Isaac Ji Kuo

Been around rec.arts.sf.science, BAUT (aka CosmoQuest), Google Plus, sfconsim-l, and other places ...

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Last Notes

2026-05-07 18:09:12 GMT

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Geoffrey Landis has used this observation to propose both manned missions to Venus and colonization in Venus's atmosphere.
Breathable air is a decent lifting gas, as the atmosphere is mostly CO2 (quite a bit heavier than both N2 and O2).

2026-04-28 13:24:23 GMT

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We can absolutely win on issues of policy.
What we need to cut out is useful fool "purity" demands that every candidate must agree with you on every issue (or one particular issue in particular) or we won't vote - helping the Republicans win in order to teach "The Democrats" a lesson.
@npub1xw7…r9m5 @npub1we7…x6u8 @npub1g3c…l8ah @npub1aqt…fgfp @npub1u0h…g7aj @npub1xmj…hnl5 @npub16za…4kfl

2026-04-12 15:10:46 GMT

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On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, no.
See, Trump does not understand the basics of cause and effect.
The reason closing the Strait has any power is that closing it has huge economic effects. And the reason it gives _Iran_ power is that the Iranian regime is not much harmed by those effects, while POTUS Trump is very much harmed by those effects.
So the orange dotard is like, "If they have so much power by punching me in the face, *I* will have power by punching

2026-04-01 23:09:12 GMT

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I have recency bias, so my main concern is with the capsule (over the remaining days of the mission). The recent scrub due to fluid leaks are a bit too similar to the recent capsule clusterfudge.
I mean, obviously I lament the switch from 4 segment to 5 segment, but even so segmented solid rocket boosters are pretty robust technology. And even in the case of an SRB failure there would be a decent chance of the LAS saving the crew.
But if the capsule pressurants go fubar ...

2026-01-28 02:44:51 GMT

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No, not a problem with competition, but rather a problem with lack of business potential. We've been hearing the same things about manned space manufacturing and such since the Space Shuttle in the 1970s. The business case simply is not there.
There's a case to be made that we want manned spaceflight anyway, and a spin gravity station to study the physiological effects of lunar/martian gravity is worthwhile.
But business profit? That's nonsense. Just a grift to bilk taxpayers.

2026-01-23 14:14:29 GMT

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Eggs remind me of the worse 4 or 8 years of my life when the wokes forced us to drink vegetarian beer and took away beef based eggs from us. All of these things make sense to me because they make more sense than Obama being President. If Obama was President, what else could be true? Anything!

2026-01-23 14:09:53 GMT

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Oh, I forgot. You are correct. Replace my previous tough choice with:
"My brain is broken. I still have the sads because Obama was president supposedly even though he's a n-CENSORED EVEN INSIDE MY SADS BROKEN BRAIN BECAUSE EVEN I KNOW IT'S WRONG. I am so sads about the worst 4 or 8 years of my life (the ones where Obama was president which includes 9/11 and when the dinosaurs escaped Jurassic Park). Eggs make me sads.

2026-01-23 13:32:03 GMT

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It's such a tough choice between
"Eggs are expensive but we live in a democracy run by sane people who earnestly want to make things better"
and
"Eggs are even more expensive and we live in a collapsing fascist dictatorship run by people stupider than you can imagine who earnestly want to make absolutely everything for everyone worse except for the POTUS's Qatar bank account".
Truly sweating red button meme.

2026-01-21 22:37:10 GMT

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I remember back when the big thing was tech business parks for big spam phone call centers. Like they seriously thought this was the big thing that was going to bring lots of great jobs to a city.
Like we were going to love all these great jobs randomly calling each other to try and spam and scam each other.
And I felt like I was taking crazy pills. How did anyone not see that this was even dumber than turnips?

2026-01-21 18:40:27 GMT

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business parks here on Earth are just throwing money at already wealthy techbros for NOTHING. It's like how taxpayer money is thrown into football stadiums for basically no benefits, but at least in that case a fraction of the taxpayers nevertheless support it because they're sports fans and they don't mind forcing their neighbors to pay for something they don't want.
Techbro business parks? The promise everything and deliver nothing, even here on Earth. In space? Forget about it.

2026-01-21 18:37:27 GMT

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My god this is so much stupider than I ever thought. It's just a grift for funneling taxpayer money to billionaire techbros.
"The goal is to transition NASA from being an owner and operator of orbital infrastructure to being just one of many customers in a new, robust, and commercially-run economy in low Earth orbit."
Translation - we are stupid. There aren't any other customers.
"A “Mixed-Use Business Park” in Space"
That's just throwing money at techbros for nothing.
Heck,

2026-01-21 16:22:11 GMT

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I used to think that Republicans wanted to make things better, they just disagreed about how best to do it.
But nope. All this MAHA stuff shows that they are deeply committed to making things worse. They just want to make things worse in every way.

2025-12-16 22:05:27 GMT

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It occurs to me that I actually expressed my actual thought process almost entirely in reverse.
I mean, you know how it is. When you want to prove something and your mind works backwards from the intended result?

2025-12-16 22:00:37 GMT

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My in my heads process:
2^5 is 32. 6^2 is 36.
32<36, so 32^2<36^2.
Thus, 1/32^2 > 1/36^2
so 1/2^10 > 1/6^4
Yes, my head skips steps here and there.
My head knows 2^10 = 1024, but 36*36 is too much for me to feel like doing in my head.

2025-12-12 06:22:27 GMT

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Off the top of my head, I think a thin circular plane might be a counterexample.
Near the center, it roughly approximates an infinite plane - for a constant amount of axial gravity toward the plane. But I think as you get a bit further from the center I feel like the radial component may make the total felt gravity a bit more than at the center.
I dunno, though ...

2025-12-06 12:20:23 GMT

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Like, I imagine Steve Balmer going on about LLM culture of K-LOTs.
"How many K-LOTs ya got there with the phrase 'my favorite animal'? How many K-LOTs ya got there with the phrase 'my favorite animal' and 'second'? K-LOTs K-LOTs K-LOTs."
It's not that deep.

2025-12-06 12:18:55 GMT

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IS the unanimity peculiar? They're all trained on the same scraped data, more or less.
Like, if you asked them what time is it on a VCR, and they all said "It is blinking 12:00" then you wouldn't find it peculiar. It's just something about the training data.
There's no thinking process going on here, it's just an internet popularity contest based on K-LOTs (kilo-lines-of-text).

2025-12-01 21:56:43 GMT

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So, when Newton came up with theories of motion which actually pulled it all together, it would have been a great relief. The same laws of motion apply to stuff on Earth and the planets in the Heavens.
But with aether theoriests it was like, "lol you're all wrong there is no aether"

2025-12-01 21:51:46 GMT

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I feel like epicycles and Kepler's eclipses were more like ... these formulas fit the observations, but WHY do they fit? It's a mystery.
Whereas all the complex aether theories like aether drag and such were more dramatic and desperate. Like, "The observations don't make any sense ... if we just make our observations more precise than maybe we can figure out which aether theory is on the money ..."

2025-11-16 16:45:41 GMT

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I think that overall the majority of American Catholics lean left, but the "Bible Belt" conservative Catholics are ... well ... what they are.
It's definitely a split.

2025-11-12 18:40:13 GMT

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I do honestly want an answer to the question, "What do you think successful anti-trust action looks like?"
As it is, I haven't the faintest clue what you think a "good" result looks like. I only hear you griping about how it is (a "bad" result).
I do find it useless to only gripe about bad things with no inkling of what could be better.

2025-11-12 18:19:06 GMT

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You're the one who said it worked great before Reagan. Did you really meant that it worked great before Roosevelt?
Honestly, you just seem to be griping for the sake of putting down politicians you hate, uselessly.

2025-11-12 18:07:42 GMT

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I mean - you said anti-trust was working great before Reagan. So I just want to understand what you mean by it working great.
What was working great with the Ma Bell breakup? I want some idea of what the "win" scenario is like, so I can have an idea of what we could be striving for with working anti-trust.

2025-11-12 17:53:13 GMT

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See, this subthread started with a suggestion that we need to bring back anti-trust to make things better.
And I like that idea in theory, but what does "winning" on that front look like in practice?
Examples from a century ago aren't helpful, because businesses and finances don't work like they did back then.
The Ma Bell breakup is more relevant, since there's at least a hope of things working similarly enough now.

2025-11-12 17:51:10 GMT

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Okay, I am going to have to focus on that big Bell breakup, because of your implication that it was working great until Reagan.
What did the breakup do which was so good? An illusion of choice?
I'm just wondering what you think of as a "win" in the Ma Bell breakup.

2025-11-12 13:32:43 GMT

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Oh, I absolutely agree that consolidation is everywhere, and it's a huge problem.
My question is - what does success against this consolidation look like? I'm a child of the 1970s so I really don't remember first hand what it was like before Reagan.
I only know what losing against the consolidation looks like. That's why I'm asking what winning against it looks like.

2025-11-12 11:43:48 GMT

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You say it was working great, before Ronald Reagan was sworn into office, so what did that look like?
You imply the Ma Bell breakup was an example of it working great, before Reagan. What about it was great? I was too young to notice first hand what practical end user effects there were.

2025-11-12 11:41:43 GMT

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Where was the success? The equally evil corporate Apple in a distant second place did nothing to reduce the harm to end users or the industry in general. There was in practical terms no competition pressure forcing real choices.
If this is what "winning" looks like, what's even the point?

2025-11-12 06:28:10 GMT

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I like the idea of anti-trust, but I also don't really know what "winning" looks like. Has there been an anti-trust action success in my lifetime?
Off the top of my head, I remember the break up of breakup of Ma Bell, but I don't really know whether or not that was "successful", and what the practical consequences were.
I'm far more familiar with the utter failure of anti-trust with Microsoft.

2025-10-27 14:50:11 GMT

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No, they aren't.
This SHOULD be super obvious when you compare how a police officer lives with how Vladimir Putin lives.

2025-10-27 11:40:02 GMT

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Sounds a lot like you think enforcing laws can't be done. Let's just throw our hands up in the air and give up on the idea of laws, because without enforcement of the laws they are meaningless.
We have a lot of experience in how things go when laws are meaningless.
It goes very badly for everyone except the thugs on top.

2025-10-27 02:32:11 GMT

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Uhh ... that was well over a century ago.
This is a solved problem.

2025-10-27 02:17:01 GMT

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Uhh ... you have to pay "thugs" to coerce people to pay any sort of taxes, as well as "spies" to catch all the people trying to hide taxable income or sales or real estate or inheritance or whatever else is taxable.
In other words, police. IRS agents. And so on.
This is ... just normal stuff.

2025-10-27 00:57:57 GMT

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Yeah, a flat income tax is extremely NOT what I favor.
I favor a steeply progressive wealth tax, rather than an income tax.
Combined with UBI and various progressive spending programs, the goal is to transfer wealth from the wealthy downward - in order to counteract the fiscal systems that funnel wealth to the already wealthy. There shouldn't be any billionaires.

2025-10-26 20:58:38 GMT

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I'm strongly in favor of a robust UBI, but I don't see how it does anything at all to prevent these disastrous Wall Street generated financial crises.
And-unpopular opinion of mine-I do not think it is sensible to talk of UBI without a holistic approach coherently analyzing the _combined_ effects of UBI and tax policy on the overall wealth redistribution (if any).

2025-10-26 12:51:02 GMT

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That's really the thing, isn't it? EVERYONE knows it's a bubble, and that it'll be bad when it pops, but NO ONE is talking about how to try and mitigate the effects on normal people.
Who cares? The important thing is that the already wealthy will be able to make lots of money off our backs when it pops. Only us plebs will suffer the consequences.
I mean NO ONE is talking about what could be done. Not even the true believer "End Stage Capitalism" socialists.

2025-10-26 01:15:24 GMT

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Thanks for confirming my suspicions that the video card was the quintessential problem.
This is the sort of thing where it helps having a broader range of experience and hardware.

2025-10-26 00:47:32 GMT

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I had a Quadro K620, which IIRC went for around $25 on eBay at the time (used). Looking it up now, I think they go for around $15 on eBay.
I do not know how they compare to what's expected for gaming.
I didn't have any problems installing the non-free driver.

2025-10-25 20:54:15 GMT

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"I suspect that using Debian Stable means you'll have to make _lots_ of changes before it's ready for gaming."
I do not like the sound of that. Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions out there.
Unfortunately, AMD is not much of an option for me because I need 4K resolution capability, and the minimum cost of used 4K capable AMD graphics cards was just too high compared to Nvidia.

2025-10-25 20:40:03 GMT

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I am using Debian Stable, and I'll bet the problem is that I'm using old graphics hardware that isn't adequately supported. I do not buy new expensive video cards. I buy used ones that are inexpensive.
I do not expect things to work better now.
Running Windows games on Linux does not matter to me. Not enough to run a different Linux distribution on one computer and dealing with maintaining that. And not enough for me to spend hundreds of dollars on a better supported video card.

2025-10-25 19:07:10 GMT

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So for me, it's simple. If you wrote your game for Windows, I'm not even going to try.
That's my solution for now. Shrug

2025-10-25 19:06:27 GMT

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game work, and maybe I could have figured out what to do to make it work eventually.
And it could have been worth the effort if I had multiple games I wanted to play.
But I only wanted to play one game, and it didn't work, and after a few weeks of fighting it I didn't feel like fighting it any more.
Web games seem fine, though, for the most part, and of course there's emulation of old computers (including web emulators). I don't have to fight the computer to run them.

2025-10-25 19:03:35 GMT

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I think I've only ever tried to make one Windows game work on Linux (through Steam and Proton).
It was Gris. It wouldn't work. I could only get the initial game menu to work but nothing of the actual gameplay. I tried for a bit, but couldn't get it to work. My money would have been flushed down the drain if I didn't also have a Windows laptop around (but anyway, it was too inconvenient for me so I ended up not playing the game).
I have heard that it makes "almost" every Windows

2025-10-17 17:11:03 GMT

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is not just a "choice" being made by the people who run corporations. The system actively compels corporations to be evil. The people running a corporation have a fiduciary duty to do whatever is profitable, regardless of what is good for others.
And it is usually more profitable to be bad for others.
People who just uselessly act confused about why they can't just be good neighbors are useful fools. Especially people like these, who know they're suffering but still vote against

2025-10-17 17:07:54 GMT

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Earlier, I read between the lines and noted implicit racism, but it's not directly obvious from the video.
Another opinion, though, brings up a different (but also serious) issue. One of the people interviewed doesn't blame the politicians, but blames the corporations. They're like, "Why can't they be good neighbors?"
We have a problem of people seeing corporations as "people", who choose to be good or bad. But those people are blinded to the quintessential truth that being evil

2025-10-17 17:01:52 GMT

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I don't think there's anything unusual in the later part of the video, that doesn't fit in with the early part.
There's some stuff about how most of them voted for Trump, and what they think of Trump, Abbot, and other politicians now. It's mixed.

2025-10-17 14:16:02 GMT

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They're not against bitcoin, they just want the bitcoin mining be done somewhere else.
In other words, they are very confused that these bitcoing mining farms aren't placed in black communities.

2025-10-04 18:46:08 GMT

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You can access those if they're under public posts, but you have to go out of your way to click away from your timeline view to get to them.
Unfortunately, Diaspora still does not have quote posting. (This is something the G+ added, after originally cloning Diaspora.) But there's nothing stopping anyone from manually creating a new post with a URL link and quoting some or all of the linked post.

2025-10-04 18:38:51 GMT

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"What I'd like is for us to be able to pick our own moderators, and have moderation from our friends decide what posts we see."
Well, obviously Mastodon ain't that. But Diaspora IS. Here's how it plays out in Diaspora:
You follow people. Each one is a moderator of the comment threads you see, as well as moderator of what links they choose to share, and what posts they wish to boost.
Under each boost is an independent comment thread, moderated by the booster rather than the OP...

2025-10-04 18:26:26 GMT

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Oh, and about someone who deletes any comments that aren't in praise of them ... so what?
If someone wants their social media experience to only consist of "positivity". Or even "toxic positivity", then ... I think that's okay?
I just feel like it's okay to give someone their own "front porch" space where they have control over their experience.

2025-10-04 18:19:33 GMT

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The reason the posts and comments paradigm has proven so popular in social media platforms is that it has proven to be an effective method for distributing moderation load.
Yes, a lot of people will leave their front porches unmoderated and full of garbage. But this is very visible and it's easy and intuitive for people to unfollow folks who tolerate the garbage.

2025-10-04 18:17:15 GMT

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Thanks for your explanation.
I do not agree that it is bad. It is to be expected that scammers will remove warning signs posted on their own front porch.
The posts and comments paradigm makes it clear and intuitive precisely where the limits of that front porch are.
The posts and replies paradigm is just a useless free-for-all where MAYBE there is some form of centralized moderation that people can appeal to, but it's never clear how much it has been in effect, where/when.

2025-10-04 18:07:29 GMT

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I don't understand how it's a counterexample. It sounds like the same thing, just with different personal criteria of what is allowed on one's "front porch".

2025-10-04 18:02:27 GMT

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What is that supposed to be a counterexample of?

2025-10-04 16:39:36 GMT

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Huh? Diaspora basically just copied the post and comment paradigm from Facebook. The design decision wasn't that deep.
The UI is very intuitive, and it's super obvious who "owns" and moderates comments because they appear directly underneath the post of the owner.
If you go to the commenter's profile page, you won't see that comment. It only appears underneath the owning post. Again, this was just copying how Facebook did things.

2025-10-04 16:21:59 GMT

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There are a few social media platforms which federate with both diaspora and Mastodon, but there are very confusing and annoying friction points.
On the diaspora side, the paradigm is posts and comments, where the owner of the post has full moderation control over the comments underneath.
On the ActivityPub side, there's no such thing. It's a posts and replies paradigm, where no one has control over the replies.
Mixing the two, as in Friendica or Hubzilla, is ... not great.

2025-10-04 14:34:36 GMT

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My Diaspora peeps are mostly a large group of ex-Google Plussers who migrated en masse due to Google axing G+.
I guess G+ dodged the enshittification bullet ... in a not very helpful way.

2025-10-04 14:30:01 GMT

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"Mastodon is the Linux of social media"
Ouch! I'm not even a Mastodon peep and I felt that one.
(I prefer Diaspora, but I'm also active on Mastodon despite my criticisms of .... meh, no social media platform is perfect, just some very much less so.)

2025-09-19 18:38:28 GMT

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Yeah. Thanks.
I try to do my part and shut up about those things I feel utter despair about, but it's difficult and sometimes it slips through.
It's a tool they are purposefully using against us. So I try to keep it in.
Of course, the better thing would be if I could connect with others who feel as I do and do things to actively try to change things for the better. My life situation doesn't afford me the time or energy, unfortunately

2025-09-19 18:31:22 GMT

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started actually winning and stuff? Well now she's just some sellout or something.
I ... I just can't. I'm so down and I feel like it's a hopeless struggle against them. And the others on the other side who are much worse. I try to not be a Debbie Downer, by admitting I don't know the answers but hopefully someone else might ...

2025-09-19 18:29:22 GMT

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Yeah, they are the problem, and I wish I knew how to do something about that problem.
You suggest they vote in the primaries to get Dems that they want, but they don't WANT Dems that they want. They want to attack the Dems.
There aren't any Dems that they actually want, because if they did win the primary they'd find some other new reason they suck and they don't deserve their vote.
I love AOC. I thought they loved AOC also. But when she

2025-09-19 17:56:45 GMT

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Problem is you're working from a false premise. Right-populists did NOT take over the Republican party. The Tea Party was created and funded by big Republican donor money. It wasn't organic, it was created by big money from the top, and it did EXACTLY what the big money donors wanted.
Who is benefiting from all the stuff that Trump and all the other elected Republicans are doing? Not the Tea Party rubes. The big money donors that used them are the big winners.

2025-09-19 17:19:31 GMT

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I know you like to talk about how many psyops fake left trolls/bots are out there, but there's also ...
There's also an absolute ton of left wing true believers who have internalized the psyop pushed world view. They can't just stop attacking Democrats. It's a core part of their identity now (and by "now" I mean like since the turn of the century or even earlier).
I don't have any insights on what to do about this problem. Just ... lamenting.

2025-09-15 18:20:03 GMT

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In contrast, the liquid core rocket concept is not THAT different from solid core. And transfer of heat from a liquid to bubbles in the liquid ... well, it doesn't require new materials research, at least.
However, I wouldn't call it slam dunk. In order to get useful thrust you're going to be moving a LOT of bubbles through the liquid core. Enough to keep the reactor walls cool. So we're talking some pretty violent flows...

2025-09-15 18:15:37 GMT

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Again ... maybe?
Can we develop practical "grit" in the propellant to adequately absorb and transfer heat to the propellant? Maybe!
Will the resulting system end up having superior specific impulse than a chemical rocket? Maybe? I mean ... possibly?
Will it offer superior overall system performance to chemical rockets possibly backed up with solar electric? Uhh ... optimistically, maybe. I would put money down on no, though.

2025-09-15 18:13:12 GMT

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I disagree that the nuclear lightbulb concept is a much more sensible option. It's an absolute nightmare of inefficiencies and potential deal killers during research toward an attempt at designing an implementation.
Nuclear lightbulb is more of an idea of an idea than a workable concept. Can we develop transparent materials that will stand up to these challenging conditions? Maybe!
Can cooling losses be reduced to a level where there's energy left over for the propellant?

2025-09-12 14:20:07 GMT

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My point is that there's already PLENTY of criticism without any of us boosting it and emphasizing it.
I don't want NO criticism, but that's not in the cards so that's moot. I want a certain level of criticism, but this is only possible if everyone I can possibly influence shuts it.

2025-09-12 13:58:46 GMT

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shouting out the flaws of any Democrat.
We do NOT need to be aiding to the din of anti-Democratic criticism.
If you prioritize attacking a Democrat, you are helping the Republicans win. Period. If you say, "Hold your nose," you are helping the Republicans win. Period.
Will anyone stop prioritizing attacking Democrats? Sigh ... I doubt it. I am not a happy camper.

2025-09-12 13:55:49 GMT

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"How do we replicate it across the USA?"
We don't. We need to back whoever is the Democratic candidate is, and hopefully that candidate is the one who is most likely to succeed in their voting district/region.
And we should only boost what's good about the Democratic candidates. We should NEVER say, "Hold your nose and vote for them anyway." That is aiding the Republicans. Period.
No, there are naturally flaws in every Democrat. And there's an endless parade of loud voices already

2025-09-03 14:30:40 GMT

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What's not necessarily so obvious is that this linear transformation preserves probability distributions. I mean ... it does in this case, but it's not a gimme.
For example, if you said - "Pick a random line that intersects the triangle" then it no longer works. But why not? You have to get into the nature of linear transformations and what it means to pick a "random line" ...

2025-08-21 20:47:56 GMT

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No, we can't name it after the person who actually discovered it. That would violate Stigler's law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy

2025-05-23 14:21:24 GMT

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Thanks - I was almost wondering if there was some reason they were almost - but not quite - ejected, but I guessed survivorship bias.

2025-05-06 21:17:49 GMT

Sarah Jane Smith eats oranges by directly biting them?
Am I just culturally ignorant or is this an odd way to eat an orange?
In 1976, the Doctor Who serial _The Masque of Mandragora_ shows Sarah Jane Smith eating an orange by directly biting it, and then removing the peel from her mouth.
https://youtu.be/7s01oQ17E5c?si=7hKPsFElNSm3mqw1&t=39
Is this ... normal? Was this a thing in the 1970s? Am I taking crazy pills?
#DoctorWho #Oranges

2025-04-23 13:37:40 GMT

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The typical HDMI cable doesn't even have enough bandwidth for 4K/60Hz. HDMI 1.4 maxes out at 4K/30Hz, and earlier HDMI max out at 1080i (the equivalent bandwidth of 1080p/30Hz).

2025-03-19 11:07:23 GMT

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Unfortunately this is necessary in order to destroy the resale value of Tesla cars, and thus destroy the stock price of Tesla shares, and thus destroy the wealth and power of Elon Musk.
It's either that, or we get serious about the Luigi solution on a grand scale.
It's not just about fighting against Elon Musk via what few avenues are left to us. It's about trying to deter the next Musk wannabe.

2025-03-15 05:41:47 GMT

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Personally, I'd say the assumptions are stupid to assume, but I'm not so certain they are wrong.
In particular, the idea that there would be continuity of identity and consciousness between a biological human brain and a future simulation? I think anyone with sense would agree that it's stupid to assume that would be.
But actually providing a robust argument or evidence that it does NOT happen is ... well, that's a tough one.

2025-03-15 05:22:44 GMT

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But also ... my brain hurt is not actually a coherent rational argument _against_ Roko's Basilisk. It's merely an observation of how anti-intuitive it is to even begin taking it seriously.
It just so happens that I had previously studied philosophy and cognitive science in directions that made me more rigorously ponder the relevant issues. That was just a convenient coincidence.
But it did give me an awareness that actually arguing against Roko's Basilisk is not as simple as "Huh?"

2025-03-15 05:19:13 GMT

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That's a great point. Like I said, it hurts my brain to even figure out what's up with their thinking.
So yeah, I can see your point about the instructiveness of figuring that out.

2025-03-15 05:09:04 GMT

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The thing that hurts my brain about Roko's Basilisk is that there could be a community of people out there, however small, that could even begin to take it seriously.
Like ... it requires so much scaffolding of weird anti-intuitive concepts to even begin to understand what should be so scary about it ...
How?

2025-03-06 22:19:20 GMT

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I'm not an expert, so I may be way off ... I feel like Xi would rather just salami slice off some easy pickings, like the juicy region around Vladivostok.
But most of Russia's population is way over to the west, far away from China.

2025-03-06 22:03:55 GMT

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China is currently making a lot of money selling to both sides. But it's more than just that. They are demonstrating to the rest of the world that they are willing to sell to anyone, and their willingness to sell will not be altered overnight depending on whose "side" you're on.
Like it or not, a lot of customers prefer dealing with an "amoral" country than one which actually cares.
I only wish that they could just let go of Taiwan.
(I'm half Taiwanese, and pro TI.)

2025-03-02 19:11:47 GMT

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While it's true that Putin doesn't fear a military attack from NATO, he fears the _idea_ of NATO.
It offers breakaway states a real (and better) alternative to suffering under Russian Mir. It gives the peoples suffering under him crazy ideas like they could live a better life with some dignity and self determination.
Not just in Ukraine, but Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Tartarstan ...

2025-02-17 15:28:54 GMT

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Well, that's an idea but it's not an "off-the-shelf" solution at the time the Orion space "battleship" was sketched out.

2025-02-17 15:06:20 GMT

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The 5 inch DP gun famously had VT proximity fuses, but out in space you don't NEED a VT fuse. Each fragment from a VT fused 5 inch is puny compared to a .50 cal bullet, and an M2 can simply spit those bullets directly at the target. No air resistance to slow down those bullets over however many miles is between.

2025-02-17 15:02:18 GMT

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Knowing what I know now about 5-inch dual purpose guns and the relative speeds and distances of orbital space maneuvering (compared to the piston engine aircraft the DP guns were effective against) ...
The idea that those 5 inch guns would be in any way useful on a space "battleship" is hilarious. Lack of air resistance means 40mm, 20mm, and even 12.7mm would have equally effective range, but would be much lighter and throw orders of magnitude more projectiles.

2025-02-10 03:46:19 GMT

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The only reason it was cloned so much was because it was easy to program. The clones all sucked, and did nothing to innovate on the gameplay, until Arkanoid. All of the actual fun Breakout type games are Arkanoid clones and descendants.
There aren't so many takes on Breakout. There aren't even all that many different takes on Arkanoid. A small number have tried to change up the Arkanoid formula, but they are obscure compared to the far more popular straight Arkanoid clones.

2025-02-10 02:35:06 GMT

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The main problem with Breakout is that no one other than ridiculous Atari fanboys really cares about Breakout other than that it was the ancestor of Arkanoid.

2025-02-05 16:24:06 GMT

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As far as I've noticed, many are keeping quiet. Which I guess is understandable. But the ones who aren't keeping quiet are just continuing to blame the Democrats.
They've been trained well to first and foremost always blame the Democrats for everything.

2025-01-29 02:43:01 GMT

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There's a new fan port of Centipede to the C64 that just came out.
It's a bit different than most ports because it literally ports the original arcade code (which ran on a 6502 CPU). The graphics and sound routines are replaced, of course, but the game logic code is original arcade.

2025-01-29 02:06:03 GMT

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Unironically useful for people who want to know what time it is before they decide to open their eyelids.

2025-01-12 01:35:02 GMT

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I remember various Facebook alternatives over the years. One of the oldest was Diaspora, and it's still around.
It's actually pretty amazing. I remember during the first push to get people to migrate from Facebook to Diaspora, that it seemed like such a confusing mess. We have to spin up our own servers? Or find some server to sign up to? And connect them up together?
It just seemed so complicated at the time. But it turned out to be a lot more robust over time than the others.

2025-01-07 21:05:42 GMT

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You can get a passive HDMI to DVI adapter. No audio functionality, of course (not part of the DVI standard).

2025-01-06 20:43:19 GMT

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Okay, but so what? The Opton isn't described as having those capabilities.
However, the "Lecton" is described as being able to be set to any voice, tempo, or modulation. This is clearly more fancy that direct audio playback, perhaps alluding to adjustable playback speed and band filters to modify modulation and voice characteristics.

2025-01-06 17:44:06 GMT

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Is it a relevant distinction, though? The "opton" device described by Stanislaw Lem in Return from the Stars seems to be a futuristic improvement over microfilm (which the protagonist from the past is familiar with).

2025-01-05 15:09:07 GMT

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As usual, this is an example of something being mistakenly interpreted as anticipating a "future" technology because the "future" person has forgotten the technology it was actually based on.
In the mid-20th century, libraries were transferring deteriorating newspapers and such to microfiche/microfilm. Microfiche/microfilm readers became commonplace fixtures in libraries for some decades. There were also some portable readers but these never caught on.
https://cdn.masto.host/spaceyspace/media_attachments/files/113/776/375/311/631/412/original/25944f0abaa4c5ec.jpg

2024-12-17 12:08:33 GMT

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I feel like it should be possible to modify the cylinder cross sections from circular to some other curve to make the joins to flat planes infinitely differentiable.
I'm not super creative, so that's how I'd try to make a "smooth" mobius strip.

2024-12-12 21:42:13 GMT

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I don't know if you followed the Intellivision Amico debacle at all, but they had a couple interesting looking titles in the works, that had an Atari Recharged sort of aesthetic going on.
Cloudy Mountain (sort of AD&D Recharged)
Night Stalker (sort of Night Stalker Recharged)
They also had Astrosmash and Shark Shark, but these looked pretty generic.

2024-12-09 04:59:14 GMT

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However, in PAL-land, it was common to attach an Atari ST to a TV set, for which there were typically neither horizontal nor vertical size adjustment options. And the screenshot you give is of a PAL-land developed game "U.S. Gold" (not actually a USA company).
Anyway, you can study historical pixel aspect ratios on, say, DOS games, by looking for things that should be circular - like the Sun or Moon. You'll find out that square pixels was NOT the norm.
2/2

2024-12-09 04:56:29 GMT

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You're assuming a square pixel aspect ratio, which is a bad assumption.
Most computer monitors of the era had vertical size control, but not horizontal size control. The thing almost all users did was to expand the vertical size as much as possible, which would result in an actual screen aspect ratio a bit taller than 4:3 (because it wasn't possible to stretch the screen horizontally to fill up the horizontal space).
As a result, pixel aspect ratios were tall... in NTSC-land.
1/2

2024-12-08 09:10:27 GMT

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I don't really "get" the distinction between "casual" games and "serious" games. From a game design and development perspective, it's all the same stuff.