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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Moron is no longer enough. Republican voters at this point are malicious, not stupid, not poor gullible fools, they are malicious people who actively seek to harm others, no matter how ‘nice’ they may seem.

    I am not interested in hearing about how someone knows a Republican who is such a nice pleasant person, willing to help just about anyone, kind, caring, etc. It is a mask, like that of…I forget the precise medical term, either psychopath or sociopath. But the irony is they are worse because they do have the capacity for empathy, but they choose not to.

    And this is, and always has been, who they are. This is not new. This is exactly who they have always been, people who, if they lived in a different time, would happily own slaves, or watch someone tortured for the evening’s entertainment at the coliseum, or any number of such things.

    That’s the people we’re dealing with, and they are a significant portion of the population as they always have been.


  • Every former president tends to be called president still quite often. If you look up news articles about most former presidents you’ll find a pretty solid split between just saying ‘President X’ and specifying ‘former President X’.

    It might be related to a military rule where retired officers get to keep using their rank title unless discharged in negative ways. Or maybe it’s just sort of traditional.


  • If I had to choose between global high speed internet access, and ground based astronomy, I’d pick the Internet every time. I’d completely blot out the sky forever if that’s what it took.

    We don’t need ground-based astronomy to learn about the universe, I’d rather encourage more space-based astronomy. Or build some observatories on the moon if you really want to build on a solid space body.

    However, Starlink is a for profit company run by Elon Musk. I don’t really want them doing it, because they’re not going to provide unlimited global Internet to everyone. So as the guy said, the idea is good, but Starlink is bad, although it is currently the only such option.


  • The irony is that if they put it at or near the end of the video, after I have learned that I like whatever I watched, I am much more likely to do so, because I often really do just forget to like things, and a reminder near the end would in fact make me go ‘yeah, this was good, I’ll do that’.

    But if they ask me to do it at the beginning, I won’t do it until I have seen enough to decide I do in fact like it.


  • Yeah, while there was mockery it didn’t come from ‘official’ sources. They called him serious names and didn’t ridicule him. They made it clear he was dangerous, but they also gave him respect like a serious candidate, contender, opponent, rival.

    It probably would have worked from the beginning to just laugh at him, IF it was coming from the actual political establishment. If Clinton had essentially based her entire campaign around ‘hahah…oh wait you’re serious? Let me laugh harder.’ there’s a good chance he would’ve crashed and burned before ever getting off the ground, I think.


  • Consider this question: how is it that anyone under the age of 40 today has ever smoked?

    By the time they were born, the bad effects of smoking were well understood. By the time they were teenagers, not smoking should have been as obvious as not jumping in front of a train. People already addicted find it difficult to quit, but it in no way explains anyone starting.

    The question is different and yet very similar, because the things you mention wind up in a similar way. Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to. And these things you mention are much easier to fall into than smoking because parents, family, etc are all pushing it on people. Smokers generally aren’t pushing their kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc to smoke, and somehow smoking still proliferates to some degree, just consider how much more difficult to avoid it is for those whose families are actively encouraging them to fall into these methods of belief and hate.









  • The administration will not endorse the widespread use of march-in rights, and is not expected to take action against any individual medicines, said the people familiar with the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal decision making.

    Important bit from that, lest anyone think they’re actually going to do something.

    I would be delighted if they did, but I would also be very surprised if they actually assert these rights on medicines developed with public funds, which is what they should do - just all of the medicines developed with public funds, patents seized, end of story.



  • Basically, every promotion of every officer in the military apparently needs to be confirmed by the Senate.

    Normally these are confirmed via unanimous consent - the entire Senate agrees and they’re confirmed with no further procedure.

    But any senator can insist that the full normal procedure be followed, which means committee hearings, discussion time, and an actual vote at the end of it. He would not be able to stop them from being confirmed on those votes. But the normal procedure requires a lot of time during which the Senate would be able to do nothing else because the procedural rules require all this discussion and voting time.

    Really, the problem isn’t that he had a lot of power; it’s the absurd situation where every single officer in the military needs to be confirmed by the Senate. I’m not sure that made sense in George Washington’s day, much less today with the size of the military.



  • Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.

    Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.

    Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.

    Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.

    Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.

    Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.

    And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.

    Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.


  • Some of these actually do have an effect, but it’s difficult to impossible for a person to know whether this particular one is a placebo button or not.

    This is especially the case with elevator close door buttons. Those buttons are always hooked up, because they are needed during emergency operation with the fireman’s key. They are sometimes programmed to cycle the doors marginally faster under normal circumstances, but more often aren’t.

    Also, some of the traffic crossing buttons don’t make the walk cycle come sooner, but they occasionally are needed to insert a walk cycle at all, because some intersections don’t trigger a walk cycle unless the button has been pressed.