Somewhere between 30-40 percent of the population doesn’t vote, so if it’s any consolation it’s only about 30 percent who are for this
How do you figure? You think the 30-40 percent who didn’t vote are against it? What evidence do you have for that?
The bigger issue is that somewhere near half the US is OK with this. Sure, maybe some people could have done more to prevent it. But, there were also untapped voters on the other side who fully supported this kind of thing, but were too lazy to vote.
The US is in a crisis not because of who is in charge, but because roughly half the population supports this kind of thing. It could be that some of them are actually not horrible people, it’s just that they’ve been misled by Fox News, right-wing echo chambers, and other sources of information that have blinded them to the truth. But, a lot of them are gleeful participants in this new world, and will fully support it until they’re the ones being sent to the camps.
It’s interesting how words change. These kinds of camps have always been bad, but the term “concentration camp” was initially chosen to make it seem benign. The idea was that it’s not a prison camp, it’s not a detainment camp, they’re merely “concentrating” people there. Then, in WWII, the term became associated with Nazi death camps.
What’s different this time around is that although the government doesn’t want people to think “death camp”, they’re gleefully promoting the idea that they will be incredibly unpleasant. Torture maybe, but not death.
But, in truth, death is likely. Cramped living conditions in a swamp in the summer in Florida? People are going to die.
Actual PoW camps were much, much more pleasant. They had to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
Look out, here come’s an 's!
Wow, my comment was removed for just a mild hint that Chinese communism isn’t free from corruption?
Ouch. Good to know it’s possible though.
You… I like you.
You’d really have liked it if I started talking about how the winters in Ontario, CA are much more pleasant than the ones in Ontario, CA.
Recreation just switches to an early morning or post-sundown schedule.
Ah, right. I hadn’t considered that. It’s interesting that the places with the most brutal heat are the ones with a relatively early sunset. In 2023 Oslo hit 32 degrees, not that hot by international standards, but combine that with the fact it happened on June 15th and the sun never fully sets at that time of year, and it’s hard to find relief.
I usually still get 3-4 hours of sports activities on a saturday or sunday.
Do you live somewhere where the mid-day heat is 35+C? 40+C? To me, those are the only ones where it’s truly brutal and I might prefer long, harsh winters. OTOH, human culture hasn’t really found a great way to deal with brutally cold winters. There are winter solstice celebrations, but no adjustment of the schedule of life to avoid the worst of the cold. But, in places with really hot summers there’s often a tradition of mid-day naps, and I could really get on board with that lifestyle.
The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it’s not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.
The thing is, Ostrom didn’t disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn’t inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it’s not about capitalism or communism, it’s about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it’s different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world’s atmosphere and there’s no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.
The other thing that most people don’t focus on is how we train LLMs.
We’re basically building something like a spider tailed viper. A spider tailed viper is a kind of snake that has a growth on its tail that looks a lot like a spider. It wiggles it around so it looks like a spider, convincing birds they’ve found a snack, and when the bird gets close enough the snake strikes and eats the bird.
Now, I’m not saying we’re building something that is designed to kill us. But, I am saying that we’re putting enormous effort into building something that can fool us into thinking it’s intelligent. We’re not trying to build something that can do something intelligent. We’re instead trying to build something that mimics intelligence.
What we’re effectively doing is looking at this thing that mimics a spider, and trying harder and harder to tweak its design so that it looks more and more realistic. What’s crazy about that is that we’re not building this to fool a predator so that we’re not in danger. We’re not doing it to fool prey, so we can catch and eat them more easily. We’re doing it so we can fool ourselves.
It’s like if, instead of a spider-tailed snake, a snake evolved a bird-like tail, and evolution kept tweaking the design so that the tail was more and more likely to fool the snake so it would bite its own tail. Except, evolution doesn’t work like that because a snake that ignored actual prey and instead insisted on attacking its own tail would be an evolutionary dead end. Only a truly stupid species like humans would intentionally design something that wasn’t intelligent but mimicked intelligence well enough that other humans preferred it to actual information and knowledge.
Yeah, exactly. Winters in LA or LA might be different. But, winters in places with months and months of snow are awful. You can’t do much outside because it’s too cold. You can’t have your windows open to get some fresh air because it’s too cold. You can dress properly to do outdoor activities, but it often requires so many layers that it’s really uncomfortable. Plus, you can’t have any gaps. Your neck, wrists, ankles are often places where the cold can get in, or worse they can get wet and being cold and wet is awful.
In addition, the world is just miserable in winter. There’s almost nothing alive outside other than other humans. No grass, many trees lose all their leaves, birds migrate away, everything is shades of grey or brown. Christmas can be fun, and it’s no coincidence that it’s celebrated almost exactly on the darkest day of the year. That’s when we need a lot of pretty lights and cheer. But, Christmas is just the beginning of winter. What follows is months of gloomy grey cold.
And, while there are outdoor winter sports, you need special footwear for all of them because of the snow and ice. You can’t even walk across a field or a park without extra effort because of all the snow. Even key winter sports like skating or hockey, if played outside, require that you at a minimum spend a lot of time shovelling all the snow off the ice surface. For a good experience you also have to flood and smooth the ice periodically. So, it’s a lot of work.
Having said all that, if I had to choose between -30 and +40, I’d probably choose -30, because at least you can put on appropriate gear for that and spend some time outside doing something fun. It may be dark and it may be grey, but it’s possible to dress for the weather. When it’s too hot, you really can’t spend any time outside, without risking your life, and it certainly isn’t possible to do anything active. But if the choice is between -30 and +30, give me the +30 any day.
I’ve been through at least 5 different kinds of phone chargers over the years. Starting with the olde-fashioned coaxial power connector, then going to various versions of USB, and at least 2 kinds of Apple proprietary connectors. Standardizing on USB-C is great. I just hope that they’re able to update it in 10-20 years when USB-C is fully out of date.
Ah, so you believe ICE?
There are a lot more, I just grabbed the first few.
Maybe if that happened ICE would actually start identifying themselves.
There are lots of stories about this.
But, those are the ones we know about. Are there others we don’t? I’d say it’s certain.
For a serial killer, this has to be a gift from the gods. Get some gear from an army surplus store, cover your face, kidnap and kill someone, hide the body, and everyone will just assume that they were deported and lost in the system.
Florida woman arrested for posing as ICE agent to kidnap ex-boyfriend’s wife: police
Man accused of posing as ICE agent, sexually assaulting woman at motel: report
Man arrested in attempted rape after allegedly posing as ICE agent in Brooklyn
Houston police: Man impersonating ICE agent responsible for robbery
Do you mean the one from Norway? He wasn’t picked up by a van, he was denied entry at the airport.
Because that’s not what they’re being told. I haven’t watched, but I assume it’s more like “These rapists, murderers and drug dealing gang members are going to be put in a comfortable detention camp that’s escape-proof because of the alligators.”
I assume they think that it’s only the worst of the worst that are being sent to these camps. They believe Trump’s narrative that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of MS13 who had MS13 tattooed on his knuckles. They believe that the people being rounded up are gangsters and terrorists, and if there’s occasionally a story of someone who wasn’t a gangster being deported, they think that’s an exception. So, while the detention might be difficult, they think it’s literally protecting innocent American lives.