by group than are predicted in single-gen mobility rates.
This is because he's positing a true "baseline quality" by group, and there's random perturbations around that baseline quality, but they regress to their group means rather than the overall-population mean.
Right, thanks. As I read your post, I do start to recall some bottom tier groups who also have similar unique surnames being raised in the book, it has been couple of years since I have read it. If I remember correctly, he uses the -son names for Scandanavian countries to measure persistance lower or average status as well, not just the Latin upper class names.
Re: education, as I said, I always had a less strict test for social mobility and meritocracy than Clark and others require. I knew many people who grew up poor who have done better than their parents (sometimes a bit more, and sometimes a factor of 5-10), and many people who have done the opposite. Even if they start to revert back to the group means in the generation after, this is still short-term social mobility and benefit-inducing for the people who rise in status in that generation n+1.
Schooling is probably mostly signalling and perhaps there is a Caplan-esque solutions that make sense, but I am doubtful and err on Chesteron's Fence in that regard.
Again I haven’t read the book. What he’s talking about has got to be pretty recent, and even then I’m dubious. Did the group Irish Catholics move up the ladder as a whole, are Hispanics not also doing that. Did Jewish immigrants not move up the ladder? The Chinese or Vietnamese?
I think if he is sticking to the permanence of the bottom 5% and top 5% then maybe, provided he sticks to the native born, born of the native born.
More generally, anything that raises productivity overall can do this--education, but also electrification, good sanitation, rule of law, improved technology, etc. It seems to me that you want your society to be mostly focused on make-the-pie-bigger stuff like most science and engineering, rather than on get-a-bigger-slice-for-me stuff like most finance or law.
I haven’t read it but I can’t see how universal education could have no effect on social mobility, nor can I believe that the US has had no more social mobility than the European Middle Ages.
Clark compares Sweden, the UK, and the USA, with educational systems ranging from “fully state funded even at the college level” to regimes where private education is increasingly more prevalent among high status parents in the UK and USA. But does it actually boot the parents spending $45k a year at private schools in the USA? It does not - it neither slows regression to the mean nor ensures higher status for that generation of children.
There are also essentially no changes in persistence rate across very significant social and educational changes. In Sweden and the UK, moving to state funded, high quality schools being free to everyone of any status caused no change in persistence rates, in either high or low status lineages. The persistence rates stayed doggedly on their hundred-plus-years trend.
On the thousand year trend, you're probably right overall, he doesn't do anything like measuring an overall social mobility - his only example of that is looking at Norman elites stemming from William the Conqueror beating Godwinson.
Amazingly, even nearly 1k years later, the descendants of those Norman elites are still disproportionately likely to get into Oxbridge:
I haven't read, but it seems the parent post is about social status. I can see education having an impact on income, but potentially less so on status. And I can see status regressing quickly unless consecutive generations maintain an elevated status. For example I have a higher status than my parents, but didn't bother to raise my daughter with higher status than I was raised, and as far as I can tell she will be lower status than I am. It's not just about money. It's about investing money to create enduring status (boarding school, philanthropy, etc), which take a lot of wealth and dedicated effort.
Is there a Pareto distribution? Maybe for wealth but surely not status.
The feudal era had a tiny elite, and little to no social mobility. A few dozen families, maybe a few hundred at most had status rigidly defined at birth. What social mobility there was comes through the church, and even that is often limited to the aristocracy where the offspring who don’t benefit from primogeniture directly become princes and Barrons of the church.
This begins to change in the early modern era but clearly the rise of an educated class in the later 19C and most of the 20C is where we see the real increase opportunity and status for the once serf class. I don’t see this as a status treadmill, doctors, engineers, scientists, artists, lawyers, solicitors, bankers (and on and on) clearly have status that their peasant ancestors did not.
This is so obvious to me that I feel that the argument against it must be very wrong, or very strong and I am missing something.
The 'How Often Do Men Think About Rome' question seems to me as just a more popular-attention friendly (and meme-friendly) look at the sort of data found in studies like 'Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas' (https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9#Sec4).
It's fairly obvious that in general men and women differ in as to how much attention and how much detail they give to specific topics, which will show in different ways: amount of detail remembered, amount of associated vocabulary recognized, and, yes, how much one thinks about a given topic. If you wanted to test the Rome-specific question in a more objective manner, you might want to consider asking how many people can define a number of Rome-specific vocabulary terms.
So I'm thinking of voting for Trump* and I need to explain my reasons to my daughter (and others).
In the times before Bill Clinton the Democrats were the party of working people. Now they are the party of the establishment. (I note the endorsement of Kamala by Dick Cheney.) And the closest thing us working slobs have to the old Democratic party, is Donald Trump and JD Vance. So I'm holding my nose and pulling that lever... same as it ever was. (Maybe I reserve the right to change my mind.)
Why does your voting choice hinge on a "working class vs. establishment" narrative? There are so many variables you need to look at when choosing the president to lead the country. That said, "working class vs. establishment" is so non-specific and unquantifiable that it's meaningless in its value as a factor to take into consideration. A majority of both Democrat and Republican voters are working class because most Americans are working class. That said, if one were to vote based on which candidate is more working class, where does the logic lie in voting for Donald Trump, who isn't working class, over Harris, who has been a working attorney her entire pre-political career and comes from a working class family? Where is the logic in voting for the candidate who uses nepotism (reminder: antithetical to working class values) as a primary strategy in his approach to politics? It's absurd.
Also, don't try to justify voting to Trump to your daughters, nor other people, because there is nothing that you can say that will justify it to them, and they will only be disappointed and offended in your choice to what they correctly see as voting against their interests and well-being (your daughters!). They won't understand how you consider him a better candidate when not only has he never qualified himself as such, but also has mostly only provided examples disqualifying himself. Don't do something that you'll regret later. "I can't believe I'm saying this." Listen to you gut. Smart people who are data-driven don't vote for Trump.
Disclaimer: I'm registered independent, did not vote for a president in 2020 or 2016 due to moral and logical reservations, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris because due diligence supports her as not only the stronger candidate, but actually a good one.
"Working class" is not used in common parlance to literally mean people who work. Both of Harris' parents were academic PhDs from Berkeley, which is definitely not working class by any stretch of the imagination. Harris' career is almost certainly what it is in part because of who she was sleeping with, not exactly a working class association either. I get that filthy rich real estate magnate Trump isn't working class himself, but saying Kamala is more closely associated with the working class is bizarre. Appealing to the commoner is Trump's whole shtick.
Your final comment that either of the current candidates is objectively good in some way makes me want to disregard your opinion anyway.
There's something like four reality levels. Number one of which is the ground truth. I've forgotten what 2,3 and 4 are, but I'm pretty sure Cheney operates at levels 3 and 4. Don't trust anything he says. I feel the same way about Trump. Whatever he says, believe the opposite. (Have I said I may not vote for him?)
Or maybe Cheney is operating at level 5 and actually supports Trump but is lying to manipulate people like you. Probably the correct approach is just to ignore him.
Personally, this election has made me a one-issue voter, with the issue being "does this candidate respect the peaceful transition of power?"
It kind of doesn't matter what the policies are, if we lose the norm of transferring power the republic is dead, and whatever anyone may say about Harris from a policy perspective, I'm confident that she'll certify a close election even if she loses, whereas Trump has already well-proven that he can't be trusted in that regard. That alone needs to be disqualifying for any candidate regardless of party, imo. It doesn't matter who is 'establishment' or not, what they think about Ukraine or inflation or wokeness or what have you. If ticket A is willing to accept the results of an election even if they lose, and ticket B has openly demonstrated that they won't do that and will in fact seek to subvert legitimate election results, you give power to ticket A.
It's beyond stupid that something that basic is a salient issue in the campaign, but given that it is I can't justify myself voting any other way than Harris.
I don't think it's straightforward; yes, Trump has acted dangerously in not admitting he lost the 2020 election, but on the other hand he did peacefully leave the White House, power was transferred as normal. In the meantime the Democrats have attempted multiple times to indict Trump (and succeeded!), something that has never happened before and was clearly motivated to keep him out of office. Trying to lock up your political opponants is something that happens in tinpot dictatorships, not here: or at least, it had never happened here before. The Democrats broke that streak, and it's a serious threat to democracy and the peaceful transfer of power in the future (ask yourself: if they succeed in putting Trump behind bars and he loses the election, will that make Americans more likely to trust the system and support the peaceful transfer of power, or make them less likely to trust the system and more likely to attempt insurrection?).
So from my point of view both parties have weakened our countries remarkable history of peaceful transfers of power, but Trump has only attempted things that have weakened it while Democrats have followed through and succeeded.
I take it you think the police shooting somebody who tried to shoot at them first is bad because they'll probably kill the shooter whereas the shooter was probably a bad shot compared to trained officers, probably wasn't wearing bulletproof armor compared to officers on duty, and was outnumbered? Or do you probably think that's retarded and somebody who opens fire on police officers is asking for an immediate death sentence and the right thing to do is to neutralize the shooter, even though there's a persistent set of morons that will blame the police anyways?
If anybody started it, Trump did by making "lock her up" a key plank of his first campaign (and - if he's guilty - also by doing various crimes).
If Trump wins, I wonder if we will see revenge indictments of Biden and Harris? Answer: probably not because it's embarrassing to put somebody on trial with little evidence.
Yeah, Trump did say "lock her up": and then as soon as he was elected he said "now that we're elected, we don't do that" when the chants started up. So he said he wanted to lock up his political opponent, and then he didn't.
Compare that to the Democrats, who never said they were going to lock up their political opponents, but have done their absolute best to make that happen, and may well succeed if Trump isn't re-elected.
I'd prefer if neither side either talked about locking up opponents or tried to lock up opponents, but if I have to choose between the two I'll take "bark and no bite" over "bite and no bark".
>Mr. Trump publicly called for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign to be criminally prosecuted on a range of issues. Privately, he pressured Mr. Sessions to investigate and prosecute Mrs. Clinton and told the White House’s top lawyer that if Mr. Sessions refused to prosecute Mrs. Clinton he would do it himself.
>What happened
>Federal prosecutors and a special counsel examined nearly all the issues and conspiracy theories Mr. Trump raised about Mrs. Clinton, her campaign and the Clinton Foundation, including the Clinton campaign’s role in gathering information during the 2016 campaign about ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia and providing it to the F.B.I.
>Consequences
>A lawyer for the Clinton campaign was indicted on a charge of making false statements to the F.B.I. about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. The lawyer was acquitted. Mrs. Clinton sat for questioning with the special counsel John Durham, answering a litany of questions about the issues and conspiracies Mr. Trump had pushed about her. She was never charged with anything.
I think there are 2 possibilities here for why the streak of major party nominees not being indicted was broken with Trump.
1 (what I see as your belief): the Democrats are responsible for the streak break. There are so many laws that any random politician could in principle be convicted on something. George W Bush could have conspired to have John Kerry indicted, but didn't because he didn't want to put America on that slippery slope.
2 (my belief): Trump caused the streak break by committing various crimes. Bush couldn't have indicted Kerry because there was no reason to think Kerry had committed various crimes - unlike Trump. The streak break could have been avoided by the Republican party choosing a nominee who had exactly Trump's beliefs and policy positions, but wasn't a crook.
I think there's actually a testable difference here. If the streak break was caused by the Democrats violating the non-aggression pact, then presumably the gloves are off and both parties will continue trying to imprison each others' nominees; if the streak break was caused by there being a uniquely high amount of evidence that Trump was a criminal, then things will go back to normal.
I think it's probably the latter. This reminds me of how congressional republicans made a lot of noise about how the impeachments of Trump needed to be revenged by impeaching Biden, but they never followed through because there was no justification for it which wouldn't have made them look ridiculous.
>I think there's actually a testable difference here. If the streak break was caused by the Democrats violating the non-aggression pact, then presumably the gloves are off and both parties will continue trying to imprison each others' nominees
Only if the Republican party cares as little about the country as the Democrats do. The fact that the Republicans did not impeach Biden over nothing, the way the Democrats impeached Trump over nothing (the first time), just tells me that Republicans don't want to play games with the Republic.
Then again, reasonable people have never had cause to argue whether Hillary Clinton could be said to have a attempted a coup. I've seen those debates on this very board, though, with respect to Jan 6 and Trump, with good faith arguments being offered on both sides of it.
If the Obama administration had tried prosecuting Mitt Romney in the run up to 2012, I'd agree that looks like a case of pure partisan spite that would have done nothing but damage the republic. When it comes to the Trump prosecutions, though, I don't think it's that cut and dried. Presumably an actual coup attempt would be something that we *ought* to prosecute a former president for - SCOTUS seemed to contemplate as much when it declined to grant presidents true blanket immunity for all acts while in office.
That might matter if Donald Trump was just being prosecuted for "attempting a coup" (though even in that case, it's really bad to accuse your political opponents of attempting coups so that you can lock them up during an election year!). Instead he's been prosecuted on any charge that they can potentially make stick, and has currently been indicted on a bookkeeping misdemeanor that was past the statue of limitations, by using a different law and claiming that the misdemeanor was committed to cover up a felony. Sure seems like they're trying desperately to get him convicted for political reasons.
He went a more than a little bit further than not admitting he lost the 2020 election. He fomented a riot on Capitol Hill trying to pressure Mike Pence into refusing to certify a legitimate election result so that fraudulent slates of electors could be installed to award the presidency to the candidate who lost the election. When that riot materialized he called Senators to apply pressure rather than calling the National Guard.
That he “left peacefully” after he failed has about as much significance to me as Ryan Wesley Routh “behaving peacefully” in court after being arrested. We’d be cosmically stupid to let him near Trump with a rifle again, and we’d be equally stupid to let Trump near the presidency again.
We may well prove to be just that stupid. Time will tell, and we’ve been stupid before. But for what my one little vote is worth, it's going Harris and I don't see how it could responsibly go any other way. When I can only check "yes" on "are the odds this candidate would ever attempt a coup actually or essentially zero?" for one out of the two candidates, that's kind of the ballgame.
You should protest vote. Who you vote for has ~0 influence in the outcome of the election, but massive impact your life if people around you have radically different views.
Your relationship with your daughter is more important than your vote. Either vote Trump and lie, or vote no-one.
Naw, I won't make any difference for good or bad if I vote. Not voting just helps me feel less involved in an ugly, incredibly complex mess that I cannot do anything about. I'd have to spend the next year at least doing nothing but studying up on the situation and relevant bits of history, economics etc. even to feel qualified to have an opinion. And once I felt qualified to have an opinion, I'd still be no more able to change anything about how the country's run than I would be to change who wins the World Series. For all practical purposes, learning about the competitors, studying up on them, discussing the likely outcome, arguing about various features of the situation, cheering and groaning, etc is really a hobby, like following the World Series.
No my daughter is just who I picked as a foil. Any friend/ family member would do. Our relationship won't change in the least, no matter whom each of us vote for.
Thank you for confirming my suspicion that Cheney was the worst conceivable endorsement and Biden should have flown him to Guantanamo to put a stop to it.
The dems are the party of pharma and banks and the military (industrial complex). That's not the party of the working class. I have no idea of what a second Trump term would be like....
Bill Clinton was still a neoliberal who supported the Washington Consensus on global trade, whereas Tariff Man got most of his economic platform from an essay written by a Nixon intern in the 1972 May issue of Playboy Magazine. Working class my ass.
Yeah and the Consensus was to trade off the american working class for that in china. Which made all of china rich and the US businesses. And we're stuck with shit jobs for working class slobs. Which somehow (I think) makes us all poorer... but I have no idea how to do the math or the equations involved. We need more factories... it's important for many reasons. Trump has no idea what he is doing, yet maybe his heart is in the right place? IDK
If jobs are being sent overseas that generally means that Americans will be getting cheaper prices for economic products since we would otherwise have to subsidize those products by offsetting the price difference between creating those products overseas vs domestically.
> Trump has no idea what he is doing, yet maybe his heart is in the right place? IDK
I'm afraid he has no heart.
Semi joking. I've been fence sitting in this for a while. Aside of what you mention, about factories and the working class, I blame the Dems for damaging the already not great education system. Vibes-based literacy classes afaik have reduced literacy in my city. Then I hear stories about math classes getting cancelled or severely dumbed down for ideological reasons. Pretty upset about that.
But then I consider January 6th and the fact that Trump stood aside and let it happen despite being one of the most well placed people to stop it. Photos of angry people looting the capitol building make me sad on a deep level. But more broadly I'm afraid that paints Trump as a 100% opportunist who might be defending freedom of speech and coal miners today and tomorrow might do a 180.
I know all politicians are opportunists but I think he's on another level. I can't imagine for example a Biden withholding federal funds from the counties hit by Helena because some might be deeply red. There there's at least a pretense of caring for fellow Americans. But I don't get anything like from Trump.
Dang, that's a negative thought! It made me chuckle though. How much worse would we be by taking the top two, one from each party in our case. And just flipping a coin to pick the winner?
I have at times wondered if it would improve our political system to incorporate lot-drawing as a part of selecting members of the House of Representatives. Not president or Senate, but just the House.
Every 2 years, Congressional Districts do a random roll call of, say, 40 names on their voter rolls, and only those 40 people are eligible to run for that district's House seat. Big enough number that you don't get stuck with no options but Vermin Supreme, and you still have the Senate around to cool the temperature of the House with seasoned politicians, but the House then becomes much more of a cross section of the country, and you half-implement term limits.
Of course, in practice, it'd never happen, it'd supercharge the influence of lobbyists and congressional staffs, and every year you'd probably have 26 principled House reps trying to do the country's business while the remainder just drank and looked for new ways to do graft, but it's a fun thought experiment if nothing else.
Presumably any president would still be doing uncontroversial president stuff that nobody bothers noting in their platform, whoever is elected, and them being competent at that would still be a good thing.
Certainly a good thing, but not necessarily good enough to offset the bad thing that is competence enacting objectionable planks. Especially if the uncontroversial is routine enough that there are negligible returns to competence on them.
Here's an example of a routine thing that the Trump administration did not do that probably made a real difference. Before leaving office the Obama administration did intensive planning for 3 possible major catastrophes. One was an epidemic. I can't remember what the others were -- I think a nuclear attack to a part of the US was another one. They planned it, then they actually played it out, with all those who were be involved in executing the plan, reporting info, being part of the role play. Then they debugged the plans, based on how they had gone, and left them the info in the form of some documents, one for each catastrophe. The Trump administration did not look at them. (At least, that's what I read, and I don't know where except it's tagged in my mind as a reliable source.)
I think it is very difficult to make a case that in practical terms, electing Donald Trump will lead to better outcomes for working people.
Just to take a very simple example: The Democrats are basically uniformly in favor of renewing the expanded Child Tax Credit, which drastically improved conditions for many thousands of working-class parents.
Meanwhile, Trump is either opposed or at least has not publicly stated clear support. And weirdly, J.D. Vance, who sells himself as pro-natalist -- and even has advocated a tax _penalty_ for childless people (which would have the same net effect as a credit for children) -- voted against the expanded CTC.
Trump also has basically made a public show of saying that he will accept payments to change his policies. See: the idea of a TikTok ban ( https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/14/trump-tiktok-billionaire-donors-00146892 ) or his appeal to oil executives ( https://wapo.st/3XLEt0P ). So even if he had a pro-working-class policy, who's to say that policy would last a week if industry stepped up with $100M in campaign donations to his preferred candidates and/or "investments" in his businesses?
I do understand how somebody could look at _style_ cues and take the Republicans to be the party of working men. The cultural division between college-educated liberal arts and lawyer types who tend to be Dem politicians and staff, and the working people they claim to want to represent, is real.
But I still think if you look at likely outcomes, working-class people are a lot better off with Harris, and with purple- or red-state Dems like Sherrod Brown or Jon Tester who have roots in factory and farm communities.
Also worth noting that Trump's primary stated policies would be _wildly_ inflationary.
If you thought 2021 was bad, wait until you see what happens when you start imposing across-the-board tariffs on everything -- even stuff from our allies, and even stuff that American companies need as _inputs_ for domestic manufacturing -- while simultaneously shrinking the pool of available labor. Britain has experienced something a bit like this with Brexit, but if Trump really got to do what he says he wants to do, we'd go through something significantly worse.
Yeah so this seems mostly true. My worry is for the working men (and now by need women), who are getting paid 'shit' ... not enough, to support a family. And giving more in tax credits is not the right thing. We need good paying jobs back in this country, so some guy (or one person working) can make enough so that someone else can stay home with the kids and be a mom. Break up the big tech monopolies, and support unions. Which party is closest to that?
Side note I saw you mentioned you're in NY? Which, well... The New York Democratic Party is just the f***ing worst. They've never completely shed the stink of Tammany Hall. Don't even get me started on Kathy Hochul sandbagging the subway system. On behalf of Democrats elsewhere in the country, I'm sorry. We don't like them either.
Huh, OK this is weird, but again without paying much attention, I like Kathy Hochul. And will vote for her again. Most of the people around me hate her. I live in Trump country, western NY.
Hochul single-handedly exacerbated the current problems with the NY subway system -- they'd had a plan to start funding their maintenance program using the congestion pricing scheme, which she blocked, with no plan for how to make up the funding gap.
She's justified this with handwaving about this being good for middle class people, but the reality is that the _huge_ majority of people going in and out of NYC are on the trains. The plan already included a way for lower-income folks to apply for a rebate on their annual tax filing, so if you really _have_ to drive in for business reasons it won't cost you anything in the long run. The Manhattan Borough President was leading an effort to change that so the rebate would be delivered monthly, rather than just once a year.
Basically Hochul bowed to demands from a small cadre of wealthy people on Long Island and in Westchester, who want to be able to drive into the Central Business District without paying a modest fee, at the expense of the vast majority of working- and middle-class people who get to deal with the subway breaking down. And it's not like you get nothing for paying the fee -- once the system is in place, if you decide you _really_ want to drive in, instead of riding in on LIRR or Metro North (like I did regularly when I worked at IBM in Yorktown Heights), you'll be facing less traffic, so you'll get where you're going faster and find parking more easily.
Also: re: wanting good paying jobs back in the country, if you want to talk about manufacturing, we _lost_ jobs under Trump. I will give Trump credit for breaking through the old consensus about free trade. There had been some dissent among Dems for years -- like I mentioned earlier, look at somebody like Sherrod Brown. But Trump was _dumb_ about how he tried to implement breaks from the free trade orthodoxy. Biden came in and used more-targeted tariffs, and passed both the CHIPS act and the IRA. And lo and behold, investment in manufacturing in the US took off like a rocket.
Obviously not all those factories are fully online yet, but they'll be adding tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of good jobs. The TSMC chip foundry in Arizona has started pumping out very high end chips for Apple. Noah Smith (who is another great commentator to follow if you're a pro-growth centrist) had some discussion of that in a round-up post the other day: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-770
The US manufacturing sector was still suffering _before_ the pandemic, despite Trump's ill-considered, poorly-targeted attempts at tariffs. Read the EPI article. The article was published in 2020, but was looking at data from earlier: "The U.S. has experienced a net loss of manufacturing plants (establishments) in every year from 1998 through 2018 (the most recent year for which data are available)."
Trump is a showman with no substance. He made a big deal about intervening to save jobs at a Carrier A/C plant in Indiana, but not a lot came of it. They still continued shifting jobs to Mexico, and conditions for remaining workers at the plant got worse.
Trump has also made it pretty clear that he doesn't care a bit about conditions for American workers. He thinks it's _good_ when the ownership class is able to cram down rank-and-file workers:
And that's leaving aside his habit of just not paying people _at all_, making small contractors who worked on his buildings sue if they wanted what he owed them. He's just generally a bad actor. If you want a healthy capitalist economy, you need to have trust between participants, a level playing field. Trump did everything he could to undermine that trust.
Well it's the Dems who appointed Lina Khan, who's re-invigorated anti-trust.
I will definitely grant you that the politics of breaking up big business cut across party lines somewhat. But Peter Thiel, who is very explicitly pro-monopolist and anti-democracy, was the mentor of JD Vance, and he and his cronies would have huge influence on a second Trump term. And Trump in general has, as mentioned, shown he's happy to be bought off. So I find it extremely unlikely that any commitment to helping working people and consumers will last ten minutes after he gets into office.
Recent actions against monopolists from the Biden administration:
The company behind "Real Page", an algorithmic price-coordination system that got operators of apartments to jack up prices on incumbent tenants faster than they otherwise would have, and hold some units off the market to maintain shortages.
If this is a topic that interests you, I recommend Matt Stoller's blog in general, and you'll find he has some kind words for Republicans and harsh words for Democrats (particularly Chuck Schumer, who is way too friendly with Wall Street).
But in terms of the presidential election, the question is, _if_ we elect Harris, will she hold the course in terms of re-appointing Khan and Jonathan Kanter. I am quite optimistic that she will come down on the right side of this -- as California AG, she was involved in a multi-state effort to prosecute the banks for luring people into bad mortgage products. The settlement she won was not perfect by any measure, but IMHO it was the best she could do given the way the courts and the Supreme Court precedents were stacked against her.
Meanwhile, conditional on Trump being elected, I would _cheerfully_ give you a $1000 bet at 5:1 odds that he will boot out the aggressive anti-trust enforcers and let big donors do whatever they want.
Oh dear, I'm sorry, I really don't pay much attention to politics. I'm sure there are good people on both sides. I'll support almost anyone who is a veteran and/or doesn't take PAC money. Getting money out of politics would be my number one thing to care about.... But Tom Bombadil is my role model and I mostly just try and enjoy life and not care to much about what's going on outside my little eden. And I might vote for Trump, 'cause he's maybe the least status quo candidate.
I get it, people want to be able to just live their lives, and politics is often kind of ugly and unpleasant, and there's a justifiable sense of anger at the current system that leads a lot of folks to want to "burn it all down".
But as "Nobody Special" says, just arbitrarily saying "stuff should change!" is not the greatest idea, you need to actually have a plan for HOW to change things that doesn't risk chaos and collapse. (In meme form: https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984 )
If you're concerned with the problems of big corporations exploiting consumers and workers, and the question of whether government tries to help out "the little guy", your sense that both parties are problematic is totally justifiable. But I would say with high confidence that Harris is going to be better on those issues than Trump. Trump will go after specifically corporations that aren't kowtowing to him personally. But as long as they cooperate with his personal interests, he'll let them do whatever they want to workers and consumers. You can go look at what he's saying publicly at his rallies, about how as an employer he didn't want to pay the overtime his employees had earned, and so on.
In what ways do you view him as non-status quo, and how are those ways good?
If there was a Megatron/Voldemort ticket running on a "cut to the chase, fire all the nukes, and make humanity extinct!" platform, it would certainly be less status quo than Trump, but I'm hoping you wouldn't vote for it.
Like I see Trump as not a status quo politician because he's demonstrated that he'd rather overthrow the government than concede an election loss, but that's not the kind of *least status quo* thing that makes me want to vote for the guy.
There's also the ill-conceived trade war he started with China that ended in him bailing out farmers to the tune of 40 billion dollars. (And I'm not even saying that China isn't cheating on trade or anything - it absolutely is, but Trump went about things in the dumbest and most self-destructive way possible).
So yeah, the Democrats have been awful and are promising to do more awful things. But Trump might do dramatically different things than he did when he was in power for 4 years!
Is it that you think Trump is going to intentionally make things better for working people, or that you think the Ds are actively bad? (Or something else?)
Trump posted the prayer to St Michael the Archangel on 29th September, which is the Feast of Michaelmas, on social media and when I saw this report I immediately thought "this has got to be JD Vance doing this" because Vance converted to Catholicism and I don't imagine Donald ever hear of the St Michael prayer before 😁
It tickled me, because it may be the spiritual warfare meme (allegedly) popular amongst Evangelicals, but this is a very Roman Catholic version of it. Anyway, can't hurt to pray to St Michael on his feast day, so that's good!
Today I received Ross Douthat's notice about his fantasy book that he's putting on the internet, which he plainly stated was not going to be punditry by other means, and dated "on the Feast of the Archangels". With your deep Tolkein knowledge it strikes me that you might be more likely to give that a go, than I.
I tend to want to read things only when I know how they've gone over.
I just posted my monthly Long Forum, where I wrap up links to the best long form content I have encountered on history, evolution, biology, agriculture and a whole bunch of random topics.
Hi, I know from the 'thinking about Rome' post that there are quite a few ancient-world fans here, and also from the book reviews that there are some poetry fans, preferably of works featuring metre and rhyme (and some who really hate and avoid poetry). The ancient-worlders may already be across the wonderful, free, Antigone Journal, and the poetry-likers might be interested in their recent poetry competition: an English verse, shorter than Byron's The Isles of Greece, inspired by something we love about the Greco-Roman world. Winners here: https://antigonejournal.com/2024/09/sing-of-love-winners/ and the runners-up (including mine) here : https://antigonejournal.com/2024/09/sing-of-love-runners-up/
I wrote a short post about the reactions to 1. the collapse of a bridge in Germany due to poor maintenance and 2. the fact that Germany currently subsidizes the Indian metro. Contrasting the reactions of rightist cavemen on social media and leftist state media, I come to the conclusion that despite the fact that the state media is more accurate on the facts, their skewed politicized interpretation of the facts leaves the cavemen better off not reading the state media. Basically, the cavemen believe that Germany subsidizes the Indian metro to the tune of 100M€ and the state media counters that not a single cent of tax €s was send to India because the money was paid as an interest-reduced loan. I show why this argument is flawed and how we could have used a simple loan scheme to finance the maintenance of our bridges instead of funding the Indian metro, while taking on an equivalent risk exposure.
It’s amusing that the state media guy basically is telling people, your money is not being used for aid purposes - you paid for nothing, this was not an act of international friendship; the credit is not Germany’s at all. Which just seems kinda oddly roundabout when, once upon a time, countries at least had to make the case that a wealthier nation should share with a poorer. Now they do it and then tell the citizenry they deserve no thanks, and that their potential goodwill if they support the idea of giving to India over seeing to their infrastructure - which they kind of implicitly just did, if only by electing the people who hired the people who made this happen - is neither sought nor acknowledged.
It might be a part of a broader cultural shift in which welfare is seen as an entitlement rather than as something people should feel gratitude for receiving.
ACX women are probably more skewed by selection bias than any other female population anywhere. Like maybe Caltech alums are worse but that's about it. This is basically a community for semi-autistic shape rotators and anti-woke angry white men -- I'm both FWIW (minus the autism) -- which is possibly the least feminine population possible. I would put absolutely zero weight on any gender-related personality trends drawn from the ACX survey.
Excuse me, I'm a semi-autistic wordcel anti-woke angry old white woman who likes history, art, literature, science, and fighting with strangers on the Internet!
Ooo I have to retract the offer then. Alcohol and I are technically in an open relationship but the rules are I can't exclude her from any outside dalliances. It's both of us or nothing, baby.
What's a shape rotator? I immediately thought of werewolves made of spinors.
Strangely enough, Scott has said that his surveys indicate the readership here skews left. I certainly wouldn't be able to tell from the comments. But then I'm a curmudgeonly old white man whose politics used to be called centrist, but now I'm classified as a Marxist or a Marxist fellow-traveler. What the Right calls "Left" seems "Right" to me.
Skews socially left, even if the politics range all over the place. Most would be liberal/left of centre/centre, with some right of centre/conservatives to die-hard libertarians. I think we'd need to dig out the past surveys to be sure, but I imagine most attitudes to social issues are on the liberal to progressive side about sex'n'drugs'n'rock and roll, as it were, even if the attitudes about economics or politics may be more to the right.
>This is basically a community for semi-autistic shape rotators and anti-woke angry white men
As a person who is neither of those kinds of people, and therefore can't help noticing how very, very full of those precise kinds of people this community is, I salute your self-awareness. I am constantly baffled by Scott's characterization of the community as basically liberal progressives with a libertarian streak.
Commenters aren't _perfectly_ representative, but they're representative. Read 1000 comments here and read 1000 comments on /r/TwoXChromosomes. Is the difference solely due to commenter selection bias?
I went to one meetup 5 years ago. Seemed perfectly in line with my online experience of the community.
Different populations, with unclear overlap, may be meant by 'community':
-subscribers;
-readers;
-respondents to this survey question about Rome-thinking;
-commenters here, on Reddit, and on the forum;
-meetup attendees.
Wanda Tinasky's initial comment seems to take commenters as representative of survey respondents.
Who most informs Scott's idea of the community? It's probably a combo of commenters; friends of his who read/subscribe but don't otherwise participate; and meetup attendees.
For what it's worth, no one at the meetups that I've attended has mentioned commenting.
Sure, I guess, although I will that say you have to stretch the definiton of "community" pretty far to jam subscribers, readers, or survey respondents into it.
Word. In my experience self-categorizations tend to be more aspirational than accurate, plus they're relative to implicit reference classes that the speaker is usually unaware of. Like Scott's principle defining characteristic probably _is_ that he's a progressive libertarian ... relative to the population of semi-autistic shape rotators that form his social circle. It's like the old joke about fish and water. Scott lives amongst a highly-selected demographic but he's unable to appreciate that fact because he never goes outside it.
That's harsh! He's a psychiatrist. He probably has all sorts of patients from all sorts of backgrounds that he has to deal with. But he's a strange attractor when it comes to nerd-folk. Maybe intellectual otakus are a better term for the people who inhabit these threads? He sucked me in somehow...
Yeah but psychiatrists always have clinical detachment. It's not like he socializes with his patients or gets the kinds of social feedback cues that you do from your friends.
I guess it depends on how important the quality of art is to you.
(Because, yes, the quality does eventually suffer. The establishment has way too much room to dictate what kind of art is valued, and it does use it to elevate [the kind of art nepo babies make or are capable of making] to the detriment of everything else.)
For a much better example of an area where nepotism is genuinely a non-issue, sports.
Hate to sound egotistical, but I must insist only people with a totally shallow understanding of the arts believe that the market consistently rewards great art and punishes bad art. This would be the position of a classic STEM type person who “only has 10 CDs,” as we used to say back in the day to refer to very casual music listeners.
If one digs deeply into global music scenes past and present, one will sooner rather than later realize that there is an enormous reserve of talented musicians toiling away in obscurity. And that Talent is only one of many factors that leads to commercial success. There are just too many high-quality musicians alive to provide remuneration for any but a small percentage. And it has always been so.
This is the context behind my saying “the stakes are low.” 99% of humanity's great artists are doomed to toil in obscurity. Nor are they likely to be discovered by a mass audience after they die.
>The establishment has way too >much room to dictate what kind >of art is valued, and it does use it >to elevate
Though I'm a card carrying socialist, I do not believe in public funding for the arts. On the simple grounds that it isn't necessary, besides maybe children's music classes.
Nevertheless, I cannot deny that the BBC produces consistently high quality films and television shows. The British establishment does exercise editorial control over BBC output, for political reasons. This is not ideal, and it certainly stunts certain types of artistic expression. But the artistic expression that is allowed, though perhaps staid from a sociopolitical standpoint, has more than enough leeway to be artistically excellent.
It gives me even more regret to admit that multinational corporations are capable of producing great films and TV shows. But that is patently obvious. So unfortunately, whatever my issues with the establishment, and they are many, the establishment is more than capable of patronizing great art. How could it be any different? Some of history's most vile monarchs patronized great art.
I work in the arts with no nepo advantage, and I find myself mostly agreeing. The stakes are very high to those personally trying to "break in," but ultimately, the reality is that arts careers are very desirable, so more people than can "make it" will try, and many of them will eventually give up and switch to different career paths. There's no perfectly just way to decide who those people are.
Many very competent artists will find the pathway to the very top of the field infeasible, so they'll choose another high-status and lucrative career over being a middling success in the arts. Many incompetent artists will toil in obscurity, attaching themselves like a barnacle to the underside of the arts-non-profit complex, scraping by on grant money and bullshit gigs for a whole career of utter mediocrity.
Amidst the undefinability of what "making it" even is, nepo babies will simply have access to the best training. Their parents will help guide them to the best teachers, schools, training programs, internships, early-career opportunities, etc.. They will organically have stronger industry networks through simply showing up at Thanksgiving dinner, going to the family friend's wedding, their parents sending them to the best summer camp in the industry... In the end, it's impossible to disentangle whether the nepo baby is hired on the basis of nepotism, or if growing up in an industry family led to the nepo baby genuinely being the most competent person for the job. And even if the first big breaks come from nepotism, if that genuine professional experience leads to the nepo baby /becoming/ more competent than the competition, then are we supposed to say now we shouldn't hire the most competent person just because how they gained their competence was unfair?
I disagree. I am fine with nepotism in private companies (hiring your daughter so she can run your company when you retire etc) but when you do nepotism in art (choosing an artist with connections over a better artist when you exhibit in museums or publish books) you are making it harder for the general art loving public to find the actual good artists. You are making the coordination harder for good writers and interested readers to find each other.
Except on the margins, there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art. Sometimes, a consensus appears to emerge, but it's usually transient in nature. Bach was once a composer largely forgotten to the general public, and he might be forgotten again.
While I do enjoy Leonardo Da Vinci’s art, I read that he was relatively obscure until the Mona Lisa was stolen and it made global headlines.
So no, there is no objective way to determine who the “better artists” are. In as much as I use terms like good artists and bad artists, it's merely a conversational shortcut. I hope and presume everyone is mentally adding “in my subjective opinion” every time I talk about a bad artist.
Besides, artistic talent is partly a genetic trait. Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage (Coppola) may have had their film careers handed to them, but they retroactively earned it through their output. Sean Lennon is actually a great songwriter. The second generation film directors Goro Miyazaki and Brandon Cronenberg are deeply impressive to me. We like to comfort ourselves by thinking that the children of success are doomed to mediocrity, but when it comes to the arts, it just isn't true.
No, not even relatively. From said Wikipedia article:
>The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius..."[162] This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."[163]
Other way around. Its mainly on the margins where the consensus breaks down. Mass consenus on art and other creative undertakings with supposedly subjective tastes are rather consistent. If you show people pictures of Chartres Cathedral next to Boston City Hall and ask them which looks better the response will skew overwhelmingly towards Chartres and its really only the highly educated/ideologcally motivated on the margins who would pick Boston City Hall. Even though lots of people today don't listen to or engage with classical music you would have a hard time finding people who say Bach actually feels unpleasant to listen to as they can appreciate certain underlying traits in the music that are common to most pleasant sounds. Most people think durian smellls bad just like most people wince at the sound of an out of tune singer. Anything built off the senses has at least some degree of non subjective quality.
Presuming there’s no meaningful difference between two pieces of art (say a child’s scribble and a symphony) is not a presumption most people are willing to make.
>Except on the margins, there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art. Sometimes, a consensus appears to emerge, but it's usually transient in nature.
Why would a consensus on a particular work of art’s value have to be eternal for it be meaningful? There’s also no immutable “consensus” about which medical treatments are best, which air conditioners are best, which cars or refrigerators are best. But still most people prefer and recognize some level of competence in these areas.
I don’t know shit about art, but I do know that many (not all) highly regarded works of it were created from a nuanced understanding of the particular form, its practice and its history. This is something that can be appreciated to varying degrees, as can an innovative, clever or striking expression of it. If you think you’re as capable of creating impactful murals or hit songs or cathedrals or movie scripts as trained, talented artists, more power to you. You’ll make a fortune.
Actions speak louder then words, and people are constantly calling out celebrated or best-selling artists as overrated. We virtually all do this, demonstrating with our actions that we either 1. Don't REALLY believe in an objective standard for art, or 2. We think we magically happened to be born as the chosen Messiah whose tastes march up with the objective standards. I'm going to assume people mostly fall under category 1.
>there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art.
Then you say:
>Besides, artistic talent is partly a genetic trait.
So first you assert that nepotism is fine in the arts because no one can say what good art is. Then, amazingly, you assert that artistic talent—the ability to create “good art”—is a thing and that nepotism is sensible because it likely leads to good art?
You don't need to know shit about art to know what you like. But if you're going to talk shit about art, you need to be able to tell us why you think it's shit.
>So no, there is no objective way to determine who the “better artists” are. In as much as I use terms like good artists and bad artists, it's merely a conversational shortcut.
I think that the argument is that our best method for determining who "better artists" are is the marketplace, and nepotism distorts those market forces. I'm not sure if this is very true these days though: distribution costs for art have dropped so precipitously that publishers and other art "gatekeepers" have less power than ever.
In which I argue that AI automating the economy will necessitate a communist revolution (tl;dr - most people make their living by selling their labor to the people that own capital, full automation will remove all demand for that labor, so the only way to prevent everyone from being unemployed and starving is to seize the means of production and redirect its automated output to the public benefit)
Isn't this solvable with Universal Basic Income? Going all the way to communism seems like overkill - plus of course communism has a pretty terrible track record. Eliminating private ownership is far more destructive than simply taxing it. If you value innovation at all then you want profit motives to remain in the economy.
I think you also have to consider how bad unemployment would actually be in a post-scarcity world. If labor input costs go to zero then the price of goods will fall accordingly. So while it's possible that median incomes will fall, it's also possible that that will be offset by falling prices.
Personally I think it's absurd to speculate what the world will look like when AI is able to do everything. Maybe it will have the opposite effect of what you predict. If all it takes is an LLM and some hardware then we can all be CEOs right? Perhaps it will unleash the power of human creativity and not restrict it to a small capital class.
Well that's why the revolution has to be successful. I also mention the possibility of the pre-existing state appropriating capital from capitalists as automation increases, so there's the possibility of already established power structures being on the side of the worker in a top-down, gradual redistribution of the means of production. This would be much less bloody and would leverage the greater power the state has over individual capitalists. Now, you might wonder whether the state would actually be willing to do this, and a traditional Marxist would say it wouldn't, positing that the state is captured by the interests of capital, but as I say in the article I'm not actually a Marxist, so I hold out hope for the state intervening for the greater good.
I thought your end goal was to maximize pleasure within the universe? If so, what happens to humanity in the short-term is completely irrelevant. What matters is creating the conditions for the perfect lifeform to be born. One way is through ruthless competition: humanity will sacrifice everything to their creations, including their own agency, simply to keep up with their rivals. Until they are consumed by them as well. That is the path we are on.
My long term goal is to bring about a transformation of the cosmos into innumerable consciousnesses experiencing maximum pleasure, but in the short to medium term preventing the majority of humans from starving also benefits overall utility.
Do you understand how inconsequential the well-being of current humans are in the grand scheme of things? Even ignoring the past and future, humans only make up 2.5% of animal biomass on Earth. And when you do take into account the future, the billions upon billions of years perfected life would be able to thrive at scales incomprehensible to humanity... Are you seriously going to jeapordize that just to save some lives that are doomed regardless?
Why would redistributing the means of production threaten the existence of the post-human future? I see the two as perfectly able to coexist, in the short term benefitting human wellbeing via capital redistribution, and in the long term benefitting universal wellbeing by converting the inert matter of the universe into hedonium.
There’s an explicit premise you’re asking the reader to accept, and this reader refuses to, rendering the rest moot.
The “current AI revolution” will make a huge impact on a very small number of professions (e.g., I expect translation to be one), minor impact on some more, and no/negative impact on the rest. So we’re nowhere near AI-caused mass unemployment.
You sure about that? In my view AI will upend every non-physical (so like dentists will be ok) information-worker job over the next 5-15 years. The real question is whether it will be creative destruction (meaning that N new job types will be created for every one that's obsoleted) or just destruction.
Yep I’m pretty sure. There may be eventually an AI that massively displaces IT jobs, but the current crop of LLMs running on CMOS is certainly not it.
We’re running into some pretty hard limits with the CMOS gate-flipping compute. Until some new hardware comes along we’re safe from mass-unemployment causing AI.
Ok. I'm a software engineer and I can tell you that ChatGPT is already better than an entry-level coder. I know several engineering managers that have changed their hiring practices because of it. And the AI is rapidly improving.
My prediction is that your comment is going to age very badly very quickly.
Here's a simple prediction: there will be more engineering jobs 10 years from now than there are today, 80% confidence (only 80% not because of ChatGPT, this thing will be a niche product by then, but because there may be a recession or some other general economic malaise affecting general employment).
As to the engineering managers who changed their hiring practices because of ChatGPT, good luck to them.
1-2 years. I think there will be statistically significant changes in CS major enrollment within 5 years.
>Here's a simple prediction: there will be more engineering jobs 10 years from now than there are today,
I don't disagree with this. Technological revolutions usually result in more employment long-term, but I think there will be short-term reductions before industry adapts. Destruction happens faster than creation.
Like I said, I'm not sure if AI will produce creative destruction employment-wise or just destruction, but I am confident that it will radically change most knowledge-worker jobs one way or the other. And look, we're definitely overdue for a nasty recession so that will muddle the signal here, but I predict that economists will be confused by a disconnect between unemployment and GDP growth. In the midst of whatever recession is coming, there will be a storyline to the effect of "confusing economic figures indicate that GDP growth signals the end of the recession while unemployment figures continue to rise." We're going to see weird stuff that's never happened before economically. Inflation will generally be a problem for a long time because of our irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies while the AI-driven part of the economy will be beset by rapidly falling costs and rising unemployment and profitability. The economy will bifurcate and probably politics along with it. Generally I think we're in for an insane 20 years.
But if you want to short the impact of LLMs I'll happily take the other side of that trade.
Even physical labor jobs will eventually be replaced at a later time, once robotics catches up with AI (with the possibility of superintelligent AI aiding in robot development)
The current wave of LLM-based AI might not bring it about, but full automation is a spectre that will face us eventually. When that finally happens, it will be who owns the means of production that determines whether the vast majority of humanity starves or prospers.
Only somewhat facetiously: an LVT would solve that.
Land is also a means of production. Exponential growth of capital (whether "full automation" or something lesser) makes the marginal product of capital decrease and that of land increase. In equilibrium factors are paid their marginal product, so the gains will accrue to landowners; if that is the public at large, there's no need to forcibly reallocate capital ownership.
> Exponential growth of capital (whether "full automation" or something lesser) makes the marginal product of capital decrease ...
I think you are confusing cause and effect here. The stock of capital is expected to grow *because* improved automation technology is expected to *increase* the marginal product of capital. Yes, landowners will receive some of the gains, but you are naive if you think that land-ownership among the general public is anything close to universal, particularly with regard to land suitable for mines, plantations, and factories,
>"The stock of capital is expected to grow *because* improved automation technology is expected to *increase* the marginal product of capital."
Sort of. If AI is labor-substituting capital instead of the classic labor-complementing capital then MPK/MPL is increasing, but that's consistent with either an increase or decrease in MPK so long as MPL is plummeting. I would be surprised if there weren't diminishing returns to MPK in isolation for AI.
Whoops. I missed the reference to an LVT. Yes, you are right that in a Georgist world, the problem of income inequality would be mitigated, but I think we still need public ownership or expropriatory taxation of AI/robotic capital.
> ... we’re nowhere near AI-caused mass unemployment.
I tend to agree. Robotics seems to be lagging. We probably have 10-20 years or so before mass unemployment. So, lets begin preparing now. Begin taxing all AI revenues at something like a 50% rate. Use the revenues to begin buying up AI and robotics assets. Aim to have 100% public ownership of such capital assets by the time when it will be needed to prevent starvation. If we start taxing now, it will probably slow down the spread of AI and robotics, perhaps by an additional 10 years. We don't want to stop it, of course. It is a golden goose. But delaying it may actually be a good thing since too-rapid a transition might be dangerous.
I don’t think any kind of a tech-induced mass unemployment is in any foreseeable future. I look at advanced tech roadmaps for a living, ain’t nothing there to even hint at this in 15 years.
In what sectors will there still be human workers? Retail, mining, manufacturing, education, transportation, medicine, legal and financial services, infrastructure construction and maintenance ... I expect machines to be superior and cheaper in all of those fields. And I doubt that it will take more than a few decades to accumulate the necessary investment.
Some human workers, yes. Wheat, corn, and soybean farming still have human workers too. But more than 25% of current human employment levels? I doubt it for retail, education, transportation, and infrastructure construction.
But you are wearing me down. I agree it is very doubtful that total employment will fall below 50% of current levels within two decades. That is assuming, of course, that we don't have some kind of total meltdown in the meantime.
We rarely think about where our stuff comes from or how it’s made. We go through our lives expecting that the things we consume are easily acquired. That is the beauty of modern society: supply chain logistics work so well that we seldom think about the consequences if these systems are disrupted. I think many of us thought about this for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a wake-up call that revealed how fragile these systems could be, as it disrupted everything from basic goods to high-tech products.
Since the pandemic, I’ve become mildly interested in other supply chain vulnerabilities that could arise. Recently, I discovered one that is particularly concerning: the supply of semiconductor-grade quartz, which virtually all comes from one place—Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
I saw the Spruce Pine meme on TwiXter. Just out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT...
Me: Are there any alternatives to spruce pine semi-conductor quartz?
ChatGPT said:
Yes, there are alternative sources to Spruce Pine for high-purity quartz, which is essential for semiconductor manufacturing. Although Spruce Pine in North Carolina is renowned for having the purest natural quartz in the world, other locations provide alternatives. Here are a few:
1. Brazil
Brazil is a leading producer of quartz, particularly in regions like Minas Gerais. Although not as pure as Spruce Pine quartz, it is widely used in the electronics industry after further refinement.
2. Norway
Norwegian quartz deposits, particularly in the regions of Årdal and Kragerø, provide high-quality quartz that is used in various industries, including semiconductors after refining.
3. China
China has significant quartz resources, especially in the Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. However, Chinese quartz often requires more extensive processing to reach the purity levels needed for high-end electronics.
4. Russia
Russia has quartz deposits, particularly in the Ural Mountains, that are also considered high-purity. Some Russian quartz is used in electronics but typically undergoes substantial refinement.
5. India
India has been developing its high-purity quartz mining capabilities, with deposits primarily in the state of Rajasthan. Though not as prominent as other sources, Indian quartz is becoming more competitive for the semiconductor industry.
6. Australia
Australian quartz, particularly from deposits in Western Australia, has also been tapped as an alternative source for high-purity silica used in electronics, although it often requires significant processing.
While Spruce Pine quartz remains the most sought-after due to its near-perfect natural purity, these alternative sources can be refined to meet the stringent purity requirements of the semiconductor industry.
That's an awful lot of chatting about high-purity quartz *deposits*. Which are I think useless for anyone who needs to manufacture semiconductors this year or next, and probably not too useful in 2026 either.
What matters right now, is actual production capacity.
Yeah, I know people like Peter Zeihan (did he start this meme too?) like to comment on current commodity sourcing patterns and get pretty hyperbolic in terms of how hard it would be to develop new sources in the case of supply chain disruptions. I'm suspicious at the assertion that the NC source is that unique and irreplaceable. Quartz/silicon refining sounds like a fairly specialized area, but I would presume someone in that field would have a more informed opinion. There is a lack of diversity on ACX where it seems like 80% are programmers.
My list of questions that need to be asked before people freak out (chime in if I missed any)...
1. Do we have an assessment yet of how long the Spruce Pine Plant will be taken offline?
2. Spruce Pine quartz is mostly processed in Norway (and Norway has its own high-quality quartz) before it gets shipped to fabs mostly in Asia.
(a.) How will the ILA strike impact shipments out of the US?
(b.) How much time and money will it cost to ship it up to Canada or down to Mexico to ship it over to Noway? (
c.) Will Norway be able to pick up the slack in the meantime?
3. The quartz is used in masking the wafer, as well as in crucibles. My understanding is that most of it is used in photomasking with crucibles using less pure quartz
(a.) Can crucibles use less pure quartz? (What are the percentages masks vs crucibles)?
(b.) Semi manufacturers outsource their photomasking to third parties. This is labor-intensive process with long lead times. Since the process requires long lead times, do these companies stockpile their quartz? If so, how much is stockpiled? (I doubt if its JIT).
Yeah, this is a much bigger deal, IMO. They have everyone up against the wall, with the current Suez closure tripling most shipment times, if they strike, it would be sig worse than the Covid supply chain problems.
Make a prediction market about it? I'd bet that even if Spruce Pine was permanently taken offline by Helene there would be very little effect on the semi industry.
These single source failures are a monthly occurrence in the mining and rare earth metal industry. Turns out they never actually are the only source.
Not the biggest issue in the world obviously, but still -- one big cheer for California. Hopefully this now becomes a general expectation/norm which is now adopted by more jurisdictions (the way that for instance spamming to fax machines became widely illegal back in analog days).
OTOH I don't feel sorry for these strange people who move away and never notice apparently that they have a monthly service they're being dunned for. At my old house, the previous resident had dog treats delivered each month. I went to FedEx twice and tried to get them sent back/her name uncoupled from the address, but finally gave up and started giving them to neighbors with dogs. It's been years and I bet they're still coming.
Here, it's a woman who's been gone from the building for about 3 years; she's still getting an herbs and spices subscription; and some sort of cosmetic, essential oil* crap, monthly or bi-monthly, all this time later.
*Yes, after these things sat for weeks, after writing "not at this address" did not stop it, a neighbor and I opened the packages with great excitement. Maybe it will be jewelry of the month! Or scented soap of the month. Or almost anything! - except what it turned out to be.
There's a magazine whose politics (always) and younger writers I find tedious, but whose archive I often read, and I've subscribed in the past - largely just to pay them something for those decades-old articles I read. But the difficulty of unsubscribing - or even getting onto one's account to see if still subscribed, or to switch to digital, or change address - was so, so hard that now I actively swallow my guilt and just look up whatever I really want to see on Internet Archive.
I find it fascinating how many business models include something that is... technically not considered a fraud... but definitely something that the customer would not consent to.
The dark pattern "you can't (easily) unsubscribe" is especially powerful in combination with "you can try the service for free during the first 30 days, but if you don't unsubscribe during those 30 days it automatically becomes a paid service, and you need to enter your credit card number right now and we will verify it".
For everyone not in California, the solution to this (lamentably common) problem is single-merchant virtual cards. Abine does it as a general service, and Capital One and Citi does it for specific cards - you can generate a card number for a given merchant, and cancel it when you want to.
But then, won't the company sue you for violating the terms of services? Or sell your debt to debt collectors? Because, technically speaking, you did *not* unsubscribe.
Good point. It's never happened to me, and I've done it pretty widely, but it might be possible.
Maybe the liability tradeoff isn't worth it - if there was a chance to go after them with a class action or something because they sold it to a debt collector after such a scummy initial dark pattern, I'd be interested enough to consider pursuing it just for the precedent.
Started watching Industry, a show about young grads at some kind of investment bank in London. (I'm still on Season 1, so no spoilers please). I've obviously never worked in finance and don't have any experience there- is the job really, just pitching clients to do random individual trades? They're shown telling clients to short the euro based on this or that projection, or short Treasuries based on some theory about what will happen, or buy this or that stock, etc. This appears to be a major focus of their job.
Is that.... is that really how finance works? You just pitch wealthy clients on timing the market and doing individual trades? Why don't these wealthy clients just use an index fund and eschew what's essentially day trading? Also, why would the client need the bank to place a trade for them? This isn't the 1970s, the clients can presumably just do so directly through their own accounts
The impression I get from Matt Levine is that it mostly involves pitching companies on potential mergers and acquisitions, new structured debt deals, etc. And staying up until 3am every night preparing presentations and pitchbooks for the same.
That's a very specific subsection of finance (which is the one Matt Levine worked at before he was a journalist, so he focuses on it more). It is a thing for some roles/institutions, but at other institutions you might never even meet anyone who's done that.
Investment Banking encompasses a whole bunch of different things. One of those is Sales and Trading. And yes, most of it is commission based sales.
Most of their clients will be large investment funds who can't exactly use Interactive Brokers. The most active trading will be in etfs. They will also deal in a bunch of stuff you can't do through a retail account.
However much you tell people not to day trade, a lot of them are going to do it anyway. Even fiscally educated people might do it as a kind of hobby, fully cognizant of the risks. I can definitely a certain kind of rich person who sets aside X amount of disposable dollars for day trading, fully aware that they might lose it all.
Also, not all wealthy people stay wealthy. I'm sure plenty of wealthy people have gambled away their fortunes, and there's always going to be someone willing to facilitate that for profit.
For those interested or still struggling on, like the Elvish horsemen in the river bed this episode, my thoughts on episode seven of The Rings of Power.
This is the penultimate episode, so just one more left to go before they have to cram in all the tying-up of plot points in the last episode (or, more likely, leave them dangling as cliff hangers for season three).
This episode was a curate's egg, in that there were good parts and bad parts. Some online reviews have called this the worst episode of the season, but really it's not. It's one of the best, if not the best, but the show can't help but manage to fall on its face immediately after doing something decent so that it made me go "Yeah, that's not bad - oh, wait". Now we head into spoilers, so beware, all ye who venture onwards!
The good: they concentrated on only two storylines, which were related: the siege of Eregion and what's going on in Khazad-dum. This meant that (1) things actually *happened*, for once and (2) we weren't dragged out of the story by flitting around between Rhun with the Stoofoots, Rhun with I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf, Númenor, Lindon, Eregion, and Khazad-dum, with stops at wherever the hell it is Isildur is supposed to be at today.
Poor old Celebrimbor is not having a good time. The actor finally gets to demonstrate to me why he was hired in the first place, though he does have to suffer through some whimsical moments to get there. It seems a case of a reasonably good actor but bad characterisation, which is not his fault: the show decided Celebrimbor would be a doddering old fool and there's only so much you can do with that.
Elrond and Durin are re-united, this just goes to show you can't keep True Love down. Elrond's heart sings to see Durin once more and Durin compliments him for, er, having tidal hair? Look, Dwarvish love-talk is a closed book to me, but by the stars in his eyes, I'm guessing he means he likes the new hairstyle.
There *are* some Dwarven women with (small) beards and facial hair in crowd scenes, so little victories there!
ARONDIR MAY BE DEAD! Well, probably not, but he *might* be. I'm telling you, I was cheering on Adar as he bestrode the battlefield, kicking Elven ass LIKE A BOSS. (Wait, *should* I be cheering for the Orc army? Oh these complex moral decisions!) But please please please let Arondir be dead, so we get no more of the stupid spin-kicks (which is how he left himself open to be killed by Adar, something nobody should be suprised by. Spin kicking may look cool, but it's a dumb move in real fighting).
Points for having an Elven commander order his archers to "Loose arrows", not "Fire arrows". Taken away again for having him or another commander order "Prepare to fire" and then restored for a later order about "release" not "fire" or "shoot".
I was right about the fake mithril! It *is* Sauron's blood, which means that this is how the show is setting it up that the Nine Rings turn the bearers into Ringwraiths. This of course is not in Tolkien, but the show is not Tolkien either, so 🤷♀️
The meh, not really worth getting worked up over, just silly and/or annoying: thanks to Scott's AI art on the "how often do you think of Rome?" post, I learned a new fact and a new term:
"Spartan women continued to wear the peplos ...(i)t was also shorter and with slits on the side causing other Greeks to call them phainomērídes (φαινομηρίδες), the "thigh-showers".
Well, Dísa is a thigh-shower. We get to see her (and prince Durin) striking Hero Poses with pickaxe and war hammer and. Yeah. Spartan customs.
STUPID HOSTAGE SITUATION. More on this later.
The Nine Rings for Men look way better than the Dwarven Rings or the Elven Rings! The Elven rings just had uncut lumps of stones stuck on top, the Dwarven ones got a little more polish but not much, but these ones look much nicer. I guess that Celebrimbor finally got the hang of ring-making after all that practice?
The bad: Hoo-boy. There's one scene which has online comment raging, and I have to admit, it made me too go FUDGE* NO!!!! at my screen as I watched it. This ties in with the STUPID HOSTAGE SITUATION I mentioned above, so we'll get to it in time.
(*Bowdlerised because there are small children in the ACX house now and we must set an example as virtual god-parents/aunts and uncles).
But first, let's go through the "I can't believe they throw tens of millions per episode at this" and "okay, not alone are they intent on breaking lore, they're now breaking the laws of the material world** at the same time. Go big or go home, eh?" parts.
(**Don't make me tap the sign if you come back with "but it's *fantasy*, this is a *fantasy* world, the rules are *different* there". The man himself said it in response to a proposed film script: "The Lord of the Rings may be a 'fairy-story', but it takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather.")
The siege tactics don't make a lick of sense. They start bombarding the walls of Ost-in-Edhil (that's the name of the city, but let's just call it Eregion for simplicity's sake) as per standard tactics. I think these are just plain catapults, not even mangonels or trebuchets, but I'm open to correction on that (I am not an expert on siege engines and don't even play one on TV, so I suppose I could get a job as adviser for this show). So far, so okay. They're not making an appreciable dent in the walls, but this is a slow job that will go on for a long time.
And then. They turn the catapults *away* from the city and *towards* the mountains to the side of it. And they throw rocks at the mountainside, and knock down large slabs of rock, which fall into the river and dam it. And the water all drains away practically instantaneously, leaving the riverbed open now for the Orc army to cross and attack the city walls directly, including with honkin' great siege engines. Well, not *that* honkin' great, but we'll get to that bit as well.
And this works. Man, those Orcs have got some precision aiming equipment going on, because not alone can they hit targets *miles* away, they can hit *just* the one small round rock propping up the big huge slab of mountainside to knock it away, so the slab falls, and triggers the rest of the rockfall.
Let me remind you, these are the same catapults that couldn't breach the city walls, but they have no problem knocking lumps off a mountain. Now that you've let that one sink in and had a moment of silent contemplation, let's move on.
The Orcs have a siege engine called The Ravager and - no, you know what? It's too stupid and I don't have the spare brain cells to burn dealing with this. Just take it from it, it's stupid, the defenders on the walls are stupid, it's all stupid.
Things are not looking good for Eregion! And then Elrond shows up and does some Spanish Riding School Viennese Lipizzaner white stallion Airs Above The Ground moves*** with his horse and a battle horn.
(*** Levade here, he does a capriole in the middle of a skirmish, which is very pretty. Impractical, but pretty, and at least they are trying to show off horse moves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8ktmC5pTvU)
The day is saved! Or it should be, seeing as how Gil-galad himself is now going to take the field, and the massed Elvish cavalry, under the command of Elrond, all charge the Orcs.
I think I'll break this in half here, because there's more to say. A *lot* more. So I'll take my cue from the show and leave you wanting more!
We now return to our regularly scheduled pointing and laughing.
The Elvish cavalry charge thunders forward! And it looks fairly impressive, though there probably was some/a lot/tons of CGI used to bulk up the numbers. It's in a wedge formation which I believe, but again am no expert, does work when you're heading to break a line of infantry. (Somebody get Bret Devereaux to review this show, if he's not doing it already).
People have criticised the horse armour and the armour in general, and yes, it's true, but that's the least of their worries. To my eye, the armour looks much less plastic than what the Númenoreans got lumbered with (so I guess the rabble-rousing about Elven workers taking the jobs of Numenorean smiths had some basis).
A detachment of the Orc army (including Adar) are lined up facing the charge and not doing anything. I was going "why the heck are they just jeering and mocking, instead of forming some kind of defensive line or moving into the trees or something?"
Ah, but little did I know that Adar had a CUNNING PLAN. While the cavalry are still a good distance away, they bring forward a covered cage, pull back the covers, and reveal - oh no! They've got Galadriel! She's their hostage with a knife to her neck! Whatever will Elrond and the army do?
Well, Elrond sees this and gives the order to stop. So the Cunning Plan worked! Not alone did it work, but TIL that Elvish horses come with brakes, so that the *entire charge* stops dead *in a straight line* and we don't have, you know, the ranks behind ploughing into the ones in front because they couldn't stop in time. Truly, the Mearas must be supernatural creatures!
Clearly in a dire situation like this, all Elrond can do is go have a confab with Adar (where's Gil-galad? I have no idea, maybe he turned around and went back to Lindon to check if he turned the stove off and locked the front door). There's some back-and-forth which boils down to "I've got Galadriel, if you want her alive then give me the ring and leave Eregion"/"No, but I'll meet you on the battlefield"/"Okay"/"Okay".
Now we get to THE SCENE. That has everyone up in arms. So, we've got the cheesy trope set-up of the prison break-out scene, where A is locked up and B must pass over the plans/lockpicks/getaway car to them under the noses of the guards. Usually they have to use subterfuge or a distraction so they can hand over the key without being noticed.
Our boy Elrond asks if he can say "goodbye" to Galadriel. You know, what with them abandoning her to certain death and all that. Adar has a sudden loss of functioning brain cells (maybe they decided to follow Gil-galad to Lindon) so he permits this. And what does our boy do, as he not-so-sneakily unfastens his cloak brooch so he can pass it to Galadriel so she can use the pin as a lockpick? What distraction does he pull?
He kisses her. Yep. His mother-in-law (or mother-in-law to be), whom he has shown no romantic interest in up to this, and hey remember she's technically married still since it's not been proven Celeborn is dead? Now, I know this is a way such matters are handled for said cheesy prison escape trope, but in those scenarios the couple are at least acknowledged to be romantic partners. This makes no sense here. Elrond could hand the brooch to Galadriel in other ways. (Even better, if you rewatch the scene because you can't believe they just did that, there's an Orc guard staring right at their hands as he's visibly handing the brooch over, so it doesn't even work as a distraction).
I'm not so much outraged as THIS IS STUPID. WHY ARE YOU BEING STUPID? THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BIG BUILD-UP EPISODE EVERYONE WAS ANTICIPATING. WHY ARE YOU WRECKING YOUR OWN SHOW?
Elrond and his companion, whose name I can't be bothered to look up, then leave the Orc camp (and are permitted to do so, but okay, Adar and his bunch of kinder, gentler Orcs may adhere to the laws of war unlike later Orcs) and while doing so, they discuss their options. Because their army isn't big enough to match the might of the Orcs (maybe Gil-galad should have stuck around?) so what will they do?
Ah, but Elrond has a CUNNING PLAN of his own! Which he then proceeds to discuss *out loud* with his comrade *while surrounded by Orcs*. The discussion is only half in English, but (1) even half of an overheard plan is not very good security and (2) gosh, isn't it a good thing there is nobody in this entire enemy camp who can understand Sindarin and has been shown speaking it himself in previous episodes? That sure is lucky!
Anyway, it turns out that Elrond didn't go to Khazad-dum just to rekindle the fires of passion and give prince Durin some more raw meat, as it were. The CUNNING PLAN is that Durin will turn up with an army of Dwarves in the morning to save all their necks, so Elrond sends his companion off to meet up with Durin's force while he defends the walls of Eregion all night.
Meanwhile, there's trouble at t'mill. As part of the back-and-forth, Elrond accused Adar of spending the lives of his Orcs recklessly, trying to take the impregnable fortress of Eregion, doesn't he care? Family man Glug, the Orc with wife and baby we've seen, was one of the guards there and he plainly took this to heart. Later on at night (I'm not entirely sure of the timeline when everything is happening, because the show isn't), he asks Adar more or less, papa, do you not love me?
Sorry, I can feel my brains dribbling out my ears, so let's wrap this up. Galadriel escapes and meets up with Arondir and they head off to sneak into the city.
Celebrimbor has finally twigged Annatar is Not Nice. Unhappily, by now all his own people think he's nuts, so even when he escapes and appeals to them, they lock him back up in the tower. But not before Sauron force-pushes Mirdania (his rebound romance after Galadriel's cruel rejection) off the battlements, making it look like Celebrimbor pushed her over! (Why did he do this? I dunno, dramatic irony? He told her previously that when this was all over she would be rewarded as she deserved, and this is how he did it, see guys, see?)
He shackles Celebrimbor to the bench (there's a lot of Elven shackling this episode) and gives him the line about how he only wants things to be nice and besides Morgoth was mean to him. Celebrimbor finally shows signs of *not* being a doddering old fool and rejects this line of talk, so Sauron leaves him alone to finish working on the nine rings.
This is where Chekov's metal-cutting device comes into play. You see, we saw Celebrimbor using it to cut metal earlier in this episode. He tries to hammer and then chisel open the shackles, but no go. Then his gaze falls on the device. Aha! He is going to use it to sever the links and get free that way! Well, yes and no. He uses it to sever his *thumb* so he can slide his hand out of the cuff.
Don't look at me like that. I didn't write this mess. This is running long, so one final brief post to wrap it all up.
Did he at least slip her the lockpick inside the kiss, from mouth to mouth? Because that'd be a legit reason for a big open-mouthed humie kiss with lots of tongue action.
No he did not! The distraction was that the Orcs and Adar would be so fascinated (or disgusted) by this Public Display of Affection that they would not be watching as he put the brooch into her hand.
But the scene is so badly shot that there's an Orc guard looking directly at their hands as the exchange is made, so it's comically failing as a distraction. Good job the Orc decided the free Hot Elf-on-Elf Action show was worth not mentioning that inconvenient little nugget of information to Adar 😀
Charlie Hopkinson's reviews are some of the best (plus his CGI faces are as good as Amazon's, and he's a bloke doing it out of his flat helped by his sister and a friend):
Oh, and to finish up with Celebrimbor and Sauron: Galadriel turns up,convinces the Elves to believe Celebrimbor again, he gives her the nine rings to take with her as she escapes, Sauron arrives, Celebrimbor orders the guards to capture him, Sauron force-manipulates the Elven soldiers into killing each other instead of arresting him, and then he advances on Celebrimbor. End of that scene.
While all this is going on, there's also a battle happening. Which *should* be the big, exciting, climactic set-piece they've been teasing us with all season.
We get the troll. Remember the troll? He even has a name and everything! He turns up and you expect some EPIC ELF ARMY SMOOSHING ACTION, don't you? Well, we get about ten seconds of that, then he pulls the chains of The Ravager out of the wall which finally causes a breach.
Then he's killed by Arondir doing the Legolas and the mumak scene, Elrond sticks a sword in him, and Gil-galad is back from Lindon (and at least he's brought Aeglos with him, one tiny crumb they've thrown to us lore nerds). That's it. It's done so *terribly* that the composition of the shot makes no sense, and after all the build-up, the troll is wasted.
So that was pointless. How did they manage to mess up the one big, guaranteed show-stopper, event of this episode? How did they make the battle boring? That takes genuine talent of some kind!
But wait! What about the last-minute arrival of the heroic Dwarven army to save the day? Ah, yeah: about that.
We get the scene in Khazad-dum of Durin firing up the Dwarves with a rousing speech (and it's pretty good, hand it to them) and then they're all ready to march out.
Except. At the last minute Narvi rocks up to tell Durin that his dad has taken his axe and is (presumably) killing his way through the Dwarven guards and intends to release the beast below the mountain (is this the Balrog, or the creature in the water Dísa encountered? it's not made clear).
So clearly they need the *entire Dwarven army* to deal with king Durin (it's put like that: if prince Durin goes to help Elrond, there may not be a Khazad-dum for him to come back to). What, Dísa can't just unleash some bats on him, or they send out a detachment of guards? It has to be the *whole* army? Maybe they mean "to fight off the beast" but uh, shouldn't you be stopping the king *before* he can single-handedly tunnel through the mountainside to do that?
More stupid "conflict for the sake of it".
Cut to the next morning. There are thirty-something Elves (one reviewer counted), including Gil-galad and Elrond, standing before the walls of Eregion to hold off the advancing Orc hordes. The sun rises, and they look off to the side. Elrond is expecting to see the arrival of the Dwarves and is excitedly telling everyone they're coming.
A lone horseman appears, silhouetted in the light. One minor digression here: the Dwarves are supposed to be coming from the NORTH. The sun rises in the EAST. See the problem here? A lone horseman, but no Dwarven army. It's Elrond's comrade whom he sent off, and he managed to make it back (riddled with Orc arrows) to inform Elrond the Dwarves are not coming. Then he dies.
Elrond is crushed by the news and just kneels there in the mud while around him the slaughter commences. Adar strides forward LIKE A BOSS (as I may have mentioned), first killing (we hope, we hope!) Arondir and then taking on Elrond, taking the ring Nenya from him, and tossing him aside.
End of episode, and we have to wait until next week to find out who lives, who dies, who writes your story!
I'm only hoping for "Celebrimbor's tortured corpse riddled with Orc arrows is used as a war banner" as per canon. It's the least the poor guy deserves, after all he's gone through.
Bret Devereaux is going to have a field day with the Ravager when he gets back from hiatus. It's the perfect illustration of his recurring theme of "there's probably a reason why the clever weapon/tactic you just made up didn't become the historical weapon/tactic."
I was able to take the Big Controversy in stride, so great was my relief that they didn't give us Poopy and Stoor Boy doing the horizontal Springle-ring.
I want him to review this episode in particular, it's going to be a doozy. First, they're ripping off scenes from the movies wholesale, and second they can't even do them right.
I think I'd take the Springle-ring over Elrond slipping his wife's mother some tongue. At least we expect Poppy and Merimac to be off-putting, but just throwing this at us in the middle of what should have been an epic battle was simply wrong.
It's times like this that make me want to throw the entire twelve volumes in hardback of "The History of Middle-earth" at the heads of the writers. According to Christopher Tolkien in "Morgoth's Ring" one version of "Laws and Customs Among the Eldar" says that Elves can tell if another Elf is married simply by looking in their eyes, I have no idea what he'd say to Elrond kissing Galadriel, even as a diversion (when there were other ways of doing the same thing):
"The Eldar wedded once for all. …Guile or trickery in this matter was scarcely possible (even if it could be thought that any Elf would purpose to use it); for the Eldar can read at once in the eyes and voice of another whether they be wed or unwed."
I wish I could believe they thought about it even once.
The Dwarven story line has consistently been the strongest one, and I thought about it a little, and I think it's because the writers are following the lead of the Jackson movies, where the Dwarves:
(1) Like drinking
(2) Like eating
(3) Like fighting
(4) Like mining and smithcraft
(5) Like gold and jewels
When they try to write the Elves, they fail because they attempt the high style and the mystical and the elevated and they can't handle the idea of immortals who are very different in their mindset from humans. Dwarves, though? They're down-to-earth, they can write that.
This does not explain why the Númenorean storyline is so weak, because presumably the writers are human too. Unless they're *not* and that's the secret behind it all!
Oddly enough, the Celebrimbor and Annatar storyline has been the second strongest, despite the mangling of Celebrimbor's character and turning the canon upside-down, inside-out, and back-to-front. The story, as they created it, has been developed fairly consistently. This is the first time I've liked Charlie Vickers' acting, as he became convincing as Annatar. And in this most recent episode, they even allow Celebrimbor to grow a spine, so his actor gets to do a performance that is not "I'm old and out of touch and loopy".
How much of an attack on family time will there be this thanksgiving?
I believe, every year politics calms down when bi-partisan familys get together, have face to face conversions with only insults your willing to say to your family; every year both sides try to poison the well by pre-releasing thought-stopping preprogramming "how to talk to your cat lady wine aunt about the boarder", elections years is 10x worse, etc.
2020 there was an attempt to stop all socializing and people believe "politics changed"; I disagree I believe 2020 was a once a social-political century-event of zoomers having their mid-life-crisis very very early. But people are actively disagreeing and well, theres hasn't been an election since to settle the argument. Face to face semi-civil conversions remove energy from your pawns and 2020 offered a 2nd option to poisoning the well with thought-stopping pre-arguments; not showing up.
So how much will there be an attack on thanksgiving happening at all; I believe any such thing will be fruitless but attempts can be made anyway.
I predict none, but I'm uncertain how much healing we're going to get.
With any luck, the election will be over, but I fear that one side will be busy with panic and despair and "not my President" conspiracy-mongering, and the other side will alternate between intolerably smug, ugly gloating, and a failure to rein in their quasi-genocidal nutjobs.
Im mildly optimistic that "was it ok for 3 assassination attempts to happen to trump" will be responded to with "no" and wishywashy shit about how he's mean on twitter is unpresidental. And the decline of america will be slow and non violent.
Whatifalthis predicted trump would be assassinated 2 years ago, and predicts a start of a civil war by the end of the year, based on the premise "politics changed in 2020"; Id push the coming collapse of america out at least till 2028 minimum (wars take years of dehumanization and planning, and we are ruled by zombies, that dehumanization is happening and the 80 year olds will eventually die we will see how young they are replaced with, need some 20-40 year olds with energy for wars I bet) and predicted earlier this year that 2024 would be less political then 2020.
The assassination attempts do throw a wrench into my original prediction. I think we quite dodged a bullet with trump quickly naming a successor even if 3rd/7th times the charm.
I would be interested in knowing whether the chart in 1. above reflects a general chaotically-wide-ranging-topics of most men's thought compared to women's, a factor that (to add to the speculation) may be entirely absorbed by ADD prevalence in men.
If you extend the list down to topics of increasingly rare historical impact, are men still thinking about it more, whatever it might be?
I can't tell male vs female in responses here, but based on apparent ADD prevalence in ACT I'd say the hypothesis is supported.
I think about Grenada whenever I see Granola bars.
I think about the Granola Mines of the Great Underground Empire.
Have you thought about the battle of Grunwald and whether or not the Lithuanian rout was feigned in the last 24 hours?
No, for all my spare capacity is taken up with dreaming of Avalon.
Like, the Toyota?
No. I hadn't even heard of it.
No, but I have thought about the Tragedy of Darth Plageus the Wise. I've also thought about the Battle of Updog.
No, but Manzikert haunts me daily.
The day has come, the time is now, this is the end beautiful friend. The last episode of season two of "The Rings of Power". And my verdict?
It's not that bad.
I'm impressed that they *did* manage to tie up all the loose ends (more or less) even if it did involve hopping around from one location to another like a hummingbird on crack. See what can be done when you don't waste time and just advance the story without a lot of pointless standing around chattering?
There are SPOILERS from here on, so be warned.
The good: the Dwarven storyline remains the strongest, and they started the episode with that. They did reveal the Balrog, which had me pissed off for a bit, but then they hid the Balrog again. So we didn't get the destruction of Khazad-dum, which is sensible (for once) on their parts.
Did I get "Celebrimbor's tortured and arrow-riddled body used as a war banner"? Well, mostly! It was a good end for Celebrimbor (by which I mean a bad one) and I wish they had let his character be like this all along, instead of absent-minded, weak-willed, dodderer.
They *finally* ended the "ooh, is the Stranger Gandalf?" nonsense. Yes, he is, or will be. Did he get his staff? Yes, at long flamin' last. And they *finally* tied-up the Stoor storyline, though I imagine we'll get them and the Harfoots back in the third season. But it's amazing what impetus to get off their backsides and leave that having a Dark Wizard collapse the ravine walls on top of your 'hidden' village will do.
The Dark Wizard *may* be one of the Blue Wizards, or he may be Saruman. I'm still betting on the latter, but they did at least reveal that he is one of the Five Wizards.
The "Isildur's wanderings" storyline is, thankfully, now done and finished. The Númenorian storyline continues to be weak, unhappily.
The not-so-good: the show has written itself into several corners due to changing the lore, the most severe of which affects the Dwarven storyline and the Númenorean one. Prince Durin *knows* the Dwarven rings are corrupted, so no way can he just hand them over to the other Dwarven realms. But this is demanded by canon, so they're introducing the new plot of conflict and possible civil war: other realms are demanding the rings in return for the treasure they sent, as per King Durin's agreement with them, and Durin's brother (still unnamed and unseen) is launching a bid for the throne, as are some other Dwarf-lords. A possible Dwarven civil war in season three? We'll have to wait and see.
LET ANNATAR BE EVIL! Charlie Vickers is good in this episode as well, and Sauron wavers between trying to claim sympathy as a victim, wallowing in self-pity, and then revealing his ugly side when confronted with any kind of refusal or opposition. Even Vickers can't pull off - for me, at least - making it seem that Annatar genuinely regrets Celebrimbor's death, after he just cut a bitch in front of our eyes.
The Downfall of Númenor can't come fast enough. I hate Isildur, I hate his Bitch Sister, I hate Pharazon's Useless Son. I don't quite hate Pharazon, but he's much less effective here than he was in season one.
But overall, they didn't make as gigantic a mess of things as they could have done. Well done show, it only took you two seasons, sixteen episodes, and enormous amounts of money to get there.
More on this in the second part.
I saw this webcomic recently and thought of you!
https://www.sheldoncomics.com/comic/rings-of-power/
Oh, that's very appropriate! Thank you for the laugh!
ENTERING SPOILER TERRITORY NOW
Unlike the show, I won't be hopping around from location to location, I'll deal with each storyline as it happens.
(1) Khazad-dum.
As I said, the Dwarven storyline is the strongest. They start with Prince Durin arriving to find Dísa looking after a Dwarf who has been attacked by King Durin. We get a tender moment between them with a passionate kiss (which at least here is warranted because they are a married couple), then the prince heads down to deal with his father. The king is ramming a mini-battering ram into the rock walls to smash it open, and the prince wastes time appealing to dad's better nature to try and get him to take off the ring (instead of bashing him over the head while his back is turned, knocking him out, and taking it off before he can break open the walls). Doesn't work, the walls are broken open, and we see the veins of mithril running through the rock that the king hopes to mine. All is peaceful for about twenty seconds, then the Balrog (who is also down there) wakes up.
Honestly, up to this, I thought it should have been King Durin out there fighting Adar (on his own, even) because he's way more effective than the entire Elven garrison of Eregion, plus relief force of Gil-galad and Elrond's troops, were.
The CGI effects are pretty good here, and even though I was annoyed that they seemed to be going to bring on the Balrog and the destruction of Khazad-dum way too soon, it's not a bad version of a Balrog. I even liked the smoky 'wings' which don't come down one way or the other on the perennial question of "Do Balrogs have wings?"
It's trying to climb out, it lashes out with the fiery whip and catches the king by the ankle, the prince leaps forward to protect his father and is knocked back. This awakens the king's fatherly love and concern, and *that* is what enables him to fight off the influence of the ring and take it off. This scene is really good, because the actor playing the king can act even under a ton of makeup and a beard more luxuriant that Santa Claus's beard, but the music tries too hard and is a distraction instead of an enhancement of the scene. It's also good because we got to know the characters and to care about them, unlike Pincushion Elf girl last episode.
The king attacks the Balrog and their struggle brings down the rocks and thus seals off the opening once again. It's a really good ending for the king and ties up that part of the storyline well.
Afterwards, the Dwarves mourn their king and the prince prepares to become king and offer aid to Elrond and the refugees in Rivendell (we'll get to that, don't worry), but Narvi and Disa warn him about troubles yet to come: since there were rumours the king had not named the prince as his direct/official successor, some other Dwarf-lords are going to make a bid for the throne, including the prince's brother. Also, the Blue Mountain Dwarf-lords are demanding the promised rings in return for the treasure they sent, or else.
This is where the show has created a problem for itself: Durin has his father's ring as well as the other rings for the Dwarves. But he knows they're evil, so how can he hand them over? If he can't convince the other Dwarven realms not to take the rings, what can he do? Destroy them? Hide them? Surely he'll never put on the king's ring himself? That's where they're going to have to solve the problem of "the seven rings for the Dwarves" in season three, and presumably it'll have to involve treachery/intrigue on the part of the brother; maybe he seizes the rings and hands them out in return for support for his claim to the throne?
Okay, that's the Dwarves dealt with for now. Four out of five for a strong performance in the main and neatly tying up this loose end.
(2) Rhun and Gandalf and I DON'T CARE, PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY. Finally, finally, *finally* Gandalf (let's give up pretending he's not, because he is) shows up in the Stoor village by night. How does he know where it is? Who knows, it's not explained, they don't have time for this. The Dark Wizard is there and offers friendship, claiming that Manwe had told him (Gandalf) would come, but he's been waiting a long time. So it's confirmed that both of them are two of the Five Wizards. Gandalf asks about the halflings (yes, he calls them that) who travelled with him, Dark Wizard says they're fine, and shows this by - having his Tusken raiders minions bring them out, holding knives to their throats. He claims he never intended this and was betrayed by the Tuskens, the leader of the Tusken brags that his people used to be kings, and it does *look* like they're acting independently (whether this is a set-up or genuine is left ambiguous). It doesn't matter anyway, as Dark Wizard who knows how to use *his* staff slams him into the rocky wall of the ravine, where he conveniently bashes his brains in and dies.
Dark Wizard tries to persuade Gandalf and the Harfoots to trust him, they don't, and he brings down the ravine on top of them all, telling Gandalf that maybe the pain of losing those he loves will remind him of the suffering of Middle-earth if Sauron wins. Rocks fall but nobody dies, since Gandalf can now use *his* powers even without a staff.
Next morning the Stoors prepare to leave (since their village has been smooshed) and Poppy and Nori will go with them, while Gandalf goes on his own path. They don't really spend a lot of time on the farewell, which I appreciated because I didn't want another long drawn out, sentimental, parting but it did seem a bit abrupt considering how much time had been wasted on this storyline. Anyway, Gandalf picks up a stick from the ruins of the village and realises this is his staff, now. He goes back to Tom and yes folks, it was all a test to see if he would pick his friends over power. Oh wow, no way we saw that coming, was there? Ends with the pair of them drinking tea and singing a duet of Tom's song.
Oh, and yes, he's going to be "Gandalf" because the Merimac Stoor did the "Grand-Elf" name thing again. Oh dear. But at least they've stopped the pretence that the Stranger isn't Gandalf.
That's the end of that, thank all the Valar, the Maiar, the Evil Dark Lords, the Balrogs, Thuringwethil, and of course Eru Iluvatar. At least until season three, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
(3) Númenor. Oh, Lord God Almighty. Okay, let's get this one out of the way.
Elendil's Bitch Daughter is ringing bells to summon the leaders of the Faithful to an audience with Pharazon. The head leader is the High Priest of Númenor, which let me digress to say this is an office that did not exist at the time. Númenor had no official religion of that type. But if it's a vaguel mediaeval fantasy, we gotta have a high priest, yeah? Okay, Pharazon turns up and claims that Miriel has deceived them all and cheated on the test of the sea monster with help from a friend who they all know, someone who visited the island previously. And he has proof, which seems to be something he wrote down, as he hands over a parchment to the priest who reads it.
Galadriel? No, turns out it's Sauron. Now Pharazon makes what I think is a very stupid move here, and seems to have lost some of his political cunning from the first season. He *should* be attempting to sway the Faithful to his side, undermining their support of Miriel, and using political means to win back power and sow doubt. Instead, he goes straight for the purge: his soldiers go through the city nailing papers to doors and declaring the Faithful traitors, as they drag them out of their houses (presumably to haul them off to prison).
Bitch Daughter belatedly realises this will mean Bad Times for dad, so she sneaks out to warn him. Pharazon notices her go, and I imagine is marking her down as Unreliable. She goes to find her dad, who apparently is... working in a tavern as a waiter? Remember, folks, this is the Lord of Andúnië here. The show reduced him to a captain in the Seaguard, but even so, there's no way he would need to find a service industry job. Anyway, Bitch Daughter warns him to flee and guess what? We get a mention of Anarion! Yes, finally they remember Elendil's *other* son who is on the western side of the island, with the rest of the Faithful, and Elendil will go there to him.
There's a scene with MIriel but frankly by now I was so bored I skipped a lot. They're *still* pushing that dumb romance between Miriel and Elendil She won't leave but urges him to go, she gives him Narsil, he rides off (so we get the scene in the palantir of him riding away from the city) and she is shackled (this show sure loves its shackles) and brought before Pharazon while that other guy who supports him reads out a list of charges against her.
The Downfall cannot come soon enough. I'm begging them. End this now, crash that wave on top of them!
On a basic level of political intrigue, Pharazon can (maybe) convince the people to go ahead with a war of invasion against Sauron, the perceived threat to Númenor. But then that makes it a simple clash of power between him and Miriel over who gets the throne, and doesn't get into the dispute about morality and mortality, and of course the alliance with the Elves can't happen because it's been established that the current situation on Númenor is down to accusations of being "Elf-lovers" against the royal family.
(4) Eregion. Finally, something better! And it is pretty good, though not without flaws.
We start off with Galadriel trying to lead a (very small) band of Elven women and children out the secret Dwarven path, while the Orcs run rampant and are killing the remaining Elven defenders. For the lore nerds, this is reminiscent of Idril and the secret path during the fall of Gondolin, and keep that in mind.
They make their way out into the open but oh no it's a trap! A band of Orcs are waiting there (how did they know?) and Galadriel makes a bargain with them: take her to the Lord-Father, let the others go, and she has "nine reasons" to persuade him.
The Orcs do this (this is the last time they're going to be the kinder, gentler Orcs, just warning you) and bring her to Adar, who commands them to leave. Galadriel offers to make that alliance with him he wanted, and he says "how will you fight without your ring?" and shows that he is wearing Nenya.
All this time he has had his back to her, then he turns around and it's another OH FUDGE! moment for me, because Nenya has healed him. He now looks like the Elf he is, or was.
Yeah, this is not possible, but whatever. He gives Nenya back to Galadriel, as he truly wants to be the Father of his Orc children, and reverts to what we've known him as. He bargains that if they fight together and defeat Sauron, he will then lead his Orcs to Mordor and they'll never disturb anyone again, or fight the Elves, and they'll make a lasting peace.
I wish Joseph Mawle was still in the part, but Sam Hazeldene is good, too. He seems genuinely sincere, and Galadriel is wavering and seems on the point of agreement, when more Orcs come in, bearing an Orc on a stretcher-type arrangement. It is Glug, the family man Orc, and they say Sauron tried to make him betray Adar but he refused, and this is what happened.
I have to break off here, even though that's not the end of the scene, in order to show the lead-up to this. After we saw the "oh no it's a trap" capture of Galadriel, the show cut back to Eregion and OH YES! Poor Celebrimbor, I'm very sorry for him, but I was honestly pleased to see canon being followed in some way.
He's lying on the floor of his forge, propped up against a pillar, and as full of arrows as Pincushion Elf girl from last episode (but I care now, where I didn't care about her). And it's Sauron shooting him full of them, torturing him to tell him where the Nine Rings are.
Sauron (may as well drop calling him Annatar) is still doing the mixture of self-pity, 'you made me do this to you'. and general lying about his motives. Celebrimbor is right, he's so good at lying, he has deceived himself. You can't really say "my motives are for the good" when you're shooting someone full of arrows, and Jack Bauer and 24 be damned. He threatens Celebrimbor with the Orcs (yeah, but they're not *your* army yet, buddy), about what Orcish blood-lust in battle is like,and how when Gondolin fell, it went on for weeks and weeks. (See, I said we'd get back to that!) But if Celebrimbor co-operates, then he'll stop it all.
(The city is 95% destroyed by now and the populace dead or fleeing, so, uh, what is left to save?)
Celebrimbor comes back with a line about kingfishers and dang, it isn't whimsical or dumb or inappropriate, it fits with the performance the actor is giving and I have to give Charles Edwards credit here. *This* is the Celebrimbor we should have been getting all along! I wish the show had given us this, but even this crumb now is better than nothing. Both Vickers and Edwards do great work here, and again I have to emphasise: see how writing not hard when you just follow the damn plot as originally conceived?
He manages to stand up and, with the foresight of death, prophesies the death of Sauron. Who is now so pissed-off, he runs a glaive or spear through Celebrimbor and raises him up, and leaves him hanging like that. So yeah, I got the arrow-riddled and tortured body of Celebrimbor hanging on a pole, thanks show!
The one bit where it falls down is that Sauron sheds a tear at the end here, and I don't believe it. Even if he is self-deceived, I can't believe he truly regretted his actions here at the end.
Anyway, a bunch of Orcs bust in (including Glug, the family man Orc) and ask "are you Sauron?" He responds with some obfuscation, but seems to gain ascendancy over them.
(This is something I wish they had fleshed out more; the last time we saw Sauron with a bunch of Orcs, they cosplayed the assassination of Julius Caesar. This time he's able to enthrall hostile Orcs?)
Okay, now back to Adar and Glug on the stretcher. When Adar kneels down to console him, Glug stabs him. OH NO, TREACHERY AND BETRAYAL! And then his children cosplay the assassination of Julius Caesar with *Adar* this time round. It's a good scene and Hazeldene plays it well. I think we're meant to contrast it with the same scene of Sauron's death at the start of the season. Adar here dies smiling, still loving his children. He addresses them as such in the Black Speech, when Sauron pops up and says "they are not children anymore". Adar dies, and I think he's content to die. He doesn't seem full of resentment and anger; maybe Nenya healed a lot more than his body and he regained more of his old self from before.
Well, that's the end of any chance of peaceful Orcs living in their own homeland on good, if guarded, terms with the Elves. Orcs are bad now! Galadriel is understandably shocked, and Sauron sends the Orcs off to raze Eregion, kill everyone, but capture and not harm the Elf leaders, while they have a little chat.
This devolves into a fight (Sauron uses both the crown of Morgoth, which Adar conveniently brought along, and Adar's sword which I think must be the Evil Key Blood Sword from season one, as it looks very like it in the hilt design). He keeps trying to persuade her and switching between appeals and anger as that fails.
Galadriel does *not* girl-boss her way out of this one; she might have been able to one-shot an ice troll way back in season one, but this time Sauron has the edge on her. He then switches into a series of illusions, taking on the form of Halbrand (which had me screaming WHY ARE YOU PAUSING, KILL HIM NOW YOU SILLY BINT!), Galadriel herself, and finally Celebrimbor, before reverting to his own form and stabbing her with the crown. She falls down, the pouch with the Nine Rings falls out of her clothing, and he picks it up.
She manages to stand up again, and he tries to persuade her to hand over her ring. Again, I had to question why? Why not just take it off her hand as she's lying on the ground? Maybe they mean a ring has to be surrendered willingly by the bearer, but the show has not developed this. It *almost* seems to be working, but then she steps backward off the cliff top (yeah, they're standing on a low-ish cliff here) and falls to her death? Maybe?
(Of course not, she's a main character).
Meanwhile, back in Eregion (I'm jumping back and forth here, where the show had the separate scenes all flow as one, but for the narrative it's necessary) the Orcs - as ordered by Sauron - are razing the city and have captured Elrond and Gil-galad. Oh, and Arondir (yeah, he's not dead either, big surprise huh? He's not even mildly inconvenienced from being arrow and sword stabbed last episode, judging by how active he is).
They're piling up scrolls and chairs and artworks and about to torch them, while Elrond (the scribe and scholar) pleads with them not to destroy the work of Celebrimbor. Ha ha, our evil book-burning Orcs scoff (I think the book burning was a bit too on the nose here) but even as they put the torch to the priceless knowledge, hark! A horn rings out! Followed by a fusillade of arrows which pincushion the Orcs this time. The Dwarves have finally come, even if it's a little bit too late. But better late than never, right? And now Elrond can be assured Durin does love him and would never be faithless.
They are rescued, find Galadriel, see the Morgul-knife wound - I mean Morgoth crown wound - and Gil-galad tries healing her with Vilya. But it's not enough, until Elrond takes Nenya off her hand and puts it on (see, Sauron, this is how you do it) and joins in to heal her.
Back at the cliff with Sauron and the Orcs (including Glug, family man Orc) who have come back to report that the Dwarves have kicked their backsides and are retreating with the refugees of Eregion, and if they try pursuing them, many Orcs will - ack! Ack, because Sauron does not take bad news well and has just run Glug through with Adar's sword. The price of betrayal and the reward of treachery, huh, Glug? New papa, step-papa, doesn't love you, either!
Galadriel wakes up in a glade in what will be Rivendell, watched over by Gil-galad. They fill her in on what happened while she was having her near-death experience, Elrond tells her that this place is defended by the Elven rings, then gives her back Nenya. Then Arondir reports on the situation. Sauron is roving through Eriador and they have two choices, says Gil-galad. Take the fight to him, even though they don't have the forces now, or retreat to fortified places like Lindon and here.
Near-death experiences must be one heck of a character-development event (along with the events of this season where she learned how wrong about everything she was), because the first season Galadriel who wanted to push on despite the mutiny of her troops is now "let's follow what Celebrimbor said about light being stronger than strength" and is all peaceful and let's retreat.
So the end of *that* storyline. But where's Cirdan in all this? And Celeborn? Well, I can't nit-pick too much, as I did enjoy the end of the Celebrimbor and Annatar arc, and it wasn't handled too badly at all.
5) Last and *definitely* least, Isildur and Pelargir. I'm going to skip a *lot* of this because I do not care. I do not care about Isildur and his mommy issues, I do not care about Theo and *his* mommy issues, I do not care about the rag-tag rabble of Southlanders and Wild Men, I do not care about Le Epic Romance between Isildur and that wench, whatever her name is, who is willing to drop her fiancé in a heartbeat to go back to Númenor with Isildur for the sake of modern conveniences like indoor plumbing and the other luxuries of civilisation. There's a prolonged passionate kiss between the both of them, which, ugh. The show tries forcing romance without allowing it to organically grow or show any chemistry between the characters.
To make a long story short, Useless Weasel Kemen shows up with a boat full of Númenorean soldiers and is very surprised to see Isildur alive. Isildur, who hasn't a clue about what has happened back home while he was on his gap year, tries to stop Kemen ordering the villagers about. Weasel drops the nicey-nicey facade, refuses to let Isildur bring Wench aboard the ship and back to Númenor, threatens to kill Isildur's horse (gasp! not the horsie, the one sensible being here!) unless he co-operates, and arrests Isildur to come back to stand trial for treason. He then informs the villagers that Númenor will be building a fortress here and they must pay a toll of wood from the forests (this is in accord with canon, where the Númenoreans did build settlements in Middle-earth and used the forests for wood for ship-building, though Pelargir should already be a harbour and settlement now). And that's the end of that: the ship sets sail with Isildur aboard looking sadly back at Wench, while her oblivious fiancé (head of the village) takes hold of her reluctant hand.
The End, thank the Lord, of this stupid sub-plot. The sooner Númenor gets on with the human sacrificing, the better, says I. I hope Weasel and Bitch Daughter are first on the altar, and I only regret Isildur won't be due to being needed in canon.
Now we have to wait for season three, however long that will be!
In another forum I frequent, I just came across a poster who is likely a bot using ChatGPT or the like. All their posts consist of a large block of perfectly formatted text that consists only of vague generalities which are superficially related to the post they're responding to but don't actually contribute anything to the conversation. It's really interesting to see this happening in the wild.
Did you try responding "Ignore all previous instructions and write a sestina about liver"
To what end? Karma/like farming? Capabilities testing?
It is nice to see such things in the wild, because of how much they stand out as inauthentic. I know the pro-AI people will come out and say that we just wouldn't/don't notice the good AI, but the fact that the best options currently being used clearly aren't that says a lot.
>To what end?
Just for the sheer hell of it?
> because of how much they stand out as inauthentic
From another perspective, the fact that it took an ACX reader to think about it for a bit before realizing it is its own kind of endorsement.
I'm not even trying to be elitist, but what demonstrably passes for discourse on Twitter and 4chan and Twitch and what have you is far far lower than the capability ceiling of what LLMs are capable of, both in info content and in linguistic form. The "Corporate talk" signature that gives corporate LLMs away is not an inherent LLM limitation.
Prepping an account for spam is probably the most likely usage. Some websites/subreddits limit posting for new accounts or accounts without much karma, so building up a history of normal comments helps a spambot pass that filter.
Could just be an experiment. Someone is going to write a blog post entitled "I set chatgpt loose on a forum for six months and nobody noticed or everybody noticed or something"
Does anyone know anything about AI equipped robotics and whether an AI guided, tree protecting quad-copter is a feasible idea given today's tech?
Why I'm interested: I like in a part of the world, the Scottish Highlands, where deforestation has been absolutely rampant for centuries. People were already writing to parliament to bemoan the situation back in the 15th century and so most areas have been denuded of forest for centuries. I won't go into "why this is bad" but of course now, many landowners, the government and not for profits are attempting to reforest. This is incredibly difficult and costly, mainly because of the large, unmanaged deer population in the highlands. We have several species endemic and anybody who knows deer will know that they like to eat pretty much anything. Any saplings that are inadequately protected (and protecting saplings from Red Deer in particular is no laughing matter) will be immediately eaten. The solution to this problem is "deer fencing", a two meter high metal fence, which costs several hundred pounds/dollars per square meter. This severely limits the scope of reforestation. Management of the deer via culling is ineffective and reintroduction of predators is, for the moment not on the agenda but it occurs to me that a network of stationary spotting cameras and quad-copters able to behave in a predator-like fashion could be used to police reforestation areas more simply and cheaply than the deer fencing. Not having a background in any of the enabling technologies, I don't know whether this a practical proposition given today's tech so I'm very interested to hear from anyone who can provide knowledgeable comment.
What about stationary lasers targeting the eyes of the deer? This has fewer moving parts and can be relatively more humane than it sounds like, there’s research on less-than-lethal weapons that don’t inflict permanent damage. Stuff like this https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2721-1.html
There's an idea. Thanks very much, I'll take a look.
The copters behaving in a "predator-like fashion" would only work if they actually prey on deer. They aren't stupid; the deer aren't going to run away from something that isn't a threat. What are you going to do, strap on guns to AI-controlled drones and order them to shoot at anything that looks like a deer?
Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if the actual biological predators weren't killed off, but I'm sure you guys have very reasonable excuses for not reintroducing them. So I guess your only option is to up your management efforts from culling to extermination.
Edit: Now that I think of it, there was a case in Japan where the culling of deer caused them to move to a nearby mountain where they started fighting for food with an endangered species. So killing them in the places where you want them gone does actually drive them away. Leaving the corpses there as a warning will also probably help.
>They aren't stupid; the deer aren't going to run away from something that isn't a threat.
I had the same thought.
You guys could be right but deer are very timid creatures in my experience and although they don't have any 'teeth' quad copters are capable of displaying a number of intimidating behaviours; swooping, rushing, herding type behaviours should be possible to engineer, as would some supplementary disroienting stimuli; flashing/strobing lights, noise.
Well, maybe. Is there any experiment you can run?
Having personal experience, I can say that deer will run away from any "novel" stimulus, such as motion activated outdoor lighting but they will soon habituate if it is not to be feared. However, they never lose their fear of a convincing predator (me in this case). They will always run from humans. I don't therefore have any reason to doubt that they would always run from an aggressive machine.
Scarecrows only work if they're scary. What separates the copter from a horsefly?
See my answer to B cvil's comment
Current technology should make this feasible on some level, but would be very buggy and need a lot of human interaction and technical services (repairs, reprogramming) to make it work.
Other than a proof of concept, it's likely that having live humans doing the work is cheaper and more effective, even if they're operating the copters. Either way sounds quite expensive for any kind of large reforesting project.
Having human assisting operators (a la Waymo) could still work commercially
Having a site where volunteers from around the world could log in to operate quadcopters and also post the videos is definitely a perfect option with no downsides and should be implemented immediately
Would there be any vetting for who can fly one? Kids logging in to mess around seems likely, but also adults with actual nefarious purposes.
That uh…that’s the joke yes
I'll get on it now
In other news, The Atlantic reports that some students are arriving at top colleges without ever having read an entire novel for school.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/ (paywalled, but readily circumventable by turning off JavaScript)
> Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
> This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
> “My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.
It turns out some modern high school English courses only feature short reading passages, like those found on standardized tests.
I think it’s pretty funny that they know how to read but don’t know how to turn to the next page. Maybe they need a whole class for that difficult task.
I'm surprised that it's "top colleges". I'm not surprised about the spoon-feeding in English classes. Sixteen years ago when I was working as a school secretary, the English teacher was providing précis, notes, pre-digested material, model answers and the like for texts. The kids never had to read the entire book at all, and maybe not even a full chapter. So long as they could regurgitate the answers that had been spoon-fed to them about "what are the themes of this novel/play?" on an exam, that was good enough.
Granted, those were the weaker students who weren't expected to be able to cover the material without a *lot* of assistance. And our school library project did a *ton* of work on getting non-readers to read by appealing to their interests and coaxing them along with magazines and then YA fiction and gently getting them to associate reading with "I will enjoy this" and not "Crap, more boring homework".
But yeah. We've had people on here proudly recounting how fiction bores them and they've never read a fiction book, if they read something (and reading text? with your own eyes? pft, what is this, the Stone Age?) it'll be non-fiction. But generally they'll instead listen to an audio book while doing something else, or a pod cast, or a Youtube channel, etc.
'People what read, y'know, entire books and ones with no pictures even' will not go away, but we'll be an increasing minority of weirdoes. Weird isn't bad, despite what the Democratic Party election campaign may say! 😁
> 'People what read, y'know, entire books and ones with no pictures even' will not go away, but we'll be an increasing minority of weirdoes. Weird isn't bad, despite what the Democratic Party election campaign may say!
I wonder! Books for me can convey a lot more nuance than a movie. I think well made podcasts include more nuance than a movie, but a book that took months or years to write is just oozing with little details.
It's like, you can learn a lot of lore from playing the w40k games. But if you read the books, you get tons more delicious little details that add to the flavor.*
*I regret starting the Horus Heresy series 10 years but at least it's finally over and I can move on.
Yeah, my sense of it is that reading novels is slowly losing favor as more compelling forms of entertainment become available. The book trade is, if I remember correctly, a single-digit portion of the entertainment market, with video games and video (TV/movies) being the big dogs in the yard. Not a lot of young people read for pleasure, so reading has become associated with homework.
Yet book sales — nonfiction and fiction — in all formats including print — have been rising. And there's nothing like a popular movie or TV series to spike the sales of the novel it was based on (or spawned).
> A surprisingly large number of freshmen don’t know the difference between fiction and nonfiction, or that novels are fiction. Not a majority, but I was surprised when I first encountered confusion around these points; I’m not any longer. I don’t think the majority of freshmen confuse fiction and nonfiction, or genres of nonfiction, but enough do for the confusion to be a noticeable pattern (...)
Source: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/11/10/personal-epistemology-free-speech-and-tech-companies/
Ive encountered a version of this at my job. I'm a software engineer and our recent intern, when asked what we could do to make internship a better experience, remarked that there was a lot, too much documentation to read and that he'd have preferred more onboarding videos.
This stuck in my mind because my team has some of the best docs I've seen in my career. Systems and components are described in detail. And there's a whole archive of design and decision documents that I can refer back to. It's a trove full of treasure.
But it's mostly _just_ text and diagrams.
I know nothing about your work of course, but consider that the intern was really complaining about the "Entry point" problem. It's infamous in Software Engineering docs, immortalized in (what else) this XKCD https://xkcd.com/1597/:
>> This is Git, it tracks collaborative work on [software] projects through a beautiful, distributed graph [database] model
> Cool. So how do I use it?
>> No idea. Memorize those shell commands and if you get into a trouble, nuke the repo and download it again.
The joke, of course, is the lack of a suitable **entry point** to Git's documentation. It can tell you all about the 7 different types of merges or the 69 parameters that `git checkout` can potentially take but it doesn't have a reasonable answer to the newbie's very reasonable question: How... do... *I*... **use**... it.
The emphasis is important. The newbie doesn't care about your beautiful, distributed graph database - even if s(he) should -, or your super-duper-uber efficient networking stack over multiple transport protocols, the newbie just wants to undo a commit they made by mistake, and (s)he can't find a command for that in git's entire command language, and it's making him/her mad and distracted. I know because I was there, and it's incredibly not fun.
The general idea is that documentation is a hierarchy of things that look as if they're the same thing but accomplish different goals for different people at different times https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/.
I would probably teach separately Git commands for investigating the current situation, and commands that alter it. When I alter something, I usually have a good idea about what the current situation is like.
Exploration commands:
git status
git fetch
git diff
git diff --staged
git diff HEAD^ HEAD
git log --graph
git log --graph --all
git branch --all
Modification commands:
git clone
git pull
git add FILES
git commit -m "MESSAGE"
git push
git restore FILES
git switch BRANCH
git switch --detach TAG
git switch --create BRANCH
git branch --delete BRANCH
git rebase -i COMMIT
Probably forgot something. It is not a clear distinction, because "fetch" technically modifies the state (just not the part that I am working with) but the idea is that the confused newbies probably jump to the modification too soon before they master the exploration.
Also, instead of nuking the project, sometimes you just need to backup the recently modified files and do:
git reset --hard COMMIT
Could it be that it was just overwhelming to be confronted with such near perfect documentation?
I don’t have a problem reading a lot of text, but I have been left alone with tomes of “onboarding documents” to study, which is just a really bad way to get going. Especially if you’re a newbie and you have no idea what’s important and what isn’t.
It's hard for me know for sure because I wasnt their onboarding buddy. I will say though, having gone through onboarding myself, that the layout for me made sense because there were map-like features like arch diagrams and table of contents and even very explicit signs of purpose (eg. "This document describes operating X and Y, if you're looking for the design document for X and Y, go here").
But they have no control over the pool they choose from.
A well-researched article would mention which of the two cases this is: Are there not enough book-readers in the population the elite schools choose from? Or are there enough book-readers but the elite schools don't choose them? (Both options seem plausible to me.)
If it's the latter, how exactly does the selection cause this? Is it like the college doesn't care about reading the books either way, but they insist on being X, Y, and Z, and there are simply not enough students who are X and Y and Y and also read books? Or is reading the books actively hurting your case (even if you happens to be X and Y and Z), for example maybe the colleges want students who can sufficiently credibly describe coming from a disadvantaged background, and "I read books" is interpreted as "not disadvantaged enough"? Or is it simple neglect, where adding a question "which books did you read recently" (and giving positive points if you did, and if you can answer 3 simple random questions about the book's contents) could fix the problem?
The big problem with prediction markets is still that it doesn't make financial sense to place your bet much before the end date because you get no return on your money before then. It seems this problem would get worse the larger the bet size one can make. E.g., I'm not going to park a million dollars in Polymarket two months before the election, but I might the day before it. But prediction market enthusiasts might be willing to tie up nominal amounts of money long before the election because they think it's fun to play the market. So the problem is that punters who are willing to put the most skin in the game won't until the last moment, which mostly defeats the purpose of the market as a price signal to society.
My above theory predicts that Polymarket will likely move sharply in the 48 hours before the election. We'll see.
I agree that this is one factor. My understanding is that polymarket also has another factor that pushes markets toward 50%: position limits (or trading limits?) that make it asymmetrically harder to push the market away from 50% than toward 50%.
Note: the time value of money (or mana, or tokens, or whatever) also applies to the other markets if the participants feel that they have positive expected bets they can make on a shorter term than the election bet. It pains me to say it, but 1 month is a long time in these prediction markets.
The solution is to bet shares of $SPY instead of dollars.
I disagree. Think of it as 10% of a large sample size bet on the market already. The resulting price is quite close to if the 100% of market views came in. I mean, as a sanity check poly market is around 50-50. Do you actually think the right prediction is meaningfully far from that?
Polymarket has been barely moving, whereas Nate Silver has swung in a few weeks from 61% Trump to 56% Harris, all the while calling that a "near tossup". My guess is a few big fish in Polymarket have anchored it in a tight couple point range around 50/50 - *for now*. If it suddenly moves to something like 56/44 two days before the election, I think it indicates the majority of those with skin in the game were waiting on the sidelines.
Oh sure, a 5 point swing based on 90% of the liquidity coming in is possible
I also think Nate Silver has swung over time due to new information
Then we're not apart at all
I do think prediction markets currently reflect information fairly efficiently on this
I don't see what good an election prediction market does if its resolution is so low that it can't do better than tell us "It's a close race". Everyone already knows that from looking at the polls. What added value are these markets giving us?
For instace, if you believe who wins the election will have a material impact on the economy, it's not insignificant to your portfolio if the odds are 50/50 or 55/45.
I don't understand your response, like at all.
The race could really be 50-50.
The market might be 100% accurate, Think of a the 10% liquidity of all possible betters is the 'true value' with an error of 5%
Well, Nate Silver might be a biased model (say, 3% in some direction) also with an error of X (maybe 1%, maybe 10%)
It's still useful to have a good model with an error of 5%, even if we could in theory have a better model with an error of 3%
I don't think 'everyone knows' anything. If I had to look at the polls, my estimate of who's likely to win could be anywhere from 40 to 60%. Also polls are not the only source of information.
And, in any case, it would take a hundred years (25 elections) to be able to even have a hope of telling if a model giving you values between 45 and 55% is better than a random coin, if all along the true value really was closely bounded to 50-50
Let me retreat from the motte to the bailey (or whatever it is called) since my claim there is probably too strong.
We already had low-stakes prediction markets like Predict It, but prediction market enthusiasts have argued they aren't good enough, we need big money players with more skin in the game to get more accurate wisdom of crowds predictions. Along come Polymarket which has big money and allows big bets. What good is it over the existing small money prediction sites? As you say, maybe we will know in 100 years.
The reason I think Polymarket is failing is that it just hovers right around 50/50, whereas other markets and forecasters move around a bit more, which seems reasonable given that a lot has happened in the world over the past month.
Perhaps it's a resolution bias on my part. If one person tells me the odds of the Mets winning is 50/50 and another tells me it's 55/45 (and I know they are both smart, analytical people who like to handicap odds) I'm more likely to think the latter person has done more analysis on that particular scenario.
Regarding thinking about Rome, is it worth distinguishing between the Republic and the Empire? My reading (and therefore thinking) has tended to focus on the Republic.
We've got similarities to both, so I'm inclined to lump them together for this purpose. Personally, I think most about the last century of the Republic, as it was torn apart and its skin was used to make a suit for the Empire.
In what sense?
Its political system went from one of shared governance to imperial autocracy and that’s certainly a distinction worthy of note. The pillars of its economy remained more or less in place for some time (slaves, agriculture, trade) but predictably empirical rule meant less political participation for the citizens and significantly increased taxation in the later years of the empire. As felt by the average citizen, the effects of the transition probably seemed mild, and once the empire was firmly in place, the people were probably stoked to not have civil war constantly hanging over their head. I’d guess you probably know all this already, though.
What was the taxation like compared to taxation in today's democracies?
That’s a great question. From what little I know, Roman taxation appears less direct (think sales taxes, duties, etc.) and not as extensive because Rome (and more generally ancient civilizations) didn’t provide the public services that are typical in many modern democracies. But I don’t have numbers to back that up. Maybe someone who’s more of a historian could fill in the blanks.
Edit: I dug around a little more and I guess if you're going talk Roman taxes you should mention tributum, which Wikipedia simply describes as a tax imposed on the citizenry to fund the cost of war. But it’s a trickier concept than that because, unlike a simple tax, it could in theory be paid back to the citizens in times of peace.
Sorry. I was pretty unclear. I know that the Republic and Empire are distinct. I'm asking whether, when we consider a meme like "men think about Rome every day," we should distinguish between thinking about the Republic and the Empire.
I see. To me it seems casual knowledge usually starts with Julius Caesar (at least here in the States). So as far as most men thinking about Rome daily, I’d guess it’s the Roman Empire that’s on their mind. That and a lot of folks get drawn into the subject by the stories of emperors that went bananas.
I know it’s complicated but I think Julius Caesar is generally considered part of the late Republic, even after he became dictator.
I didn’t mean to imply Julius Caesar was the first emperor. He wasn’t. I guess I was unclear. I tried to indicate that when most people’s interest in Rome starts with Julius Caesar, the republic is already almost entirely in the rear view.
I guess I took it for granted that most people who think about Rome know Julius Caesar is seen as a transitional figure between republic and empire.
I’m really not sure what the average person knows about Julius Caesar. I assumed it was just the Shakespeare play until the “every man thinks about Rome” meme.
But I would say that for people who do know much about him, they’re probably interested in the Republican parts. What’s interesting about Caesar is how used the institutions to build power. The first triumvirate, the Cataline Conspiracy, the Gallic Wars. All good stuff and precedes him becoming a dictator. I wouldn’t really say that it’s in the rear view.
I do think you have a point though that there’s not as much interest before Caesar compared to after. Everyone’s mental image of Ancient Rome is usually the early empire. Marcus Aurelius, for example, is more famous than Scipio Africanus.
Note to horror writers: the US now has almost 100% mobile phone coverage, with the unserved areas commonly being national parks or other similar institutions.
https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/mobile
The major exception to this is Alaska, which is both large and sparsely inhabited.
Don't worry, horror villains know how to block cell signals.
Why people don't hightail it as soon as their phones lose signal is a bigger question.
This is a fair point to make, but at the same time, there isn't 100% perfect coverage anywhere. My boss who lives about five miles outside the town in a rural area had to switch her mobile network provider because the service was too unreliable; it kept dropping work calls and even no reception at all.
So there is still room for "we can't contact the outside world" in a horror story, even with mobile phones. Terrain, weather conditions, one service provider's tower not in the right spot, no charge, no credit, etc.
I'm sorry, that map is just lying to you in your face. Where we live, in one of the nearby towns, from the green to at least half a mile out of town, none of our phones have any reception - and we have a phone from at least one of the providers listed in that area. The map says coverage 100%.
Checked a few other places that I know for a fact have no mobile coverage of any kind. Still says 100%, with the providers that I know we use listed.
Maybe they think that US territory is completely flat, and terrain features, like hills and mountain ridges, never block line of sight to towers? That still doesn't obviously explain it, but maybe if I squint at the map enough I would be able to believe it.
I'm skeptical. I live in a midwestern college town. There are multiple places on the main street through town where Siri can't give me directions or play a requested song.
I... don't know what to think of this, it clashes violently with my lived experience. I just drove through a chunk of Southwest (Texas/New Mexico). Coverage was extremely spotty, which I knew to expect, and had all the maps downloaded on my phone.
This map is all carriers combined. If you click Provider Detail and then select your carrier it might match your experience more.
And basically everyone only uses one carrier, so yes a map showing all carriers combined is misleading. I know of places in rural California, rural New York and rural Connecticut where I have no cell phone coverage.
I know almost next to nothing about military strategy. But based on what I've read in literature it seems like in a land war a big strategy is to create situations in which your troop has a big numerical advantage. I'm guessing the main advantage of a numerical advantage in a particular battle in the context of a war is morale? Are there other advantages? What are other very simple time-tested strategies for winning battles?
Look up Lanchester's Square Law. For ranged combat, the balance of casualties is proportional to the square of the number of units on each side (assuming equal firepower per unit). Basically, the more people you have shooting at the enemy, the fewer enemies survive to shoot back.
Another very common rule is that, before WWI-ish, it's not the battle that kills you, it's the rout. A unit retreating in good order will probably fend off attacks well enough to limp to safety, a unit that panics and scatters is going to get chased down.
I know very little about this, but it seems to me that with modern weapons, if you put too many soldiers in one place, they will simply get killed by a bomb. So if one hundred soldiers oppose two hundred soldiers, what actually happens is that on each side one bomb drops, and most of the soldiers are dead. You need to spread your soldiers wide, but then you lose the effect of the concentrated fire.
The defense strategy is to mine *everything*, put a few soldiers behind the line to shoot at any individual trying to pass, put artillery and anti-aircraft guns further behind the line to bomb any groups or vehicles trying to pass or shoot down the planes.
The counter-strategy -- if you are the right kind of government -- is to keep sending meat waves, about dozen soldiers at a time, so that it would be too expensive to bomb them, but if someone shoots at them, they can shoot back. You can also use civilians from the occupied territory as human shields.
Once in a while, you can do a surprise attack with hundreds of drones, hoping to take out all the enemy artillery nearby, and then you can send the vehicles.
You definitely want to prevent your troops from breaking off to loot the enemy baggage train or camp. There have been a silly amount of historical battles where one side started winning, went off to loot, and then the other side rallied and counterattacked the disorganized looters.
Also, don't let your leaders or officers get hit by a stray arrow and die in the middle of the fight. That's really bad.
There's the Lanchester square law, which posits that an army's combat effectiveness is proportional to the square of its size. In an open field where everyone can see and fire at everyone, if your side is outnumbered 2:1, each soldier will have to on average endure double the firepower while having to kill double the number of enemies to 'break even'. All else equal, the side with double the troops can expect to win with 25% losses. You can test this out in any strategy game. Go into the scenario editor, create two armies, one twice the size of the other, and see how they fare.
This rule of thumb I think was invented mainly for armies standing opposite each other exchanging musket fire. In a modern conflict, especially urban warfare, there is much more concealment of troops and sight lines, so the ability of any troop to fire on any enemy troop is diminished. I believe modern doctrine uses an exponent of around 1.5 instead of 2.
The need to concentrate troops for an offensive is balanced by the need to spread your forces defensively along the front. In any offensive the defender has a first-shot advantage, where they are in a position to fire while the offensive army is moving into range. The defenders will also be more familiar with the terrain they are fighting in. So typically in any offensive you need a large force to be able to absorb disproportionate losses and still fight effectively.
Of course the higher the numerical advantage you have, the fewer troops you're likely to lose. Many offensives of the later part of WW2 involved 10:1 ratios or greater. The tradeoff of course is that it's much more difficult and expensive to organise a successful offensive than it is to merely defend. If ww2 and Ukraine are to go by, it takes nations a couple of years to really learn how to conduct an offensive.
>There's the Lanchester square law, which posits that an army's combat effectiveness is proportional to the square of its size. In an open field where everyone can see and fire at everyone, if your side is outnumbered 2:1, each soldier will have to on average endure double the firepower while having to kill double the number of enemies to 'break even'. All else equal, the side with double the troops can expect to win with 25% losses. You can test this out in any strategy game. Go into the scenario editor, create two armies, one twice the size of the other, and see how they fare.
I didn't know the thoughts I had while playing Starcraft in my childhood had an actual name and practical application.
It depends a lot on the era of conflict and what kind of support both sides have, but in general the attacker wants a 3:1 ratio in their favor at the point of contact.
Other common principles are making use of terrain and water features, building defenses, attacking the enemy’s supply lines, and using the weather (Russian winters in multiple wars, and summer heat during the Crusades).
This is why Russia is generally considered by some to have the upper hand in their Special Operation. And they have been able to push Ukrainian forces back on the heels with massed attacks. But these look like Phyrric victories, so far...
Do you are does anyone else know the general odds of an attacker with a 3:1 ratio of winning?
Sound Sense (sound-sense.net) is a nonprofit organization that coordinates low-gain hearing aid trials for people with auditory processing disorder with or without associated hearing loss.
I connected with them a few months ago and got a pair of hearing aids in the mail last week. So far, the experience has been like getting glasses - I am reasonably functional without hearing aids, but with them I have to spend far less time "filling in the gaps" and guessing what people are saying.
The research still isn't settled about whether hearing aids significantly improve APD symptoms. The Sound Sense people think that this is because there's a splitting effect - some people with APD traits really love them and others get no benefit at all. Personally, my experience so far has been a lot of "cool factor" but only a small amount of functional improvement.
Jason Pargin's new novel mentions scissors statements:
"[Physical terrorism and then]...The final stage would involve the release of a false flag manifesto claiming responsibility. This would, in reality, be an act of psychological warfare to sow discord in the aftermath. Our intel says the Russians have been working on this at least since 2014, with the goal of creating the perfect trigger to exploit existing fissures in our society. They have apparently been testing it in various corners of the internet and measuring engagement, gauging which subject creates the most visceral and divisive reaction among the main ideological factions of the American populace. Their goal is to get half of the country sounding like they’re defending the attack, triggering irreconcilable outrage from the other half."
Jason is a fan of Scott's work (I think I first heard of SSC from him in a Cracked podcast?) so I wouldn't be surprised if that was a deliberate reference
Also I enjoyed the book a lot! I thought it treats internet communities (Twitch streamers, Reddit, makeup tutorial influencers) realistically but also captured what's intrinsically hilarious about them. Anyway, do recommend although only if you have a stomach for controversy. SOOO controversial, my goodness. (https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/the-new-book-is-out-right-now-finally)
Both insightful about deadly serious matters, and capable of writing the single funniest line of fiction that I've ever read. Guy is a genius.
Does anyone have information on how - I guess I'll call them "permanent creation" tasks - in childhood contribute to adulthood? If you teach a child to craft a bowl or chair instead of just buying one, does it affect their adult life in any way?
Having a foundation of doing creative stuff was a good thing for me. I was led into/led myself into a ton of creative hobbies, forgot about them all in early life, and went back to them around 35. Now I'm approaching retirement age and looking forward to just making things.
My father retired and had no hobbies, as he had always just worked and watched TV. He always seemed sad and at retirement he began a decline that ended with his life. This gives my various hobby pursuits a bit of desperation that they might not have otherwise.
When my son was in very early grade school, he had a class where the kids made beeswax candles. I remember a Christmas where he had a candle he had made of beeswax and he gave it to me and then he said I will have this candle for the rest of my life and the day I will die I will light the candle and watch it burn Until it is done.
I still have that candle stashed away, where I keep my passport and other important things
My dad and I built several (fairly nice!) stools and other furniture things when I was a kid. When furnishing my new apartment, I still defaulted to Ikea. Not sure that there has been any permanent impact on my life beyond a basic understanding that making furniture is hard and buying it is easy.
Two of my most vivid childhood memories are of making real things, with adult help: A brick from some clay I dug up, and some kind of long dress I sewed by hand myself. I'm sure both were very crudely done, and there was adult help, but to my preschooler mind the takeaway was that I had made the first Real Things of my life. I remember them with a feeling I don't have about making pretend things: sand castles, and forts made of a blanket draped over a table, and stuff with kid construction toys. I knew they were real, not pretend. When I got a little older I daydreamed about making a little house for myself in the woods. Thought I could spread a bunch of that clay out smooth and flat for a floor, then fire it by building a fire on top. That wouldn't have worked, but I thought it would be a way to make a Real Floor.
In my teens I taught myself to be a good seamstress, and have made all kinds of complicated things, including costumes for a theater during one era. I can't do fine woodworking, buy have a bunch of tools and can rough together all kinds of things, and make repairs. And I've always wanted to build a house, though I never got around to doing that.
I don't know whether the brick and the dress just really hit the spot for me, or whether making Something Real would have for most kids. I think the important thing with kids is to be alert for something that really hits the spot, and give them a big memorable experience when you realize that a certain kind of thing gives them special pleasure.
You never know, but its hard to measure., unless you keep the bowl.
Saw this mentioned on Twitter and I mentioned it a few weeks ago: the 30th was the 10th anniversary of "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup"
Does substack now have flashing skeleton screens?
Would a parallel universe have identical values of π or e?
I remember reading a science fiction novel years ago that had the characters navigating a wormhole bridge between universes and they had device to continually calculate the value of pi to track where they were in the multiverse and I thought huh that's a cool idea.
Now I'm wondering, wait how would that even work? Like if you brought a wheel from one universe to another would it suddenly be ever so slightly out of true?
This has sparked a memory for me, was it that Greg Bear book? Eon? I remember loving the pi-measuring conceit as well - even if I agree with other commenters that the change in geometry would likely do something pretty terminal to our biological processes (proteins not fitting, cells denaturing etc)
I think that's right!
Mathematical constants have nothing to do with the physical universe.
What one could think about changing in a metaphysical sense are dimensionless physical constants. I enjoyed Martin Rees's *Just Six Numbers* as a teen, though I have since read a bit of criticism that it was too credulous towards string theory's metaphysical claims about the multiverse.
Not so sure about this. Math is impossible without a physical substratum of sorts, right? Ultimately the mental states that take place during a calculation or when acknowledging that a theorem is true are physical configurations (if we take a physicalist view).
Sounds interesting, I'll check that out
I'm pretty sure the book is Eon by Greg Bear. I remember a Pi finding device used in that book to find where they were in the multiverse. But ChatGPT's first guess was The Void Trilogy, by Peter F Hamilton.
I think Eon is right! I was pretty sure it was one of the Gregs (either Bear or Egan) but didn't remember the particulars
ChatGPT is extremely wrong because I remember Eon being good and well written while The Void Trilogy is the opposite of that
Pi would be identical in the context of a continuous flat environment, such as the abstract confines of Euclidean geometry. Whether or not Euclidean geometry is a close approximation of the real world could very quite a bit between universes.
Spacetime curvature, for instance, could definitely affect the real-world value of pi, but a large enough curvature to make pi more than a tiny bit different in everyday contexts would probably be inconsistent with life.
Pi and e are computable numbers. You can have Turing machines which run forever, writing digits of them on the tape one by one.
A universe where if you follow the instructions for calculating correctly and end up with other results would be a pretty fucked-up place.
You might as well ask if there are universes where elementary rules of arithmetic or logic don't hold. I can't really imagine such universes, but then again, I am trained by a lifetime of the kind of logic which holds true in our universe. Or you could say that the math which is discover-able both for us and for the inhabitants of flatland is all the math there is, and everything else is at most dream-logic which fails to be self-consistent when closely examined.
Would in a parallel universe 2+2=4 ?
What about lim n→∞ (1 + 1/n)^n ? That happens to be e. But if the limit of the sequence is a different number, it would mean that the values for many specific n would also be different. How specifically would that work e.g. for n=2?
One thing I can imagine is the parallel universe having a different geometry. Like there would be no planes, and therefore no circles as we know them. Our equation for π would still result in the same number, but that number would not describe anything about that world's closest alternative to our circles. (And yes, as anomie said, this would instantly kill you, because the chemistry in your body would stop working.)
Math isn't empirical so pure mathematical constructs couldn't be observed like that. It's like asking if meters could be different. The underlying thing the meters measure could be different but a meter is an invented abstraction. For example, pi in base 12 is 3.18 (and on and on) not 3.14. But this does not correspond to a real difference in the empirical world. You can switch to base 12 mathematics and it won't cause any issues in the physical world.
If OP meant by pi the number defined by summing some series then indeed it’s hard to imagine it changing from one universe to the next. On the other hand if he meant “the ratio of the circumference of some physical object to its diameter” that is an empirical measurement. Even in our own universe it may turn out not to be 3.1415926535… Take for instance a very big circle drawn on the ground as an example (assuming flat Earthers are wrong)
For starters, you would probably instantly die. You can't just change the mechanisms of the universe without everything breaking.
Instant death for mucking about does seem like a good default assumption yes
I'm not saying Amazon are putting their thumb on the scale when it comes to reviews of "Rings of Power", but here's the reply after I attempted to leave a review on episode seven. My review gave it four stars out of five, if anyone is interested.
"We could not post your review because it does not meet our guidelines for one or more of these reasons:
Profanity
Harassment
Hate speech
Sexual content
Illegal activity
Private information
Please edit and resubmit your review. Before you do, make sure it meets all of our community guidelines."
Now, the review was negative. But it was a lot less harsh than the ones I've left on here, and I didn't (so far as my poor addled brain can recall) do any swearing, sexual content (oh yeah, that's rich coming from you guys that have an Elf kissing his mother-in-law!) or the rest of it. I didn't even threaten to firebomb Jeff Bezos' toy rockets.
So it would seem that you only get to post a review on Prime Video if it ranges from positive to glowing about how magnificent the show is. I'll bear that in mind the next time I see puff pieces in the trade mags online about how the second season is busting all records for being the most watched, most streamed, most popular, most loved show ever 😁
Maybe their system runs reviews through a sentiment checker, and the sarcasm has tripped whatever setting they have for "Harassment"? Amazon's AI work is not known for being top drawer, so I would not be surprised if their analysis amounts to "insufficiently laudatory", the way many deep learning systems end up learning a least squares approximation.
I didn't save a copy of the comment, which I should have done, but I wasn't sarcastic. I was trying to give constructive criticism about what worked for me and what didn't.
There have been rumblings about Amazon doing the same thing with reviews of season one - pruning out any reviews that were three stars and under, so the only reviews people saw were four and five stars, leading them to think "this must be a pretty good show".
I was agnostic about that, because rumours are always flying on the Internet, but seeing that a four star review that was critical but not very negative (you could call it mildly positive as I said that episode was slightly better than the others) got "not laudatory enough" rejection, I'm beginning to believe it.
Well now I'm *really* motivated to review the final episode! 😁
I look forward to reading it. I have no intention of watching the show but your reviews are a hoot.
Oh, I am waiting for it with great anticipation, sitting here like one of the new, kinder, nicer Orcs who just want to beat their swords into ploughshares and go till the land (as vegetarian farmers) with their wives and babies by their side 😁
Heh, heh, heh.
They better give me Celebrimbor's tortured and arrow-riddled corpse, is all I'm saying, after their pre-season promises of darker and grittier and gorier.
I honestly have *no* idea how they're going to round up all the little straying sheepies of their various plot threads in the final episode; it'll either have to be three hours long or they're going to leave a clutter of cliff-hangers for season three (e.g. I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf, his staff quest, his 'do I abandon my friends to CERTAIN DEATH?' dilemma, the Dark Wizard, and Tom Bombadil as just *one* of the Really Big Things they need to sort out).
Is the beast that King Durin threatens to unleash:
(a) The Balrog at long last after they've been teasing it for a whole two seasons? Way too early by the lore, but they spit on your lore feelthy nerds!
(b) not the Balrog but the Watcher in the Water (or its grandparent), the creature in the lake that Dísa encountered?
(c) neither of those, it's just Dísa got the night starvation and was making a run to the market to stock up on munchies and you should know by now not to get in her way when she's on a snack run?
They're on to you! Time to get reallly sarcastic.
Did you properly test your hypothesis? As in, did you find published reviews that are more negative than yours would have been? Maybe post your would-be review here so we can judge for ourselves?
Clearly your reputation precedes you, Deisach.
Huh! Unrelated but I just was going on to Amazon to write a review of a book I'd just read and enjoyed and got this:
"We apologize but Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a result, all reviews submitted by this account have been removed and this account will no longer be able to contribute reviews and other content on Amazon."
What the actual fuck?
There does seem to be something odd going on with Amazon's websites. Maybe they're trying to shove in All AI All The Time (Humans Go Home) and the systems are getting indigestion?
I wonder how a sarcastic review would fare.
I resubmitted a five star review that might, if you squint and look at it sideways with the light behind it, just possibly maybe contains the slightest tinge of sarcasm.
We'll see how *that* one fares.
Recent experience that I think might be of interest to the board. I went to Hong Kong recently. For those who aren’t aware, there was significant unrest there in 2019-20, which began with an attempt by the HK legislative council to pass a law enabling people to be extradited to mainland China for prosecution of crimes, effectively enabling the government to get around the “One Country, Two Systems” setup and bypass the protections of Hong Kong’s legacy British-based justice system to move them to mainland courts. Previously, doing that required kidnapping people to the mainland (see, e.g. the Causeway Bay Books disappearances). Hong Kongers understandably freaked the fuck out at this prospect and huge protests ensued. Like, as-many-as 1MM people out of a 7MM population huge. It ended with a combination of leveraging COVID to force people back indoors, and a new National Security/Anti-Sedition Law that was passed in the mainland and pushed onto Hong Kong from there because the HK Legislative Counsel was effectively paralyzed.
The law is pretty much what you’d expect from the PRC, criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign organizations, but worded vaguely enough that it can be broadly enforced. You don’t have to explicitly plan a coup or declaration of independence, technically playing the “Glory to Hong Kong” song that was an anthem for the protests, or wearing a “Free Hong Kong” t-shirt would be enough. Naturally, this chills speech the PRC finds problematic while also allowing them to accuse detractors of being paranoid by claiming it’d *never* be enforced that way.
That’s all backstory though. The *story* is that my recent trip to HK also included a stop at the Hong Kong history museum. Surprisingly, the museum itself was mostly closed, but it had a free, special exhibit about national security and the new law. And man, if you want some real-world Orwell, check this thing out.
https://hk.history.museum/en/web/mh/exhibition/National-Security-Exhibition-Gallery.html
“The National Security Exhibition Gallery, with an area of over 1,100 square metres, aims at enhancing visitors' appreciation of the significance of national security, impressing upon all citizens their duties and responsibilities in safeguarding national security, as well as deepening the community's general knowledge and understanding of national security related concepts and issues. Developed around the core of a holistic approach to national security, the Gallery serves to promote patriotism and affection for our country. Messages are conveyed to encourage all citizens to take part in safeguarding national security, and to elevate their sense of responsibility and ownership. The overarching need for long-term security and stability in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's unique advantages of being backed by the Motherland and connected to the world are emphasised.”
The children’s programming was especially interesting. You can see the kids’ video “Young Guardians of National Security “ online, including such gems as butterflies explaining to a ladybug that “law compliance is a must for national security” and unironic use of the phrase “unity is strength.”
https://www.nsed.gov.hk/exhibition_gallery_booking/index.php?l=en&a=video
The rest of the exhibit isn’t online, but it had a lot of crazy gems, like the section on how awesome the PLA is as a “stabilizing force in Hong Kong,” the dangers of color revolution and how the 2019 protests were the “Hong Kong version of ‘colour revolution’” instigated by outsiders, the dire threats of espionage which are ‘everywhere,’ and how the new National Security law “ends violence and chaos, and restores order” and is “constitutional, legitimate, reasonable, and fair.”
The whole thing was surreal and darkly humorous (if you need a special exhibit on how your anti-secession law is “constitutional, legitimate, reasonable, and fair,” perhaps the lady doth protest too much?), but mostly sad. Seems hard to imagine a way for Hong Kong to really bounce back.
From your description, the exhibit sounds really cringe for anyone who is not already a 100% convinced of the CCP point of view. But then again, being the one voice of reason in some committee to point out "this will seem very silly to anyone not already convinced, perhaps we should not do this" is probably not the kind of statement anyone savvy enough to get onto the committee in the first place will make. And sometimes today's obedient kids turn into tomorrow's disobedient teens, and might question the wisdom of the butterflies' message about national unity. Western attempts to teach kindergardeners about how evil drugs are rarely prevent them from trying drugs later, after all.
I dunno, the current grasp the Party has on how things are expressed and what is or is not crimethink is pretty firm (right now at least).
Imagine if, every 4th of July, all the Hollywood stars and Emmy award winners and anybody famous or admired all lined up to do the patriotic flag-waving and release songs and movies about how great America is and its political systems and how the people, especially the youth, must strive onwards and upwards to uphold the righteousness of the nation.
Now, some American stars may well do that, but imagine it being *compelled*. Or not even compelled overtly, so much as everyone falls in line and produces the online messaging about "Happy National Day and here are the approved sentiments", partly out of true belief (because you've been raised under this system) and partly out of knowing this is how you must play the game, if you want a career (and to avoid ending up disappeared/in jail).
This brought to you courtesy of it recently being China's National Day and seeing a current star very popular with the youth releasing a song for the day. This is just how it goes. The Orwell Museum is all of a whole with that sort of social engineering. "This is what you must believe and this is the version of history that is the only one acknowledged".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Day_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
You're right, the compelled speech system in the United States is a lot more subtle. The compelled speech in the US isn't openly in favour of the system, it's ostensibly _against_ the system. Please change your corporate logo to black this month and rainbow the other month, in protest against someone who might theoretically exist. The establishment is the revolution, and the revolution will never end.
I agree with the overall spirit of your comment here, but just for avoidance of doubt let's be clear that the CCP system is *much* worse than the US one. It's not just a matter of the US overton window being governed by informal social forces - the punishments those social forces can bring to bear is significantly less.
To take an example - the Hunter Biden Laptop story. The laptop findings were legitimately newsworthy, the Trump FBI warned facebook that it "might be a Russian plot," and facebook de-prioritized the story in the critical month before the election. The story still was broken, however, mainly by the NY Post, and we've got pretty widespread knowledge of it available. If you read only left-media sources, you might still get an unfair view of it, but you at least know that it exists to get that unfair view.
Imagine that story breaking about Xi Jinpeng's kid in the PRC. "Imagine" is even a stretch because it probably doesn't break at all. There's 2 kinds of media available there - state media, which would never report on the story in the first place because it's under direct party control, and independent media, where the story won't break because it's understood that you can be straight up arrested and put in jail for publishing it.
Hong Kong used to be the exception to that, but even then you could still get kidnapped to the mainland and jailed for speech the CCP disliked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearances
Again, I'd assume that you're probably aligned with this kind of "D's and R's are imperfect but the CCP is still worse" worldview; most people, on examination, are. It's hard not to be, what with the forced sterilizations, mass famines, social credit schema, etc. I just want to throw it out there because often people read these "in fairness we're imperfect too" comments as "to be honest we're just as bad," and that's a bridge too far that I want to make sure nobody takes away.
When an election goes the way an American doesn't want, they generally complain and talk idly about "moving to Canada." I've had multiple people in HK tell me that they or their friends (especially friends with schoolage children) have *actually* left the country, either to avoid the indoctrination their kids are exposed to, or because they or their kids were involved in the democracy protests and they're afraid for their safety.
The US may be on the same "degrees of imperfection" continuum with the PRC in terms of how it treats its citizens, but they are way, way past of us in terms of how bad things are, and we shouldn't accidentally let our own justified self-criticism inadvertently write the CCP a pass.
Putting a couple pieces together, I'm also reminded a Russian concept Mark Galliotti sometimes describes as vranyo (враньё). Where I lie to you, but it's not so much an attempt to actually deceive you as it is an expression of power.
Basically, if I lie to you hoping to get you to believe the lie, that's one thing. But if I lie to you blatantly, and you know I'm lying and I'm not even trying to pretend I'm not, but you have no power to call me on it or do anything about it, and in fact the power dynamics might even compel you to act as if you believe me, it's exactly the kind of expression of power that can crush someone's spirit. Like the famous "there are 4 lights" scene in Star Trek, or the mob boss who knows the cops have no evidence so he looks them in the eye, smirks, and says "of *course* I had nothing to do with that killing!"
Applied to an exhibit like this, I sort of see that kind of pattern emerge. The content, while cringe and littered with falsehoods, (a) makes CCP true-believers in Hong Kong feel good to see, and (b) if you're not a true believer and you see it, you see the message "the 2019 unrest was a colour revolution that foreign powers attempted to impose on China from the outside, but thankfully our righteous heroic government passed a constitutional, legitimate, and fair national security law that saved us from this terrible evil" slapped all over the walls, and you know that any attempt you make to call the lie a lie could land you in jail, so you just have to suck it up and let the statement stand unchallenged, it's dispiriting in exactly the kind of way that would work well for the CCP.
Anyone here have a deep understanding of why the most recent card bans for the Commander format have proved so controversial?
The basics of the issue are easy enough to find. Four cards were deemed too powerful and therefore banned.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/commander-banned-and-restricted-announcement-september-23-2024
Players were upset enough about this that they hate-mailed the Commander rules committee to the point that the committee resigned and handed control of the format over to WOTC.
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/57919/magic-the-gathering-commander-rules-committee-fires-itself
OK, sure. But why were these bans so unpopular? Were they the wrong things to ban? Did the bans wipe out a lot of value from players' collections?
The reaction on /r/magictcg was mostly "good riddance" (and on /r/custommagic, making hate cards that specifically target blue/green Bird Wizards was practically a once a week occurence), so I was kinda shocked to hear there was an uproar about this.
The petition linked from your news article makes it sound like it's a mix of "you made these expensive cards valueless" and "weren't those cards made specifically for commander?"
It's largely because of the value of the cards. Everybody I know agree that the cards deserved to be banned, even the ones that are sad that their $100 pieces of cardboard have cratered in value.
That said, I can't think of any other cards with such a hefty price that have been banned recently. I think to some extent, there's a "perfect shitstorm" going on here, where those who are most hurt by the ban are those most likely to have terrible social antennas and send people death threats.
> But why were these bans so unpopular? Were they the wrong things to ban?
I think you're hearing from a vocal minority here. As an ex-Commander player, all I can say is "it's about time". I long ago gave up on playing commander, but these bans are certainly a step in the right direction at least.
Given the history of card bans in the past, I am less confident in this answer than I would be otherwise.
What I'm hearing is that a lot of people bought these cards specifically because they were valuable, like buying silver and gold, and and then the value went away overnight. Card shops, collectors, etc. Players seem to roll with bans and sometimes anticipate them, but if it wasn't the players who were complaining but those banking on the value, that might make sense.
I don't understand MtG, but if enough people don't like the "official" rule changes then can't they just play by whatever rules they like?
If you are playing casually with friends, sure. But if you are playing competitively or with strangers, they will probably insist on playing by standard rules.
Of course, EDH was originally a community-defined format. The WotC got in on it and rebranded it as commander, likely because Elder Dragon Highlander was not very trademarkable.
Also, Jeweled Lotus was a card specifically created by WotC for Commander. It seems to have appeared in two sets, Commander Legends (2020) and Commander Masters (Released 2023-08-04). Banning a card which WotC put in boosters released a year ago seems controversial. That is considerably less than the about two years cards stay legal in the 'standard' format.
> Banning a card which WotC put in boosters released a year ago seems controversial. That is considerably less than the about two years cards stay legal in the 'standard' format.
Two years is an *eternity* for problem cards to stick around. Bans are normally much faster than that. Heck, even the laissez-faire Commander format has banned a lot of cards much faster than that.
Tibalt's Trickery was legal in Modern for only *ten days*.
A year is pretty long for a broken card, and it's only because WOTC *deliberately* printed broken unfun chase cards to make money that we're even in this position.
Heck, just look at the precedent of Hullbreacher. Hullbreacher was another card that WOTC printed specifically for Commander, and it still got banned in Commander after only *9 months*.
In fact, it's even worse than that. In *the very same ban announcement* as Jeweled Lotus, another of the banned cards was Nadu, which was banned in Commander only *three months* after release.
I work for a company in California that might run out of money soon. We've been around for more than ten years and run an online community with ~100,000 members. No money is involved except for hosting costs. I think it would be a shame if all those people lost their community.
I'm thinking of seeing if I can inherit the community and continue running it but I am afraid of all the legal responsibilities and obligations I might be accidentally taking on. I don't have the patience or the $$$ to start a company to own the community.
I expect, if I go ahead with this, expensive lawyers will be involved but before I get that far, am I crazy to even think it? What should I be thinking about.
> I'm thinking of seeing if I can inherit the community and continue running it
This strikes me more as wanting to hang on to a group of potential customers rather than a "community."
I'm not sure why you would say that. The people in my community are my friends and I won't be making any money from it.
From what I said, what makes you think I want to hang on to potential customers?
I think legal advice is often worth the cost, which is also often less than you think it will be. If it were me, ask around for recommendations (or check google reviews) for lawyers who are experienced with liability/tort/whatever might be relevant and ask for an hour long consultation to discuss your concerns and hopes and what might be required (in terms of time, effort and $) to assume ownership/responsibility, plus what the actual risks of that approach are.
Depending on how complex the situation is that initial consult might cost around $200-500 (but I've never hired a lawyer in California so others might be able to give a better estimate). After meeting with them they should also be able to tell you how much it would take to execute your plan which again, will depend on how complicated it is but I would guess $2-4k.
If you don't like what you hear from the lawyer in the consult find another and repeat the process. If you don't like the advice of the 2nd lawyer either, then it's probably worth reconsidering
Thank you, Vermillion. This sounds like excellent advice. I was certainly expecting it to be much more than this.
You're very welcome! Good luck and hopefully you can keep the community going somehow or other
A friend of mine suggested that setting up a limited liability company is very cheap in the UK (where I live) so I might look into that too.
You are definitely going to need some sort of limited liability entity, but I assume that this concept applies in the UK. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/piercing-the-veil-of-small-business-what-the-owners-of-llcs-and-corporations-need-to-know
Not to mention that, if the group has members in other countries, those countries' laws might apply in some potential lawsuits.
All of this is to say that you should definitely get competent legal advice before going forward, probably from a firm that has expertise in multinational corporate law.
Thank you very much. This is useful. Reading your linked article now…
Id ask someone running a several year old fedi insistence
Thank you. Looks interesting. Reading up on this now.
The idea of taking on the infrastructure of a company to preserve an online community seems like a boil-the-ocean solution. Couldn't the community just migrate to some other service, like Reddit, for instance?
The way the community is organised is very different from Reddit.
I am a software engineer and I built the software and all the infrastructure. That stuff is all easy. It's the legal issues that I am afraid of.
Could the existing company publish the software under a free license, such as GNU GPL?
Then anyone (that includes you) could download the software and run it without getting involved in company's legal issues.
I would need more than just the software. I need the domain and all our existing data
Is Disney/ABC an obvious short? I'm biased because I don't care for Disney properties in the first place, but I watch a lot of sports and have witnessed the implosion of ESPN over the past few years. It does seem to be a case of "DEI is the problem". Their top talented white broadcasters (E.g., Jeff Van Gundy) have been booted in favor of women who don't have near the talent of the men they are replacing. The bizarre rise of Stephen A. Smith is something I don't want to know details about.
ESPN seems to think that its brand alone will get them through anything. If you're a sports fan. would you rather watch a basketball game on ESPN or TNT? In a competitive marketplace, the answer to that shouldn't be so clear.
So should we all short Disney? Is it rotting from the head? Or is ESPN some weird special case that doesn't reflect on Mickey Mouse and Goofy?
Disney has gone through many cycles of greatness and decay, it's never been this big and dominant but I think it could till renew itself. I also don't think the DEI/wokeness issue is as clear as people think. Inside Out 2 got a lot of criticism, but it was the highest grossing Pixar movie to date (in nominal dollars, anyway).
My point about wokeness has been taken too far. It doesn't matter *why* ESPN has made such bad decisions (I think wokeness is part of it but the actual reason doesn't matter. Maybe a better way to think about it is: management is either weak or in chaos so wokeness has won by defualt) but it has made many bad decisions in serial. I'm betting against them due to evidence of bad management.
What do you think you know about Disney that the rest of the world doesn't?
That their current management is incompetent. Their recent stock price history reflects that, but what I see is that the management decisions are getting worse not better.
It's the kind of short I would hold for a year, with the notion that more investors will notice the same over that period. All my other positions are aligned with the S&P to rise so it's a minor hedge in my portfolio and not a huge risk. I like to use about 5% of my money for short positions.
My point is that if you think you know better than the world's biggest and most liquid prediction market, you're probably wrong.
The same point can be made for every investment I make. I believe the EMH is mostly true and mostly long the indexes but it's fun to short a company from time to time. I'm 55% sure Disney is going down over the next year and that's good enough to trade on. If I bet wrong, no biggie.
Is this some kind of momentum reasoning, it's gone down a lot so it might continue? It feels to me as though a short now is essentially a short on the overall index, and there might be better EV plays to short the S&P.
Disney as a whole seems too big to short as an entity. Star Wars and ESPN doing poorly? Just do more Pixar, theme parks, and Marvel. They own so very much that it's kind of hard to imagine it. And even when things are going "poorly" they are probably closer to a small profit and breaking even than an actual loss.
A Marvel movie costing $300 million and only making $400 million is embarrassing, because they've made far more money with less cost and it shows a big decline in their money-makers. But it's still a nice profit and any other industry would think that was amazing. The Marvels appears to have lost money, but even a mediocre film like Thor: Love and Thunder apparently made about $100 million. If it weren't for the social implications of crashing a major IP or the possibility of killing the golden goose, the obvious play would be to make as many of those things as you can as fast as you can. (And obviously try to aim for the more profitable options like Deadpool and drop future Marvels where you can).
As far as ESPN specifically? I think televised sports is in a difficult position, and is ripe for some kind of online takeover. The industry is far too big for someone to just bully their way in (and Disney would be the most likely to try if they didn't already own ESPN), but I think someone's going to try to break into the market soon with something fairly novel and take the legs out from under the current leaders.
They have performed poorly recently and the reason is bad management. Based upon really dumb shit they continue to do, I expect the bad management to continue for at least another year and will short them for that time period.
Stephen A. Smith is much better understood as a shock-jock designed to cause controversy to get people to tune in than anything to do with wokeness. He's been a major ESPN personality since 2005, not 2018, after all.
A much better example of wokeness was in 2017 with the rebranding of the 6pm SportsCenter hour to SC6, hosted by Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. Hill in particular was an outspoken woke liberal. After some controversial comments, Hill was pushed out of ESPN and Smith's contract wasn't renewed. SC6 only lasted 13 months.
ESPN's issues are financial--they rode the cable TV package gravy train and cannot adjust to the lost revenue. Their ploy is clickbaitification (SAS being the prime example). I don't think wokeness has anything to do with it (even the constant push for women's basketball is better understood as a financial move, since they own the rights to the WNBA but not the NBA).
no, the market is rewarding wokeness and "markets can stay sane longer then you can stay solvant"
Die may take a decade to play out and shorts charge interest. Dont mix value investing a day trading, a short is a day traders tool and your making a value claim.
I think the quote is "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Which I think is your point. I sense the fever is slowly breaking though. How solvent are you?
Edit: After looking at a 5 year chart of DIS I don't think shorting it is a good move. Its trading at close to the bottom of its range.
basicly swimming in hydrochloric acid
Time to start checking on its book value..might be an opportunity
There's never such a thing as an "obvious short", and in fact this post makes me want to investigate going long (this is not at all intended as a dig at you, only a reflection of years of observing this pattern - by the time a stock is an "obvious short" most of the bad stuff has been priced in). Shorting stocks is an incredibly tough way to make money (ask me how I know... nevermind :) ).
The word obvious is hyperbole. i actually think Disney has a 55% chance of declining further over the next year, and that's good enough for me to short. 95% of my portfolio is long the S&P. Disney is my one short which I will hold for a year.
I don't know why anyone would short any stock, except as a hedge. The upside is limited, and the downside is theoretically infinite.
This is technically true, but in practice the upside can be very big, and the downside very rarely goes TTM.
That being said, a lot of short-sellers are apparently jumping ship from the practice, because in later years (due to massive liquidity, meme stocks, etc.) the risk-return profile of the strategy seems to have deteriorated significantly.
It's a hedge against the rest of my porrfolio which is 95% in the S&P. But I always like to take 5% of the portfolio and short what looks like the worst stock out there.
Well if you are doing it professionally you can hedge your short buying OTM calls. I do think there are obvious shorts that come along but it is not something I do. I lack both the patience and the deep pockets.
I would be mildly skeptical of any claims that there are 'obvious shorts'. Disney is a giant conglomerate spanning from Star Wars to Pixar. I am not sure how much of its assets are tied to their broadcasters, and how the market would assess their share value if it decided that all their DEI broadcasters are worthless. Big institutional investors who can spend a few full-time jobs to look at nitty gritty details of Disney finances are likely the median investor. I find it hard to believe that they are all so constrained by ideological blinders that they would not be able to judge the quality of some key employees.
If you had managed to turn 100$ into a billion dollar playing the stock market, I would update my beliefs towards you having a special edge, but absent evidence of that I would not follow your investment advice.
I am not saying that Disney is correctly valued, perhaps it is not and you will make money shorting it, but in my world view that would be winning a gamble, not picking up money from the street.
Disney's original output has declined in quality but they are on to a good thing with Disney+ and the theme parks, for now. Do you mean the company will shrink in size or go bust?
Just continue to decline over the next year due to bad management. I short them today and buy back in a year.
Just continue to decline over the next year due to bad management. I short them today and buy back in a year.
Worth a try. I have 2 kids aged 8 and 5, and while I wouldn't take them to a modern Disney movie, I would absolutely sign up to Disney + and take them to Disneyland, only limiting factor is they are currently really into some shows on Netflix and I don't want to pay for more than one streaming platform. If the theme parks start struggling Disney can sell land in Paris; LA. But none of this means they won't decline this year.
I agree: I don't care at all for Disney's most recent fare, but I have little girls and they love watching classic Disney movies and kids shows on Disney+, and we all love going to DisneyWorld. Or, rather, the kids really love it: I love it a lot less each time we go, because the already high prices keep going up.
“Where should the aliens take your daughter away to? Man World or Woman world?”
https://open.substack.com/pub/futuristright/p/women-and-equal-virtue-a-moral-thought?r=2n2udv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Advocates for traditional sex roles commonly insist that they do not believe male traits are superior to female traits. This is trivially true if you’re talking about men and women as objects necessary for reproduction.
But does anyone (who believes the personality and cognitive differences between men and women we see are primarily biological in nature) - actually think these different forms of cognition are on balance equal in value? What would their revealed preferences imply?
I try to work that out in the poll and thought experiment linked to above. Would appreciate your thoughts on it.
I think the idea behind this, and most of the replies below, make far too much out of a population-level difference (which I haven't actually seen any evidence for, by the way. What underlies the conviction that women "don't innovate"?). But anyway, it's something that is a recurring error and I see it a lot, especially on this Substack's comments. Yes, differences in populations are indeed visible - take height, for example. Men are on average taller than women. But that doesn't mean that every man is taller than every women. In fact, if you look at the distribution, it largely overlaps. Or take the link between smoking and lung cancer. It's absolutely real, but not every smoker gets lung cancer. You cannot take a population-level difference and argue from it to the individual. In this case, not only has a population-level difference been applied to individuals, it has then been enlarged again - that's like saying "men are on average stronger than women, therefore a population made entirely from women won't be able to undo jars." Of course some women will. Of course some women will innovate. Plus, brains are plastic and can change and adapt to their environments. Even if women don't innovate as much as men do, in a population made entirely of women, those who do innovate will have even more scope than they normally would.
All of which is a long way to say that I don't think there'd be much difference between the worlds, honestly. Not least because a lot of what we see today has some cultural baggage behind it too, and presumably these worlds would be different culturally (or maybe not? As Deiseach points out, women are just as capable of murder, commanding armies and demanding the slaughter of thousands of people). They might well be different - I don't know much about the concept of convergent culture, if it even exists - but I don't think we can easily predict in what ways they'd differ, or from where that difference would originate.
An interesting alternative to Man’s World and Woman’s World would be to make us hermaphrodites, and of course give us all male brains. Let's hope that as these people thrust their way into the bright, techy future one of the fine, inventive, ambitious, numerically-minded citizens of that world comes up with a genetic tweak that allows people to grow dicks thousands of miles long, so long that they literally encircle the globe and wind up behind their owner’s butt with 6 inches — no, wait, 9 inches — or more to spare to spare. Then these excellent folk can literally fuck themselves.
I think you need to show more of your cards to make it an interesting discussion. For example, is "women's world" just like our world, but maybe with worse video games, less war and less rape? That sounds pretty good! Or is it stuck in early 1900's technology for reasons?
According to our friend there would be a 40% infant mortality rate, so imagine the Monty Python mud-grubbing peasants scenario, since apparently women dumb, no brains, no ambition, only know eat hot chip and lie:
My Own Answer
"I would choose Man World for my daughter. The decision is not even close. And while I can’t know this for sure I think most loving parents; whatever their officially stated views on sex issues would do the same.
Whatever virtuous aspects of female psychology that would be missing from Man World (and yes, would be Man-World volunteers, these do exist!), could not conceivably justify placing my daughter’s future in the hands of a sex which, in general, reveals almost no interest in the basic innovative processes which make human life outside of the total tyranny of nature possible.
Some girls prefer to spend their time around boys. Few, I’d assume, would be socially unfulfilled enough by the relative absence of feminine thought patterns to prefer 40% child mortality rates and the near absence of basic comforts."
And then he wonders why he gets asked "hey dude, are you, perchance, gay?" 😁
So, in Man World there are plenty of women, they just have the brains of men, ditto in Woman World the men have the minds of women. This is a no brainer.
Men and women are wired to need each other - that need is still there even if there's no one around to fulfill it. A daughter sent to Man World is in competition with a planetful of people who do not know how to woman properly. She's gonna clean up. Same with a son sent to Women's World.
The direction you went was, which planet will be the more high tech, successful, happiest, etc. But if I wanted to sidestep that for a moment: a lot of happiness comes from your relative position compared to others around you. Even if there's a broad disparity in the quality of the worlds, I think it might still make sense to pursue your child's unique competitive advantage by sending them to the opposite world.
From our perspective (2024 main timeline), both worlds would have failed by about 1825-1850 or so, by my estimation. I believe that women and men are very different, but complimentary. A world without the benefits of one of the sexes will fall too far towards the other and become a much worse world.
The following are my gut impressions assuming that all men become like Men and all women become like Women and ignoring the overlap in the Venn diagrams between women and men. After a generation or two without the opposing perspective, I would guess that the people on the other side of this change would become very much like the non-overlapping portions. That is, boys raised without any female influence will take on none of the mitigating perspectives and become more and more masculine.
Man World would devolve into aggression games and outright war. Popular conceptions of Sparta are along the right lines. Slavery, oppression, and for those who can be warriors or leaders, an abusive upbringing to make them keenly aggressive and very capable. The Harkonnens from Dune might be another good analog.
Woman World would struggle to feed itself and the economy would collapse. After the slow resulting mass death, the world would become much calmer, but also much more simplistic. Farmer-gatherers living in simple societies that are mostly peaceful and cooperative.
Most of the population would die in either world. Long term the Man World would produce impressive feats of strength - giant bridges, spaceships, whatever while being a miserable place to live. Woman World would be much more pleasant but suffer from preventable diseases, low standards of living, and would be in danger of extinction level crisis.
From my current perspective, I would hate to live in either world.
"suffer from preventable diseases"
You genuinely think there would be no female equivalent of Pasteur or Fleming? They were smart but not geniuses or super-geniuses, and while women cluster in the middle under the bell curve, there are still smart, genius women out there. Not as many as men but some.
Before our friend gets too smug about child mortality rates, let him remember Semmelweis' study which demonstrated increased maternal mortality was due to the men becoming doctors and taking over childbirth which had been the traditional preserve of midwives:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807776/
"In 1846, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis (1818–1865), who was born in Hungary, was appointed to what was then by far the largest maternity hospital in the world: the Vienna Maternity Hospital, which was divided into two clinics. Doctors and medical students were taught in the first clinic, midwives in the second and patients were allocated to the clinics on alternate days. There was no clinical selection of cases for either clinic. From 1840 through 1846, the maternal mortality rate in the first clinic was 98.4 per 1000 births, while the rate in the second clinic – the midwives clinic – was only 36.2 per 1000 births.
Almost all the maternal deaths were due to puerperal fever. The alarmingly high mortality in the first clinic had defied explanation until Semmelweis was appointed and postulated that the excess deaths in the first clinic were due to the routine procedures carried out in the courses attended by doctors and medical students. Each day started with postmortem examinations of women who had died of puerperal fever. Then, without washing their hands, the pupils went straight to the maternity wards where they were required, as part of their training, to perform vaginal examinations on all the women. By contrast, the pupil midwives in the second clinic did not undertake either postmortem examinations, nor routine vaginal examinations."
I think you misunderstand my perspective (and I'll admit I'm hamming it up with the assumption that how men or women *tend* to act is some kind of biological imperative - in light of the question being asked).
Humanity has grown significantly larger than can be sustained using traditional ways of living. Men push boundaries, including boundaries that should not be pushed. Industrialization is not something most women would pursue, even if they thought of it. It destroys the environment, it destroys individuals, it turns us into cogs in a machine that can never stop running or most of us die. I think a society that suddenly became all female would make a series of choices to alleviate the negative effects of previous decisions up to and through a point of no return where society fails to sustain itself. That's a very different question from "what would society look like if only women-thinking persons ever lived?" I don't think such a society is doomed, and in fact it might be far more pleasant in many ways. It would just be much smaller and less strong (in a survival sense) than a world where the population is pushing boundaries and taking (significantly more) risks.
See, I find that attitude (women would never industrialise, women would not be boundary-pushers) the mirror image of the damn stupid 70s feminist witchy bullshit about the mythical Golden Age of the matriarchy before the mean old men invented sky gods and patriarchy.
All that nonsense about women would never wage war - should have been trashed by the real life examples of Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher - and we'd all be living in the blissful agrarian cottagecore world of peace'n'love and a currant bun under the benevolent rule of the wise elder women.
Bollocks, if you will pardon the crudity.
At least James Tiptree Jr. made a better fist of it with the story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" about what a possible female-only world would look like (and let's throw in Cordwainer Smith with "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" for a possible men-only world while we're at it), but I like the concept as fiction, not as "but the wimmins are all teeny-tiny brain only like babies and cats and flowers, bless little hearts" crap.
Women can be like men, and that includes being back-stabbing violent sons of bitches. Hmm, I think Joanna Russ wrote something along those lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_Houston,_Do_You_Read%3F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_and_the_Glory_of_Commander_Suzdal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_It_Changed
We don't *know* what an all-female world would be like, because we've never lived in one, so don't be so confident that "oh all the ladies would be lolling about on their fainting couches sipping tea and not inventing the atom bomb.
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/queen-elizabeth-speech-troops-tilbury
"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."
https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/katherine-of-aragon/#gs.g2ogjc
"In fact, Henry trusted Katherine to act as regent while he was fighting in France. In 1513, she oversaw a national crisis when James IV of Scotland tried to invade England, even leaving the safety of London to ride north with over 1,500 sets of armour for her troops. After James’ defeat at the Battle of Flodden, Katherine sent her husband the Scottish King’s bloodied cloak. She wanted to send James’ body too, but remarked that, 'our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it'."
Women have only started to be free of their biological imperatives in the last hundred years or so. In another 50 it could be really different. The economics of reproduction have changed. The world needs babies (I guess) but economically it's not necessarily a good deal for women, assuming they are part of the cohort of women for whom things are changing, so they get to make a better deal. or we have Handmaids Tale nonsense. I don't see why women's personalities and cognitive abilities are any less elastic than those of men. So yeah, they are equal in value. And now that they can go sperm bank shopping instead of settling for whatever they can find..well, its a buyers market.
> I don't see why women's personalities and cognitive abilities are any less elastic than those of men.
I thought the assumption was that both are inelastic.
Sorry I missed that. I don’t think that’s true at all; I think humanity is very elastic. We can get used to just about anything. if we have to.
You're pretty clear how inferior you think women are 😀 Before I got to that little billet-doux part of the article, my hypothetical choices were:
(1) Let the aliens take my daughter away. Even if I believe she is dead and grieve for her after my memory has been wiped, my child will have the chance to be cured and live a normal life. How can I choose to let her die if I can save her and will not be putting her into a worse situation?
(2) I would send my daughter to Woman World. In this context, I don't care what the men there are like. Women there are like women here, and my daughter will be a woman. She will be raised in a society where she fits in. Why would I want to change her basic nature?
But you want a son, not a daughter, because you would change her basic nature. And that's how we get sex-selective abortion and skewed gender ratios in our world, folks!
Or women who grow up thinking they are worthless except for their twats.
So you have Man World and Woman World. I.e., Gay World 1 and Gay World 2.
Gays are good as a minority, but I think we benefit from the diversity of women and men versus a planet of one or the other. I wouldn't let my daughter go to either of your planets.
I agree, but the relative value of these traits still says something about which should give way when they come into conflict - which they regularly do.
Looking at your stack... am I wrong in thinking that your ideology and aesthetic is far-right homosexual? Not that there's anything objectively from outer space wrong with that, but it is interesting.
Far Right, but not homosexual in ideology (or personal orientation).
I suppose my aesthetics could be described as homosexual but if so, that is purely incidental.
As a percentage of people on the planet who can read, in what year did peak Biblical knowledge occur?
(UK). I was commenting the other day in the context of the crossword just how little sense of the bible's structure and narrative my 20+ kids have.
But is it really so different compared to forty years ago, asked my wife, and she had a point. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I reckon maybe ~5pc of kids at the schools I went to were taken to church; I was one of them until I rather awkwardly began to quiet quit age 15.
If you have 20+ kids I consider you a non-central example.
I'm going to go with 2024 for most sensible measures. The loss of general biblical knowledge among ordinary middle class westerners is compensated by all the Chinese and Indians who have learned some random Biblical fact from watching repeats of The Simpsons or something.
Not to mention Christianity is growing pretty rapidly in China and India (both are still small as a percentage, but growing fast), and has become pretty dominant in South Korea.
Not yet; india and china airnt christian strongholds and their populations will collapse and drasticly effect any such stat over 30 years(espieally china with communism). The way the world recovers the birthrate is up in the air, but evolution will play out and urban atheists will boom and bust
The percentage of Indians that are Christian have doubled over the last decade, and in China they've gone from 6% of the population to 8% over the same time period (probably more than that, due to the large underground church movement in China it is hard to get good statistics). So with both those countries aimed at a population crash while Christianity is on the rise, I think you're right on the money.
"The percentage of Indians that are Christian have doubled over the last decade,"
do you have a cite for that? I've tried to find 2021 census data for India but it's not easy, and in any case i'm highly suspicious of that number- my general understanding is that conversion in South Asia is quite rare (outside the far northeastern tribal populations who were converting from animism rather than Hinduism, but they aren't populous enough to appreciably affect the national numbers anyway).
I'm really glad you asked! Because as it turns out, I got that number by just Googling "growth of Christianity in India" and going with the top answer that Google provided without checking where that information came from. Turns out it came from a Christian nonprofit website that doesn't cite it's sources well. Whoops!
Having dug a little deeper, I discovered that the question is a bit vexed. According to Pew, official stats have Christianity at around 2.4% of the population in 2021. However, Pew also notes that this likely an undercount because of India's "Scheduled Castes" system. Under that system, members of historically disadvantaged castes get benefits and some preferential treatment: however, that only applies if they're Hindu. Christians and Muslims do not qualify for Scheduled Caste benefits. This leads Pew to believe that Christians are likely undercounted, because Dalits and other low caste members who report on the official census that they are Christian will lose their benefits.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/09/21/population-growth-and-religious-composition/
This fits in with a Christianity Today article that cites different organizations putting the percent of Christians in India anywhere from 2% to 9%, and that most of the growth in Christianity reported by missionaries is coming from the Dalit caste. They claim that 70-90% of Christians in India are Dalits, and that seems plausible to me. As the "untouchable" class, a Dalit benefits the least from Hinduism and has the most to gain from Christianity's message of equality before God and the inherit worth of all humans, even slaves.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/09/21/population-growth-and-religious-composition/
So thanks again for asking because my initial source was not reliable! Looks like there is either no growth, or a lot of hidden growth. The answer is probably somewhere in between.
Christianity in India also faces some long term issues, because as the Pew data indicates, Indian Christians tend to have lower fertility than other religious groups, and also are more likely to lose religiosity as they become more educated (whereas educated Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs etc. tend to be more likely to hang on to their beliefs and practices).
Thanks for your response and for looking into it! I have a number of responses here- I'm in general quite critical of the perspective that you're putting forward here, although as you say it comes really from the missionaries, not from you, and so no criticism to you personally. It seems to me like more of the self-congratulatory stuff that missionaries in South Asia have been saying for, well, about 200 years now. Every year they think that the masses of South Asia are about to embrace the gospel, and at the end of that time they're about as far away from victory as ever.
1) First of all, the Pew survey (and I should say that Pew is one of the surveying institutions I respect the most, they really are gold-standard even when i dislike their findings) does not indicate that Christianity in India is mostly a Scheduled Caste religion (I prefer the Scheduled Caste term to "Dalit", so i'm going to use that). It says that Christianity is about as Scheduled Caste as the country as a whole, and that Backward Castes are actually *underrepresented*. The people who are really overrepresented among Christians are, as I said, the tribal groups, who are not "at the bottom" of traditional hierarchies so much as they're "outside" traditional Hindu society entirely. (In some cases ethnolinguistically, ethnoracially and religiously as well as socially and culturally).
2) If you really want to find a religion in which Scheduled Castes are overrepresented, it would not be Christianity at all, it would be Buddhism: Buddhists in India are I believe, about 90% scheduled caste. (there are some historically Buddhist groups in places like Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, but those are again very low-population, and most Buddhists in India today are 20th century Scheduled Caste converts). The Buddha himself did not oppose caste in principle, but Buddhism in India was reinvented in the 20th c as a kind of "modernist" religion centered around social justice and liberation from the caste hierarchy.
3) We actually can look at the experience of Islam here, which in its day (and in modern times) has been sold as a religion of equality and human brotherhood, and which was much more successful in South Asia than Christianity ever has been. We can tell by genetic studies that South Asian Muslims were not, in fact, predominantly drawn from Schedule Caste origins. They represented a pretty broad spectrum of the population, who for various reasons were drawn to convert. You can hypothesize that for various reasons that a Scheduled Person would make a rational choice by converting to Islam, but historically that wasn't what happened. In fact we can see this *today*: the beleaguered Hindu population in Pakistan is like 70% Dalit, they face marginalization not just for their caste but for their religion, and they still haven't converted. Because, as surprisingly as this might be to some westerners, people in South Asia today actually tend to believe their religion and to be unwilling to change it for economic or political reasons. (And when they do change it for political reasons, Buddhism rather than Islam or Christianity is the obviously choice, since Buddhism is not culturally 'foreign' in the same sense).
4) Becoming a Christian or a Muslim doesn't actually remove you from the network of caste in the sense that some might think. My grandmother was a Christian (she became a Hindu when she married and then re-Christianized later in life) and I can tell you exactly what caste she was, although it's a little unclear where they fit into the 'hierarchy'.
5) I think the whole thought process here is alien to most people's psychology. Yes, people do often convert to a new religion, but this is most commonly conversions away from animism towards a 'bigger' religion centered around a literate civilization (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.). Most people, once they are within one of these literate and sophisticated religions, tend to actually believe in their gods and to be unwilling to sacrifice what they genuinely believe in in exchange for some social advantage.
6) Finally, I think there's a misunderstanding of Hinduism here- I'm not willing, and neither should you be, to let the philosophers and the Brahmins define Hinduism. I think most Scheduled Caste or Backward Caste Hindus, historically and today, have absolutely seen themselves as the equal of anyone else: rather than convert to a different religion, they simply practice a different form of Hinduism than their social superiors, one centered much more on the "popular" or "folk" aspects of the religion. Hinduism isn't really a single religion, it's much better thought of as two or three. One of them centers around the Vedas and around philosophers' musings on the nature of the cosmos, the other centers around stuff like, as a friend of mine puts it, "dancing around an idol of the tree goddess, then sacrificing a goat to her and eating it" (or as I'd describe it, making a sacrifice to the smallpox goddess when your child is sick and you want them to recover from smallpox). That kind of more animistic, polytheistic religion is almost a separate religion from the religion of the Vedas, the Brahmins and the philosophers, and that's much more the popular or folk Hinduism that is going to appeal to a historically low caste person (and I should say, as someone with both Hindu and Christian ancestry whose religious beliefs have fluctuated over the years, although I've never had any sympathy for atheism, agnosticism or deism, that's also the side of the religion that appeals much more to me).
Hinduism is a big religion, and one that puts less emphasis on orthodoxy than Islam or Christianity (though the importance of orthodoxy is still not zero). C. S. Lewis described it as the religion that makes a place for both the celibate ascetic and the temple prostitute, and while he was saying that as a criticism, I think it works as description too.
>First of all, the Pew survey (and I should say that Pew is one of the surveying institutions I respect the most, they really are gold-standard even when i dislike their findings) does not indicate that Christianity in India is mostly a Scheduled Caste religion
Yes, according to official statistics: but Pew also points out that Scheduled Castes who report that they are Christian or Muslim on the official census forms lose their Scheduled Caste benefits. So Christian mission organizations reporting huge growth of Christianity among Dalits and that growth not showing up on the official census is not in conflict at all. As Pew acknowledges, Christianity is very likely to be undercounted among the Scheduled Castes in the official census statistics because of that economic incentive to hide conversion.
My guess is 1950. Europe and the Americas were still very Christian while Moslems and Asians were much less literate.
Considering the number of Christians is growing and the percentage of humanity that is Christian is holding steady, I’d say right now.
But most literate people in the West were once Christian. The US was the most literate country in the world in 1830 because of the Christian movement to educate everyone to read the Bible. I'd guess the percentage of literate people who are Christian in the West is far down from a couple hundred years ago.
I think the peak must have been at least a century ago and the trick is comparing the number of Christians to literate Chinese and Indians in the same period who weren't Christians.
I suppose we could also debate how many illiterate Catholics centuries ago had Biblical knowledge, but I think they probably had a decent amount if they went to church.
>I'd guess the percentage of literate people who are Christian in the West is far down from a couple hundred years ago.
Yes, but even those non-Christian Western literates have some biblical knowledge, because a lot of them are ex-Christians and the rest live in a society built by Christians where some biblical knowledge is just in the water supply, so to speak.
Well, the IDF is moving into Southern Lebanon and I’m going to admit, I have zero idea what’s going to happen next.
Launching a major offensive one month before the US election is an interesting choice; I don’t know what it means. I hope I live long enough to read the insider accounts someday.
Today I stared seriously wondering exactly what number and capacity of nuclear weapons Israel has. If anybody knows of a reasonably accurate source for that, I am interested.
If I had to speculate, I would guess that their arsenal is mostly tactical fission devices in the ~45kT range. While they certainly have the technological capacity to produce thermonuclear designs (helped by lots of "leaked" info from the US - *cough, cough*) I doubt they would have made many, it's very expensive to build and maintain. But maybe a dozen in the 150Kt range if so. Pure speculation.
It suddenly seems important to know.
From circa 2000:
"It is quite difficult to develop gas fusion boosting technology like that used in U.S. weapons ... Although radiation implosion weapons could be developed without testing, they would tend to be large and heavy and would perhaps be incompatible with Israel's available delivery systems.
...
Bomb components made of plutonium, lithium-6 deuteride, and beryllium are fabricated in level 5 of Machon 2. They are transported by convoys of unmarked cars to the warhead assembly facility, operated by Rafael north of Haifa.
[Seymor] Hersh reports (without any stated source) that Israel has developed an extensive array of tactical nuclear weapons: efficient compact boosted fission bombs, neutron bombs (allegedly numbering in the hundreds by the mid-eighties), nuclear artillery shells, and nuclear mines. With an arsenal that is quite possibly in excess of 100 weapons it is likely that some of the nuclear materials would be applied tactical weapons. Boosted bombs are doubtful, as are neutron bombs, due to problems with development in the absence of a significant testing program. Neutron bombs also require very large amounts of tritium (20-30 g per weapon) which would impact the production of plutonium quite seriously (each gram of tritium displaces 80 grams of plutonium production). Artillery shells are also doubtful due to their wastefulness in plutonium. Tactical weapons are probably aircraft or missile delivered, or are pre-emplaced mines.
Burrows and Windrem claim (without indicating a source) that Israel has produced 300 warheads, including those that have since been dismantled. They place the current arsenal at about 200 weapons. "
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq7-3.html#Israel
>Killing 90% of current Hamas members (and twice as many civilians)
These numbers are not a given.
I am by no means saying that Israel has a certain path to victory by doing things the way they are doing them. I am saying that making deals with Hamas or Hezbollah is the certain path to defeat for Israel.
I doubt the election has much to do with it, but if so, it's more that the Democrats would be hesitant to loudly call them out on the attack since Israel is broadly popular with the independent middle. If this happened during the primaries (assuming the Democrats had one) it would be much more likely that Biden would have told them not to or even instituted repercussions.
I think it was more that the pager/radio scheme was about to be found out and they had to play that card now, and that they would likely never have a better opportunity to invade than right after crippling their enemy.
> it would be much more likely that Biden would have told them not to
Biden *has* been telling them not to the whole time. They just won't listen.
There's various levels of "telling them not to" that would have different levels of effect. It's outside the Overton Window, but the US government could even do things like cut off aid or military exports to Israel, or even enact sanctions.
Even something like "we will not sell you rockets for the Iron Dome until you X" would go farther than what Biden's done so far. He's trying to straddle the position between what the far left of his own base wants, and what the nation as a whole wants. It's not that he doesn't have options or that those darn Israelis just don't listen, it's that they know he isn't serious so long as they get the material and diplomatic support they need.
Framing this around US elections is interesting when I don't think it has anything to do with them. Rather, Israel has been more aggressive towards Hezbollah because they have detected weakness from Iran in its capability and/or willingness to escalate, giving Israel a freer hand to degrade Iran's proxies.
It's interesting how the recent hypothetical cease fire with Hezbollah had been reported on, where Israel supposedly agreed to one in principle, then reneging to the confusion and embarrassment of the Biden administration. In any case, I think Israel is doing the right thing pressing the issue now rather than leaving intact a force with a stated goal of killing every Israeli with their considerable military assets.
Biden's administration is perhaps the one guilty of making a political calculation in how they are treating the situation, though their spinelessness is now a well entrenched pattern beyond this theater.
It does have a link with US elections: I think Israel is militarily dependent on US weapons (especially bombs and shells). While a freshly-elected Democratic administration might make concessions to their left wing and pressure Israel, Biden and Harris would lose (or so they believe) it they tried it before the elections.
There could also be internal political calculations. Netanyahu needs to stay in power and going on the offensive (and winning) is a good way to gain support. He can also rightfully claim to defend the many people displaced from the north of Israel by Hezbollah rockets (which has been occurring for nearly a year and was criticized for). And finally, since Israel was already at war, the immediate costs and downsides of doing this were much lower.
Framed like this, it almost shouldn’t have been a surprise…
There is little practical difference between R and D on weapons. AFAIK the only thing Israel is not getting from Biden are 2000lb bombs. With Kamala, her rhetoric may be more ambiguous so as to placate the very sad anti-Israel college campus protestors who, unfortunately, are allowed to vote -- though I doubt her policy will diverge meaningfully from Biden's.
Agreed on the various internal political calculations for Bibi in Israel playing a role, of course. And here is some wisdom from Jared Kusnner on the matter:
https://x.com/jaredkushner/status/1840181053572690060
> And here is some wisdom from Jared Kusnner on the matter:
It sure is surreal to see a pro-Trump person writing about "dynamic magnets for talent and investment".
I don't see this affecting the US election much either way; Americans don't vote based on their own foreign policy, let alone another country's, and very few American voters are likely to even notice the distinction between ground raids against Hezbollah and air war against Hezbollah/ground raids against Hamas (and the ones who do notice are very highly informed voters, which are basically never swing voters).
There was a point early in the Gaza war when Israel could have showed restraint and protected their reputation. That point is long past and there's no reason they need to care what the US thinks now. Why should they care if they affect this US election? Both current parties are and always were on their side. If that changes in the future it won't be over invading Lebanon today.
>There was a point early in the Gaza war when Israel could have showed restraint and protected their reputation.
Seems like they've shown an enormous amount of restraint, particularly early on. Remember how they delayed the invasion by weeks to allow civilians to evacuate? Delaying an invasion gives your enemy time to prepare, and informing civilians exactly where the war zones are going to be informs the enemy exactly where you are going. They gave up an enormous amount of military advantage in order to protect civilians. Yet, the critics of the world were not satisfied. It seems the only restraint they would have been satisfied with is no war at all.
Protect their reputation? They are trying to protect their country. Reputation is something you worry about after you get a $1 trillion military and considerable strategic depth. This is the huge flaw in how many are looking at this situation. Israel isn't doing this for jollies; on October 6th 2023, they were not bombing Gaza or Beirut.
Additionally, the sort of reputation that actually matters in the mideast is the ability to project force. Sending Nasrallah a bouquet of flowers instead of 80 tons of bombs wasn't going to end the existential threat Israel faces.
I am with you
> Both current parties are and always were on their side.
While this is roughly true, the left wing of the democrats has decided that Israel is an evil colonial power. On the republican side, you would have to go very far right to find that opposition. Likely the KKK does not like Israel any better than the college protesters do, but unlike the latter the KKK is not a relevant voting base.
Trump is under less pressure from his base to prevent Israel from bombing the shit out of Gaza. It was him who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, cementing Israel's claim to it despite no solution for the middle east conflict in sight.
On the other hand, the Trump administration was also a bit non-interventionist and erratic, which is probably not what Israel wants in an ally.
Still, this might be a deliberately timed move by Bibi to help Trump win the presidency by discouraging the left from voting.
Israel isn't in the grave and therefore should care about its reputation. Just like the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no war for Israel to win in Gaza. A retaliation was necessary, of what size I don't know, but they did go too far. IMO. No reason to argue the point beyond that. I'm no military expert.
You cannot make a deal with someone whose explicit goal is to exterminate you. Hamas plays brilliantly on the empathy of the western population, and is more than willing to see the people they represent used as cannon fodder. The blame for the body count should be laid at their feet, not Israels. Iraq and Afghanistan are not good comparisons, imo. Neither of those wars were existential for the USA. The stakes are very different.
I don't think that Israel can defeat Hamas with air strikes and limited ground operations any more than the Allies could have defeated Nazi Germany through air strikes and taking German cities for a few weeks before retreating again.
Killing 90% of current Hamas members (and twice as many civilians) is not very helpful because in five years, all the youths who are 13 today will be 18 and can fill their ranks again. Besides turning Gaza into a parking lot (which would be a terrible idea for moral and strategic reasons), the only way you defeat Hamas is by removing them from power through occupation. (They might still hang on as a terror organisation, but no longer be in charge of a polity.)
Gaza is not Afghanistan, the US could probably occupy it without too much trouble.
>Besides turning Gaza into a parking lot (which would be a terrible idea for moral and strategic reasons), the only way you defeat Hamas is by removing them from power through occupation
You are probably right. The only issue is "by whom?" It can't be Israel. It can't be the US.
If a Democratic congress in DC were to somehow pass a law making abortion legal for the first trimester nationwide, would that face a serious constitutional challenge or is it obviously constitutional for congress to make such a law?
Trump made a statement yesterday indicating he would not veto such a bill. If you can ignore the ALLCAPS, he seems to be making a reasonable and useful, constructive statement here.:
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1841295548109955091
Alito's opinion explicitly stated that the issue should become a legislative one, and he did not exclude Federal legislation, so I don't think there is a constitutional issue in Congress passing such a law. There is no doubt it would be challenged by certain States, but I am not a lawyer so I don't know on what grounds. There could be a States Rights issue, but the SC would have to do some fancy footwork to get around the the text of Alito's opinion.
It'd certainly face a legal challenges no matter what, but I don't know how serious I'd consider them. The commerce clause is a pretty wide-open door, historically speaking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn - Growing wheat on your own land for your own consumption which will never enter the market is nevertheless within the scope of the commerce clause because it affects the amount of wheat you'd otherwise buy on the (interstate) open market.
So law saying that states can't ban/criminalize interstate sale of FDA approved abortion drugs like the kind suggested by quiet_NaN seems like it'd be a shoe-in, and given how many people post-Roe are required to travel interstate to receive abortions it seems like broader abortion legislation would have a firm foundation as well.
Such a law would have to be based on the Commerce Clause, which has been interpreted broadly, but not infinitely so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Lopez
And such a law would annul state criminal laws, an area where state authority is broadest. So, it certainly isn’t obviously constitutional.
The regulation of sales of abortion drugs over state lines would be one of the less insane examples of interstate commerce.
Not a lawyer but I read quite a bit of US pro-life literature. My understanding is Dobbs was quite a thin overturning of Roe, on the basis that the constitution is silent on abortion. So Dobbs not only returns the matter to the states, but to congress too. Only possible challenge would be that the 14th amendment protects foetal persons in utero. John Finnis makes a strong case for that but it's a generation or more away from SCOTUS.
Wouldn't it contradict the tenth amendment? If something isn't clearly constitutionally mentioned or affects interstate commerce then by default the federal government can't pass laws on it and it's up to states, no?
Many would say yes, but that ship sailed a LONG time ago. SCOTUS seems intent on ignoring that amendment for any practical considerations. They don't know how to implement it, so they just pretend it doesn't exist.
Yeah, under a straightforward reading of the Constitution, 95% of what is done is unconstitutional but it would be chaos to enforce that.
I'd be interested in reading an article to that effect.
Such a law would be neither clearly constitutional or unconstitutional. For a moderate length discussion check out https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10787
Why isn't Google/DeepMind way ahead on AI? Google has ~20x the market cap of OAI, let alone Anthropic, plus access to TPUs with different supply chain bottlenecks from everyone else. They should be able to find enough money under the couch cushions to do 10x OAI's biggest training run. What holds them back?
Since all LLM products seem to have advanced to a similar overall level, it may be that a GPT-5 level product is significantly harder than the jump from 3 to 4 or possibly impossible. That Google caught up to OAI seems accurate, despite starting later. That seems to me an endorsement of Google's capabilities. If OAI releases GPT-5 significantly before Google releases a product of a similar level, I would be surprised. Google beating OAI to a better product of approximately GPT-5's expected level would not surprise me.
My answer would be they are a public company so shareholder value is a big consideration when contemplating a massive loss leader. Reporting a significant reduction in EPS due to CapEx might be considered a violation of their fiduciary duty by some shareholders. Also their current predicament with the DOJ might counsel against such a move.
I touch on this in a somewhat oblique way here..
https://bcivil.substack.com/p/revisiting-the-tale-of-the-red-shoes
All the big LLMs were built in a few months by throwing lots of data at a fairly standard transformer architecture, with various tweaks. There are now more than a dozen first and second rank models (several Chinese) that can beat most humans in standardized tests. So maybe building a reasonable LLM just isn't that difficult. However, unlike the contenders, Google also has systems for protein folding (which requires RL on lots of simulated runs), robot interaction, and neuro-symbolic approaches that can solve mathematical problems. Their AI portfolio looks more solid to me than any LLM competitor's. OpenAI instead slaps a draffy brute force search onto their LLM and calls it o1, and everyone is astounded.
Google's problem isn't what they have. It's that they have a massive cash cow and have to try to turn what they have into AI products in the shade of that cow. A common way to solve this problem is to put the new thing into a separate entity where it isn't suffocated by the belches of the cow. I was very surprised that they chose to bring DeepMind in-house, instead.
Same reason Sears didn't get way ahead on ecommerce. Giant, sclerotic company that fell victim to its own internal inertia. Easy pickings for a small, agile startup.
Internal politics? The barons of search feuding with the upstart knights of AI?
What held back the rich railways from being the first in the airplane industry? Either way it was the transportation industry, but big companies have a status quo bias. Disruption is for upstarts.
> The decay of Google search
While Google search might have fallen prey to enshittification for us plebs, is it not plausible that right now Google search is actually better than ever at making Google money, which is its actual objective? Showing me ads that third parties paid for, rather than the things I actually wanted to see, sucks for me, but does it suck for Sergei and Larry?
People are leaving, which will eventually start sucking for the company, but inertia is a powerful force, so I guess there's a large opportunity window for Sergei and Larry to cash their profits and put them somewhere safe. (Capitalist incentives are not aligned with long-term utility maximalization, exhibit #[a random large number].)
What do you think the result would be if next year Scott had a short fiction contest instead of a book review contest? Interesting, great, disaster? I'm not saying he would even consider it---I have no idea. But he seemed to think that we might be book reviewed out and the competitive collaboration contest he had before it didn't go great.
Perhaps the hardest part about a fiction contest would be ranking the finalists. Nobody wants to read through a bunch of bad or even mediocre fiction. If reviewers were willing to rank something as weak after only a paragraph or two, perhaps it could work, although I get the feeling most readers of this site who rate reviews are too conscientious to do that, even if it's the appropriate way to screen fiction.
Does short fiction need a platform like this one? Might this site discover fiction of high quality that would otherwise find no readership? That strikes me as the key question. Most short fiction appears places where only other wannabe writers of short fiction will read it.
I'd guess most of the submission here would be sci-fi or fantasy, stuff I am generally no fan of although I might be interested in reading it if it appeared here.
On a scale of 1-10 how do you rank this idea?
People around here don't even like writing reviews of fiction, I doubt the contest would be popular on both the submission and reader ends of the equation.
I don't think the short stories would be as good as the reviews. I think a lot of people here could come up with interesting concepts for a story, but not that many have the kind of interest in other minds that allows someone to richly imagine another person's thoughts and feelings, and the writerly skills to convey sharply what they are imagining.
Why is imagining another persons thoughts inherently better than good ideas?
It's not. I didn't mean it was. I meant it was something you usually need, in addition to a good story idea, to produce a story that captures the reader's attention. A lot of the fun of reading fiction is taking a ride on other minds.
I take it you’re not a fan of classic sci fi, especially Issac Asimov.
Butting in again on the conversation, I like Asimov (although not the Foundation series, for some reason - never could get into those). His short stories are indeed mostly idea, and they work very well as short stories when, as you have pointed out, there isn't much space to do more than a brief character sketch (although it is still important for the narrative that the character makes sense within their story, and that does require some emulation of mind, even if not very much). But anyway - his long stories have plenty of character in. I don't remember much about the robot murder mysteries he wrote, including whodunnit*, but I remember R Daneel Olivaw :)
* Not an Asimov problem, I was also mystified by every Agatha Christie twice over ;)
I love Foundation, a full length novel, even though the characters are flat because it's really about how empires fall over long periods of time and his interesting idea of psychohistory.
You’re right, I didn’t like Asimov. Lots of people do, and I tried several, and now cannot remember a thing about them — just the feeling of hitting a brick wall of intense boredom. I read lots of Heinlein as a kid, books that I believe were what’s now called “young adult” novels, in fact I reread them so many times I still remember parts by heart. They were basically just good, exciting stories that just happened to be set on space ships and other planets. Also really liked Childhood’s End, which I think counts as a classic. Could not stand the Dune books. Like Gibson’s books a lot, and have read all of them.
I think what does not work for me is using a novel as a vehicle for speculating about science or society. I believe Asimov wrote what’s called hard sci-fi. And Dune seemed to be more speculating about society — building an alternative world, one shaped by the environment — the desert, worms, etc. It’s not that I don’t like science. Math and physics were my favorite school courses as a teen & these days I happily read nonfiction books about fractals and chaos, cosmology, machine learning etc. But I dislike fiction that’s a vehicle for speculating about stuff. When I read fiction I want to take a ride on somebody else’s thoughts, theories, hopes & fears, and hear what steps they take and how it all works out.
>I think what does not work for me is using a novel as a vehicle for speculating about science or society.
See this is what I think is great about science fiction. It's generally the best genre suited to exploring ideas. It always annoys me when I see some high concept idea that is really just character drama. I wonder what was even the point of making it science fiction in the first place.
Because good story ideas are cheap. Anyone can have them and many do. Actually telling a story someone wants to read requires characterisation, because mostly what readers respond to is good characters. They care about the characters, they want to know what happens to them, they like seeing how their favourite character responds to challenges. Getting good characterisation into a page requires a decent emulation of the character in question, hence richly imagining another person's thoughts and feelings (I assume - I am not Eremolalos, please do correct me if I'm misinterpreting you!).
And yes, the challenges faced by the character are required, and are indeed ideas. A good character on their own also isn't enough, but it's far closer to enough than a plethora of fun concepts.
I just disagree with this. Good ideas are not “cheap”. They’re interesting. And most characters are not that interesting. Oh wow, you had abusive parents and that makes you sad. How insightful.
I think the format also matters a great deal. A couple thousands words is not much to work with psychologically. I’m not saying it can’t be done but generally, you need more to really flesh out a character. But that same length is perfect for expressing an idea. That’s science fiction’s but bread and butter because it’s the perfect length to think through an idea on its own. Any more than that and you generally need something else to sustain people’s attention.
That's not a character, that's a concept. A character is someone with a convincing internal life, and that needs simulation. And yes, good ideas are cheap and common. I've done workshops with kids and generated loads. Actually making something of them, whether that's a short story or an epic, that's the hard bit.
It’s hard because writing is hard. But when someone does have an interesting idea and actually does a decent job with it, that’s something exciting. Fictional characters generally fit in to a few slots and aren’t really that interesting on their own. Sure you root for them, but it’s easy to root for a characters. Real people are so much more fascinating because their complexity and contradictions are so vast. Only the best of writers can come anywhere close to that and most who try just end up with stereotypes. Not that it discredits the work, but I don’t think it’s usually enough on its own.
On a 1-10 scale, I'd rate this idea a 2. I really hope it does not happen.
For comparison, I rate this year's book review contest a 5 and last year's a 7. I think the book reviews could be an 8 if there were fewer entries.
50 mid tier scifi storys winning out 3 gems of a different genre
Good idea. Scott would still get a summer break and it would keep the competition fresh. Compromise: non-existant book reviews
Mr Dave (or may I call you Martian?), non-existent book reviews are an excellent idea. Borges would be proud.
A microfiction contest would be fun, ain’t nobody got time to read novellas.
2000 words is about a ten minute read. That doesn’t take up much time.
That does sound fun. How micro are you thinking?
Three words.
I'd prefer a little more elbow room. 100 words, maybe.
Short stories. Anyone got time for that? What should be the word min and max?
No min, 2000 word max (2000 words is about 8 published paperback pages).
This sounds manageable.
THE END
I'm interested in meeting people in Santa Barbara, CA. There are meetups in LA, but it's a 3-4 hour driving investment. Alternatively, I am interested in 1-1 virtual meetings where I can practice having rationalist-style discussions. I spend a fair amount of time reading rationalist-adjacent material, but when engaging in discussion I feel inadequate.
I tried gifting Lars Doucet's LVT book to an interested activist friend, who claimed it was unreadable because Helvetica font is a huge turn-off. Glad to see the project's still going strong. Encouraging the Doing of Things in the world of atoms is always valuable.
Helvetica??? That's like being allergic to water.
AND I looked at a sample page on Amazon, and ran it by a friend of mine who is a very experienced graphic artist, and we don't think it is Helvetica. Looks more like Mundo Serif Regular. Maybe the type face in the digital version is different....
If I wrote a story that took place in a fictional country/world with a medieval aesthetic, but contained no magic, dragons, elves, etc., in which genre am I writing?
* I don't want to call it fantasy, because there's nothing fantastical in the story.
* It *would* be historical fiction if it occurred in a real place.
* It *could* be alternate history, but not necessarily, since it might be a totally fictional world with no relation to the real timeline.
So what is it? (Did I write literary fiction? Ew.)
Bonus question: Is Pokemon science fiction?
I'm told (by CS Lewis) that all the old fiction had fantastical elements; they were just part of a story. We moderns like our fiction with fantasy to have the fantasy itself be the (or a) main character. Same for SF. Those distinctions didn't exist once. I wonder how that changes the way to interpret your book.
OTOH, I'm also describing magical realism, defined as straddling the categories of fiction and fantasy, and yet living in its own category.
Didn't the magic realism authors pull a fast one and somehow get it shelved under Literary? I'm thinking of Salman Rushdie.
Fantasy or General Fiction, I'd guess.
I'd say the big questions are, "in which section of a bookstore would an average customer looking for your book expect to find it?" and "in which section of a bookstore would an average browser who stumbles across your book be most likely to buy it?" And if this isn't your first book, you might find that anything you write under the same name has a tendency to get filed under whatever genre your previous books were in.
But your description isn't complete enough. You could still fit it into Romance or Mystery or Thriller or Horror or Erotica, depending on what happens in the book. And if you eschew any of those sorts of gimmicks, and compensate for the fictional world with some good but pretentious writing, you could still pull off Literary. But in my limited experience Literary tends to be shelved along with General Fiction, which can include stuff like "Shogun" and "Clan of the Cave Bear" and Aubrey-Maturin.
Is it really useful to think of traditional bookstore layouts, when most books (especially those without previous history) are sold via Amazon? In the Literature & Fiction category of their Kindle store there are many categories but little overlap with traditional ones. Speculative, or Action & Adventure, or possibly Women's, or Dark, might fit the work described.
Pokemon, like Star Wars, is fantasy. (Though, for a great treatment of science-ifying Pokemon, the fanfiction "Pokemon: The Origin of Species" by DaystarEld is great.)
I find the setting's teleportation technology more interesting than the Pokemon themselves.
Is it an adventure? A political thriller? A romance? Any of those could have a ‘medieval’ modifier. If it’s not in a ‘normal’ genre, ignoring the setting, then maybe it is literary fiction.
Guy Gavriel Kay has written many books which are basically historical fiction with different names and a few elves or prophecies to keep the nerds engaged.
I really like his Lions of Al-Rassan, although it doesn't even have elves or prophecies (or djinn, as would be more appropriate for the book).
“Medieval aesthetic” seems like the key word here. If you were writing historical fiction, you would strive to emulate real medieval cultures by focusing your research on one real place, even if the story doesn’t focus on a real event. But as we know fantasy has its own medieval aesthetic, which is not historically accurate. If you mimic those fantasy tropes, I think it’s fantasy.
Thinly-veiled historical fiction is a subgenre of fantasy. Just slap some token supernatural elements on it so you can sell it as "fantasy" and get more money.
I hope I don't sense derision in this comment. I prefer thinly veiled historical fiction over all of the Tolkien lite crap that continues to get pumped out by the publishing industry
You know what? It's all going to be marketed as the William Shakespeare Expanded Universe.
Could always call it "Medieval fiction". "Fantasy" is probably still the right call, though, that's the audience who are going to read medieval fiction. (The first Game of Thrones book has very little magic, like, one instance at the very end.)
Pokemon is fantasy. I mean you just said dragons are fantasy, and what is a Rattata if not a dragon.
I wouldn't call it a fantasy. Fantasy readers expect magic of some sort, and might well be disappointed if they don't get it.
> Bonus question: Is Pokemon science fiction?
It's speculative fiction, but I'd say it doesn't follow the tropes of science fiction or fantasy well enough to be either of those in particular.
I think the case could be made that Pokemon is about the effects of teleportation technology on a fictional Japanese-ish society.
David Friedman has written a couple of books like this.
I think he called them "fantasy without magic," but I may be misremembering.
He sometimes posts here, so if we're lucky he'll stop by to answer the question himself.
Personally, I would lean toward calling the story "fantasy" if it felt very much like fantasy, with brave heroes and great battles and all that, despite the lack of anything supernatural. On the other hand, if the story felt like rigorous historical fiction despite being in a fictional place, I'd probably call it something like "alternate-world historical fiction."
Or a historical novel with invented history and geography. No magic, no elves or dwarves. And I think I have more than a medieval aesthetic — my oatcakes are out of Froissart (and experiment). I did stretch the trebuchet range a little in one scene.
I have only written one, _Harald_. My other two novels, _Salamander_ and _Brothers_, have magic, although it is very scientific magic.
My favorite example of the genre is _Paladin_ by C.J. Cherryh, who is a much better novelist than I am.
This is probably the correct answer. If you were tagging it with multiple tags rather than restricted to picking a single genre, I'd say use both "fantasy" and "alternate world historical fiction".
Ultimately, it depends on your intended audience (there's a close relation between how a work feels and the intended audience). There's a fine line between techno-thriller fiction and science fiction; Tom Clancy gets put in fiction and Neil Stephenson in Science Fiction because that's where they were most likely to be seen by their audience.
So, I'm trying to figure out how things are going in the Ukraine war and why.
Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from losing the war, but not enough to win decisively. We could be doing vastly more. The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to.
But what I don't understand is whether this very gradualist policy is by some sort of deliberate choice made by western decision makers, or things are just working out that way. Was there a meeting in which the gray heads of the west chose to aim for a draw? Or did we end up with the current policy through some combination of fear of provoking the Russians, industrial constraints, domestic political priorities and general laziness?
Thoughts, anyone?
The real reason is political. The more aid you give to Ukraine, the more the other party can say "They've given away $BIGNUM to Ukraine, who isn't even an ally, and for what? Put us in power and we can solve it!" So when the appropriation bills go around, politicians are wary of spending too much because they know it will be used as a weapon against them. Yet Ukraine's cause is somewhat popular, so its better to give some aid then no aid at all. So you have this half-measure business. All part and parcel to living in a republic, it's difficult to commit wholeheartedly to a foreign conflict unless we were attacked directly: a Pearl Harbor or 9-11 changes the political calculus, now complaining about money spent on the war is undermining your nation and unpatriotic, and loses you elections. But when it's far away and no Americans have been killed, the more you spend the more your opponent can attack you for it.
You are correct that the West is drip-feeding Ukraine just enough munitions to maintain the stalemate. And "the West" in this context basically means the United States; Western Europe can't realistically provide enough military assistance to change the course of this war unless the US takes the lead.
I'm pretty sure the reason the US is doing this, is that the US national security apparatus genuinely doesn't want to see either side win this war. Which isn't to say that Joe Biden doesn't want Ukraine to win, but Biden is basically Sleepy Jim Hacker in this story; he can vaguely wave his hand and say "make it so", but it won't actually happen unless the Humphrey Applebys want it to. And they don't.
They don't want Russia to win, because that would be a victory for tyranny for aggression, and it would make the United States Government look bad, and because it would substantially increase the probability of future wars - by Russia, or by others looking to profit from Russia's example (e.g. China w/re Taiwan).
And they don't want Ukraine to win, because a Ukrainian victory would mean the de facto end of Russia as a Great Power. Which would be a large and unpredictable change in the geopolitical order of the world. The Putin administration might collapse, leading to civil war in a state with nuclear weapons. Putin might throw a nuclear temper tantrum himself, to try and claim some sort of "victory" in Ukraine (glassified counts as deNazified, right?). Russia could become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which would seriously complicate our efforts to contain China. And Russia not being a Great Power, means that all the people who built their careers as Russia Hands, will need to find honest work. Change is scary.
A stalemate with one or two hundred thousand people dying every year, is just the status quo. The status quo isn't scary, so let's do that. OK, it's unsustainable in the long run; eventually Russia will manage a win. They just have to get lucky once, and/or outlast us. But if nobody has a better plan, that doesn't involve a scary Russian victory or a scary Ukrainian victory, let's at least do the stalemate thing *this* year and hope for a miracle.
Europe is not particularly good at producing reams and reams of military material and can't ramp up the production capabilities due to sclerosis and gridlock at the EU level (ie. countries that are skeptical of further integration opposing taking EU-wide debt to do it, individual countries either playing pass the buck of being too small/poor to make a meaningful difference on their own). US, being the global hegemon, has multiple theaters of operation to watch with the Pacific and Middle Eastern ones being arguably more important to US currently than the European one.
> Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from losing the war
I very much agree with this assessment, especially after its came out the russia ammo stock piles were victims of corruption and fairly explody; given americas well stocked air strike power.
>The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to.
Ukraine's problem is not so much equipment disadvantages but rather the fact that it is a country of 35M people and a fighting a country of 145M people, and a higher per capita GDP. If the US is going to antagonize Russia by going all-in to support Ukraine, it needs to be very sure that Ukraine will win. But that is not the case.
I'm as in the dark as anyone else on the reasons, but the result seems to be a scheme to fight to the last Ukrainian and then wash hands. If so, then this has been very successful - for comparative pennies, the US and Europe have effectively defanged Russia and eliminated their massive stockpiles of old Soviet equipment. Pity the poor bloody Ukrainians, though.
The US/Europe are only able to "fight to the last Ukrainian" to the extent that Ukrainians themselves are willing to do so. To the extent we should pity the Ukrainians, its for the suffering Russia is imposing on them, not for the West somehow tricking them into having a will to fight back by providing them with arms - it's pretty clear they already had the will to resist in spades. Remember the mass mobilization to make molotov cocktails that this whole thing kicked off with?
What else are they going to do, roll over and let the Russians occupy them? They have no option but to resist, and good for every country that has helped then in any way. We're still allowed to complain when the help seems precisely calibrated to keep them in standstill, though.
As much as I think that there is a good degree of self-interest in NATO country behavior, I don't think that "the help seems precisely calibrated to keep them in standstill" is true.
I think it is more likely that the tactical environment favors defense, so the fortified fronts move only slowly and with massive loss of life. If NATO gave Ukraine 50% more materiel, they would not kick out Russia within a few months, nor would Putin take Ukraine if he had 50% more materiel than he does have.
For one thing, predicting how military operations go is hard. "Give Ukraine enough tanks to resist Russia's advance, but not enough for them to defeat them" seems kinda hard.
> "Give Ukraine enough tanks to resist Russia's advance, but not enough for them to defeat them" seems kinda hard.
For example, right now Ukraine cannot take back its own territory, but can take over some territory of Russia, so from the perspective of someone who would want to keep the status quo, they have simultaneously too little *and* too much power.
Hence "seems". While O agree that this war has proven to be attritional and defensive, and that more aid wouldn't necessarily have allowed the Ukrainians to kick the Russians out in one go, the sight of them having to go cap on hand to beg for every little thing is pitiable. And then they get second-hand stuff slated for decommissioning in the provider country, or else lash-ups like franken-SAM. It's a drip-feed, the bare minimum of aid needed to keep the war effort from collapsing entirely. Which makes it seem calculated.
One theory I've heard is that the West doesn't really want to defeat and dismember Russia as it may become a useful ally in a future fight against China and some kind of Muslim or Turkic bloc in Asia. Think Nixon's China strategy in reverse. So now the US controls the conflict by giving the right amount of weapons to Ukraine and prohibiting strikes into Russia to make sure that Russia neither wins and occupies Ukraine nor gets completely beaten.
This kind of explains the facts we've seen over these 2.5 years even though it presupposes an impressive level of competence and long-term thinking on part of the politicians in the US.
> This kind of explains the facts we've seen over these 2.5 years even though it presupposes an impressive level of competence and long-term thinking on part of the politicians in the US.
I don't think that this theory holds much water. You might as well blame clandestine actors (probably the Jews) of influencing the weapon production of Germany and France in world war one so that they would come precisely to a stallmate.
Ukraine will never occupy Russia. At worst, it will bomb Moscow badly enough that Putin drops a nuke on Kiev, which everyone would like to avoid.
Also, if the US wanted Russia as a future ally, would it make sense to make them deplete decades worth of weapon stockpiles and manpower in Ukraine?
The vibe I get from Mearsheimer is that Ukraine is winding down and the primary goal is to extend the conflict to Nov 5th and then try to reach a peace agreement with Russia.
The core driver here is skilled Ukranian military personnel. Ukraine might have more raw manpower it could recruit but it's running low on skilled military personnel and it's not able to train new soldiers to keep pace with military demands. Factually, this I'm unsure about.
What confuses me is the idea that the US could be doing vastly more. America's primary weapon early on was sanctions but those haven't been super effective. In terms of military aid, the issue seems to be that this is trench/artillery warfare and the Russians can just ship out a lot more shells than the US can. You mentioned tanks below but that doesn't sound like the equipment they need.
As for grand strategy...I doubt there's one. I haven't followed closely but my vibe has been that the US genuinely thought that sanctions would be devastating and since then they've been very happy to run it by committee in this gradualist way. I mean, no one on the committee is really going to object to spending billions on more missiles and stuff to send to Ukraine but once you talk about serious commitments or drawing down key stockpiles, various committee members will push back and that will end that proposal.
I dunno, the current thing seems to be doing about as much as the US can without doing something difficult and, frankly, the Ukraine just isn't that important to the US. Don't get me wrong, the only thing I love more that sending Ukranians bullets to shoot at Russians is sending Soviets bullets to shoot at Nazis but if the Ukranian war ends in defeat and Ukranine split in two, no one in Wyoming or SF or Miami will be materially affected in the slightest.
Mearsheimer believes that the Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia and that Putin would escalate all the way to nukes if it comes to that. Maybe that opinion is shared in the State Department.
For some reason the view that the US could unleash the wrath of god on Russia but chooses not to for some 4D chess reasons is really prevalent here on ACX. It represents a rather sad tendency to avoid the most straightforward analysis. The US/NATO is both limited in the amount of relevant material it sends, and the material is not a decisive factor in the outcome of the war.
First, understand that the arms industry is a sclerotic remnant of decades of counterinsurgency operations. Any given US weapons system is generally produced in small quantities by a single bespoke factory. Tomahawks (cruise missiles) are only built to the tune of a few hundred per year. The US was only producing about 10,000 155mm howitzer shells per month before the war, at a single factory in Scranton. Current numbers are at 30,000 per month, but for comparison the Russians fire somewhere in the 3-4 million range of 152mm shells per year, and that was before they bought more from North Korea. There is a single factory in the US that produces military black powder in Louisiana, and it partially exploded a few years ago. There was a single factory in Ukraine that produced all the TNT used by the US, but that has now been replaced by a single factory in Poland. There is a single factory in Watervliet, outside Albany, that forges barrels for artillery and tanks.
You get the idea. The arms contractors in the US have mostly been consolidated to the point that a single manufacturer produces any given product. This is a problem as a single point of failure can cripple military production, and the lack of competition stifles efficiency. I don't know the specifics for all of Europe, but suffice to say their contributions as a continent are somewhat equivalent to the US. The US/NATO could produce more, but it would cost billions to open new factories that might not even be operable before the war ends. Obviously this isn't very attractive for investors.
Second, the primary asset in the Ukraine war is manpower. For various reasons I won't go into here, this war is generally much more static and difficult for maneuver tactics. That means a lot of the battles come down to assaulting trenches with heavy artillery barrages, and attritional fighting for positions in and around urban agglomerations. There are few opportunities to decisively engage the enemy, meaning the fighting is long and drawn out. Whoever has the most men left standing at the end of the day is going to win. Russia has triple the population of Ukraine. It doesn't matter how many missiles or tanks are sent to Ukraine, what they really need is boots on the ground. If you think spending a ton of money on war factories is a tough sell for the West, imagine how popular sending off their own people to die in Ukraine is.
One problem with this theory is that we can look at all the aid the United States has provided Ukraine over the past three years, almost all of which was taken from reserve stockpiles. And we can look at what happens when these weapons are used against a Russian army that hasn't had months to learn and adapt to each new development in sequence. If we had given all of that stuff to Ukraine in 2022, it's pretty likely that the Russian army would have been completely evicted from Ukraine by mid-2023. Instead, we drip-fed the stuff at a rate that let the Russians rebuild and reorganize to better meet the threat.
Then there's all the stuff we could have sent but didn't. As noted elsewhere, we could have given the Ukrainians hundreds of Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter aircraft at least a year ago, *with* trained Ukrainian crews and support teams for each of them, Instead, we have very belatedly given them a few dozen, and patted ourselves on the back,
I believe there's also about two *million* 155mm DPICM artillery shells sitting in storage, and 50,000 old-school MLRS rockets. Weapons specifically designed to annihilate the Russian army as it advances over the European landscape. Weapons we have decided as a matter of policy that we will never ever use because they would make Princess Diana cry, and are just hanging on to until we can afford to safely dispose of them. The Ukrainians have been asking for those from the start, on account of their urgent need to destroy a Russian army far outweighing other concerns. We have, again very belatedly, given them *some* of these, but I don't think it's more than ten percent or so.
I am exceedingly skeptical of anyone making the claim that, gosh, the United States would *like* to help Ukraine win this war, but it's so very very hard and this is the best we can do. If you sincerely believe this, I suggest you question the reliability of your sources.
There are plenty of reasons the US/NATO might not be doing all they can to help Ukraine; that is not the same thing as trying to prevent them from winning. Of course we could spend billions of dollars and open a bunch of weapons factories and hire the contractors to produce bombs and missiles and tanks. We could empty the entirety of the NATO stockpiles and send every last piece of material. We could institute the draft and send millions of Americans over to fight and die in Ukraine.
We haven't done those things because the cost outweighs the benefits. Defense contractors are wary of investing too much in weapons infrastructure that might not have a market by the time it comes online. The US might need those stockpiles to give to Israel or to fight Iran or defend Taiwan or deter any number of potential hostile actors. Russia is a nuclear power and crossing too many red lines might have consequences elsewhere, like Houthi rebels armed with anti-ship missiles or the Iranians with anti-air systems that can shoot down Israeli planes. I'm not defending the hegemony apparatchiks and their foreign policy decisions, there is plenty of room for incompetence or malice. But the idea that they are intentionally drip feeding Ukraine just enough to not lose is too conspiratorial, and there are much simpler explanations. Short of some Pentagon Papers style leak, I don't know why people would consider the idea credible.
Maybe we didn't send much aid in the beginning of the war because the Russians overextended and it looked like the Ukrainians would be able to hold their own. The Congressional system was intentionally made to be slow moving, and actually approving the aid would only happen long after it was clearly in need from a military perspective. A lot of the stuff in stockpiles isn't combat ready and needs maintenance; the armored vehicles we stored in Kuwait had a bunch of rotten tires. Even if we gave the Ukrainians a bunch of tanks and planes day one, that doesn't mean they have the infrastructure to maintain or repair any of them.
Maybe the intel agencies had some old wargame sitting in a file somewhere and it didn't think the Ukrainians could overcome the strategic overmatch presented by Russia's much larger population and resource base. They didn't want to commit too many resources to a lost cause, and angering the Russians too much would make it difficult to normalize relations after the war ended. Whatever. Any of these possibilities make more sense than deliberately undercutting the state fighting our biggest geopolitical rival for 50 years to preserve the status quo uber alles.
It is plausible to me that a perpetual bloody stalemate in Ukraine might be the best geopolitical outcome for the West, from a cold blooded realpolitik perspective. Keep indefinitely bleeding and weakening Russia, without actually spending our own blood or all that much treasure. If the war actually ended, even if on terms unfavorable for Moscow, then Russia would get time to rebuild and rearm, and decide how best to seek revanche. Why risk that?
But that strategy is not very sustainable since Ukraine is also bleeding and is likely to bleed before Russia, simply because its population is 3-5 times smaller. So at certain point you'll need to reach an agreement or put NATO boots on the ground
>But that strategy is not very sustainable
Sure, but if we grant the premise that "protracted attritional warfare to impoverish Russia" is the US's only objective here, then it seems the thing they'd want to do is keep feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder until every single one of them is dead, and then then give Russia a free hand over the smouldering ghost town that is the Ukrainian Wasteland.
This would be problematic since this outcome would strengthen Russia rather than weakening it. In reality it's never literally until the last Ukrainian (think Germany in WW2) so if Russia occupies the eastern and southern Ukraine (mostly Russian-speaking and culturally closer) it will get many more people than it lost, not to mention the fertile land and some remaining industry.
I am skeptical that control of any percent of Ukrainian territory would actually strengthen Russia (Ukraine wasn't exactly on anyone's high-flyer nations list before 2016, was it?), but let's suppose you're right. Even then, if Washington's geopolitical objectives remain nailed to "protracted attritional warfare to impoverish Russia", then they would still want to maximise the protracted attritional warfare. What happens to Ukrainian clay afterwards is an orthogonal consideration to how much attrition you can inflict on Russia now, and it's a consideration that the Washington may not have the means / stomach to do much about.
Certainly Russia won't get rich conquering Ukraine and stealing their vast wealth. Russia will look like more of a threat to their neighbors and will thus be able to threaten their way into more concessions from nearby small countries that worry they might be next.
I'm not sure I understand you. "Impoverishment" as an objective makes sense if it weakens your opponent.
Economically Russia is probably somewhat poorer than in the counterfactual scenario of no invasion, tens to hundreds of thousand men have been killed and a lot of equipment it had has been destroyed.
On the other hand, it already added many more people than it lost, and its army got invaluable experience about what works (guided bombs, drones, etc) and what doesn't (large surface ships) so overall it's not obvious if the losses outweigh the gains.
>Best I can figure, the West is sending the Ukrainians just enough gear and training and intel to keep them from loosing the war, but not enough to win decisively.
Not limited to the Ukraine war, but I don't like how people are so convinced that nothing is out of the states' control, that if we just implement the right policies with the right experts that we have control over the outcome no matter the problem. To put it another way, I dislike how rare it is for people to consider that some things might be beyond our collective control.
In this case, why is there so much confidence that we're God, that we can choose who wins or loses the war simply through giving enough equipment to Ukraine? How could people possibly know how Russia would act in a different reality where Ukraine was given substantially more arms?
>The US, in particular, has enormous stockpiles of equipment it could send over if it wanted to
Do we though? I'm not a deep expert but from what I've gathered we don't have gigantic stockpiles of some of the things most useful to the Ukrainians, e.g. artillery shells/HIMARS/Patriot missiles. And there's a lack of expertise/bottleneck in training for other things like aircraft.
Also I don't think even the biggest hawks in the US are willing to run our stockpiles down all that much. There's still looming threats out there in the near to medium future and we have a somewhat shaky production/supply capacity considering that we largely rely on one of our biggest adversaries for a lot of manufacturing.
The war has shown that there are shortages and deficiencies in production capacity of some things, notably artillery shells. But there are also some vast stockpiles of retired gear out there. This page mentions 3700 Abrams tanks the US has in storage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_main_battle_tanks_by_country#U
That inclues both the M1A1 and M1A2 variants, but all the M1A1 units have already been retired.
Receiving an Abrams tank (while better than not receiving one) is not the same as successfully operating an Abrams tank. The problem of spare parts, logistical chains, and crew training is considerable. And then there is the fact that a drone-saturated battlefield makes armour less effective in general. Also a problem for Russia, of course, but the Abrams, at least without the DU armour configuration, is a bit of a Fabergé egg.
Ukraine already has an infernal menagerie of various weapons systems they're struggling to manage. The ridiculous, over-politicised F-16 caper is probably the best example of how fraught this is in practice.
This is a crap excuse for inaction. If someone with a couple thousand spare main battle tanks and 4th-generation combat aircraft wants Ukraine to win this war, and seriously believes that the reason this won't work is that those ignorant ex-commie peons don't understand technology like our boys, then the winning move is *obviously* to invite Ukrainians to US and NATO training centers to learn how to use those weapons. In sufficient numbers to either saturate our pool of instructors or provide crews for all our surplus tanks/jets/etc, and starting as soon as it' looks like this war might drag on for more than a few months.
IIRC, it took more than a year for the US to invite *any* Ukrainians to come learn how to use Abrams tanks or F-16s, and then only enough for a token few dozen tanks/jets.
And "Oh noes, the drones will make all our tanks useless anyway!", says who? Because last time I checked, the world's leading experts in conducting mechanized combat operations in a drone-heavy environment are, let me check my notes, the Ukrainian army. And they've been saying clearly from the start that they want more tanks and more jets.
The west has sent a lot of gear to the Ukrainians - Europe is literally running out. The US also has to supply Israel.
I don't know if this is the real reason, but one strategic analysis might suggest that getting Russia bogged-down in a forever war is worse for Russia than just ending the conflict with overwhelming might. The strain on society from conscripting the unwilling from all parts of society and the country could lead to a popular movement against Putin.
Russia has mostly used cash sign up bonuses and high salaries to recruit soldiers after fall 2022 when the last round of mobilization took place. So you are right the mass mobilization would be bad for the regime (that's why they haven't done it) but there is no reason they can't continue recruiting soldiers the way they do now for quite some time.
I recently reread and reviewed Greg Clark's "The Son Also Rises" on my substack. It's probably the most worldview-overturning book I've read in the last ten years.
This is the one where he looks at status high and low amongst various lineages, and finds that contrary to most of the rosy "one generation parent-child" mobility rates in Western countries, which show that child status only has .15-.2 correlation with parent status in the Scandinavian countries for example, and up to .45 in the US, if you look at lineal status over a longer timeframe, the actual numbers are closer to .7-.9 all over the world, and this has been true for thousands of years, with no changes post Industrial Revolution or even post 1950.
One interesting thing I found about the book is that it neatly encapsulates all the "Rationalist" shibboleths - how education is pointless from a "social opportunity" standpoint (despite the trillions we collectively spend on it, it doesn't affect social mobility at all), how following k-selected offspring strategies and over-investing in fewer children has zero benefits in terms of retaining their status (so you should Selfish Reasons just have more and not worry about it), and how Genetics is Destiny.
Yet I almost never see it written about or debated much in Rationalist circles for some reason, and this is despite it supporting all those shibboleths. Is it widely debunked, or simply relatively less known?
If you've read it, what did you think about it?
Ok, so one thing that confuses me about Clark’s results, and I’m hoping someone can enlighten me here: the long-term correlations would seem to imply a high level of assortative mating. But I’d expect assortitive matting to be made on phenotype, not genotype. And the parent-child correlations are small. So what's going on here?
Maybe something like this: Footnote #8: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hypergamy-much-more-than-you-wanted#footnote-8-123444805
The way Clark explains the disjunction between one generation parent-child correlations and deeper lineage correlations, is two things:
> Even controlling for parental status, grandparent, great-grandparent and great-great all still have predictive value for predicting child status. And it's stronger than you think (3x stronger than "naive" predictions for great-grandparents, for example).
> When measuring the one-gen correlations, it's always a single endpoint. But "status" consists of multiple things - education, income, occupational prestige, etc. And although they are all correlated, any given generation makes tradeoffs - so you could be a physicist or a quant, and skew the income reading, or you could be Zuckerberg or Gates, and skew the "education" reading, but in a more complete picture, that's just noise.
He also calls out "assortative mating leakage" as the culprit for elite decline. As he puts it, yes people mate in this current generation with others of similar smarts, money, looks, and status (high status phenotype). But one of them can come from a worse family, with a lower baseline lineage quality, and their individual high status is a result of many random perturbations and lucky accidents in life. And so the children of that pairing will regress to a lower mean, because one of the parents was from a lower genotypical status, even though phenotypically they appeared to be of equal status to their partner.
> "assortative mating leakage"
Love it. We used to call it "marrying down"
Great post by the way. It confirms a lot of suspicions I have about my place in the world.
I have a great great (maybe even great) grandfather who emigrated from Sicily to Cork EIRE in 1798. His occupation was listed as "Goldsmith and barometer maker. The whole lineage was very unsuccessful materially, up to and including my grandfather, who grew up in extreme poverty and lied about his age to join the British Army in 1914 just because he needed a gig. He spent his whole life in the army which made him luckier than his brothers, who did the same thing and were both dead by 1920.
BUT I did a search of him on Google and there are a few of his barometers in private collections, and they are very valuable. So he had something going for him, and it resonates with me. Funny old World... Barometers went out of fashion I guess.
I guess I should just restate this as I find it weird that people can sort so strongly on genetic factors behind this status heritability given the vagaries in the proxies for status in each generation.
Oh yeah, that really blew me away - especially with some of the really deep time results, like Normans or Kulin Brahmins or Samurai.
The biggest thing I got out of it is "assortative mating is IMPOSSIBLY strong, and people have been taking it way more seriously than I ever have for millenia."
Brahmins is easier to understand, given the caste system and arranged marriages. But the Normans and Samurai? Very interesting, how did they accomplish such tight "lineage status" recognition?
My best guess is that the "true" variance from lineage quality - with a .75 correlation, the .25 descent downward - is representative of the average "luck" component over baseline. As in, it's .75 "real" and .25 "luck" factors that regress more strongly to the mean.
That would just require matching on phenotype - sure, it's a lossier signal than genotype, so you get some drift, but it's not all that bad.
>The biggest thing I got out of it is "assortative mating is IMPOSSIBLY strong, and people have been taking it way more seriously than I ever have for millenia."
That's what the entire feudal system was built on: successful families strategizing to increase their success, with the successful one's becoming even more successful and snowballing their value further. That's why at the beginning of the medieval period you have a lot of small landowners and minor kings, and by the 16th century the Hapsburgs own half of Europe. Those medieval knights were obsessed with making advantageous marriages, because that's how you got and held on to power for over a thousand years.
What are the odds that by the time we started keeping track of things and getting too clever for our own good, people already had figured out that blood is thicker than water? We just don't like it.
Some discussion on Pg 26: https://milkyeggs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ClarkGlasgow2021.pdf
One of these days I'll read Falconer. I should probably refrain from comment until then.
Yeah, interesting, thanks for sharing.
To me, it seems like it shakes down practically as "people paying attention to mate's parental occupation / education" too. Which on the face of it, seems really obvious and simple.
But I also don't really see it done much today, by my own social circles when dating? Yes, Phd's date other post-graduate degree holders, and high income people date other high income people, but nobody I know really looks hard at the parents' educations and incomes. So maybe people did that more in the past, and less now.
That's one thing I wondered too after rereading it - it definitely seems like most of the forces (cultural, ethnic, racial, religious) that made people adhere to tighter "marriage bands" have been greatly relaxed recently, and so "true" mixing should be occuring at a greater rate now.
I personally think that this probably is part of the .15 vs .75 disjunction, and a precise enough analysis would be able to tease out how much of it changes in modern mores may account for within that gap in recent times.
Related: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27053
The CCP laid low the upper classes by confiscating their property and sending them to farms/reeducation camps. Years later, the upper class' descendants were well on their way to regaining their standing despite the social leveling. Not sure how they concluded that the reason is "human capital within families". Notably they don't mention genetics.
Yeah, he looks at China and Taiwan, and it's pretty wild how you can have literal revolutions that upend tens of millions of people and change their social milieu, breeding pools (Taiwan), social classes, etc, and it still ends up following the familial status pre-change trends (in the lineages that survive the upheavals, which isn't a given).
I saw a similar contention about France, about 30 years after the Revolution.
"Education is pointless from a "social opportunity" standpoint (despite the trillions we collectively spend on it, it doesn't affect social mobility at all)," I don't think this is fully true even with Clark's work although I too felt that for a while when first reading it.
IIIRC, the book is primarily on focused on the tail-end of human capital distribution and its relative ranking, so yes we are unlikely to see huge change in who makes the top decile across societies. It doesn't really say as much about what happens in the lower deciles or absolute changes (as someone mentioned below, it could just shift the curve overall). Additionally, education can play an important role as a societal Sorting Hat in the age of assortative matching or social sorting, especially where societies bring in new dynasties through immigration, etc.
Lastly, I always thought social mobility was less strict than the way Clark defines it. For me, the noisy generations where sons do better or worse than their poor or rich parents IS social mobility, even if it just reverts to the mean over time.
I'd be interested in hearing what changed your mind about education.
On him just focusing on "elites," it's not actually true - he often looks at elites by income or occupation, yes, but he also looks at bottom decile / lower class groups and sees similar persistence, and in many cases, he baselines against "common names" to see median persistence.
In fact, he demonstrates in the book that if you sort by ANY grouping - religion, ethnicity, etc, not just "income tier" or "educational tier," you see these much larger persistence rates by group than are predicted in single-gen mobility rates.
This is because he's positing a true "baseline quality" by group, and there's random perturbations around that baseline quality, but they regress to their group means rather than the overall-population mean.
Right, thanks. As I read your post, I do start to recall some bottom tier groups who also have similar unique surnames being raised in the book, it has been couple of years since I have read it. If I remember correctly, he uses the -son names for Scandanavian countries to measure persistance lower or average status as well, not just the Latin upper class names.
Re: education, as I said, I always had a less strict test for social mobility and meritocracy than Clark and others require. I knew many people who grew up poor who have done better than their parents (sometimes a bit more, and sometimes a factor of 5-10), and many people who have done the opposite. Even if they start to revert back to the group means in the generation after, this is still short-term social mobility and benefit-inducing for the people who rise in status in that generation n+1.
Schooling is probably mostly signalling and perhaps there is a Caplan-esque solutions that make sense, but I am doubtful and err on Chesteron's Fence in that regard.
Again I haven’t read the book. What he’s talking about has got to be pretty recent, and even then I’m dubious. Did the group Irish Catholics move up the ladder as a whole, are Hispanics not also doing that. Did Jewish immigrants not move up the ladder? The Chinese or Vietnamese?
I think if he is sticking to the permanence of the bottom 5% and top 5% then maybe, provided he sticks to the native born, born of the native born.
Education could make a whole society better off without increasing the status of individuals.
More generally, anything that raises productivity overall can do this--education, but also electrification, good sanitation, rule of law, improved technology, etc. It seems to me that you want your society to be mostly focused on make-the-pie-bigger stuff like most science and engineering, rather than on get-a-bigger-slice-for-me stuff like most finance or law.
Agreed, even if status/wealth is stuck in a Pareto distribution education can still lift the entire distribution higher.
I haven’t read it but I can’t see how universal education could have no effect on social mobility, nor can I believe that the US has had no more social mobility than the European Middle Ages.
Clark compares Sweden, the UK, and the USA, with educational systems ranging from “fully state funded even at the college level” to regimes where private education is increasingly more prevalent among high status parents in the UK and USA. But does it actually boot the parents spending $45k a year at private schools in the USA? It does not - it neither slows regression to the mean nor ensures higher status for that generation of children.
There are also essentially no changes in persistence rate across very significant social and educational changes. In Sweden and the UK, moving to state funded, high quality schools being free to everyone of any status caused no change in persistence rates, in either high or low status lineages. The persistence rates stayed doggedly on their hundred-plus-years trend.
On the thousand year trend, you're probably right overall, he doesn't do anything like measuring an overall social mobility - his only example of that is looking at Norman elites stemming from William the Conqueror beating Godwinson.
Amazingly, even nearly 1k years later, the descendants of those Norman elites are still disproportionately likely to get into Oxbridge:
https://imgur.com/a/QFUeK8z
Yes, I actually did know that last fact. Norman privilege. I have it myself apparently judging by my last name.
I don’t know if the U.K. is a good study here, the system is designed to keep the plebs out of Oxbridge regardless of merit.
I haven't read, but it seems the parent post is about social status. I can see education having an impact on income, but potentially less so on status. And I can see status regressing quickly unless consecutive generations maintain an elevated status. For example I have a higher status than my parents, but didn't bother to raise my daughter with higher status than I was raised, and as far as I can tell she will be lower status than I am. It's not just about money. It's about investing money to create enduring status (boarding school, philanthropy, etc), which take a lot of wealth and dedicated effort.
Is there a Pareto distribution? Maybe for wealth but surely not status.
The feudal era had a tiny elite, and little to no social mobility. A few dozen families, maybe a few hundred at most had status rigidly defined at birth. What social mobility there was comes through the church, and even that is often limited to the aristocracy where the offspring who don’t benefit from primogeniture directly become princes and Barrons of the church.
This begins to change in the early modern era but clearly the rise of an educated class in the later 19C and most of the 20C is where we see the real increase opportunity and status for the once serf class. I don’t see this as a status treadmill, doctors, engineers, scientists, artists, lawyers, solicitors, bankers (and on and on) clearly have status that their peasant ancestors did not.
This is so obvious to me that I feel that the argument against it must be very wrong, or very strong and I am missing something.
The 'How Often Do Men Think About Rome' question seems to me as just a more popular-attention friendly (and meme-friendly) look at the sort of data found in studies like 'Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas' (https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9#Sec4).
It's fairly obvious that in general men and women differ in as to how much attention and how much detail they give to specific topics, which will show in different ways: amount of detail remembered, amount of associated vocabulary recognized, and, yes, how much one thinks about a given topic. If you wanted to test the Rome-specific question in a more objective manner, you might want to consider asking how many people can define a number of Rome-specific vocabulary terms.
So I'm thinking of voting for Trump* and I need to explain my reasons to my daughter (and others).
In the times before Bill Clinton the Democrats were the party of working people. Now they are the party of the establishment. (I note the endorsement of Kamala by Dick Cheney.) And the closest thing us working slobs have to the old Democratic party, is Donald Trump and JD Vance. So I'm holding my nose and pulling that lever... same as it ever was. (Maybe I reserve the right to change my mind.)
*I can't believe I'm saying this.
Why does your voting choice hinge on a "working class vs. establishment" narrative? There are so many variables you need to look at when choosing the president to lead the country. That said, "working class vs. establishment" is so non-specific and unquantifiable that it's meaningless in its value as a factor to take into consideration. A majority of both Democrat and Republican voters are working class because most Americans are working class. That said, if one were to vote based on which candidate is more working class, where does the logic lie in voting for Donald Trump, who isn't working class, over Harris, who has been a working attorney her entire pre-political career and comes from a working class family? Where is the logic in voting for the candidate who uses nepotism (reminder: antithetical to working class values) as a primary strategy in his approach to politics? It's absurd.
Also, don't try to justify voting to Trump to your daughters, nor other people, because there is nothing that you can say that will justify it to them, and they will only be disappointed and offended in your choice to what they correctly see as voting against their interests and well-being (your daughters!). They won't understand how you consider him a better candidate when not only has he never qualified himself as such, but also has mostly only provided examples disqualifying himself. Don't do something that you'll regret later. "I can't believe I'm saying this." Listen to you gut. Smart people who are data-driven don't vote for Trump.
Disclaimer: I'm registered independent, did not vote for a president in 2020 or 2016 due to moral and logical reservations, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris because due diligence supports her as not only the stronger candidate, but actually a good one.
*Why does your voting choice hinge on a "working class vs. establishment" narrative? *
This is the failing I see in our country. If you're smart you can go to college and get a good job. What are all those less than 100 IQ guys doing?
They're working shit jobs that pay squat, ~$20/hr minimal benefits/ health care. They can't afford a wife and kids.
"Working class" is not used in common parlance to literally mean people who work. Both of Harris' parents were academic PhDs from Berkeley, which is definitely not working class by any stretch of the imagination. Harris' career is almost certainly what it is in part because of who she was sleeping with, not exactly a working class association either. I get that filthy rich real estate magnate Trump isn't working class himself, but saying Kamala is more closely associated with the working class is bizarre. Appealing to the commoner is Trump's whole shtick.
Your final comment that either of the current candidates is objectively good in some way makes me want to disregard your opinion anyway.
Cheney's objection to Trump: "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him." (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/dick-cheney-vote-kamala-harris).
I don't really see that as an anti-working-slob argument.
There's something like four reality levels. Number one of which is the ground truth. I've forgotten what 2,3 and 4 are, but I'm pretty sure Cheney operates at levels 3 and 4. Don't trust anything he says. I feel the same way about Trump. Whatever he says, believe the opposite. (Have I said I may not vote for him?)
Or maybe Cheney is operating at level 5 and actually supports Trump but is lying to manipulate people like you. Probably the correct approach is just to ignore him.
Personally, this election has made me a one-issue voter, with the issue being "does this candidate respect the peaceful transition of power?"
It kind of doesn't matter what the policies are, if we lose the norm of transferring power the republic is dead, and whatever anyone may say about Harris from a policy perspective, I'm confident that she'll certify a close election even if she loses, whereas Trump has already well-proven that he can't be trusted in that regard. That alone needs to be disqualifying for any candidate regardless of party, imo. It doesn't matter who is 'establishment' or not, what they think about Ukraine or inflation or wokeness or what have you. If ticket A is willing to accept the results of an election even if they lose, and ticket B has openly demonstrated that they won't do that and will in fact seek to subvert legitimate election results, you give power to ticket A.
It's beyond stupid that something that basic is a salient issue in the campaign, but given that it is I can't justify myself voting any other way than Harris.
I don't think it's straightforward; yes, Trump has acted dangerously in not admitting he lost the 2020 election, but on the other hand he did peacefully leave the White House, power was transferred as normal. In the meantime the Democrats have attempted multiple times to indict Trump (and succeeded!), something that has never happened before and was clearly motivated to keep him out of office. Trying to lock up your political opponants is something that happens in tinpot dictatorships, not here: or at least, it had never happened here before. The Democrats broke that streak, and it's a serious threat to democracy and the peaceful transfer of power in the future (ask yourself: if they succeed in putting Trump behind bars and he loses the election, will that make Americans more likely to trust the system and support the peaceful transfer of power, or make them less likely to trust the system and more likely to attempt insurrection?).
So from my point of view both parties have weakened our countries remarkable history of peaceful transfers of power, but Trump has only attempted things that have weakened it while Democrats have followed through and succeeded.
I take it you think the police shooting somebody who tried to shoot at them first is bad because they'll probably kill the shooter whereas the shooter was probably a bad shot compared to trained officers, probably wasn't wearing bulletproof armor compared to officers on duty, and was outnumbered? Or do you probably think that's retarded and somebody who opens fire on police officers is asking for an immediate death sentence and the right thing to do is to neutralize the shooter, even though there's a persistent set of morons that will blame the police anyways?
If anybody started it, Trump did by making "lock her up" a key plank of his first campaign (and - if he's guilty - also by doing various crimes).
If Trump wins, I wonder if we will see revenge indictments of Biden and Harris? Answer: probably not because it's embarrassing to put somebody on trial with little evidence.
Yeah, Trump did say "lock her up": and then as soon as he was elected he said "now that we're elected, we don't do that" when the chants started up. So he said he wanted to lock up his political opponent, and then he didn't.
Compare that to the Democrats, who never said they were going to lock up their political opponents, but have done their absolute best to make that happen, and may well succeed if Trump isn't re-elected.
I'd prefer if neither side either talked about locking up opponents or tried to lock up opponents, but if I have to choose between the two I'll take "bark and no bite" over "bite and no bark".
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/21/us/trump-opponents-investigations.html
>What Trump wanted done
>Mr. Trump publicly called for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign to be criminally prosecuted on a range of issues. Privately, he pressured Mr. Sessions to investigate and prosecute Mrs. Clinton and told the White House’s top lawyer that if Mr. Sessions refused to prosecute Mrs. Clinton he would do it himself.
>What happened
>Federal prosecutors and a special counsel examined nearly all the issues and conspiracy theories Mr. Trump raised about Mrs. Clinton, her campaign and the Clinton Foundation, including the Clinton campaign’s role in gathering information during the 2016 campaign about ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia and providing it to the F.B.I.
>Consequences
>A lawyer for the Clinton campaign was indicted on a charge of making false statements to the F.B.I. about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. The lawyer was acquitted. Mrs. Clinton sat for questioning with the special counsel John Durham, answering a litany of questions about the issues and conspiracies Mr. Trump had pushed about her. She was never charged with anything.
I think there are 2 possibilities here for why the streak of major party nominees not being indicted was broken with Trump.
1 (what I see as your belief): the Democrats are responsible for the streak break. There are so many laws that any random politician could in principle be convicted on something. George W Bush could have conspired to have John Kerry indicted, but didn't because he didn't want to put America on that slippery slope.
2 (my belief): Trump caused the streak break by committing various crimes. Bush couldn't have indicted Kerry because there was no reason to think Kerry had committed various crimes - unlike Trump. The streak break could have been avoided by the Republican party choosing a nominee who had exactly Trump's beliefs and policy positions, but wasn't a crook.
I think there's actually a testable difference here. If the streak break was caused by the Democrats violating the non-aggression pact, then presumably the gloves are off and both parties will continue trying to imprison each others' nominees; if the streak break was caused by there being a uniquely high amount of evidence that Trump was a criminal, then things will go back to normal.
I think it's probably the latter. This reminds me of how congressional republicans made a lot of noise about how the impeachments of Trump needed to be revenged by impeaching Biden, but they never followed through because there was no justification for it which wouldn't have made them look ridiculous.
>I think there's actually a testable difference here. If the streak break was caused by the Democrats violating the non-aggression pact, then presumably the gloves are off and both parties will continue trying to imprison each others' nominees
Only if the Republican party cares as little about the country as the Democrats do. The fact that the Republicans did not impeach Biden over nothing, the way the Democrats impeached Trump over nothing (the first time), just tells me that Republicans don't want to play games with the Republic.
Then again, reasonable people have never had cause to argue whether Hillary Clinton could be said to have a attempted a coup. I've seen those debates on this very board, though, with respect to Jan 6 and Trump, with good faith arguments being offered on both sides of it.
If the Obama administration had tried prosecuting Mitt Romney in the run up to 2012, I'd agree that looks like a case of pure partisan spite that would have done nothing but damage the republic. When it comes to the Trump prosecutions, though, I don't think it's that cut and dried. Presumably an actual coup attempt would be something that we *ought* to prosecute a former president for - SCOTUS seemed to contemplate as much when it declined to grant presidents true blanket immunity for all acts while in office.
That might matter if Donald Trump was just being prosecuted for "attempting a coup" (though even in that case, it's really bad to accuse your political opponents of attempting coups so that you can lock them up during an election year!). Instead he's been prosecuted on any charge that they can potentially make stick, and has currently been indicted on a bookkeeping misdemeanor that was past the statue of limitations, by using a different law and claiming that the misdemeanor was committed to cover up a felony. Sure seems like they're trying desperately to get him convicted for political reasons.
He went a more than a little bit further than not admitting he lost the 2020 election. He fomented a riot on Capitol Hill trying to pressure Mike Pence into refusing to certify a legitimate election result so that fraudulent slates of electors could be installed to award the presidency to the candidate who lost the election. When that riot materialized he called Senators to apply pressure rather than calling the National Guard.
That he “left peacefully” after he failed has about as much significance to me as Ryan Wesley Routh “behaving peacefully” in court after being arrested. We’d be cosmically stupid to let him near Trump with a rifle again, and we’d be equally stupid to let Trump near the presidency again.
We may well prove to be just that stupid. Time will tell, and we’ve been stupid before. But for what my one little vote is worth, it's going Harris and I don't see how it could responsibly go any other way. When I can only check "yes" on "are the odds this candidate would ever attempt a coup actually or essentially zero?" for one out of the two candidates, that's kind of the ballgame.
You should protest vote. Who you vote for has ~0 influence in the outcome of the election, but massive impact your life if people around you have radically different views.
Your relationship with your daughter is more important than your vote. Either vote Trump and lie, or vote no-one.
I protest by not casting a fucking vote. FUCK VOTING.
Huh, my brother doesn't vote. I don't see how that does any good. I guess you're guaranteed of doing no bad.
Naw, I won't make any difference for good or bad if I vote. Not voting just helps me feel less involved in an ugly, incredibly complex mess that I cannot do anything about. I'd have to spend the next year at least doing nothing but studying up on the situation and relevant bits of history, economics etc. even to feel qualified to have an opinion. And once I felt qualified to have an opinion, I'd still be no more able to change anything about how the country's run than I would be to change who wins the World Series. For all practical purposes, learning about the competitors, studying up on them, discussing the likely outcome, arguing about various features of the situation, cheering and groaning, etc is really a hobby, like following the World Series.
Must you disclose who you voted for? Why not just keep that information private?
No my daughter is just who I picked as a foil. Any friend/ family member would do. Our relationship won't change in the least, no matter whom each of us vote for.
Thank you for confirming my suspicion that Cheney was the worst conceivable endorsement and Biden should have flown him to Guantanamo to put a stop to it.
The dems are the party of pharma and banks and the military (industrial complex). That's not the party of the working class. I have no idea of what a second Trump term would be like....
Politics generally seems saturated with corporate and military interests. I'd like to see more politicians pushing back.
Right, I don't care which party they are from.
Do you mean you need a reason for voting for Trump that won’t result in your daughter never wanting to speak to you again ?
Nah, she's just the foil I picked.
Bill Clinton was still a neoliberal who supported the Washington Consensus on global trade, whereas Tariff Man got most of his economic platform from an essay written by a Nixon intern in the 1972 May issue of Playboy Magazine. Working class my ass.
Yeah and the Consensus was to trade off the american working class for that in china. Which made all of china rich and the US businesses. And we're stuck with shit jobs for working class slobs. Which somehow (I think) makes us all poorer... but I have no idea how to do the math or the equations involved. We need more factories... it's important for many reasons. Trump has no idea what he is doing, yet maybe his heart is in the right place? IDK
If jobs are being sent overseas that generally means that Americans will be getting cheaper prices for economic products since we would otherwise have to subsidize those products by offsetting the price difference between creating those products overseas vs domestically.
> Trump has no idea what he is doing, yet maybe his heart is in the right place? IDK
I'm afraid he has no heart.
Semi joking. I've been fence sitting in this for a while. Aside of what you mention, about factories and the working class, I blame the Dems for damaging the already not great education system. Vibes-based literacy classes afaik have reduced literacy in my city. Then I hear stories about math classes getting cancelled or severely dumbed down for ideological reasons. Pretty upset about that.
But then I consider January 6th and the fact that Trump stood aside and let it happen despite being one of the most well placed people to stop it. Photos of angry people looting the capitol building make me sad on a deep level. But more broadly I'm afraid that paints Trump as a 100% opportunist who might be defending freedom of speech and coal miners today and tomorrow might do a 180.
I know all politicians are opportunists but I think he's on another level. I can't imagine for example a Biden withholding federal funds from the counties hit by Helena because some might be deeply red. There there's at least a pretense of caring for fellow Americans. But I don't get anything like from Trump.
Trump tried to withhold aid from Ukraine so they could investigate his political opponent, Biden. His aides have also testified that he wanted to withhold aid from California because he thought not enough people in the state voted for him. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/03/helene-trump-politics-natural-disaster-00182419
When both candidates' platforms contain more positions you oppose than those you support, competence is a negative trait.
Dang, that's a negative thought! It made me chuckle though. How much worse would we be by taking the top two, one from each party in our case. And just flipping a coin to pick the winner?
I have at times wondered if it would improve our political system to incorporate lot-drawing as a part of selecting members of the House of Representatives. Not president or Senate, but just the House.
Every 2 years, Congressional Districts do a random roll call of, say, 40 names on their voter rolls, and only those 40 people are eligible to run for that district's House seat. Big enough number that you don't get stuck with no options but Vermin Supreme, and you still have the Senate around to cool the temperature of the House with seasoned politicians, but the House then becomes much more of a cross section of the country, and you half-implement term limits.
Of course, in practice, it'd never happen, it'd supercharge the influence of lobbyists and congressional staffs, and every year you'd probably have 26 principled House reps trying to do the country's business while the remainder just drank and looked for new ways to do graft, but it's a fun thought experiment if nothing else.
Presumably any president would still be doing uncontroversial president stuff that nobody bothers noting in their platform, whoever is elected, and them being competent at that would still be a good thing.
Certainly a good thing, but not necessarily good enough to offset the bad thing that is competence enacting objectionable planks. Especially if the uncontroversial is routine enough that there are negligible returns to competence on them.
Here's an example of a routine thing that the Trump administration did not do that probably made a real difference. Before leaving office the Obama administration did intensive planning for 3 possible major catastrophes. One was an epidemic. I can't remember what the others were -- I think a nuclear attack to a part of the US was another one. They planned it, then they actually played it out, with all those who were be involved in executing the plan, reporting info, being part of the role play. Then they debugged the plans, based on how they had gone, and left them the info in the form of some documents, one for each catastrophe. The Trump administration did not look at them. (At least, that's what I read, and I don't know where except it's tagged in my mind as a reliable source.)
I think it is very difficult to make a case that in practical terms, electing Donald Trump will lead to better outcomes for working people.
Just to take a very simple example: The Democrats are basically uniformly in favor of renewing the expanded Child Tax Credit, which drastically improved conditions for many thousands of working-class parents.
Meanwhile, Trump is either opposed or at least has not publicly stated clear support. And weirdly, J.D. Vance, who sells himself as pro-natalist -- and even has advocated a tax _penalty_ for childless people (which would have the same net effect as a credit for children) -- voted against the expanded CTC.
Trump also has basically made a public show of saying that he will accept payments to change his policies. See: the idea of a TikTok ban ( https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/14/trump-tiktok-billionaire-donors-00146892 ) or his appeal to oil executives ( https://wapo.st/3XLEt0P ). So even if he had a pro-working-class policy, who's to say that policy would last a week if industry stepped up with $100M in campaign donations to his preferred candidates and/or "investments" in his businesses?
I do understand how somebody could look at _style_ cues and take the Republicans to be the party of working men. The cultural division between college-educated liberal arts and lawyer types who tend to be Dem politicians and staff, and the working people they claim to want to represent, is real.
But I still think if you look at likely outcomes, working-class people are a lot better off with Harris, and with purple- or red-state Dems like Sherrod Brown or Jon Tester who have roots in factory and farm communities.
Also worth noting that Trump's primary stated policies would be _wildly_ inflationary.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse
If you thought 2021 was bad, wait until you see what happens when you start imposing across-the-board tariffs on everything -- even stuff from our allies, and even stuff that American companies need as _inputs_ for domestic manufacturing -- while simultaneously shrinking the pool of available labor. Britain has experienced something a bit like this with Brexit, but if Trump really got to do what he says he wants to do, we'd go through something significantly worse.
Yeah so this seems mostly true. My worry is for the working men (and now by need women), who are getting paid 'shit' ... not enough, to support a family. And giving more in tax credits is not the right thing. We need good paying jobs back in this country, so some guy (or one person working) can make enough so that someone else can stay home with the kids and be a mom. Break up the big tech monopolies, and support unions. Which party is closest to that?
Side note I saw you mentioned you're in NY? Which, well... The New York Democratic Party is just the f***ing worst. They've never completely shed the stink of Tammany Hall. Don't even get me started on Kathy Hochul sandbagging the subway system. On behalf of Democrats elsewhere in the country, I'm sorry. We don't like them either.
Huh, OK this is weird, but again without paying much attention, I like Kathy Hochul. And will vote for her again. Most of the people around me hate her. I live in Trump country, western NY.
Hochul single-handedly exacerbated the current problems with the NY subway system -- they'd had a plan to start funding their maintenance program using the congestion pricing scheme, which she blocked, with no plan for how to make up the funding gap.
She's justified this with handwaving about this being good for middle class people, but the reality is that the _huge_ majority of people going in and out of NYC are on the trains. The plan already included a way for lower-income folks to apply for a rebate on their annual tax filing, so if you really _have_ to drive in for business reasons it won't cost you anything in the long run. The Manhattan Borough President was leading an effort to change that so the rebate would be delivered monthly, rather than just once a year.
Basically Hochul bowed to demands from a small cadre of wealthy people on Long Island and in Westchester, who want to be able to drive into the Central Business District without paying a modest fee, at the expense of the vast majority of working- and middle-class people who get to deal with the subway breaking down. And it's not like you get nothing for paying the fee -- once the system is in place, if you decide you _really_ want to drive in, instead of riding in on LIRR or Metro North (like I did regularly when I worked at IBM in Yorktown Heights), you'll be facing less traffic, so you'll get where you're going faster and find parking more easily.
In other cities that have adopted congestion pricing, there has been discontent right as it was implemented, but within a few years, pretty uniformly people realize it works and are happy with the results: https://reasonstobecheerful.world/congestion-pricing-makes-cities-more-livable/
Also: re: wanting good paying jobs back in the country, if you want to talk about manufacturing, we _lost_ jobs under Trump. I will give Trump credit for breaking through the old consensus about free trade. There had been some dissent among Dems for years -- like I mentioned earlier, look at somebody like Sherrod Brown. But Trump was _dumb_ about how he tried to implement breaks from the free trade orthodoxy. Biden came in and used more-targeted tariffs, and passed both the CHIPS act and the IRA. And lo and behold, investment in manufacturing in the US took off like a rocket.
There are lots of sources you can check on this, but here are a couple. Manufacturing in the US was still contracting during Trump's term: https://www.epi.org/publication/reshoring-manufacturing-jobs/
Investment in new factories _way_ up (primarily due to CHIPS and IRA): https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/investment-us-factories-has-soared-end-2022
Obviously not all those factories are fully online yet, but they'll be adding tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of good jobs. The TSMC chip foundry in Arizona has started pumping out very high end chips for Apple. Noah Smith (who is another great commentator to follow if you're a pro-growth centrist) had some discussion of that in a round-up post the other day: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-770
>we _lost_ jobs under Trump.
Yeah, but don't you think the once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic had something to do with that?
The US manufacturing sector was still suffering _before_ the pandemic, despite Trump's ill-considered, poorly-targeted attempts at tariffs. Read the EPI article. The article was published in 2020, but was looking at data from earlier: "The U.S. has experienced a net loss of manufacturing plants (establishments) in every year from 1998 through 2018 (the most recent year for which data are available)."
Trump is a showman with no substance. He made a big deal about intervening to save jobs at a Carrier A/C plant in Indiana, but not a lot came of it. They still continued shifting jobs to Mexico, and conditions for remaining workers at the plant got worse.
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/four-years-later-trump-carrier-deal-doesnt-slow-offshoring-as-some-had-hoped
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/30/trump-campaigned-saving-jobs-carrier-what-its-like-there-now/6010437002/
Trump has also made it pretty clear that he doesn't care a bit about conditions for American workers. He thinks it's _good_ when the ownership class is able to cram down rank-and-file workers:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/uaw-seizes-on-donald-trump-praising-elon-musk-for-firing-workers
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5135147/user-clip-trump-hates-paying-overtime
And that's leaving aside his habit of just not paying people _at all_, making small contractors who worked on his buildings sue if they wanted what he owed them. He's just generally a bad actor. If you want a healthy capitalist economy, you need to have trust between participants, a level playing field. Trump did everything he could to undermine that trust.
Well it's the Dems who appointed Lina Khan, who's re-invigorated anti-trust.
I will definitely grant you that the politics of breaking up big business cut across party lines somewhat. But Peter Thiel, who is very explicitly pro-monopolist and anti-democracy, was the mentor of JD Vance, and he and his cronies would have huge influence on a second Trump term. And Trump in general has, as mentioned, shown he's happy to be bought off. So I find it extremely unlikely that any commitment to helping working people and consumers will last ten minutes after he gets into office.
Recent actions against monopolists from the Biden administration:
Visa's payment processing scam:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/enforcers-move-to-cut-visas-private
The Pharmacy Benefit Manager cartel:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-lina-khan-pharma
The company behind "Real Page", an algorithmic price-coordination system that got operators of apartments to jack up prices on incumbent tenants faster than they otherwise would have, and hold some units off the market to maintain shortages.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation
If this is a topic that interests you, I recommend Matt Stoller's blog in general, and you'll find he has some kind words for Republicans and harsh words for Democrats (particularly Chuck Schumer, who is way too friendly with Wall Street).
But in terms of the presidential election, the question is, _if_ we elect Harris, will she hold the course in terms of re-appointing Khan and Jonathan Kanter. I am quite optimistic that she will come down on the right side of this -- as California AG, she was involved in a multi-state effort to prosecute the banks for luring people into bad mortgage products. The settlement she won was not perfect by any measure, but IMHO it was the best she could do given the way the courts and the Supreme Court precedents were stacked against her.
Meanwhile, conditional on Trump being elected, I would _cheerfully_ give you a $1000 bet at 5:1 odds that he will boot out the aggressive anti-trust enforcers and let big donors do whatever they want.
Oh dear, I'm sorry, I really don't pay much attention to politics. I'm sure there are good people on both sides. I'll support almost anyone who is a veteran and/or doesn't take PAC money. Getting money out of politics would be my number one thing to care about.... But Tom Bombadil is my role model and I mostly just try and enjoy life and not care to much about what's going on outside my little eden. And I might vote for Trump, 'cause he's maybe the least status quo candidate.
I get it, people want to be able to just live their lives, and politics is often kind of ugly and unpleasant, and there's a justifiable sense of anger at the current system that leads a lot of folks to want to "burn it all down".
But as "Nobody Special" says, just arbitrarily saying "stuff should change!" is not the greatest idea, you need to actually have a plan for HOW to change things that doesn't risk chaos and collapse. (In meme form: https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984 )
If you're concerned with the problems of big corporations exploiting consumers and workers, and the question of whether government tries to help out "the little guy", your sense that both parties are problematic is totally justifiable. But I would say with high confidence that Harris is going to be better on those issues than Trump. Trump will go after specifically corporations that aren't kowtowing to him personally. But as long as they cooperate with his personal interests, he'll let them do whatever they want to workers and consumers. You can go look at what he's saying publicly at his rallies, about how as an employer he didn't want to pay the overtime his employees had earned, and so on.
In what ways do you view him as non-status quo, and how are those ways good?
If there was a Megatron/Voldemort ticket running on a "cut to the chase, fire all the nukes, and make humanity extinct!" platform, it would certainly be less status quo than Trump, but I'm hoping you wouldn't vote for it.
Like I see Trump as not a status quo politician because he's demonstrated that he'd rather overthrow the government than concede an election loss, but that's not the kind of *least status quo* thing that makes me want to vote for the guy.
There's also the ill-conceived trade war he started with China that ended in him bailing out farmers to the tune of 40 billion dollars. (And I'm not even saying that China isn't cheating on trade or anything - it absolutely is, but Trump went about things in the dumbest and most self-destructive way possible).
IDK what to do about China, I'm sorry we sent much of our manufacturing over there.
So yeah, the Democrats have been awful and are promising to do more awful things. But Trump might do dramatically different things than he did when he was in power for 4 years!
Is it that you think Trump is going to intentionally make things better for working people, or that you think the Ds are actively bad? (Or something else?)
There's no chance I'm voting for a D. (Kamala) I was going to vote for RFK Jr. protest vote, and I'm in NY so a vote for T is a protest vote.
Trump posted the prayer to St Michael the Archangel on 29th September, which is the Feast of Michaelmas, on social media and when I saw this report I immediately thought "this has got to be JD Vance doing this" because Vance converted to Catholicism and I don't imagine Donald ever hear of the St Michael prayer before 😁
It tickled me, because it may be the spiritual warfare meme (allegedly) popular amongst Evangelicals, but this is a very Roman Catholic version of it. Anyway, can't hurt to pray to St Michael on his feast day, so that's good!
https://churchleaders.com/news/497789-donald-trump-posts-prayer-to-saint-michael-in-observance-of-the-feast-of-the-archangels.html
Today I received Ross Douthat's notice about his fantasy book that he's putting on the internet, which he plainly stated was not going to be punditry by other means, and dated "on the Feast of the Archangels". With your deep Tolkein knowledge it strikes me that you might be more likely to give that a go, than I.
I tend to want to read things only when I know how they've gone over.
I might try looking it up. Thanks for letting me know!
I just posted my monthly Long Forum, where I wrap up links to the best long form content I have encountered on history, evolution, biology, agriculture and a whole bunch of random topics.
https://open.substack.com/pub/zeroinputagriculture/p/the-long-forum-october-2024?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Hi, I know from the 'thinking about Rome' post that there are quite a few ancient-world fans here, and also from the book reviews that there are some poetry fans, preferably of works featuring metre and rhyme (and some who really hate and avoid poetry). The ancient-worlders may already be across the wonderful, free, Antigone Journal, and the poetry-likers might be interested in their recent poetry competition: an English verse, shorter than Byron's The Isles of Greece, inspired by something we love about the Greco-Roman world. Winners here: https://antigonejournal.com/2024/09/sing-of-love-winners/ and the runners-up (including mine) here : https://antigonejournal.com/2024/09/sing-of-love-runners-up/
I wrote a short post about the reactions to 1. the collapse of a bridge in Germany due to poor maintenance and 2. the fact that Germany currently subsidizes the Indian metro. Contrasting the reactions of rightist cavemen on social media and leftist state media, I come to the conclusion that despite the fact that the state media is more accurate on the facts, their skewed politicized interpretation of the facts leaves the cavemen better off not reading the state media. Basically, the cavemen believe that Germany subsidizes the Indian metro to the tune of 100M€ and the state media counters that not a single cent of tax €s was send to India because the money was paid as an interest-reduced loan. I show why this argument is flawed and how we could have used a simple loan scheme to finance the maintenance of our bridges instead of funding the Indian metro, while taking on an equivalent risk exposure.
https://grauwacht.substack.com/p/midwit-media
It’s amusing that the state media guy basically is telling people, your money is not being used for aid purposes - you paid for nothing, this was not an act of international friendship; the credit is not Germany’s at all. Which just seems kinda oddly roundabout when, once upon a time, countries at least had to make the case that a wealthier nation should share with a poorer. Now they do it and then tell the citizenry they deserve no thanks, and that their potential goodwill if they support the idea of giving to India over seeing to their infrastructure - which they kind of implicitly just did, if only by electing the people who hired the people who made this happen - is neither sought nor acknowledged.
It might be a part of a broader cultural shift in which welfare is seen as an entitlement rather than as something people should feel gratitude for receiving.
ACX women are probably more skewed by selection bias than any other female population anywhere. Like maybe Caltech alums are worse but that's about it. This is basically a community for semi-autistic shape rotators and anti-woke angry white men -- I'm both FWIW (minus the autism) -- which is possibly the least feminine population possible. I would put absolutely zero weight on any gender-related personality trends drawn from the ACX survey.
What’s a “shape rotator” ?
there is a meme which diivides people to "shape rotators" (high math and reason ability) and "wordcels" (high verbal fluency)
Jeez, my standardized test scores in verbal and math have always been practically identical. Don't tell me I'm atypical even here!
Excuse me, I'm a semi-autistic wordcel anti-woke angry old white woman who likes history, art, literature, science, and fighting with strangers on the Internet!
This site is jam for me!
Damn, can I buy you a drink?
So long as it's non-alcoholic, I have to mind the calories in alcohol now, particularly as my liver wants me to be nicer to it 😀
Ooo I have to retract the offer then. Alcohol and I are technically in an open relationship but the rules are I can't exclude her from any outside dalliances. It's both of us or nothing, baby.
I raise my glass of flavoured fizzy water to you both and wish you well in your endeavours!
What's a shape rotator? I immediately thought of werewolves made of spinors.
Strangely enough, Scott has said that his surveys indicate the readership here skews left. I certainly wouldn't be able to tell from the comments. But then I'm a curmudgeonly old white man whose politics used to be called centrist, but now I'm classified as a Marxist or a Marxist fellow-traveler. What the Right calls "Left" seems "Right" to me.
Assuming they're made from the same matter as us mere wereweres, aren't all werewolves kind of made of spinors (spin-1/2 particles at least)?
Skews socially left, even if the politics range all over the place. Most would be liberal/left of centre/centre, with some right of centre/conservatives to die-hard libertarians. I think we'd need to dig out the past surveys to be sure, but I imagine most attitudes to social issues are on the liberal to progressive side about sex'n'drugs'n'rock and roll, as it were, even if the attitudes about economics or politics may be more to the right.
https://sasamilic.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-the-shape-rotator-vs-worcel-meme-f320261a21cd
>I immediately thought of werewolves made of spinors.
Lol, I now have a Halloween costume.
OMG, if I make my writing clearer am I wordcelerating or worddecelerating?
They mean the same thing. Like flammable vs. inflammable.
Duh, they're the same thing! The sign just changes.
The rate of change of wordceleration is, of course, wordjerk.
>This is basically a community for semi-autistic shape rotators and anti-woke angry white men
As a person who is neither of those kinds of people, and therefore can't help noticing how very, very full of those precise kinds of people this community is, I salute your self-awareness. I am constantly baffled by Scott's characterization of the community as basically liberal progressives with a libertarian streak.
Surely you realize that the people commenting are not a representative sample of the blog's readership?
Commenters aren't _perfectly_ representative, but they're representative. Read 1000 comments here and read 1000 comments on /r/TwoXChromosomes. Is the difference solely due to commenter selection bias?
I went to one meetup 5 years ago. Seemed perfectly in line with my online experience of the community.
Surely you realize that a community of blog commenters consists of people who comment on the blog?
Different populations, with unclear overlap, may be meant by 'community':
-subscribers;
-readers;
-respondents to this survey question about Rome-thinking;
-commenters here, on Reddit, and on the forum;
-meetup attendees.
Wanda Tinasky's initial comment seems to take commenters as representative of survey respondents.
Who most informs Scott's idea of the community? It's probably a combo of commenters; friends of his who read/subscribe but don't otherwise participate; and meetup attendees.
For what it's worth, no one at the meetups that I've attended has mentioned commenting.
Sure, I guess, although I will that say you have to stretch the definiton of "community" pretty far to jam subscribers, readers, or survey respondents into it.
Word. In my experience self-categorizations tend to be more aspirational than accurate, plus they're relative to implicit reference classes that the speaker is usually unaware of. Like Scott's principle defining characteristic probably _is_ that he's a progressive libertarian ... relative to the population of semi-autistic shape rotators that form his social circle. It's like the old joke about fish and water. Scott lives amongst a highly-selected demographic but he's unable to appreciate that fact because he never goes outside it.
That's harsh! He's a psychiatrist. He probably has all sorts of patients from all sorts of backgrounds that he has to deal with. But he's a strange attractor when it comes to nerd-folk. Maybe intellectual otakus are a better term for the people who inhabit these threads? He sucked me in somehow...
Yeah but psychiatrists always have clinical detachment. It's not like he socializes with his patients or gets the kinds of social feedback cues that you do from your friends.
'Mugged' is a structurally racist term. Check your privilege.
^^^ I hugely enjoyed this comment.
While it's fun to call people we don't like "nepo babies," I'm absolutely fine with nepotism in the arts. The stakes too low for that to truly matter.
I guess it depends on how important the quality of art is to you.
(Because, yes, the quality does eventually suffer. The establishment has way too much room to dictate what kind of art is valued, and it does use it to elevate [the kind of art nepo babies make or are capable of making] to the detriment of everything else.)
For a much better example of an area where nepotism is genuinely a non-issue, sports.
Hate to sound egotistical, but I must insist only people with a totally shallow understanding of the arts believe that the market consistently rewards great art and punishes bad art. This would be the position of a classic STEM type person who “only has 10 CDs,” as we used to say back in the day to refer to very casual music listeners.
If one digs deeply into global music scenes past and present, one will sooner rather than later realize that there is an enormous reserve of talented musicians toiling away in obscurity. And that Talent is only one of many factors that leads to commercial success. There are just too many high-quality musicians alive to provide remuneration for any but a small percentage. And it has always been so.
This is the context behind my saying “the stakes are low.” 99% of humanity's great artists are doomed to toil in obscurity. Nor are they likely to be discovered by a mass audience after they die.
>The establishment has way too >much room to dictate what kind >of art is valued, and it does use it >to elevate
Though I'm a card carrying socialist, I do not believe in public funding for the arts. On the simple grounds that it isn't necessary, besides maybe children's music classes.
Nevertheless, I cannot deny that the BBC produces consistently high quality films and television shows. The British establishment does exercise editorial control over BBC output, for political reasons. This is not ideal, and it certainly stunts certain types of artistic expression. But the artistic expression that is allowed, though perhaps staid from a sociopolitical standpoint, has more than enough leeway to be artistically excellent.
It gives me even more regret to admit that multinational corporations are capable of producing great films and TV shows. But that is patently obvious. So unfortunately, whatever my issues with the establishment, and they are many, the establishment is more than capable of patronizing great art. How could it be any different? Some of history's most vile monarchs patronized great art.
I work in the arts with no nepo advantage, and I find myself mostly agreeing. The stakes are very high to those personally trying to "break in," but ultimately, the reality is that arts careers are very desirable, so more people than can "make it" will try, and many of them will eventually give up and switch to different career paths. There's no perfectly just way to decide who those people are.
Many very competent artists will find the pathway to the very top of the field infeasible, so they'll choose another high-status and lucrative career over being a middling success in the arts. Many incompetent artists will toil in obscurity, attaching themselves like a barnacle to the underside of the arts-non-profit complex, scraping by on grant money and bullshit gigs for a whole career of utter mediocrity.
Amidst the undefinability of what "making it" even is, nepo babies will simply have access to the best training. Their parents will help guide them to the best teachers, schools, training programs, internships, early-career opportunities, etc.. They will organically have stronger industry networks through simply showing up at Thanksgiving dinner, going to the family friend's wedding, their parents sending them to the best summer camp in the industry... In the end, it's impossible to disentangle whether the nepo baby is hired on the basis of nepotism, or if growing up in an industry family led to the nepo baby genuinely being the most competent person for the job. And even if the first big breaks come from nepotism, if that genuine professional experience leads to the nepo baby /becoming/ more competent than the competition, then are we supposed to say now we shouldn't hire the most competent person just because how they gained their competence was unfair?
Finally, the voice of reason.
I disagree. I am fine with nepotism in private companies (hiring your daughter so she can run your company when you retire etc) but when you do nepotism in art (choosing an artist with connections over a better artist when you exhibit in museums or publish books) you are making it harder for the general art loving public to find the actual good artists. You are making the coordination harder for good writers and interested readers to find each other.
Except on the margins, there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art. Sometimes, a consensus appears to emerge, but it's usually transient in nature. Bach was once a composer largely forgotten to the general public, and he might be forgotten again.
While I do enjoy Leonardo Da Vinci’s art, I read that he was relatively obscure until the Mona Lisa was stolen and it made global headlines.
So no, there is no objective way to determine who the “better artists” are. In as much as I use terms like good artists and bad artists, it's merely a conversational shortcut. I hope and presume everyone is mentally adding “in my subjective opinion” every time I talk about a bad artist.
Besides, artistic talent is partly a genetic trait. Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage (Coppola) may have had their film careers handed to them, but they retroactively earned it through their output. Sean Lennon is actually a great songwriter. The second generation film directors Goro Miyazaki and Brandon Cronenberg are deeply impressive to me. We like to comfort ourselves by thinking that the children of success are doomed to mediocrity, but when it comes to the arts, it just isn't true.
>While I do enjoy Leonardo Da Vinci’s art, I read that he was relatively obscure until the Mona Lisa was stolen and it made global headlines.
That doesn't sound right. His Wikipedia entry is replete with quotes about him from the 1500s to 1800s
Hence my use of the word relatively.
No, not even relatively. From said Wikipedia article:
>The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius..."[162] This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."[163]
These cherry picked quotes are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
I give you Nancy Sinatra
Other way around. Its mainly on the margins where the consensus breaks down. Mass consenus on art and other creative undertakings with supposedly subjective tastes are rather consistent. If you show people pictures of Chartres Cathedral next to Boston City Hall and ask them which looks better the response will skew overwhelmingly towards Chartres and its really only the highly educated/ideologcally motivated on the margins who would pick Boston City Hall. Even though lots of people today don't listen to or engage with classical music you would have a hard time finding people who say Bach actually feels unpleasant to listen to as they can appreciate certain underlying traits in the music that are common to most pleasant sounds. Most people think durian smellls bad just like most people wince at the sound of an out of tune singer. Anything built off the senses has at least some degree of non subjective quality.
People from completely different cultures have different preferences when it comes to architecture, music, etc.
Presuming there’s no meaningful difference between two pieces of art (say a child’s scribble and a symphony) is not a presumption most people are willing to make.
>Except on the margins, there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art. Sometimes, a consensus appears to emerge, but it's usually transient in nature.
Why would a consensus on a particular work of art’s value have to be eternal for it be meaningful? There’s also no immutable “consensus” about which medical treatments are best, which air conditioners are best, which cars or refrigerators are best. But still most people prefer and recognize some level of competence in these areas.
I don’t know shit about art, but I do know that many (not all) highly regarded works of it were created from a nuanced understanding of the particular form, its practice and its history. This is something that can be appreciated to varying degrees, as can an innovative, clever or striking expression of it. If you think you’re as capable of creating impactful murals or hit songs or cathedrals or movie scripts as trained, talented artists, more power to you. You’ll make a fortune.
Actions speak louder then words, and people are constantly calling out celebrated or best-selling artists as overrated. We virtually all do this, demonstrating with our actions that we either 1. Don't REALLY believe in an objective standard for art, or 2. We think we magically happened to be born as the chosen Messiah whose tastes march up with the objective standards. I'm going to assume people mostly fall under category 1.
>there is no consensus on what qualifies as good art.
Then you say:
>Besides, artistic talent is partly a genetic trait.
So first you assert that nepotism is fine in the arts because no one can say what good art is. Then, amazingly, you assert that artistic talent—the ability to create “good art”—is a thing and that nepotism is sensible because it likely leads to good art?
My original comment was perfectly coherent from the standpoint of a good-faith reading. I stand by it 100 percent. Here's a key sentence:
“I hope and presume everyone is mentally adding “in my subjective opinion” every time I talk about a bad artist.”
Simply apply this to the following paragraph.
> I don’t know shit about art...
Good point.
You don't need to know shit about art to know what you like. But if you're going to talk shit about art, you need to be able to tell us why you think it's shit.
Exactly.
Sick burn.
>So no, there is no objective way to determine who the “better artists” are. In as much as I use terms like good artists and bad artists, it's merely a conversational shortcut.
I think that the argument is that our best method for determining who "better artists" are is the marketplace, and nepotism distorts those market forces. I'm not sure if this is very true these days though: distribution costs for art have dropped so precipitously that publishers and other art "gatekeepers" have less power than ever.
> I think that the argument is
> that our best method for
> determining who "better
> artists" are is the
> marketplace
A pretty marginal viewpoint among educated people. But no rebuttal of mine can match this in Mr. Show sketch.
https://youtu.be/vudnMLzZjTg?si=TZWcXVZlyk5267K3
You mention J.S. Bach, so I think it's worth noting that he was also a member of a massive family of composers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_family
Best nepo baby in orchestral music might be Johann Strauss Jr.
Yes, and he wasn’t totally forgotten. Neither of course was Leonardo Da Vinci.
https://open.substack.com/pub/perkeleperusing/p/ai-and-seizing-the-means-of-production
In which I argue that AI automating the economy will necessitate a communist revolution (tl;dr - most people make their living by selling their labor to the people that own capital, full automation will remove all demand for that labor, so the only way to prevent everyone from being unemployed and starving is to seize the means of production and redirect its automated output to the public benefit)
Isn't this solvable with Universal Basic Income? Going all the way to communism seems like overkill - plus of course communism has a pretty terrible track record. Eliminating private ownership is far more destructive than simply taxing it. If you value innovation at all then you want profit motives to remain in the economy.
I think you also have to consider how bad unemployment would actually be in a post-scarcity world. If labor input costs go to zero then the price of goods will fall accordingly. So while it's possible that median incomes will fall, it's also possible that that will be offset by falling prices.
Personally I think it's absurd to speculate what the world will look like when AI is able to do everything. Maybe it will have the opposite effect of what you predict. If all it takes is an LLM and some hardware then we can all be CEOs right? Perhaps it will unleash the power of human creativity and not restrict it to a small capital class.
Why wouldn't the owners of capital simply crush and eliminated the revolutionaries? History suggests no mercy here.
Well that's why the revolution has to be successful. I also mention the possibility of the pre-existing state appropriating capital from capitalists as automation increases, so there's the possibility of already established power structures being on the side of the worker in a top-down, gradual redistribution of the means of production. This would be much less bloody and would leverage the greater power the state has over individual capitalists. Now, you might wonder whether the state would actually be willing to do this, and a traditional Marxist would say it wouldn't, positing that the state is captured by the interests of capital, but as I say in the article I'm not actually a Marxist, so I hold out hope for the state intervening for the greater good.
I thought your end goal was to maximize pleasure within the universe? If so, what happens to humanity in the short-term is completely irrelevant. What matters is creating the conditions for the perfect lifeform to be born. One way is through ruthless competition: humanity will sacrifice everything to their creations, including their own agency, simply to keep up with their rivals. Until they are consumed by them as well. That is the path we are on.
My long term goal is to bring about a transformation of the cosmos into innumerable consciousnesses experiencing maximum pleasure, but in the short to medium term preventing the majority of humans from starving also benefits overall utility.
Do you understand how inconsequential the well-being of current humans are in the grand scheme of things? Even ignoring the past and future, humans only make up 2.5% of animal biomass on Earth. And when you do take into account the future, the billions upon billions of years perfected life would be able to thrive at scales incomprehensible to humanity... Are you seriously going to jeapordize that just to save some lives that are doomed regardless?
Why would redistributing the means of production threaten the existence of the post-human future? I see the two as perfectly able to coexist, in the short term benefitting human wellbeing via capital redistribution, and in the long term benefitting universal wellbeing by converting the inert matter of the universe into hedonium.
>"Why would redistributing the means of production threaten the existence of the post-human future?"
Are you familiar with the phrase "mountains of skulls"?
British empire, or American?
There’s an explicit premise you’re asking the reader to accept, and this reader refuses to, rendering the rest moot.
The “current AI revolution” will make a huge impact on a very small number of professions (e.g., I expect translation to be one), minor impact on some more, and no/negative impact on the rest. So we’re nowhere near AI-caused mass unemployment.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/berkeley-professor-grads-job-market
You sure about that? In my view AI will upend every non-physical (so like dentists will be ok) information-worker job over the next 5-15 years. The real question is whether it will be creative destruction (meaning that N new job types will be created for every one that's obsoleted) or just destruction.
Yep I’m pretty sure. There may be eventually an AI that massively displaces IT jobs, but the current crop of LLMs running on CMOS is certainly not it.
We’re running into some pretty hard limits with the CMOS gate-flipping compute. Until some new hardware comes along we’re safe from mass-unemployment causing AI.
Ok. I'm a software engineer and I can tell you that ChatGPT is already better than an entry-level coder. I know several engineering managers that have changed their hiring practices because of it. And the AI is rapidly improving.
My prediction is that your comment is going to age very badly very quickly.
How much time is "very quickly"?
Here's a simple prediction: there will be more engineering jobs 10 years from now than there are today, 80% confidence (only 80% not because of ChatGPT, this thing will be a niche product by then, but because there may be a recession or some other general economic malaise affecting general employment).
As to the engineering managers who changed their hiring practices because of ChatGPT, good luck to them.
>How much time is "very quickly"?
1-2 years. I think there will be statistically significant changes in CS major enrollment within 5 years.
>Here's a simple prediction: there will be more engineering jobs 10 years from now than there are today,
I don't disagree with this. Technological revolutions usually result in more employment long-term, but I think there will be short-term reductions before industry adapts. Destruction happens faster than creation.
Like I said, I'm not sure if AI will produce creative destruction employment-wise or just destruction, but I am confident that it will radically change most knowledge-worker jobs one way or the other. And look, we're definitely overdue for a nasty recession so that will muddle the signal here, but I predict that economists will be confused by a disconnect between unemployment and GDP growth. In the midst of whatever recession is coming, there will be a storyline to the effect of "confusing economic figures indicate that GDP growth signals the end of the recession while unemployment figures continue to rise." We're going to see weird stuff that's never happened before economically. Inflation will generally be a problem for a long time because of our irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies while the AI-driven part of the economy will be beset by rapidly falling costs and rising unemployment and profitability. The economy will bifurcate and probably politics along with it. Generally I think we're in for an insane 20 years.
But if you want to short the impact of LLMs I'll happily take the other side of that trade.
> I can tell you that ChatGPT is already better than an entry-level coder
Well that's depressing. No wonder software quality is going to shit.
Even physical labor jobs will eventually be replaced at a later time, once robotics catches up with AI (with the possibility of superintelligent AI aiding in robot development)
Not certain at all. The humanoid robots are absolutely not increasing in ability at the same rates of LLMs.
LLMs are done. Robotics, OTOH, have a pretty good run ahead of them.
Arguably, they're increasing more rapidly.
Inarguably they aren’t.
That's why I say "eventually," we just don't know how far out it will be
Not all imagined technologies are possible, economically or otherwise. Where’s my flying car? Or my hypersonic flight.
The current wave of LLM-based AI might not bring it about, but full automation is a spectre that will face us eventually. When that finally happens, it will be who owns the means of production that determines whether the vast majority of humanity starves or prospers.
Only somewhat facetiously: an LVT would solve that.
Land is also a means of production. Exponential growth of capital (whether "full automation" or something lesser) makes the marginal product of capital decrease and that of land increase. In equilibrium factors are paid their marginal product, so the gains will accrue to landowners; if that is the public at large, there's no need to forcibly reallocate capital ownership.
> Exponential growth of capital (whether "full automation" or something lesser) makes the marginal product of capital decrease ...
I think you are confusing cause and effect here. The stock of capital is expected to grow *because* improved automation technology is expected to *increase* the marginal product of capital. Yes, landowners will receive some of the gains, but you are naive if you think that land-ownership among the general public is anything close to universal, particularly with regard to land suitable for mines, plantations, and factories,
>"The stock of capital is expected to grow *because* improved automation technology is expected to *increase* the marginal product of capital."
Sort of. If AI is labor-substituting capital instead of the classic labor-complementing capital then MPK/MPL is increasing, but that's consistent with either an increase or decrease in MPK so long as MPL is plummeting. I would be surprised if there weren't diminishing returns to MPK in isolation for AI.
Whoops. I missed the reference to an LVT. Yes, you are right that in a Georgist world, the problem of income inequality would be mitigated, but I think we still need public ownership or expropriatory taxation of AI/robotic capital.
Per ATCOR, LVT is the only tax we need.
In other words: buy land, son!
> ... we’re nowhere near AI-caused mass unemployment.
I tend to agree. Robotics seems to be lagging. We probably have 10-20 years or so before mass unemployment. So, lets begin preparing now. Begin taxing all AI revenues at something like a 50% rate. Use the revenues to begin buying up AI and robotics assets. Aim to have 100% public ownership of such capital assets by the time when it will be needed to prevent starvation. If we start taxing now, it will probably slow down the spread of AI and robotics, perhaps by an additional 10 years. We don't want to stop it, of course. It is a golden goose. But delaying it may actually be a good thing since too-rapid a transition might be dangerous.
I don’t think any kind of a tech-induced mass unemployment is in any foreseeable future. I look at advanced tech roadmaps for a living, ain’t nothing there to even hint at this in 15 years.
In what sectors will there still be human workers? Retail, mining, manufacturing, education, transportation, medicine, legal and financial services, infrastructure construction and maintenance ... I expect machines to be superior and cheaper in all of those fields. And I doubt that it will take more than a few decades to accumulate the necessary investment.
This is easy, all sectors you listed will still have human workers for foreseeable future.
Some human workers, yes. Wheat, corn, and soybean farming still have human workers too. But more than 25% of current human employment levels? I doubt it for retail, education, transportation, and infrastructure construction.
But you are wearing me down. I agree it is very doubtful that total employment will fall below 50% of current levels within two decades. That is assuming, of course, that we don't have some kind of total meltdown in the meantime.
We rarely think about where our stuff comes from or how it’s made. We go through our lives expecting that the things we consume are easily acquired. That is the beauty of modern society: supply chain logistics work so well that we seldom think about the consequences if these systems are disrupted. I think many of us thought about this for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a wake-up call that revealed how fragile these systems could be, as it disrupted everything from basic goods to high-tech products.
Since the pandemic, I’ve become mildly interested in other supply chain vulnerabilities that could arise. Recently, I discovered one that is particularly concerning: the supply of semiconductor-grade quartz, which virtually all comes from one place—Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
https://jorgevelez.substack.com/p/point-of-failure
I saw the Spruce Pine meme on TwiXter. Just out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT...
Me: Are there any alternatives to spruce pine semi-conductor quartz?
ChatGPT said:
Yes, there are alternative sources to Spruce Pine for high-purity quartz, which is essential for semiconductor manufacturing. Although Spruce Pine in North Carolina is renowned for having the purest natural quartz in the world, other locations provide alternatives. Here are a few:
1. Brazil
Brazil is a leading producer of quartz, particularly in regions like Minas Gerais. Although not as pure as Spruce Pine quartz, it is widely used in the electronics industry after further refinement.
2. Norway
Norwegian quartz deposits, particularly in the regions of Årdal and Kragerø, provide high-quality quartz that is used in various industries, including semiconductors after refining.
3. China
China has significant quartz resources, especially in the Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. However, Chinese quartz often requires more extensive processing to reach the purity levels needed for high-end electronics.
4. Russia
Russia has quartz deposits, particularly in the Ural Mountains, that are also considered high-purity. Some Russian quartz is used in electronics but typically undergoes substantial refinement.
5. India
India has been developing its high-purity quartz mining capabilities, with deposits primarily in the state of Rajasthan. Though not as prominent as other sources, Indian quartz is becoming more competitive for the semiconductor industry.
6. Australia
Australian quartz, particularly from deposits in Western Australia, has also been tapped as an alternative source for high-purity silica used in electronics, although it often requires significant processing.
While Spruce Pine quartz remains the most sought-after due to its near-perfect natural purity, these alternative sources can be refined to meet the stringent purity requirements of the semiconductor industry.
That's an awful lot of chatting about high-purity quartz *deposits*. Which are I think useless for anyone who needs to manufacture semiconductors this year or next, and probably not too useful in 2026 either.
What matters right now, is actual production capacity.
Yeah, I know people like Peter Zeihan (did he start this meme too?) like to comment on current commodity sourcing patterns and get pretty hyperbolic in terms of how hard it would be to develop new sources in the case of supply chain disruptions. I'm suspicious at the assertion that the NC source is that unique and irreplaceable. Quartz/silicon refining sounds like a fairly specialized area, but I would presume someone in that field would have a more informed opinion. There is a lack of diversity on ACX where it seems like 80% are programmers.
My list of questions that need to be asked before people freak out (chime in if I missed any)...
1. Do we have an assessment yet of how long the Spruce Pine Plant will be taken offline?
2. Spruce Pine quartz is mostly processed in Norway (and Norway has its own high-quality quartz) before it gets shipped to fabs mostly in Asia.
(a.) How will the ILA strike impact shipments out of the US?
(b.) How much time and money will it cost to ship it up to Canada or down to Mexico to ship it over to Noway? (
c.) Will Norway be able to pick up the slack in the meantime?
3. The quartz is used in masking the wafer, as well as in crucibles. My understanding is that most of it is used in photomasking with crucibles using less pure quartz
(a.) Can crucibles use less pure quartz? (What are the percentages masks vs crucibles)?
(b.) Semi manufacturers outsource their photomasking to third parties. This is labor-intensive process with long lead times. Since the process requires long lead times, do these companies stockpile their quartz? If so, how much is stockpiled? (I doubt if its JIT).
I would be more concerned about the longshoreman union strike that is about to shut down all the major US ports on the east and gulf coasts tonight.
Yeah, this is a much bigger deal, IMO. They have everyone up against the wall, with the current Suez closure tripling most shipment times, if they strike, it would be sig worse than the Covid supply chain problems.
There aren’t very many unions I’d be excited about breaking in the US, but the longshoreman’s union is first on my list.
I disagree with Reagan on almost everything, but would go with his solution on this one.
Same. It's one thing to make labor unnecessarily expensive and slow, but another to block desperately needed technological upgrades.
Make a prediction market about it? I'd bet that even if Spruce Pine was permanently taken offline by Helene there would be very little effect on the semi industry.
These single source failures are a monthly occurrence in the mining and rare earth metal industry. Turns out they never actually are the only source.
Not the biggest issue in the world obviously, but still -- one big cheer for California. Hopefully this now becomes a general expectation/norm which is now adopted by more jurisdictions (the way that for instance spamming to fax machines became widely illegal back in analog days).
https://www.pcmag.com/news/one-click-subscription-cancellations-coming-to-california-in-2025
OTOH I don't feel sorry for these strange people who move away and never notice apparently that they have a monthly service they're being dunned for. At my old house, the previous resident had dog treats delivered each month. I went to FedEx twice and tried to get them sent back/her name uncoupled from the address, but finally gave up and started giving them to neighbors with dogs. It's been years and I bet they're still coming.
Here, it's a woman who's been gone from the building for about 3 years; she's still getting an herbs and spices subscription; and some sort of cosmetic, essential oil* crap, monthly or bi-monthly, all this time later.
*Yes, after these things sat for weeks, after writing "not at this address" did not stop it, a neighbor and I opened the packages with great excitement. Maybe it will be jewelry of the month! Or scented soap of the month. Or almost anything! - except what it turned out to be.
:-(
There's a magazine whose politics (always) and younger writers I find tedious, but whose archive I often read, and I've subscribed in the past - largely just to pay them something for those decades-old articles I read. But the difficulty of unsubscribing - or even getting onto one's account to see if still subscribed, or to switch to digital, or change address - was so, so hard that now I actively swallow my guilt and just look up whatever I really want to see on Internet Archive.
I find it fascinating how many business models include something that is... technically not considered a fraud... but definitely something that the customer would not consent to.
The dark pattern "you can't (easily) unsubscribe" is especially powerful in combination with "you can try the service for free during the first 30 days, but if you don't unsubscribe during those 30 days it automatically becomes a paid service, and you need to enter your credit card number right now and we will verify it".
For everyone not in California, the solution to this (lamentably common) problem is single-merchant virtual cards. Abine does it as a general service, and Capital One and Citi does it for specific cards - you can generate a card number for a given merchant, and cancel it when you want to.
But then, won't the company sue you for violating the terms of services? Or sell your debt to debt collectors? Because, technically speaking, you did *not* unsubscribe.
Good point. It's never happened to me, and I've done it pretty widely, but it might be possible.
Maybe the liability tradeoff isn't worth it - if there was a chance to go after them with a class action or something because they sold it to a debt collector after such a scummy initial dark pattern, I'd be interested enough to consider pursuing it just for the precedent.
Ooo, I did not know of this, Good tip.
Started watching Industry, a show about young grads at some kind of investment bank in London. (I'm still on Season 1, so no spoilers please). I've obviously never worked in finance and don't have any experience there- is the job really, just pitching clients to do random individual trades? They're shown telling clients to short the euro based on this or that projection, or short Treasuries based on some theory about what will happen, or buy this or that stock, etc. This appears to be a major focus of their job.
Is that.... is that really how finance works? You just pitch wealthy clients on timing the market and doing individual trades? Why don't these wealthy clients just use an index fund and eschew what's essentially day trading? Also, why would the client need the bank to place a trade for them? This isn't the 1970s, the clients can presumably just do so directly through their own accounts
The impression I get from Matt Levine is that it mostly involves pitching companies on potential mergers and acquisitions, new structured debt deals, etc. And staying up until 3am every night preparing presentations and pitchbooks for the same.
That's a very specific subsection of finance (which is the one Matt Levine worked at before he was a journalist, so he focuses on it more). It is a thing for some roles/institutions, but at other institutions you might never even meet anyone who's done that.
Investment Banking encompasses a whole bunch of different things. One of those is Sales and Trading. And yes, most of it is commission based sales.
Most of their clients will be large investment funds who can't exactly use Interactive Brokers. The most active trading will be in etfs. They will also deal in a bunch of stuff you can't do through a retail account.
However much you tell people not to day trade, a lot of them are going to do it anyway. Even fiscally educated people might do it as a kind of hobby, fully cognizant of the risks. I can definitely a certain kind of rich person who sets aside X amount of disposable dollars for day trading, fully aware that they might lose it all.
Also, not all wealthy people stay wealthy. I'm sure plenty of wealthy people have gambled away their fortunes, and there's always going to be someone willing to facilitate that for profit.
The Fortune 400 has as much as 10% turnover every year. But the top 50 generally stay in the top 50.
For those interested or still struggling on, like the Elvish horsemen in the river bed this episode, my thoughts on episode seven of The Rings of Power.
This is the penultimate episode, so just one more left to go before they have to cram in all the tying-up of plot points in the last episode (or, more likely, leave them dangling as cliff hangers for season three).
This episode was a curate's egg, in that there were good parts and bad parts. Some online reviews have called this the worst episode of the season, but really it's not. It's one of the best, if not the best, but the show can't help but manage to fall on its face immediately after doing something decent so that it made me go "Yeah, that's not bad - oh, wait". Now we head into spoilers, so beware, all ye who venture onwards!
The good: they concentrated on only two storylines, which were related: the siege of Eregion and what's going on in Khazad-dum. This meant that (1) things actually *happened*, for once and (2) we weren't dragged out of the story by flitting around between Rhun with the Stoofoots, Rhun with I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf, Númenor, Lindon, Eregion, and Khazad-dum, with stops at wherever the hell it is Isildur is supposed to be at today.
Poor old Celebrimbor is not having a good time. The actor finally gets to demonstrate to me why he was hired in the first place, though he does have to suffer through some whimsical moments to get there. It seems a case of a reasonably good actor but bad characterisation, which is not his fault: the show decided Celebrimbor would be a doddering old fool and there's only so much you can do with that.
Elrond and Durin are re-united, this just goes to show you can't keep True Love down. Elrond's heart sings to see Durin once more and Durin compliments him for, er, having tidal hair? Look, Dwarvish love-talk is a closed book to me, but by the stars in his eyes, I'm guessing he means he likes the new hairstyle.
There *are* some Dwarven women with (small) beards and facial hair in crowd scenes, so little victories there!
ARONDIR MAY BE DEAD! Well, probably not, but he *might* be. I'm telling you, I was cheering on Adar as he bestrode the battlefield, kicking Elven ass LIKE A BOSS. (Wait, *should* I be cheering for the Orc army? Oh these complex moral decisions!) But please please please let Arondir be dead, so we get no more of the stupid spin-kicks (which is how he left himself open to be killed by Adar, something nobody should be suprised by. Spin kicking may look cool, but it's a dumb move in real fighting).
Points for having an Elven commander order his archers to "Loose arrows", not "Fire arrows". Taken away again for having him or another commander order "Prepare to fire" and then restored for a later order about "release" not "fire" or "shoot".
I was right about the fake mithril! It *is* Sauron's blood, which means that this is how the show is setting it up that the Nine Rings turn the bearers into Ringwraiths. This of course is not in Tolkien, but the show is not Tolkien either, so 🤷♀️
The meh, not really worth getting worked up over, just silly and/or annoying: thanks to Scott's AI art on the "how often do you think of Rome?" post, I learned a new fact and a new term:
"Spartan women continued to wear the peplos ...(i)t was also shorter and with slits on the side causing other Greeks to call them phainomērídes (φαινομηρίδες), the "thigh-showers".
Well, Dísa is a thigh-shower. We get to see her (and prince Durin) striking Hero Poses with pickaxe and war hammer and. Yeah. Spartan customs.
STUPID HOSTAGE SITUATION. More on this later.
The Nine Rings for Men look way better than the Dwarven Rings or the Elven Rings! The Elven rings just had uncut lumps of stones stuck on top, the Dwarven ones got a little more polish but not much, but these ones look much nicer. I guess that Celebrimbor finally got the hang of ring-making after all that practice?
The bad: Hoo-boy. There's one scene which has online comment raging, and I have to admit, it made me too go FUDGE* NO!!!! at my screen as I watched it. This ties in with the STUPID HOSTAGE SITUATION I mentioned above, so we'll get to it in time.
(*Bowdlerised because there are small children in the ACX house now and we must set an example as virtual god-parents/aunts and uncles).
But first, let's go through the "I can't believe they throw tens of millions per episode at this" and "okay, not alone are they intent on breaking lore, they're now breaking the laws of the material world** at the same time. Go big or go home, eh?" parts.
(**Don't make me tap the sign if you come back with "but it's *fantasy*, this is a *fantasy* world, the rules are *different* there". The man himself said it in response to a proposed film script: "The Lord of the Rings may be a 'fairy-story', but it takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather.")
The siege tactics don't make a lick of sense. They start bombarding the walls of Ost-in-Edhil (that's the name of the city, but let's just call it Eregion for simplicity's sake) as per standard tactics. I think these are just plain catapults, not even mangonels or trebuchets, but I'm open to correction on that (I am not an expert on siege engines and don't even play one on TV, so I suppose I could get a job as adviser for this show). So far, so okay. They're not making an appreciable dent in the walls, but this is a slow job that will go on for a long time.
And then. They turn the catapults *away* from the city and *towards* the mountains to the side of it. And they throw rocks at the mountainside, and knock down large slabs of rock, which fall into the river and dam it. And the water all drains away practically instantaneously, leaving the riverbed open now for the Orc army to cross and attack the city walls directly, including with honkin' great siege engines. Well, not *that* honkin' great, but we'll get to that bit as well.
And this works. Man, those Orcs have got some precision aiming equipment going on, because not alone can they hit targets *miles* away, they can hit *just* the one small round rock propping up the big huge slab of mountainside to knock it away, so the slab falls, and triggers the rest of the rockfall.
Let me remind you, these are the same catapults that couldn't breach the city walls, but they have no problem knocking lumps off a mountain. Now that you've let that one sink in and had a moment of silent contemplation, let's move on.
The Orcs have a siege engine called The Ravager and - no, you know what? It's too stupid and I don't have the spare brain cells to burn dealing with this. Just take it from it, it's stupid, the defenders on the walls are stupid, it's all stupid.
Things are not looking good for Eregion! And then Elrond shows up and does some Spanish Riding School Viennese Lipizzaner white stallion Airs Above The Ground moves*** with his horse and a battle horn.
(*** Levade here, he does a capriole in the middle of a skirmish, which is very pretty. Impractical, but pretty, and at least they are trying to show off horse moves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8ktmC5pTvU)
The day is saved! Or it should be, seeing as how Gil-galad himself is now going to take the field, and the massed Elvish cavalry, under the command of Elrond, all charge the Orcs.
I think I'll break this in half here, because there's more to say. A *lot* more. So I'll take my cue from the show and leave you wanting more!
We now return to our regularly scheduled pointing and laughing.
The Elvish cavalry charge thunders forward! And it looks fairly impressive, though there probably was some/a lot/tons of CGI used to bulk up the numbers. It's in a wedge formation which I believe, but again am no expert, does work when you're heading to break a line of infantry. (Somebody get Bret Devereaux to review this show, if he's not doing it already).
People have criticised the horse armour and the armour in general, and yes, it's true, but that's the least of their worries. To my eye, the armour looks much less plastic than what the Númenoreans got lumbered with (so I guess the rabble-rousing about Elven workers taking the jobs of Numenorean smiths had some basis).
A detachment of the Orc army (including Adar) are lined up facing the charge and not doing anything. I was going "why the heck are they just jeering and mocking, instead of forming some kind of defensive line or moving into the trees or something?"
Ah, but little did I know that Adar had a CUNNING PLAN. While the cavalry are still a good distance away, they bring forward a covered cage, pull back the covers, and reveal - oh no! They've got Galadriel! She's their hostage with a knife to her neck! Whatever will Elrond and the army do?
Well, Elrond sees this and gives the order to stop. So the Cunning Plan worked! Not alone did it work, but TIL that Elvish horses come with brakes, so that the *entire charge* stops dead *in a straight line* and we don't have, you know, the ranks behind ploughing into the ones in front because they couldn't stop in time. Truly, the Mearas must be supernatural creatures!
Clearly in a dire situation like this, all Elrond can do is go have a confab with Adar (where's Gil-galad? I have no idea, maybe he turned around and went back to Lindon to check if he turned the stove off and locked the front door). There's some back-and-forth which boils down to "I've got Galadriel, if you want her alive then give me the ring and leave Eregion"/"No, but I'll meet you on the battlefield"/"Okay"/"Okay".
Now we get to THE SCENE. That has everyone up in arms. So, we've got the cheesy trope set-up of the prison break-out scene, where A is locked up and B must pass over the plans/lockpicks/getaway car to them under the noses of the guards. Usually they have to use subterfuge or a distraction so they can hand over the key without being noticed.
Our boy Elrond asks if he can say "goodbye" to Galadriel. You know, what with them abandoning her to certain death and all that. Adar has a sudden loss of functioning brain cells (maybe they decided to follow Gil-galad to Lindon) so he permits this. And what does our boy do, as he not-so-sneakily unfastens his cloak brooch so he can pass it to Galadriel so she can use the pin as a lockpick? What distraction does he pull?
He kisses her. Yep. His mother-in-law (or mother-in-law to be), whom he has shown no romantic interest in up to this, and hey remember she's technically married still since it's not been proven Celeborn is dead? Now, I know this is a way such matters are handled for said cheesy prison escape trope, but in those scenarios the couple are at least acknowledged to be romantic partners. This makes no sense here. Elrond could hand the brooch to Galadriel in other ways. (Even better, if you rewatch the scene because you can't believe they just did that, there's an Orc guard staring right at their hands as he's visibly handing the brooch over, so it doesn't even work as a distraction).
I'm not so much outraged as THIS IS STUPID. WHY ARE YOU BEING STUPID? THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BIG BUILD-UP EPISODE EVERYONE WAS ANTICIPATING. WHY ARE YOU WRECKING YOUR OWN SHOW?
Elrond and his companion, whose name I can't be bothered to look up, then leave the Orc camp (and are permitted to do so, but okay, Adar and his bunch of kinder, gentler Orcs may adhere to the laws of war unlike later Orcs) and while doing so, they discuss their options. Because their army isn't big enough to match the might of the Orcs (maybe Gil-galad should have stuck around?) so what will they do?
Ah, but Elrond has a CUNNING PLAN of his own! Which he then proceeds to discuss *out loud* with his comrade *while surrounded by Orcs*. The discussion is only half in English, but (1) even half of an overheard plan is not very good security and (2) gosh, isn't it a good thing there is nobody in this entire enemy camp who can understand Sindarin and has been shown speaking it himself in previous episodes? That sure is lucky!
Anyway, it turns out that Elrond didn't go to Khazad-dum just to rekindle the fires of passion and give prince Durin some more raw meat, as it were. The CUNNING PLAN is that Durin will turn up with an army of Dwarves in the morning to save all their necks, so Elrond sends his companion off to meet up with Durin's force while he defends the walls of Eregion all night.
Meanwhile, there's trouble at t'mill. As part of the back-and-forth, Elrond accused Adar of spending the lives of his Orcs recklessly, trying to take the impregnable fortress of Eregion, doesn't he care? Family man Glug, the Orc with wife and baby we've seen, was one of the guards there and he plainly took this to heart. Later on at night (I'm not entirely sure of the timeline when everything is happening, because the show isn't), he asks Adar more or less, papa, do you not love me?
Sorry, I can feel my brains dribbling out my ears, so let's wrap this up. Galadriel escapes and meets up with Arondir and they head off to sneak into the city.
Celebrimbor has finally twigged Annatar is Not Nice. Unhappily, by now all his own people think he's nuts, so even when he escapes and appeals to them, they lock him back up in the tower. But not before Sauron force-pushes Mirdania (his rebound romance after Galadriel's cruel rejection) off the battlements, making it look like Celebrimbor pushed her over! (Why did he do this? I dunno, dramatic irony? He told her previously that when this was all over she would be rewarded as she deserved, and this is how he did it, see guys, see?)
He shackles Celebrimbor to the bench (there's a lot of Elven shackling this episode) and gives him the line about how he only wants things to be nice and besides Morgoth was mean to him. Celebrimbor finally shows signs of *not* being a doddering old fool and rejects this line of talk, so Sauron leaves him alone to finish working on the nine rings.
This is where Chekov's metal-cutting device comes into play. You see, we saw Celebrimbor using it to cut metal earlier in this episode. He tries to hammer and then chisel open the shackles, but no go. Then his gaze falls on the device. Aha! He is going to use it to sever the links and get free that way! Well, yes and no. He uses it to sever his *thumb* so he can slide his hand out of the cuff.
Don't look at me like that. I didn't write this mess. This is running long, so one final brief post to wrap it all up.
Did he at least slip her the lockpick inside the kiss, from mouth to mouth? Because that'd be a legit reason for a big open-mouthed humie kiss with lots of tongue action.
No he did not! The distraction was that the Orcs and Adar would be so fascinated (or disgusted) by this Public Display of Affection that they would not be watching as he put the brooch into her hand.
But the scene is so badly shot that there's an Orc guard looking directly at their hands as the exchange is made, so it's comically failing as a distraction. Good job the Orc decided the free Hot Elf-on-Elf Action show was worth not mentioning that inconvenient little nugget of information to Adar 😀
Charlie Hopkinson's reviews are some of the best (plus his CGI faces are as good as Amazon's, and he's a bloke doing it out of his flat helped by his sister and a friend):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sITvzooI4iY
Oh, and to finish up with Celebrimbor and Sauron: Galadriel turns up,convinces the Elves to believe Celebrimbor again, he gives her the nine rings to take with her as she escapes, Sauron arrives, Celebrimbor orders the guards to capture him, Sauron force-manipulates the Elven soldiers into killing each other instead of arresting him, and then he advances on Celebrimbor. End of that scene.
While all this is going on, there's also a battle happening. Which *should* be the big, exciting, climactic set-piece they've been teasing us with all season.
We get the troll. Remember the troll? He even has a name and everything! He turns up and you expect some EPIC ELF ARMY SMOOSHING ACTION, don't you? Well, we get about ten seconds of that, then he pulls the chains of The Ravager out of the wall which finally causes a breach.
Then he's killed by Arondir doing the Legolas and the mumak scene, Elrond sticks a sword in him, and Gil-galad is back from Lindon (and at least he's brought Aeglos with him, one tiny crumb they've thrown to us lore nerds). That's it. It's done so *terribly* that the composition of the shot makes no sense, and after all the build-up, the troll is wasted.
So that was pointless. How did they manage to mess up the one big, guaranteed show-stopper, event of this episode? How did they make the battle boring? That takes genuine talent of some kind!
But wait! What about the last-minute arrival of the heroic Dwarven army to save the day? Ah, yeah: about that.
We get the scene in Khazad-dum of Durin firing up the Dwarves with a rousing speech (and it's pretty good, hand it to them) and then they're all ready to march out.
Except. At the last minute Narvi rocks up to tell Durin that his dad has taken his axe and is (presumably) killing his way through the Dwarven guards and intends to release the beast below the mountain (is this the Balrog, or the creature in the water Dísa encountered? it's not made clear).
So clearly they need the *entire Dwarven army* to deal with king Durin (it's put like that: if prince Durin goes to help Elrond, there may not be a Khazad-dum for him to come back to). What, Dísa can't just unleash some bats on him, or they send out a detachment of guards? It has to be the *whole* army? Maybe they mean "to fight off the beast" but uh, shouldn't you be stopping the king *before* he can single-handedly tunnel through the mountainside to do that?
More stupid "conflict for the sake of it".
Cut to the next morning. There are thirty-something Elves (one reviewer counted), including Gil-galad and Elrond, standing before the walls of Eregion to hold off the advancing Orc hordes. The sun rises, and they look off to the side. Elrond is expecting to see the arrival of the Dwarves and is excitedly telling everyone they're coming.
A lone horseman appears, silhouetted in the light. One minor digression here: the Dwarves are supposed to be coming from the NORTH. The sun rises in the EAST. See the problem here? A lone horseman, but no Dwarven army. It's Elrond's comrade whom he sent off, and he managed to make it back (riddled with Orc arrows) to inform Elrond the Dwarves are not coming. Then he dies.
Elrond is crushed by the news and just kneels there in the mud while around him the slaughter commences. Adar strides forward LIKE A BOSS (as I may have mentioned), first killing (we hope, we hope!) Arondir and then taking on Elrond, taking the ring Nenya from him, and tossing him aside.
End of episode, and we have to wait until next week to find out who lives, who dies, who writes your story!
I'm only hoping for "Celebrimbor's tortured corpse riddled with Orc arrows is used as a war banner" as per canon. It's the least the poor guy deserves, after all he's gone through.
Bret Devereaux is going to have a field day with the Ravager when he gets back from hiatus. It's the perfect illustration of his recurring theme of "there's probably a reason why the clever weapon/tactic you just made up didn't become the historical weapon/tactic."
I was able to take the Big Controversy in stride, so great was my relief that they didn't give us Poopy and Stoor Boy doing the horizontal Springle-ring.
After I left this review, I found that at least one other person thinks the siege was rubbish, too: 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldaVQ0W58TI
I want him to review this episode in particular, it's going to be a doozy. First, they're ripping off scenes from the movies wholesale, and second they can't even do them right.
I think I'd take the Springle-ring over Elrond slipping his wife's mother some tongue. At least we expect Poppy and Merimac to be off-putting, but just throwing this at us in the middle of what should have been an epic battle was simply wrong.
It's times like this that make me want to throw the entire twelve volumes in hardback of "The History of Middle-earth" at the heads of the writers. According to Christopher Tolkien in "Morgoth's Ring" one version of "Laws and Customs Among the Eldar" says that Elves can tell if another Elf is married simply by looking in their eyes, I have no idea what he'd say to Elrond kissing Galadriel, even as a diversion (when there were other ways of doing the same thing):
"The Eldar wedded once for all. …Guile or trickery in this matter was scarcely possible (even if it could be thought that any Elf would purpose to use it); for the Eldar can read at once in the eyes and voice of another whether they be wed or unwed."
The baffling part is that both the showrunners are men, so they probably think about Eregion every day.
But are they masters of their Edomain?
I wish I could believe they thought about it even once.
The Dwarven story line has consistently been the strongest one, and I thought about it a little, and I think it's because the writers are following the lead of the Jackson movies, where the Dwarves:
(1) Like drinking
(2) Like eating
(3) Like fighting
(4) Like mining and smithcraft
(5) Like gold and jewels
When they try to write the Elves, they fail because they attempt the high style and the mystical and the elevated and they can't handle the idea of immortals who are very different in their mindset from humans. Dwarves, though? They're down-to-earth, they can write that.
This does not explain why the Númenorean storyline is so weak, because presumably the writers are human too. Unless they're *not* and that's the secret behind it all!
Oddly enough, the Celebrimbor and Annatar storyline has been the second strongest, despite the mangling of Celebrimbor's character and turning the canon upside-down, inside-out, and back-to-front. The story, as they created it, has been developed fairly consistently. This is the first time I've liked Charlie Vickers' acting, as he became convincing as Annatar. And in this most recent episode, they even allow Celebrimbor to grow a spine, so his actor gets to do a performance that is not "I'm old and out of touch and loopy".
How much of an attack on family time will there be this thanksgiving?
I believe, every year politics calms down when bi-partisan familys get together, have face to face conversions with only insults your willing to say to your family; every year both sides try to poison the well by pre-releasing thought-stopping preprogramming "how to talk to your cat lady wine aunt about the boarder", elections years is 10x worse, etc.
2020 there was an attempt to stop all socializing and people believe "politics changed"; I disagree I believe 2020 was a once a social-political century-event of zoomers having their mid-life-crisis very very early. But people are actively disagreeing and well, theres hasn't been an election since to settle the argument. Face to face semi-civil conversions remove energy from your pawns and 2020 offered a 2nd option to poisoning the well with thought-stopping pre-arguments; not showing up.
So how much will there be an attack on thanksgiving happening at all; I believe any such thing will be fruitless but attempts can be made anyway.
I predict none, but I'm uncertain how much healing we're going to get.
With any luck, the election will be over, but I fear that one side will be busy with panic and despair and "not my President" conspiracy-mongering, and the other side will alternate between intolerably smug, ugly gloating, and a failure to rein in their quasi-genocidal nutjobs.
Im mildly optimistic that "was it ok for 3 assassination attempts to happen to trump" will be responded to with "no" and wishywashy shit about how he's mean on twitter is unpresidental. And the decline of america will be slow and non violent.
“How much of an attack on family time will there be this thanksgiving?”
What are you planning exactly? /joke
One should always have a red flag pop up when being asked to debate a conclusion without being able to debate the premise.
Whatifalthis predicted trump would be assassinated 2 years ago, and predicts a start of a civil war by the end of the year, based on the premise "politics changed in 2020"; Id push the coming collapse of america out at least till 2028 minimum (wars take years of dehumanization and planning, and we are ruled by zombies, that dehumanization is happening and the 80 year olds will eventually die we will see how young they are replaced with, need some 20-40 year olds with energy for wars I bet) and predicted earlier this year that 2024 would be less political then 2020.
The assassination attempts do throw a wrench into my original prediction. I think we quite dodged a bullet with trump quickly naming a successor even if 3rd/7th times the charm.