TheVat

Seems like a reach. There must be a range of car body types and suspensions and overall weights, which would mean variation in such effects in both ICE and EVs. But who knows, maybe worth testing. Researchers will have to pay well, to get volunteers with motion sickness tendencies. I can see the ads now: "Earn money with your vomit!"

Oh well, one can also laugh at the Norway/Sweden confusion on the buxom "prize." She's shown in the colors of the Swedish flag, but it is Norway (red, blue, and white) which gives the peace prize, handed out in Oslo.

IIRC that was one of the most hyped features. Though (likely involuntary and unconscious) facial twitches did cause some to wonder if some consciousness persisted for a brief time in the head, post-chop. The chemist Antoine Lavoisier is said to have asked witnesses to his execution to observe his head while he tried to blink several times to signal them. There are dubious and unverified accounts that he managed to blink 15-30 times before brain death. It does make for a nice scientist to the very end anecdote, though. I guess they thought his being a tax collector for the Ancien Regime was sufficiently awful to outweigh his usefulness as a chemist.

Katie hasn't yet converted to "MAGA face" it seems. Though she's pretty much MAGAfied in other ways.

Survey data that's reliable in dictatorships?? Titter!

Yep. Might help to look at driving styles - EV drivers may occupy a demographic that tend to accelerate and decelerate more rapidly, and take advantage of EVs higher low-end torque. Based on my own experience (and spouse's) as passenger in an EV, I would also suspect the way some regenerative braking is calibrated, which means that actual data should be gathered to see if the effect is also appearing in hybrids. I suspect the sound thing is a red herring. If that were a necessary cue for the brain/vestibular system, more people would be ralphing their lunch from golf carts or electric light rail. And EVs aren't completely quiet - there's motion-indicating noise from wheels and air resistance and a motor whine.

Yes, none of that "one rifle files blanks, so no one can say for certain they fired a kill shot" waffling. I second your motion. Indeed. When I lived in Nebraska there was some child abuse case where a child was beaten and forced to swallow Drano. At that time I was completely fine with removing the parent from the face of the Earth by any means handy. (An irrational response on my part, not least because oblivion could have offered the perp respite from contemplating what they had done)

I was also struck by this, where a dystopian structure is shown piecemeal (the way most people experience it) and sometimes only alluded to indirectly. Contrast the way eugenics emerges in "Klara" with how it is presented more forcefully in the film "Gattaca". (And kudos to Ishiguro for showing how genetic editing would be fraught with dangers, how it can't just turn on smartness without risking physical and social health) Also the passive way most people seem to accept the sentience of the Artificial Friends without asking about their autonomy and civil rights. Ishiguro is quite clever in showing us how easily people will accept a system of slavery if its presented as a universal good and the slaves aren't uppity. The "artist" Capaldi, though he hints at some notion of advancement for AFs, is also willing to see Klara's own personality as completely expendable in the service of becoming a Josie surrogate. (And yes, Ishiguro doesn't mind telling us where the plot is going - early on, the mother asks Klara in the AF store if she can walk like Josie, but that in no way takes away emotional impact from what we learn later - the devil emerges from the details, and sometimes resides in a mother's twisted maternal feelings.) Anyway, I'm glad you liked it.

Not sure it's quite that bad. Canada has nine provinces. Wait, is Saskatchewan a province, too? I drove through it and didn't see much of anything. Ok, maybe it's ten. But really, you should just merge Saskatchewan into Manitoba. Seriously, I think it's the exceptionalism I found most toxic growing up here. And the idea that our culture is a set of packaged commodities we can export around the world, be it movies, music, fast food (ugh), technophilia, or whatever is deemed to be somehow shiny with dynamism.

Unfortunately the US Supreme Court has not seen it that way. Apparently the double jeopardy clause only is considered to apply to prosecution and not to execution. Romell Broom is a case where courts made this clear, and the result was barbaric. His execution failed in 2009, and a long round of litigation concluded with a new execution date set in 2022. He died from COVID before that date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romell_Broom Yep, drug shortages have led to legal battles based on the dubious supply chains now being used. It's been my understanding that firing squads are actually the most merciful form of execution, with death being certain and nearly instantaneous, but of course they are messy and people are squeamish. (And I would guess that firing squads became too much associated with dictatorships, in the popular imagination?)

Well I could write pages of polemic against the DP, but Mr Wilson has laid it out with clarity. It's all there, the capriciousness, the moral hypocrisy, the horrific implications of mistakes, the grotesque role we citizens play having a proxy contract killer act on our supposed behalf. (One who may, through incompetence, assume the mantle of torturer and the lifelong burden that may bring them) BTW, when they insert the needles they first follow standard medical practice and cotton swab the injection sites with alcohol. Yeah. As in, we're killing you now but let's be safe and make sure you don't get an infection.

Klara and the Sun, by Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Liked this more than his other sci-fi themed novel, Never Let Me Go. (Not that it's not also masterful) As in his other work, he explores what it means to be human (using the first person perspective of an AI companion, an android who has feelings and even forms spiritual beliefs centered on the Sun), and how society can create and exploit a new underclass. But no summary really captures the emotional and philosophical depths of an Ishiguro novel, or his power to spring a revelation on the reader. As always, he showed me something about how we deal with constraints in our lives while still finding transcendent moments. I don't know, maybe I'm just gobsmacked right now, but I want to say this is his best work. But of course I say that every effing time I finish one of his books.

As my own side note, climate change is the one I've started multiple threads on here/elsewhere, as well as writing up reports on the topic for a software company decades ago, so its omission from my brief list was entirely due to typing too fast. It is always the very fat elephant in my room. 🫣

Yikes, I hope not! We have enough Damoclean swords mounted over our puny noggins (nukes, microbes, PFAS, nanoplastics, AI, bioweapons, etc) as it is. (I think you're being ironic, yes?) If we ever all agreed that probelm-solving comes from the barrel of a gun, that would set the Doomsday Clock in Chicago to ten seconds before midnight. Worth noting: Oliver doesn't linger on the lionization of Luigi (nor joins in), but only touches on it to show the crazy media reverberations of all the rage so many Americans feel towards the Big Healthcare behemoth. And Oliver, in full Angry Caffeinated Parrot mode, takes in some of that rage and channels it with eloquence. Good point. Our system of representative democracy is so broken. A majority have wanted SP healthcare for decades, even as billionaire donor run politicians keep trying to convince them it's a wicked commie conspiracy. Democrats gave up on real socialized medicine because they also were controlled by Big Money, and Big Money knows it would mean the rich paying their fair share and the Big Health behemoths know it would greatly reduce profits generally and including the profitable supplemental markets that might be left. In America, health is a commodity not a basic human right of access.

It's a curious mantra we keep hearing over here that the US has to somehow "beat China." With the data center boom there's this persistent question that no one is really answering: why do we need so many? This seems a standard theme of capitalism, an unquestioned ethos of "more is better," no matter what it's more of. IIRC Marx called it the "fetishization of commodities." @sethoflagos you're probably more up on your Marx than I am. But wasn't ol Karl kind of warning us about products of human labour taking over and running us? AI would be the apotheosis of this. Anyway, noone in power is going to answer the "why so many" questions beyond vague references of, "we need to beat China." Beat China to what? The PRC already has a horrifyingly advanced surveillance state and that is, erm, something that America, Land of the Free, should seek fecking primacy in?? Or is that we want to dominate in terms of sidelining our entire workforce with AI robotics? Underneath all the belligerent chest pounding talk of beating China seems to be autistic tech bros who haven't the foggiest notion of the societal implications of their work. Not the first time this trend is observed in Silicon Valley. This oligarchy-level of leverage, which has been spiking in the Orangeymandias admin is what people like Bernie Sanders have been trying to prevent with campaign finance and election law reforms, to rein in super PACs and corporate corruption and patronage. It's frustrating because so many information-poor voters, if you talk with them, actually want such reform if their attention is drawn to it.

Cumulus narwhal icosahedron pinky. Rhizome elocution wisp?

Thank you! I had just returned to post an accessible transcript, but yours seems more readable. Mine was still evolving from the fertile crescent in Mesopotamia. (Do I aim (A): to pose Mesopotamia? I do.) DK - no 'gram account. The full show is blocked in the UK, unless you have access to Sky Comedy. Or have a VPN - if the latter, you can just set it to some region like Bulgaria and the YT video will unblock. To which one replied "Socialism? You mean that broad ideological framework which has been implemented at all levels of government in the US since the 1870s, and which you know almost nothing about?" Or something like that? I guess people like healthcare to be profit centered when they get some of the profits and don't have to watch people suffer and die from medical neglect on a level most commonly seen in third world countries.

This is such a skillful evisceration of the largest company in US healthcare that I feel it's worth bending the forum rules and asking people to watch. However, to show a little deference to the discussion format here, here is a bit of transcript... ...and YT has in its wisdom chosen to block my copy/pasting of some introductory passages from the transcript they provide. Can I get a variance here? (At least until I can copy it elsewhere)

Swiss cheese has one of the lowest lactose levels of any cheese. This means the Swiss have better digestion, which causes them to be kinder and turn in wallets. PROVE ME WRONG!!!

Yep, I was going to suggest the part of epistemology which concerns itself with the limits of knowledge. The postulate that everything is amenable to some explanatory scheme lies within that branch. There's a scientific aspect, e.g. is a human brain limitation imposing limits on our knowledge, or is it the basic architecture of reality which forces blind spots, or a combination of those?

Yes. I've long thought it will be a soft power takeover. Wait for a good leverage point with the orange dotard, hint at a blockade, then offer Taiwan some softer alternative to invasion like a "treaty" where Chinese "consultants" are installed in key government offices. I suspect the Chinese CP learned some lessons about messy takeovers in Tibet, back in the fifties.

Palindrome season on the wane here. I noticed a couple words recently -"pollinators" and "aperitif" - and they seemed like 'drome material, but I had to stay with the meanings of the words that passed before me, striving to keep up with accelerating changes in the world. That said, it does sometimes feel like there's a magic in subverting our symbol systems, a kind of rough poetry or at least a whimsical experiment with meaning. Sometimes it's even charged with some teasing hint of a hidden order, like the voudon tossing of chicken bones or the scattering of 50 yarrow stalks of I Ching or reading the dregs of a tea cup. But I can settle for whimsy and the brief trip to a bubble universe where things make sense both forwards and backwards. (As opposed to our reality where people in power can spout jabberwocky in both directions). Cheers. And beware of women named Naomi.

No. Nothing but BS coming from the tech bros in their Patagonia vests. Who have started derisively calling anyone who questions their business model a "doomer." Or referring to AI agents who escape as "released into the wild," as if it's some earth-friendly thing in tune with nature. I wonder if they'd feel the same way about Gain of Function viruses escaping from a BSL-4 lab and appearing in their sandwich? Earth handed over to people with Asperger's.

If anyone wants to try a brew or other edible with gut comfort in mind, I've been having some good results from L. rhamnosus. I gather trad ginger beers tend to go with L hilgardii, but it looks like some other L. species will also serve as well. I was returning wheat to my diet a while back and trying to smooth the transition with some of the probiotics in non-dairy yoghurts which can help with grain digestion, especially those pesky gliadins. Tinkering with various blends, I tried adding some supplement rhamnosus at room temperature and giving it a day or two. Gut settled down rapidly after that. (A pitfall of trying no wheat for a while is enzymatic downregulation - basically, the gut colony scales back on the species that were handling wheat. So when you restart, the species remnants have to start reproducing quickly and that means gas. So if you can nutritionally inject some of those species in there, like L plantarum, L casei, B infantis, B breve, L rhamnosus, et al, it can help.) I had been eating some yoghurt brands that had some of those in the mix, but rhamnosus seemed to really hasten the flip back to normal. CAVEATS: This is anecdotal, so far as my experience goes, and gut biomes vary quite a bit, so I want to look into research some more on specific strains. Am also going to try L reuteri, another candidate. (Sorry, a little off the ginger beer rails.)

"It's not a god, it's a zip file." Amusing way to put it. Zip file + stochastic parrot + glorified autocomplete. And something about humanity's cognitive labours fed back to us for $20/month.