dachte

The vast majority of uses of the phrase "at all costs" are just someone being stupidly dramatic.

To match their drama, there's little good you can do with someone like that; may as well throw them from the nearest bridge.

I wonder if musical taste overlaps enough with core cognitive patterns that one could make music that would be extra-good for people with, say, OCD, autism, or other specifics.

It is a rare person and a rare people that shows grace and mercy in their moment of power, or decency in their moment of fear.

Wondering how brits lost their touch at comedy over the last 20 years or so.

Just saw in the local park a really cute little girl opening her hands to give her family hugs and they looked excited to give her one but she lost interest and ran off. This happened multiple times; guessing it's a regular thing with her. In the end what I assume is her mum finally got a hug.

Experience that might be interesting for people keen to manipulate/maintain Overton Windows - go live in another country. This probs means living outside of it there on several topics. One can react in primarily two ways: A) Change who you are to fit in B) See what it looks like from outside

I am not advocating a level of empathy that leads to passivity, but rather something that leads to empathy and moderation in manipulating these borders of society. You may want to win, your cause must be just, but you only earn the right to use harsh tools when you see their weight.

I seem to have a really good pattern of getting along with Australians; something about that culture seems to produce people who are very chill but not vacuous.

Working in a big tech company and finding that the hardest thing to do is actually booking rooms for a large number of people, across several offices. Sighhh

The world would be a much better place if rather than the ICC facing sanctions, ICE were. Europe should declare anyone who worked in ICE to be persona non grata in the EU.

I think brits are a little too enamoured of the word "cheeky"

It feels strange to claim ownership of ideas or art generated in one's sleep. And perhaps uncertain, because one knows less surely that such things are not half-forgotten reproductions of verbatim works of others.

It's a little weird to notice how hard Amazon steers you towards their house brands, and how hard it is on Amazon to buy things that actually have good external ratings.

I think that one of the best hard lines to draw in antitrust law would be that any sufficiently large storefront must only be a storefront. No house brands, and limits on how much "tax" they can put on things sold in their store. Open entry laws too.

Against Fetterman and AOC (a thread) In case there are those who don't get that we don't need to choose between the AOC and Fetterman politics, there are four distinct axes (at least) through which to draw politics on the left:

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You might ask me who I'd choose given a straight-up choice between Fetterman and AOC. But I don't have to choose. We can always say no to both types, not donate to either, not vote for either. Either the party risks losing us because they nom the wrong people, or it adapts.

I reject, fully and broadly, the idea that we ever owe the Democratic Party our vote. I've voted for Libertarians, Republicans, Greens, and Democrats over my life. Even though I've voted for Dems the most. It will always be possible for any candidate to lose my vote.

I expect never to have a chance to act on this. And I don't know if I would given the chance. But I don't disapprove if someone would, with these facts on the ground.

This is not a time for people like Fetterman. Even if in other times I'd approve of his center-left politics.

). An earlier me might be surprised to see me applying that "however that might happen" label, as it takes me a lot to support political violence. But when a national leader threatens our allies with invasion, invades other countries with inadequate justification, and announces boatmurders, I adapt.

I'd prefer impeachment. Or some gentler means, but really whatever it takes so long as there are no other casualties is something I'd give a full pass to. Same with Putin. Same with Bibi. When national leaders cross enough lines, other concerns take a back seat.

My opposition to DSA type politics is mostly on both A and B (they also have a tendency to overlap with tankies or other deeply weird foreign policy views). AOC's politics have no appeal to me. Although I don't dislike her as much as Fetterman; at least so far she's good enough to oppose Trump.

In terms of Schumer, I'm generally okay with him. Particularly given his willingness to stand against Bibi. The main worry is he may be a bit weak on point D - I see no room for cooperation with Trump (and would laud anyone who would remove him and Hegseth from US politics, however that might happen

I don't mix my politics with my personal ties - I can still be friends with people who are even friendly with Trump, but in the world of politics I have zero patience towards pols who are friendly to Trump, whatever their other beliefs.

Separately, I am culturally pretty centrist by American standards (despite not living in the US anymore). I oppose far-left culture. Economically, I'm center-left - I see a place for markets and in alternatives to market solutions I want to move slow. And in foreign policy, I'm institutionalist.

These axes really are independent. You could imagine someone who's far-left on A and B, whatever positions on C, who's so anti-typical that they'd be friendly to Trump.

I loathe Fetterman, primarily because at this point I'm in almost "war footing" against Trump - the murder of people in the Atlantic, the friendliness to America's foes and hostility to our allies, the breaches to international law, etc, mean ending his regime is more important than other norms.

A) Where one wants cultural politics to be B) Where one wants other domestic politics to be C) Where one wants foreign policy to be D) How firmly one resists right-wing extremism

I generally like him as a late night host, but Seth Meyers' segment "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" irks me on a conceptual level. I know it's comedy, but I firmly believe that neither in comedy nor in other language is it cool to have differences in ok topic or vocabulary.

There are no words that Hispanics or whites or Indians or whatever can use that the rest cannot. There is no license to tell some jokes that comes from being gay or Christian or whatever.

Second time in my life a particularly bad SVT event sent me to an emergency room. Not surprisingly an ER in Ireland is not very different from an ER in the US.

Now that I'm no longer passed out or even groggy, I can say that the ambulance took a ridiculously long time to arrive. Nice people when they turned up but if someone is actually in a serious emergency Ireland is not a great place for it.

20 Sept

The hospital is actually pretty great although I'm unhappy to be spending more time in it. Just like last time I went to the hospital for my heart, they don't like the Troponin levels and that's why I'm not home right now. Sigh.

Second time in my life a particularly bad SVT event sent me to an emergency room. Not surprisingly an ER in Ireland is not very different from an ER in the US.

Maybe someday my heart will just throw in the towel, but for now I'm feeling ok again, and bored waiting to be discharged.

They are a little grumpy that I don't have a primary care doctor over here yet; there's nobody to send the records to.

I considered myself moderately skeptical of broad machine learning, but I've both become more neutral on the topic and a lot of people seem to have moved towards really hardcore "anti" on the topic. Wild to see.

12 Sept

I think it's pretty safe hedging for big ML companies to vaguely call for each other to move more slowly in doing research. On one hand, nothing useful can, even in principle, come from such calls. But on the other they'll be blamed less when change has some sharp edges.

12 Sept

Personally, I oppose pretty much any imaginable regulation of ML, feeling it will be both ineffective in most cases and counterproductive in others, but I know ML will bring some sharp edges with it as it lands in society.

7 Sept

It's a bit weird reading about Ireland considering changing its stay duration for citizenship. Makes me much less enthused about the country and in staying here.

7 Sept

Really Ireland is pretty damned disappointing in a lot of ways.

7 Sept

The idea of the Overton Window is good to keep in mind, but it should not lead to confusion of one's goals. People on either side of the political spectrum should not take it as a goal to move things maximally in their direction from center; maximalism is bad in meeting actual goals and as tactics

6 Sept

I refuse to blanket condemn political violence, although as a tool it should be used incredibly sparingly, in cases where it is almost unimaginable that deep, generally-ongoing wrongs could face justice, against people who are elbow deep in the abuses. It's not a toy. It should be very, very rare.

6 Sept

With all the map silliness that's been going on recently, if we're to be a bit childish too: * Western continents: North Canadian Continent, South Canadian Continent * US -> Lesser Canada * Lake Ontario * Gulf of Mexico * Africa diminished to 1/8th the size it'd be for the map projection

6 Sept

Maybe something like this.

It really doesn't take a lot of handiness to make one's dwelling a bit better. Spent about half an hour today removing/stowing two doors in my (Dublin) apartment that had a spring hinge making them too eager to close, where the landlord gave me big doorstops that'd occasionally fail.

Taking them off the doorframe and putting them in my laundry closet removes a constant source of mild irritation. Sometimes you just need to think "ya know, I can change this" and that's what it takes.

It's wild to think that our cognition happens at a level where for most of the existence of humans we had no idea of the vast scale, in terms of count of individual cells, of any human body, and that casual movement probably kills a fair number of human cells incidentally.