That’s true. I don’t think it’s generally a problem, but I do find it funny when you see someone politely correct someone else deep in a chain where no one else is reading, and the correction says “0”.
To anyone who downvotes like that: you look like an insecure clown.
Corey Doctorow had a presentation this past week at the C3 hacker conference arguing that all our allies only agreed to be ruled by US tech hegemony in exchange for free trade agreements, and if they want a win-win solution to getting f’d, they should repeal their laws against jailbreaking US tech.
Tech sovereignty is already (finally) an issue the rest of the world is waking up to. I hope they go much farther and faster.
I’m not saying both sides are equally culpable. Obviously Trump, Biden, Obama, and all of their Sec. of State are the primary villain.
You know, I’ve been keeping my mouth shut because I don’t know that much about Venezuela…
But now that Maduro’s VP has expressed a willingness to cooperate with Trump, I think everyone who disputed the claims that Maduro and Chavismo were corrupt has some explaining to do.
I feel like the leftists who supported Chavismo and the right-wingers who backed US intervention should all go out for drinks and commiserate over their foolishness for thinking that they could overlook their allies obvious corruption. Am I wrong?
First, the most honest answer is that it’s a shitty question. This ‘Sophie’s Choice’ promise is inherently designed to disrespect someone. In real life, you just react and try to save both, most likely based on who is a better swimmer, is closer, etc.
But the question between who you prioritize is valid. The answer is subjective, of course, but my advice would be that you prioritize your mother over a casual girlfriend/bf, but you prioritize a finance or spouse over your mother. And this isn’t hard to explain to Mom. I did. I said, “Hey Mom: remember how Dad always put Grandma in front of you because he was such a wimp, and it made you feel absolutely terrible? Well good news: you raised a better man than she did.”
She didn’t love it, but she got it. And she respected it.
It’s pretty wild, because this is genuinely great politics and great policy. It’s weird that folks haven’t realized this and acted on it yet. Fingers crossed.
That’s what I said! Fifteen minutes isn’t far. But it’s no longer close.
About twelve.
Could you throw this back in the fryer? I think I see a few uncompressed pixels.
This is really deep.
I also gotta say: I reserve more respect for anyone who changed their attitudes to something I admire than someone who always held them. Me? I’m pretty progressive. But it’s not like I can take credit. I share similar views to most people with my upbringing. Holding these beliefs is about impressive as a ball rolling down a hill.
Questioning your beliefs and going somewhere else? That’s an achievement.
Get ready, because this is kind of cheesy stuff, but these two pieces of sports advice, taken together, have guided me for years.
First: a mentor of mine who was a pool shark taught me that when you’re playing pool, there is always a best shot to take. Sometimes, when you’ve got no good options in front of you you want to just do nothing or quit. But no matter what, billiards offers a finite set of options of where to try and aim the cue, and if you rank them from best to worst, there is always a best. When you’re in a bad situation, you find it and you take the best option. Often, that’s either a harm reduction strategy, a long-shot that feels impossible, or a combo of both. But if you always do this you’ll usually suffer far less harm in the aggregate, and if you take enough long shots you’ll occasionally achieve a few incredibly improbable wins.
Second: A kayaking instructor taught me – and this I’m told is true in many similar sports – you go where your focus is, so to evade a problem, focus on the way past. If you see a rock, don’t stare it it, you’ll hit it. It doesn’t matter if your brain is thinking “I gotta go anywhere except that rock!” If you’re looking at, you’re heading into it. If you don’t want to hit the rock, instead you have to look at wherever it is you DO want to go. It takes a bit of practice, because your brain sees “rock!” more easily than “smooth water flowing between two rocks”. But that’s how you get down a river, and it’s also how you work through almost any other problems in life that are rushing at you: don’t focus ON them, focus on whatever is the preferred alternative. This is especially useful if the alternative is sort of a non-thing, like an empty gap between two problems. And it often is.
Taken together, you get the basic approach that has steered my problem solving throughout adulthood. And it really works.
Holy shit, really?
That is Sony levels of stupid.
View from the Top.
I saw it when I was in my twenties with a friend because we (two mostly straight guys) thought we were going to see the latest silly Mike Myers movie. And then it turned out that he was barely in it! They just took all his scenes and put them in the trailer! The actual movie was a very dull romcom staring Gwyneth Paltrow and some guy who I don’t remember being in the trailer at all.
When it ended, we walked out of the theater and just said to each other ‘What the hell was that?’.
Also, I think Shallow Hal kind of falls in this too. I don’t recall the trailer being great, but it had to be good enough that it got me to see that terrible movie.
Also, I don’t know if this qualifies, but I remember that The Cable Guy staring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick was the first time I saw a movie and realized that a trailer can be misleading. They deliberately promoted it like The Mask and Ace Ventura. I think I was like 12 when I saw it, and it creeped me way the fuck out.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s actually a better movie than people remember, but the misleading promotion was a great way to ensure the movie didn’t find its audience.
Wanna join my D&D group?
My timezone is west coast.
I feel like a lot of people are missing the obvious conclusion that everyone involved here is awful.
Maduro? Brutal dictator. His domestic opposition? Violent fascists. His international opposition? Absolute war criminals.
It’s really sad. My primary opinion is that the US needs to leave Venezuela the fuck alone. If you want democracy in Venezuela, you can’t get it through sanctioning the population into starvation if they don’t vote the way Chevron tells them to. Did Maduro steal an election? Yes! But his opposition at home and abroad isn’t mad that it wasn’t fair: they’re mad because they think it’s bullshit for him to steal it after they stole it first!
Get the fuck out and let them actually decide what they want. The US is the clearly the greatest villain in a story with no obvious good guys.
It would explain a lot
Whew.
The thing about these incidents that I find most interesting is that they basically reveal a widely held suspicion among many people that these government contractors are over-crexentialed bullshit artists.
This just shows what we’ve all suspected: they’ve been cutting corners, claiming underserved authority, and making up shit for years. But now some folks are checking and reporting on it.
This, 100%.
If I apologize to you, the apology is but the words themselves: it’s the contract I make with you. It’s a memorandum of understanding of how I fucked up and a promise not to do so again.
LLMs can write words, but they cannot understand their actions or make honest promises to modify their behavior. They cannot be accountable in any way. Blaming them is like an actual scapegoat: a blameless things meant to have a debt if sin transferred to it before it’s sacrificed. Expect we’re not even getting the sacrifice.