You don’t need an app, just

- be attractive

- be good at talking

- be respectful to women

- have a manic episode

- tell her how you feel, to her face

- tell her she’s attractive

Then once your mood stabilizes, if she didn’t report you to HR, you can probably escalate to cocktails.

Hyperpop remix! Hyperpop remix!!!

When I used to mod morrowind and oblivion, there was another big site which I forget the name of.

I think nexus bought them in the end which I did not enjoy because I always thought nexus was annoying wrt making an account etc.

Some amazing mods out there though. DarkNuts greater dwemer ruins was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in a video game and should ideally have been incorporated as an extended TES 3 goty, licensing etc aside. Tamriel rebuilt was mind blowing too.

My cockerel was not amused. Nor was my pussy-cat.

The repeal of Roe v Wade was a gut punch for me, but I’ve known it was entirely possible for quite a long time. Plus some states have had trigger laws forever so that’s hardly surprising.

Yes, there will be instability, but it’s not the chaotic out-of-the-blue kind, unless you’re wilfully ignorant of the anti abortion movement, or extremely naive to the motivations of that bloc.

If you read the opinions they’re not very convincing. They’re making up principles to adhere to which did not exist before, and doing this for things that have broad support in the US population.

So it is quite chaotic out of the blue kind. Essentially the Judges are ruling by decree and will strike down any law that’s not explicitly enumerated in the constitution (and even there they will certainly weaken the law as we saw with Roe v Wade).

A lot of people think it's possible to read the constitution literally and divine what the words mean. To them, all of this makes perfect sense, because they can't see how the previous rulings ever fit what the constitution prescribes.

I sympathize, but clearly there is far more to our laws than just the words on that document. It's just the set of principles providing some foundation. Hell, we started with "congress shall make no law..." and extrapolated that all the way to pretty much any institution funded by taxes. Clearly a literal reading has limits.

In light of recent events, the only conclusion I can arrive at is that originalism as a legal theory was a decades-long project created with the express purpose of overturning the Warren-era jurisprudence. Roe is the first salvo, but there are many more regressions coming.

It was not created as a good-faith "alternate interpretation." It is not a cohesive or logical theory. It is, instead, a weapon, whose targets should be clear to everyone now. The way the weapon works is that you assume that it is being made in good faith and engage with it on its own terms. And then, again and again, get owned. Because the other guy is just making stuff up, and you, the sucker, are actually arguing.

I'm not quite in conspiracy territory yet, but I really would like to know what they are saying out loud behind closed doors at the Federalist Society HQ.

As a slight tangent since you seem to be knowledgeable: what is the motivation of the anti abortion bloc? I feel that godliness and a true care for life yet unborn is not it, because the bloc does not exhibit these qualities in many other areas...

Eh, I do think it's being repulsed at the idea of killin' babies.

Combined with not weighting the value of the choices of women or the impact on them or their bodies very high.

Look, uh, abortion is kinda a yucky thing. There's not some bright-line moment of change and investiture with consciousness and being that happens at the moment of birth. It's only when you decide the choices and bodily autonomy of the adult woman is more important than the potential of the life growing in her that you can support abortion.

I have no religious affiliation beyond accepting others’ religions (I’m not atheist because ultimately atheism is overly restrictive in its worldview) and agree that abortion is way more nuanced than what modern feminists present. Personally, I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum at different points in my life. I believe I am now somewhere in the middle and the reasons are not in any way religious. They’re based on my lived experience more-so than high school ethics. But man the amount that people want to reduce this to “fuck religion” is really annoying. No one wants to admit it’s a yucky issue.

> I’m not atheist because ultimately atheism is overly restrictive in its worldview

I don't consider myself atheist either. But I do not believe in any sort of god. I figure 'atheist' actually goes a little too far in making assumptions, so I prefer 'ignostic.'

On the bright side, people hear what they want to hear when you use that term. A good chunk of my extended family, who I otherwise quite like, are evangelical christians and not particularly tolerant of atheists (they wouldn't spit in your face, but it makes them intensely uncomfortable). They don't hear 'ignostic' they hear 'agnostic' and that is considerably less offensive to them. I do not correct their understanding, because the conflict is unnecessary and would not improve anyone's life.

> the amount that people want to reduce this to “fuck religion”

A lot of blame for this lies with religious folks trying to make laws based on their religion. I get a little irritated about that myself. Your religion is your business, but I have every right to live my life free from your religious beliefs. As soon as they started making it a core part of their political platform, it became more acceptable to adopt the "fuck religion" attitude in response.

What is uniquely interesting in this scenario is that there isn't any science supporting one side either. Totally agree about not pushing religious beliefs on society in the face of a rational understanding. That’s simply destructive and toxic. But in this case, we really do need to drop the rational vs religious rhetoric and acknowledge this is entirely a social issue. I think discussions would get a lot further if we were all able to frame it that way.

IMO comparing vaccination to women's bodily autonomy is a bad faith argument. Vaccination is about protecting society -- the protection it offers individuals who get the vaccine is incidental.

Anti-abortion folks have a stronger argument, IMO, by focusing on the liberty of the unborn child. Both sides refuse to give up ground, however, for political reasons. The logical conclusion is that there is a point somewhere on the scale between 0 and 9 months where a fetus gains enough liberty to qualify for rights of its own that can be balanced against the rights of the mother. I hope some day we can come together to define that point and codify it.

> IMO comparing vaccination to women's bodily autonomy is a bad faith argument.

That seems a somewhat inflammatory lead, but as far as I can tell you haven't explained or argued for it. It is obvious that the people who want to criminalise abortion believe it is about protecting society; if it were their babies they wouldn't need to criminalise it.

So far the only hard evidence about the COVID vaccines is that they offer excellent individual protection. It appears that the community protection just involves reducing the rate of spread rather than the reach, and since we're dealing with an exponential process it potentially has little practical effect. We ran a natural experiment in Australia that suggested there was no community protection effect. The spread of COVID through the community was basically instantaneous when lockdowns lifted in December [0].

[0] https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_NSW.html

Arguments don't matter, in the end, really

In the long run, "in the end", arguments are all that matters.

Sure, not many mature people are convinced. But people growing up and developing their positions are influenced. And even those of us who are not fully convinced tend to build some nuance into our positions to cope with the stronger arguments.

> what is the motivation of the anti abortion bloc?

I'm going to take this question seriously. The pro-life bloc is sincere when they say they think killing a fetus after conception is murder. They also on average have right leaning policy. Since you didn't list specifically what you meant by "exhibit these quantities" so this is guessing. I see a lot of arguments from left leaning folks that round to "if pro-life people were REALLY pro-life they would agree with all my policies (health care, climate change, gun control, ect)" and then use this argument to say pro-life people are liars. Nope, they just disagree about when killing the pre-born humans counts as murder.

A different framing can be revealing. For some years the state in the US with the lowest number of abortions per capita was Massachusetts where abortions are not only readily available but also essentially free. The big difference is that sex education and contraception are pervasively available. In the areas that support a ban on abortions sex education and contraception have limited availability. Instead people are supposed to abstain until they commit to a partner for procreation. Abstinence is unrealistic, so this results in youthful sexual experimentation starting families. There are effectively two different ways of living here with abortion being linked to sex education and contraception and how ideas about how families should be formed and pregnancies planned or not.

Exercise and microdosing together, it’s pretty good but moods are intense. Do feel more positive about the future on the day to day (current geopolitical situation notwithstanding)

Alt country is a thing. Cannot wait to hate on the inevitable mashup of country and hyperpop.

If you know the future, play the lottery, or even better, form a startup :)

Otherwise, it’s a similar problem to being on eg the cutting edge of music. You either consume everything you can until you can make judgements on what will stick or not, or you create things yourself and try your hardest to make them the next thing.

Luckily, in our industry, you can also:

- know the fundamentals of math/science/technology: there is never truly anything new, there are always rehashes of something else

- be smart enough to absorb radical new theories: self explanatory, better learners can get a grasp of the content more effectively

- socially positioned enough to delegate what you don’t understand: if formally verified quantum blockchain on tensor cores (or whatever) doesn’t resonate with you, but you think it could be useful later, get a younger/brighter person to do what you won’t or can’t. You might reap major rewards from having a protege in the space, and if you don’t, then you helped the next gen learn something new, so feel good about that.

I like the concept of the chemical potential from statistical mechanics.

The thermal potential (also due to entropy) causes temperature to spread outwards, hot to cold. This can be seen by solving the heat equation.

The chemical potential is that if you have a bunch of “stuff” (particles molecules etc) in one place, they will tend to spread out in space to maximize the entropy.

There’s no force or impulse making it happen, it’s just that you are far more likely to observe a system with “stuff” spread out than concentrated.

That’s why I love entropy. It’s not a force or even something super tangible. It’s more like the interface between the physical world and the abstract world of probabilities. The realest abstraction of them all.

I imagine my last day is going to be spent hooked up to a life support machine in a climate controlled environment as various close people trickle in to say farewell.

I’d prefer to spend the close of my 20s doing something else like raving on a warm beach with a bunch of people who don’t know me and won’t miss me tomorrow, and hopefully finding one or two fellow travellers who I can keep in touch with until my dying days :)

exploration vs exploitation

The real kicker of course, is for many people there is even more than a few folks coming to visit, especially for folks who don’t do the hard and nasty stuff in like when it’s necessary for others.