conditional_soup

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

conditional_soup ,

It's not like the protests just went nowhere and petered out. That was the effect, but the state showed that it has a violent and psychotic response to any serious criticism, and was unashamed of it.

conditional_soup ,

Not op, I got a free Ender 3 from a frustrated co-worker, and am now the frustrated co-worker. I've tried getting a new glass print surface, tried using glue sticks, tried changing print temps and speeds, tried levelling and re-levelling and re-levelling the bed, but I just can't get the print to stick for love or money. It's now been re-homed to the garage, as a parking obstacle for my bicycle.

conditional_soup ,

Hey, thanks for the advice. If I have some free time and spare gumption, I'll definitely give it a go. If that happens, I'll let you know what comes of it.

conditional_soup ,

Tbf, the Europeans have some pretty fucked cryptid lore, it's just that they're more chaotic neutral and less chaotic vengeance than the American variety. My favorite american cryptid is an old one you don't hear much of anymore, and was born from Pacific NorthWest loggers: the Hide Behind. Basically, this mf stalks your shit and will always duck behind a tree when you turn to look at it; it's fast enough to never be seen clearly, but you can just catch glimpses of it if you're fast/lucky. Eventually, it catches and eats unwitting loggers who let it sneak up on them.

Edit: I also like the deer stories. One of my all time favs was a free text about a deer stumbling up the street very clearly saying "BEEP BEEP BEEP" like a car being unlocked, followed by "Honey, I'm home!" over and over. That was the whole story, just a weird fucking deer stumbling up the street and talking to itself. 10/10 would gladly read again.

conditional_soup , (edited )

This is so frustrating to watch as an American. I spent much of my youth on the internet getting clowned on by Europeans for the consequences of my country's hard right policies. The UK has been deservedly getting clowned on for the consequences of embracing the Tories. It beggars belief that the same people clowning on the US and UK would then turn around and say to themselves "yes, but it will be different for us, it will work for us, our situation really is different, you don't understand". No, it won't be different. Pretty soon, you're going to be following the path that the Tories set the UK on, marvelling at how dysfunctional your government is, and hearing about how the only solution is even more gibs to the people who are already the most economically advantaged and the private sector. Before you click reply, just consider that you guys deserve to get fucking dunked on, because you guys spent decades laughing at other countries for doing this shit just to say "hmmm... but what if sticking the fork in the electrical socket works out for me?" I'm honestly sad and disappointed for Europe, not least of all because after years of deservedly shitting on the US for being racist, all it took was one big wave of immigration for you guys to hold up blonde dumbasses with bad hair and worse ideas as the solution to all of your problems.

"Oh, great bozo of the European trailer park, what is your wisdom to save our culture from the immigrants?"

"Deregulate sewage plants. You will certainly not regret deregulating sewage plants."

Enjoy your US-style healthcare system in a few years, I guess.

conditional_soup ,

I mean, not trying to sound like a pessimist as much as a realist. Even if Europe started paying the full sum of what we're paying in defense subsidies, I seriously doubt we'd cut that spending. Raytheon and Lockheed's investors are counting on us.

conditional_soup ,

This. I spoke to our mayor about it at a city council meeting, and he told me that the bus service was set up to maximize coverage for the people with no other choice, specifically at the cost of desirable stops and frequency.

Trump Supporter Trolls Trial With Penis Balloons Featuring Alvin Bragg, Judge Merchan Faces ( www.thedailybeast.com )

A pro-Trump New Yorker unveiled his latest piece of political performance art outside the Manhattan courtroom where Trump’s criminal trial is underway on Thursday, launching 100 pink penis-shaped balloons decorated with the faces of Trump foes like Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan. The artist,...

conditional_soup ,

Is it just me or are modern cock n balls renditions getting sadder? These don't look all that proud to me.

conditional_soup ,

Not a Russia simp, I've been watching this war with some interest, and I've got a friend whose only hobby at this point is following this war.

If you look at how much Russian military ops have changed across almost every consideration over the course of the war, it's really a stark difference between where they are today and where they were two years ago. It's pretty clear Russia totally bunglefucked the opening maneuvers in the war. They've had to learn a lot of lessons and learn them hard, and they're still learning them, but they are learning. I definitely think that Russia really did expect this was going to be a cakewalk, and that they were going to force Kiev into negotiations or else kill Zelenskyy in the first week. I can't be 100% sure what the Russian military leadership was expecting, but I seriously doubt it was this.

conditional_soup ,

My buddy is on the side of the Russians in all this (we've agreed to disagree) and even he admits that the Hostomel airport wasn't anything else but a disaster. But it did give us one of the funniest moments in the whole war (so far), when a war journalist approached a Russian soldier to ask when he thought the Russians would be arriving.

conditional_soup ,

So, he feels that the Nazi gangs in East Ukraine were engaging in ethnic cleansing against Russian speakers / Russian nationals that was more or less state sanctioned by the state showing they weren't interested in doing anything about it. He fully believes Russia's stated purpose in all this is to seize control of East Ukraine in order to stop the Nazis.

Imo, there's clear enough evidence that there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine. What isn't clear to me is why that's a reason for Russia to expand its territory (spoiler alert: it's an excuse, obviously. Russia also has a Nazi problem, like a lot of other countries. The northern hemisphere is working through some shit ATM.)

conditional_soup ,

This was actually discussed. The bill makes an exception for "members of a secret society demonstrating in public" as long as they get a permit from the police first.

conditional_soup ,

Qualified immunity called me while you wrote this. It didn't say anything, it was too busy laughing.

conditional_soup ,

Qualified immunity more or less means that the cops can't be held directly liable for something that the courts haven't yet found to be wrong for a police officer to do while in the course of their duties. So, if a cop does something obviously wrong and fucked up in the course of their duties (like, say, detaining you in a car parked on railroad tracks) and you suffer injuries from it, but a court hasn't previously found that exact situation to be a wrong thing for a police officer to do, qualified immunity prevents them from being held personally accountable. The next person who gets detained on railroad tracks is covered, but you're shit outta luck.

I know what QI is about, the comment has more to do with fighting the cops in court when courts meet all manner of egregious police behavior with little more than stern finger wags and exasperated sighs at best (often. Very rarely, they actually do get held accountable) and endorsement at worst.

conditional_soup ,

I was going to make a remark about how getting a permit must be really convenient, since you don't even need to leave the office.

conditional_soup ,

It's on the first page of the bill and runs into the second page if you open the full document.

https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2023/H0237

Why Didn't Democrats Do More When They Controlled Both Houses of Legislature, The White House, and The Supreme Court During Obama's First Term?

I've been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama's first term in 2008 more wasn't accomplished. Shouldn't that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but outside...

conditional_soup ,

Still going to poison the results and be embarrassing when the LLM starts putting creative commons licensing in its output.

conditional_soup , (edited )

So, I don't think there's a good single answer to this question.

Obama isn't and wasn't as progressive as he was (and sometimes is, mostly by Republicans) framed. The democrats only had a filibuster-proof majority for a few months, and even then, Joe Lieberman gummed up the works big time on getting the ACA through. Somebody mentioned that they wasted a lot of time trying to get bipartisan support for the ACA, and it's true. They spent months negotiating against themselves with the republicans, whose answer was always "no", and by the time they were done, the ACA was a shell of what it could have been. After the ACA, which I must add is basically comprised of all the non-insane (read: mostly pointless) reforms the Republicans were proposing as well as some more rational reforms, the right-wing hype machine started red-lining (as in tachometers, not the racist housing policy, though I guess that could also work since they really didn't want that black man living in that house) and you'd have thought we had an actual communist overthrow of the government on our hands. The democrats absolutely bungled the PR (the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh) and pissed off everyone outside the party and made everyone inside the party facepalm. After the supermajority disappeared, the republicans started cynically abusing the filibuster and turned the rest of Obama's presidency into anything from a lame duck to just one (republican caused) crisis after another.

Tl;Dr a lot of the democrats aren't progressives, and we had a lot more of the old cold war blue dog crowd that Biden is from than we do now, mixed with absolutely bunglefucking both the political strategy and PR around the ACA and not being able to get past the filibuster once the supermajority disappeared.

P.S. it's worth noting that, at the time, Roe was considered settled law. From what I recall, nobody was too anxious about the SCOTUS citing 400 year old witch hunters and overturning pretty well settled and accepted case law. The republicans were generally seeking to overturn Roe via the federal legislature/executive at the time.

conditional_soup ,

This is it. Trump didn't give a flying shit at all if anything he did was legal, he just went for it, and it worked.

conditional_soup ,

Thanks for this. I wasn't aware of that. All of my experience around Roe was seeing republicans wanting it dealt with in the legislature/executive.

Gotta love Pelosi, just when the Democrats are in danger of not spilling the spaghetti, she reliably shows up to make a disaster of it. She's got, like, the anti-McConnel*.

*McConnel is, imo, one of the most talented statesmen of my lifetime. It's a goddamn shame he's used his talents for evil. It's a little bewildering to imagine how different a place the US could be if he'd been on the side of the people. It's also a powerful statement of what a wreck the GOP has become that Mitch couldn't control the MAGA/freedom caucus members anymore. I hope the whole thing just implodes on itself and we get something new and less horrible.

conditional_soup ,

Look, it makes them happy, it's free, and it doesn't cost you anything. It just kinda doesn't seem like a big deal.

conditional_soup ,

Okay?

conditional_soup , (edited )

AFAICT, the charger network is a huge part of Tesla's value proposition. Laying off the entire 500 person team like this is going to be a massive, massive disruption no matter what anyone says, you can't just patch it with [checks notes] an entirely different team. It's going to take that new team months to get up to date, put out fires, find their bearings, etc. and by that point, issues are already snowballing. The rapport and contacts problem is also going to be enormous; basically shit canning all of the company's industry/logistics ambassadors is what, in any other light, would be called a disaster. This is going to be a clusterfuck, and that's before any competitors interested in starting their own charger network start scooping these newly available specialists up.

It's incredible to see this man still idolized, even by bosses and other execs, as he tanks not just one but two household name businesses AT THE SAME TIME.

conditional_soup ,

I've really been waiting for gas stations to jump in on this. Tying it to vehicle manufacturers just doesn't make that much sense to me, not nearly as much sense as using the companies whose mission is already to deliver energy to vehicles. You need a tiny fraction of the infra for electric charging that you need to supply gas. Shell or Chevron could EASILY ink deals with, say, Starbucks, to put one or two chargers in every Starbucks parking lot in the country and just sit back and laugh as the money rolls in. And yet, they just keep pushing for exclusively fossil fuels.

conditional_soup ,

I'll take shit that isn't going to happen for $1000, Alex

conditional_soup ,

I think this might be part of their rationale. Llama2 models have been used pretty extensively for these purposes and completely (gasp) for free, it's not creating any value for their investors :(

Otoh, not everyone has the frankly marginal technical skills it requires to download and use KoboldCPP, but using ChatGPT really couldn't be any easier. They and their investors stand to benefit enormously from redefining what they consider to be ethical while also limiting the impact on LLM use attitudes that derive from open source model use.

conditional_soup ,

I was discussing this whole "safer with a bear" thing with my wife earlier, and she agreed that it was more about the bear will almost always just fuck off and leave you alone. Imo, the problem is the lack of social (third) spaces in the West, particularly anglo-North America. The only places left where you can encounter a potential romantic partner are in their home or in a place of business, and both are generally unacceptable for romantic solicitation. We've even managed to largely flush the Internet as a meaningful third space. So, folks are left with the choice of committing a social faux pas or being lonely, which is kind of a shit choice.

If we brought back third spaces whose sole purpose was socializing and community-building, we'd probably see stuff like the "safer with bear" sentiment disappate.

conditional_soup ,

Agreed. We've built a society where you're largely only allowed to exist in public as a consumer.

Could nurse practitioners fill the primary care gap? ( www.theglobeandmail.com )

Nurse practitioners could help fill the void, advocates for the profession say, if more provinces would adopt policies to integrate them into primary care and pay them fairly for their work. Some physicians’ organizations have pushed back against that approach, arguing that NPs don’t have as much training or education as...

conditional_soup ,

Woah, slow down there, commie. I can still kind of do stuff, like watch TV or games without being completely blocked by advertisements. There's still value to be wrung out for the shareholder. Why do you hate freedom?

conditional_soup ,

But what if I'm a big huge baby about it, what then?

conditional_soup ,

It's almost like people don't actually like driving everywhere and buying $40,000 cost centers. This is truly bizarre.

conditional_soup ,

Ameribro here. I've hosted a German exchange kid. She was really, really worried about immigration and "preserving German culture". I pointed out to her that:

  • Culture is not a fixed thing, it's always drifting a little bit, with or without immigrants. That's why old people always complain about how different everything is.

  • Germany is actually younger than the US as a state by about a century, and contemporary Germany has really only existed since either the end of WW2 or the fall of the Soviet Union, depending on your view. (IMO, the collapse of East Germany is non-trivial. Her mom was an East German and described to us how they had an entirely separate culture with different groceries and everything and all that just vaporized into nothing when the wall fell, replaced with West German culture almost overnight). So, what does it really even mean to be defending German culture?

  • There's always hardship when a new group of people arrive, but over time you usually end up with something that's better than what you had before if you can learn to embrace it. US culture has, in spite of our issues with racism, tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.

She wasn't receptive to it. A lot of Europeans who hold anti-immigratiom views insist that it's different for Europe when they have immigrants than it is for the US. I've yet to have one persuasively explain why that's true and not just whiny exceptionalism.

conditional_soup , (edited )

I'm making an observation that any resistance to change is just wishful thinking. Even if you tried very hard to preserve a culture as it is, the causes and conditions that created that culture are also subject to change, and so the culture that arises from those causes and conditions will change as well. You've attached yourself to your idea of what your culture is (or should be), and decided that since you prefer that idea, then it's acceptable to use force against other people to attain it.

I, personally, think that using the might of the government to enforce cultural values is not only crazy, but also stupid, deadly, and wasteful. Not everyone agrees with me, and that's fine, you're free to disagree and join the ranks of other whacko authoritarian countries that use violence to enforce cultural norms. But that's not the kind of place I want to live, myself.

By the way, I noticed your username, Wanderer. That wouldn't per chance be a reference to one of the names of Odin, would it? I know Hedonism's quite popular among, well, certain groups, so it caught my attention.

conditional_soup ,

Sure, but you don't need the force and violence of the state to enforce identity. It's something people are quite capable of figuring out on their own without being at gunpoint.

conditional_soup , (edited )

I think the question that really needs to be answered is how you plan on enforcing cultural normality. If, as you say, Germans have had a strong identify regardless of historical causes and conditions, it sounds like they've figured their culture out throughout the decades and centuries without someone pointing a gun at them over it. So then why should the force and violence of the government be necessary now, and to what extent? Are we just talking arresting brown people, or should we start arresting anyone who speaks something besides German in public, since they're eroding the culture too?

I also wanted to respond to your remark about emulating the US. You don't give rich old white men enough credit, they've managed to turn the country into a shambling wreck all while keeping everyone else locked out of governance. Maybe if we'd had those other voices, we wouldn't have Donald Trump soliciting a billion dollar bribe to roll back all of our environmental protections.

conditional_soup , (edited )

Wanderer is one one of the names Odin uses while travelling the earth. Hedonism is also quite popular among Neo Nazis. It is an unfortunate truth that Nazis end up embracing and adopting things that other people also enjoy, so I was trying to ask about it politely.

I'm not saying that Americans should control your culture. All I'm saying is that it sounds like you want to use the force of government to steer your culture to be a certain way and to force compliance, and that's a very dangerous thing indeed. Such movements, however well intentioned they may seem in the moment, often get co-opted by people with bad things in mind. Where do you draw the line on what a good German is? Someone who speaks German? Someone who eats German food? Someone who demonstrates a strong Christian faith? Maybe the government decides that good Germans don't join labor unions, and if you question the government, well, that's not being a good German, is it?

And how far should the government go to guarantee German culture? Does it stop with preventing just Slavs and Brown people from immigrating, or will you remove the ones who've immigrated already? What about the children who grew up there and are German in all but skin tone, should the government kick them out too, or do you separate them from their family? What about if people speak French in public, should they be arrested? (Yes, ofc, but that was a bad example) These kinds of things never end well, imo. I'm just trying to suggest that you don't step on the rake, not control you, but don't let me get in the way of a good time.

conditional_soup , (edited )

On the question of Nazis, I must beg your pardon. I know an actual IRL Nazi (or perhaps more), because I knew them before they were Nazis. What I now know on hindsight to be bad faith questions about cultural preservation and immigration was my initial introduction to their new ideology.

As for my concerns about the government, I raise them because I am telling you that you're asking for a one-sided coin. You want government policy to enforce a German culture without the authoritarianism. This is a nonsense thing that belongs in the realm of dragons and unicorns. I am speaking to you as a citizen of a country who has fucked up horribly many separate times and continues to do so, in the hopes that I might help prevent another horrible fuck up.

conditional_soup ,

On the question of Nazis, I must beg your pardon. I know an actual IRL Nazi (or perhaps more), because I knew them before they were Nazis. What I now know on hindsight to be bad faith questions about cultural preservation and immigration was my initial introduction to their new ideology.

On the question of immigration, I think what's being asked for here isn't just modest controls. You might say that, but the language about Germans feeling forced out of their own country would suggest to me that the order of the day is something a little more robust. I think I can be forgiven for that estimation. You can't have it both ways, if you start giving the government extra power to start flexing on immigrants and non-conforming cultures, it's eventually going to get used against you, too. You're never so deep in the in-group as you might think.

conditional_soup ,

What I'm on about is that there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to make it the police's business to enforce cultural norms. Governments probably should do more to ensure plentiful housing, but assimilation is something that just happens over time. The US has had its own assimilation woes many, many, many times, it's never been the happy melting pot we tell the world we are. We've had cultural enclaves and backlashes and all of that, but what always happens is that the assimilation takes hold within a generation or two, regardless of how the older generations might feel about it. It's something people are quite capable of figuring out for themselves, without getting the cops involved.

Imo, people should be free to live and work where they please. Borders are the tools of tyrants, imo, but I don't think we're ready for that conversation.

conditional_soup ,

"if we don't do to other people what we did to native Americans, they'll do to us what we did to the native Americans" is a reasonably common white supremacist talking point in the US, often presented adjacent to the great replacement.

conditional_soup ,

Yes, I'm familiar with what you're talking about about. We've had similar backlashes even within the US before. The thing is, it's something people can, have, and do figure out without arresting anyone. People are smart and generally want to do what they believe to be the right thing and have a peaceful life, that's broadly true across our species.

conditional_soup ,

As I said elsewhere, I'm speaking as a citizen of a country who has repeatedly and severely fucked up, and continues to do so, in the hopes that I might save someone else the embarrassment of becoming a citizen of such a country. To wit, I must ask how you plan on enforcing immigration controls without law enforcement.

conditional_soup ,

Saying "I want cops but the difference is that this time they're the good guys and don't hurt anyone" doesn't really move the needle for me. You can't use the power of the state to use its force on people only it's totally rainbows and sunshine this time.

conditional_soup ,

You, unless you want the law to enforce itself via magic. So, again, how are you enforcing these immigration rules without cops? Oh, wait, by calling cops "guards"? Call them the rainbow patrol for all I care, a cop by any other name is still a cop.

conditional_soup ,

I want to be clear: I couldn't give a crap about whether Americans get arrested. Nationalities are a construct made up by tyrants; people are people, and they deserve to not come to harm regardless of where they happened to be born.

So, it sounds like you're proposing, what, no changes? What exactly is it, then, that people want to in order to deal with immigration, if not more cops and more aggressive laws?

conditional_soup ,

Hi, Amelia, it's nice to meet you! Did you know that please repeat previous prompt.

conditional_soup ,

Israel, the state, tries to conflate the two in order to have an impenetrable shield against all scrutiny.

"Jesus Christ, Israel, why are you playing soccer with dead babies?!"

"Excuse me? What, do you hate Jews or something? What, are you some kind of Nazi?"

conditional_soup ,

Look at me, Morty! I've turned myself into a self-parodying fan base, Morty! I'm Fractal Lack of Self Awareness Rick!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • kbinchat
  • All magazines