Darzin

This isn't a case of the rich getting away with anything though. We have charges for manslaughter and gross negligence for a reason and this case fits those to a T. Plus he didn't get away with it cause he's ya know dead. As for the waivers, waivers usually hold up less in court then people think and don't absolve people from negligence which this case certainly has. It's very likely Ocearngate will be found liable, but I don't think there will be much to take from Oceangate in the end. The company wasn't profitable and was barely scraping by. A big reason for some of the cut corners is they simply didn't have the money to do better. They just didn't have the cashflow for what they were doing.

Yes but not because AI will make us dumb but rather because of the paperclip maximizer problem, any sufficiently intelligent AI programmed for not matter how much of a simple task is going to realize that allowing itself to be turned off will stop it's goal no matter how mundane. I'm not someone who thinks AI is going to doom humanity but I do think there is a non zero chance of it. Chat GPT can't even control their own primitive barely even AI in the bounds they've set for it.

I welcome this decision; a little racial discrimination as a treat was never going to be the permanent answer to America's underperforming minorities. I think @James Arryn made some very good points and if it was 1968 I'd be in 100% agreement with introducing it for the next 25 years. But I think now it's time to sunset affirmative action. Not because America's racial problems are all fixed but because first it is racial discrimination and we should be careful with that even for good and historical reasons, but more importantly because affirmative action has served as a band aid to hide serious structural problems in America. Black and Latino students massively underperform in test scores in college attendance rates in income and virtually very other category you can think of. In a large part because schools that serve primarily black and brown students are worse and particularly inner city schools have failed to the point where any education at all is extremely hard. The average white family has more than $100,000 dollars in assets the average Black family has less than $40,000. As long as these things persist we are not going to see a natural balancing of college admissions, at least not at elite institutions. And these ivy league schools are specifically engaged in elite production they are by definition highly exclusive. You can't make elite colleges "equitable and egalitarian" It cuts against their very purpose which is to create a highly exclusive elite. Take the best students, give them the best education, and then they go on to the best jobs. This is by definition a hierarchical and exclusionary system there is a gaping chasm between an Ivy league education and equity. Now they don't take the best students that's the whole point of affirmative action and legacies to get a mix that looks like America mix them with some old money and connections (legacies) and create a class of Ubermensch to go out and conquer. I'd argue it'd be better for society as a whole if the Harvard graduating class had Asians wildy overrepresented because it would be more meritocratic but also it would lead to more drawing of the elite from other institutions the kind the other 99.99% of Americans can aspire too. This careful Byzantine gerrymandering to get the right racial balance creates tons of weird externalities and effects. Imagine telling a Laotian kid (whose community performs on par with Latinos) That he can't get into Harvard because the Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese kids do very well and they are all lumped in as Asian. And it doesn't even do what it wants. The number of black students at Harvard from average Black families is still essentially zero. The Black students are drawn from the winner class of Black and America and increasingly African immigrants. An extremely smart and driven white or Asian kid from an average white or Asian family can likely get into an Ivy, an extremely smart and driven black kid from an average black family likely can't even with affirmative action. If we really want to be equitable we should open up the ivy's and help everyone who has the ability get an excellent education. Since we can't do that we should at least get rid of these racial quotas and let the chips fall where they may.

Oh hmm well that does put a damper on things.

Another interesting thing, is that at full strength Wagner is likely stronger than the Belarus army. Belarus has more bodies but Wagner is a well paid, well trained, and has a lot of real world combat experience. Not sure if that will matter but it's good to note.

I feel like in the US most well educated white people agree with those premises. It's more the uneducated white people pushing back. Though that may be more regional, but where I'm from every good educated white person is very keen to self flagellate about how much they've benefitted from slavery whereas dudes with a plumbing business couldn't care less.

Apparently not and the criminal case has not been dropped either. Maybe the reason he stopped as he appeared to be winning is the Kremlin had agents among those close to him and forced him too. A coup within the coup as it were. It would make a lot of things that don't add up make sense. But whatever happened this isn't over yet.

We definitely need more details something is off here but who knows what. It' possible Putin is capitulating and staying on as just a figurehead but Mao shows why that's a dangerous proposition.

Maybe not, A lot of them seem to be not fighting rather than defecting. From the video reports I've seen which is not a great sample but still. This speed run towards Moscow honestly reminds me a lot of the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan. With a small group of motivated fighters blitzing across the country. Russia's secrutiy forces may just not have the morale to take on motivated battle hardened veterans. Especially when the outcome is in such flux.

Russia is almost the definition of a nominal republic. Putin even had to respect term limits that were in the constitution before. It's not just air assaults I'm surprised the bulk of the army is still in Ukraine considering the Wagner coup is an existential threat to Putin's regime and even his life. It's shocking that the totally optional Ukrainian war is continuing when enough soldiers exist to decisively defeat Wagner.

I don't think Wagner is doomed without defectors. It depends on the quality of the FSB internal troops and National Guard stationed there. These are green third rate soldiers going against Russia's elite. Plus Wagner is likely pretty motivated if they win they're gonna get a huge payout if they lose their going to be shot.

I don't think it actually has much to do with them being rich so much as the unique nature of the story. The Thai boys in the cave was also a huge story despite them being super poor. If these billionaire's had been on a yacht that caught fire it would have been local news at best. These odd race against the clock stories have an appeal to our human nature. I got a bit sucked into this despite it being a bit morbid, but it's an interesting problem with a human element, it appeals to our lizard brains. Also it's been a bit disturbing seeing the number of people on Reddit reveling in their death because they are rich.

There are only a handful of human craft that can even get down that deep. Military submarines and rescue vessels don't operate at anywhere near that depth. It's a miracle they were able to get anything down to find them at all. Though it seems based on these reports there was nothing to rescue as it may have been crushed on the decent. On the other hand them finding it near the Titanic may indicate they started the tour got suck for some reason and the Titan failed due to sustained pressure. We'll likely no more after the press conference.

There's an interesting podcast from one of the writers of the Simpsons who went to visit the Titanic on Oceangate's sub. It's worth a listen to. It really emphasizes how fly by night the whole thing was. https://bleav.com/shows/what-am-i-doing-here-with-mike-reiss/episodes/episode-40-the-titanic/

Yeah... sometimes I wonder if everything after 2015 hasn't been a dream.

Something something... all of this has has happened before all of this will happen again. What before determines what comes after and death came swirling down.

Because for one they don't believe that, they believe it's a lie spread by "the matrix". But for two and more importantly Tate has performed some kind of witchcraft or alchemy where despite being a pimp he's not regarded as a pimp, but rather a cool bro who has a harem of girls because he's so alpha and awesome. Why this is I dunno but it's a huge part of his success.

Maybe Elon Musk isn't but it's hard to argue Heartofice isn't when he's unfailing polite and significantly more moderate on these issues then the Republican party. They idea that he couldn't possibly believe what he says when millions of people believe just that is just willful blindness.

I dunno that this out of the facist playbook, so much as it's the province of tin pot dictators everywhere.

Russia has a flat tax, so it's something you can do. It's just not something that would generally have good effects.

Yes if we excluded every institution that used to oppress the LGBT community organizations at pride would basically be limited to gay bars and a few hippies. Cops at pride is a good thing, it shows that those with alternative sexualities have been excepted into the fold of civil society. If if you expect the cops to investigate hate crimes and protect the LGBT community you should welcome them at pride. The desire to exclude them comes from the fact that the cops were the "baddies" at stonewall but this feeds into a kind of leftist myopia were the cops must always be the agents of heteronormativity and the gays must always be outsiders against the state. It's telling that no one ever argues that politicians shouldn't be at pride despite all they have done historically to harm LGBT people。

I think the whale mothers are likely something Bakker thought up when he first created the series and didn't revise but who really knows.

You 'member when the libs fantasized about Melania being a secret resistance person? I 'member.

You stop him at the ballot box. I for one think it's a very good thing that criminal charges can't stop someone from being elected.

Social media was pretty open before the war and none of that happened. The audience for state media is boomers who want to believe what it says. Millions of Russians already don't believe state run media as credible they just don't believe anything else is credible either. The politically engaged westernized Russians you want to reach already have VPNs anyways. There is a lot less of a bubble then you think, they just don't care.