Good comment! (Sorry, not on here a lot)

An important reminder and a good counter example. That said…this is petty and clearly unethical, and also strikes me as quite a different phenomenon from the kind of open corruption we are talking about with the conservative justices.

I’m not sure. It’s partly just that Alito is a selfish, lonely, bitter, viciously bigoted person. The progressive justices don’t seem to be having a problem following the ethics rules.

The most interesting piece of this for me is that the “gender politics index” is an even stronger predictor of Trumpy support than the “modern sexism index.” The gender politics piece is outrage politics - it’s culture-war, cult of victimhood stuff with minimal substantive claims attached. And that’s what most strongly predicts voting preferences.

What that means to me is that, as with everything that makes the news coming out of high profile republicans, their positions are utterly cynical and calculated to induce fear-based rage voting, rather than a reflection of a sincerely held set of moral and cultural beliefs.

… well, for one thing, your numbers are a little bit off there. The US is sent about $75 billion to Ukraine, not $100 trillion.

The aid check situation sucked, but that was very much a congress problem caused by the most conservative Dems (one of whom has since left the party).

More to the point, I feel confused by your answer: what is it that you don’t buy? You genuinely feel there’s a moral equivalence across all politicians?

I don’t agree. This is a very South Park perspective. Yes, all politicians engage in bribery, corruption, and double dealing. No, the parties are not morally equivalent.

Biden has protected his son, but he has consistently displayed an eagerness to help people and to pass useful, popular laws that save lives and shift money downward in the economic pyramid.

Trump passed a tax cut for people with private jets and GW Bush killed 300,000 innocent civilians. It’s insane to pretend there’s a moral equivalence here.

I agree that cashing in is at least important part of this. As I understand it, however, past a certain point creating and using LLMs is in fact extremely expensive. That’s why GPT4 limits user interactions, for example. I also think that the more restricted these tools are in general, the better for everyone. It’s absolutely possible to use them in positive ways, but as it stamps they are mostly just flooding the internet with garbage at killing low level content jobs.

Yeah. Supreme is the ultimate example, but also stuff like yeezees. And far be it from me to judge those more fashionable than myself. But most streetwear / hype stuff is just normal stuff but really shit quality and with the price upped by an order of magnitude b/c of intense social media FOMO. So, so dumb

Microsoft Word is a bad piece of software that is poorly designed, laughably unoptimized, and mostly dysfunctional. It’s like a passenger car with seven wheels arranged in an irregular septagon, a 1 gallon gas tank, and a kitchen stool for a seat.

Also hype clothes are a tremendous waste and reveal the hollowness and meaninglessness that underlies most fashion

The UK isn’t even the best example of this. Denmark. Does it better. Campaign posters have to follow a specific format, can only be posted in specific places, and all candidates are publicly funded. Elections are cheap, quick, and (relatively) honest. Plus it’s much harder to become a celebrity politician, or an extremely rich one.