YouTube has been censoring my comments for over three years. Who else is noticing this? You won't easily notice, as you will not be told, the message won't be gone until you reload the page, and the message is also deleted without a trace from your own message history. Here are the messages they have deleted (with some context) in the last three months, according to my records. There's also a shadowbanning / demotion system where your comment is unlikely to be seen in the default "top comments" view; I will list shadowbanned comments also.
I guess I should just start over with a new account to see if it helps, but YouTube is tied to my gmail. Would I need a new gmail address too?
[Reply to [People here are talking about the collapse of a nation, the breakup of the largest country in the world, with most of the people clearly saying that they want it to happen. [...] This is showing that the wår is becoming more and more existential to Russia and if it loses it will collapse as a state. This is why it must win.]]
**INSTANTLY DELETED:** @Zz_Mike-Hawk_zZ If people outside Russia want it to split apart, that does not explain why Russia should steal more Ukrainian territory and murder thousands more of its people.
**DELETED AFTER 1 MINUTE???** @Zz_Mike-Hawk_zZ Even if people outside Russia want it to split apart, that would still not explain why Russia should steel more Ukrainian territory and kiII tens of thousands more of its people.
Oh wow they silently deleted my respelled comment on a delay timer. That is new behavior. Basically discussion is not possible / very limited here.
**NOT DELETED** I'm very concerned about the poor epistemics of humanity. In recent years I came to realize that most people who believe correct things believe them for the wrong reasons. In other words, rather than a "mostly good" left-wing and a "mostly bad" right-wing, we have most people being mostly bad most of the time, but with the left being more correct on average, partly because their average level of education is higher, and partly because they do not put much stock in the notion that "you shouldn't trust experts". The biggest political differences between people are not left vs right, but "up vs down". I made a diagram to illustrate this, but can't link to it because YouTube tends to silently, instantly and permanently delete my comments if they have links (and also often if they don't) which derailed my last discussion on this channel.
**INSTANTLY DELETED:** [[Reply to self]] (Aside: I would also say that the way YouTube deletes comments is very corrosive of societal trust as well as very annoying. Right-wingers who notice YouTube is silently deleting their comments are more likely to be radicalized than made more moderate by YT's behavior IMO. I mean, they're deleting many comments by center-left people like me, so they are probably censoring the right even more aggressively)
**DELETED THEN REINSTATED? (gone after a minute, but back after two)** (Aside: I would also say that the way YouTube deletes comments is very corrosive of societal trust as well as very annoying. I tried to say more about this but YouTube deleted my original comment. Indeed, I have a lot more to say than I will actually bother to say, since the more I talk, the more I get deleted)
[[Reply to "Division caused online, driving hate..."]] **INSTANTLY DELETED:** As a former Christian, the loss of traditional Christian values among people who call themselves Christian is amazing. How do they convince themselves that Trump, the man who was too lazy to memorize even a single Bible verse to back up his claims of being a Christian, is the paragon of Christian values?
[video about Nazis, I avoid using the term in an attempt to evade censorship]
**COMPLETELY HIDDEN from default non-Chronological view**
So the Russians just casually accuse Ukrainians of being like this, day-in day-out, month after month, year after year. You can understand Russians falling for it, but it's always surprising how many westerners fall for it. Do they even know that Russians even label Americans and Europeans this way too?
[[Reply to: Kamala really is the most irresponsible politician we've had in America in decades.]]
**SILENTLY DELETED** @GermanConquistador08 Well, at least you're illustrating Vlad's point. Trump can commit unconstitutional acts, call every democrat "radical left", stack the supreme court, create dozens of evidence-free lawsuits and a riot to overturn the election, etc etc, but the fact remains that his ordinary boring opponent will be held to much higher standards.
[[note: I actually weakened my argument here in an effort to pass the censor. What I thought was the actual worst thing about Trump―which also makes him grossly irresponsible―is that he lies and bullshits constantly. But I felt that saying so would be more likely to be censored, so I didn't say it. Now I think that what's worse than his BSing is what those lies serve to do: wreck the democratic game.]]
[Reply to @jesan733 [I'm a very reasonable centrist, anti-conspiracy-theory-minded, and I find youtube automatic comment moderation absolutely horrible and frustrating]]
**NOT DELETED** Yeah, I'm a bit of a hobbyist researcher (I wrote a few articles on Skeptical Science, which is an anti-misinformation site about global warming), and the "silent deletion with no appeals" system bothers me a lot. It discourages me from countering misinformation, because (1) why put effort into a comment that might just be deleted? and (2) saying that a video is wrong about something tends to cause fans of the OP to downvote me, which may reduce my own reputation in the eyes of YouTube. Also, I can never provide sources because the presence of any URL (even links to other YouTube videos) almost guarantees deletion of the whole comment.
**SILENTLY DELETED** Also, commenting on YouTube takes a lot more time now because I need to open a private browser window to check how well each comment was received by YouTube (i.e. how far down the list of "top comments" do I have to scroll to see it, or was it deleted, or was it shadowbanned meaning it is only visible in the "Newest first" view?) And also I have to copy-paste each comment into a document in order to make a record of what YouTube is deleting, in case they decide to delete it without a trace. So I have a file, now, with hundreds of my comments and how YouTube treated each one. I think more people should be aware of this because if I (as a reasonable center-left person) am being censored on a regular basis, I expect right-wing people to be much, much angrier still. It must feed heavily into their sense of victimhood.
**NONDELETED [after 1 minute]** Case in point, two minutes ago I posted a follow-up comment that was just as long as the first one, and after refreshing the page, it is now gone. If you're curious what I had to say, well, I can't say. If I did, this third comment would probably go the same way as the second one.
[Reply to [I've listened to a lot of your excellent analysis Vlad, but it still royally boils my P]]
**SILENTLY DELETED** They can even be conscripted and think "well, I guess we have to stop a NATO invasion, and it is Necessary to subjugate the hohols after all". Critical thinking is not required at any point. (I dislike the term critical thinking: it sounds like all you need is to criticize, and you don't need critical thinking skills to do that. I call it "thinking things through and looking for ways that you, and everyone else, could be mistaken.")
Nobody cares, is why. I don't think Youtube is out to get you, and you certainly don't seem to have expressed opinions that would fall foul of "all right thinking people on the right side of history think this" metric (e.g. your poke at 'why oh why Christians Trump?' is a bog-standard talking point).
You done screwed up with the algorithm for some reason, and that's inscrutable.
I rarely comment on YouTube, so I have no experience either way. But as far as I know, there are two functionalities on YouTube that may be related:
1) Authors can delete comments under their videos.
2) Authors can set the comment policy to "approve first", which means that your comments will be visible to others only after the authors approve them.
So you might want to make sure it is actually YouTube that deletes your comments, instead of (1) the authors deleting them, or (2) comments being automatically hidden as they await the authors' approval. You could check that by uploading your own video and posting the same comments there.
EDIT:
Actually, I forgot a much more likely option: that it is not some YouTube algorithm *detecting* your comments, but rather people flagging your comments, and YouTube automatically deleting the comments that received a certain amount of flags.
YouTube does not have the capacity to review these things, and some groups of people are happy to coordinate flagging of the comments they don't like.
To be clear, a majority of my comments are not deleted, I typically check whether a comment has been deleted about 60 seconds after posting it, and the deletion rate does not vary according to which channel I'm posting to (but, I believe, varies according to content). So it's not a matter of an author deleting (which would vary by channel) or approve-first (in which case all my comments should disappear under a given channel), nor is it likely to be a matter of human flagging (since only 60 seconds have passed since I posted).
If some automated flagging bot not controlled by YouTube is doing this, the effect is functionally the same as if YouTube itself were doing this, except that it is even more amazing that YouTube does not notify me of comments deleted because they were flagged by "users". Also, the presence of a URL (even links to other YouTube videos) virtually guarantees deletion, which backs up the hypothesis that YouTube itself is doing this. EDIT: I just checked my records, and found that 5 comments with URLs (1 to YouTube, 4 off-site) were deleted and 2 were not (1 to YouTube, 1 off-site), vs a baseline deletion rate of 20-25%. I know this isn't many data points, and under normal circumstances I would post my sources far more often, but as soon as the correlation became clear I studiously avoided URLs. I'm still pretty sure about it because the non-URL content of three of the deleted messages looked like text that ought to have survived the censor:
Try to post some clearly pro-Russian comments, with links etc. (Maybe somewhere where people are unlikely to see it.) If none of them gets deleted, it's probably reporting.
Seems to me this is the kind of thing some journal might publish an article on. You'd need to ask around some more first to be sure there isn't some prosaic explanation. If there's not, maybe do some experiments yourself, sending comments from different users (friends' accounts?), with small variations, trying to figure out what the triggers
(continued) are. And ask around -- there must be other people this is happening to. Seems like info gathered that way, which could be done pretty quickly, would be enough to get Medium or Vox or similar interested. Also, the guy who writes the Garbage Day blog seems quite knowledgable about algorithms and trends
(continued) on social media. He's pretty committed to being funny and entertaining on his Substack, so it takes a while to notice that he's quite smart and knows a lot. He is NOT the kind of person who would write an article, but might be able to tell you useful things, if you make it worth his while somehow.
Does anyone here follow Alexander Kruel on Facebook? His daily science and tech news summaries are excellent, IMO, if you can also stand the peppering of content about race-related science.
Today is election day in Ireland to vote in our next government (yippee 🙄)
But how does the Irish voting system work? Luckily, our national broadcaster has produced a guide for primary school children, which is about the level my brain is capable of handling today:
"news2day reporter Barry Gallagher enlisted the help of some 6th class students from his old school, Scoil Cholmcille An Tearmann in Co Donegal, to give you the lowdown on how our Proportional Representation voting system actually works.
To give it it's full title, the Proportional Representation with a Single Transferrable Vote (PR-STV) electoral system used in Ireland is known as one of the fairest methods of counting votes in an election, but it is also one of the most complicated."
Elections have a long tradition of being controversial, unfair, undemocratic, and generally "hey this can't be right":
Voter suppression? Ha, how about holding the 1613 election at 4 in the morning, plus have armed soldiers turning away voters!
"There was significant false recording of polls, the government occasionally jailed sheriffs who (correctly) returned an elected candidate who was not to their liking and polls were sometimes held a second time to elect 'the right candidate'. In Dublin they tried to hold a 4am election for fear free citizens might appear expecting to cast votes and prospective Cavan voters were blocked by armed soldiers with matches lit."
I had never heard of potwalloper boroughs before, but it seems that suffrage was determined by the size of your pot. Clearly, this gives new importance to the saying about "not having a pot to piss in", as that would certainly debar you!
"On the other hand, Swords in Co Dublin was not owned by anyone. As Dr Suzanne Forbes has indicated, elections were notorious in these potwalloper boroughs (an electorate of any male householder who had a hearth sufficient to boil a large pot). The townsfolk effectively sold their votes to the highest bidders: Swords had 'the meanest class of citizens…whose venality was as black as the pots that qualified them' and elections here 'were always rowdy, violent and colourful'."
"A potwalloper (sometimes potwalloner or potwaller) or householder borough was a voter in a parliamentary borough in which the franchise was extended to the male head of any household with a hearth large enough to boil a cauldron (or "wallop a pot")."
"Low information voters"was a live issue back in 1830, too:
"A Pot-Walloper", Times cartoon of 1830. One politician addresses the scruffily-attired peasant voter: "The people of Britain possess the power to return an independent parliament if they will but exert it, think of that my noble pot-walloper"; on the right, another candidate says "Never mind Him I'll give you something to put in your pot", reflecting fears that poor voters would be easily bribed."
Trump/Biden (pick your choice, or both if so inclined) is/are crazy and senile? Sorry, some word salad here and there isn't up to snuff in the "crazy but elected" stakes:
"The election of John Bligh, later 3rd Earl of Darnley, MP for Athboy in Meath in 1739 was not controversial despite his obvious eccentricity (later outright insanity). Bligh was later convinced he was a 'fine china teapot' and reputedly refused to consummate his marriage for fear his spout should break off in the act. The fact that his family owned the borough clearly advanced his electoral prospects."
Kamala is not the first, and won't be the last, candidate to blow through a large war chest paying for catchy ways to attract the fickle attention of the electorate:
"Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, was equally contemptuous of 'the very worst species of Representation – potwalloping Boroughs and open elections by the mob, where neither property, nor family connexions, nor the good opinion of the neighbourhood, nor any other good species of influence, would weigh against adventurers from Dublin or London with large purses'.
The entertainment bill (breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with drinks at each stage) of prospective candidates could be phenomenal. "
Sadly, today we just have to choose between the usual selection of venal, incompetent, idealistic but nuts, and plain nuts to form our next right of centre/centre right coalition government. (I'm calling that now for the end result).
Oh, I'm late. Uh... Yay, That Guy! Boo, The Other Guy! Finally, someone willing to say that thing! Oh man, I can't believe the other people said that other thing! Four More... shit, how long do people hold office over there?
A general election has to be held at least every five years, by law. Sometimes governments will go early, e.g. if the polls are bad and/or they anticipate some scandal will hit so they want to get out there before things go bad, or the opposition manages to win a vote of no confidence.
This time, the Dáil ran from February 2020 to November 2024. We've been under a coalition government of the two largest parties in the state, with junior partners the Greens. They had a rotating Taoiseach system in place (i.e. the leaders of the two main parties would swap seats as Prime Minister, more or less).
And for all the Harris supporters breathless about Trump being a CONVICTED FELON 34 FELONIES, we have a genuine gang leader running and seeming to be doing quite well, actually (though the most recent results indicate he won't win a seat after all).
After the "imagine yourself after 10 years in jail" part of the post on prison, we will all be delighted to know that Mr. Hutch managed to clean up his life after an initial stay in jail. He didn't stop being involved in armed robbery, money laundering, drugs, and murder, but he was much more disciplined and clean-living.
"The university has not confirmed that the player is transgender, and The Times is not naming her because she has not publicly confirmed her identity."
The Times has a policy along the lines of "if we like you/you are a member of a favoured group, we give you anonymity; if we don't like you/you are a member of a disfavoured group, we'll reveal your identity".
...Who do they think they are, playing the part of the moral crusader? They're journalists, not activists. Their job is to provide news that the people want to see. Can't they see that the times are changing? Everyone hates these people. Even the liberals, who just keep their mouths shut because it's forbidden to criticize the mentally ill. Give the people what they want.
In reply to Melvin, because the borked Substack comments won't let me directly reply to him (it's only the past couple of days this has been acting up, did the hamster escape from the wheel again?)
Pardon my aging brain, I think there was a schlock genre like this in the 70s which took real-world events and put them together into a 'documentary' style format, but it was really an excuse for gore porn, if you will.
Mondo movies? Hang on while I Google. Yep, here we go:
"Mondo film is a subgenre of exploitive documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include portrayals of foreign cultures (which have drawn accusations of ethnocentrism or racism),[1] an emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage. Over time, the films have placed increasing emphasis on footage of the dead and dying (both real and fake)."
Ok, what the hell has happened to the substack comments? I'm using it on a mobile browser, and the lines to the left of a comment thread have gone: this means it's all but impossible to tell, in a remotely long thread, which comment is a reply to which. Also, some of the comments are merging into each other or into the names and timestamps, and some of them are getting slightly cut off on the right of the screen. There are also some other incomprehensibly stupid changes that just make everything look uglier and jerkier.
1. Why the hell do they do crap like this? I can't imagine any purpose any of this possibly serves (it doesn't seem to me making them load any faster, for example). This is not a rhetorical question. Why waste time and money on changes that do nothing but make things worse?
2. Scott, can you PLEASE ask them to reverse the first part of this (removing the nested lines) on your site, like you've done with other things, because this makes threads potentially unreadable. It dumbs down the comments (who cares who's replying to whom, just let everyone scream at each other aimlessly!) and it obviously affects all previous threads as well.
I imagine the code is burdened by technical debt with hundreds of defects logged to it and when they fix a batch they just release with all the new defects that have been introduced.
Substack is still on a recruitment drive for more content creators who will bring along an audience of paying subscribers (please stop trying to make me start my own Substack, guys, thanks). Their model is "you write your long-ass post up on the top, but the comments are or should only be 'take my money you genius, how do I subscribe?'"
Well, that's better than my most recent experience trying to view comments on the Android version of Firefox: the comments wouldn't load at all. No amount of refreshing seemed to fix the issue.
The desktop version of Firefox now moves the Cancel and Reply buttons too low to click if the comment is long enough to enlarge the input box. So I had best not make this comment too lo
I watched a compilation of some of the most horrifying anti drink driving ads from around the world and they left me feeling pretty bad. This one, for instance, isn't one of the most graphic but stuck with me the most https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kADUAXf7hOo
A lot of people like horror movies which deal with exotic nonexistent horrors like ghouls and monsters. Is there any market for horror movies which deal with real world horrors? Imagine a 90-minute horror film which just deals with the aftermath of a car accident. One person dead, one person loses both legs, one person with life-altering brain injury, one person with horrendously disfiguring burns. We see their medical treatment, the reaction from their families when they're told what happens, their long slow rehabilitation, their decades of diminished life ahead. Is this the kind of horror film that anyone would actually want to watch, or do people only like horror films when the horror seems sufficiently exotic to not actually happen?
people survive severe disability, death of family members, disfigurement, yet go on to have positive lives, so the middle and end of the movie might have too much positivity to fit in the horror genre.
That's just real life, and if you wanted to press it into a genre, the genre would be "documentary". While I don't know if a snuff/body horror sub-genre would be commercially viable because of legal hurdles and/or insufficiently large customer base, the desire to watch horrible situations certainly exists. Just take accident gawkers, for example.
There might be a market for it, but it's decidedly not horror. Horror involves something coming for you in the present; big monsters, or a serial killer, or even just progressively stronger evil thoughts, the key is that something is actively hunting you down and you aren't safe in the moment. If you try to make a movie where car accidents are hunting you down, you're making a comedy.
I recently saw Absolution, which was not great, but was about a gangster getting old and dementia-adjacent. That's more the category you're talking about here.
...Who the hell would want to watch that?? That's not horror, that's just depressing. That'd be like pornography that didn't have sex and instead just had the depressing aftermath of two people who don't even have real feelings for each other awkwardly sitting in a room together.
Sudden Substack glitch preventing me from replying to posts; the box is expanding, the "Reply" button is being pushed into the comment below it, and the lower comment's presence is blocking the button.
It seems like a "div" element around the reply is assigned "height: 162px", and as the comment gets longer, the textbox expands, but the "div" element around it does not.
The obvious question is "why?????", but I guess the obvious answer is "because Substack".
If you are a web developer, you can temporarily fix it by increasing the number before clicking the submit button.
Has Substack turned into Twitter? — I can post very short replies via my Mac's web browsers. But I can post longer replies from my smartphone's Substack app. But there's no search function on the app, so it's almost impossible to navigate 1,000+ comments.
Dunno if current reply bug is related, but I'm trying to edit a post in my own Substack and it's hell. Things that current instructions from Substack say are doable just don't work, eg. breaking title into 2 lines, dragging images to reposition them.
Possibly related - the ACX Tweaks add-on has stopped working on both Chrome and Firefox. Looks like the format of the timestamps for posts has changed.
I am so frustrated with the prissiness of GPT4's image processor. Recently it has refused to make an image of a whirlpool sucking in ocean water because sucking; to make an image of somebody licking a lollipop because licking; and to make an image of a two headed dog nipping the toes and hair of a Barbie doll because grisly and surrealist. But it topped all of them tonight. My prompt read:"Realistic image: In the foreground an attractive 40-ish women wearing red lipstick, has bushy brown hair. In a trailer behind her a man sitting in a wheelchair is visible." Chat said, the prompt violated their content guidelines. I asked if the problem was the word bush, and clarified that I was describing the hair on her *head* ffs. And the lipstick was on her *mouth,* you know? No, said Chat, it thought the problem was that I was asking for image of someone disabled. But, I pointed out, there's no mockery here, and the man is not in danger. Is it against the rules to even depict the disabled?. Chat added that also it was important to be respectful of "certain groups," and suggested that I refer to the trailer as a "mobile home." So I changed bushy hair to voluminous hair and trailer to mobile home. And Chat rendered the image. BUT it turned the trailer into a small, spiffy, white aluminum sided house, with a bright green flawless lawn and a row of perfectly spaced geraniums in front of it. And the woman continued to look like she was 25 years old. Multiple attempts to change the elements that were wrong were an utter failure. After a while Chat started modifying random other things -- for ex., put the man in the wheelchair outdoors, and in another image kept that guy plus added a shadowy guy inside the house.
Anyone know if Chat/Dall-e3 always been this way, or whether there is now a new protected category of blue collar Trumpers?
Later edit: Just now it refused to make an image of a dead huge-mouthed monkfish in the sand under a full moon because combination of DEATH plus SURREALISM might disturb sensitive people. That was Chat's actual explanation. Ignored my argument that people catch fish, toddlers in the grocery store see from the strollers the dead fucking fish, and people eat fish. Also, monkfish in the image is not distorted -- all monkfish have huge mouths. Besides, even a grisly picture of a monkfish with a monstrously distorted half-human face wouldn't be Surrealism. "Surrealism" isn't French for "weird distorted monster movie shit" ffs.
AI images have always done horribly at realistic depictions of people. I suspect all of the training images are social media influencers or something; every person invariably turns out looking like a 20-something model. Old is possible to do with special tools, which you probably don't have access to with the big commercial AIs. I don't know that I've ever seen an AI generator capable of making a picture of an ugly person.
Oh Dall-2 would make ugly people, and I'm not talking here about weird deformities due to errors in rendering certain features. If I simply asked for a person doing X, I got fat people, bald people, middle-aged people doing X. Did you ever mess with Dall-e2?
As for the rest, this is why people want open source AI. So we don't end up with a bunch of corporate PR crap hardcoded in.
I had to write this as a reply to myself because apparently substack won't let you post long replies now; the reply button gets cut off by the text of lower comments and I can't click it. Speaking of shitty design.
If it's brutal you want, you've come to the right person!
"In the center of the room a tiny geranium houses poisonous frogs smuggled from Peru"
Do you mean terrarium, or are the poison frogs sitting in a plant? If poison frogs are hopping about the place, that certainly is one way to keep the employees on their toes!
Over-use of adverbs. Much too much "busily, comfortably, thoughtfully".
Are the two Trevors different people, or same guy with different names? Pittsman, Cooper.
The story seems to have an interesting germ of an idea, and the out of chronological order isn't off-putting. Is there more to it, because if this is the whole thing, then it ends too abruptly and you haven't tied the opening paragraph to anything in the rest of the story yet.
Stephen King has a book about writing that I like. He says never to use adverbs -- they make what you're describing sound hokey and unreal. "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
No it definitely isn’t. If you read his advice on writing there’s a whole lengthy rant about adverbs in it, and it’s quite clear he’s not joking around. He doesn’t actually say one should never use them, just that they always weaken the sentence and to try to avoid them if at all possible. Gives suggestions for ways to avoid them: Instead of saying someone ran quickly, use a stronger verb: say they sprinted. Or use a figure of speech — the person ran as tho pursued by a rabid dog
I was definitely being flippant here, but "never" is an adverb too, so the advice never to use adverbs is contradictory. A lot of popular writing advice one sees around revolves on banning whole categories of words and phrases from use, often with a shaky grasp of what belongs to that category (the passive voice seems to be a popular target). Now to be fair the advice given by competent writers like King or Orwell generally has nuance and exceptions, and it's only the dumbed-down version that ends up saying stuff like "adverbs and passives should always be avoided".
Yeah, there are a lot of words in the same category as never. They are adverbs, but I don't think they're the kind King has in mind. I think what he's talking about is quickly, rudely, softly, etc -- mostly adjectives to which -ly is added. I'm quoting King not because I take his advice as gospel, but because I agree with it. Sentences with adverbs in them have a corny, "written" sound when in read them. Thinking it over right now, I'm wondering if what I dislike about the -ly adjectives in writing is that they are not often used in spoken language. For instance, I wouldn't say to someone that I drove quickly -- I'd say I drove fast. Prob. would not say I spoke softly, more like to say "I was almost whispering" or "I kept my voice very low." I wouldn't say someone spoke to me on the phone irritably, I'd say they were irritable -- or pissy -- on the phone. Etc. So maybe that's what gives adverbs in writing a hokey quality for me: They sound to me like the author has stopped speaking naturally, and is doing Creative Writing, and Describing.
Maybe too esoteric, but the parts of speech have different levels of weightiness, or power. The order is: Proper nouns > nouns > verbs > adjectives > adverbs.
(Yes, the most potent literary form is the list of proper nouns; sections such as these are included in all the most long-lasting, important literary works. The Iliad, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, The Voluspa, etc etc.)
Paradise Lost has a list of demons; The Iliad has a list of ships; Moby Dick has a list of whale species; The Voluspa has a list of dwarfs. Much great, enduring literature includes sections that are, essentially, just long lists. No action, no dialogue, just a list of names and descriptions. Young people tend to think these are the most boring sections. But actually, they're very powerful. Part of the reason for that power is the power of proper nouns. Naming things is powerful, so these sections that are lists of names are very powerful. The "epic catalog" can only be done well by a master, though. It's not something a beginner should try right away.
If you want another demonstration of the enormous power of proper nouns, look at the first page of On the Road. See how much weight is being carried by the word "Dean". On the Road is basically built on proper nouns.
Very much disagree with this, I like adverbs. At least, in dialogue tags which are where they are most frequently condemned. In real life, people give information when they speak not just by their words but by their tone of voice. I think it's ridiculous if fiction can't represent the full range of ways people actually talk, just because of overly zealous writing rules.
Now, including an adverb *just for the sake of including an adverb* is a very different matter...
"I see what you mean", she said thoughtfully as she sat uncomfortably on the chair, shifting wincingly as the hard surface sternly refused to yield caressingly, as her bottom needily demanded relief.
She carefully considered what response would suit, it needed to cheerfully yet fully demonstrate that she generously conceded the point with virtually no exceptions, just like the luggage sloppily let itself be towed about almost in a line.
There are a few criticisms I could make, but the most honest, brutal of them is that it isn't a story, it's a series of unconnected vignettes that may or may not have endings themselves. Conversations end practically mid-phrase, we're jumping between locations, between times, between people, between plots, and when we reach the comment box and the words are all behind us nothing has brought the threads together in any meaningful way.
There are several phrases that are purely there to paint a picture, but fall short of fully painting it. “Their luggage sloppily in tow, they almost form a line.” I'm trying to picture this, and it strikes me that I don't know why they're forming the line. If it's unprompted habit, it will feel different than if it's responding to hotel incentives. It will say different things about the guests. Likewise, Tony Cortazar. “He has been hard at work on his beard and the two months of steady, persistent effort show.” Show what? Is it a good beard, a scraggly beard, the Beard Of Heaven like you see in old paintings? You've drawn my attention to this man's chin, and then left a blank spot over it.
“Go outfront the hotel and cross Seawall Boulevard “ reads like camera instructions, like it's a script rather than a story. Books are tour guides, they don't send the audience out ahead of them. “Out front, across Seawall Boulevard” gets us there more smoothly.
Stan Kennon's first sentence is so long and overelaborate that I instinctively infer he's the Narrator, and all the previous scenes are retroactively Stan's perception of them. “on the block in the lease sale” is doing a lot of that; that's an exposition line, everyone here knows where the bidding will be. Stan's only reason to say this is to inform the audience, which is the job of the Narrator. (Their conversation also ends before it begins. Everything that's said there is the kind of small talk you put in scenes to get the audience comfortable with the characters, before you have your actual scene. The actual scene is missing here.)
It's strange that Stan Kennon, Man In His Forties, and Tony Cortazar, Man With Beard, both get names, but CEO, Man Worthy Of Appearing In Two Scenes, does not.
I am physically repulsed by Trevor snorting cocaine directly off the surface of a public bathroom. Bring a tray, my man. Your own arm would be cleaner.
Skimming through, I suddenly notice there are two separate Trevors. I assume this is leading to a case of mistaken identity later on, but if you're going to do this you should probably refer to them as Pittman and Cooper. The audience shouldn't be the ones confused.
So I'm watching Marc Andreessen talking with Joe Rogan, And Joe says something about the ACLU defending the Nazi's right to march and speak. And Marc responds with a few words and then says, "Yeah it was not too long ago that democrats were in favor of many of these extremely sensible positions." With a cute smirk at the end, and I bust a gut and had to post here. about the 1:31:00 mark here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8MOfxD5nU
JR probably meant to say ACLU but actually said ADL. I could be wrong but I don’t think the Anti Defamation League was arguing for Nazi march permits in the recent past.
I had never listened to Joe Rogan before. I knew he was controversial but he came across as just being overly credulous in the part I watched.
I guess depending on where your credulity takes you it could lead to being considered controversial.
Well, it's always credulity paired with skepticism, isn't it? I think for a typical person, the instant they get credulous about something, they get skeptical of the opposite (first impression bias).
Joe Rogan doesn't invite HBomberguy or Brian Deer on the show to talk about how the whole all-vaccines-cause-autism thing was an accidental byproduct of a scam by Wakefield and Fudenberg, and how Wakefield's resulting celebrity led to things like the film Vaxxed (directed by, and starring, Wakefield) which perhaps helped bring right-wing/Christian groups like Daystar into the anti-vax fold, which helped lead to Robert Malone's prominence, which led Joe Rogan to invite Malone on the show. The description of that episode says "Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection." He doesn't mention that Malone hasn't worked on mRNA vaccines for ~30 years.
Joe didn't invite a somebody for a contrary/mainstream view around the same time period. For some reason he did invite an Australian radio host to talk about the pandemic, who pushed back on one of Joe's beliefs at the 18 minute mark... but I think Joe doesn't worry about being wrong about things, or about his guests being wrong, even when being wrong means more people die. Come to think of it, that's a really common consequence of being wrong for any popular figure. But it seems like when people become popular, their sense of responsibility grows not at all, or at least, their overconfidence shrinks not at all.
<But it seems like when people become popular, their sense of responsibility grows not at all
I think it's a case of power corrupts. I've seen the same thing in medical professionals. Sometimes you can tell they're just doing the routine thing without trying hard or thinking hard -- even when they must know the routine thing won't work.
(cont'd) They've lost track patient's need and yearning for help. It's as though that level of detail is too granular for them. They've moved on to thinking in bigger units. Their sense of responsibility is tied to things like keeping the group practice up and running smoothly, meeting various big picture goals -- number of pts seen per day, etc.
Right he did say ADL... I also assumed ACLU. Joe is fine, and fun, mostly he wants to have a good conversation, so he rarely has much 'push back' talking to guests. I don't find Joe to be controversial. He does love a good conspiracy theory, and is willing to dive down a lot of silly rabbit holes.
Yeah, I haven't seen much of his stuff but while his credulousness on some matters is less than impressive, in general I'd say it's more politeness towards his guests than anything else.
Sure, his job is to have a good conversation with his guest and get them to tell their story in the best way. He has had a few episodes were two people come on to debate an issue.
Yeah IDK why it struck me so much... just a true and delicious turn of phrase. I'm really hopeful for america at the moment, and yet many of those around me are opposite... so I guess part of my hope is a return to more sense.
If I'm interpreting the smirk correctly it means "I've just realised that while by sensible ideas I meant free speech, some people are going to decide to interpret me as meaning Nazism, and it's too late to rephrase it now without looking like a dork, oh well, hello everyone seeing this on twitter"
Sure, I thought of that as I was writing, but all you have to do is watch the podcast and he is really just saying that he hopes the Dems become a sensible party again.
Why should we even think that survival would be possible even if we get where we are going? We evolved in a planet-wide system, and is it not unreasonable to assume that this planet-sized system is necessary for us to survive?
One of THE ongoing themes of modern science is the continual discovery of connections between every aspect of our earth-sized ecosystem. Kill off these bugs, which then harms these birds that ate them, which then results in less bird droppings, which then results in fewer colonies of these fungi, which hurts these symbiotic fungi, which causes these trees that rely on that fungus to be susceptible to disease, which deforests this region, which increases blah blah blah. Or maybe, grow and provide all human food in a sterile environment, which decreases exposure to minor pathogens, which maybe changes immune response to other things, which maybe causes a sharp increase in autoimmune disorders. The system is self-stable because it evolved that way.
I grant that we're past the point that people naively think that you can just pack up enough water, air, nutrients, and energy, and people can just live in a spaceship or artificial colony bio-habitat for arbitrarily long, but are we really being any more reasonable with our thinking now? So, you're going to pack up 1000 varied crops and seeds? What about the bacteria they need in the soil? What about the fungi--many maybe undiscovered yet--that keep those in check? A subset of the system may run for a little while, but it is inherently missing parts and may be inherently unstable. There is no way to take everything.
Relativistic spacecraft may not at all be the limitation. I put forth the theory that no biological beings can ever stably move out of the large evolutionary system in which they evolved. Why don't we get visits from aliens? They're just as stuck as we are in the celestial tide pool in which they were created. And when the tide pool dries up, you either go with it, or you've somehow transcended the biology altogether and headed off into the stars as some sort of digitally stored chatbots.
Counting on a post-earth future is like a counting on winning the lottery instead of planning for job. Except, we at least know that winning the lottery is theoretically possible. Leaving your home ecosystem behind? Not so much.
It’s an open question, but it sure seems like we’d be better off starting from scratch with Earth biomes than trying to live on an alien world.
There are lots of old sci fi stories where the humans live on patches of Earth life, and the original life forms keep pushing through and have to be constantly suppressed.
I think the rest of the universe should be spared us. Why should members our species be fucking and fighting on every inhabitable square foot of the universe? We're not that wonderful, you know?
Nothing wrong with indulging in some light misanthropy as we enter the dreaded Holiday Season; however, the unfortunate truth is that humans are the most interesting of all the known ways to arrange matter in the universe and it isn't even close.
Yes but this isn't the SAT's, you know? There is no Ivy that species get sent to if they're 99th percentile on interesting, or smart, or complex. Who do we know of who's watching, and can become interested in us? And as for being interested in our own species -- I constantly hear people on here discounting members of our species
(continuing here b/c of bug) whom they think are dumber than them in important ways -- or because they believe stuff the speaker thinks is dumb or malignant. Outside of this little space, members of our species are having a hate-fest on Twitter, and sawing each other's heads off around the globe. Interested?
The rest of the universe - so far as we've seen - is inert matter. Rolling around the curves of spacetime. Jostled back and forth under different forces. Sometimes annihilating other chunks of things but mindlessly, always mindlessly. No intent. No choice.
It's not about being promoted somewhere or currying favor with some observer. So far, we are the observer. Our fighting and fucking should spread throughout this lifeless universe. Our head sawing is more beautiful than all the sunsets unobserved through showers of diamonds.
Your word "interesting" is doing a lot of work here. Somehow you think it covers the situation even though neither of us is picturing there being any mind other than those of our species to be interested. I point out various signs of lack of interest individual members of our species have in each other, including head sawing, now our lack of interest is beautiful.
The Universe? OP's misanthropy was directed at those who presume life exists elsewhere, and if it does, the one thing we know about it is that we know nothing about it and likely can't compare it to anything earthbound.
Oh, I don't know about that; have you ever watched a family of raccoons, or an orca pod, or a cleaner wrasse's day-to-day life? Humans are the most interesting to *us*, maybe, but the other animals might disagree.
Saying that something is the most interesting doesn't mean that everything else is completely uninteresting.
Animals do exhibit a great deal of complex behavior. Humans, though, do so across a much wider range of activities and for a much wider range of reasons. By interesting I mean the most capable of producing surprise.
Imagine a hyper advanced alien civilization that has a complete knowledge of all physics. A completely lifeless planet might be aesthetically pleasing or neat or otherwise engaging for some reason but it wouldn't be interesting. There would be no question why everything was the way it was. A planet with life, though, is different. The living beings can reshape it. Animals do this, sure, but humans do it in many more ways and for many different reasons. We can even make elements that don't exist on Earth. We have symbols everywhere at different levels of meaning, we can even reflect on a meta level about our own behavior to a level unknown in other animals.
Our super advanced alien species would need many more bits to model us compared to any of the other animals, fun to watch as they may be.
To build on this: the most interesting parts of my life look like the everyday parts of these animals' lives. The best bits of my life are caring for and playing with my children, waking and exploring, and dealing with complex social situations. Most of my life is spent on a black chair in a sterile office making clickety clack noises in front of a grey glowing box, and not only could the racoons, orcas, and wrasses find it boring, other humans would too!
The universe is in desperate need of humans. Humans are wonderful creatures and the best thing that happened in the universe. We need more of them not less.
That's a very reasonable generalization of two objections I've seen for Musk's ludicrous Mars colonization plans, namely, "we don't even know how to build a self-sustaining isolated ecosystem here on Earth, let alone bring all the necessary organisms to another planet alive", and "there's nothing that could conceivably happen to Earth that would make it as hostile to life as Mars is right now".
Also, "it's practically impossible to colonize other worlds" is a sobering but plausible answer to "where are all the aliens?" So, yeah, you're onto something. IMO, it's not clear yet whether "practically impossible" turns out to mean "actually impossible" or "solvable with a multi-century concerted research program", but the difference for what we can expect in our lifetimes is zero.
Which experts said that? I'd be interested to read the arguments. I know plenty have argued it won't be economically feasible for various reasons, but I don't know any serious arguments that say it isn't technically possible, especially since the Saturn V proved big payloads are possible and the space shuttle showed upper stage reusability is also possible.
The leadership at Arianespace is *still* saying that, last time I checked. The number of people who were saying that in the 1980s and 1990s when I started paying serious attention, will not fit in the margins of this blog post, but seriously, I was there, and it was most of the industry. With a few caveats like "for the foreseeable future" and "not practical but somebody could maybe do it as a stunt".
Yes, but the Arianespace CEO seems to make his point on the economics not the technology. Do you have something where he is saying it is technically not possible? I've seen plenty of papers from the 90s arguing the economics don't work out as well, but I don't see anyone saying its technically impossible. "Do it as a stunt" makes it sound like they base their arguments on economics, i.e. it might be feasible but you'll never make money with it (which just shows they never concieved of something as big or as profitable as Starlink).
Basically what I'm asking is, do you know of any argument against the technical implausiblity of reuse, rather than economic arguments?
These experts may still turn out correct. AFAIK, so far the only payload Starship has taken to LEO was a banana, so we're still missing five orders of magnitude.
This may be a fundamental difference in attitude between people. Some people think that everything that isn't firmly ruled out by the laws of nature is just a matter of effort to achieve. I think that many things just aren't feasible, and if some promised breakthrough pushes credibility, I'm willing to consider it "possibly impossible until shown otherwise". And I am quite sure that sustainable isolated habitats are something we should figure out here on Earth before sending someone on a suidice mission into space.
The bar to Starship carrying payload to orbit is at the moment regulatory rather than technical. It's engines and aerostructure have demonstrated the necessary capabilities as of IFT 5.
Assuming SpaceX isn't outrageously lying on its published numbers regarding vehicle weight, propelling capacity, and engine performance, then Block 2 is mathematically quite capable of launching 100 tons to LEO.
Regulations don't stop them putting 100 tonnes of dummy payload into their next launch. It's more likely they don't do it because it's not useful to the development at this point.
Curious if anyone is reading Ross Douthat's online fantasy novel and, if so, what they think. I'm no fantasy fan myself so not reading it, but I've been a Douthat reader for years so wondering what regularly fantasy readers' opinions are.
I have not read it before just now, but my initial impression is annoyance. The introduction uses the term "Faerie". Everyone else uses "Fae", it's a shorter and clearer term.
The first sentence of the Prologue is trying to do too much; it should be two separate sentences, one for the priests, the other for the mother. Then the third paragraph introduces the explanation as, rapidfire, an "excuse", a "story", and a "tale", but then says the person using it thinks it's true, which is contradicting the entire buildup.
So, so far, four paragraphs in, I dislike the prose. I also don't know very much about the characters. The introduction suggests they're conquering kings, but the story only says they've got maids, and doesn't even give a technology level, apart from "mirrors". Not a promising start.
YouTube has been censoring my comments for over three years. Who else is noticing this? You won't easily notice, as you will not be told, the message won't be gone until you reload the page, and the message is also deleted without a trace from your own message history. Here are the messages they have deleted (with some context) in the last three months, according to my records. There's also a shadowbanning / demotion system where your comment is unlikely to be seen in the default "top comments" view; I will list shadowbanned comments also.
I guess I should just start over with a new account to see if it helps, but YouTube is tied to my gmail. Would I need a new gmail address too?
### Sept 14 2024 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-33VO9eerq9MXFaivi0gg/community?lb=UgkxKwVzqkJBIfzjuXXy0_VwcxqHXUb38vrs
[Reply to [People here are talking about the collapse of a nation, the breakup of the largest country in the world, with most of the people clearly saying that they want it to happen. [...] This is showing that the wår is becoming more and more existential to Russia and if it loses it will collapse as a state. This is why it must win.]]
**INSTANTLY DELETED:** @Zz_Mike-Hawk_zZ If people outside Russia want it to split apart, that does not explain why Russia should steal more Ukrainian territory and murder thousands more of its people.
**DELETED AFTER 1 MINUTE???** @Zz_Mike-Hawk_zZ Even if people outside Russia want it to split apart, that would still not explain why Russia should steel more Ukrainian territory and kiII tens of thousands more of its people.
Oh wow they silently deleted my respelled comment on a delay timer. That is new behavior. Basically discussion is not possible / very limited here.
### 2024-09-17 Vlad Vexler Chat https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxQAgnpUQ-PRXCSjrsK1fD7ZF2GLcOrq3L
**NOT DELETED** I'm very concerned about the poor epistemics of humanity. In recent years I came to realize that most people who believe correct things believe them for the wrong reasons. In other words, rather than a "mostly good" left-wing and a "mostly bad" right-wing, we have most people being mostly bad most of the time, but with the left being more correct on average, partly because their average level of education is higher, and partly because they do not put much stock in the notion that "you shouldn't trust experts". The biggest political differences between people are not left vs right, but "up vs down". I made a diagram to illustrate this, but can't link to it because YouTube tends to silently, instantly and permanently delete my comments if they have links (and also often if they don't) which derailed my last discussion on this channel.
**INSTANTLY DELETED:** [[Reply to self]] (Aside: I would also say that the way YouTube deletes comments is very corrosive of societal trust as well as very annoying. Right-wingers who notice YouTube is silently deleting their comments are more likely to be radicalized than made more moderate by YT's behavior IMO. I mean, they're deleting many comments by center-left people like me, so they are probably censoring the right even more aggressively)
**DELETED THEN REINSTATED? (gone after a minute, but back after two)** (Aside: I would also say that the way YouTube deletes comments is very corrosive of societal trust as well as very annoying. I tried to say more about this but YouTube deleted my original comment. Indeed, I have a lot more to say than I will actually bother to say, since the more I talk, the more I get deleted)
[[Reply to "Division caused online, driving hate..."]] **INSTANTLY DELETED:** As a former Christian, the loss of traditional Christian values among people who call themselves Christian is amazing. How do they convince themselves that Trump, the man who was too lazy to memorize even a single Bible verse to back up his claims of being a Christian, is the paragon of Christian values?
### Sept 29 2024 33,000 Lives Lost in 48 Hours? The Babyn Yar Tragedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jm0h3hpg8
[video about Nazis, I avoid using the term in an attempt to evade censorship]
**COMPLETELY HIDDEN from default non-Chronological view**
So the Russians just casually accuse Ukrainians of being like this, day-in day-out, month after month, year after year. You can understand Russians falling for it, but it's always surprising how many westerners fall for it. Do they even know that Russians even label Americans and Europeans this way too?
### Oct 25 on How to answer: is Trump a fascist? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1jSFfKPF4A
[[Reply to @Todd.B]]
[[Reply to: Kamala really is the most irresponsible politician we've had in America in decades.]]
**SILENTLY DELETED** @GermanConquistador08 Well, at least you're illustrating Vlad's point. Trump can commit unconstitutional acts, call every democrat "radical left", stack the supreme court, create dozens of evidence-free lawsuits and a riot to overturn the election, etc etc, but the fact remains that his ordinary boring opponent will be held to much higher standards.
[[note: I actually weakened my argument here in an effort to pass the censor. What I thought was the actual worst thing about Trump―which also makes him grossly irresponsible―is that he lies and bullshits constantly. But I felt that saying so would be more likely to be censored, so I didn't say it. Now I think that what's worse than his BSing is what those lies serve to do: wreck the democratic game.]]
[Reply to @jesan733 [I'm a very reasonable centrist, anti-conspiracy-theory-minded, and I find youtube automatic comment moderation absolutely horrible and frustrating]]
**NOT DELETED** Yeah, I'm a bit of a hobbyist researcher (I wrote a few articles on Skeptical Science, which is an anti-misinformation site about global warming), and the "silent deletion with no appeals" system bothers me a lot. It discourages me from countering misinformation, because (1) why put effort into a comment that might just be deleted? and (2) saying that a video is wrong about something tends to cause fans of the OP to downvote me, which may reduce my own reputation in the eyes of YouTube. Also, I can never provide sources because the presence of any URL (even links to other YouTube videos) almost guarantees deletion of the whole comment.
**SILENTLY DELETED** Also, commenting on YouTube takes a lot more time now because I need to open a private browser window to check how well each comment was received by YouTube (i.e. how far down the list of "top comments" do I have to scroll to see it, or was it deleted, or was it shadowbanned meaning it is only visible in the "Newest first" view?) And also I have to copy-paste each comment into a document in order to make a record of what YouTube is deleting, in case they decide to delete it without a trace. So I have a file, now, with hundreds of my comments and how YouTube treated each one. I think more people should be aware of this because if I (as a reasonable center-left person) am being censored on a regular basis, I expect right-wing people to be much, much angrier still. It must feed heavily into their sense of victimhood.
**NONDELETED [after 1 minute]** Case in point, two minutes ago I posted a follow-up comment that was just as long as the first one, and after refreshing the page, it is now gone. If you're curious what I had to say, well, I can't say. If I did, this third comment would probably go the same way as the second one.
### Nov 30 2024 https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxBNd7AJrA6mUT08XCPCQo1EptxW1OR23H
[Reply to [I've listened to a lot of your excellent analysis Vlad, but it still royally boils my P]]
**SILENTLY DELETED** They can even be conscripted and think "well, I guess we have to stop a NATO invasion, and it is Necessary to subjugate the hohols after all". Critical thinking is not required at any point. (I dislike the term critical thinking: it sounds like all you need is to criticize, and you don't need critical thinking skills to do that. I call it "thinking things through and looking for ways that you, and everyone else, could be mistaken.")
Nobody cares, is why. I don't think Youtube is out to get you, and you certainly don't seem to have expressed opinions that would fall foul of "all right thinking people on the right side of history think this" metric (e.g. your poke at 'why oh why Christians Trump?' is a bog-standard talking point).
You done screwed up with the algorithm for some reason, and that's inscrutable.
Youtube is a video platform, not a debate platform. If you want to debate people on Youtube you need to use the proper form: clapback videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5U4OfJ1NA
I rarely comment on YouTube, so I have no experience either way. But as far as I know, there are two functionalities on YouTube that may be related:
1) Authors can delete comments under their videos.
2) Authors can set the comment policy to "approve first", which means that your comments will be visible to others only after the authors approve them.
So you might want to make sure it is actually YouTube that deletes your comments, instead of (1) the authors deleting them, or (2) comments being automatically hidden as they await the authors' approval. You could check that by uploading your own video and posting the same comments there.
EDIT:
Actually, I forgot a much more likely option: that it is not some YouTube algorithm *detecting* your comments, but rather people flagging your comments, and YouTube automatically deleting the comments that received a certain amount of flags.
YouTube does not have the capacity to review these things, and some groups of people are happy to coordinate flagging of the comments they don't like.
To be clear, a majority of my comments are not deleted, I typically check whether a comment has been deleted about 60 seconds after posting it, and the deletion rate does not vary according to which channel I'm posting to (but, I believe, varies according to content). So it's not a matter of an author deleting (which would vary by channel) or approve-first (in which case all my comments should disappear under a given channel), nor is it likely to be a matter of human flagging (since only 60 seconds have passed since I posted).
If some automated flagging bot not controlled by YouTube is doing this, the effect is functionally the same as if YouTube itself were doing this, except that it is even more amazing that YouTube does not notify me of comments deleted because they were flagged by "users". Also, the presence of a URL (even links to other YouTube videos) virtually guarantees deletion, which backs up the hypothesis that YouTube itself is doing this. EDIT: I just checked my records, and found that 5 comments with URLs (1 to YouTube, 4 off-site) were deleted and 2 were not (1 to YouTube, 1 off-site), vs a baseline deletion rate of 20-25%. I know this isn't many data points, and under normal circumstances I would post my sources far more often, but as soon as the correlation became clear I studiously avoided URLs. I'm still pretty sure about it because the non-URL content of three of the deleted messages looked like text that ought to have survived the censor:
**SILENTLY DELETED:** 15:42 "Ukraine ran out of 152mm ... Ukrainian government never took care of creating plans to create shells" - what's this then? https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/2521001-army-soon-to-get-152mm-shells-for-hiatsynt-artillery-system-poroshenko.html
**SILENTLY DELETED** 1:17 This picture is from Russia in 2019[1]. The ammo dump cookoff on Aug 16 looks like this: https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1560579567944753155
[1]: https://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2019/08/05/2-injured-in-blast-at-russian-ammunition-dump
**INSTANTLY DELETED**
I think I found it: https://youtu.be/r-HTvLAPS0c?si=HDBGDL3Wssb3Kfy9&t=350
Try to post some clearly pro-Russian comments, with links etc. (Maybe somewhere where people are unlikely to see it.) If none of them gets deleted, it's probably reporting.
Seems to me this is the kind of thing some journal might publish an article on. You'd need to ask around some more first to be sure there isn't some prosaic explanation. If there's not, maybe do some experiments yourself, sending comments from different users (friends' accounts?), with small variations, trying to figure out what the triggers
(continued) are. And ask around -- there must be other people this is happening to. Seems like info gathered that way, which could be done pretty quickly, would be enough to get Medium or Vox or similar interested. Also, the guy who writes the Garbage Day blog seems quite knowledgable about algorithms and trends
(continued) on social media. He's pretty committed to being funny and entertaining on his Substack, so it takes a while to notice that he's quite smart and knows a lot. He is NOT the kind of person who would write an article, but might be able to tell you useful things, if you make it worth his while somehow.
Does anyone here follow Alexander Kruel on Facebook? His daily science and tech news summaries are excellent, IMO, if you can also stand the peppering of content about race-related science.
It seems to be all AI-related.
Today is election day in Ireland to vote in our next government (yippee 🙄)
But how does the Irish voting system work? Luckily, our national broadcaster has produced a guide for primary school children, which is about the level my brain is capable of handling today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPlRbkyBKE
https://www.rte.ie/kids/news2day/2024/1129/1483712-barry-from-news2day-explains-the-irish-pr-voting-system/
"news2day reporter Barry Gallagher enlisted the help of some 6th class students from his old school, Scoil Cholmcille An Tearmann in Co Donegal, to give you the lowdown on how our Proportional Representation voting system actually works.
To give it it's full title, the Proportional Representation with a Single Transferrable Vote (PR-STV) electoral system used in Ireland is known as one of the fairest methods of counting votes in an election, but it is also one of the most complicated."
Elections have a long tradition of being controversial, unfair, undemocratic, and generally "hey this can't be right":
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/1128/1483582-history-elections-ireland-medieval-18th-17th-century/
Voter suppression? Ha, how about holding the 1613 election at 4 in the morning, plus have armed soldiers turning away voters!
"There was significant false recording of polls, the government occasionally jailed sheriffs who (correctly) returned an elected candidate who was not to their liking and polls were sometimes held a second time to elect 'the right candidate'. In Dublin they tried to hold a 4am election for fear free citizens might appear expecting to cast votes and prospective Cavan voters were blocked by armed soldiers with matches lit."
I had never heard of potwalloper boroughs before, but it seems that suffrage was determined by the size of your pot. Clearly, this gives new importance to the saying about "not having a pot to piss in", as that would certainly debar you!
"On the other hand, Swords in Co Dublin was not owned by anyone. As Dr Suzanne Forbes has indicated, elections were notorious in these potwalloper boroughs (an electorate of any male householder who had a hearth sufficient to boil a large pot). The townsfolk effectively sold their votes to the highest bidders: Swords had 'the meanest class of citizens…whose venality was as black as the pots that qualified them' and elections here 'were always rowdy, violent and colourful'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potwalloper
"A potwalloper (sometimes potwalloner or potwaller) or householder borough was a voter in a parliamentary borough in which the franchise was extended to the male head of any household with a hearth large enough to boil a cauldron (or "wallop a pot")."
"Low information voters"was a live issue back in 1830, too:
"A Pot-Walloper", Times cartoon of 1830. One politician addresses the scruffily-attired peasant voter: "The people of Britain possess the power to return an independent parliament if they will but exert it, think of that my noble pot-walloper"; on the right, another candidate says "Never mind Him I'll give you something to put in your pot", reflecting fears that poor voters would be easily bribed."
Trump/Biden (pick your choice, or both if so inclined) is/are crazy and senile? Sorry, some word salad here and there isn't up to snuff in the "crazy but elected" stakes:
"The election of John Bligh, later 3rd Earl of Darnley, MP for Athboy in Meath in 1739 was not controversial despite his obvious eccentricity (later outright insanity). Bligh was later convinced he was a 'fine china teapot' and reputedly refused to consummate his marriage for fear his spout should break off in the act. The fact that his family owned the borough clearly advanced his electoral prospects."
Kamala is not the first, and won't be the last, candidate to blow through a large war chest paying for catchy ways to attract the fickle attention of the electorate:
"Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, was equally contemptuous of 'the very worst species of Representation – potwalloping Boroughs and open elections by the mob, where neither property, nor family connexions, nor the good opinion of the neighbourhood, nor any other good species of influence, would weigh against adventurers from Dublin or London with large purses'.
The entertainment bill (breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with drinks at each stage) of prospective candidates could be phenomenal. "
Sadly, today we just have to choose between the usual selection of venal, incompetent, idealistic but nuts, and plain nuts to form our next right of centre/centre right coalition government. (I'm calling that now for the end result).
Oh, I'm late. Uh... Yay, That Guy! Boo, The Other Guy! Finally, someone willing to say that thing! Oh man, I can't believe the other people said that other thing! Four More... shit, how long do people hold office over there?
A general election has to be held at least every five years, by law. Sometimes governments will go early, e.g. if the polls are bad and/or they anticipate some scandal will hit so they want to get out there before things go bad, or the opposition manages to win a vote of no confidence.
This time, the Dáil ran from February 2020 to November 2024. We've been under a coalition government of the two largest parties in the state, with junior partners the Greens. They had a rotating Taoiseach system in place (i.e. the leaders of the two main parties would swap seats as Prime Minister, more or less).
For comparison with the USA, we have eleven parties/groups going for election:
https://www.rte.ie/news/election-24/
And for all the Harris supporters breathless about Trump being a CONVICTED FELON 34 FELONIES, we have a genuine gang leader running and seeming to be doing quite well, actually (though the most recent results indicate he won't win a seat after all).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Hutch
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41514458.html
After the "imagine yourself after 10 years in jail" part of the post on prison, we will all be delighted to know that Mr. Hutch managed to clean up his life after an initial stay in jail. He didn't stop being involved in armed robbery, money laundering, drugs, and murder, but he was much more disciplined and clean-living.
RIP Nik, I was a big fan. Read everything he ever wrote!!!
"The university has not confirmed that the player is transgender, and The Times is not naming her because she has not publicly confirmed her identity."
NYT now has a policy about revealing names?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/us/transgender-san-jose-boise-volleyball.html
The Times has a policy along the lines of "if we like you/you are a member of a favoured group, we give you anonymity; if we don't like you/you are a member of a disfavoured group, we'll reveal your identity".
Once we understand that, it is all consistent.
Maybe it's time for the NYT to follow in the Onion's footsteps. https://theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997/
...Who do they think they are, playing the part of the moral crusader? They're journalists, not activists. Their job is to provide news that the people want to see. Can't they see that the times are changing? Everyone hates these people. Even the liberals, who just keep their mouths shut because it's forbidden to criticize the mentally ill. Give the people what they want.
In reply to Melvin, because the borked Substack comments won't let me directly reply to him (it's only the past couple of days this has been acting up, did the hamster escape from the wheel again?)
Pardon my aging brain, I think there was a schlock genre like this in the 70s which took real-world events and put them together into a 'documentary' style format, but it was really an excuse for gore porn, if you will.
Mondo movies? Hang on while I Google. Yep, here we go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_film
"Mondo film is a subgenre of exploitive documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include portrayals of foreign cultures (which have drawn accusations of ethnocentrism or racism),[1] an emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage. Over time, the films have placed increasing emphasis on footage of the dead and dying (both real and fake)."
It’s creepy stuff. Never seen any of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death
Once worked with a jerk who enjoyed showing that one to house guests.
Never paid the guy a visit. Made a point of giving him a wide berth.
There is nothing new under the sun, as the man said.
Ok, what the hell has happened to the substack comments? I'm using it on a mobile browser, and the lines to the left of a comment thread have gone: this means it's all but impossible to tell, in a remotely long thread, which comment is a reply to which. Also, some of the comments are merging into each other or into the names and timestamps, and some of them are getting slightly cut off on the right of the screen. There are also some other incomprehensibly stupid changes that just make everything look uglier and jerkier.
1. Why the hell do they do crap like this? I can't imagine any purpose any of this possibly serves (it doesn't seem to me making them load any faster, for example). This is not a rhetorical question. Why waste time and money on changes that do nothing but make things worse?
2. Scott, can you PLEASE ask them to reverse the first part of this (removing the nested lines) on your site, like you've done with other things, because this makes threads potentially unreadable. It dumbs down the comments (who cares who's replying to whom, just let everyone scream at each other aimlessly!) and it obviously affects all previous threads as well.
We are just doing alpha testing for Substack.
I imagine the code is burdened by technical debt with hundreds of defects logged to it and when they fix a batch they just release with all the new defects that have been introduced.
I wish they would at least give a warning cry of "New bugs for old!" :-)
Substack is still on a recruitment drive for more content creators who will bring along an audience of paying subscribers (please stop trying to make me start my own Substack, guys, thanks). Their model is "you write your long-ass post up on the top, but the comments are or should only be 'take my money you genius, how do I subscribe?'"
Well, the normal policy is that only paying subscribers can comment...
< , what the hell has happened to the substack comments?
FUBAR
Computer programmers. Can’t live with em. Can’t shoot em.
Well, you *can*, but society frowns upon that for some reason.
Well, that's better than my most recent experience trying to view comments on the Android version of Firefox: the comments wouldn't load at all. No amount of refreshing seemed to fix the issue.
The desktop version of Firefox now moves the Cancel and Reply buttons too low to click if the comment is long enough to enlarge the input box. So I had best not make this comment too lo
perhaps someone should make an unaffiliated OT only wordpress blog for readers of SSC?
I watched a compilation of some of the most horrifying anti drink driving ads from around the world and they left me feeling pretty bad. This one, for instance, isn't one of the most graphic but stuck with me the most https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kADUAXf7hOo
A lot of people like horror movies which deal with exotic nonexistent horrors like ghouls and monsters. Is there any market for horror movies which deal with real world horrors? Imagine a 90-minute horror film which just deals with the aftermath of a car accident. One person dead, one person loses both legs, one person with life-altering brain injury, one person with horrendously disfiguring burns. We see their medical treatment, the reaction from their families when they're told what happens, their long slow rehabilitation, their decades of diminished life ahead. Is this the kind of horror film that anyone would actually want to watch, or do people only like horror films when the horror seems sufficiently exotic to not actually happen?
people survive severe disability, death of family members, disfigurement, yet go on to have positive lives, so the middle and end of the movie might have too much positivity to fit in the horror genre.
That's just real life, and if you wanted to press it into a genre, the genre would be "documentary". While I don't know if a snuff/body horror sub-genre would be commercially viable because of legal hurdles and/or insufficiently large customer base, the desire to watch horrible situations certainly exists. Just take accident gawkers, for example.
There might be a market for it, but it's decidedly not horror. Horror involves something coming for you in the present; big monsters, or a serial killer, or even just progressively stronger evil thoughts, the key is that something is actively hunting you down and you aren't safe in the moment. If you try to make a movie where car accidents are hunting you down, you're making a comedy.
I recently saw Absolution, which was not great, but was about a gangster getting old and dementia-adjacent. That's more the category you're talking about here.
...Who the hell would want to watch that?? That's not horror, that's just depressing. That'd be like pornography that didn't have sex and instead just had the depressing aftermath of two people who don't even have real feelings for each other awkwardly sitting in a room together.
Sudden Substack glitch preventing me from replying to posts; the box is expanding, the "Reply" button is being pushed into the comment below it, and the lower comment's presence is blocking the button.
It seems like a "div" element around the reply is assigned "height: 162px", and as the comment gets longer, the textbox expands, but the "div" element around it does not.
The obvious question is "why?????", but I guess the obvious answer is "because Substack".
If you are a web developer, you can temporarily fix it by increasing the number before clicking the submit button.
Yup me too.
I am able to get around this by posting a short comment and then editing it.
Has Substack turned into Twitter? — I can post very short replies via my Mac's web browsers. But I can post longer replies from my smartphone's Substack app. But there's no search function on the app, so it's almost impossible to navigate 1,000+ comments.
Dunno if current reply bug is related, but I'm trying to edit a post in my own Substack and it's hell. Things that current instructions from Substack say are doable just don't work, eg. breaking title into 2 lines, dragging images to reposition them.
I tried that but when my edited comment hit about 6 lines the same thing happened and I could not save it.
I heard it's a Wokester attack.
Same here. I also opened the short comment in a separate window.
Ditto.
Possibly related - the ACX Tweaks add-on has stopped working on both Chrome and Firefox. Looks like the format of the timestamps for posts has changed.
Same here, on both counts.
I'm having the exact same issue.
I am so frustrated with the prissiness of GPT4's image processor. Recently it has refused to make an image of a whirlpool sucking in ocean water because sucking; to make an image of somebody licking a lollipop because licking; and to make an image of a two headed dog nipping the toes and hair of a Barbie doll because grisly and surrealist. But it topped all of them tonight. My prompt read:"Realistic image: In the foreground an attractive 40-ish women wearing red lipstick, has bushy brown hair. In a trailer behind her a man sitting in a wheelchair is visible." Chat said, the prompt violated their content guidelines. I asked if the problem was the word bush, and clarified that I was describing the hair on her *head* ffs. And the lipstick was on her *mouth,* you know? No, said Chat, it thought the problem was that I was asking for image of someone disabled. But, I pointed out, there's no mockery here, and the man is not in danger. Is it against the rules to even depict the disabled?. Chat added that also it was important to be respectful of "certain groups," and suggested that I refer to the trailer as a "mobile home." So I changed bushy hair to voluminous hair and trailer to mobile home. And Chat rendered the image. BUT it turned the trailer into a small, spiffy, white aluminum sided house, with a bright green flawless lawn and a row of perfectly spaced geraniums in front of it. And the woman continued to look like she was 25 years old. Multiple attempts to change the elements that were wrong were an utter failure. After a while Chat started modifying random other things -- for ex., put the man in the wheelchair outdoors, and in another image kept that guy plus added a shadowy guy inside the house.
Anyone know if Chat/Dall-e3 always been this way, or whether there is now a new protected category of blue collar Trumpers?
Later edit: Just now it refused to make an image of a dead huge-mouthed monkfish in the sand under a full moon because combination of DEATH plus SURREALISM might disturb sensitive people. That was Chat's actual explanation. Ignored my argument that people catch fish, toddlers in the grocery store see from the strollers the dead fucking fish, and people eat fish. Also, monkfish in the image is not distorted -- all monkfish have huge mouths. Besides, even a grisly picture of a monkfish with a monstrously distorted half-human face wouldn't be Surrealism. "Surrealism" isn't French for "weird distorted monster movie shit" ffs.
AI images have always done horribly at realistic depictions of people. I suspect all of the training images are social media influencers or something; every person invariably turns out looking like a 20-something model. Old is possible to do with special tools, which you probably don't have access to with the big commercial AIs. I don't know that I've ever seen an AI generator capable of making a picture of an ugly person.
Oh Dall-2 would make ugly people, and I'm not talking here about weird deformities due to errors in rendering certain features. If I simply asked for a person doing X, I got fat people, bald people, middle-aged people doing X. Did you ever mess with Dall-e2?
As for the rest, this is why people want open source AI. So we don't end up with a bunch of corporate PR crap hardcoded in.
I had to write this as a reply to myself because apparently substack won't let you post long replies now; the reply button gets cut off by the text of lower comments and I can't click it. Speaking of shitty design.
I just posted the following short story on my blog and would appreciate honest, brutal criticism of it. https://hankwilbon.substack.com/p/the-principal-agent-problem
If it's brutal you want, you've come to the right person!
"In the center of the room a tiny geranium houses poisonous frogs smuggled from Peru"
Do you mean terrarium, or are the poison frogs sitting in a plant? If poison frogs are hopping about the place, that certainly is one way to keep the employees on their toes!
Over-use of adverbs. Much too much "busily, comfortably, thoughtfully".
Are the two Trevors different people, or same guy with different names? Pittsman, Cooper.
The story seems to have an interesting germ of an idea, and the out of chronological order isn't off-putting. Is there more to it, because if this is the whole thing, then it ends too abruptly and you haven't tied the opening paragraph to anything in the rest of the story yet.
Thanks.
Stephen King has a book about writing that I like. He says never to use adverbs -- they make what you're describing sound hokey and unreal. "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
"He says never to use adverbs"
I wonder if this is intentionally ironic advice?
No it definitely isn’t. If you read his advice on writing there’s a whole lengthy rant about adverbs in it, and it’s quite clear he’s not joking around. He doesn’t actually say one should never use them, just that they always weaken the sentence and to try to avoid them if at all possible. Gives suggestions for ways to avoid them: Instead of saying someone ran quickly, use a stronger verb: say they sprinted. Or use a figure of speech — the person ran as tho pursued by a rabid dog
I was definitely being flippant here, but "never" is an adverb too, so the advice never to use adverbs is contradictory. A lot of popular writing advice one sees around revolves on banning whole categories of words and phrases from use, often with a shaky grasp of what belongs to that category (the passive voice seems to be a popular target). Now to be fair the advice given by competent writers like King or Orwell generally has nuance and exceptions, and it's only the dumbed-down version that ends up saying stuff like "adverbs and passives should always be avoided".
Yeah, there are a lot of words in the same category as never. They are adverbs, but I don't think they're the kind King has in mind. I think what he's talking about is quickly, rudely, softly, etc -- mostly adjectives to which -ly is added. I'm quoting King not because I take his advice as gospel, but because I agree with it. Sentences with adverbs in them have a corny, "written" sound when in read them. Thinking it over right now, I'm wondering if what I dislike about the -ly adjectives in writing is that they are not often used in spoken language. For instance, I wouldn't say to someone that I drove quickly -- I'd say I drove fast. Prob. would not say I spoke softly, more like to say "I was almost whispering" or "I kept my voice very low." I wouldn't say someone spoke to me on the phone irritably, I'd say they were irritable -- or pissy -- on the phone. Etc. So maybe that's what gives adverbs in writing a hokey quality for me: They sound to me like the author has stopped speaking naturally, and is doing Creative Writing, and Describing.
Maybe too esoteric, but the parts of speech have different levels of weightiness, or power. The order is: Proper nouns > nouns > verbs > adjectives > adverbs.
(Yes, the most potent literary form is the list of proper nouns; sections such as these are included in all the most long-lasting, important literary works. The Iliad, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, The Voluspa, etc etc.)
Wait, I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about works that refer to the poem Paradise Lost? Or the title of the original. poem?
Paradise Lost has a list of demons; The Iliad has a list of ships; Moby Dick has a list of whale species; The Voluspa has a list of dwarfs. Much great, enduring literature includes sections that are, essentially, just long lists. No action, no dialogue, just a list of names and descriptions. Young people tend to think these are the most boring sections. But actually, they're very powerful. Part of the reason for that power is the power of proper nouns. Naming things is powerful, so these sections that are lists of names are very powerful. The "epic catalog" can only be done well by a master, though. It's not something a beginner should try right away.
If you want another demonstration of the enormous power of proper nouns, look at the first page of On the Road. See how much weight is being carried by the word "Dean". On the Road is basically built on proper nouns.
Very much disagree with this, I like adverbs. At least, in dialogue tags which are where they are most frequently condemned. In real life, people give information when they speak not just by their words but by their tone of voice. I think it's ridiculous if fiction can't represent the full range of ways people actually talk, just because of overly zealous writing rules.
Now, including an adverb *just for the sake of including an adverb* is a very different matter...
"I see what you mean", she said thoughtfully as she sat uncomfortably on the chair, shifting wincingly as the hard surface sternly refused to yield caressingly, as her bottom needily demanded relief.
She carefully considered what response would suit, it needed to cheerfully yet fully demonstrate that she generously conceded the point with virtually no exceptions, just like the luggage sloppily let itself be towed about almost in a line.
But without adverbs, how could one write Tom Swiftys?
"like this," said Tom simile.
There are a few criticisms I could make, but the most honest, brutal of them is that it isn't a story, it's a series of unconnected vignettes that may or may not have endings themselves. Conversations end practically mid-phrase, we're jumping between locations, between times, between people, between plots, and when we reach the comment box and the words are all behind us nothing has brought the threads together in any meaningful way.
Thanks.
...eh, I'll do the other ones too.
There are several phrases that are purely there to paint a picture, but fall short of fully painting it. “Their luggage sloppily in tow, they almost form a line.” I'm trying to picture this, and it strikes me that I don't know why they're forming the line. If it's unprompted habit, it will feel different than if it's responding to hotel incentives. It will say different things about the guests. Likewise, Tony Cortazar. “He has been hard at work on his beard and the two months of steady, persistent effort show.” Show what? Is it a good beard, a scraggly beard, the Beard Of Heaven like you see in old paintings? You've drawn my attention to this man's chin, and then left a blank spot over it.
“Go outfront the hotel and cross Seawall Boulevard “ reads like camera instructions, like it's a script rather than a story. Books are tour guides, they don't send the audience out ahead of them. “Out front, across Seawall Boulevard” gets us there more smoothly.
Stan Kennon's first sentence is so long and overelaborate that I instinctively infer he's the Narrator, and all the previous scenes are retroactively Stan's perception of them. “on the block in the lease sale” is doing a lot of that; that's an exposition line, everyone here knows where the bidding will be. Stan's only reason to say this is to inform the audience, which is the job of the Narrator. (Their conversation also ends before it begins. Everything that's said there is the kind of small talk you put in scenes to get the audience comfortable with the characters, before you have your actual scene. The actual scene is missing here.)
It's strange that Stan Kennon, Man In His Forties, and Tony Cortazar, Man With Beard, both get names, but CEO, Man Worthy Of Appearing In Two Scenes, does not.
I am physically repulsed by Trevor snorting cocaine directly off the surface of a public bathroom. Bring a tray, my man. Your own arm would be cleaner.
Skimming through, I suddenly notice there are two separate Trevors. I assume this is leading to a case of mistaken identity later on, but if you're going to do this you should probably refer to them as Pittman and Cooper. The audience shouldn't be the ones confused.
This was a really good podcast on Israeli politics in regard to Palestine:
https://www.econtalk.org/terrorism-israel-and-dreams-of-peace-with-haviv-rettig-gur/
So I'm watching Marc Andreessen talking with Joe Rogan, And Joe says something about the ACLU defending the Nazi's right to march and speak. And Marc responds with a few words and then says, "Yeah it was not too long ago that democrats were in favor of many of these extremely sensible positions." With a cute smirk at the end, and I bust a gut and had to post here. about the 1:31:00 mark here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8MOfxD5nU
JR probably meant to say ACLU but actually said ADL. I could be wrong but I don’t think the Anti Defamation League was arguing for Nazi march permits in the recent past.
I had never listened to Joe Rogan before. I knew he was controversial but he came across as just being overly credulous in the part I watched.
I guess depending on where your credulity takes you it could lead to being considered controversial.
Well, it's always credulity paired with skepticism, isn't it? I think for a typical person, the instant they get credulous about something, they get skeptical of the opposite (first impression bias).
Joe Rogan doesn't invite HBomberguy or Brian Deer on the show to talk about how the whole all-vaccines-cause-autism thing was an accidental byproduct of a scam by Wakefield and Fudenberg, and how Wakefield's resulting celebrity led to things like the film Vaxxed (directed by, and starring, Wakefield) which perhaps helped bring right-wing/Christian groups like Daystar into the anti-vax fold, which helped lead to Robert Malone's prominence, which led Joe Rogan to invite Malone on the show. The description of that episode says "Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection." He doesn't mention that Malone hasn't worked on mRNA vaccines for ~30 years.
Joe didn't invite a somebody for a contrary/mainstream view around the same time period. For some reason he did invite an Australian radio host to talk about the pandemic, who pushed back on one of Joe's beliefs at the 18 minute mark... but I think Joe doesn't worry about being wrong about things, or about his guests being wrong, even when being wrong means more people die. Come to think of it, that's a really common consequence of being wrong for any popular figure. But it seems like when people become popular, their sense of responsibility grows not at all, or at least, their overconfidence shrinks not at all.
<But it seems like when people become popular, their sense of responsibility grows not at all
I think it's a case of power corrupts. I've seen the same thing in medical professionals. Sometimes you can tell they're just doing the routine thing without trying hard or thinking hard -- even when they must know the routine thing won't work.
(cont'd) They've lost track patient's need and yearning for help. It's as though that level of detail is too granular for them. They've moved on to thinking in bigger units. Their sense of responsibility is tied to things like keeping the group practice up and running smoothly, meeting various big picture goals -- number of pts seen per day, etc.
Right he did say ADL... I also assumed ACLU. Joe is fine, and fun, mostly he wants to have a good conversation, so he rarely has much 'push back' talking to guests. I don't find Joe to be controversial. He does love a good conspiracy theory, and is willing to dive down a lot of silly rabbit holes.
Yeah, I haven't seen much of his stuff but while his credulousness on some matters is less than impressive, in general I'd say it's more politeness towards his guests than anything else.
Sure, his job is to have a good conversation with his guest and get them to tell their story in the best way. He has had a few episodes were two people come on to debate an issue.
Why were you laughing? Marc is simply stating the facts. Did they surprise you?
Yeah IDK why it struck me so much... just a true and delicious turn of phrase. I'm really hopeful for america at the moment, and yet many of those around me are opposite... so I guess part of my hope is a return to more sense.
If I'm interpreting the smirk correctly it means "I've just realised that while by sensible ideas I meant free speech, some people are going to decide to interpret me as meaning Nazism, and it's too late to rephrase it now without looking like a dork, oh well, hello everyone seeing this on twitter"
Sure, I thought of that as I was writing, but all you have to do is watch the podcast and he is really just saying that he hopes the Dems become a sensible party again.
Only 8 years old. That’s so deeply tragic. I’m very sorry for him and his family. I can’t event imagine.
Why should we even think that survival would be possible even if we get where we are going? We evolved in a planet-wide system, and is it not unreasonable to assume that this planet-sized system is necessary for us to survive?
One of THE ongoing themes of modern science is the continual discovery of connections between every aspect of our earth-sized ecosystem. Kill off these bugs, which then harms these birds that ate them, which then results in less bird droppings, which then results in fewer colonies of these fungi, which hurts these symbiotic fungi, which causes these trees that rely on that fungus to be susceptible to disease, which deforests this region, which increases blah blah blah. Or maybe, grow and provide all human food in a sterile environment, which decreases exposure to minor pathogens, which maybe changes immune response to other things, which maybe causes a sharp increase in autoimmune disorders. The system is self-stable because it evolved that way.
I grant that we're past the point that people naively think that you can just pack up enough water, air, nutrients, and energy, and people can just live in a spaceship or artificial colony bio-habitat for arbitrarily long, but are we really being any more reasonable with our thinking now? So, you're going to pack up 1000 varied crops and seeds? What about the bacteria they need in the soil? What about the fungi--many maybe undiscovered yet--that keep those in check? A subset of the system may run for a little while, but it is inherently missing parts and may be inherently unstable. There is no way to take everything.
Relativistic spacecraft may not at all be the limitation. I put forth the theory that no biological beings can ever stably move out of the large evolutionary system in which they evolved. Why don't we get visits from aliens? They're just as stuck as we are in the celestial tide pool in which they were created. And when the tide pool dries up, you either go with it, or you've somehow transcended the biology altogether and headed off into the stars as some sort of digitally stored chatbots.
Counting on a post-earth future is like a counting on winning the lottery instead of planning for job. Except, we at least know that winning the lottery is theoretically possible. Leaving your home ecosystem behind? Not so much.
It’s an open question, but it sure seems like we’d be better off starting from scratch with Earth biomes than trying to live on an alien world.
There are lots of old sci fi stories where the humans live on patches of Earth life, and the original life forms keep pushing through and have to be constantly suppressed.
I think the rest of the universe should be spared us. Why should members our species be fucking and fighting on every inhabitable square foot of the universe? We're not that wonderful, you know?
The rest of the universe is dead. I don’t know how you could be opposed to bringing forth life.
Nothing wrong with indulging in some light misanthropy as we enter the dreaded Holiday Season; however, the unfortunate truth is that humans are the most interesting of all the known ways to arrange matter in the universe and it isn't even close.
Yes but this isn't the SAT's, you know? There is no Ivy that species get sent to if they're 99th percentile on interesting, or smart, or complex. Who do we know of who's watching, and can become interested in us? And as for being interested in our own species -- I constantly hear people on here discounting members of our species
(continuing here b/c of bug) whom they think are dumber than them in important ways -- or because they believe stuff the speaker thinks is dumb or malignant. Outside of this little space, members of our species are having a hate-fest on Twitter, and sawing each other's heads off around the globe. Interested?
The rest of the universe - so far as we've seen - is inert matter. Rolling around the curves of spacetime. Jostled back and forth under different forces. Sometimes annihilating other chunks of things but mindlessly, always mindlessly. No intent. No choice.
It's not about being promoted somewhere or currying favor with some observer. So far, we are the observer. Our fighting and fucking should spread throughout this lifeless universe. Our head sawing is more beautiful than all the sunsets unobserved through showers of diamonds.
Your word "interesting" is doing a lot of work here. Somehow you think it covers the situation even though neither of us is picturing there being any mind other than those of our species to be interested. I point out various signs of lack of interest individual members of our species have in each other, including head sawing, now our lack of interest is beautiful.
The Universe? OP's misanthropy was directed at those who presume life exists elsewhere, and if it does, the one thing we know about it is that we know nothing about it and likely can't compare it to anything earthbound.
Oh, I don't know about that; have you ever watched a family of raccoons, or an orca pod, or a cleaner wrasse's day-to-day life? Humans are the most interesting to *us*, maybe, but the other animals might disagree.
Saying that something is the most interesting doesn't mean that everything else is completely uninteresting.
Animals do exhibit a great deal of complex behavior. Humans, though, do so across a much wider range of activities and for a much wider range of reasons. By interesting I mean the most capable of producing surprise.
Imagine a hyper advanced alien civilization that has a complete knowledge of all physics. A completely lifeless planet might be aesthetically pleasing or neat or otherwise engaging for some reason but it wouldn't be interesting. There would be no question why everything was the way it was. A planet with life, though, is different. The living beings can reshape it. Animals do this, sure, but humans do it in many more ways and for many different reasons. We can even make elements that don't exist on Earth. We have symbols everywhere at different levels of meaning, we can even reflect on a meta level about our own behavior to a level unknown in other animals.
Our super advanced alien species would need many more bits to model us compared to any of the other animals, fun to watch as they may be.
To build on this: the most interesting parts of my life look like the everyday parts of these animals' lives. The best bits of my life are caring for and playing with my children, waking and exploring, and dealing with complex social situations. Most of my life is spent on a black chair in a sterile office making clickety clack noises in front of a grey glowing box, and not only could the racoons, orcas, and wrasses find it boring, other humans would too!
And yes, I'm spared starvation, disease, predation, etc, but you said "interesting"!
If you DON'T find it interesting, why are you doing it? Your description is leaving out all of the intellectual engagement that makes it interesting.
The universe is in desperate need of humans. Humans are wonderful creatures and the best thing that happened in the universe. We need more of them not less.
I think the universe's opinion can be summed up as, "If you can, go ahead!" Just like it would say to every other idea, from every other source.
well said 😂
That's a very reasonable generalization of two objections I've seen for Musk's ludicrous Mars colonization plans, namely, "we don't even know how to build a self-sustaining isolated ecosystem here on Earth, let alone bring all the necessary organisms to another planet alive", and "there's nothing that could conceivably happen to Earth that would make it as hostile to life as Mars is right now".
Also, "it's practically impossible to colonize other worlds" is a sobering but plausible answer to "where are all the aliens?" So, yeah, you're onto something. IMO, it's not clear yet whether "practically impossible" turns out to mean "actually impossible" or "solvable with a multi-century concerted research program", but the difference for what we can expect in our lifetimes is zero.
And the ‘experts’ also had very convincing arguments why reusable rockets with the capability to launch 100 ton payloads to LEO wouldn’t be possible…
Which experts said that? I'd be interested to read the arguments. I know plenty have argued it won't be economically feasible for various reasons, but I don't know any serious arguments that say it isn't technically possible, especially since the Saturn V proved big payloads are possible and the space shuttle showed upper stage reusability is also possible.
The leadership at Arianespace is *still* saying that, last time I checked. The number of people who were saying that in the 1980s and 1990s when I started paying serious attention, will not fit in the margins of this blog post, but seriously, I was there, and it was most of the industry. With a few caveats like "for the foreseeable future" and "not practical but somebody could maybe do it as a stunt".
Yes, but the Arianespace CEO seems to make his point on the economics not the technology. Do you have something where he is saying it is technically not possible? I've seen plenty of papers from the 90s arguing the economics don't work out as well, but I don't see anyone saying its technically impossible. "Do it as a stunt" makes it sound like they base their arguments on economics, i.e. it might be feasible but you'll never make money with it (which just shows they never concieved of something as big or as profitable as Starlink).
Basically what I'm asking is, do you know of any argument against the technical implausiblity of reuse, rather than economic arguments?
These experts may still turn out correct. AFAIK, so far the only payload Starship has taken to LEO was a banana, so we're still missing five orders of magnitude.
This may be a fundamental difference in attitude between people. Some people think that everything that isn't firmly ruled out by the laws of nature is just a matter of effort to achieve. I think that many things just aren't feasible, and if some promised breakthrough pushes credibility, I'm willing to consider it "possibly impossible until shown otherwise". And I am quite sure that sustainable isolated habitats are something we should figure out here on Earth before sending someone on a suidice mission into space.
The bar to Starship carrying payload to orbit is at the moment regulatory rather than technical. It's engines and aerostructure have demonstrated the necessary capabilities as of IFT 5.
Assuming SpaceX isn't outrageously lying on its published numbers regarding vehicle weight, propelling capacity, and engine performance, then Block 2 is mathematically quite capable of launching 100 tons to LEO.
Regulations don't stop them putting 100 tonnes of dummy payload into their next launch. It's more likely they don't do it because it's not useful to the development at this point.
Curious if anyone is reading Ross Douthat's online fantasy novel and, if so, what they think. I'm no fantasy fan myself so not reading it, but I've been a Douthat reader for years so wondering what regularly fantasy readers' opinions are.
A bit of Googling reveals this is The Falcon's Children, on Substack. https://www.falconschildren.com/p/welcome-to-the-falcons-children
I have not read it before just now, but my initial impression is annoyance. The introduction uses the term "Faerie". Everyone else uses "Fae", it's a shorter and clearer term.
The first sentence of the Prologue is trying to do too much; it should be two separate sentences, one for the priests, the other for the mother. Then the third paragraph introduces the explanation as, rapidfire, an "excuse", a "story", and a "tale", but then says the person using it thinks it's true, which is contradicting the entire buildup.
So, so far, four paragraphs in, I dislike the prose. I also don't know very much about the characters. The introduction suggests they're conquering kings, but the story only says they've got maids, and doesn't even give a technology level, apart from "mirrors". Not a promising start.