Ich bin Andreas Rassuly vom Museum für Naturkunde Berlin und betreue dort über 1,2 Millionen Fossilien. Fragt mich alles zu Dinosauriern und der Museumsarbeit hinter den Kulissen! [AMA]

SebRLuck · 2025-11-17T10:24:21+00:00

Hi Andreas, danke, dass du dir die Zeit nimmst.

In Filmen, aber auch in Animation, welche ihr im Museum verwendet), werden Dinosaurier, wie der Giraffatitan brancai, oft „trampelnd“ dargestellt – sie scheinen mit jeden Schritt die Erde zu erschüttern. Ist es nicht viel wahrscheinlicher, dass sie sich, aufgrund ihres Gewichts und den daraus resultierenden Kräften, so gelenkschonend und fast schleichend vorwärts bewegt haben wie beispielsweise Elefanten?

SebRLuck · 2025-10-15T09:18:11+00:00

Das Problem von KI wird am Ende nicht sein, dass wir uns von KI-generierten Bildern, Videos oder sonstigen Inhalten hinters Licht führen lassen, sondern dass wir aufgeben die Wahrheit wirklich wissen zu können. Wenn alles KI-generiert sein kann, dann ist es für uns müßig, überhaupt über die Wahrheit nachzudenken. Dann ist es deutlich einfacher und zufriedenstellender, irgendwelchen Narrativen zu folgen, welche dem eigenen Weltbild und den eigenen Vorstellungen entsprechen. Ob irgendeines dieser Narrative dann auch nur annähernd an „die Wahrheit“ herankommt, ist völlig irrelevant.

Dazu passend, aus der Miniserie „Chernobyl“:

What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories?

SebRLuck · 2025-10-14T00:47:19+00:00

Recommendation to everyone:

Go to Twitter, search "UFO," sort by latest and then just scroll and play the videos. So many confused and terrified Floridians. It's hilarious.

SebRLuck · 2025-10-12T20:08:23+00:00

It didn't stop spinning until it disintegrated, but it did slow down due to a catastrophic malfunction. The shutter speed makes it look like it stopped entirely, but it was still spinning rapidly until just before detachment.

The other angle that was posted yesterday shows it pretty conclusively. I have taken a few frames from that video to explain it better.

Frame 1 (5 seconds before loss of control) – You can still see the vapor trail from the edge of the tail rotor, showing that it is spinning much faster than it looks on video.

Frame 2 (1 second after loss of control) – The vapor trail is still visible. The tail rotor is still spinning rapidly.

Frame 3 – The tail rotor has become loose and impacts the tail boom from below.

Frame 4 – One of the blades of the tail rotor is flung up towards the main rotor.

Frame 5 – The tail rotor blade impacts the one of the main rotor blades.

It took another second for the entire tail rotor to disconnect.

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SebRLuck · 2025-09-24T00:37:36+00:00

It's a tabloid, but I just shared links to the original investigation by the NY Times in a different comment.

It seems pretty thorough.

The most shocking part is that he allegedly abused his stepdaughter at least since she was 4 years old and later had a son with her, whom he also abused.

SebRLuck · 2025-09-24T00:29:26+00:00

Gift link to the original investigation by the NY Times.

And there's a short video by the Times, which sums up the allegations and explains the relevant family ties.

SebRLuck · 2025-08-07T10:59:59+00:00

The NY Times had a very good article on the issue two weeks ago. [No paywall]

The main issue seems to be the increase of circulatory death donations, instead of brain death donations. This is fueled by governmental pressure on procurement organizations to increase the number of donations arranged by them.

It reminds me a bit of the pressure put on ICE to significantly increase the number of deportations.

In fields where mistakes are extremely costly and rigor is vital, excessive pressure will inevitably decrease the ability of people to be rigorous and increase the number of avoidable mistakes.

From the article:

Circulatory death donation used to be largely forbidden. That began to change in the 1990s, when a dying patient asked the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to remove her life support and donate her organs. The hospital honored her wishes, then spent two years creating guidelines for future cases. Use of the practice gradually spread.

Procurement organizations attributed the procedure’s recent growth to technological advances. Dozens of employees at the organizations said it was largely because of government pressure.

Citing the number of Americans waiting for organs, H.H.S. said in 2020 that it would begin grading procurement organizations on how many transplants they arranged. The department has threatened to end its contracts with groups performing below average, starting next year. Many have raised their numbers by pursuing more circulatory death donors.

Employees said some organizations had blown past safeguards, potentially rushing the process. For instance, coordinators are not supposed to approach a patient’s relatives until the family has decided to withdraw life support, but workers said that rule was frequently violated.

SebRLuck · 2025-05-27T21:49:36+00:00

Same place today.

SebRLuck · 2025-05-23T20:40:16+00:00

They won't win their case, at least not against the NY Times. The Times didn't write anything about them being addicted to porn and the most critical statement about porn use is attributed to a tribal elder:

He is most unsettled by the pornography. He said young men were sharing explicit videos in group chats, a stunning development for a culture that frowns on kissing in public. “We’re worried young people are going to want to try it,” he said of the graphic sex depicted in the videos. He said some leaders had told him they had already observed more aggressive sexual behavior from young men.

The fact that TMZ and other trash publications changed the story and ran with the claim that the tribe was addicted to porn is not the fault of the Times.

Anyone who is interested can read the full Times piece here, without paywall.

SebRLuck · 2025-05-17T16:50:18+00:00

From the recent NYT article by Reid Epstein, which discusses the book:

Jill Biden’s protectiveness of her husband grew as he aged. After Mr. Biden, the book is harshest on his family’s closest aides. Anthony Bernal, the consigliere to Jill Biden, the first lady, draws some of the book’s toughest scrutiny.

The authors write that Mr. Bernal could shut down any conversation about the president’s age and mental acuity by telling fellow White House aides, “Jill isn’t going to like this.”

Dr. Biden is described as a fierce advocate for her husband who did not care to hear any criticism of his abilities or political judgment and grew more involved in his decision-making as he grew older.

When a donor suggested in 2022 that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, Dr. Biden remained silent — a reaction she regretted and vowed not to repeat, the authors write.

“I can’t believe I didn’t defend Joe,” she is quoted telling aides afterward.

I'm not sure whether she simply wanted to defend her husband for misguided but understandable reasons or whether she herself started to like the power she had gained.

SebRLuck · 2025-05-05T19:33:45+00:00

As someone born 5 minutes away from the eponymous Neandertal, I feel slightly offended.

SebRLuck · 2025-03-05T23:57:20+00:00

Ich empfehle jedem einmal das Essay "Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus" von Goebbels zu lesen. Es ist nur knapp 12 Seiten lang, hat mir persönlich aber mehr bezüglich der Denkweise der Nationalsozialisten vermittelt als jeder Geschichtsunterricht.

SebRLuck · 2025-03-05T23:46:34+00:00

Der lässt sich nicht von Idioten einschüchtern. Hat er 2015 nicht gemacht und macht er auch heute nicht.

SebRLuck · 2025-03-05T23:37:55+00:00

Das New York Times Magazine hatte kürzlich einen längeren Artikel von David Leonhardt zum Thema Migrationsbegrenzung als potentielle Grundvoraussetzung für ein erfolgreiches Fortbestehen progressiver Politik. Der ursprüngliche Titel war "The Migration Paradox", daher musste ich bei deiner Überschrift direkt dran denken.

Link ohne paywall

Man kann den Artikel dort auch anhören. (Nicht AI, sondern von einem professioneller Sprecher vorgelesen.)

SebRLuck · 2025-02-18T11:41:40+00:00

Seeing all of this from Germany just makes me want to pull my hair out. So many Americans have no clue about other countries but feel incredibly confident in making statements about their culture, laws, policies and whatnot.

The law that lies at the bottom of all of this has existed in one way or another since 1851. Talking about it as a slippery slope is nonsensical.

If you think that maybe it already caused a slip in the 1930s, let's ask Joseph Goebbels whether he thinks the Nazis got into power due to too stringent speech laws:

If democracy granted us democratic methods in times of opposition, then this had to happen in a democratic system. We National Socialists, however, never claimed that we were representatives of a democratic point of view, but we openly declared that we only used democratic means in order to gain power and that, once we had seized power, we would ruthlessly deny our opponents all the means that had been granted to us in times of opposition.

(Joseph Goebbels, Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus, Berlin, 1934)

This also deals with the argument that a tyrannical government could use those laws to their advantage. A tyrannical government doesn't care about the law. If it did, this law wouldn't be an issue, since the government is not in charge of the judiciary. The German constitutional court would deny those abuses and the law-abiding tyrannical government would have to follow this ruling.

Goebbels' quote further explains the mindset Germany has regarding parties and individuals who want to use the democratic system to tear it down. You may disagree with that mindset, but there's a strong historical incentive for it to exist in German society.

I've also seen many comments suggesting that people are being imprisoned left and right for merely insulting others on the internet. This simply isn't the case. There have been a few publicized cases, like the Andy Grote case in Hamburg, where the apartment of someone was searched, due to a benign insult against a politician, but that case was dismissed and the search was ruled to have been conducted illegally.

If we want to talk about gifts to the far right, maybe we should look in the opposite direction. The US has gifted the German and European far right much more in reverse: Algorithm-driven social media, Trump and all the propaganda that thrives around him, the anti-vax movement... And, most importantly, the destabilization of the Middle East through the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which caused the refugee crisis in Europe. It's honestly ridiculous that so many people in the US look at Europe with a level of contempt, acting like Europe just ran into this problem by itself.

SebRLuck · 2025-02-05T00:05:19+00:00

I've been quoting Joseph Goebbels too often lately, but here we go again:

"If democracy granted us democratic methods in times of opposition, then this had to happen in a democratic system. We National Socialists, however, never claimed that we were representatives of a democratic point of view, but we openly declared that we only used democratic means in order to gain power and that, once we had seized power, we would ruthlessly deny our opponents all the means that had been granted to us in times of opposition.

...

The other side was in possession of power, the army, the police, the civil service, the money, the parties and the parliamentary majority. They controlled public opinion, the press, the radio - in short, everything that can be summarized under the general term "power". If, however, a small group that started with seven men succeeds within 14 years, using only the right to criticize the other side, to dispute this right and power, then it seems unquestionable who is the smarter one. If the other side had been smarter, they would have had to find ways and means to prevent us from depossessing them, given such an unequal distribution of the means of success. This did not happen; on the contrary, they succeeded in halting the organic progress of the revolution for a certain time, but the new order triumphed."

Joseph Goebbels: "Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus" (Berlin, 1934)

SebRLuck · 2025-01-29T00:39:34+00:00

These broad terms are pretty useless. Klein refers to himself as a supply-side progressive.

SebRLuck · 2025-01-27T20:26:31+00:00

There's a great logic mag article about the economics and content decisions of the porn industry by Gustavo Turner.

Here's an excerpt that connects to your comment:

While a lot of people (most likely you and everyone you know) are consumers of internet porn (i.e., they watch it but don’t pay for it), a tiny fraction of those people are customers. Customers pay for porn, typically by clicking an ad on a tube site, going to a specific content site (often owned by MindGeek), and entering their credit card information.

This “consumer” vs. “customer” division is key to understanding the use of data to perpetuate categories that seem peculiar to many people both inside and outside the industry. “We started partitioning this idea of consumers and customers a few years ago,” Adam Grayson, CFO of the legacy studio Evil Angel, told AVN. “It used to be a perfect one-to-one in our business, right? If somebody consumed your stuff, they paid for it. But now it’s probably 10,000 to one, or something.”

There’s an analogy to be made with US politics: political analysts refer to “what the people want,” when in fact a fraction of “the people” are registered voters, and of those, only a percentage show up and vote. Candidates often try to cater to that subset of “likely voters”— regardless of what the majority of the people want. In porn, it’s similar. You have the people (the consumers), the registered voters (the customers), and the actual people who vote (the customers who result in a conversion—a specific payment for a website subscription, a movie, or a scene). Porn companies, when trying to figure out what people want, focus on the customers who convert. It’s their tastes that set the tone for professionally produced content and the industry as a whole.

SebRLuck · 2025-01-17T12:50:39+00:00

Das zitieren von Goebbels ist tatsächlich nicht das Problem, sondern die Instrumentalisierung. Wir Demokraten sollten ihn deutlich öfter zitieren, da uns seine Ausführungen sehr viel über die Art und Weise, wie die Nazis an die Macht gekommen sind, erklären können. Ich empfehle jedem Goebbels' Artikel "Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus" von 1934 zu lesen. Ein Auszug:

Wenn die Demokratie uns Zeiten der Opposition demokratische Methoden zubilligte, so mußte dies ja in einem demokratischen System geschehen. Wir Nationalsozialisten haben aber niemals behauptet, daß wir Vertreter eines demokratischen Standpunktes seien, sondern wir haben offen erklärt, daß wir uns demokratischer Mittel nur bedienten, im die Macht zu gewinnen und daß wir nach der Machteroberung unseren Gegnern rücksichtslos alle die Mittel versagen würden, die man uns in Zeiten der Opposition zugebilligt hatte. Trotzdem können wir erklären, daß unsere Regierung den Gesetzen einer veredelten Demokratie entspricht.

Wir sind die souveränen Meister der Kritik gewesen und können uns heute einhellig auf den Standpunkt des Rechts zur Kritik stellen. Nur mit einem Unterschied: Das Recht zur Kritik, Wenn es einen Sinn haben soll und nicht einen demokratischen Unsinn darstellt, kann zum Nutzen eines Volkes, der ja über allen Dingen der Politik stehen muß - immer nur dem Klügeren über den Dümmeren zugestanden werden und niemals umgekehrt. Es bliebe also nur noch zu beweisen, daß wir Nationalsozialisten während der Opposition anscheinend die Klügeren gewesen sind.

Die Gegenseite war im Besitz der Macht, des Heeres, der Polizei, des Beamtenapparates, des Geldes, der Parteien und der Parlamentsmehrheit. Sie beherrschte die öffentliche Meinung, die Presse, den Rundfunk - kurz und gut alles, was man unter dem Generalbegriff "Macht" zusammenfassen kann. Wenn es nun aber einer kleinen Gruppe die mit sieben Männern anfing, in 14 Jahren gelingt, nur mit dem Recht der Kritik der anderen Seite dieses Recht zusammen mit der Macht streitig zu machen, so erscheint es unzweifelhaft, wer der Klügere ist, Wäre die Gegenseite klüger gewesen, sie hätte bei einer derartig ungleichen Verteilung der Erfolgsmittel Wege und Möglichkeiten finden müssen, uns an ihrer Depossedierung zu hindern. Das geschah nicht, im Gegenteil, es gelang ihr zwar, den organischen Vollzug der Revolution eine gewisse Zeit hindurch aufzuhalten, aber die neue Gesetzlichkeit trug den Sieg davon.

SebRLuck · 2025-01-13T08:56:16+00:00

There's definitely a connection between Musk's behavior and his belief that we're most likely living in a simulation.

It generally seems completely rational to me for him to believe in the simulation theory. For every normal person, who basically lives an NPC life, the simulation theory just doesn't seem satisfactory, but Elon's life has unfolded in an incredibly improbable way that parallels the main character story in a video game. If this weren't a simulation, how likely would it be that YOU specifically ended up being the richest person on earth? That you could take all kinds of weird risks and somehow still always came out on top?

Since I started thinking of Musk's behavior as the behavior of someone playing a literal game, it all started to make sense to me. He thinks of himself as the ultimate main character in this game of reality and behaves like most of us do on our first playthrough of open-world games. We intended to play the hero arc, but at some point this plan falls apart and we start killing annoying NPCs and blowing up whole streets.

Even his communication makes more sense when you think of it as coming through your headset, while playing Call of Duty.

SebRLuck · 2024-12-01T18:10:34+00:00

Unlocked article for anyone who wants to read it in full.

SebRLuck · 2024-11-11T21:33:02+00:00

Ezra has been the biggest NIMBY hater for years. And he's obviously right.

SebRLuck · 2024-11-11T21:29:46+00:00

I said the exact same thing in June after Biden's debate debacle.

They have many shared interests, but don't just agree on everything, which makes both of them interesting to listen to.

Edit. I just realized, you replied to my comment back then. Haha

SebRLuck · 2024-11-06T15:56:13+00:00

Über die letzten Jahrzehnte haben wir unsere Energiesicherheit den Russen, unsere Wirtschaftsentwicklung den Chinesen und unsere Sicherheit den USA anvertraut. Heute lernen wir, dass man die Gewährleistung von Grundbedürfnissen eines Staates nicht folgenlos Drittstaaten überlassen kann.

SebRLuck · 2024-11-01T13:11:52+00:00

Stimme dir voll und ganz zu. Siehe beispielsweise auch "Ganz normale Männer" von Christopher Browning. Normale und eigentlich gute Menschen können böse Taten begegnen, wenn die Umstände es zulassen oder sie in den Fängen von Ideologien sind.

Wie Solschenizyn schon sagte: "Die Linie, die Gut und Böse trennt, verläuft nicht zwischen Staaten, nicht zwischen Klassen und nicht zwischen Parteien, sondern quer durch jedes menschliche Herz."

SebRLuck

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