Holy ****!

No wonder they kicked our asses in world war 2.

That's pretty tactical! I think it has some weaknesses though. It's very cumbersome, and requires multiple people to work together to deploy it.

how about memes about memes of the dude?

Plus the risk of falling and breaking your legs.

Yeah and you'd probably have to do quite a bit of maintenance on the pole to make sure it doesn't start to splinter, get any cracks, get dried out, etc.

The texture of the surface of walls also varies a lot, so it may not be able to be deployed in some areas.

“Alt-right” internet detectives have captured Shia LaBeouf’s secret flag

It is. In the Netherlands the two most socially taboo things to do are call someone a Nazi or acknowledge German superiority at soccer, not necessarily in that order.

Thank you.

That's all true. And it does seem like the specter of the Nielsio-Borodog combo still haunts this forum (let's not forget the glory of AlexM and zan nen, though). These days I'm like -3 economic, -1.5 social on the old political compass. Another boring centrist tankie, a social democrat with liberal-socialist goals. I'm going to go listen to the LCD Soundsystem song "Losing My Edge" and eat french toast.

You couldn't find a Tweet of this could you.

FYI if you are looking for a new troll/performance art project, you could start tweeting all of your posts and post by embedding the tweet here. It's not like any of your posts are longer than 140 characters anyways.

The Romans once had something like 49 emperors in an 80 year stretch before and during the Crisis of the Third Century, a majority of whom died violently or were usurped by military coups. Note the empire lasted like another 200 years after that although certainly withered.

Also this time period you reference was during what we in US call the Gilded Age (or alternatively, the last half of the Victorian Era in the British Empire) and then subsequently the transition and end of the Progressive Era; basically global social, political and economic phenomenon that played out all over the Western world. A period many commentators and people have noted is quite similar to our own times: relative global peace and prosperity for a long stretch at the end of the 19th century which was followed by great stratification of wealth and marked increase in inequality at the beginning of the 20th century, which was then followed by intense political turmoil, strident revolutionary and reactionary politics, boom and bust economic cycles, and then eventually hugely destructive and deadly genocides, mass deprivation and global world wars.

Sleep well.

Actually the post I made started out as a response to another post (I think that post by Autocratic) about Putin as "maybe the person who extracted the most wealth" or something to that effect. To find people who were richer than the top estimates of Putin's wealth you have to go back to Rockefeller and Carnegie who were worth $340B and $310B in today's dollars respectively.

I wanted to tie that in with other stuff and make a bigger point, but I lost steam and got derailed on assassinations.

Today the LA Times ran a large story on pay-to-stay jails. There are relatively a tiny number of spaces/inmates involved and don't get me wrong, I think the jails that are the problem are the rest of them, not the ones where you pay to not have the constant threat of violence from inmates and guards. But, the ability to pay, in one case as much $251 per night, to stay in a nicer jail is quite disturbing.

I'm not much of a drinker, but to those of you who are, Happy Purim!

I've never been religious, but owing to showing up to college one semester with no place to live I ended up renting a room in a Chabad boarding house one semester. On Purim it was like Orthodox Animal House. The only Orthodox men who weren't blind drunk were two who had translated the passage as "intoxicated" instead of "drunk" and they took acid.

They clearly could give a **** if dudes fall and die. When you don't care about death I would imagine military stuff is way easier.

Ha. I celebrated Purim once with a performance of Cristiano Giuseppe Lidarti's "Esther" oratorio, but while we had the costumes and the booing, we sadly lacked the drunkenness. No one bothered to clue in the goyim.

Author of Sapiens on Ezra Kline show says problem with UBI will be a problem of meaning, and that drugs and video games will be the replacement for work (discussion is in last 10 mins).
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/...60day-49284945

I guess i don't get it. People on unemployment, welfare, and food stamps are doing drugs and video games all day? If we gave people that stuff whether they had a job or not the employed people would quit to do drugs? Can't they just lose their jobs right now and get to basically the same place?

Yeah, I agree with this. I've had a bit of not working time in my life, it's not good for you. People with initiative or who are passionate about stuff will be fine, but that's true under any imaginable system. People who need help finding meaning in their lives will be ****ed. I have no idea what the solution is.

Haven't listened yet but knowing Harari and seeing the summary from simplicitus, it seems like the solution is drugs and video games, or you know, stimulation and chemicals to alter your senses. So Brave New World territory then.

He recommends three books: Guns, Germs and Steele; Chimpanzee Politics; and Brave New World.

Sure; having read all three, they seem like a fair selection for understanding tomorrow. I think we even had a thread on Guns Germs and Steel here before. Definitely worth everyone's time imo. Chimpanzee Politics is probably the most necessary urgent reading for understanding the Trumpening of America imo.

Anyway, I did listen to the podcast. The conclusion that most struck me was, forgetting UBI for the moment, I don't feel confident anyone has it nailed where AI is headed. And that was the most fundamental question about the viability of humans, our purpose, our economic value and utility in the future -- and I don't think you could glean much from that conversation even if it was interesting.

I have a little heuristic which is that confidence goes down and risk/uncertainty goes up the more that the tone of the conversation is indistinguishable from what clueless stoned people would sound like.

That is, if you were to listen to two experts talk about something and they are virtually and substantively indistinguishable from non-experts who are mostly clueless about the topic, but high as a ****ing kite and so relatively inhibited to just say whatever comes to the top of their minds -- you know that NO ONE is confident about the subject matter. That the experts can't really delineate themselves from the musings of people who are just high.

As far as I can tell Ezra and Harari eventually devolved into the viability of AI Yoga teachers in the economy 50-300 years from now and neither really said much you would bet on. It basically sounded like what a buddy and I might talk about if we got baked and then just sat around and bullshitted about the economy in 50 years. That suggests to me these guys probably aren't experts or if they are, no one can say much with certainty.

Ezra: It seems to me that people just innately like yoga teachers.
Harari: yez, Ezra, dat is true, but more importantly in za futures it could be possible that people will come to love their AI yoga teachers. It is very very hard for a taxi driver to transition from driving za taxi to become the great yoga teacher, but za AI could learn to be a great yoga teacher. Millions of textile workers in Bangladesh cannot metamorphose into 3D printers either.
Ezra: well they might program the robots and maintain them if they have a long time to learn

Uh, OK guys, good talk.

I think a Butlerian Jihad is more likely than AI yoga teachers.