hobbes64's recent activity

  1. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 20 in ~society

    hobbes64
    (edited )
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    Agreed. It probably isn't fake. But there's so much intentional kayfabe going on that of course people are suspicious. I'm reminded of a Twilight Zone episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street...

    Agreed. It probably isn't fake. But there's so much intentional kayfabe going on that of course people are suspicious.

    I'm reminded of a Twilight Zone episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
    The point of that story is that people become suspicious of each other and tear each other apart. The antagonist in the story is fear.

    In our real world, the same thing is happening, except the antagonist is the nefarious people that strategically generate the mistrust and fear. This includes Trump and the people who support him, including a right-wing media complex funded by unlimited dark money. I've got people I've known my whole life (and who used to be normal) who tell me things like the moon landings were faked because they saw a youtube video that said it was fake, or that autism is caused by vaccines, or requiring people to wear a mask to reduce the spread of an airborne virus during a pandemic was fascism. It's a post truth firehose of bullshit at all times.

    Edit: Wow we are going to hear nonstop conspiracy theories for a while now -

    (≖_≖ )
    https://bsky.app/profile/meidastouch.com/post/3mkefstocws2g

  2. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 20 in ~society

    hobbes64
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    WTF indeed. I guess enough isn't known yet, but it seems most likely this is another person trying to get Trump. I guess this is the 3rd attempt, although I think one of them was armed but didn't...

    WTF indeed. I guess enough isn't known yet, but it seems most likely this is another person trying to get Trump. I guess this is the 3rd attempt, although I think one of them was armed but didn't get close and didn't fire?
    It's very weird how this is going down. I was reading some stuff on reddit before today's incident and there were quite a few comments from people who think the attempt on Trump before the election was a hoax. Here are the arguments:

    • Trump never mentions the attempts
    • Investigations into the attempts have been stopped
    • The secret service didn't properly secure the area and let an armed man onto a roof
    • The secret service saw the shooter before he shot but reacted very slowly to this info
    • After shots were fired the secret service did not safely remove Trump from the area. They let him stand up and pose for a photo
    • The photo seems staged with a flag in the background and a raised triumphant fist etc
    • A high powered rifle bullet would have done more damage to his ear
    • Based on the angle the bullet couldn't have hit his ear without also hitting his skull (maybe he was hit from some ricochet material and not the though)
    • His ear was bandaged for a while and not it is completely healed (ears cartilage doesn't heal)
    • Trump is into wrestling and would know how they cut themselves to make some drama

    It's weird that there's yet another attempt and the secret service has messed up again.

    So I'm not saying it's fake and that this is a convenient thing to distract from the war and all the news about Trump's poor polling and dementia. I just know that something weird is happening. Maybe it's because they fired a lot of competent secret service people and replaced them with less competent loyalists, as they've done almost everywhere else?

    I'm just asking questions while cocking my head slightly and giving a confused Tucker Carlson face.

    Edit:
    I remember when Obama was elected that I was kind of terrified that a racist nut would take him out. I assumed that he would have much higher than normal danger of being assassinated than other presidents, and we know that there have been many attempts, and some successful, over the years. There were a few attempts on Obama, but none as close as these attempts on Trump.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on The people do not yearn for automation in ~society

    hobbes64
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    The company that I work at has completely succumbed to AI fever. Over the last few months, more and more resources have been diverted to work on it. I’ve tried to raise some red flags about this....

    The company that I work at has completely succumbed to AI fever. Over the last few months, more and more resources have been diverted to work on it. I’ve tried to raise some red flags about this.

    • There’s lost opportunity by working on this instead of our traditional strengths
    • We’re being asked to create systems that have almost no requirements or use cases from management. So the developers either just wing it or come up with their own.
    • There’s no evidence our customers want any of this, and possibly will hate and resent it.

    I guess the company is just afraid competitors will be able to market AI stuff before us. But they don’t know why that would matter. Why would someone want to type a request to a bot rather than click a button in a UI?

    Regarding the software brain and everything being in databases: I noticed some time ago that software models a little bit of the real world. It tries to solve a problem in the real world, but doesn’t contain all the information. Just like a plastic model airplane looks like an airplane but it can’t fly or take people anywhere. So when you take that data, which is just a shadow of the world, and feed it to AI, you are going to get results that don’t line up to the real world, and the more you process and bend that data, the less “real” the answer.

    But regarding thinking that you can advertise in a way that makes people like things that are harming them: There’s evidence that this works. Notice how often people vote for politicians who are not going to make things better. A specific example is that people in the US vote for republicans based on the premise that they are better for the economy. There’s ample evidence they are worse, except for the rich. But advertising apparently tricks people into falling for this over and over.

    13 votes

  4. Comment on Invincible Season 4 finale discussion in ~tv

    hobbes64
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    There's no internal consistency inside the show because it's about magic creatures and magic is illogical. Sometimes I can turn off my brain and allow this, but this realization sits in the back...

    There's no internal consistency inside the show because it's about magic creatures and magic is illogical. Sometimes I can turn off my brain and allow this, but this realization sits in the back there, like pride, constantly fuckin' with me.

    So I'm going to do an indulgent mini rant about things that pop into my head whenever I watch these superhero shows.

    Here are just a few things that don't make sense (most are tropes from other superhero things but these have always bugged me). I think some of these types of things are mocked in The Boys but I haven't seen that for a while:

    • The Viltrumites, and some other aliens, can just float in the sky. So I guess they can turn off gravity? No, that's not it, because they can fly at thousands of miles an hour straight up. So they can repel gravity? No, that's not it, because they can fly through space at thousands of miles an hour in any direction without apparently worrying about needing to have thrusters or handle any kind of Newtonian opposite reaction stuff. Maybe they have super farts?
    • They have access to almost infinite amounts of energy, but they don't seem to eat more than a human. You'd think they'd need a whole supermarket of food every day that they are fighting giant monsters or moving a skyscraper. Maybe they just get static electricity from the environment like John Galt's engine from Atlas Shrugged. But how does that work in space?
    • They seem to breathe and get out of breath, but they can fly around in space and not breathe for weeks or more. This is also related to the conservation of energy thing that's bugging me (we breathe to produce energy and dispel toxins). But I don't know, maybe they have lungs and space gills like some kind of salamander.
    • In all these shows, someone will fall off a tall building and the hero will fly down at a speed that is way higher than the acceleration of gravity in order to prevent the sudden stop at the end. But they grab the person with such speed and force that the person would probably turn into red mist with much more damage than if they just hit the pavement.
    • The super strong live in cities that look kind of regular and they can easily just tip a building over. Imagine living in a house where you sneeze and accidentally knock the wall down. Seems like they should use unobtainum to build something stronger. Also, they would not need stairs and may have doors on the 100th floor or something.

    This was a reason I liked the first Ironman movie. It was still kind of about magic, but it was wrapped in tech like "Fusion Reactors" and "nanobots" and "thrusters". And even Spiderman makes a little sense. He can't just float around, he can jump and stick to things. His strength isn't realistic, but at least he isn't a god like Superman is.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys in ~society

    hobbes64
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    The snark I mentioned was that I find McSweeney’s funny in small doses, but if I read a few of their posts in a row it gets tiresome because it’s all the same format of saying some bullshit that...

    The snark I mentioned was that I find McSweeney’s funny in small doses, but if I read a few of their posts in a row it gets tiresome because it’s all the same format of saying some bullshit that “certain people” would actually agree with, but dear reader you are enlightened so you know it’s bullshit and I’m winking at you. It’s kind of like the humor was on The Colbert Report.

    You are clearly saying something much different, and if I’m understanding you, I think you are saying that this topic is too serious to just throw sarcastic humor at and hope people understand the problem plainly. And if you are saying that I probably agree with you, except to say that dark humor is pretty popular during war and under dictatorships, and we are moving pretty far down those roads.

  6. Comment on The US Chief Justice and his wife took $20 million from firms he rules on. I'm filing for his disbarment today. in ~society

    hobbes64
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    What could have been done differently? He should have been tried and convicted by 2022 at the latest for sedition, conspiracy to defraud the united states, obstruction of an official proceeding,...
    • Exemplary

    What could have been done differently?

    • He should have been tried and convicted by 2022 at the latest for sedition, conspiracy to defraud the united states, obstruction of an official proceeding, and stealing secret documents
    • Before that, he should have been convicted by the senate and removed from office and barred from serving a second term
    • Before that, the republican party should not have accepted him as a candidate to represent the party

    The first bullet is the responsibility of the DOJ under Biden. The rest of the stuff and everything since is on the Republican Party and the Supreme Court.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys in ~society

    hobbes64
    Link Parent
    Sometimes I read a few McSweeney's articles when I want to feel like I jumped into a big vat of snarky sarcasm.

    Sometimes I read a few McSweeney's articles when I want to feel like I jumped into a big vat of snarky sarcasm.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Invincible Season 4 finale discussion in ~tv

    hobbes64
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    I have a question about the ending, related to the scourge virus that the recording of Thaedus revealed to Allen. When he said that it would wipe out all Viltrimites and similar beings, are the...

    I have a question about the ending, related to the scourge virus that the recording of Thaedus revealed to Allen.
    When he said that it would wipe out all Viltrimites and similar beings, are the similar beings Mark and Oliver, or is it all humans?

    I'm assuming that it must mean all humans, otherwise the use of the scourge virus is kind of a no brainer.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on The US Chief Justice and his wife took $20 million from firms he rules on. I'm filing for his disbarment today. in ~society

    hobbes64
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    Btw I’ve noticed that the most prominent people who are right wing and making the country worse for most citizens are almost always not just wrong but also criminally corrupt. This includes the...

    Btw I’ve noticed that the most prominent people who are right wing and making the country worse for most citizens are almost always not just wrong but also criminally corrupt.

    This includes the president, his entire cabinet, his family, most of the conservatives on the Supreme Court, most prominent republicans in congress, and many prominent right wing media personalities. They claim to want traditional values but almost universally lie and misrepresent, and a large percentage break the law to get what they want.

    6 votes

  10. Comment on The US Chief Justice and his wife took $20 million from firms he rules on. I'm filing for his disbarment today. in ~society

    hobbes64
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    This is a substack post from Christopher Armitage about stunning corruption in the supreme court. Includes a strategy to do something about it. ... ...

    This is a substack post from Christopher Armitage about stunning corruption in the supreme court. Includes a strategy to do something about it.

    Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more than five hundred cases argued at the Supreme Court by law firms that had paid his household millions in commissions. He architected the Court’s first ethics code and designed it to be unenforceable. This is a course of conduct stretching across two decades, connected by a single through-line: the belief that the rules that apply to every other federal judge do not apply to him.

    ...

    The scope of Roberts’s corruption is not measured in individual cases. It is measured across the entire docket of the Supreme Court over two decades. WilmerHale alone, one of Jane Roberts’s documented client firms, had 18 cases at the Supreme Court in the single term of 2016, and Seth Waxman of WilmerHale has argued more than 85 Supreme Court cases across his career. Hogan Lovells, another documented client firm, argued 8 Supreme Court cases in 2024 alone and has represented nearly 10 percent of the Court’s entire docket in recent terms. Across Roberts’s two decades on the Court, the law firms paying his household in commissions have argued more than five hundred cases before him. He recused from none of them on spousal income grounds.

    ...

    Five mechanisms exist to hold a federal judge accountable for the conduct documented here. Each of them is available. Each of them is being refused.

    The law exists. 5 U.S.C. § 13106 makes willful false disclosure a civil violation with penalties up to $50,000. 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes knowing false statements to the federal government a felony punishable by five years. 28 U.S.C. § 455 mandates recusal. These are laws Congress wrote. They apply to the Chief Justice.

    Impeachment exists. Article II, Section 4 provides for removal of judges for high crimes and misdemeanors. Porteous in 2010. Claiborne in 1986. Hastings in 1989. Congress has the power and has used it on federal judges.

    The Judicial Conference has a statutory referral obligation under § 13106. It exists. It just hasn’t been used against a justice.

    The DC Bar has disciplinary jurisdiction over its members. It exists. It just carves out judicial capacity by policy.

    The Supreme Court Bar has a complaint mechanism. It exists. It just answers to the Court.

    The mechanisms exist. The political will of the people who control them does not. The Judicial Conference won’t refer. The DC Bar declines on intake. The Senate won’t impeach. DOJ won’t prosecute. Each institution points at another institution and says not my jurisdiction, not my moment, not my responsibility.

    In the United Kingdom, a party who believes a judge should step aside can file a challenge, and a different judge decides. In Canada, the Judicial Council accepts complaints from any member of the public and can recommend a judge’s removal. In Germany, the other members of a Federal Constitutional Court panel vote on whether a colleague must recuse, and the judge in question does not vote on their own case. In Australia, a statutory code requires federal judges to disclose spousal income in full rather than by category label. At the European Court of Human Rights, the plenary court has authority to remove a judge who fails to recuse where the law requires it.

    What every one of these systems shares, and what the American system lacks, is an external body with the authority to receive a complaint, investigate it, and impose consequences. The self-policing rule is the American anomaly.

    19 votes

  12. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 20 in ~society

    hobbes64
    Link Parent
    Yup. This is mentioned in the Atlantic articles on the subject today. Here's one: The Virginia Gerrymander Disenfranchises Republicans Hopefully Democrats have finally learned that "When they go...

    Yup. This is mentioned in the Atlantic articles on the subject today.

    Here's one: The Virginia Gerrymander Disenfranchises Republicans

    Republicans seem to have expected that Democrats would continue to follow rules they had long since enthusiastically abandoned. The Washington Post editorial page, exemplifying its rightward turn under owner Jeff Bezos, dismissed Democratic concerns about Texas gerrymandering last year, arguing that “what’s happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy.” The editorial-board members were considerably less enthusiastic about Virginia’s redistricting, which they called a “power grab”; Democrats, they warned, had plunged America “deeper into the gerrymandering abyss.” Whoops!

    Hopefully Democrats have finally learned that "When they go low, we go high" hasn't been working. The only thing Republicans understand is Tit for Tat

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 20 in ~society

    hobbes64
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    Virginia voters approve redistricting measure backed by Democrats Note also this opinion piece from the Washington Post Virginia plunges America deeper into the gerrymandering abyss This kind of...

    Virginia voters approve redistricting measure backed by Democrats

    Virginia voters have approved a Democrat-backed redistricting plan, according to Decision Desk HQ, greenlighting a new congressional map that could net the party as many as four seats ahead of the midterm elections.

    Voters in the Old Dominion cast their ballots in a Tuesday referendum, in which Democratic lawmakers asked them to approve a state constitutional amendment that would temporarily bypass the state’s redistricting commission and redraw maps mid-decade.

    The new House map expands Democrats’ 6-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation to a 10-1 edge — a significant boost in the battle for control of Congress this fall.

    Note also this opinion piece from the Washington Post
    Virginia plunges America deeper into the gerrymandering abyss

    This kind of piece is more evidence that the Washington Post has been corrupted since Bezos took over. There was no such negative opinion in the Post of the Texas redistricting that favored republicans and that particular gerrymandering exercise was not even put before voters.
    (Re: The Post: I'm referring to this recent Tildes thread about Bezos and other billionaires which contained several threads about the effect of billionaires on the free press)

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Adults are earning college degrees online in weeks, alarming US educators in ~society

    hobbes64
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    I mentioned in my comment that college is much more expensive now than it was when I went. I was able to pay for (state) college by working part time and living at home. But there are currently...

    I mentioned in my comment that college is much more expensive now than it was when I went. I was able to pay for (state) college by working part time and living at home.

    But there are currently multiple states in the US that make community or state college largely free for residents. It's possible to get a lot of the personal growth benefit from this path. Not everyone needs to go to Harvard. The main cost is lost opportunity where you are working part-time jobs during school years.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Adults are earning college degrees online in weeks, alarming US educators in ~society

    hobbes64
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    You can bet that rich people's kids will continue to get broad educations that take many years, while everyone else has whatever minimum is needed to work in the AI mines. We are apparently aiming...

    You can bet that rich people's kids will continue to get broad educations that take many years, while everyone else has whatever minimum is needed to work in the AI mines. We are apparently aiming for a gilded age of a few rich people and everyone else is peasants. For a while there we were working on a middle class, but those types are more difficult to control I guess.

    11 votes

  16. Comment on Adults are earning college degrees online in weeks, alarming US educators in ~society

    hobbes64
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    This seems to be only about how a college education is used as a gate to filter job applicants. When I went to university I heard a lot about how it was to get a rounded education and be exposed...

    This seems to be only about how a college education is used as a gate to filter job applicants.

    When I went to university I heard a lot about how it was to get a rounded education and be exposed to different ideas. Then I could have a richer life and be a more informed citizen.

    So I have a university degree in computer science but I also took classes in art history and religion and biology and literature and writing and lots of math. Oh and philosophy, including a lot about logical fallacies so I’m not as easy to trick by Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro.

    I could probably have the same job now if I went to trade school or took online classes or lied about my education.

    I’m not disparaging anyone who just wants a shortest route to the highest pay. And I understand that education is way more expensive now than when I got my degree. But man, as a society we are really losing something here.

    51 votes

  17. Comment on The insider trading suspicions looming over Donald Trump's US presidency in ~society

    hobbes64
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    Yes I’ve seen that various orgs have noticed the trading but I don’t remember any that were directly implicating trump associates.

    Yes I’ve seen that various orgs have noticed the trading but I don’t remember any that were directly implicating trump associates.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on The insider trading suspicions looming over Donald Trump's US presidency in ~society

    hobbes64
    Link Parent
    Note also that this is reporting by BBC. I haven’t seen stories about this on major American media which has mostly been captured by the billionaires who are on team Trump.

    Note also that this is reporting by BBC. I haven’t seen stories about this on major American media which has mostly been captured by the billionaires who are on team Trump.

    13 votes

  19. Comment on The insider trading suspicions looming over Donald Trump's US presidency in ~society

    hobbes64
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    Throughout US President Donald Trump's second term in office, traders have been betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements.
    The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them to some of the president's most significant market-moving statements.
    It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.
    Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public.
    Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating the president's interventions.

    7 votes