SlickNixon

Why I always make a point to mention my preferred methods for determining architecture--bird signs, and throwing the bones.

>The profitable small farm is common enough, particular among the older generations who have their debts paid off

The purchase of said farms and the paying off of said debts wouldn't happen to be enabled by a long career in tech by said older generations, would it?

And is it your impression that I agree that the argument in the summary you provided is more or less accurate, and the material on the laptop as reported is evidence of foul play and cause for further investigation?

I thought we were assuming everything was on the level on the basis of Autumn Sorrells' credentials?

>Well I dont know what else to say to someone who thinks they are informed, when they aren't and who refuses to look elsewhere.

Did you read my comments before you showed up and started shooting holes in the floor? Specifically:

>A healthy skepticism suggests those payments [made to Hunter Biden] were not made on the basis of his business acumen, in the same way we can suspect purchases of his paintings were not made on the basis of his artistic skill.

>It sounds to me like you are just providing a rationalisation for a closed mind.

Oh no I'm accused of being anti-intellectual. Wait, see:

>put the recommendee on the back foot where they're refusing to read a source as offered

Let's circle back--did you honestly expect people to buy and read a 224 page book that you couldn't be bothered to summarize (besides touting the Amazon reviews?)? What's the conversion rate on that? Or is it more that you can recommend a book, people don't read it (surprise), and then it's their fault for not finding out the facts?

The world is filled with falsehoods that were instantly and uncritically taken as truths by susceptible segments of the population.

Photos are admittedly different (text is slippery when it comes to true or false; there's a binary quality to the presence of a naked woman) but if the fake photo gets 100,000 views, and the "actually, it's fake" follow-up gets 100, it's a heavy lift for the latter to epistemically triumph over the former.

Would the contents of the Amazon delivery van end up in the Boston Harbor or on ebay?

Why would I need to search for her credentials when you gave me a url to her LinkedIn profile?

Are you familiar with the complaint lodged against Neuralink by PCRM? Did you read the Guardian and Business Wire articles that iancmceachern posted? Do you consider the Guardian and Business Wire to be reputable news organizations, and their reporting on the issue and the statements released by PCRM a form of substantiation? Is a link to Autumn Sorrells LinkedIn, a link to Ashlee Vance's wikipedia page, and a couple of tweets by the same intended as a response to any of the above?

When it suits them. See: https://www.newsweek.com/world-cup-worker-threatened-100-las...

I appreciate the input, but I'm going to do a heel-face (face-heel?) turn and say that I trust that book about as far as I can throw it. There's an entire industry dedicated to rapidly churning out books on right-wing culture war topics, and the quality tends to be low.

I have, in the course of my travels, been told many times that I need to read such-and-such a book on a topic before I can "really have an opinion". I get the taste in my mouth that such books tend to serve a defensive role in conversations (like barbed wire, with a machine gun pointed at it) instead of an educational one, and put the recommendee on the back foot where they're refusing to read a source as offered.

It works because--going back to point 1--there's so many books out there that reading them all doesn't scale and never will. They take far, far more than they give. The youtube videos of the genre "three hours of some guy talking into the camera" occupy a similar niche.

Hold on, pump the brakes. How do you know what is or isn't on the laptop?

If you're taking adds:

https://www.protolabs.com/

https://www.xometry.com/

>That's not at all what I've done.

It was an uncharitable characterization, my apologies.

>The mere existence of an inbound solicitation is not evidence of corruption.

This is true. The counterpoint is that there's a lot of evidence that people found solicitation of Hunter Biden worthwhile (illustrated by the fact that they kept paying him).

A healthy skepticism suggests those payments were not made on the basis of his business acumen, in the same way we can suspect purchases of his paintings were not made on the basis of his artistic skill.

I think the main source of confusion is here is that the original author said "weapons", which about half of commentators have taken to mean weapons/warheads and half have taken to mean nuclear material of any variety.

>Feynman had discovered that the Y-12 Plant was storing uranium nitrate solution enriched in U-235 in drums holding 300 to 3,000 gallons. After performing some calculations, the young physicist determined that the drums were placed in potentially unsafe arrangements in a number of buildings.[0]

Looks like fluids again, not warheads.

https://exploreoakridge.com/how-a-26-year-old-physicist-may-...

>the "big guy" referenced...

Remarkable to see the "it wasn't him, and if it was... and if he did, he didn't... and if it is..." play out in earnest.

Fission, boosted, or fusion all start with a fission bomb with a possibility to fizzle.

>even if we take Vance out of the picture

Pump the brakes. With Vance out of the picture your initial comment is a link to someone's LinkedIn profile. Do you want answers to these questions or are you throwing up flak?

All of those examples involve reactors, single cores, or fluid containers.

I believe the original question was whether storage of multiple weapons in the same vicinity could result in accidental assembly of a critical mass, which appears to be something the author of the original blog came up with on their own.

We are in agreement on the crypto split between illicit and mainstream activities, and your points are well supported by the history of monero/XMR--it can't be bought with card or bank transfer on any of the major exchanges, and has been insulated from the volatility and inflation of the more mainstream coins. So in a sense the outcome you're describing has already come to pass, in a small section of the market.

Where we disagree is the criminalization of cryptocurrency transactions to achieve that end. Owning, buying, and selling monero isn't illegal; regulations of some type (I am not aware of the exact structure) have prevented it from being touched by institutional players, but the risk of a private citizen getting caught in some sort of spike trap designed to eliminate reckless speculation and fraud on an institutional level is zero.

I agree 100% that there's a major bubble in cryptocurrency, the popping of which will happen in manner that is novel and unknown, but "make it illegal" means cops and guns, full stop. I (and I suspect many of the people who replied to you) see that option as a last resort, and totally inappropriate in the case of free exchange of innocuous assets between private individuals.

I understand your point more fully now, and agree that my second reply was somewhat orthogonal to it.

Crypto is a huge risk minimizer for buying illicit goods. Unless you make the punishment for purchasing cryptocurrencies severe (on par with buying/possession of the goods in question) you won't remove the motivation for using them as an intermediate means of exchange. If you do make the punishment sufficiently severe, you'll be sending people to jail for the exchange of the equivalent of digitally encrypted beanie babies. Have you thought through the implications of that? For whom is that solution easy?

Cryptocurrencies are a second-order desirable in the same way that meeting in private, instead of public, is. Would you support criminalizing private meetings and encrypted communications to the same end?

A buyer's intentions after the purchase of an illicit item have zero relevance to the evasion of law enforcement during the purchase itself.

Perhaps a third incentive program...

I'm just joshing around. You make good points, and I appreciate your sincerity.

>we get these 7-layer wedding cake Rube Goldberg machines because we want to show how ideologically pure we are in our demonstration of market efficiency

This simply doesn't connect for me in this case, given that the the New York and Chicago rat problems stem from trash collection issues under the purview of public agencies.

Enact a secondary system that rewards the discovery and elimination of illicit rodent breeding programs.

Your initial (implicit) claim was that Ashlee Vance is an unbiased observer, which has yet to be substantiated.

How can we know that Vance is self-censoring? We can't. I'm sure they believe everything they're saying, but if they believed something different they would not be touring the Neuralink labs.

Wait until you find out what people buy with cryptocurrency.

However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.

>You equate pointing out the existence of a genocide with a "call to violent action"

I take it you favor a more passive approach.

>Your comment, in the context of this conversation, argues in favour of arresting anyone who points out that a genocide is taking place. That is extremely dangerous.

This is exactly what my comment was arguing. I wrote that comment not as a reflection of my personal views, but to highlight the consequences of prosecuting individuals for statements which aren't direct threats.

I don't believe arresting and prosecuting individuals for making such statements is justified. I agree that the context of this conversation argues in favor of arresting anyone who points out that genocide is taking place, and I agree that accepting it as a precedent is extremely dangerous. You've elucidated my reasoning on the subject perfectly.