I really need to read this book if no other reason than "former fashion model now sociologists writes a book about how beauty is valued" is kind of the perfect hook?

I should have reposted this during the shutdown cave

One of my favorite things about academia and the working world alike is that Excel is not a database, Excel is not statistics software -- but you can torture it into performing passably as both! And people do all the time! There's some deep lesson here about generalists v specialists.

I think you are certainly correct and this is a good thread but also the tools are pretty much designed to produce misunderstanding. Like you have the ability to see a LLM and think "this is a computer program, how do I make it do what I want" even though that is elided every step of the way

this is significantly fewer than the average number of americans who die each month, and administrative updates take to work through the system, absent substantially more context, this is meaningless

I don't know what this is but I love that Excel icon at the output end

I’m going to think about watching this moment unfold in real time for a long time. for all the horrors coming out of Chicago and its metro area, the principled courage of everyday people, in the face of such intimidation, never ceases to astonish. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/12/k...

The basic problem is that eugenics is for people who want "better" not to liberate people from disease or the cruel whims of biology, we also have jobs for the latter group, they're doctors, epidemiologists, and medical researchers.

Seems bad!

Arguments over tenure the professional consequences. But maybe we should end it because having an insulated class of elites is socially destructive.

However it dies it is unlikely to die quietly

Has anyone ever tried getting an LLM to write in assembly or machine code or something even less language-like?

This is wrong. It’s wrong morally. It’s wrong theologically. It’s wrong. As a Catholic, I want trans folks to be part of my community and I want trans folks to have the access to the lifesaving care they need. As a Catholic, I believe that Catholic institutions should be institutions of service—>

Good day to not have heroes

As a tax man who works with high net worth individuals, I am routinely asked, and after that demanded, to send non-password protected full tax returns via email

this applies to several republican representatives right now and i think it would be very good practice to observe it.

The Democratic Establishment likes a lot of people it really shouldn't, but just to reiterate your point - the Democratic Establishment fucking hates Larry Summers, and I wish people On Here would stop conflating 'people willing to talk to reporters' with 'Democratic Establishment'

The distinction actually matters because we're not talking about crimes from disordered attractions, but from people deliberately looking for someone to exploit due to their youth and lack of power.

I know this because of doing e-discovery as an underemployed attorney. There's probably a lesson there.

I said this elsewhere, but I really meant it: I think it shows both poor moral character but also the kind of bad emotional control that would make me wary or suspicious of an individual in real life.

Writers are bad.

"harm"

I think with a lot of powerful men they see access to sex as their rightful due and that aren't all that embarrassed by that and for the longest time society as a whole wasn't either. And yet even with that there are people who find a line to cross for the thrill of crossing it.

The most wild thing about the Clinton's is they probably love each other very much.

Public figures are all freaks is the thing

How did all those experienced politicians and seasoned generals end up losing to a kid who was only 19 years old when he first showed up on the scene? Because they were all like this. Maybe with a big dose of lead poisoning to boot, which we're also still working out of our system.

Having done a handful of laptop repairs in my years I wonder how many allegedly obsolete computers out there is just because of badly seated heatsinks or a power inlet that was hot glued instead of soldered properly.

(this is a good thing, but has been done with zero warning and no plan for implementation, leaving tons of people in the lurch. also, americans hate change)

jfc

Not entirely atypical for a CEO honestly. You become important enough and expectations get real low.

It's fine. I still have a good job and a spouse and child. I'm a normie. (Narrator: He was not a normie.)

Fun thing is, you actually can come up with a fairly compelling health care plan that accords to conservative principles but in America "conservative" means most of all "dun wanna pay for it"

I wasn't a huge Linkin park fan or whatever but for some reason I've been trapped in a "they replaced their dead lead singer 7 years later with a woman" rabbit hole. That's quite a move!

The biggest divide on this site might be between those of us who have been mods and those who have not.

I would not count on the whole billion or so people in the PRC to be all that enthusiastic about defending the party online.

They are doing so much to make the story huge. I don't understand.

This is going to become a regular sign to tap huh

I don’t want to weigh too deep into this, but I am noticing a lot of people saying this is OK because it references a Johnny Cash lyric, and like, I don’t actually think that’s an acceptable standard at all. It’s not magically okay to say things if you phrase it as a (reference to) song lyrics.

It was true the first time around, but this farcical second run makes all other analytical frames come across as naive, ya know? Like, policy analysis is impossible unless you start with “orange man bad, therefore —“

Society if the average US voter since 2015 had had literally zero views on politics except “orange man bad”

The Mongols murdered so many people you guys. Just so many.

So to maximize everyone mad at me at once: this is shorism.

The same way news hounds have a hard time understanding what will make an impact with the public and motivate them to protest they might have understanding what elected Democrats tying into No Kings looks like.

Okay, some proposed terminology: LLM - the big ball of linear algebra that models language use, both in general and any particular model of language. Chatbot - the interface powered primarily by the LLM but with whatever watchdog programming and so on that is being used AI - the whole product.

But I want to turn people into dinosaurs

i really really really really think we are delivering on terrible, society destroying, applications of AI at about 10x the rate of "economically useful, liberatory, activity for normies"

I am still on board with "technology has no inherent moral valence" but boy you can really spot the technological changes that act as amplifiers for "destruction is generally easier than creation"

So that prominent poster saying dumb shit is going to run for office some day, but only when they think it's easy.

The key to having fun with AIs is low expectations.

I'm sorry but are there new developments because last I heard we were talking about the enhanced subsidies still?!