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a_better_world

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a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
But if Musk actively identifies himself as a Nazi, how is that name-calling?

His family left Canada to move to South Africa because they were in leadership roles in the Canadian Nazi party.

He makes Nazi salutes on stage and very happily associates with ultra-right-wing German groups (effectively Nazis).

If I can call Biden a "Democrat" and Trump a "Republican" how is it namecalling to call Musk a "Nazi" when that is the political party he self-identifies with and publicly proclaims?

Maxdo, I appreciate your moral stance. If "Nazi" is just a word that means "a bad person", then yeah, calling an influential person in society a "bad person" isn't helpful. As you say, name-calling doesn't help.

However, as you also say, it is important to try to see the reality. Musk is a Nazi.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
Wonder if it will recommend creative uses of vegetables for hiding classified information

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47126246
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
"freedom torches" was the exact phrase used. They were sold as a marker of female liberation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

The term was first used by psychoanalyst A. A. Brill when describing the natural desire for women to smoke and was used by Edward Bernays to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. Bernays hired women to march while smoking their "torches of freedom" in the Easter Sunday Parade of 31 March 1929,[1] which was a significant moment for fighting social barriers for women smokers.

Bernays is widely seen as the father of modern marketing, and helped lay the foundation for the consumer-based economy.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
wouldn't that be _rectal ad absurdum_ in this case :)
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
LISP returns!
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
> we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive.

Science would like to point out that rats also can learn to drive

https://theconversation.com/im-a-neuroscientist-who-taught-r...
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
ok, but how about if we stop funding ICE?
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
how good was Taleb at following his own advice? Had he tested it? As I recall he is pretty big on "skin in the game' as his differentiator.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
he might mean Bernie Sanders or someone of that type
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
if college education produces a public good (a more competent workforce), then it should be funded through public funds-- government should pay for education.

If it does in fact lead to better outcomes, then the higher tax will cover the cost.

running it through the private system builds in too many perverse incentives.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
Soooo many times in my career I've had to come back and "extract that variable into a function" that I just do it right away by force of habit.

Point is, this isn't trivial, it is the kind of thing that ends up saving work over the long haul.

Or include this in my agent 'rules' files.

GOOD EXAMPLE

query=f""" SELECT foo FROM {sometable} WHERE {condition} """ answer=spark.sql(query).toPandas()

BAD EXAMPLE

answer=spark.sql(f""" SELECT foo FROM {sometable} WHERE {condition} """).toPandas()
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
sounds a bit like https://thechoiceengine.substack.com/p/the-strip-mining-of-t...

"The strip mining of trust" is a metaphor describing the unsustainable extraction of social capital—honesty, reputation, and goodwill—for short-term, selfish efficiency or profit. Similar to ecological destruction, this process erodes long-term, foundational trust, leaving behind hollowed-out institutions and requiring massive future effort to restore.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
or might find SOMEONE ELSE stranded somewhere due to vehicular breakdown.

yes, obviously "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others" (so you remain an asset instead of a liability), but please remember the "helping others" part (so you remain an asset instead of a liability).
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
or just shoot you while you are in your car.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
I guess you don't live in Minneapolis, or another targeted metro area. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a city where 3000 masked and poorly trained people cos-playing special forces are specifically tasked with arresting as many people as they can and told that they have full immunity.

you haven't seen the effect on schools when federal agents enter school grounds and take kids away.

you haven't seen my parent's nursing home sending the senior leadership outside the building to look for patrols before they let the staff leave (the staff is all legal/greencard holders, but see note above -- ICE doesn't care).

It's not hysteria when it is your every day lived experience.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
if you have the grip strength to hold that, you have solid core strength already.

And you are carrying in your hands, not balanced on your head-- which totally alters the stress on the spine.

So yes, cograts on your feat, that is a pretty cool level to hit, but it doesn't counter the basic advice of "grow into it" instead of "max from day one"

Also, you did this "once". If the accident rate is 1:100, doing it once without getting hurt is not very surprising.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
"when AI took my job I bought a chain saw"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/opinion/artificial-intell...

Sorry, don't have an archiv link.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
former practicing scientist at an institute whose name you would recognize.

The field may not be fully constrained by ethics, which is just a way of saying that the work is done by people and people have varying ethical bounds, but from what I saw many of my colleagues were highly ethics driven.

I remember one Russian colleague who smuggled blood products out of Russia so they could be tested for HIV. Because the Russian government refused to help these patients. The man risked his life to help HIV sufferers.

Ethics is best when matched with courage, if a person is willing to put their life on the line for their beliefs.

Also noting that in the western world, experiments generally need approval of an ethics board before proceeding. That board's sense of ethics might make different judgments than you on, for example, mice experiments, but there is a big difference between "not constrained" and "some of the constraints are different than what I would choose".

where in this case, the ethics boards decided that provided a certain risk/reward barrier is crossed, and that the animals are otherwise treated well, sacrificing mice to improve human health is just fine.

That is an ethics based decision that was debated for a long time. And maybe should continue to be debated, there is real value in your stance that all beings are sentient and this demands a level of care.
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
gems and turds. The far right consipiracy stuff was filtered out, likewise the neonazi/technocracy stuff (and yes, there is clear historical links between technocracy and nazi idologies, see the history of Joshua Norman Haldeman (1902–1974), the American-born Canadian maternal grandfather of Elon Musk, and why they moved to South Africa)
a_better_world
·il y a 5 mois·discuss
changing "clay" for "legos" doesn't change the core argument. The tactile feel you get for the medium as you work it with your hands and the "artificial syntax" imposed by the medium.