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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • You know, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks “If we didn’t have laws, people would just do horrible things to one another because we’re all libidinal animals shackled by the threat of state violence.”

    But if I’d just stormed the US Capital Building, spent six months in iPad timeout, and then received a Presidential pardon to Do As Thou Wilt, I might get a little freaky with it under the preconception that laws really don’t apply to me.









  • Not suggesting this will actually happen, but if the current trend continues at the same rate

    It never does. Markets move periodically - early slow change, mid-point rapid change, tail slow change - for the most part. Nevermind that a 62% sell-off raises the question of “Who is selling?” versus “Who is buying?” Dollars are still far too cheap for a plunge that steep.

    A short period of time before the Iran war started, I pulled all my money out of the market and am 100% in CDs now.

    CD rates are shit right now, thanks to low interest rates.

    You’d be better off in utilities or REITs. US energy companies have done very well in the wake of the Hormuz straight closure. I dropped a bunch into United Healthcare recently, thanks to their bargain basement price. Doubt it’ll pay off soon. But I see a healthy upside long term.




  • The Iranian government is a bunch of evil assholes, just like the Israeli and US governments.

    The need to paint everything in broad brush “Good v Evil” is what legitimizes these wars to begin with. The idea that you’re doing anyone a favor by bombing them should be ridiculous on its face. But we consistently build up this narrative of the Just War, we declare everyone we don’t like is Hitler, and then we throw more and more of the planet into the “Hitler” bucket when they aren’t along for the ride once the bombs land.

    It’s just that they have been attacked by equally evil cunts.

    When you kill off all the nice guys, what you’re left with are the assholes. The Iranian government is the end result of this multi-generational culling process. The American and Israeli governments are, too.


  • I still find it hard to understand the emotional attachment to LLMs and why people believe their ideas

    It’s a conversation you’re having on the internet with an agent that sounds like a human. People get invested for the same reason they get catfished.

    It sounds like she is too overworked and stressed to make decisions or even think for herself, so she lets GPT do it for her.

    That’s the nut of it. And ChatGPT tends to mix the pastiche of a well-researched argument with the kind of feel-good self-affirmations that win over their audience. So you’re getting what looks - at first glance - to be good advice. And then you’re getting glazed on top of it. And then it’s designed to tell you what you want to hear, so you’re getting affirmation bias.

    I hope she gets better soon, and I hope you do too, being overworked and stressed really destroys you and the people around you in many ways.

    I mean, that’s why human-to-human interactions are valuable. But it’s also why they’re difficult. Like any good medicine, it can taste bitter up front even if its what you need in the long run.