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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Well that makes more sense than LLMs I suppose. Doesn’t really make a lot of sense why musk would want that given the one thing he doesn’t run is an ad network.

    As someone that works in the tech sector though, this idea doesn’t really seem super compelling. The advertisers already have this data, so it just seems like a weird kind of heist to go pull off.

    Advertisers already know how much money you make, what illnesses your suffering from (based on things you search for), I mean we live in an unprecedented surveillance states.

    Maybe musk wanted his own version of that to sell to people, that’s a somewhat plausible scenario. This just sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory and the rule for a conspiracy theory is “someone has to make money” for the theory to be true.

    Is musk a piece of shit, sure. Does the government have data, yep. Does taking the data from the government make musk money, maybe? I guess in the world where it’s a play for him to close the gap on a bunch of demographic information people can already buy from google or X, which he owns.

    So I suppose if we see X or xAI offering significantly improved ad targeting or data brokerage that would make this all hang together.


  • I’m open to the idea it’s for something else. Data to feed into AI is the thing people are willing to pay heaps of money for right now. And musk has an AI company so I thought the thinking was “musk is taking data for his stupid ai company”

    If that’s not what he’s doing, then what data and for what purpose?

    I loathe musk, but having some trouble connecting the dots.

    So if not for feeding into xAI, what data do people think he’s taking and what’s he doing with it?


  • The thing I’ve never really understood about this is what kind of data would the government have that would be any use to an LLM?

    I’m sure that musk wanted that government data, but you all ever work with the government? Every data set is some weird pile of forms encoded in fixed width field, wrapped in json, plopped into the cdata of an xml node. Fucking enjoy parsing that shit and when you do you realize you have a form some guy filled out in 1972 to register a trailer.

    Is the government sitting on some treasure trove of data that you could feed into an LLM as training data? Because that’s what would actually be valuable.

    But musk is a fucking moron so I wouldn’t put it past him to break into an empty bank vault and then scuttle away like the fucking roach he is.



  • Universities have often played a role in being where protest movements begin and grow.

    There’s a lot of reasons for this, you have a lot of students in one place, most students on scholarships and with loans have time on their hands to discuss issues of the day, most students aren’t constrained by work and family and property that would give others pause from participating in protest.

    From the anti war movement in the 60s to the communist overthrow of China, mass political movements get their starts in universities.

    So if you can set a precedent of criminalizing speech and make the punishments as cruel as possible, you make students think twice about protesting.

    That’s what this is about, sure America is happy to do Israel’s bidding, but don’t think for one moment they actually give one flying fuck about that. They found a brown person with a foreign enough name that they could destroy for stepping out of line as a not so subtle way to say to every student, “shut up, keep your head down, and we won’t come after you”

    It’s the same thing they are doing with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They don’t care about these two individuals, they don’t have any special interest in harming them (though I’m sure they delight in it) they want to send a message to everyone else.

    We have the power, shut up

    That’s the message, step out of line and find out. Due process, free speech, that shit is over. You are welcome to pretend it still exists but challenge us and we are one clerical error from you enjoying a lifetime of free room and board at CECOT.

    For this to work it has to be punishing, it has to be dehumanizing, it has to be spectacular. The goal is to make you think when you go to resist, “I don’t want to end up like that one guy…”

    The point is to make this as visible and memorable as possible so when your personal breaking point is hit and you think to resist there’s a voice in your head that says “no I better not”



  • Yea this is my problem with this video.

    It’s a pretty good video and the creator gets so close to figuring out that he doesn’t hate his phone, he hates social media.

    It’s an interesting video from the point of view that it kinda makes this argument over and over.

    I thought that doing X without my smartphone would be really inconvenient, it was only mildly inconvenient and I was able to manage it.

    He ends up realizing how much happier he is without having the ability to just pull his phone out and go on twitter anytime he is bored. So just delete twitter?

    All the benefits of his experiment can be had by just getting rid of social media apps and all the inconveniences can go away.

    I really wanted this video to end with him putting those two bits together. But instead he just goes “well back to using a phone and it making me miserable” and as the viewer I’m just thinking “what was the point of all this then?! You learned a lesson, you gained a valuable insight about yourself as a person, and now just nothing. Just ‘cool insight, no need to act on that though’ seriously?!”


  • Yea I tend to think than when someone identifies as a Libertarian they almost certainly don’t mean a civil libertarian, which is how the aclu actually identifies themselves.

    We have grown from a roomful of civil libertarians to more than 4 million members, activists, and supporters across the country. The ACLU is now a nationwide organization with a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices filing cases in both state and federal courts. We appear before the Supreme Court more than any other organization except the Department of Justice.

    This is literally the only time the word libertarian appears in their own history https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history


  • Thank you.

    I feel like a crazy person sometimes because I remember when the ACA was rolling along it was reported that it was just the Heritage Foundation, a notoriously right wing think tank, plan.

    I looked into it because I thought “certainly this can’t be true, hope and change and all that” I went and looked up their plan. It was a market based approach that used tax incentives and penalties to increase the size of the insurance pool.

    That’s the ACA.

    And people act like it’s some litmus test of progressive policy success.

    This is what I’ll never forgive Obama about. He captured an entire generation of voters energy stumping with progressive speeches about making real change. He had no real desire to do that, constantly governing from the center / center right.

    So that whole generation learned a lesson, progressive policies don’t work. Which is amazing considering that we didn’t even try any. We somehow passed a bunch of corporate friendly policies and peoples lives didn’t get meaningfully better and they chalked it up to “progressives don’t have an answer either”

    I think this is a contributing factor to the absolute shit show we find ourselves in today. America has deeply broken problems that are entrenched because them existing makes someone very rich. Not the same guy for every problem, but for every problem in America you can rest assured there’s a small group of assholes that need that problem to exist so they can buy a third yacht. People feel that pain and they went “well fuck, the lefts best orator, the guy with a vision and plan and skills couldn’t fix it” then along comes trump being a blowhard jackass saying “I can fix it” and people were like “sure, let’s try it”

    Obama could have actually delivered on that change, it wouldn’t have been easy, he would have had to actually use that supermajority for the few weeks it existed to pass legislation. He would have had to bring blue dogs to heel or blow up the filibuster. But if he could have found the gumption to do it, and those policies meaningfully improved peoples lives, he would have cemented multiple decades of democratic dominance.

    Instead he passed uninspiring half assed solutions that tinkered around the edges of our societies most difficult problems. Structured them so that all the pain would be felt up front and all the benefits would slowly phase in over time. Tried to find compromise so that the right wouldn’t attack him and even after giving everything away they screeched about death panels.





  • If I were your partner, although it might not feel like it in the moment, the sooner the better.

    If you aren’t going to commit to them, that’s your choice to make, but free them up to find someone that will. Every ounce of love and time and attention they pay you from the moment you make the decision to leave until you find the gumption to do it is a waste for them. The most respectful thing you can do is not waste the precious and finite moments of their life.

    Let them know what you’ve decided. Have the courage to tell them plainly and honestly that you are leaving and that you won’t be the person to love them. Let them get over you so they can find the person that will love them.

    And don’t you dare double back unless you mean to stay. If you stay do it because it’s what you want not because you feel bad. That partner is a human being, one that deserves the truth and to be loved. If you can’t do that, or don’t want to do that, that’s your choice.

    This is the least we owe our partners, to be honest with them, to love them or let them find love elsewhere.

    I know you are getting a lot of downvotes. Choosing to leave someone you love is not a popular opinion. I could not do it and I think most couldn’t. In time I suspect you will find one of two things to be true.

    • You will find someone you truly love and you will recognize that this relationship had affection and care but was different.
    • You will find that what was out there wasn’t worth what you gave up, that this was love, and you will wish you had it back

    This is life though, the hard decisions, and only you get to make them. I hope you make a good one, and above all, if you want to be a decent human being, treat your partner well. If that means standing by their side in love, great. If that means being honest with them so that they can be happy, also fine. Just don’t lie to them, don’t be needlessly mean in ending it, have the courage of your convictions and tell them the plain simple truth. Don’t make up a reason that feels better, don’t blame them for the relationship falling apart, don’t trick them into hating you.

    You owe them that at least.


  • Explain your situation then.

    Sounds to me like you love your partner and they love you. You’d like to leave to go have other life experiences.

    It’s pretty easy, which do you value more, the love you have for your partner or these life experiences you could have?

    I don’t know you, but my guess is that if you are thinking about it enough to want to find an answer, then you already have your answer. You value the life experiences more, you care about your partner, and you don’t want to hurt them.

    I’ve been married to my wife for over a decade now, I love her with all my heart, I can’t think of any kind of life experience that would make me want to leave her. I imagine that love is not a binary on or off type thing that there are degrees and kinds of love. It’s very well possible that you love your partner but not enough to want to stay together forever.

    This is really a question that only you can answer. Which do you want to do, it’s your one life, you get to choose. But don’t stay with your partner because you are afraid of hurting them because if that’s why you stay, you will become bitter and resentful and the idea of “what could of been” will always be this perfect thing that they kept from you.

    Stay because you want to stay or leave because you’d rather leave.


  • In general you can’t be responsible for someone else’s emotions.

    If you were having a casual relationship and the other person has big feelings you don’t reciprocate, that sucks but it’s not your fault.

    If, however, you reciprocate those feelings, or pretended to and led them on, then you do bear some responsibility.

    The actual salient question though is if you love this person that loves you. If not, you aren’t doing them any favors stringing them along. That person deserves to be loved like anyone else and you will be causing them more harm than good if you pretend you love them just to save them some heartbreak.

    The correct course of action is to be honest about how you feel and also recognize how your partner feels. Whether or not you intended them to fall in love with you, recognize that that is significant and your loss in their life will be painful. There’s no two ways about that, so be kind and compassionate to your partner.

    But do not fool yourself into thinking that what’s right is to just keep them around because you don’t want to break their hearts. If they love you, they want to be loved back, and if you can’t do that that’s fine.

    Pretending you love them so you won’t hurt them will cause the greatest pain of all.


  • I’m neurodivergent, let me take a crack at this.

    First off, disclaimer, autism is a massive spectrum so this whole thing is a gross generalization.

    Neurodivergent people act differently than neurotypical people for 3 broad categories of reasons

    • different stimuli processing
    • different thinking patterns
    • different skills

    First, is stimuli processing. Have you ever been in a crowded room and there’s lots of people talking but your brain does you a cool favor and ignores all that noise so you can focus on the person in front of you? Did you do anything to make that happen, probably not. It’s just a thing your brain did for you when processing all that stimuli, you placed your focus on the speaker in front of you and your brain filtered the rest. What if you couldn’t do that?

    Stimuli processing issues can present in both dimensions, both over processing and under processing. Neurodivergent people are often placed into situations that are relatively easy for neurotypical people to process but can be very challenging for neurodivergent people to process. If you want to do a thought experiment (or actual experiment) select a stimuli you can’t ignore, pinch yourself hard every few seconds and try to carry on a conversation. You will notice it takes a lot more energy to focus on your tasks and ignore this unwanted stimuli.

    Second, different thinking patterns. We all process the world differently. Neurodivergent people can have very different ways of processing information, I know first hand of three patterns that are common and that I exhibit.

    • Perseveration. Perseveration is when you can’t stop thinking about a topic. Kinda like getting a song stuck in your head, but for me it’s having a difficult technical problem and literally being unable to carry out other functions because I can’t keep my brain from working on it. I wake up at 4am thinking about technical problems and then can’t go back to sleep. A puzzle might be a fun diversion for you, it can be a dangerous trap for me where I know my brain will continually turn it over again and again no matter what I want.
    • Hyper literal thinking. I think about things in very black and white terms. It can be very frustrating for things to happen outside of the rules I’ve established. There are rules that make obvious sense and the contravention of those rules is distressing. For example, you aren’t supposed to hurt people’s feeling but you also aren’t supposed to lie, this makes white lies distressing (I find all kinds of deception distressing, and it’s amazing how much you are just supposed to lie to people in many social situations).
    • Hyper focus. Neurodivergent people often have special interests that they can focus on for extended periods of time. If people were to leave me alone, I could write code for days, only stopping when hunger or some other undeniable physical pain occurs.

    Third, different skills. Frequently neurodivergent people find social skills difficult. I said to someone recently that neurotypical people seem completely insane to me. The complex web of contradicting rules make little sense. On top of this, rules are often predicated on being able to ascertain the feelings of the person you are interacting with. Many neurodivergent people find this difficult to impossible.

    The best I’ve been able to come up with is it’s like being color blind. I struggle with understanding facial expressions, body language, tone, etc. I also have problem displaying the correct things in kind. To operate in the world, many neurodivergent people adopt a system of “masking” where we learn what we are “supposed to do” and carefully study people and make sure to make our faces look right and make our bodies look correct. This is extremely taxing even if you get it right, so neurodivergent people end up sometimes getting it wrong and also spending a huge amount of energy doing this.

    So to sum up. Neurodivergent people are asked to operate in a world that is constantly bombarding us with negative stimuli, spending extra energy trying to understand social signals that come naturally to others but our brains don’t pick up. Following these weird scripts requires a ton of energy and it’s easy to mess it up and then someone wonders “why are autistic people so weird?”



  • It took a lot of persistence and luck. I had found my wife a new doctor to do her medication management and I ended up just politely hounding her staff explaining calmly but firmly the catch-22 I found myself in.

    The trick I’ve learned over caring for my chronically ill wife, who I love with all my heart, is to be very nice to the front line medical people but to never give up. They take crap all day from angry people, so I make it my mission to never yell at them, never get cross with them. I just explain what’s going on and my goal is always to get them on my side, be my person on the inside.

    That worked here too. After calling a couple times and being nice, one person working the phone remembered me and I could tell they wanted to help. I just kept asking them for options, people like it when they can be part of solving the problem. They got in the doctors ear about this and suddenly if she did a virtual evaluation of my wife she could write a preliminary prescription to fill the gap.

    Is this how things should work? No. Should you have to beg and cajole and get lucky that someone will help you? Absolutely not. But this is how I’ve figured out how to navigate this broken system.

    Tl;Dr - Be very nice to office staff, be persistent, make it a problem you can solve together, keep reminding them that you are advocating for a flesh and blood human being you care about and that them just suffering will never be a good enough answer.

    Also don’t get frustrated if you don’t make progress and need to call back, I think it only took calling 3 days in a row for them to figure out they better help me or they were going to have to talk to me every single day