The Bible is notably silent on government social programs. Many Christians have taken it upon themselves to believe that social programs are evil, that they perpetuate the problems they’re intended to address, that they destroy the nuclear family, etc.

They sincerely believe that they are doing good by getting rid of these programs because they want to see the Christian family and the church take the central role on these issues, not the government. Furthermore, they believe that a government which tries to solve all social problems and create a utopia for everyone is fundamentally evil, hence the phrase:

“Don’t immanentize the eschaton.”

In their view, he would. They believe that Jesus wants people to give directly to charity, not to create government programs for it.

Canadian here. I spent most of July 1 in bed! Was not feeling patriotic! Did not watch any fireworks.

The thing I wasn’t prepared for was not the lack of time, it was the lack of desire to play games.

Lots of people drink bottled water, soda, beer, or other drinks not immediately connected to the water supply. Furthermore, poisons are unlikely to remain undetected long enough to kill the entire population. While a strong dose of a deadly poison like cyanide can kill in minutes it’s likely to be detected quickly due to how rapidly its effects begin to show up.

A slower-acting, accumulating poison like dimethylmercury could potentially kill more people because its effects don’t show up immediately. On the other hand, the delayed effects of the poison would provide the victims a chance to retaliate against the poisoners.

Either way, it’s a very crude and unfocused attack against a population which is unlikely to achieve any political aim besides wanton destruction and outrage.

60 was chosen by the Ancient Sumerians specifically because of its divisibility by 2, 3, 4, and 5. Today, 60 is considered a superior highly composite number but that bit of theory wouldn’t have been as important to the Sumerians and Babylonians as the simple ability to divide 60 by many commonly used factors (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15) without any remainders or fractions to worry about.

Medieval technology is vastly more complex, broader in scope, etc. compared to the Stone Age stuff on Primitive Technology. It’s actually extremely challenging to go from scratch like he does and then achieve medieval-level ironworking. He can barely make a few little iron pellets which are excessively-hard (too much carbon) and need further processing to become workable. He is a very long way from building a proper medieval smelter capable of producing pig iron or other cast iron products.

Same with any pair activity. Paddling a canoe is no fun if one person doesn’t like water and wants outta there ASAP!

Yes, it is a choice. However one of the biggest problems is that so many of the good choices are gone. I’m talking about the positive social institutions and community organizations people used to belong to. The third spaces.

Communities have fragmented. Neighbours hate each other. Both of my neighbours hate our family. One is a childless, alcoholic husband and wife who also hate each other (they used to be nice years ago) who also hate us and give us creepy looks all the time. The other is green lawn-obsessed neighbour who hates us for the pine trees we have growing on our property and refuse to cut down (at our own expense) to suit their tastes.

We’re a society of severely mentally ill, isolated, confused, and angry people. Our villages and communities are all gone. We’re all a bunch of islands unto ourselves.

The manosphere is one symptom of a much larger problem. Look at it in isolation and you’ll miss the big picture. Authoritarianism is on the rise globally. Loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions. Society’s traditional institutions are a distant memory. All we have remaining are loose groups of people shouting at each other as the spectre of war lurks in the background.

Yes, of course. Look at Amish communities. Largely self-sufficient and thriving.

People who haven’t tried it greatly underestimate the amount of work though. I’d recommend dipping your toe in with some gardening at home first. Jumping in the deep end will usually lead to failure and disillusionment.

I wouldn’t even go as far as to group people into tolerant vs intolerant binaries. Everyone is intolerant about something. Everyone has boundaries. You wouldn’t just let someone walk into your house and start using your toothbrush. But that’s not very controversial!

One of the biggest issues with tolerance vs intolerance debates is the unequal burden of tolerance. When it comes to housing, this is reflected in the classic NIMBY vs YIMBY debates. Many many people complain about NIMBYs but are actually NIMBYs themselves: they just want someone else to bear the burden. For example, they may be pro-early-release for a sex offender while not wanting that sex offender to live in their neighbourhood.

This applies to all kinds of issues. People may be pro-immigration but are they pro-giving-up-their-job to a (lower paid) immigrant? Probably not.

We as a society were much more tolerant and welcoming towards immigrants before we put all of our social welfare programs in place. In a society with no minimum wage, no social programs, and few/no regulations to limit housing development, there is no cost to immigration because immigrants have to claw their way up from the very bottom. That was how the big cities in Canada and the U.S. were built: by immigrants who choose to come here (fleeing brutal oppression and lack of opportunity) and make their own fortunes.

No, though there’s been plenty of marketing where they claim “we know how to build AGI.”

They have marketed ChatGPT as a general purpose AI from the very beginning, though the question of how to leverage that has remained open.

I was very careful not to use the term AGI for this reason. General intelligence tool isn’t the same thing. It’s a much weaker claim, yet it’s also a far stronger claim than any purpose-built software. The ambiguity is part of their marketing strategy.

If ChatGPT were marketed as a toaster nobody would bat an eye. The reason so many are laughing is because ChatGPT is marketed as a general intelligence tool.

One of the only good uses I’ve seen for LLMs is as a sort of advanced grammar checker. I have a friend who is a subject matter expert but English is not his first language. He uses ChatGPT to help him rewrite his technical statements into plainer, more fluent English. He does not rely on the model for any subject matter information and when it hallucinates he is able to detect and correct the mistakes. Otherwise he finds it extremely useful as a writing tool.

That’s a strange list. OpenAI doesn’t only offer SaaS for end users, it also offers API access which puts it into the infrastructure game with the likes of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure (which actually offers OpenAI services and pushes them out to Windows users en masse).

6 million units at $700 a pop is $4.2 billion in revenue. Much closer to 1/2 of $10 billion than 1/10.

Apple has never made more money from the App Store than from iPhone hardware sales. When the iPhone launched the App Store didn’t exist yet. Over time, Apple’s revenue from services (including the App Store) has grown dramatically to around $26 billion per quarter today, though that is still less than what they earn in iPhone sales (a bit over $50 billion per quarter in 2024).

People feel no social obligation because they no longer feel connected to anything. Membership in civic institutions and community organizations has fallen off a cliff. Urban planning has turned suburbs from walkable mixed-use communities into car-centric ghost towns. Rampant inflation and cost disease have destroyed affordability for many. Homeowners have become some of the worst ladder-pullers with extreme NIMBYism slowing housing construction to a crawl.

I’ve been using Duolingo to study Mandarin for a few years now. It’s fun but the lessons are frequently frustrating. They love to teach me a bunch of new characters, then stop using them altogether for a few months, then bring them back and expect me to know them with zero review.

The lessons should be structured to include more review if you’re only doing 1/day (which I think is the normal way people use it).