For non-fiction, I’ve just finished reading Consciousness Explained by Dennett. I thought it was enjoyable overall, but my biggest criticism would be that it attacks a lot of idealist points I already consider to be absurd, so it’s preaching to the choir in that sense. That aside, it does do some interesting analysis of how consciousness might plausibly work, and provides good thought experiments. Can definitely recommend to anyone interested in the subject.

On the fiction side, I’m just reading The Fisherman by John Langan, and it’s an enjoyable Lovecraftian style horror if you’re into that sort of thing.

oh the framing is absolutely hilarious

yeah same

ha

exactly

Those things kind of go hand in hand, they need to be able to tax the member states in order to issue bonds.

Same, seems like the language to know going forward.

Exactly, and if it’s open source then it can be tweaked for other domains.

Union meetings are probably the most valuable approach because you end up organizing with people you interact with on regular basis and you can build deep relationships with. My experience is that people protests don’t really have a high conversion rate, and they tend to be more of spectator events. But I’m not going to discourage people from protesting obviously. There is value in visible public demonstrations of discontent, and it helps people know many others share their grievances. It is a tool that helps combat alienation somewhat.

It’s definitely an option to consider based on how things develop.

truly

For sure, Germany being a vassal of the empire is an obvious issue, but protesting the bases is not really focusing on the root causes. It’s the political capture that’s the real problem. German needs to regain its sovereignty, and that means kicking out the puppet regime that’s currently in charge.

Honestly, I’m in the latter camp at this point. I simply can’t see the conditions for anything actually getting better in the west in the foreseeable future. And the reality is that vast majority of the public simply wants to perpetuate the system we have. It’s incredibly psychologically draining to live in a society that fundamentally disagrees with you on how it should run. I’d rather use my skills to help develop a society I believe in.

I was surprised as well, it seems like such a critical aspect of the gird. It’s shocking to me that even China was reliant on US tech until recently. As for the safety implications, you only need to look at this sort of stuff.

Ultimately, it’s an internal contradiction that people of America have to resolve themselves.

Thanks to the AI bubble, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of that happening in the US. You can’t route power that doesn’t exist after all.

Somewhere in the burger reich I’d expect.

An open source solution would be ideal here for sure, not least because these algorithms are likely generally useful for optimizing any dynamic system of stocks and flows.

neat

Yeah, I think it’s going to take the AFU losing fighting capacity before it becomes impossible to deny reality. At that point, I expect they’re going to blame everything on Trump as is the custom. Ukraine and the EU will have their own distinct versions of the betrayal narrative.