Liffguard

Back in 2016, PJ O'Rourke said about Hilary Clinton vs Donald Trump, "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters." I guess that's kind of how I feel about May. In fact, I've taken it to be a somewhat useful rubric for assessing how much and in what ways I disagree with someone. Some people I can't even disagree with as such, because we exist in effectively totally different reality spheres. There's definitely a large contingent of the current Tories who fall into that category.

It's an honest question. Terrorism is a notoriously slippery concept to define properly. Is there a clear distinction between a terrorist and a guerilla fighter? Is a guerilla fighter necesserily less morally praiseworthy than a uniformed soldier? Is the difference between terorrisim and "legitimate" military violence in the choice of target? Is it in possessing the sanction of a recognised state? Is a terrorist who suicide bombs a civilian street to be condemned and a military pilot who drops a bomb on a civilian street to be praised? All genuinely thorny questions IMO. Not as easy as praiseworthy soldiers and despicable terrorists.

First, what is terrorism? Secondly, even if we extend our special appreciation only to the uniformed armed personnel of legitimate states, does that include the invaders of Ukraine? Iraqi soldiers invading Kuwait?

Again, was that what I said? You said that you think soldiers are special because they put their lives on the line. I pointed out that lots of people put their lives on the line in pursuit of evil. Therefore, putting one's life on the line should not automatically be worthy of respect.

I didn't compliment their bravery, I pointed out they put their lives on the line. I was implying that the mere act of risking or sacrificing one's life is not inherently noble or worthy of respect. The respectability of an action also has to be judged in the context of the broader cause that the action is in aid of.

Did I say that?

The 9/11 bombers put their lives on the line as well. Russian soldiers are putting their lives on the line right now. Surely there also has to be some assessment of what someone is putting their life on the line for?

My girlfriend and I are flying into Austin for this one. Really hoping for clear skies, it's a long way to go to end up staring at clouds!

I've mentioned before I have zero problems with immigration and am explicitly in favour of global open borders. I also mentioned before I'm uncomfortable with the argument "immigration is good because who else is going to do our shit, badly paid jobs?" I suppose I'm also uncomfortable with the argument "immigration is good because it keeps our unsustainable economic order afloat for another twenty years or so." By all accounts, falling birth-rates are a global issue, and the globe's population grwoth seems to be consistently predicted to slow and then reverse. An economic system that relies on a bottom-heavy demographic pyramid seems to be on borrowed time. Politicians can either try to delay the inevitable for as long as possible, or we can start trying to make rational plans for how we can justly and equitably organise and run an ageing society.

A by-election isn't a "local" election, it's an election for national office. Foreign policy is entirely within the remit for a by-election campaign. The UK sells military supplies to Israel. Not a particularly enormous amount, but not nothing. It also hosts the facilities of some Israeli companies. Those arrangements can be subject to change, and that represents leverage. The UK also has a permanent security council vote and a certain amount of diplomatic clout. Again, not a huge amount, and probably less than many in this country would think or prefer, but not nothing. So no, the UK cannot unilaterally make Israel reverse course, but it does have tools to apply pressure, and to make Israel's current position somewhat less tenable. Again, it's not much but it's not nothing. Whether or not you agree that's a desirable policy course to pursue, or whether it would be worth the costs, other people are free to decide that it is a course they want to see pursued, and to signal that preference through their choice of representative. This very much isn't an endorsement of Galloway from me. Personally I think he's an opportunistic, self-serving grifter (aka a politician). But his being elected isn't necessarily an irrational choice by the people who voted for him. It signals a clear preference for a certain foreign policy direction. You might argue that the election of a single, effectively independent MP, is not going to have any effect on UK foreign policy, so why vote for him? And that's probably true I guess. But then, why vote for anyone who proposes anything outside the policy mainstream? Why bother to vote at all? No single vote, no single candidate, is ever going to shift national policy to that extent. So do people just give up? Or do they try to exert whatever small bit of influence they can?

I definitely don't think of myself as a "grafter," I generally prefer to avoid work. OTOH I'm currently staying up late working on my quantum computing coursework, so maybe that counts? The answer is definitely music for me as well. I'm not a songwriter though, I just like to play songs that other people have written. Or at least, I don't write whole songs from scratch, but I do come up with basslines and give input on harmonisation, structure etc. I'm learning jazz improv as well. Recording is fun, but playing live on stage is what properly lets me blow off steam. I suppose the other side of the coin is that I blow off steam by attending gigs as well. Most weekends my partner and I are at one of the local indie music venues.

This articulates an aspect of the discussion around lesser-evil voting that doesn't seem to get brought up enough. Namely, it's not election day yet. On the actual day, you have to weigh the binary option of whether or not to vote, then weigh the limited candidate options and make whatever choice, at that time, you think results in the best (or least bad) outcome. But before the election? You still have the ability to influence the candidates. One of the ways of doing that is if enough people threaten to withhold their votes over a particular issue, in the hopes of convincing (or at least just pressuring) the candidate into a different position. I mean, this framing is obviously both naive and ultra-simplified. But threatening to withhold votes to force a position change is still a legitimate political tactic.* In some respects it's the only leverage lots of people have. It's one thing to insist on lesser-evil harm reduction on the election day itself. It's another to insist that everyone must promise to back the candidate to the hilt before the election. * Alternatively, for many people it isn't a tactic, they're just genuinely disgusted/exhausted/exasperated with the candidate's positions and can't stomach supporting them. Irrational? Counter-productive? Maybe. And yet, if you rely on those voters for victory, it's no use decrying their irrationality. You still need to convince them to support you, even if it irks you. And I'm not sure how effective a tactic it is to shame and hector voters into supporting you.

Seems likey basically every internet service is getting noticeably worse. Enshittification in practice.

If you'll all forgive some shameless self-promotion, my band has an EP out.

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” – Ursula K Le Guin

Yeah, one of the things that immediately punctures my suspension of disbelief in movies and tv shows (less so on stage) is costumes that look like costumes. Yet another inherent difficulty in translating animation to live action. Trying to make animated clothing look naturalistic in live action while still being recognisable is extremely difficult.

I'd say the issue is that "human nature" is broad and flexible, and different aspects of it can be reinforced by different cultural expectations and incentive structures. And capitalism's strength and it's major downside is that, by positively incentivising certain negative (or perhaps antisocial) human traits (greed, insecurity, status-obsession) it channels those traits into productive ends. This results in enormous productive potential, which results in an enormous glut of material abundance (in the aggregate, distribution is another matter). But it also exercises no restraint on those traits. Indeed, very much the opposite. So you get endlessly expanding production, at any cost, without any thought to externalities, without any thought to whether or not what is being produced, or the manner in which it's produced, is conducive to human flourishing. And of course the incentive structures are set up in such a way that even steady-state profitability is failure; if you don't grow, you fail. Which leads to endless attempts to find more and more revenue streams, to extract more and more resources, dump more and more waste, squeeze more and more out of the workforce. Indeed, if I had to characterise what we call capitalism as simply as possible, it would be "always more." And often, more is good! An enormous amount of the physical abundance produced under capitalism has indeed made average quality of life much better for many people (physically at least, there are discussions to be had about capitalism's psychological/social/spiritual costs). But more isn't always good. And an incentive structure that mandates endless, accelerating extraction and endless, accelerating acquisition is obviously going to generate lots of negative externalities, especially on a closed, delicate ecosystem with unpredictable feedback loops. Whenever "human nature" is invoked to explain/excuse certain negative outcomes, I wish people would be more specific. Is greed a part of human nature? Yes, certainly. Are altruism, cooperation and generosity parts of human nature. Also, yes. So which of these traits actually get expressed in society, and why? Do we live under sytems that actively incentivise some of those traits and repress others? Can we change those structures?

This is it for me. Aesthetically, I think the Dune universe is psychedelic, extravagant, colourful, maximalist and weird. Villeneuve's Dune is a very well-made movie, but I really don't like the more stark, minimalist design philosophy. It feels very generically sci-fi.

Iroh should be in a loincloth you cowards!

My prediction is that we'll see the first case of this before the end of the year.

Deeply unlucky for Sunak to have made those comments on the one day that the UK's political and media establishment decided that transphobia is bad actually. I'm sure normal programming will resume shortly.

Found a fiver in the pockets of a pair of trousers I got at the charity shop, so they ended up being almost free!

Going off-topic, but this just isn't true? There's so much amazing music being produced every day all over the world, from tiny unsigned local acts to big well-known names. Sure, there's lots of crap too, but that's always been true. It's just that we remember the classics and forget the dross. Arguably, today's music scene is much more fractured than it used to be, with fewer utterly dominant pop stars (Taylor Swift aside). But that just means you have to go actively looking for great music a bit more, not that it isn't there. Now movies? Movies are absolutely getting worse

Okay I am absolutely tearing through The Mountain in the Sea. About 3/4 done, really enjoying it so far. I'd recommend this for any fans of Peter Watts' Blindsight or Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life.

On the one hand, it is a useful feature to be able to patch problems like this remotely. On the other hand, I wonder if individual users have the option of accepting or rejecting the patch? And if they don't, then I wonder what else Tesla can do to the cars it manufactures without the owners' consent. And obviously the connection goes both ways, Tesla must be collecting a huge amount of data as well. So yeah, this is a useful feature, but the broader implications of an always online car make me very nervous.