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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • This is my thought. I could imagine Biden announcing that Obama was coming in to play a very key role in his administration and that might give him a boost. That while technically the buck stops with Biden still, that Obama is very close to contribute.

    This would sidestep the “annointed one” problem, avoid skipping the primary, and while it’s short of a new candidate, it gets a very popular person near the presidency who couldn’t have been the candidate.

    I couldn’t imagine them starting from scratch at this point, couldn’t imagine who they would pick that people would already resonate with.




  • I was thinking the debate rules actually saved Trump from his worst impulses. Biden was allowed to speak at full length and Trump gets to appear like he can participate in a civilized conversation while Biden would sometimes go off the rails while trying to fill his time. A lot of his embarrassments started in a decent place, but pivoted badly in the middle.

    Trump confidently lied repeatedly without consequences, and so long as someone is unaware that it’s lies, I could imagine them finding Trump’s rhetoric credible that night.


  • I’ll agree, but he was at the same time more bold, like saying everyone wanted to overturn Roe v Wade. Confident and competent lying can get you far, but if you lie about how the people watching would feel, you undermine all your other lying.

    There are few things more maddening than claiming you know how someone feels more than they themselves do. A very credible liar can be undone if they lie that well on a matter the audience personally knows better. Suddenly all the benefit of the doubt purchased by the confidence is erased.



  • That’s been my experience so far, that it’s largely useless for knowledge based stuff.

    In programming, you can have it take “pseducode” and have it output actionable code for more tedious languages, but you have to audit it. Ultimately I find traditional autocompletion just as useful.

    I definitely see how it helps cheat on homework, and extends “stock photography” to the point of really limiting the market for me photography or artists for bland business assets though.

    I see how people find it useful for their “professional” communications, but I hate it because people that used to be nice and to the point are staying to explode their communication into a big LLM mess.



  • So much the better, as far as those executives are concerned.

    Let’s say you want to cut costs and you know you have momentum and a long lag where your total incompetence won’t make a difference to business results in the short term, so cut costs by getting rid of the top talent.

    Now if they outright just fire every good person, well that looks obviously stupid, but if those good people just… up and quit… well they are hardly to blame, and don’t have to pay out those massive severances. You get your annual bonus which is big, and your big restricted stock payday might be delayed two years, but they know, realistically, they can probably coast a good 3 or 4 years before the game is up. Or if you have a supremely strong ‘business brand’, you might be able to coast indefinitely as the big shots will never believe that brand isn’t good anymore.


  • I have found my headset useful for work, when working from home and I don’t do camera on meetings anyway.

    At home it’s pretty nice, and since my ears are open I can actually talk, so my wife actually prefers it over me wearing headphones. But all things in moderation, I wouldn’t wear it constantly.

    Despite being a huge fan of the concept, I still couldn’t go for Apple’s headset, it’s heavy, it’s expensive, and lack of controllers are all deal breakers. The Quest 3 is lighter, has good controllers, and is more affordable. It may not have the displays as nice as Vision, but that doesn’t make up for the rest of the stuff.





  • Strong is not mutually exclusive with fat.

    I have a friend who made ability to lift heavy stuff basically his whole identity. Correlated with that was at any gathering he made a big show of eating just way more than everyone else because he’s a “big guy” and his muscles demand that much. So long as he could lift, obviously he must be fit, he works out after all. Basically his concept of masculinity is lift the heaviest stuff and eat the most stuff.

    Now he’s struggling with diabetes and liver problems, despite being crazy strong. Never did cardio, and ate way more than he needed.

    Yes, BMI can be misleading and being a bit muscular can have a higher BMI and be healthier than BMI says, but odds are if you are up in the obese territory, you probably are packing a lot of visceral fat screwing up your gut.




  • I think as candidates Clinton, W. Bush, Gore, Obama, McCain had sincere support overshadowing the need to stop some particular bad person instead. As misguided as I think it is, Trump voters also are all about Trump less than stopping Biden. I can’t personally remember a race where “the other side must be stopped” as pretty much the sole consideration among the voters until the Trump era.

    Yes, third party candidates are dismissed in a self fulfilling prophecy, but also that reality drives most reasonable would-be third party candidates to one of the viable parties, generally leaving third party candidates that wouldn’t be that popular anyway.