cairo_x

More interesting is why choose these shitty providers?

https://blog.12security.com/darkness-at-noon-01-waxtitan/

Yeah, early on. The commenter doesn't know what they're talking about.

a world in which investigative journalism seems to have vanished and bitter corporate rivals cooperate on everything from joint ventures to lobbying efforts

Says the man behind Thiel capital.

My point was that hard and fast startup tactics don't guarantee success (WRT the starship project), and mostly have little to do with whether a project succeeds or fails at all.

Over half of all startups fail within 5 years. In the space industry it's much much worse. Although as long as SpaceX has cash I guess they'll just keep on trucking.

What is the main value of link analysis? As far as cause and effect and the larger picture (especially WRT the time domain), a lot of it seems like reading signs in chicken gizzards. The more you put in, the less sense they make.

There's only so much useful information to be gleaned from this kind of geometry. Fingering out and tracing cause and effect is just about impossible.

I wish someone would come up with a half decent top-down timeline creation and analysis tool.

That is the what lies at the rotten heart of capitalism.

I mean, people say a lot of horseshit about what capitalism is or isn't ("I'm a capitalist because I'm for making money and profits.", etc), or creating a fake context where the only alternative is ownership by the state.

But at the end of the day it's about the worker employer relationship, period, end of story.

Sweet. Border's been shut down, but contacts within the Ovis aries antifacist underground have already informed me that measures have been put in place. Before it's safe for him to come out he will be entombed in a giant mound of sheep shit, which they assure me is electromagnetically impermeable and should stop him calling for help.

Bit cringey when Seneca's mansplaining to a mother struggling with son's death why she shouldn't be so gloomy.

Anyone know where Peter Thiel's virus bunker is so we can concrete up the entrances?

Ah. As someone who went through the same thing (minus the ptsd), next time you get in a bad mental spot go see a psychiatrist and tell them about the bipolar diagnosis. There are some very mild mood stabilizers out there nowadays that don't zombify you. (SSRI's can trigger manic episodes and cycling in people with bipolar, fyi).

Also just making sure you don't trying and deliberately alter your moods with caffeine, weed, or amphetamines will keep you relatively stable (even without drugs). Although if you start having a full blown episode it's worth keeping what I said above in mind.

Sorry if the advice is unwelcome. This is just what I found helpful.

People with bipolar often use caffeine, weed, or even amphetamines to deliberately trigger hypomania. Feels good, but unfortunately it also increases the frequency of depressed episodes. It's like Karma.

Depends. In the short term (12 months) CBT has been shown to be very effective. However, over two years it has been shown to be just as effective as doing nothing.

The problem of time turns up in multiple kinds of treatments, and I believe it has simply to do with how long the depressive episodes last. Usually by the time people seek treatment that will be at the peak of the episode. Regardless of the treatment, a couple bunch of month will pass and people find themselves getting better. I suspect most depression studies a deeply flawed because of this effect. At some point the treatment will stop working. But it's not that the treatment stopped working, it's that a new depressive episode has begun and the treatment never really did all that much in the first place.

You were prescribed SSRIs with a Bipolar diagnosis!?

DOH! Replace the word transient with continuous.

The problem of consciousness is about understanding systems which feed back into themselves, build a model of themselves, and reason about themselves. The structure underneath is well known, if not perfectly understood.

The problem is you could build a system that satisfies each of those states and we still couldn't prove if it had qualia or not. That is literally 'the hard problem'.

Another difficulty of consciousness is it may not be transient. It may pop in and out of existence, and the only thing giving each instance the illusion of transience are the memories each previous instance have generated. The problem now is the fuzzy definition of a memory and the many different ways the human body may store it (in genetics, neural pathways, in brain chemistry, muscle memory, etc). In order to locate the present consciousness you have to be able to track all of these memory systems to get a lock on to which active brain network shape may be the current instance of consciousness, which may at any time vanish and pop up in another network.

Consciousness not being transient is kind of terrifying. It's like a mental version of 'The Prestige'. Every night when you lose consciousness, or maybe every time you lose or change a train of thought, 'you' essentially dies, and is cloned/re-imaged by your memories at some other location in the brain.

time tracker browser plugin

Any recommendations?

https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/

Had a scroll through those interviews. Lord, what a hack fest. A conga line of cringe, meh, and OKAY.

One of the most articulate and complete replies I've ever received on this website. Thank you.

Skinwalker Ranch seems like a key to understanding the state of the art in UFO research. In a word: Farcical. Almost on a 'men who stare at goats' type level of ridiculousness.

What's the deal with Skinwalker ranch? Why are they interested in it? Everything is so vague and x-filesy when people mention the ranch. Very woo woo without any actual details about what people have encountered there. What is the specific link between the ranch and UFOs?

The story structure makes it possible. Most stories don't have such a structure.

LOL.The article is full of them, too.

eg: Nirvana fallacy assumes socialism is unattainable when many of the best parts of existing society are socialist (public health/education/legal aid, many small businesses, self employed people, large co-ops, credit unions, etc).

edit: Mostly The Nirvana Fallacy is itself a meta-fallacy, as most of the time it's used to justify things being shit by accusing the proposed alternative of being utopian (the sub-fallacy). I seem to remember George Orwell wrote a large part of an essay dedicated to how totalitarianism relies upon such fallacies ('pragmatism', 'realist', etc)

sigh

'nation of Kurdistan'

let me help you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan

Hint: Kurdistan consists of SE Turkey, Northern Syria, Northern Iraq, NW Iran.

While some have sought to create an independent nation state, the democratic confederalist movement has decided to simply exist in parallel as a border-free confederation. With EU law, Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi/Iranian law and Kurdish law existing in parallel.

Unfortunately, Islamic State and a bunch of certain powerful Turkish individuals have been trying to wipe them off the face of the earth. But as far as systems of direct democracy go, they have been wildly successful. Glorious, even.

If, for whatever reason, you are contemptuous of the Kurds, there are other models to look to.

For example (wiki copypaste warning):

In the New England region of the United States, towns in states such as Vermont decide local affairs through the direct democratic process of the town meeting. There is much state and federal case law, from the early 1900s to the 1990s, that protects the people's right to each of these direct democracy governance components (Magleby, 1984, and Zimmerman, 1999). The first United States Supreme Court ruling in favor of the citizen lawmaking was in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 in 1912 (Zimmerman, December 1999). President Theodore Roosevelt, in his "Charter of Democracy" speech to the 1912 Ohio constitutional convention, stated: "I believe in the Initiative and Referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative."

In various states, referendums through which the people rule include:

    Referrals by the legislature to the people of "proposed constitutional amendments" (constitutionally used in 49 states, excepting only Delaware – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).
    Referrals by the legislature to the people of "proposed statute laws" (constitutionally used in all 50 states – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).
    Constitutional amendment initiative is a constitutionally-defined petition process of "proposed constitutional law", which, if successful, results in its provisions being written directly into the state's constitution. Since constitutional law cannot be altered by state legislatures, this direct democracy component gives the people an automatic superiority and sovereignty, over representative government (Magelby, 1984). It is utilized at the state level in nineteen states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and South Dakota (Cronin, 1989). Among these states, there are three main types of the constitutional amendment initiative, with different degrees of involvement of the state legislature distinguishing between the types (Zimmerman, December 1999).
    Statute law initiative is a constitutionally-defined, citizen-initiated petition process of "proposed statute law", which, if successful, results in law being written directly into the state's statutes. The statute initiative is used at the state level in twenty-one states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989). Note that, in Utah, there is no constitutional provision for citizen lawmaking. All of Utah's I&R law is in the state statutes (Zimmerman, December 1999). In most states, there is no special protection for citizen-made statutes; the legislature can begin to amend them immediately.
    Statute law referendum is a constitutionally-defined, citizen-initiated petition process of the "proposed veto of all or part of a legislature-made law", which, if successful, repeals the standing law. It is used at the state level in twenty-four states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989).
    The recall election is a citizen-initiated process which, if successful, removes an elected official from office and replaces him or her. The first recall device in the United States was adopted in Los Angeles in 1903. Typically, the process involves the collection of citizen petitions for the recall of an elected official; if a sufficient number of valid signatures are collected and verified, a recall election is triggered. In U.S. history, there have been three gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history (two of which resulted in the recall of the governor) and 38 recall elections for state legislators (55% of which succeeded).

    Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have a recall function for state officials. Additional states have recall functions for local jurisdictions. Some states require specific grounds for a recall petition campaign.[26]

    Statute law affirmation is available in the Nevada. It allows the voters to collect signatures to place on ballot a question asking the state citizens to affirm a standing state law. Should the law get affirmed by a majority of state citizens, the state legislature will be barred from ever amending the law, and it can be amended or repealed only if approved by a majority of state citizens in a direct vote.[27]

Another example is the Swiss, as per wikipedia:

The pure form of direct democracy exists only in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[17] The Swiss Confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with strong instruments of direct democracy).[17] The nature of direct democracy in Switzerland is fundamentally complemented by its federal governmental structures (in German also called the Subsidiaritätsprinzip).[5][6][7][8]

Most western countries have representative systems.[17] Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. On any political level citizens can propose changes to the constitution (popular initiative), or ask for an optional referendum to be held on any law voted by the federal, cantonal parliament and/or municipal legislative body.

...

Then there is the Crow Nation of Montana:

Governing over the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, the Crow General Council has been the legally recognized government of the tribe since 1948. The General Council is formed out of all voting-age members of the Tribe. Council members meet biannually to nominate members to various sub-councils. The General Council also has the power to pass legally binding referendums through a 2/3rds vote. The 2002 Constitution somewhat reduced the powers of the General Council through the creation of a distinct Legislative Branch. Under the 1948 Constitution, the General Council created and passed laws. Under the adopted 2002 Constitution, a distinct, elected Legislative Branch creates and passes laws, although the General Council can overturn these or pass its own laws through its referendum and initiative power. [13]

A step backward. Their democratic and governance system is horseshit.

Elon Musk mentioned having a direct democracy on Mars. Maybe they should take a page out of his book and go look at what the Kurds are doing with democratic confederalism.

FYI: Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city.

People vote in their own judges and military commanders, and so on, just like in the Athenian Polis (although the Athenians did use slaves for their police force tho).

Either way, at the very least, one would hope a nation of the future would have some kind of system of direct democracy. It would be a great testbed, especially at this early stage, of testing different modes of bureaucracy (automated, AI based, career bureaucratic admin, or as in the Athenians, a required service to be fulfilled by all, much like the jury system).

I would be able to get around to writing that screenplay I've been thinking about--if only I could find the right editor /s

Speaking of genetic diversity, interestingly, the grove in question has none whatsoever.

In the gorge there are perhaps 100 clumps of trees, but genetically there could be as few as one or two 'individuals'. This is because each plant has multiple clumps of trunks. The plants basically clone themselves, which makes the entire population extremely precarious in terms of disease.

It was the decade of David Graeber for me:

Debt: The first 5000 years

Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

All incredible mind expanding books.

Sweet jesus, don't get a thinkpad after having used a macbook. They are built of soft, grease-absorbing cheap plastic.

People say 'oh, but thinkpads are so rebuildable'. Yeah. Because they degrade easily and are made of such cheap materials, they have to be.

I bought a second hand dell laptop. Five years later bought a brand new thinkpad. Which do you think had to be repaired, and even with new parts still looks more worn out?

This is excellent!

Keep getting asked to count 10 cats at levels 5 and up.