mozz

joined 2 years ago
[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

They have important policy differences

No, they don't. Biden has important policy differences with other adult politicians and those differences are worth talking about. Trump eats McDonald's and watches Fox News and rants about Mexican rapists and makes incoherent yelling at his advisors that sometimes they translate into crazy policy decisions for him, but there's nothing like a "policy." He thinks that tariffs are money that another country pays to us, and so sometimes he'll create a tariff that will create very real harm to real people inside the US, and then brag about how much money we're going to collect because of it, because he doesn't know his ass from his elbow as far as "policy" and doesn't want to learn. I meant that analogy like the Golden Retriever flying the airplane as a very serious description of the situation where Trump is making economic "decisions." It's like a toddler cooking dinner. It's like putting a crypto bro in charge of the federal reserve. It's insane on a level that's easy to normalize and lose sight of, and you're feeding into that normalization by talking about Trump's "policy."

Like my personal economic situation is not noticeably different for having Biden as president vs. Trump. I’m aware of these policies but they haven’t changed the lives of me or anyone I know.

(1) This is a bad way to approach the question "is person A better to lead the country or person B", like if you or your friends don't personally have kids then education isn't important, but more importantly (2) Yes they have. Normally, this argument would be plausible because the mechanisms are so indirect, but the gulf between Trump and Biden is so vast that I'm easily confident enough telling you that there has been a difference.

I'll give an example: Around a million people have died of Covid, and a lot of them didn't need to, but Trump fucked up the Covid response basically as badly as it's possible to do without deliberately making the vaccine illegal or something. For any of the people who died because of Trump's incompetence (some friends-of-friends of mine did), their economic lives have been changed because of the difference between Trump and Biden. They can't go to work or support their families anymore.

If you had your student debt canceled I’m sure that’s a huge deal but my understanding is it was a small number of people. Please correct me if that’s incorrect.

It's $138 billion to 3.9 million people.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Furthermore, I didn’t see much difference in the economy between the two.

You can't see the difference between student loan forgiveness, CHIPS act, infrastructure act, and generally being a boring center-right Democrat, versus "let's put tariffs on Canada and start a trade war with China and fuck up the Covid response so badly that people can steal up to half a trillion dollars from the treasury and basically get away with it?"

There are things to dislike about Biden and I would agree with some of them, and not every single thing the president does will be felt on the level of any particular individual, but comparing the two on real-adult stuff like economic policy is like comparing a pilot's performance against having a Golden Retriever fly the airplane.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 10 points 2 years ago (6 children)

It's not a complicated cycle.

Day 1: Here's why Biden is bad
Day 2: Here's why Biden sucks
Day 3: Here's why no one likes Biden
Day 4: Trump has a plan to put everyone in prison Day 5: Biden sucks

...

Day 497: New poll indicates people don't like Biden <- We are here Day 498: Unemployment mysteriously hits lowest point in 20 years Day 499: Biden sucks

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 9 points 2 years ago

It is as I suspected

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 points 2 years ago

I saw your picture and now I envy your life

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Cats don't like having their water next to their food; if you separate the food and water dishes to different rooms, a lot of times they get more enthusiastic about the water in the dish.

Sometimes of course they are just little weirdos

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I miss the days when GPT would make an explicit point within a decent fraction of its answers that it was only a large language model, and not a general purpose intelligence, because those are two very very different (if very similar-seeming to initial human perception) things.

It seems that the inexorable tide of misperception that that was a futile attempt to forestall has come in.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Well... I think I just see them as two separate issues. Your point is 100% valid but I'm not sure it undoes any of the argument about progress on fundamental research; I just see them as tangential issues.

Like, we're still exploiting people and the environment of the global south. That didn't go away (in fact we arguably got more efficient at it as the systems became more refined and less go-in-with-gunboats brute force). But for some reason the progress in base research did go away, and he's trying to get to the reasons why that happened. If we'd actually undone colonialism but lost progress in basic research as a consequence of that then yes; but I don't think that's how it happened.

The point that, he shouldn't be thinking only of good scientific progress in the wealthy sector of the first world and everyone else isn't real important, yes I 100% agree with. I also think it's not strictly an either-or though -- the same systems that are screwing a highly educated person in Idaho who can't get funding for their good idea, are the same systems screwing the Honduran farmer. If getting to the reasons behind (a) are going to lead to shedding any amount of light on (b) via some further investigation then I'd be in favor of that.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As far as I'm concerned, the downfall of little blinking lights on the hardware that showed you the status of what's inside, was the beginning of the making-shitty of the entire internet and computing world.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 2 years ago

Baked chicken - There are a ton of these recipes but they all come down to basically the same thing: Brine, put seasoning on, cook it in the oven, let it rest a few minutes, done. It takes a little time from start to finish, but the total investment of actual effort is like 5 minutes. (I keep a little tupperware of premixed seasoning.) Combine with a tray of vegetables in the same oven and/or some rice or something. (I actually do this with skin-on chicken thighs instead, but it's basically the same)

Steak - Learn to cook a good steak, it's fuckin magic. Again you can find recipes online. Let it warm to room temperature first, put salt and pepper on it, sear the outside 30s or so on high heat including picking it up and hitting the edges, then lower the heat and flip it every 60-90 seconds to let it cook, and at the end dump some garlic and butter in the pan to flavor it. Let it sit a minute or two and you're good bb.

Blueberry pancakes - Use fresh blueberries.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

All my interests are pretty much narrative gamedev and cyber sec, and it's hard to make money with it.

I kinda agree with the person who is calling you out on this statement. 🙂 I get what you're saying though -- I think the missing factor is that interests don't make money. Completed work makes money. I had a pretty easy time of it starting off in my career because I had a track record of hobby projects and real-work projects, and so my first and third jobs out of school were from people who were doing startups as they were graduating and got in touch with me about working for them, and from there it got a lot easier (I was actually working basically full time for one startup during my last semester before I graduated). But I only got the first two jobs because people knew stuff I had done, from way back before work ever even came into the picture.

IDK how well that will translate to the present day; the climate is different now I know. But you say you're interested in gamedev... what game do you have to show? If you have one and everyone knows about it, even if it's small and humble (think Hungry Knight -> Hollow Knight) then I think you'll be in a lot better position than not.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 27 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Yes I know about the halting problem, I got extra credit in school for writing a paper with a detailed analysis of a busy beaver machine which at the time ran longer than any in the published literature. I just can't understand the joke... are there people on the second track? Won't the train stop wherever the person is, since the person is defined to be left at the place the trolley will stop? Won't the person die of old age? Why does the diagram show them only 50 meters away, where they're definitely going to die one second from now?

HELP I AM CONFUSED I AM TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY

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