Uriel238 [all pronouns]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • There are literal eldritch horrors we do not comprehend. It is why the sun has all the material features of god, yet we see it as a (very large, implacable, thankfully consistent) object, and we don’t think about how we must refrain from looking at the sun directly, only that it burns our eyes.

    Bertrand Russell’s attempt at reducing all of mathematics to a perfect system of logic (until this was proven by Gödel to be impossible) broke him, much the way professors at Miskatonic would go mad trying to model the universe by pondering quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore.

    Myself, I was already pretty mad (diagnosed) when I saw lines being crossed in the US that pointed towards a fascist autocratic future and a purge campaign, and so I took to studying moral philosophy and the Holocaust, specifically the human mechanisms that justified the engagement of and participation in evil. Consequently, I broke my brain even further. Nature, human or otherwise, can be unflinching and ruthless in its efforts to exploit or consume us, which is why we need reciprocal ethics in the first place.

    I do not imagine the universe is incomprehensible, only that we are small and still pretty simple, imagining the moon closer and bigger since we see models drawn to disproportionate scale. And so the layperson doesn’t understand how difficult it is to launch a probe from one speck so that it drifts for months or years, to fall into an orbit around another speck. It’s difficult to imagibe that the stars in a single galaxy, each teeming with satellite objects, are uncountable like the grains of sand on a beach. We know it’s a number, but still have to estimate its value with a wide error margin.

    It’s not forbidden knowlege. The parabolic manifold in which the pillars of R’lyeh stand can be computed, but our hominid brains have to bend a lot, or chain together analogies and metaphors to understand them.

    It’s like a dog chasing a hyperball, possibly to its peril.




  • IMSI spoofing is a product of wireless telephony being an ancient (way-pre-internet) technology, and we’re long in an era where law enforcement (or in this case law-enforcement coded) investigators don’t have to obey laws, such as assuring due process, and unreasonable searches disqualifying evidence. Instead they’re hunting political enemies, and every prisoner of the United States is now a political prisoner.

    It also means we don’t have to obey the law, and can start using all-frequency jammers in and around protests and ICE actions to level the playing field. (It will also interfere with regular infrastructure, but it’s not like ICE or the current regime gives half a fuck about that.

    All-frequency jammers are older tech and easier to build than IMSI spoofers, and are highly illegal since so much of our commerce and communications depend on radio. But the current [FCC] has also been captured and is failing to do its job.

    Any Amateur Radio enthusiast will know how to make a jammer. And current battery technology would assure you could make a handful that are portable and powerful enough to shut down blocks and blocks of municipal communication. This is playing pretty hardball, but then ICE isn’t playing by the rules.






  • In psychology, it’s called attitude polarization, where we ignore data that conflicts with an ideology while accepting data that confirms it. It’s a known common human bias.

    Scientists train themselves to accept new data as challenging old presumptions (that maybe the old model is false, or simplistic and some unconsidered noise is affecting observed data)… at least when they’re doing real science. Failure to do so, and to cling to older models, is how old dudes get tagged as hidebound reactionaries. And even Einstein couldn’t square his feelings regarding Heisenberg probability models of quantum dynamics.






  • As we quickly learned during the George W Bush era, no news media agency can be trusted. To counter this, check reporting of the same incident from multiple news agencies and find the consistent facts. Everything else is suspect.

    In a hurry, see if Reuters or AP has covered it, but verify when you have the time.

    Done this way AJ is perfectly viable as a source for news, in that the bias can be filtered out.

    FOX and OANN are known to lie or misrepresent facts entirely, but that gets filtered through cross-checking.

    Trust, but verify.


  • My management tricks (which came from being managed) included calling for a 90 minute meeting if I needed 45 minutes, and bring snacks.

    Oh and when someone finishes an all day job in half a day, let them goof off for the rest of the day.

    But then I believed that whole happy workers are maximally productive workers thing that, well, every serious management study reports.


  • We may have to revise our education system so that it’s not connected to our credential system.

    There’s a story about Einstein teaching physics and letting the kids who didn’t want to be there leave and do something else with the time. The ones who remained were quite attentive.

    There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they’re ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.

    In the meantime even when I was in high school in the 1980s, our system was created to sort kids into sports stars that might become college players, STEM kids that might become scientists and engineers, and House Hufflepuff (common laborers).

    The education system has only gotten progressively worse since then, as its budget increases have not kept up with inflation. And then there’s the whole effort to insert evangelist Christianity (+ American Exceptionalism + Conservativism–Capitalism) into public school.

    And to this day, we still use the lecture / lab / test model that excludes a lot of alternative comprehension and learning models. We’re not looking to teach kids, rather we’re looking to harvest the geniuses, and turn the others into bonded laborers and soldiers for billionaire vanity projects.




  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoMemes@sopuli.xyzBut but but
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    1 month ago

    The French Revolution took about a century to fully process through. There were several instances of guillotines and piles of heads. We usually know about the first one (and the second one for those who’ve seen Les Misérables. ) During the post 1789 process there was also a weird cult thing that looked a bit like MAGA, until even the cultists got tired of Robespierre’s bullshit.

    Marie Antoinette was a perfectly serviceable princess / queen and fielded charities and smiled at the commoners and all the things ambitious feudal ladies are supposed to do. She never said Qu’ils mangent de la brioche but the rumor of it was current, and sped her way to the guillotine. She was also accused of sexual perversities, including The German Vice (lesbianism) most of which had to be explained to her so she could deny having ever done them.