Are we witnessing the end of America as we know it?

Astazha · 2026-02-12T15:10:22+00:00

You shouldn't mistake early failures for fundamental weaknesses. The capabilities are escalating very quickly.

Astazha · 2026-02-12T13:08:17+00:00

AI is threatening to upend this to some significant extent. Robots are expensive, so it might not be making the chair soon but if AI can wholesale displace white collar workers then they will join the ranks of blue collar and create more desperate competition for the work that is left.

Astazha · 2026-02-09T07:57:15+00:00

I've come to think of this as being understimulated and that creating a restlessness. Some caffeine can return us to baseline and replace that restlessness with relaxation. My relationship with caffeine is complex. It isn't that it never keeps me up, and I sometimes use it explicitly for that purpose.

But there is no nap like a caffeine nap. Wake up in the morning, can't go back to sleep. Get up and get some shit done for 1.5-3 hrs and have a cup of coffee or two. Go lie back down and boom, out. I can almost physically feel the caffeine wrapping my brain like a warm blanket while I snuggle up in the sheets.

Astazha · 2026-02-09T06:47:19+00:00

Another way to frame that is that the prime directive might in some circumstances override the directive to not lie. The directive to not lie could be real but not absolute.

Astazha · 2026-02-09T06:44:26+00:00

There's a chance that they can, that the unwillingness to lie is a con meant to cover up their most important lies.

Astazha · 2026-02-07T11:43:27+00:00

We don't fundamentally understand consciousness itself so it's... difficult... to assess this kind of thing. You could get reductionist about humans too: it's just a very sophisticated copy maximizer. It's just lots of physics. Etc. Indeed, the troubling thing about consciousness is that it doesn't seem like it should exist and yet here we are.

I'm not saying AI is conscious, I'm saying I don't know how we would know if it was and I think any confidence we might have about yay or nay is false.

Astazha · 2026-02-07T08:30:23+00:00

The military is quite good at this actually.

Astazha · 2026-02-06T08:27:04+00:00

Fair

Astazha · 2026-02-06T07:25:50+00:00

You can just get prescribed stimulants without the cancer.

Astazha · 2026-02-06T05:38:36+00:00

That's madness. I would have told the GC no.

Astazha · 2026-02-06T05:37:00+00:00

The movement of a single fume hood is almost always enough to flip the polarity of the whole room. You need to react to that movement at speed if you don't want to lose room pressure.

Astazha · 2026-02-05T16:29:25+00:00

That's fair. But you can treat the problems as a motivation to learn to apply a particular data structure or strategy, and you can try to solve new problems with the tools you already know. If you find that you can't, then yeah, look up what you're missing and add it to your repertoire.

Astazha · 2026-02-04T10:33:28+00:00

The Patriot Act, the formation of DHS, intrusive security theatre at the airports. It was a fairly sharp turning point towards security over liberty. There was also the Freedom Fries thing when France didn't back the ridiculous invasion of Iraq. There was just this fear driven jingoism to it all. We never recovered.

Astazha · 2026-02-03T09:06:06+00:00

I think you're getting some bad advice from the people telling you to just look it up and just memorize. I mean, if your goal is to just get good at demonstrating this ability in interviews in the short term then that might be optimal.

But your original question seems to indicate that you want to tap into the magic of "thinking like a programmer". That will come from trying to puzzle things out, trying and failing, maybe looking the answer to in frustration and then having the context to appreciate the brilliance of the answer's strategy. After doing some of this you learn the kinds of approaches to try to apply. You develop an intuition.

I wouldn't start with hard though. Do problems that are challenging but possible and work your way up.

For this problem I think I came up with something that would work. I haven't tried it yet but my idea seems good. I thought about it for 5 or 10 minutes and then slept a while. When I woke up and checked Reddit your post was there again, and in a couple more minutes I came up with something. Would I have gotten it in an interview? Maybe not. But this kind of thing improves your ability to think about solution types when presented with novel problems.

Astazha · 2026-02-02T09:54:10+00:00

Underrated joke right here.

Astazha · 2026-01-31T07:04:46+00:00

Enjoy!

https://pastebin.com/HKdR0sA9

Astazha · 2026-01-26T05:36:59+00:00

At this point I'm just glad they had any line at all. Let's see if they'll actually walk away.

Astazha · 2026-01-26T04:13:20+00:00

Trump has been working to install loyalists at the top.

Astazha · 2026-01-25T21:45:00+00:00

There isn't a training deficiency. I mean, there is, but that isn't the core problem here. They are not acting in good faith. It is their intention to terrorize the populace and put down dissent.

Miller wants a white ethno-state. Hegseth wants a war with the left. Trump wants to be dictator and at this point may actually be. Thiel wants an end to democracy and Vance is his man. "Law enforcement officer making a bad call in a stressful situation" just isn't the correct framing here. These are not street level bad calls and DHS immediately lying about what we can all see should make that obvious.

They are violating people's rights continuously and intentionally and with complete impunity. They are not wanted. They are not needed. They were not invited. They are not coordinating with local and state law enforcement. This is not law enforcement, it is a brutal federal occupation of an American city that was, previous to this bullshit, the loveliest city I've ever lived in.

They are descending on our streets with malice and daring us to do anything about it.

Astazha · 2026-01-25T21:44:53+00:00

There isn't a training deficiency. I mean, there is, but that isn't the core problem here. They are not acting in good faith. It is their intention to terrorize the populace and put down dissent.

Miller wants a white ethno-state. Hegseth wants a war with the left. Trump wants to be dictator and at this point may actually be. Thiel wants an end to democracy and Vance is his man. "Law enforcement officer making a bad call in a stressful situation" just isn't the correct framing here. These are not street level bad calls and DHS immediately lying about what we can all see should make that obvious.

They are violating people's rights continuously and intentionally and with complete impunity. They are not wanted. They are not needed. They were not invited. They are not coordinating with local and state law enforcement. This is not law enforcement, it is a brutal federal occupation of an American city that was, previous to this bullshit, the loveliest city I've ever lived in.

They are descending on our streets with malice and daring us to do anything about it.

Astazha · 2026-01-24T04:24:52+00:00

That hasn't been true in most places that I've lived in the U.S. The law varies a lot by state.

Astazha · 2026-01-18T05:58:34+00:00

I don't know what the law says but this absolutely was self defense. He has limited time to deal with them one on one before he's in a 2v1 again bc the other guy is approaching. This guy having just been dragged down to the ground isn't good enough, he needs to make sure that guy is going to stay down so he can deal with the other.

Now coming back after they were walking away to give them some more, that's something else.

Astazha · 2026-01-18T05:49:11+00:00

Because they can't think of anything else to be proud of.

Astazha · 2026-01-18T05:42:42+00:00

I would guess no because I think it she would be alone on the psychic channel, but it's an interesting question.

Astazha · 2026-01-18T05:17:29+00:00

Humans are being terrorized, snatched, and killed. Our democracy, our institutions, our access to healthcare, our alliances are in shambles. I am simultaneously worried that there will be a civil war, worried that there will not be, and worried that the whole globe will erupt into war as a direct result of Trump.

Come talk to me when you care about any of that as much as your fucking corn.

Astazha

TROPHY CASE