TemulentTeatotaler's recent activity
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Comment on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the US, allowing him to go free in ~news
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Comment on Texas secessionists win GOP backing for independence vote: 'Major step' in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler (edited )Link ParentThe long history of problems in the South is due to rewarding political violence and screwing up Reconstructionism. Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson favoured white Southerners /...- Exemplary
traced directly back to the decision to force the South (literally, at gunpoint) to stay in the Union and like it, or else.
The long history of problems in the South is due to rewarding political violence and screwing up Reconstructionism. Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson favoured white Southerners / northern Copperheads. He attempted to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866, revoked Sherman's Special Orders, and pardoned/restored the Confederate elites.
The same people were put back in power and the federal gov't relegated authority back to the state, so they recreated the pre-war social order by an expansion of Black Codes into the Jim Crow era.
And because the fed didn't protect black southerners but did count them for the purpose of representation we rewarded disenfranchisement.
But much more significantly, I have a real problem with the idea of a country created by--and based upon--democratic governance, saying that some group within its community is not allowed to leave the country after a fair/honest democratic vote choosing to do so.
(*except for women, non-landowners, and black people (who get a negative vote), and where land is more important that people)
Presumably that also means Dallas and Austin can secede from Neo Texas? And conservative neighborhoods can secede from them? That is a good recipe for Balkanization.
One of the foundational principles of democracies is limitations on authority of the gov't and guaranteed protections for the people. The 90% cannot vote themselves entitled to the 10%'s labor and property. Why should you be able to vote away someone's home and country?
And as has already been pointed out elsewhere, the state doesn't own everything. Texas wouldn't resemble its present self without the support and protections of the U.S., and there are significant federal investments in it. Why would it be allowed to steal those?
If Texas actually votes to leave the US, just let 'em go. They've been living in a fantasy world for decades, anyway; let them sink or swim on their own.
Texas has been fairly purple for decades. When you say "Texas" that includes people like the thousands of women Texas would like to force to carry their rapist's child who would no longer be eligible to travel to another state or be given federal protections.
That sort of "burn the system" shtick appeals to a desire for simplicity in a complex reality. I find it hard to believe that anyone calling for that, when presented with a realistic representation of what that would entail, would remain in favor of it.
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Comment on Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament after EU defeat, calls election in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentIt's not a massive difference, but (in the U.S. at least) women are more likely to vote / be involved in politics in almost every breakdown until you get to the 65+ bucket. From another source:It's not a massive difference, but (in the U.S. at least) women are more likely to vote / be involved in politics in almost every breakdown until you get to the 65+ bucket.
From another source:
46% of women and 40% of men 18 to 24 years old voted
59.7% of women and 53% of men 25 to 44 years old voted
68.2% of women and 64.9% of men 45 to 64 years old voted
72.5% of women and 72.8% of men 65 to 74 years old voted -
Comment on US Supreme Court ruling greenlights nearly all racial gerrymandering in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentYou can argue that drawing a map to give a likely majority to a minority group allows for better representation, but you can also concentrate minority votes in a few regions to help the party who...You can argue that drawing a map to give a likely majority to a minority group allows for better representation, but you can also concentrate minority votes in a few regions to help the party who would not be getting those votes based on their platform win otherwise contested elections. That's what has ended up happening in a lot of places.
The idea you have to "win" to have representation is also a bit flawed. In a hypothetical scenario with three voting blocs with 49%, 49%, and 2% of the vote, the 2% has equal say in the outcome of the election. It's not hard to find minority interest groups (e.g., NRA) who are catered to because of their influence.
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Comment on Today is the UK courts decision day on Julian Assange's extradition to the US in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI don't think you'd find anyone here defending a clandestine operation to murder someone in another country. Definitely not one that isn't an active, violent threat. What you're referring to...I don't think you'd find anyone here defending a clandestine operation to murder someone in another country. Definitely not one that isn't an active, violent threat.
What you're referring to appears to be the work of Mike Pompeo. There have been many batshit plans that never manifest (e.g., drunk Nixon nuking NK) which can be hard to evaluate, except to say the people involved are not good people.
Pompeo was a Trump appointee whose company included Manafort with his activity in Ukraine on Russia's behalf, Flynn's plot to kidnap a rival of Turkey's Erdogan, the downplaying of the murder of Khashoggi, and a number of other shady, authoritarian acts.
I also don't think you'd find many people defending the horrific past of alphabet agencies (MK Ultra, violence towards civil rights leaders, Operation Condor, etc.) or people like Gina Haspel who became the head of the CIA after Pompeo.
That aside, Assange is not a journalist and he is not someone speaking truth to power. There is a good chance he is a foreign asset and committed crimes that merit extradition.
Intent and character doesn't get more clear than him promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich) while being in contact with Guccifer 2.0 after his death:
According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg" from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14, which was four days after Seth Rich died.[77][78][79] In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence.
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Comment on The tech baron seeking to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco in ~life
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentThis is coded language for contemporary Democrats? You don't need to overcomplicate things. He didn't invent "gray tribe", it's from a Star Slate Codex blog post from 2013 and he refers to a...any time he talks about a “gray,” he’s talking about Democrats today
This is coded language for contemporary Democrats?
“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”
In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: “Did you want to take the sign off of Elon’s building?”
You don't need to overcomplicate things. He didn't invent "gray tribe", it's from a Star Slate Codex blog post from 2013 and he refers to a blue-gray axis where technologist/libertarian/borderless grays create new wonderful things while the establishment blues try to bridle them. He's a pal of Thiel and Elon Musk and resents oversight from democratic institutions.
Hyperbole and "jokes" can be ways of signalling intent or measuring your audience without taking the risk of having an attackable position, but he doesn't come across as a 52 yo 4chan troll like Musk, whose satire is reduced to a sneering and insincere rhetoric of convenience.
Unless you think the last 10 years of his life have been performance art, his preferences are roughly in line with what was said. Maybe some of it was exagerrated for a laugh or to stretch a presentation, but he wants the sort of influence over cops/media/politicians that would have allowed him (Musk/Thiel/etc.) to ignore pesky laws and regulations that are just artifacts of a broken democracy.
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Comment on Net neutrality is back as US FCC votes to regulate internet providers in ~tech
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAfaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level. The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight...Afaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level.
The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight it, and the Biden DOJ dropped it / California won in 2021.
Not sure if other states had similar reactions, but California by itself has a huge amount of clout. Carriers were looking at having to handle things differently all over the country in addition to being blocked from doing what they hoped to accomplish.
The bungled execution (e.g., transparent lies about the DDOS/faked comments) might have also contributed to some hesitancy to advantage of the situation.
Many people think Y2K was alarmist, but in both situations while there was certainly alarmism and misinformation there were also very legitimate concerns that didn't manifest because people put in work to stop them.
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI'd argue humans have a pretty good roadmap for understanding human consciousness. A neurologist could look at imaging of a damaged brain and have a decent guess as to how that person would...I'd argue humans have a pretty good roadmap for understanding human consciousness. A neurologist could look at imaging of a damaged brain and have a decent guess as to how that person would describe how they feel. They may have cortical blindness, or not feel like they owned their hands, or feel their loved ones had been replaced with imposters, etc.
You could take the strong sollipsist position that humans except for you are p-zombies, but being able to alter your own brain activity with medication or something like TMS and see how it lines up with what other people describe gives a decent intuition that your conscious experience is coming from the brain's activity and organization, and it's not a huge leap to believe that isn't unique to you.
Why not play it safe with other animals until we know for sure?
Definitely in favor of better treatment of animals, but it's hard to know what consciousness is valuable, human-like, or even accessible.
Is the aversion of single-celled bacteria pain or reflex? What about the spinal reflexes of a person with significant brain damage? What about a foetus, human or otherwise? Does the simulated connectome of C. elegans or Google have a consciousness?
Is avoidance of pain the main goal, when a good deal of the animal kingdom ends up being eaten alive, parasite-ridden, or starving to death? Where do you place the line between mercy killing a deer with Chronic Wasting Disease, population control, or full-on anti-natalism for animals (humanely) raised for food or in pastoralism? Are lab rats that get better treatment than "building rats" unethical?
"Playing it safe" depending on what you consider to be your defaults can lead you to some weird places. Maybe you'd be opposed to abortion or euthenasia. Maybe you'd want to ban cats, or replace obligate carnivores with hunters wherever possible.
Recent psychology got a lot of good criticism for trying to generalize using college students (WEIRD pops), so I can't imagine how bad it is when you get into something as alien as ants passing mirror tests. "Suffering" could have less to do with getting smooshed and more with being on an optimal route to food that ant-feels really inefficient. Or to steal from the Simpson's...
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAlmost necessarily so, if you accept that evolution was a gradual process from mudskipper to man. Besides that most people have some notion of a changing consciousness as they grew from zygote to...Almost necessarily so, if you accept that evolution was a gradual process from mudskipper to man. Besides that most people have some notion of a changing consciousness as they grew from zygote to adult, or when they're tired, fevered, or otherwise altered (inc. recreationally) as Julien Offray de La Mettrie noticed.
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Comment on Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to twenty-five years in US prison in ~finance
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI think there's something wrong about how we perceive crime that will increasingly become a problem as society continues to be abstracted. People can't properly factor the pain of someone who...I think there's something wrong about how we perceive crime that will increasingly become a problem as society continues to be abstracted.
People can't properly factor the pain of someone who can't afford dental work, the loss of possible futures had a college fund not been drained, a family weighed by a member requiring significant support, the domestic violence that spikes with financial stress, the risks the unhoused are exposed to, or the slow erosion of constant poverty and stress.
There's a death count for the actions of the Stackler family, and there are people who sold their bodies to make rent or feed an addiction. I had a sad encounter with a childhood friend in that group years back. What is the meaningful distinction between rape and creating the conditions that make prostitution one's best/only option? Or creating problem gamblers with its ~1/5 chance of attempted suicide and (attempted) murder?
If years later we found X number of suicides above the average in the population effected by FTX, or that they live X years shorter lives, what share of that death is SBF's, and if that was in the ballpark of the multiple murders you'd consider harsher punishments for, would you think those should be given to SBF?
I don't mean to weigh in on what sentencing should be for what someone like SBF did. The U.S. clearly has a dysfunctional justice system when compared to other countries, and my personal preference is always some flavor of pragmatism. I just think the language doesn't match the realities, because the realities are hard to collate.
"...Bankman was a fraud who caused a lot of people hardship" -- he caused death, some in the way LUNA did, and other ways slower and less obvious. He is the source of many untold stories like the guy on Reddit years back who stole hundreds of thousands from his family for a "sure thing."
He should be treated in the same way people without connections, wealth, or a story would. In recognition of the fullness of the consequences of his choices. Maybe that should be more leniently, but if so I'd hope it's across the board, and not just for white collar crime.
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Comment on ‘Andrew Tate greeted us by his pool bare-chested’: Dan Reed on his pursuit of the misogynist in ~tv
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAs cfabbro pointed out, his rise to prominence was based on a misrepresentation of C-16. In 2018 he was putting out things like this on PragerU. He's shown the same willingness to make specious...As cfabbro pointed out, his rise to prominence was based on a misrepresentation of C-16. In 2018 he was putting out things like this on PragerU. He's shown the same willingness to make specious comments about global warming. His Zizek debate is another point of a complete ignorance on his main cultural bogeyman.
When he ended up getting sick on a diet of only "beef, salt, and water" he flew to Russia because no doctors wanted to perform his preferred riskier treatment of being put into a coma. Then he claimed not to know benzos were addictive... as a psychologist.
That is either insane levels of incompetence or reflexive lying. All of which points to him not being someone who can offer healthy criticism. There are lots of valid critiques and refinements to be levied at progressives or feminists, but he isn't the one to do it.
You can certainly find good advice he gives, and I'm sure there's no end to the number of people who'd say he made a positive impact on them or even saved their life. This is the pattern of all gurus, though. Generic good advice and counting your wins but not your losses. All made unique and marketable (and sometimes dangerous) with some weird shit thrown in.
"Exercise more", "have goals", or "have a sense of autonomy/responsibility" is not any more rare or novel than "eat vegetables" (or, I guess, "don't eat only beef"). Many people in his audience would attribute success to him, but without looking at those who had adverse reactions (e.g., sabotaged relationships demanding traditional roles for their partner) or who would succeed regardless it's no more reliable as evidence than people that claim some pseudoscience du jour cured them.
When you get into specific things like using willpower/order to fix your life may just be bad advice, and advice he himself is shown not to follow. If he gets people to (first) seek out Jungian therapy instead of a "gold standard" modality like CBT then he's at least not encouraging an evidence-based approach to therapy.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentNo trouble! Bummer about the name, but Plant Bubbles is a nice replacement. I'd thought about making a joke suggestion of Spiro Agnew (from the Latin for "breathe" and, uh, a portmonteau of...No trouble! Bummer about the name, but Plant Bubbles is a nice replacement.
I'd thought about making a joke suggestion of Spiro Agnew (from the Latin for "breathe" and, uh, a portmonteau of "agricultural renewal" (Nixon did found the EPA at least?)) but thought better of it.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentLooks great, and I like the concept! I didn't play it for too long and I'm not much of a gamer, but I'll give some feedback with that disclaimer. Mechanically I don't think it was unintuitive. A...Looks great, and I like the concept! I didn't play it for too long and I'm not much of a gamer, but I'll give some feedback with that disclaimer.
Should I remove the "clean air" currency and just have plants be self-reproducing?
Mechanically I don't think it was unintuitive. A color-coded resource is pretty standard.
Should I rename the game from Air Garden to Bubble Garden?
Besides being descriptive, you might want a name to be distinct to help with remembering or finding it. In that sense "Air Garden" is a bit more conceptually overloaded, with aeroponics and air plants like succulents?
I think the thumbnail is probably going to give the largest impression of what your game is about, and it's effective enough there isn't a big difference between your two options.
Have you thought about looking at companion plants for reference? Always cool when you pick up some real-world knowledge from a game, and the tables of what plants synergize or what they attract/repel might be useful for brainstorming.
Instead of popups you might consider something like "Notes" on a menubar, possibly with a badge indicating unread tutorial entries? At the start of the game I was paying attention to putting some plants out and had 4 popups at the same time. I felt like I needed to stop what I was doing to read them, and when one faded the one I was reading jumped. Once gone they seemed to be gone for good. If not, making them clickable to dismiss instead of the small "x" would be helpful?
Keeping the most recently placed plant active would be another QoL change, for bulk planting.
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Comment on Steaks grown from human cells spark interest and outrage [2020] in ~food
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentMy sibling is a therapist and had a messy childhood, definitely get the compartmentalization. Stories have been shared, like: Sad spoilers A patient who failed an attempt at suicide with a drill...My sibling is a therapist and had a messy childhood, definitely get the compartmentalization. Stories have been shared, like:
Sad spoilers
A patient who failed an attempt at suicide with a drill to the skull. Or a woman with connective tissue issues who would dislocate joints taking a shower and had to sing "you are my sunshine" to herself to cope.
If they weren't able to compartmentalize they just couldn't be a therapist. So maybe part training, part survivorship bias at play. Same deal with the gallows humor of medical professions.
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Comment on Steaks grown from human cells spark interest and outrage [2020] in ~food
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI don't think it's weird in that we have lots of people that believe that, but I think many people make a separation between personhood and biology. Is killing someone with complete brain death...I don't think it's weird in that we have lots of people that believe that, but I think many people make a separation between personhood and biology. Is killing someone with complete brain death killing a person? Is it ending a life? Opinions split on that.
Same thing with where along the spectrum of zygote to infant something "human" comes about. Or maybe sperm, if you're Catholic, or contraceptives as preventing potential life. No one saying life begins at conception is giving time off for bereavement for the huge percent of spontaneous abortions, and no matter how many letters I write I can't take out a life insurance policy for... nevermind.
The blood bag argument is a tricky one. Some people say, well, your organs/blood could save X lives if we harvested them right now. Should society be allowed to take them?
The other side of that argument may be that child neglect is possible because a [prospective] parent has some obligations like someone who opted to give first aid. You can't leave your child in a hot car because you were responsible for it, and someone killing a pregnant woman may be punished more harshly. Is it wrong for someone to drink while pregnant if they're planning to not carry the child?
I'm strongly pro-choice but it can be a messy topic.
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Comment on Steaks grown from human cells spark interest and outrage [2020] in ~food
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentSome of it might be a predisposition, like "sanctity" of moral foundations theory. It's always interesting to see the split in school when people swab various surfaces and see what bacteria was...Some of it might be a predisposition, like "sanctity" of moral foundations theory.
It's always interesting to see the split in school when people swab various surfaces and see what bacteria was there. Some get disgusted because fecal particles are everywhere, and change/doors/fountains are breeding grounds. Others come to the conclusion that they've been living in a world with thresholds for how much bug or mouse can accidentally make its way into their Cheerios and they haven't been harmed by it, so it must not be that bad.
Culturally I think people who've had more of an analytical education might have less of a response, having encountered enough misfirings of instinct to gradually place less importance on it. Do you think that's changed as you've grown older?
Views on abortion might also be relevant, since people who are pro-choice have made a conceptual distinction between human cells and human life, in a way cultures that eat animal meat have made a distinction between humans and animals.
One last thing is the possibility of canabilism seems very far removed from modern life. I don't care if someone jinxes me or gives me the evil eye because I don't believe in them, or that it could have some bad outcome for me.
Do you have a visceral reaction to something like, say, sex dolls that are made to look more like children or have been treated violently? There's an intuition there that someone who does that may be either developing some abusive tendencies or revealing themselves to have them in a way that would directly translate to a real fear of harm.
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Comment on Steaks grown from human cells spark interest and outrage [2020] in ~food
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentImplying someone has dark triad traits and should be avoided is kinda rude.Implying someone has dark triad traits and should be avoided is kinda rude.
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Lisa Hannigan ft Loah - Undertow live at Other Voices (2020)
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Comment on Robot that uses AI to pull weeds may reduce poisonous herbicide use by 70% in ~food
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentThe robots just need gustatory sensors so the selective pressure causes weeds to taste like corn? Like chicken (though I'm team 'default tetrapod flavoring').The robots just need gustatory sensors so the selective pressure causes weeds to taste like corn? Like chicken (though I'm team 'default tetrapod flavoring').
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Comment on The cocktail party effect — our stunning ability to filter out words and sounds in ~science
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI recall something similar in studies on in-group preference in infants. One of the takeaways (iirc, from old discussion) was that while babies "like" people that physically look like their care...I recall something similar in studies on in-group preference in infants. One of the takeaways (iirc, from old discussion) was that while babies "like" people that physically look like their care takers more they have an even stronger preference for people speaking the same language. Or maybe they just mistrust the French
In a series of studies, 10-month-old infants in the U.S. and France were shown movies of a native French speaker and a native English speaker who spoke to the infant in alternation. Infants then were shown events in which the two speakers appeared together without speaking, held up two identical toys and, silently and in synchrony, offered the toys to the infant. Just at the moment at which the toys disappeared from view, two real toys appeared in front of the infant, giving the illusion that the toys came from the screen. Infants in the U.S. reached for the toy offered by an English speaker rather than a French speaker, and infants in France reached for the toy offered by the French speaker, even though the toys were identical and were never paired on screen with the language ...
In one study, 2.5-year-old children were shown the same displays of French and English speakers. The two speakers then appeared together silently, and children were given an opportunity to “give a present” to one of them. Children in both the U.S. and France reliably chose the native speaker as the recipient of their gift (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, under review). In another study, 5-year-old children were shown still photographs of children and then listened to samples of their speech, which varied either in language or in accent, and were asked to choose one child as a friend. Children’s choices were reliably affected by the accent with which the other children spoke. Moreover, children’s friendship choices dissociated from their judgments of comprehensibility: although children understood a child who spoke their native language with a foreign accent, they nonetheless preferred to associate with a native-accented child
Another related concept might be the uncanney valley curve, or our sensitivity to natural acceleration, which we use to categorize the world into agentic and non-agentic things. We're very good at telling if something is falling/moving/etc. in a way that would require it to be alive. And if something is trying to act like it's a floating log (or a human) and we detect that, odds are it is trying to trick you and not for a good reason.
If someone speaks in an unexpected language or mispronounces a shibboleth they may be out-group and evolution has taught us that might be dangerous.
What we perceive is a consensus of a lot of different parts of the brain, and those parts can each be primed in different ways to make them biased towards a particular result. Lots of fun examples of audio priming out there, like the McGurk effect or garbled audio that becomes completely understandable once you're told what it is. I would guess many factors (e.g., recency of speaker to group, perceived safety, etc.) play a role in the threshold of alien argot you have to hear to catch your attention.
I think the charitable take is that he ended up in Russia with nowhere to go, and that whether he actively aids Russia his existence serves their goal of sowing dissent and undermining any U.S. claim to moral superiority.
Assange (who I'd argue has a strong case of being a Russian abetter, if not an asset) got him to go to Russia before looking for asylum in Bolivia. Given the forced landing of Evo Morales, that was perhaps a good choice.
He's largely been irrelevant since then, afaik. Often critical of the surveillance state, but not positive about the Russian gov't in the way Tucker Carlson or others have been.
Not especially critical, either, but seeing the treatment of not just Navalny but the threats to his family, it would be risking a lot to do so. A quick look suggests he was upset about the invasion.
You can argue the morality of being of use while not actively aiding Russia. But you can also argue that he shouldn't be in this situation to begin with. If other countries offered him asylum, or (at least according to him) if he was allowed to have a fair trial, he may not be in Russia.
So he stays in the only country willing to host him, and Russia gets to say, "Hey! Look at Cuba, look at Operation Condor, look at Laos or the fresh campaign to malign China in the Phillipines by fomenting distrust of Sinovac/PPE!" -- as a way of rationalizing that what they're doing is just real politik.
Which sucks. You get the same people justifying or condemning atrocities based on their nationality, forming that international brotherhood of nationalists, and you get groups saying it was wrong when the U.S. did it, and wrong when Russia does it.