cryoshon

The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment. They are doing widespread and overt corruption and insider trading on a daily basis on scales that have never been seen in human history before. There is not any attempt at stopping that by any organ of government.

Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.

These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.

The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.

I remember playing this game as a child and absolutely loving every tidbit of it... there's never been anything quite like it since, especially nothing with such a banger of a soundtrack.

One of the best parts of the game: Your scowling coach berating you for getting the robot too smashed up and then having to pay for the repairs.

This is awesome, going to check it out. I've been playing HotA on and off for years now.

The way these people operate: If I don't do this bad thing and make a buck from it, someone else will.

Having this problem with the voice mode as well. It makes it far less usable than it might be if it just honored the system prompts.

For me, the considerable environmental issues aside, the problem with farmed fish is that it simply doesn't taste nearly as good as the wild-caught versions.

Take salmon for instance. In a lifetime of preparing and then eating several portions of salmon per week, I've noticed that the farmed salmon are pretty much always:

-Very pale pink color, as though the animal was unhealthy (sometimes stores even add red food dye to cover this up)

-Weak and mushy flesh, even when fresh; healthy salmon flesh is muscled and springy, it isn't naturally slimy and it holds its shape

-Weak flavor that seems to be missing a lot of the more robust flavor notes entirely

-Thinner or nearly-nonexistent layer of fat between the flesh and the scales (contributes to less flavor overall and removes a lot of the umami); the same problem also applies to the thin bands of fat between the rows of muscle in the filet itself

-Skin/scales slightly disintegrate or fleck away at a touch instead of remaining intact

I don't even bother buying it even if it's significantly cheaper.

I can't imagine that the nutrient content is the same as the wild-caught fish. And based on the sickly look and taste of the meat, it's also very hard to believe that the farmed fish live a life that they find to be pleasant, to the extent such a thing is possible.

Today they're admitting AI is hollowing out entry-level jobs. The reality is that it can and will replace mid-level and eventually even quite senior jobs.

Why?

It's already doing a lot of the loadbearing work in those mid-level roles too now, it's just a bit awkward for management to admit it. One common current mode of work is people using AI to accomplish their work tasks very quickly, and then loafing a bit more with the extra time. So leaders refrain from hiring, pocket the savings, and keep a tight lid on compensation for those who remain.

At some point they'll probably try to squeeze the workforce for some additional productivity, and cut those who don't deliver it. Note that the "ease" of using AI for work tasks will be a rationale for why additional compensation is not warranted for those who remain.

This is fascism. There is no longer separation between the government and private industry as a result of the criminal and out-of-control authoritarian Trump administration.

By and large, Silicon Valley and its kingmakers are fully in support of this, many vocally so.

To the point of the paper, it has been a somewhat disturbing experience to see otherwise affable superiors in the workplace "prompt" their employees in ways that are obviously downstream of their (very frequent) LLM usage.

Who will own the company that operates the AGI?

It won't be me or you. Whoever it is, they will not share any of the economic upsides of AI with the public unless they are legally forced -- zero, zip, zilch, nada. Even then, they will keep the lion's share for themselves, and they will use their surplus to shape society to their advantage.

So yes, many millions of us have a big problem to worry about, especially considering how much struggling there already is now.

The world is palpably warmer today than when we were children. Likewise, it was not always the case that summers were characterized by weeks of choking wildfire smoke.

Who are you going to believe: the warmth felt by your own skin, or the people telling you that nothing is wrong, and that global heating isn't something to be concerned about? Psychologically it's more comfortable to choose the latter because it implies things can stay the same without trouble. But it's only viable to do so if you can suppress the cognitive dissonance.

The planet is burning.

We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate.

We know which companies are responsible for polluting. They've been doing it for years, knowing the damages in greater and greater detail all along the way.

Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem? And why aren't these chemicals banned? At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this? We don't get much of anything in the way of protection from bad domestic actors (in this case, polluters) for our tax dollars.

It's getting quite tiring to live in a country where the rules seem to be "anarchy for thee, and profits for me".

general source to understand the phenomenon in prior variants: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.7571...

mutation profile of this particular variant: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

summary of the phenomenon in layman's terms: when binding at 100% efficiency, antibodies bind to portions of the spike protein like a key fits into a lock, so it's easy to "unlock" the lock, thereby neutralizing the viral particle. when there are mutations which affect the shapes of the different portions of the spike protein, it's like the pins in the lock shifting so that the key you used before might not work without quite a bit of jiggling, assuming you can get it to unlock the lock at all. the more mutations that increase the amount of jiggling it takes, the more the pins in the lock become intractable with the key you have.

this set of analogies is imperfect in a few ways, but hopefully it helps you to understand the gist of the problem.

it's very early in terms of the data that's out there, but so far it looks quite bad.

the ELI5 is that it's expanding really fast, and it is probably at least somewhat resistant to our immune system's first line of defenses that are formed from vaccination or a prior infection. the details on all of those points are very much in flux still, so be aware that the story could change as we learn more.

in more detail:

the biggest piece of worrying evidence is that it's growing as a proportion of cases in south africa at such an intensely fast rate that it's outcompeting the delta variant as though it isn't even there, which means it's far more transmissible than any other variant.

as far as i know, there isn't any information on whether it has higher lethality compared to delta, but my hunch is that it does.

the reason why i think it will end up having increased lethality is that it appears to have a complex of mutations that are associated with resistance to antibodies, likely including those generated by vaccination. that will make it take longer for the immune system to form an effective response to infection, allowing the virus to replicate rampantly and cause organ damage for longer.

keep in mind every other variant has also exhibited this property at least to a small amount, and in most cases, regardless of vaccination, our bodies are still able to clear the infection.

the issue is that this time around, the variant doesn't have just one or two tropisms associated with lower antibody binding efficiency, but perhaps a couple dozen. so, it'll likely be more effective at reinfecting people who have already had covid, too. and even though the variant may be "vaccine resistant", i'd bet that vaccinated people will still fare better than unvaccinated people. unfortunately, our antibody therapies probably won't be as helpful at saving people who are hospitalized.

but, our antiviral therapies (including those still in development) shouldn't be any less effective against this variant, which is a very faint silver lining.

in conclusion: buckle up, we're probably in for a rough ride.

>I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik.

yes, this has been my experience. as you said, it's an effective tactic to defuse genuine threats to the narrative as being "unreasonable" or "not serious".

i have a hunch that learning to refrain from criticism of insiders is actually the biggest "lesson" taught at the universities and organizations that are traditional centers of elite power. it's part of the pedigree.

>actually socially positive

>If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products.

in practice, these two concepts are incompatible. everyone has buttons that can be pushed with the help of detailed psychological profiles made by advertisers.

if you push those buttons enough times, it's typically unhealthy for the person and financially beneficial for the pusher all the while.

i'm a huge proponent of this book. it's not just about "reading books" so much as how you should approach any piece of prose information. it's life-changing.

no, these are the very first vaccines to use mrna technology successfully. same with the vaccine delivery technology -- lipid nanoparticles.

that's why there is a lot of concern about their potential long-term side effects. in animal models, one of moderna's older vaccines (not for covid) was found to cause severe liver damage... likely as a result of the nanoparticle formulation they were using, rather than the mrna itself, but who knows.

personally, given the data that i've seen so far, i'd be more comfortable with taking the pfizer mrna vaccine than the moderna one. especialy when you add in moderna's reputation for peak sleaziness and non-transparency, it seems especially risky to be one of their guinea pigs in the general population.

can you cite a source for this? I'm interested in learning more in detail

this assumes the weakest possible form of a wealth tax.

a progressive wealth tax would tax the increase of wealth on the margin rather than just "wealth". experience equity gains of $1M? you owe an extra $10k in liquid cash at the end of the year. if your equity doesn't grow, you don't get taxed.

in any event, the floor for these kinds of laws would likely be above the ceiling of most people's lifetime wealth accumulation.

what can be said to people like the author?

"i told you so" is too bitter an admonishment for someone who has shown contrition and suffered greatly for their sizeable sins. "sorry for your loss" is too gentle. "why didn't you listen?" will simply devolve into partisan bickering, and nobody will be convinced.

more importantly, what might we say to someone to prevent them from killing other people through their ignorance and intransigence, like the author did? rational discussion of evidence hasn't worked. legal mandates haven't worked. social shaming hasn't worked. mass death hasn't worked.

and more importantly still: how can we hope to build or repair a society when people like the author are so keen to drag us down, at least until they fall victim to the very problem we are trying to protect them from?

we can't simply let them all get infected if they are nearby -- they'll drag us to hell with them, as they already arguably have. at what point do we refuse to entertain their backwardness? at what point do we withdraw from them or exile them and leave them to their fate?

agreed entirely.

there's no way forward regarding global warming with the current US insitution of leadership, comprised of both major parties. they've got to be removed for the most optimal response to climate change, but doing so will be ghastly.

that's why i've started hunting for CCS solutions/companies to invest in/ways to start a company to leverage CCS for profit. we're going to need a massive mop to clean up the mess the baby boomers are still insisting on making worse.

unfortunately, i think you'll find that DX is far too edgy for any school curriculum because it's far too true to life.

school curriculums are not intended to capture the nuance of how a "terrorist" group like the NSF might gain popular support and even the moral high ground as a result of their efforts to reduce the inequality of vaccine distribution. an inequality of distribution that our society is all but destined to replicate, as soon as we have a vaccine for COVID-19.

nor are school curriculums interested in provoking critical thought by posing questions like "what if powerful groups of people are conspiring for their own gain, even when it results in mass misery?" this too we have already covered in the pandemic, when trump's political allies recieved preferential access to the right to sell protective equipment that was in short supply even when their need for it was minimal and the consequences of their greed was mass death.

put differently: school curriculums exist to prevent enlightened dissenters from existing, not to make more of them. i'd be all for having it be part of a course, but it's just too real.

>an "intensive" regimen of essentially n-back training prescribed by my care provider.

can you describe the treatment protocol to us in brief or link us to additional resources on this topic? this sounds very interesting and potentially very helpful.

"How to Read a Book" is one book that I think every school and university should teach from cover to cover.

it completely changes your approach to learning to be significantly more rigorous, and i can't speak highly enough about it. and of course, it's not just good for reading from books, but any kind of reading you want.

critical thinking classes from kindergarten through the end of college.

i have developed a loose curriculum for the latter half of that pipeline, but getting the education uniformly distributed throughout the public mind market is the hard part.

>The social contract exists for skilled people through their employers

that's not what the social contract is. and unfortunately, the crux of that very misunderstanding is exactly why the US is being absolutely shredded by a plethora of different and seemingly intractable systemic problems.

the social contract is between citizens and the state, wherein citizens consent to to taxation and governance which curtails some of their freedoms such that the state can guarantee their freedom from certain maladies and undesirable conditions. employers have nothing to do with it because businessess operate within the confines of the social contract at large because they are goverened by the laws of society.

we're in the middle of a pandemic, and there are millions and millions of people who are uninsured and who cannot get medical care because they were separated from their employer-provided health insurance.

pretending that businesses are stand-ins for the services that the government's end of the social contract should guarantee simply doesn't work in practice.

the case for national paid parental leave -- that's right, parental leave, not just maternity leave -- is that it's a standard feature of developed countries.

the US will start to see more and more brain drain to other developed countries until some basic aspects of the social contract here are corrected. we'll also see fewer highly-skilled immigrants wanting to join our workforce.

there's no reason for highly educated people to stay here or immigrate to here when their quality of life will be significantly worse than elsewhere because our basic suite of mandatory and ubiquitous social amenities are entirely absent.

i've come around to a similar point of view after spending a lot of time in latin america.

i don't necessarily believe that people down there are happier on average, because i know that many are not. but, i have noticed that latin americans seem to have the latitude to take more joy and passion in their daily lives. and i think that if the two can be separated, people are more content on average there than they are here.

not everything is a business transaction, and it isn't necessarily desirable for someone to be spending their time clawing their way through the world. there's less of a culture of marketing/advertising creating new problems for people and offering products to solve them, too.

as a former immunologist, i can assure you that with common viruses and bacteria, we have years and years of knowledge about how they perform, thereby making the risks of exposure calculable.

it is this body of knowledge which allows our society to normally function even during a typical flu season. we understand the upper and lower boundaries of the consequences, and we can make an informed judgment about what we should do to navigate the environment accordingly.

the idea of throwing open the gates to allow everyone to get infected is a dangerous fantasy. at best, it's taking a leap of faith with other people's health without knowing whether there is a long way down or not.