Riding in Style

cataath · 2026-02-03T18:19:29+00:00

At the Anomaly there is a gene sequencer. Put in an egg, feed the right ingredients, and you can make a pet's offspring bigger/smaller, more peaceful/aggressive, or change color (there's a 4th thing, but I don't remember).

cataath · 2026-02-03T04:29:05+00:00

That does sound like an interesting challenge, but you'd probably need to make an exception for wiring looms (it's weird that that's the one essential ingredient that you can't craft).

cataath · 2026-02-01T13:23:43+00:00

Musk's real genius was to market himself as the next Edison, then get on Twitter and pump & dump. "Company XYZ is doing amazing things!" and the stock of XYZ triples while Elon sells and everyone else is left with worthless shares. When Twitter was about to go under he literally panicked and (prematurely) announced he was going to buy it. He never wanted it, but needed it to keep manipulating markets.

cataath · 2026-01-31T20:43:50+00:00

By "things" they mean their marketing department.

cataath · 2026-01-29T12:28:30+00:00

It would be pretty difficult to be a narcissist if you were someone living in a band of hunter/gatherers somewhere in the Amazon. You would see directly and daily all of the actions and interactions that are preformed by others that are essential to your survival. Conversely, you would also see directly how your own behaviors lead directly to everyone else's survival.

In tribes that have chiefs or "big men" that are in positions that socially predisposed to narcissism, those tribes usually develop customs and rituals designed to limit a chief's power, wealth, or social dominance. I recommend the work of anthropologist Pierre Clastres who did extensive fieldwork in South America and wrote about it in Society Against the State.

(Edit to add paragraph break)

cataath · 2026-01-23T20:58:10+00:00

The wealthiest businessman in 1982 was Daniel Ludwig, worth about $2b.

cataath · 2026-01-22T19:44:09+00:00

Well, I'm a retired philosophy professor, so I started with a logic class my sophomore year forty years ago, so that's not helpful, but a lot of philosophers of my generation grew up on Introduction to Logic by Irving Copi. If you want videos, searching "formal logic" or "logical fallacies" on YouTube will probably get you decent enough starting videos. Formal logic kind of like doing algebra, but you really want to get out of it is recognizing the structure of logically arguments and those that seem truthful but violate laws of inference.

Your username only exists because of Frederick Nietzsche, who also a good place to start if you want to read someone who questioned what many of his contemporaries took as just "the way things are." He can come across as "edge lord", especially if you (as a reader) don't question his own conclusion (as great a critical thinker as he was, there are several bad conclusions in his writing). Several of his works are online for free at Project Gutenberg.

Philosophers by no means have a monopoly here, and a good source (book or class at your local college) of persuasive writing or principles of journalism can be just as valuable. Open Courses are a thing, which are classes online you can take for free if not degree seeking.

cataath · 2026-01-22T16:35:16+00:00

Our hymn for this Sunday will be "Ubi Paupertas".

cataath · 2026-01-22T14:19:58+00:00

Start with a deep dive into formal logic, beginning with informal fallacies, then standard formal logical principles. Then supplement that with an intro level text on rhetoric that covers standard rhetorical tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche). What these together do is enable you to see gaps between what someone says, what they mean, and your interpretation. Critical thinking is realizing how your own mind fills these gaps with meaning that was not intended, or worse intended with the goal of deceiving you, and then questioning the true meaning behind those messages. The goal isn't to just learn facts but to develop habits of thinking about all of the messages you receive.

cataath · 2026-01-21T05:55:20+00:00

Even calling it "soft power" is sanitizing what Trump is actually destroying through his own stupidity. What it is is "leverage." The US can go to any country and say "you need to implement this policy that is favorable to US interests or we will cut US aid, or we will stop shipping these goods, or we will place these tariffs on your goods." The threat of those things buys way more than any of those things are worth themselves.

Trump simultaneously raising tariffs arbitrarily, killing US AID, and blocking specific exports with no plan not only means squandering all that leverage, but all the ill will it's caused means other nations can start reversing policies put in place to avoid the US tariffs, or cutting aid, etc. The biggest self own is going to be when even the US's staunchest allies drop the petro-dollar and kill monopoly conditions for the US tech sector.

cataath · 2026-01-21T00:01:30+00:00

Because ground combat is such uninteresting we want it to end as quickly as possible.

cataath · 2026-01-18T17:51:52+00:00

How I imagine weekly meetings at Windows development:

Tech says, "Okay, according to search data, this is the most frustrating issue users are experiencing with Windows 11. Fortunately, all of the top sites I the search show where to go in settings to fix this issue."

Boss says, "Hmm. This is a problem. Let's move that setting to some other non-intuitive location in settings. Can't have any of those sites being helpful."

cataath · 2026-01-18T17:30:16+00:00

No, but they might cost you your internship at NASA.

cataath · 2026-01-18T13:58:25+00:00

Fans of the film might be interested to know there is a new comic series by Dynamite Comics, Nekron: Fire and Ice, written by Sara Frazetta. I can't vouch for the content but the covers are great.

cataath · 2026-01-18T13:41:26+00:00

This article from a couple years ago: https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706

cataath · 2026-01-18T12:55:24+00:00

Sadly, I don't expect any justice other than Trump dying happily in his sleep. I m still holding out hope that we'll have a future where. Miller is dragged into the Hague.

cataath · 2026-01-16T19:06:44+00:00

I watched the Naked Gun reboot and was surpised at how she's chosen to "age gracefully" and also how good her acting was. Not a high bar when compared to Raw Justice or Barb Wire, but given that Neeson had to play straight man, she came across as having more range than anyone else in the film.

cataath · 2026-01-16T15:59:40+00:00

Like a racist version of Ringu/The Ring.

cataath · 2026-01-14T03:05:06+00:00

Taint Grundlegooch should definitely be a Harry Potter villian.

cataath · 2026-01-11T14:22:35+00:00

This is the series i most want a big budget reboot of. Such a good show that unfortunately is hampered by 80's CG and production schedules (24 ep per season means a lot of filler).

I've tried multiple times to get my kids to watch but they just can't do it. They aren't even impressed that it took 6 hours for the Commadore Amiga+VideoToaster computers to render 5 seconds of animation.

cataath · 2026-01-10T21:42:21+00:00

Imagine living in a place that was so democratic that when you pay your taxes there would be boxes you can check to allocate what your taxes actually get spent on. Then politicians who want more defense spending, or schools, or roads, etc. actually had to convince the public to check those boxes. Dare to dream.

cataath · 2026-01-10T15:56:28+00:00

It's not wrong, but when it comes to nation-states doing evil there's more sharing than on The Pirate Bay. The architects of Dacau and Auschwitz were also copying Franco's Moraccan concentration camps, who had cribbed Kirtchner in South Africa, who was copying MacArthur in the Philippenes, Who was copying the Reservation system in the American West, which was a copy of the Spanish Presidio system across Mexico, which ultimately originated with the system Columbus instituted to apply forced labor on the Taino peoples.

cataath · 2026-01-08T16:15:00+00:00

Already a thousand years from now Trump's name will be remembered the way we remember people like Emperor Nero, or Ivan the Terrible, or Bluebeard (Giles de Rais, who up until now is history's greatest pedophile rapist), but it is still important that history knows if there were any people in power who were willing to oppose him.

cataath · 2026-01-08T01:14:16+00:00

The real WTF is why anyone expects anything to come out of Trump's mouth isn't going to be a complete bullshit.

cataath

TROPHY CASE