globalincident

[globalincident]

Sometimes the truth looks ridiculous. Sometimes the US really is being run by a fascist, sometimes an important figure in government really did just make a Nazi salute. When a person is bad, you shouldn't bury that fact in the details, you should declare it in the headline for all to read, even if it does look ridiculous.

French royalist newspaper progressively freaking out as Napoleon gets closer to Paris

So I don't know if it is a true story but it is hilarious. In his Impressions de Voyage, Alexandre Dumas (who also wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) recolls reading a few years ago the royalist (and so) anti-Napoleon newspaper Le Moniteur. Every day, he notes the changing tone of headlines as Napoleon, who fled from the island of Elba, approaches Paris :

The cannibal left his lair

The Corsican Ogre has just reached Golfe-Juan

The tiger has arrived at Gap

The monster spent the night in Grenoble

The tyrant has crossed Lyon

The usurper was seen sixty leagues from the capital

Bonaparte is advancing at great strides but will never enter Paris

Napoleon will be under our ramparts tomorrow

The Emperor arrived at Fontainebleau

His Imperial and Royal Majesty arrived yesterday in his Tuileries castle among his loyal subjects

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You could make that argument. The alternative is that you argue that if something is bad, you shouldn't bow to pressure to weaken your stance. If you think Napolean is a monster, you shouldn't stay quiet about that, you should keep calling him a monster. It's worth noting that ultimately Le Moniteur became a major propaganda mouthpiece for Napolean; an important voice against him was silenced before he had even entered the city.

French royalist newspaper progressively freaking out as Napoleon gets closer to Paris

So I don't know if it is a true story but it is hilarious. In his Impressions de Voyage, Alexandre Dumas (who also wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) recolls reading a few years ago the royalist (and so) anti-Napoleon newspaper Le Moniteur. Every day, he notes the changing tone of headlines as Napoleon, who fled from the island of Elba, approaches Paris :

The cannibal left his lair

The Corsican Ogre has just reached Golfe-Juan

The tiger has arrived at Gap

The monster spent the night in Grenoble

The tyrant has crossed Lyon

The usurper was seen sixty leagues from the capital

Bonaparte is advancing at great strides but will never enter Paris

Napoleon will be under our ramparts tomorrow

The Emperor arrived at Fontainebleau

His Imperial and Royal Majesty arrived yesterday in his Tuileries castle among his loyal subjects

[globalincident]

Violet Beauregarde should‘ve won Wonka’s chocolate factory

Have I watched the movie in the last decade or more? No. Do I have iron clad evidence to support my argument? Yes.

1. She’s the most knowledgeable about candy. She’s committed to it, and knows her stuff. When Wonka holds up a little yellow piece across the room, she recognizes it immediately. She was able to switch to candy bars for the sake of the contest, so we know she has personal discipline and is goal oriented. Also, two major projects play directly into her strong suits: the 3-course-meal gum that Wonka failed to make safe (gum) and the neverending gobstopper (longevity).

2. She’s the most fit to run a business. Violet is competitive, determined, hard working, and willing to take risks. Her father is a small town car salesman and politician, so she could easily pick up knowledge and support from him. (Veruca’s dad is also a business man, and in a compatible market (nuts), but it’s made very clear that Veruca has no respect or knowledge of business practices or hard work.)

3. She’s the most sympathetic to the Oompa Loompas. She critiques Veruca when Veruca demands to buy one. More importantly, Wonka has been testing the 3-course-meal gum that ‘always goes wrong’ on Oompa Loompas while he presumably just watches. Violet is ready to put herself on the front line, instead of treating the Oompa Loompas as disposable, and would therefore be a better boss.

4. Her personality ‘flaw’ is the most fitting for the company. In the moralizing Oompa Loompa song, they just say ‘gum is pretty cool, but it’s not socially acceptable to chew it all day‘. The thing is, we already know that she can stop if she wants, because she already did that to win the golden ticket. And yeah, she is defensive about the perceived impoliteness of her hobby (like when her mother tries to shame her about her habit during a televised interview) but the obsession with candy and neglect of social norms is EXACTLY what Wonka is all about. This is on brand.

5. Her misstep in the factory is reasonable. Wonka shows everyone a candy he’s very proud of. Violet is like “oh sick, that’s gum, my special interest.” Wonka then pulls a “WRONG! It’s amazing gum!” In the very moments before she takes the gum Wonka has mislead her just to belittle her. So when he’s like “I wouldn’t do that” why should she give a shit what he has to say? She’s not like Charlie over here who’s all “Sure Gramps, let’s stay behind while the tour leaves and secretly drink this thing that has been explicitly stated to fill you with gas and is too powerful for safe consumption, oh and also I just saw what happened to Violet so I actually KNOW what this stuff can be capable of” Also, Violet is not selfish about her experience, she tells everyone what she’s tasting and feeling, and everyone is eager to hear it. Taking a personal risk to share knowledge with everyone. Violet is Prometheus: fact.

So Augustus contaminates the chocolate river. Charlie sneaks around and contaminates the vent walls. Veruca destroys and disrupts the workspace. Mike knows exactly what will happen to him and transports/shrinks himself deliberately. Violet had no idea what the gum could potentially do to her, and caused no harm to anyone or anything but herself.

Lastly: Can you imagine Charlie filling Wonka’s shoes? That passive, naive boy? Violet is already basically Wonka. She’s passionate, sarcastic, candy-obsessed, free thinking, and a total firecracker. She’s even better than Wonka, because she doesn’t endanger others.

Violet should’ve been picked to inherit the chocolate factory.

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I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say

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look at this stock photo

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For years I've found it vaguely weird that human children are so difficult to raise. When I poke at the confusion, my brains says something like, "It seems non-predetermined that human kids would be all three of (1) energetic, (2) doing random/'insane' things all the time, (3) emotionally volatile/needy. Like, if you rolled a random sapient species 1000 times, I think humans will be in the top quartile of children-difficulty."

But once I spelled that out to myself, it seemed obvious that (1) and (2) fall out of sapience. Compared to non-sapient animals, sapient animals probably want enormous amount of training data early in life (plus feedback from adults, which will somewhat contribute to (3)).

This leads me to the prediction that sapient life forms across the universe will tend have the trait of "having been difficult to parent".

(Obvious counterexample to keep in mind: octopuses are quite smart and have no relationship with their parents)

Taking an even greater leap, I weakly predict that fertility crashes like ours might be a relatively common among sapient species that invent contraception.

[globalincident]

At a big stretch of the imagination, maybe he was just waving?

okay he definitely wasn’t going for a Nazi salute (why would he do that? The fascism isn’t stored in the salute) but what was musk going for? I’ve heard Roman salute but that still sounds weird. He just looked like an imbecile

[globalincident]

If you oil, ink, lacquer, paint, varnish, dye, baste, or glaze something, you apply a liquid. So all those are kind I guess. But if you brew something you create it, so is a brew a kind or cruel liquid?

Since watering means giving something water but milking means extracting milk from something that must means that water's default is to give but milk's default is to take. So water must be inherently kind while milk is cruel

[globalincident]

They did it the same time they decided to serif the letter f. The reason for serifs is disputed.

Seriously though were people in the past just constantly giggling at the word “suck” being written with a long s like was that a thing do you think

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"This is the Democrats fault, somehow" is a phrase you can apply to many things correctly and also many things incorrectly, but if you say it all the time you can get a bunch of people to clap for you who tell the difference either

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[globalincident]

Possibly this is a result of text encoding errors? I feel like with access to more placeholder text I could figure this out. The letters look like they appear in groups of three, which could be an artefact of the encoding.

Top: the Star List menu in Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Bottom: the internal layout files for the game contain placeholder text for many elements that have no associated text in-game whatsoever, with some text being very bizarre. The placeholder text for the star icons in the Star List is "77eOOO777nnn7e7nnn7e7OOn 7eOO 77OO KeOO" in all languages.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: cometmedal

[globalincident]

But in a way, they're right. AI is a way of creating poor quality art very cheaply. In the past, if you wanted to obtain poor quality art very cheaply, you payed someone a very low rate to do it; this is the only portion of the workforce that is actually likely to lose their job because of AI, and therefore these are in fact the only artists you are materially supporting when you criticise AI.

i love how many AI art haters will with no self awareness whatsoever ask "ummm why don't you just underpay and exploit someone (probably in the global south) instead of using the evil words machine :/"

[globalincident]

i cant believe connie is a filthy homestuck

[globalincident]

Guess I should throw out some Gaza Ceasefire Thoughts - from a political history perspective it certainly is interesting:

-- As for the deal itself, it is pretty much "the best one could realistically hope for", though funnily enough the details aren't that surprising. Israel for some time has had very little strategy in Gaza (beyond "release the hostages or we keep blowing up random blocks"), and so them agreeing to these terms is the expected outcome. Hamas also lacked any real strategic options, but in the summer you could at least argue "the status quo of radicalizing the population and shredding Israeli reputation is beneficial", so you can see why both sides really weren't committing to anything before in the summer. Things have changed since then, though.

-- The straight-up-humiliating defeat of Hezbollah in the fall was a complete game-changer for the strategic situation. As much as Hamas had a strategy it was "wait for Hezbollah/Iran to carry the weight of the fight", and that was going not-awfully through the summer. Then Israel absolutely shattered Hezbollah to the point where their ability to control Lebanese politics is up-for-grabs, and any real thread to Israel is temporarily gone. Meanwhile Iran stacked that defeat with the revolution in Syria and their own military capacity losses, and while there is real tension in Iran between realist & radicalist factions, the current winds are blowing towards retreat. Combine that with the death of Sinwar, and the new Hamas leadership had no cards left to play. By the same token, Israel has few fights left to win.

-- This is why negotiations resumed in earnest in October/November, and right now you are seeing some pretty heavy exaggeration of the role of the Trump administration in this deal. It has been being hashed out for months, you can easily point to articles about progress throughout both of those months (example) and the Biden administration was heavily involved in the Doha talks. These things just take time, and both sides had a dramatic incentive shift recently. That is carrying the most weight here - talks were "90% complete" before any Trump reps arrived on the scene.

-- But the election certainly did play a role here, primarily because it was inducing uncertainty and changing incentives in the US. While it was going on you can see how both sides could "hope" that new administrations might let them gain an advantage, and understood that commitments from the Biden administration in August just weren't very meaningful. Additionally, while not very important the war was "an issue" in the election, and so the "action space" of politicians was shaped by that. Why not just...wait, and see how things go, right? Now there is no more reason to wait, you know what you got.

--I don't want to take all credit away from Trump on this, though. A theme I will continue to harp on, the "Imperial Presidency" has advantages. Biden was a perpetual faction appeaser, and you could credibly call his bluff on any decision around the war by going "you won't take the heat from your own party on this" from the left or the right. Trump can much more credibly claim "I don't give a fuck what I 'said on the campaign trail', I say what goes, make a deal or I will absolutely spite you". This is not a great strategy in a lot of contexts, but in foreign policy you need this sometimes. Dems really do need to take notes here, more unity in either direction and more strong brinksmanship from Biden would have been better.

--Now let's walk that back a bit - it is way easier for the Trump administration to play hardball. Elections make hard decisions much more difficult to pull off, as political factions can punish you more easily. The Dems have an asymmetric disadvantage here - they are inherently the "dove" party facing a topic where the median American voter is generally hawkish, and they are the party that contains a notable split within itself on the issue. Meanwhile Republicans all agree. No longer facing electoral pressure, it is much easier for Republicans to play a "Nixon goes to China" card and credibly browbeat Israel. No one will really doubt the Republicans are anti-Israel even if they do that, and Dems can't accuse them of foul play because the party itself is split on the topic. This is "unfair" in a certain sense, for sure, but such is politics.

--I would be assigning way less credulity to the complaints amoung the Israeli far-right about Trump or Netanyahu "betraying" them. The far-right in Israeli is a powerful force, for sure, but by no means do they command the majority. They want to annex the West Bank and all that, but most Israelis disagree, the military isn't on board, it would jeopardize US/Arab ties, etc. Never say never but that was not really in the cards - if it was they would have done it already. Slow-roll settlement expansion is the plan, that will continue, but meanwhile there is nothing left to do in Gaza. Netanyahu is of course going to say publicly "oh boo hoo my hands were tied by the Americans I'm so sorry" while he gets almost all of his realistic goals. This is politics 101 stuff - though if the approval vote on Thursday goes sour then I am wrong on this, part of why I am posting it today. (Also another reason to not assign too much credit to the Trump admin - easy to "bully" someone who wants to be bullied)

Okay done - hopefully the ceasefire sticks, obviously this has been a disastrous war for almost all involved, never look the imperfect status quo horse in the mouth. It isn't the world one would want but it is better than the one we have right now.