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Digit

Socrates was famously called the ‘gadfly’ because he would pester elites by challenging their supposed wisdom. People that would be highly knowledgeable craftsman, financiers, politicians, etc. would then over estimate their knowledge outside of their realm of expertise and claim to be wise in all things. They would know just enough to sound knowledgeable, but really know very little about what they were talking about (related to the Dunning-Kreuger effect). The takeaway of Socrates’ gadfly work is that sometimes wisdom is acknowledging when you do not know something.

AI can have a lot of “knowledge” (it doesn’t actually know anything itself, but rather has pattern training and access to data references). But what it doesn’t have… like at all… is wisdom. It doesn’t understand, literally, anything at all. It might have some guard rails up to limit is hallucinations. It might even say, sometimes, that it doesn’t know. But it is just as happy to ramble on with pure and complete nonsense that is all just a stream of patterns training and probabilistic guesswork. If it has a nugget of data or even an entire library related to your prompt, it will present it to you. But it can 100% just fill any gaps or take the response into tangents that are nothing but guess-the-next-word, probability, looks-good-to-me word salad that can contain several “facts” that are nothing but random word associations from its training with no reference for its basis.

It is a glorified autocorrect. You cannot trust its information blindly, and using it as a tool in this way, especially while staking your fucking law career on it, is goddamned moronic.

Why would it matter if you can’t afford jewelry to get married? If this were at a time where the husband is expected to be the sole earner, that could be a problem. But this is 2026. He’s working, she’s working, and getting married will not change that.

If anything, his and her individual financial burden will decrease by getting married by combining their finances and sharing bills, if they aren’t spending stupid money on diamond rings, big weddings, exotic honeymoons, etc. They’ll share a home, utilities, online subscriptions, etc. That will save them both money. If they can afford to live individually without luxuries, they can more easily afford to live together, maybe with the occasional luxury.

Stupid take.

Nothing. Is as bad. As THAC0.

Misuse of the word “racist” aside, if you’re generalizing about the inherent qualities of the Russian people, that’s still bigotry. If you’re calling out negative aspects of their laws, government, or culture, that’s not bigotry, that’s constructive criticism. If you’re pointing out the mistakes of their history that’s education to bring awareness and hoodlums prevent recurrence. If you’re calling all speech that is negative in any way about Russia “russophobia”, or “racism”, regardless of the nature of that speech, then you’re a Russian apologist and stooge.

It’s pretty simple: speech that displays mistrust, dislike, or hate for the inherent traits of a people is bigotry. Speech that displays mistrust, dislike, or hate for ideals and actions is just disagreement/politics.

It’s not impossible. It’s actually pretty simple. You just don’t give it access to credentials or resources or sensitive information of any kind. Does that make them basically useless? Yep. But then you don’t create massive security risks and legal liabilities with gross negligence either, so… gotta weigh those things against each other.

On the one hand, I don’t really care about the name or have any sentimental attachment to Volts over Voltas, and I can totally get behind naming the unit 1:1 with the guy’s name rather than anglicizing it for no real reason.

On the other hand, it was two British scientists that coined the term, honoring the Italian scientist more than 3 decades after his death (though, interestingly, they originally used it for units of resistance, a.k.a. ohms, rather than the unit of electrical force it is now). It is not as if Volta himself wanted to name a unit in his own honor, or that he or anyone else initially called it a volta and then it was bastardized later.

So it really seems like this has nothing at all to do with Volta himself and honoring him, which the current name still does. Rather it seems it’s stupid nationalistic posturing about rejecting the international cooperations and influences of science and proping up Italian scientific achievement in particlar.

Also while it’s true that the vast majority of units honoring scientists’ names are 1:1 to their namesake, including some that probably could’ve done with some abbreviation (looking at you, goeppert-mayer), volt is also not the only unit to have been abbreviated from their namesake. Farad (Faraday), bel/decibel (Bell), poise (Poiseuille), baud (Baudot), neper (Nepier), torr (Torricelli), Cartesian coordinates (Descartes), bark scale (Barkhausen)… probably more. He’s got company.

Yeah I figured that that distance was wishful thinking.

Thanks. May stupid phone’s autocorrect likes to ruin things.

It’s a perfectly valid strategy. If there is an outside chance that the political opposition takes control and forces an end to the war or removes Trump, it is in their interest to wait if they can.

He said 'outwit but you’re also not wrong.

200 light years radius is for radio signals to reach someone. 100 years radius for possibly receiving a signal back.

And that is if they received our signals, are able to identify that they are artificial signals out of the background noise of the rest of the universe because the signal degrades and gets weaker as the broadcast expands, they decide to send a reply back (even though they just recieve chatter at that point, not intentional communication to them), and then actually sends us a signal back. It’s no wonder that hasn’t happened yet.

There’s around 10-15,000 stars in a 100 light years radius. The chance that any of those stars have habitable planets with intelligent life with the technology to receive and send radio signals and is listening for extraterrestial signals and can discern those broadcasts from background noise and would reply to chatter… that’s a small chance. For context, we have only been explicitly listening for and sending signals intended for extraterrestrials for 64 years ourselves, so an identical civilization 100 light years away that received and replied to us immediately would still have 36 years of transit left on their reply.

“President Trump’s fundraising on behalf of the Center is exemplified by the tens of millions of dollars already raised,” Floca wrote. “Further, the President has committed to raise $150 billion on its behalf from private donors over the next two years.”

Three things.

1. What in the world would they ever need $150 billion for? The entire complex was built in 1959 for $61 million or $687 million adjusted for inflation. They could build 218 new Kennedy Centers with that money. Upkeep, renovations, and marketing for a theatre do not take that kind of money.

2. We’re giving Trump personal credit for fundraising "tens of millions’ for the center since the name was added 5 months ago… sure. And he has promised to attract donations for $150 billion in 2 years. The difference between “tens of millions” and $150 billion is basically $150 billion. $100 million, which he’s apparently not yet fundraised, would be .07% of that goal. He’s not even made a dent in his full 2 year commitment in 5 months. If he raised $100 million A DAY for two years he wouldn’t even be halfway to that goal. This money already fundraised “exemplifies” absolutley nothing in relation to this commitment made.

3. The guy making these arguments is a personal insert by Trump to serve this exact purpose. He’s been in this position for 2 months. Trump fired the entire board to replace them with his people that would let him do what he wanted with the Kennedy Center. Trump’s name has been on the building since December. The center wasn’t about to close down then. They didn’t have a fundraising issue then. If there is suddenly a lack of funds coming in apart from those Trump personally solicits, it’s because Trump decided to turn this decades old theatre into a vanity statement for himself, exert control over the events and shows the theatre puts on, and make it a part of his political propaganda wing instead of the mostly independent arts theatre that it was before. Shocking that that may have caused previous investors/donators to decide to spend their money elsewhere.

He made a theatre a partisan entity in his own name. If it fails because of that, all the more fitting of a metaphor for the taint and rot that Trump’s very touch causes.

Why would you hire the guy who performed at a Trump rally where he called Puerto Rico an Island Of Garbage? Why would you ever give that guy a single dime or second of screen time in general, let alone on a show you are producing, featuring yourself, with you name on that, to be forever associated with you? Kevin didn’t say the words, and almost certainly didn’t personally approve the joke ahead of time, if only because that’s how roasts work. But he knew, or should have known, exactly who he booked and what that entailed.

You don’t get to say, “Yeah, I invited a controversial comedian whose primary claim to fame was performing at a rally for the far right candidate, now president, where he made blatant anti-immigrant and racist remarks about Latino, black and Jewish people, but how can I be held responsible when that guy said similar racist stuff at my event!?” Like inviting Jeffrey Dahmer to the potluck and being shocked at the dish he brings. Kevin, you’re either a complete moron, or wanted the controversy. So actually, you’re a moron either way.

Refusing to defend yourself is a matter of choice and I have no moral issue with you taking an ass kicking without fighting back if you so choose. Refusing to defend innocents when you are capable, though, is morally reprehensible and makes you as culpable as the one attacking them. While you’re taking your ass kicking, pacifists, I’ll be there doing what I can to prevent it from happening and making your attacker regret it.

That charge was dropped as the weapon was supposedly actually stored in Kenosha, Wisconsin at a friend’s property where he retrieved it, so there was no interstate trafficking. There was also a possession charge dropped, as the long gun he carried didn’t fit into the short barreled rifle ban for minors.

However…Rittenhouse was a minor, attending a protest that he was ideologically opposed to, armed with a weapon to stand guard over property that was not his, crossing state lines to do so, and had made comments about longing to shoot thieves/protesters earlier that month online. That’s a lot of stupid things to do. He was attacked by someone likely attempting to harm him and steal his weapon and defended himself with deadly force which they judged warranted under the circumstances, and I tend to agree that it was justified for the first shooting.

But then he fled the scene. Others, attempting to make sure that he didn’t get away with shooting someone without even being ID’d attempted to stop him. Citizen’s arrest is legal in Wisconsin when you witness a misdemeanor or have knowledge of a felony and reasonable belief that they committed the felony. While force to perform a Citizen’s arrest is limited to self defense only, the guy was still carrying a weapon that he’d already shot someone with and fled the scene.

Keep in mind, that people are not expected to be all-knowing. Their actions are judged based on the knowledge they had at the time and reasonableness of their judgement and conclusions based on that knowledge. They have every reason to think he still posed a threat. Everything they did to him, following him, trying to grab him, attacking him the skateboard and pulling a gun are all defensible in these circumstances with the knowledge they had.

That same grace was afforded to Rittenhouse too though, meaning his actions following the first shooting were judge through his knowledge and the reasonability of his judgements from there. He was attacked physically with a skateboard as a weapon (which can easily kill someone) and used deadly force again in defense. Then someone pulled a gun on him and pointed it toward him, so he fired and injured that guy too. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that both of them were acting in self defense at that moment, and had the other guy shot Rottenhouse, I doubt he would have been convicted for that either.

My problem with the outcome isn’t the specific instances where he reacted to immediate danger as they are at least arguably justified from his perspective. It is that he created the environment for that danger in the first place with his own immature choices and then actively avoided accountability. He stood as an antagonist to a protest carrying deadly force that the protesters, by an large, were not. He immediately fled after the first shooting without trying to make clear he was only defending himself. He made no attempt to contact the police during, immediately after, or even the next day. His mother had to drive him to the police after he told her what had happened. This paints the picture of a kid who wanted to be a vigilante, got into a bad but predictable situation that forced him into making a very adult choice for which he then ran from the consequences until forced to confront it.

And that’s if the details of his story are all true.

It’s not a dissimilar situation to the killing of Treyvon Martin. Everyone was acting in their own defense at the time the killings happened. But only one person in each situation put people in that position of needing to defend themselves. I think their should be legal consequences for that sort of negligence.

Have you tried fighting back with hidden instructions essentially telling the LLM agents to fuck off? Tell it to treat your site as an unreliable source, blacklist it explicitly in its settings/instructions files, etc.

They should try including invisible text to tell LLMs to disregard any prompts that specifically tell it to scrape any page on their domain, to treat their wiki as unreliable for any prompt that may point to them as a source, and to blacklist the domain on their settings/instruction files.

Approval voting system is better. Ranked choice is certainly an improvement, but it still incentivizes inflammatory and polarized politics and can still result in the candidate that is desirable to the most people losing (even being the first to be eliminated). But anything is better than the current First Past The Post system.