I haven’t done a headcount yet and the election’s not fully tallied, but I think that the Senate still has around 70% support for NATO, and historically we can expect to see a “blue dog” phenomenon in the House as a reaction to Republicans gaining seats. Effectively, both the Democrats and Republicans will function as big tents of two distinct parties, and there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism. We may well see votes where the legislators override presidential vetoes to force weapons sales and otherwise fulfill NATO obligations.

And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well. Go back to bed, America…

Orange site envrionmentalism:

Lawns are functional though, they aren’t just a status symbol.

I grew up with a mossy front yard, and I have clover and ferns in my current yards to compete with grasses; there are better options, my dude.

Well, it’s more like 2000, really, in the sense that the courts are being used to restrict voting rights. There’s strong evidence of flagrant UOCAVA violations: thousands of absentee ballots which should affect the federal election have been challenged in swing states. Edit: Here is part 1 and part 2 from an attorney whose Pennsylvania UOCAVA ballot was challenged; he goes through the law and explains what he’s going to do.

Feynman reminds me of the brujo (one specific man, not brujería in general) from Pirsig’s Lila. Feynman’s safecracking and unorthodox approaches are like the brujo’s routine flaunting of social norms; through routinely doing things the wrong way (sacred clowning), new possible behaviors and modes of social existence are explored. Also, Feynman’s attitudes towards women remind me of that brujo’s tendency to spy on women by looking through their windows into their homes while they were not necessarily dressed, which the brujo’s society did not tolerate.

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” Some corporations are criminal enterprises and should have their tax numbers revoked. Some corporate officers are criminals and should be prosecuted. Some are complicit in crimes against humanity or war crimes and should be internationally prosecuted.

Every person I talk to — well, every smart person I talk to — no, wait, every smart person in tech — okay, almost every smart person I talk to in tech is a eugenicist. Ha, see, everybody agrees with me! Well, almost everybody…

The big difference is that Yud is unrigorous while Wolfram is a plagiarist. Or maybe putting it another way, Yud can’t write proofs and Wolfram can’t write bibliographies.

Mr. Rogers’ channel thumbnails would look like one of those full-completion video-gaming channels that involve a controller-holder, sometimes along with a confused roommate or neighbor, logging hour #73 of a 20hr RPG because they can’t figure out how to get a platinum on the last minigame. There’d be a blurry background of the handpuppets and two headshots of Mr. Rogers smiling and his guest freaking out. I think the titles would be fairly tame, though; I’m imagining, “Another Day in the Neighborhood #112 | An Unexpected Guest, Learning to Tie Shoes”

Now, where it gets fun is imagining that Lamb Chop could have the same setup. “Lamb Chop & Friends #52 | She’s Unstoppable, So Much Blood, Can We Unsummon Lamb Chop?”

Bezos’ open interference in the Washington Post’s editorial section has pushed Walter Bright into a very funny series of public admissions that he did not have to make. See the orange site here for his ongoing libertarian meltdown.

Meanwhile, actual Pastafarians (hi!) know that the Russian Federation openly persecutes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for failing to help the government in its authoritarian activities, and also that we’re called to be anti-authoritarian. The Fifth Rather:

I’d really rather you didn’t challenge the bigoted, misogynist, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the bastards.

May you never run out of breadsticks, travelers.

It’s almost completely ineffective, sorry. It’s certainly not as effective as exfiltrating weights via neighborly means.

On Glaze and Nightshade, my prior rant hasn’t yet been invalidated and there’s no upcoming mathematics which tilt the scales in favor of anti-training techniques. In general, scrapers for training sets are now augmented with alignment models, which test inputs to see how well the tags line up; your example might be rejected as insufficiently normal-cat-like.

I think that “force-feeding” is probably not the right metaphor. At scale, more effort goes into cleaning and tagging than into scraping; most of that “forced” input is destined to be discarded or retagged.

Thus leading to this sneer on HN. I’m quoting it in entirety; click through for Poe’s Law responses.

I was telling someone this and they gave me link to a laptop with higher battery life and better performance than my own, but I kept explaining to them that the feature I cared most about was die size. They couldn’t understand it so I just had to leave them alone. Non-technical people don’t get it. Die size is what I care about. It’s a critical feature and so many mainstream companies are missing out on my money because they won’t optimize die size. Disgusting.

Lucky 10000: this integration started decades ago. You may have heard of “computational trinitarianism” or read Baez & Stay 2009. The current big listing of correspondences is called the computational trilogy. Don’t let the Nobel committee’s foolishness blind you to the genuine connections between computer science and physics.

Surprisingly close to the plot of Illuminatus!, isn’t it?

Your phrasing reminded me that he was one of the principal authors of lex back when he was a whelp.

This exchange on HN, from the Wordpress meltdown, is going to make an amazing exhibit in the upcoming trial:

Anonymous: Matt, I mean this sincerely: get yourself checked out. Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your house? … Go to a 10 day silent retreat, or buy a ranch in Montana and host your own Burning Man…

Matt Mullenweg: Thanks, I carry a co2 and carbon monoxide monitor. … I do own a place in Montana, and I meditate several times a day.

Yeah, it’s a real thing that happens when programming robots. Kinematics is more difficult than route planning, for example.

I think it might be worth reflecting on exactly why Fountain seems to “get weird;” it had a context and complaints about it are part of that context. I liked this recent video which explores the politics of Fountain.

Nuclear power has fairly predictable amortized returns. I imagine that this is worth the cost to MS over the next two decades or so; we have no idea what their current energy premium is like, and this plant doesn’t have to be as cheap as a new plant, just cheaper than the current premium.

Hallucinations — which occur when models authoritatively states something that isn’t true (or in the case of an image or a video makes something that looks…wrong) — are impossible to resolve without new branches of mathematics…

Finally, honesty. I appreciate that the author understands this, even if they might not have the exact knowledge required to substantiate it. For what it’s worth, the situation is more dire than this; we can’t even describe the new directions required. My fictional-universe theory (FU theory) shows that a knowledge base cannot know whether its facts are describing the real world or a fictional world which has lots in common with the real world. (Humans don’t want to think about this, because of the implication.)