Not to be "that guy" but Anduril is Aragorn's sword and is the most good-guy good-thing that could ever be fantasized about. It's used to defeat Sauron. And the Palantir stones are not "the bad guys tool", they were made by the Elves in ancient history and a few of them wound up in the bad guys hands. Misread LOTR indeed!
I specifically referred to the witch kings surveillance artefacts with misreading.
I don’t think their creation story is mentioned in LOTR, other than that they are extremely powerful and dangerous.
But you are right of course about Anduril and if you take the whole silmarillion as background. I never really liked that part though
The Palantiri were created by the Elves in Valinor and given to the high race of Men.
The witch-king could in theory have used a Palantir, but there’s no suggestion he did.
The seven stars in Gondor’s crest are the Palantari, and in the War of the Ring, Aragon specifically requested they be added to his banner. They represent the highest level of the civilization of Men.
Yes, but the elf who created them is quite a tragic character himself. To the extent that his own mother chose to die after giving birth because she knew how much sorrow he would eventually bring. So I'd be careful to not paint them as a good thing either.
you're right, and definitely Palantir is a harder sell here. But to say "they named their weapons company Anduril, what are they, bad guys?" frustrates the nerd in me quite a lot.
Well sure you still have 2 or 3 infra people but now you don’t need 15. Comparing to modern Hetzner is also not fair to “cloud” in the sense that click-and-get-server didn’t exist until cloud providers popped up. That was initially the whole point. If bare metal behind an API existed in 2009 the whole industry would look very different. Contingencies Rule Everything Around Me.
While this is tragic, undeniably so, it’s worth knowing that a head on collision in Malibu two days ago killed a 50 year old man when a 20 year old crossed over the double yellow line. It was obvious seeing the car that the young person was racing and driving dangerously. It barely made the news. I only know it happened because I drove past the wreck.
Tragic about the cat - and Waymo must improve - but we cannot lose sight of the greater good.
No, We should be fighting tooth and nail against these companies. They're not here to save us from ourselves. They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works.
I can't find anything saying waymo has a thermal camera. They aren't expensive- certainly not compared to the LIDAR- and provide extremely discriminated input on "am I about to kill something?" They're not perfect as foul weather and fog are likely to blind thermal- but they shouldn't be driving in suboptimal conditions until they have a track record of safety in optimal ones.
What criteria would you consider sufficient for deployment on public streets? My experience is that people opposed to AV technology usually aren't familiar with the level of validation that's been done and tend to have expectations that are either impossible or are already met.
Waymo has experimented with thermal imaging in the past. I've never seen experiments indicating it's a particularly valuable modality for AVs, and high resolution thermal cameras exceed the price of decent LIDAR these days. You can easily spend $10k+ on a FLIR sensor with a pixel count higher than 4 digits.
Waymo was started partly to save lives by Sebastian Thrun who lost a friend to a car accident when he was 18. They have about 1/3 the accident rate of human drivers. Calling this stuff evil is kind of sad.
In some countries, drivers are expected to prove their ability to operate heavy machinery safely, held that promise, and governments prioritize zero deaths in their spending and policy making.
In the U.S., billions of dollars that could be spent on proven ways of solving the problem are instead spend on speculative robotic car development.
Robotic cars are not the only solution. They may eventually be as effective as proven solutions that are offensive to U.S. car supremacists, but as of today, robotic cars have proven only to be better than untrained, inattentive U.S. drivers and the life-threatening domestic policies that enable them. Robotic cars aren’t trying to solve the problem; they’re trying to capture spending on the problem. If transportation policy magically changed overnight to force immediate, funded implementation of proven safety processes from other countries, the excuses given for Waymo and others to beta-test their “these fatalities are a necessary accident in service of zero deaths” robotic vehicles would no longer hold water.
Autonomous vehicles don't impede transit advocacy, and they genuinely can be massive accessibility improvements to disabled and disadvantaged populations. Unless you have a magic wand to make those changes, it seems like AVs are an improvement over the current situation?
Transit changes are not required to implement the safety changes made by other countries. The cause and effect is reversed here: safety changes make transit more appealing because safety changes tend to decrease peak vehicle capacity, but transit does not make safety more appealing to untrained and overconfident (or willfully unsafe) drivers. You can’t just focus on transit while ignoring drivers and expect people to stop dying.
I remember during the first days of Covid lockdown how 99% of the cars on the busy hill outside my apartment were replaced by transit, with a commute distance of zero miles. The people who liked to do downhill racing on that hill during the day sped up from their usual brake-screech limits of 40mph to as high as 70mph, in a 35mph residential with an unsignaled busy crosswalk. And they continued doing this until the end of the lockdown when other cars got in their way again. Transit might reduce total car volume but it would increase the mean kill rate per roadway vehicle without safety culture and spending shifts.
Regardless, people who are on transit or in autonomous vehicles are people who won't be increasing roadway risk. AVs can adopt new driving rules without the typical years of political struggle over license points. AVs also have capabilities for better traffic shaping in cities. Responding to SF's market street closure was very easy with AVs. It was the uber drivers and tourists who struggled.
Meanwhile, she persisted, we could have zero deaths tomorrow if it was important to our culture. As we each recognized, the culture clearly isn’t changing anytime soon — but that lack of cultural concern invalidates “reduces deaths” as a relevant marketing claim for robotic cars. Why is it the preferred talking point for advocates when it’s demonstrably irrelevant?
If we lowered the speed limit to 20 miles per hour country wide we would be a lot closer to zero deaths. But at what cost?
We live in an imperfect world of trade offs, not perfect solutions. Even requiring people to wear seatbelts has a cost
I genuinely don't understand what policy changes you think would lead to zero deaths tomorrow. We'd still have deaths even if no one left their driveway without a valid CDL and a resolve to never exceed 10km/h.
Yeah, I get that; and! some of it is particularly nonintuitive outcomes from human psych/soci that look ghastly through a rational behavior lens. There’s a lot of reading that one can do on the subject if independently curious.
So tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human.
I’d say a government employee just seeks profit by doing as little as possible for the fixed paycheck they get. _Everyone_ has a profit motive. The question is how their profit aligned with that of others.
> tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human.
Easy, most people fit that description actually. And that's fortunate because otherwise the world would collapse pretty quickly from lack of midwifes and gynecologists.
In fact, the neoliberal cult that neglects the human nature and pretends everything is shaped by monetary incentives is slowly destroying our societies…
Everyone need to pay their bills but that's a completely different thing from being “profit seeking”.
I'm pretty positive that very few of the women you know do prostitute themselves for a living despite it being the most profitable activity imaginable. Turns out most women aren't profit-seeking after all.
Reporting. I try to solve problems just to get them solved. I don't seek to enrich myself. By the way, living in your world of profit-seeking-at-all-costs maximalism is the cruelest fate imaginable, but assholes normalizing maximized greed are a dime a dozen, ruining things for everyone else.
Guildenstern: In the morning, the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.
Rosencrantz: That it's morning?
Guildenstern: If it is, and the sun is over there for instance, that would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there, that would still be northerly. To put it another way, if we came from down there, and it's morning, the sun would be up there, but if it's actually over there and it's still morning, we must have come from back there, and if that's southerly, and the sun is really over there, then it's the afternoon. However, if none of these are the case...
Rosencrantz: Why don't you go and have a look?
Guildenstern: Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer
R and G are dead is a true gem of the English language. Strongly recommend the film!
To be an Empire, wouldn't Israel need to defacto control _some territory_ and then be trying to expand their empire into Palestine? Or is the idea that the US is the Empire?
There is another `anti-` that I would use here instead.
> To be an Empire, wouldn't Israel need to defacto control _some territory_ and then be trying to expand their empire into Palestine?
To be an Empire in the narrow sense they would have to have a polity that is the metropolitan power and then exert control over some external territory that is distinct from the metropole, and has different rules applied to it, either through direct administration or control of the local administration. Ignoring the disputes over what exactly the meaningful status of Gaza is, the open occupation of the West Bank would seem to qualify.
Though, yes, it is definitely true that lots of people who see Israel as a facet of imperialism hold to a view where there is a single globe-spanning Empire of which the US is the metropole and Israel is simply one of the tentacles. (These people also have elaborate arguments as to why entities that might seem to meet every aspect of the definition of Empire even more than Israel-as-metropole does, particularly modern Russia, are not imperialist powers that amount to “it's only Imperialism if it comes from the US region of North America, otherwise its just sparkling international influence.”)
> These people also have elaborate arguments as to why entities that might seem to meet every aspect of the definition of Empire even more than Israel-as-metropole does, particularly modern Russia, are not imperialist powers that amount to “it's only Imperialism if it comes from the US region of North America, otherwise its just sparkling international influence.
I think this last part does disservice to the rest of your argument. It's not "the same people", it's a subset. There are people capable of holding the view that all of those are examples of modern imperialism.
Also, some of us in Latin America have a reasonable justification for animosity against the US rather than against other (also imperialist) actors: we are "America's back yard" and they have been involved in toppling, undermining, threatening or supporting our governments as they see fit. The US' relative influence far outstrips all others. Russia, China, etc, while nonzero are comparatively far lesser influence factors and therefore are downplayed in our perception of the world.
> > These people also have elaborate arguments as to why entities that might seem to meet every aspect of the definition of Empire even more than Israel-as-metropole does, particularly modern Russia, are not imperialist powers that amount to “it's only Imperialism if it comes from the US region of North America, otherwise its just sparkling international influence.
> I think this last part does disservice to the rest of your argument. It's not "the same people", it's a subset. There are people capable of holding the view that all of those are examples of modern imperialism.
I think you need to go back and reread the sentence immediately preceding the one you excerpted which provides the reference for these people, because no, the group referenced there absolutely does not include people who hold “the view that all of those are examples of modern imperialism”. For reference, that sentence is: “Though, yes, it is definitely true that lots of people who see Israel as a facet of imperialism hold to a view where there is a single globe-spanning Empire of which the US is the metropole and Israel is simply one of the tentacles.”
People who view that there are multiple imperial powers are not part of the group I am referring to in that sentence and the one you excerpted which follows it.
> Also, some of us in Latin America have a reasonable justification for animosity against the US rather than against other (also imperialist) actors
Lots of people lots of places have a reasonable justification for greater animosity toward the US, yes, but that has nothing one way or the other to do with anything I said.
> To be an Empire, wouldn't Israel need to defacto control _some territory_ and then be trying to expand their empire into Palestine?
They very openly do both those things in the West Bank.
Then you have the more extreme settler types talking about the biblical "Land of Israel" that would extend into modern Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
But as far as I understand it, Israel is usually not the empire itself, but a bridgehead or particularly glaring example of imperialism from the West, starting with the British Empire.
> Or is the idea that the US is the Empire?
So, yes.
It were those countries that conquered those regions from the Ottoman empire and then decided among themselves to support the project of a Jewish state, against the wishes of the existing population of the region.
The whole reason Gaza (was) the most densely populated place on Earth was because its full of refugees that got pushed out by israel's violent expansion. Sometimes Palestinian's homes weren't even destroyed but simply kept by Israeli settlers. There's a common picture of a middle aged Palestinian in front of a house that just 30-50 years ago was there's but is now occupied by an israeli
Well, what does a neck-bearded old engineer know about fashion? He probably - Oh, wait. It's a she. Still, what does she know? Oh wait, it says she has a medical degree. In fashion! From France!
Just because "Die motherfucker die motherfucker die" appeared in a song once doesn't mean it's not also death threat when someone's pointing a gun at you and saying that.
I think you might be confused or mistaken (or you are making a whole different joke).
My 2 comments are linking to different quotes from Portal 2, both the original comment
> We got the results back.....
and
> Well, what does a neck-bearded old engineer know about fashion?.....
Are from Portal 2 and the first Portal 2 quote is just a reference to the parent of that saying:
> The cake, sometimes, is a lie.
(Another Portal reference if that wasn't clear), they weren't calling the parent horrible, they were just putting in quote they liked from the game that was referenced.
That's one reason why I linked the quote, so people would understand it was a reference to the game, not the person actually saying the parent was horrible. The other reason I linked it is just because I like added metadata where possible.
Yes. You chose to repeat those words in that sequence in that place. You could have said anything else in the whole wide world, but you chose to use a quote from an ancient video game stating that someone was horrible. Sorry if I'm being autistic and taking things too literally again, working on having social skills was a different thread from today.
Thankful for people like this - with kids and family and work I’d probably have had this sit bricked for a year in my garage before finding time to tinker with it. Now I can just never buy any iLife product ever.
Worth noting that Olipop's fiber comes from inulin, which can be purchased as a supplement and dissolves in water nicely. I'm very curious why inulin is such an unknown product - its a polysaccharide, so it tastes mildly sweet despite having minimal to no impact on glucose levels.
You'd think we'd have been supplementing almost all sugary foods/drinks with it for years, since it's a cheap and healthy sweetener.
The human body lacks the enzyme to digest inulin, it passes through the gut and feeds the gut bacteria, which I guess is why it's labeled a pro-biotic? Jerusalem artichoke (the root of a sunflower, Jerusalem is a corruption of girasole) contains a high concentration of inulin. This tuber is usually found served at upper-end swanky restaurants. One year I found it at a farmer's market, bought a bunch and gleefully carted it home. It was rather delicious. Also, gas that would turn a cow inside out. Beware.
Rice makes quite a good currency, especially if you only have one primary cultivar. It's relatively fungible and dried white rice more or less lasts forever without spoiling. It's quite nice it has the side effect of also literally being food. If rice had been common in Rome, we might still be paying taxes in rice.
It's still used for bribes in Japan, where earlier this year the agriculture minister was sacked for receiving gifts of rice in the middle of a nationwide rice shortage. His replacement still has an outside chance to become the next prime minister.
The most interesting search result for “rice as a bribe” was its use in a Pathfinder module in order to curry favor with birds. I recognize this isn’t precisely the point here, but given the cross-section of countries represented, I would imagine bribing people with what was literal food currency for centuries has merely decreased in priority relative to local fiat currency, which is perhaps widely accepted nowadays but less readily produced from farmland.
As long as the largest form of economic activity was agriculture, and access to hard currency was limited, people were paying taxes with food (or labour in their landlord's fields).
We pay taxes in money because we have a diversified economy, where 90% of us are not subsistence peasants, and the money supply & availability of banking is large enough that we (or our employers) have cash on hand.
>We pay taxes in money because we have a diversified economy
It's all a fiction, though. Ultimately wealth can be translated to very raw things, like energy, space, and time. Using rice as currency is not too different from using Joules as currency, as it's ultimately just captured and stored solar radiation. The issue with using food as money is not that the economy is diverse, as it's ultimately for the most part powered by people eating. The issue is that if you spend money to make a km^2 of land usable for factories that produce, say, semiconductors, that's not exactly translatable to tons of rice.
> Using rice as currency is not too different from using Joules as currency
There are enough differences that we still need to worry about them: Would you really have no preference between them when there's a famine? Which one would you rather have when someone announces they've just cracked fusion power generation?
Even among such "suitable" commodities (durable, fungible, divisible, etc.) there are differences in risk/utility which don't vanish simply because there's a market for exchanging the two.
Fiat currency is significantly more isolated from such confounding factors, at least as long as people assume the government will continue to exist. It doesn't go crazy
> it's ultimately for the most part powered by people eating.
I am reminded of the subsistence farmer's reasons [0] for not converting everything they have to/from coinage:
> The thing is, as the food supply contracts, the price of food rises and the ability to buy it with money shrinks (often accelerated by food hoarding by the wealthy cities, which are often in a position to back that up with force as the administrative centers of states).
> Consequently, for the [farming] family, money is likely to become useless the moment it is needed most. So while keeping some cash around against an emergency (or simply for market transactions – more on that later) might be a good idea, keeping nearly a year’s worth of expenses to make it through a bad harvest was not practical.
> No, there are significant differences: [...] does not make them equivalent as currency.
Did I say rice was exactly equivalent to energy, or did I say that it was not too different? Surely you can see that rice is more analogous to energy than to drill bits.
>So while keeping some cash around against an emergency (or simply for market transactions – more on that later) might be a good idea, keeping nearly a year’s worth of expenses to make it through a bad harvest was not practical.
Hence the point of notes. "Rice is not such a bad thing to base your currency on" doesn't mean wallets should be literal fistfuls of rice grains in bags that you lug around.
I'm not a big fan of how abstract modern monetary systems are, and I'm still trying to decide whether they confuse people by accident or design.
It’s a complicated engineering system with high capex to drive a steam turbine. It’s hard to compete with something like that in a market increasingly driven by intermittent periods of essentially free energy. Too cheap to meter didn’t work out for nuclear either.
I guess the convenience of money is that it doesn't even need to exist, they can just be numbers in an SQL table (other database types are available). Imagine needing to ship tons of rice when buying an RTX 5090. Or even buying a datacenter full of them. Nvidia or Apple would need giant silos for all the rice they have (or I guess there'd be Central Rice Storage, and a ledger to say who owns how many tonnes)
It's funny how too many of us are obsessed about keeping our number in the database as big as possible...
This is basically where banks come from. Then next thing you know there wouldn't actually be central rice storage and people would be saying that things were better when we were on the rice standard.
I understand the individual sentences in your post, but I don't understand what overall argument it makes.
(It also fails to take into account the practical aspects of collecting taxes, which is why food and labour were a common currency for them pre-industrialization, and money is the common currency for them post-industrialization. My post addresses the issue of collecting taxes more than it does the issue of generating wealth.)
It's possible I might have misunderstood your point. What I was getting at is that the economy being diverse is not a reason for money to be pegged to rice. Perhaps you were talking about the physical act of paying? "We pay taxes in money" = "we give stacks of paper to the government [rather than bags of rice]"?
Yes, I was talking about the physical act of paying - and the form that payment could take when you're trying to extract taxes out of cash-poor subsistence peasants - and how in that kind of world, taxes in a single, fungible type of good (food, days of service in agricultural labour) are common.
The economy being diverse, and not just a bunch of peasants barely making ends meet is a great reason for me to not be taxed in rice. I don't grow rice. I don't know anyone who grows rice. I'd have to take money, buy rice, give it to the taxman. This is... Not ideal. (Just like the taxman getting paid in <whatever random non-food good I produce is not ideal.)
Even in pre-industrial societies, where where taxes-in-food were common, city-dwellers paid taxes in cash.
But just like how you don't actually hand over stacks of paper to pay your taxes, you wouldn't need to actually pay in literal bags of rice in a world were rice was currency. I would imagine any economy that kept using rice as currency past the point of subsistence farming would develop tokens.
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