tom bombadil

huh. it turns out that if you smoke enough weed, you can intuitively perceive that epiphenomenal dualism is correct

it feels like the modern world is one where the total amount of cultural output is going up, but the amount of talent isn't keeping up, so the talent gets spread thinner and thinner across more and more projects

medieval historians

ouch

yep. long walls are really most useful when your main concern is surveillance. it's tough for large numbers of enemies to get across a wall without you noticing it. but northern italy was densely populated heartland. the sheer population density works as a surveillance net

it wouldn't have really addressed any security concerns. long walls can't also be heavily manned, so they're best-suited for preventing small raids or surprise attacks. makes more sense out on a remote border, not the heartland

looking around the coffee shop and assessing the vibes before deciding whether to open twitter or bsky

(of course if you're a leftist who believes that leftist strategies are effective, the liberal approach probably feels like sabotage and psychological warfare, not assistance)

but fundamentally, offering harsh but honest criticism is a form of aid and assistance. center-left writers are comfortable helping leftists because they share a lot of values. they don't want to critique the right because the last thing they want is for the right to fix its problems

whereas the left seems to basically agree with me on values but deeply misunderstands what sort of actions are likely to bring about a better world. this is why the left feels movable in a way the right doesn't

i think the reason the left is so often the target of criticism is because their actions feel poorly aligned with their goals. the right has goals i disagree with, but seems to pursue them with some measure of effectiveness (though i also i don't really want to help them succeed)

that should also keep your body heat from melting the ice cream, good tip

it was the wisdom luke needed in that moment though

nope. they didn't outsource their thinking to the US state dept, they outsourced their thinking to their resist lib parents (still adding the negation sign though of course)

the golden path:

- taiwan beefs up its military

- china attacks anyway

- bogs down and can't get anywhere

- dems win the presidency

- US starts supplying taiwan with weapons

- taiwan's battle-hardened war machine rolls across china

- china is now a western-friendly liberal democracy

facebook keeps showing me this same video but with more garage beers every time

we erased turing from history by:

- naming the turing test after him

- naming the turing machine after him

- making a hollywood movie about his life and awarding it an oscar

honestly i don't remember if my high school history textbook mentioned Turing but he's not like an obscure figure if you do any reading at all

if you want to mildly inconvenience your friends while achieving nothing, consider picking a random date and posting some shit like this on instagram

i like to imagine his political views as a sort of high-dimensional solid. then the current political situation is an intersecting hyperplane. his posting is the intersection of those two high-dimensional objects, one of which is constantly moving around and changing

my history textbook from like 2006 covered 9/11 in the final chapter lol. we didn't get there in class though

this is wildly ridiculous and unfair towards EAs, who have done some incredibly important work. musk is not EA nor would EAs want him

pop any chips under the broiler for a min or two

the "can't pass a plan the right way so we do a bunch of ad hoc adjustments nobody likes" thing might be a defining characteristic of 21st century vetocracy and decaying state capacity

discontinuous

the loophole was always just this scene

yimby kinda drives people nuts and i think it's because it doesn't fit comfortably into either side of the culture war. neither side can really appreciate the vision

that's not really pi's fault. we're the ones insisting on a rational estimation of an irrational number

fascinating. i wonder at what level of the hierarchy that sort of decision gets made

I agree, but I think you should take seriously that this is why the left is so at odds with the democratic party. They do not value the constitutional order and cannot understand why democrats are so interested in maintaining it. They see it as fighting with your hands tied behind your back