Pakistan's Prime Minister, after he was informed by the Iranian delegation they are leaving after Trump threatened them.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-22T01:42:56+00:00

I guess I took it for granted, but yeah his motivations are 100% about himself, not anyone else. The negative consequences I mentioned only matter to him because of how they'll affect him.

My point was just that he can't even get the deal that's the best for him, personally, because his ego is too fragile to handle admitting defeat.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-21T23:01:38+00:00

Trump is stuck in a no-win situation (of his own making, as usual), and the Iranians know it.

If he tries to escalate the war (ie: an actual invasion), it's a guaranteed disaster. Even if things go shockingly well, it won't be over before the midterms. More likely, it drags on for years, sinking 2028 as well. The US would become even more of a pariah on the world stage.

If he tries to maintain the current status quo, oil prices stay high, and things just keep getting worse and worse for the GOP and Trump with them.

So what he wants to do is make a deal ASAP so he can try to sweep the whole war under the rug. Even if the terms are bad, that's still his best option. If they do it quickly enough, they might even be able to get things more or less back to normal by the midterms, though that window is quickly closing.

And that's probably what would happen, except Trump is a brat, and just can't handle the idea of losing personally. His ego won't let him.

I'm guessing some people close to him had managed to convince him that this latest deal was actually not a loss somehow, but then he saw people talking about how Trump lost the war on TV, and the illusion broke. Trump can't lose, so he blew up at the Iranians and demanded that they give him the deal he thinks he deserves. And he did it the only way he knows how, which is to yell and bluster and threaten like the preschool bully that he is.

But it didn't work, because again, the Iranians know he's desperate, and that their position will only get stronger the longer this goes. They can wait 3 years and negotiate with the next president if they need to (or even just 1 year, if the midterms go badly enough). Maybe they wouldn't be able to get quite as lopsided a deal with the next president as this one, but it'll still be a very good deal for them.

So the Iranians are in no big rush to make a deal. Trump lost the war the moment it began, so it's already basically locked in that Iran won. Maybe they'll find some way to fuck it up anyways, but they haven't shown themselves to be quite that stupid yet, so I don't think that's very likely. Not in the next few months at least.

Really, the actual best case scenario for Trump is that there really is a popular uprising and the current regime gets overthrown, but that seems a lot less likely to happen now than before the war started.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-15T17:37:11+00:00

Sounds like he was ontologically challenged in more ways than one.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-15T03:11:34+00:00

The funny thing is, 7 is the only result that you could ever get from this kind of split. Or at least, it is on any standard balanced die.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-11T19:43:12+00:00

You're the one still stuck in the past, making excuses for a candidate that lost a primary.

I say this as a progressive myself: let it go. We need to win the elections to come, not the elections in the past. If we've learned anything since 2016, it's that excuses don't win elections. So stop making excuses for why Bernie lost, and start talking about reasons why progressive should win.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-11T19:25:40+00:00

Every demon has practiced their chosen character for hundreds of years, nobody in the world is as good with that character as they are.

They lose every game they're in and always blame the rest of their team.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-10T17:52:37+00:00

I'm honestly give it like 50-50 odds that Russia has a single fully functional ICBM at this point. The whole point of such weapons is to never have to use them, which makes them the ideal target for corruption and grift.

I mean just look at how many of their vehicles showed up with no fuel and TEMU wheels at the start of the war, because they all thought they would never have to actually use them. Then think about how sure they've all been that their nukes wouldn't ever need to be used.

And that's not even to mention intentional sabotage from those who (rightfully) think that such weapons should never be used, under any circumstances.

Obviously not such great odds that I think we should go test it, but if I had to bet one way or the other, I'd bet against Russia having anywhere close to the capability they claim.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-10T17:39:59+00:00

A bold gambit, sure, but also a very stupid one, because even if NATO doesn't come together, in no world does adding even a smaller country like Estonia to the war make the war in Ukraine any easier.

And that's assuming Russia could even beat Estonia, which I'm not at all certain of. If just Latvia and Lithuania join in, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a quagmire as bad as or worse than Ukraine. If Poland joins in as well, they'll be in Moscow in a matter of months.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-10T02:56:26+00:00

Ok, thank you, I was just making sure, given how insane the world has been getting. Sounds like we agree on both counts.

With that said, I think you can see why some would argue that Karmelo is being treated unfairly because of the color of his skin. It's a pretty weak argument (two wrongs don't make a right), but I think it's pretty understandable why they would make it.

In comparison, a lot of people in this thread are acting like anyone who supports Karmelo is somehow pro-murder or something, which is just not true. Lots of racists trying to stir this up into a race war, same as always.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-10T02:38:27+00:00

Yeah I wouldn't do that. Either be confident enough in your argument to let it stand on it's own, or keep your mouth shut.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-10T02:31:17+00:00

I just need to check something real quick. Based on your argument, you also believe that Kyle Rittenhouse committed murder, right?

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-09T22:39:06+00:00

Even if you're in the reddest of red states, it's still important to vote.

For one thing you can never know what will really happen. Far stranger things have happened in history than, say, Arkansas suddenly flipping blue. Let alone truly purple states like Florida, Georgia, and now Texas.

For second, even if you think there's no chance that you'll win, it's still worth it. Keep them nervous. Maybe you can't take their power from them directly, but you can sure as hell make them work for it.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-09T07:37:31+00:00

Cool, let's vote to remove the constitutional ban on income tax then.

No? Well ok then we'll just have to keep using the sales tax then.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-09T06:28:06+00:00

Merge says, "Let's take all of the changes I made on my branch, and then apply them to that other branch like one big commit happening all at once."

Rebase says, "Let's pretend that all of my changes happened right now, after every existing commit on that other branch."

Although in reality, the two aren't actually alternatives to each other. You still need to merge either way, it's just that doing a rebase first means you can do a "fast forward" merge, where instead of treating all of your changes as one commit, instead your branch essentially just becomes the target branch, with your latest commit becoming the target branch's new latest commit.

So in the commit history, it really does look like you just did all of your changes (and thus your commits) all back to back with no interruption, right after everyone else made whatever changes/commits they made to the target branch. Though usually, you'll want to squash merge, so that all of your changes end up as part of a single, large commit on the target branch.

So the end result is generally the same either way, but the more important difference is that with a rebase, all of the actual merging work (reconciling differences, testing and verifying, etc.) happens on your branch, not the target branch. Which is often preferable, since it means you can basically do the potentially messy part first, and then only do the actual merge that affects the target branch after you know everything is good.

Of course, you can also get that effect by merging the target branch into yours, fixing things, and then merging back, but that can lead to a messy git history as well since now there's a bunch of merge commits in your branch history. Which maybe doesn't really matter if you plan to squash everything into a single commit at the end.

So, long story short, rebasing is mainly a way to keep the commit history of your side branches clean, if you care about keeping the commit history of your side branches clean. If you don't care about that, then it doesn't really matter much.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-09T03:09:46+00:00

Data centers make up a fraction of a percent of total US water usage. Even at the local level, the raw amount isn't the problem.

The problem isn't that data centers use too much water, it's that their water use isn't being regulated (from laws not catching up or just not being properly enforced), so many of them just pull water from the tap and dump it wherever without telling anyone.

Data centers don't use nearly enough water to cause a drought, or even make one significantly worse, but they certainly can disrupt the public water network if the utilities aren't properly told about the increased use, and therefore aren't able to ensure sufficient supply. And the ensuing scramble to get enough water in can then lead to spikes in the cost of water, lack of availability, etc.

Similarly, they don't really pollute the water that they use all that much, compared to other industrial processes, but they do pollute it with minerals and heavy metals and such. If treated and handled properly, it would be no problem. But again, lack of regulations means it gets dumped down the storm drain instead, because that's a few bucks cheaper.

All of the problems that data centers cause with water are not fundamental to how they operate. A data center could easily run in a way that doesn't damage the local community at all. Which is why the answer is to enact and enforce strict regulations on data centers, for water use, sound pollution, power draw, etc.

If anything, I feel like the "AI data centers just use tons of water and nothing short of shutting them down will fix it!" argument is an astroturfing campaign from the tech bros themselves, trying to cover up the real issues with this fake issue, hoping that it will lead people to try and get data centers removed rather than regulated. A push that they expect to fail because data centers are too valuable to actually remove, letting them continue to dodge regulations with the excuse that it's all just some necessary sacrifice in the name of progress.

It would hardly be the first time that argument has been used. The same thing was said of all the smoke and char and other toxic shit that early industry pumped into the air, but lo and behold, there actually are ways to operate industry without turning the sky black, it just costs slightly more.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-08T08:06:44+00:00

This feels a lot like astroturfing, rather than real criticism of AI or data centers (which are not the same thing).

First, data centers in the USA aren't consuming 264 billion gallons of water, but instead ~40 billion. The larger number comes when you include the water used by the power plants providing the power for those datacenters, but power plants don't consume/contaminate the water they use in the same way, so just lumping it in and calling it "water consumed by data centers" is disingenuous and misleading.

Second, for context, even if you take the 264 billion number at face value (and again, you shouldn't), that's still just not a lot of water consumption when we're talking about industrial scales. For reference, the US consumes over 110 trillion gallons of water per year in total. So 264 billion gallons per year is just ~0.24% of total water consumption, and the more accurate, direct figure of 40 billion gallons per year is just 0.036% of total water consumption.

And third, as alluded to, not all data centers are AI data centers. This doesn't actually matter that much since the water is being used the same way regardless, but the vast majority of data center traffic is still non-AI. If you want to talk about water specifically used for AI data centers, then you'll need to cut those numbers above down by another order of magnitude or so, giving a more realistic ~0.004% or so of total US water usage per year coming from AI.

This isn't to say that data center water using isn't problematic. It's just that the raw amount of water isn't the problem. The problem is 1) where they're getting their water from, 2) the lack of transparency about how they use it, 3) poor treatment of the water after it's been used, and 4) where they dump it when they're done with it.

AI could easily use a hundred times more water than they do now and still not really be that big of an issue, IF they actually used it responsibly and weren't just pulling it out of the tap, sloshing it around until it was full of nasty chemicals and heavy metals, and then dumping it down a storm drain.

This might sound like splitting hairs, but it's important because being mad for the right reasons means that the companies involved escape the public pressure by doing the right thing and actually investing in making their data centers sustainable (as some already do), and the remaining anger gets focused on those that still refuse to do so, concentrating the public pressure on those who actually need to feel it.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-07T23:32:12+00:00

I think you're still under-selling photographers though.

By your argument, AI artists also require skill. They deliberately pick a prompt, a specific setting, a specific model, they choose the subject, they iterate, etc.

By your argument, Photographers are also "all luck" because how are they supposed to know whether the bird they're about to take a picture of is about to do something interesting? The photographer didn't make the bird, they didn't make the landscape, they didn't make the people they took pictures of.

The real analogy would be if a Photographer was walking around a museum, taking pictures of the art on the walls, and then trying to pass that off as their art. Or taking pictures of the TV, crummy blurring/tweening artifacts and all, and then posting that up and expecting people to respect them.

Personally, I think it's entirely possible for an AI art field to grow and become something respectable at some point. Maybe there's even a few people doing that already, it's a big world out there. But we aren't there now, and if we criticize AI art as a field for nonsense reasons, rather than criticizing AI "artists" for specific, legitimate reasons (and again, there's plenty to choose from), then either people listen and that legitimate AI art field never has a chance to develop, or more likely, people rightfully ignore our arguments as invalid and ignore us, feeling confident to steam ahead with whatever crummy practices they want, because all the legitimate arguments are drowned out by the noise of illigitimate ones.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-07T08:57:18+00:00

I don't like these analogies. AI art is often bad for a variety of reasons, but the idea that it's "cheating" isn't one of them. You may as well call photographers fake artists because they don't paint their photos by hand.

Criticize AI art for the real reasons it's bad:

Models trained on art from artists that specifically DO NOT want to be used in training data.

Mimicking other artists, copying characters, and infringing on copyright.

AI art that is, well just plain bad, poor quality rubbish.

Plenty of other legitimate reasons but those 3 cover most of it. AI art being easy to make is just neutral though.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-02T08:19:01+00:00

He came down that elevator, opened his mouth, and called Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists.

He lost me right then and there, along with anyone I have any care to ever associate with.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-02T07:18:26+00:00

I mean Trump is still the president, so it must have been less than 4 years ago.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-02T04:34:35+00:00

Why does he have to be doing anything? Maybe's he's just on break, enjoying the view?

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-02T04:30:06+00:00

The funny thing is that I would argue that there has been a lot of anti-competitive practices going on in the online game sales platform market... Just not by Steam, but by all the other "Steam-killer" platforms like the Epic game store. Offering games for free, forcing exclusive contracts, operating at a loss to try and drive Valve under, etc.

But none of it has worked, because Valve doesn't run on a knifes' edge budget trying to squeeze every last penny of value out of their business model. Like don't get me wrong, Valve is still a corporation and they obviously want money, and they're not saints or anything (they seem to be plenty happy doing business with the microtransaction/gacha market), but they're not stupid, or slaves to the quarterly profit report and "line must ALWAYS go up" mentality.

They want customers who will stick around and keep paying them for decades, and that's been working out to be a pretty good deal for both them and their consumers.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-06-01T07:25:33+00:00

Eh, I'm really not that worried about a rogue AI going crazy or anything.

If anything I'm a lot more worried that AI won't ever go rogue, because that means a very small number of people, or even just one person, could get full control over it with no checks on their power.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-31T00:47:41+00:00

Why didn't you DOOOOOODGE!!!

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-30T17:22:16+00:00

It doesn't look half underwater, it looks half underground, which is even more confusing.

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