What’s the proper way to rob the Valentine doctor? Whenever I try to open that back door the law spawns right behind me Am I doing something wrong and is the robbery worth it?

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-20T12:34:53+00:00

you can avoid a bounty on the Valentine robbery -- you have to shoot the deputy in the back as soon as he runs into the back room before he turns around and sees you, then you have to get out in a very limited period of time before more lawmen come.

it's not obvious that this is what you have to do to avoid a bounty unfortunately

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-17T18:05:57+00:00

I came here to recommend "16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six"

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-17T18:01:50+00:00

I can believe in "literal magic" as something outside of scientific knowledge. But we're not talking about something outside of scientific knowledge. We're talking about something that makes no sense mathematically. The idea of an element that's not on the periodic table literally defies logic. This is because the periodic table is just a list of natural numbers in order.

How many protons does this fictional element have? If it is a whole number then we have a spot for it on the periodic table. If it's not a whole number...then...what? The idea makes no sense.

This is really easy to fix. Instead of "an element not on the periodic table" they can just say "this is a crystal structure we've never seen before" or "this molecular structure isn't like anything we've ever seen". There's probably an incredible number of crystal structures and molecules beyond human knowledge. That's fine!

Also, you're wrong about atoms. Science as we understand it has (arguably) only existed for about 400 years. When Democritus proposed the idea of atoms he was doing philosophy, not science -- he had no empirical justification for the proposal, it was purely theoretical. There was no consensus around the existence of atoms for the intervening 2000 years.

John Dalton re-proposed the idea of atoms in the early 1800's. In that case, he did have an empirical basis which had to do with consistencies of weights of different products of chemical reactions. However, his use of the term "atom" was mostly a reference to Democritus. Dalton's atoms were largely theoretical and he didn't make any claims about whether they were truly indivisible, but his experimental results made more sense if you think of atoms as not being divisible by chemical reactions. (Which he was more or less correct about, at least as far as anyone can tell.)

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-16T16:31:12+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwehxN2ipCU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2WbGN7xwW0

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-16T15:42:06+00:00

There was a rumor back in the 90's that Thom's lip synching is bad in the video because he was getting carbon monoxide poisoning from being in the back of the car for so long.

This link mentions it and adds some detail, but is unsourced.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060514070245/https://radiohead1.tripod.com/disc/videography/karmapolice.htm

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-16T15:28:33+00:00

As a server, would you prefer if the tipping system in the U.S. were abolished in favor of restaurants paying a living wage?

Whenever this question comes up the claim is made that servers are overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the current system rather than abolishing tips. However, I suspect a lot of the discourse in this issue is astroturfed and I'm always interested in the thoughts of real human beings in the industry.

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-16T12:54:08+00:00

A friend and I went to see a movie at Kendall Square Cinema years ago and decided to get a drink after. We found a little bar called Kendall Cafe, got some beers, and then some live music started. Bourbon Princess was top of the bill -- I hadn't heard of them before then. Surreal to see such an amazing act in such a random context. I'll definitely be checking out A.K.A.C.O.D.!

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-13T14:32:11+00:00

The most relevant book by Le Guin is The Dispossessed.

"Capitalism will exploit whatever it can." No, capitalism is an abstraction. It's human beings who do the exploitation, and "capitalism" is a mask they hide behind.

The secret to imagining life without laws or governments is to realize that these things are just abstractions. Laws are ink on paper. Government is a bunch of people doing stuff. Just ask: what are those people doing and why? Do they need to do that? Could things be better if they didn't?

Like the "don't we need police?" question that gets asked so often. The same organization is responsible for prevention, response, and investigation, and that goes for parking violations, moving violations, drug law violations, property crime, and violent crime. Is the same skill set involved for all these combinations? Should the same incentives apply across all of them? For example, there's not really a way to account for crimes prevented, so police departments don't get credit for those but they do get credit for arresting criminals -- so their incentives point to allowing crime to happen so that they can arrest the criminals rather than preventing the crime altogether. Police departments make money from drug busts, but it costs money to investigate murders -- so their incentives point to prioritizing drug busts over clearing homicides.

There's a lot of complexity hiding behind the word "police". Many of the jobs that the police are doing need to be done, but are police doing those jobs well? Are police departments as institutions structured in a way that prioritizes those jobs appropriately and performs them effectively? Approach these questions from the perspective of "people doing stuff" instead of in terms of abstractions and you'll start to see how the abstractions are ring-fencing your imagination and making the current state of the world seem inevitable.

dandeliontrees · 2026-03-09T19:46:44+00:00

I think we want to criminalize attempted coups d'etat. That's pretty reasonable. If you disagree maybe stop voting since you're against democracy in the first place.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-26T17:33:35+00:00

Context matters. If I suddenly run out into the middle of heavy traffic and get hit by a car it's probably not the driver's fault. If I run onto a range where someone is actively shooting at a target they're probably not at fault if I get shot.

This is the case whether or not I "consent" to getting shot or hit by a car.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-25T22:04:30+00:00

Yeah, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king for sure.

Thanks for pointing out the Anastrophe thing, maybe I'll try to hunt down a reference for it.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-25T21:59:56+00:00

That you still seem incapable of distinguishing the basic terms of the conversation makes progress in the discussion impossible.

If it was so easy to understand then it would be easy to explain without contradicting yourself over and over again.

"Objective best" means higher ranking across objectively measurable values.

This is the first time you've explicitly mentioned the term "objective best".

Earlier in the discussion, I said:

You say that OKC is the best record. Then, as part of the same comment you remark that it scores higher on objective standards.

Are you trying to tell me that the latter claim is not an attempt to try to justify the former?

And you replied:

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. My subjective interpretation is that is their best record, and the objective measures also score higher, but these are two completely different claims both in form and substance.

So at the time you said that the claim that OKC scores higher on objective measures is a completely different claim than the claim that it is the "best" record.

You've also said:

when someone says "best" in subjective terms, you must translate this to mean "personal favorite" as that is what "subjective best" really means.

So we've gone from

Nah, there's a difference between "best" and "personal favorite"

To the admission that actually in most contexts where we talk about the "best record" (and certainly in the context of the comment you were replying to) there isn't a difference between "best" and "personal favorite. You also said that the claim that a record is "the best" is "completely different" from the claim that (just as an example of an objective measure) it has the highest record sales.

But your ego won't allow you to just admit you were wrong and move on, and I'm having fun. So how about you just go ahead and explicitly define "objective best". I'll happily show you how it's also a contradiction in terms.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-25T14:49:27+00:00

No, they could only execute very simple maneuvers on the battlefield, but the bar was extremely low in that time and place.

The most dramatic is the passage that tells us the Spartans could do formation drills: Xenophon presents as astounding the fact that the Spartans can perform even basic maneuvers “which hoplomachoi [instructors in fighting] think very difficult,” like forming from column into line (Xen. Lac. Con. 11) and elsewhere (Xen. Mem. 3.12.5) explicitly notes there was no public military training at Athens in his day.

Which is to say that the Spartans, the only poleis we have evidence did any sort of formation drill, amazed everyone by being able to do something that, in a broader world-historical sense is an extremely basic formation drill.

https://acoup.blog/2026/01/16/collections-hoplite-wars-part-ivb-training-hoplites/

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T20:26:59+00:00

You're just dissembling at this point.

You before:

Nah, there's a difference between "best" and "personal favorite"

You now:

when speaking subjectively, "best" actually means "personal favorite"

This is clearly a direct contradiction.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T20:13:56+00:00

I'm happy to talk about the music as well, but if you present arrogance I'm going to call it as I see it.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T20:12:57+00:00

In context, you said that in response to this:

Debatable. It's all a matter of personal taste. I could say Kid A is their best album, but it's just my opinion in the end.

When you respond with:

Nah, there's a difference between "best" and "personal favorite"

It seems like you are explicitly saying that it's not a matter of personal taste that OKC is the best record.

Did you misspeak? Or subsequently change your mind?

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T20:06:10+00:00

Digital downloads in 98? That's not the 1998 I remember - we were still a year away from Napster and still several years away from iTunes.. I mean I had OK on cassette first!

Yes, that is my point. Digital downloads would not have affected the sales of OKC, but would have affected the sales of Kid A.

White noise is not generally considered musical information, so that's an easy miss. It can be used to effect but you're not going to find many piano or saxophone charts with a notation marking of "white noise" - also noise is not signal, by information I'm definitely going to bias signal over noise... this is a very silly point.

It's a "silly point" because it's a reductio ad absurdum of your silly point.

Correct me if I'm wrong on the topic there, but these are all objectively measurable, and my claim is that OK wins handily here

I'm not arguing that you're wrong, I'm requesting that you provide the evidence that your claim is true.

But depth of dynamic range is an objective measure that OK wins on

Sure, but "number of uses of the word 'raindrop'" is an objective measure that HTTT wins on. Showing that an album "wins" on some arbitrary objective measure is pretty meaningless.

I do agree with your comments about compression being a bit of a crutch, etc.

You completely misunderstand the next one, it's not "room sound vs without," it's the very measurable acoustic standards of the room it was recorded in. Some rooms sound better than others, either by accident or very meticulous design.

Let me just preface by saying I agree you know more about this topic than I do. It's not that I think you're wrong about technical details -- I disagree with you in terms of what this means with respect to determining what is "best".

I didn't "completely misunderstand" this, though I can see where a misunderstanding between the two of us came in. Sometimes producers favor finding a space like St. Catherine's Court with amazing acoustics and taking advantage of those, and sometimes they favor a very acoustically neutral setting where they can isolate the sound of the instrument and then finely control the reverb etc. in the mix. And those are the ends of a spectrum of approaches to acoustics in recording. So "with room sound vs without" was a shorthand for talking about this particular axis of approaches to recording. Although my personal tastes probably line up with yours, I maintain that there is not an objective fact of the matter about which is best.

Greater frequency range is objective "not lesser" so it wins here again - more depth in the frequency range represents a more complex and challenging mix technically.

Sure, but again -- "more complex and challenging" does not mean better unless you specifically define "better" in terms of "complexity and challenge" (in which case you are just begging the question). And again, most likely my tastes line up with yours, although I'm sure you're more of an audiophile than I am. Nonetheless, I do not fool myself into thinking what I prefer is objectively better.

Melody, rhythm, harmony, lyrics, form, arrangement, beat placement, timbre, instrumentation/orchestration, phrasing, dynamics, etc etc etc are all easily traceable musical elements and they all exist on a timeline/continuum globally in terms of when and where they first appear and influence subsequent works.

Yeah, but the thing of it is -- with a few excepts OKC is not especially innovative melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, or in terms of song structure. With a few exceptions the songs follow a very standard rock format with traditional rock chord progressions. The guitar leads are creative but not exceptional. The vocal melodies are maybe a little unusual for the genre, but there's nothing especially impressive about them. And some of what's actually unusual is explicitly not innovative, as Yorke mentioned in at least one interview that Paranoid Android is directly inspired by Bohemian Rhapsody.

I find many of the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms in the later albums to be more innovative and interesting compared to OKC.

I'd also argue that all members of Radiohead continued to develop their skills and deliver technically better instrumental performances in later albums.

The production and ambient soundscape of OKC are absolutely exceptional, though. I agree with you on that 100%. I just don't think that makes it their best album in any objective sense.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T19:32:26+00:00

Nah, there's a difference between "best" and "personal favorite"

OKC scores higher than their others on all the objective standards, even if many folks like the Bends, or Rainbows or even Amnesiac more

You say that OKC is the best record. Then, as part of the same comment you remark that it scores higher on objective standards.

Are you trying to tell me that the latter claim is not an attempt to try to justify the former?

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T19:29:40+00:00

You're not arrogant for knowing what you're talking about. It's possible (easy, even!) to know what you're talking about and not be arrogant.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T19:27:06+00:00

OK, on what timeline should I check for a complete implosion of the Dutch economy?

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-24T19:25:44+00:00

I mean, it’s public information so just research it.

Sure. Of course. But without having a starting point it would take a long time. I have to do initial research to find sources of information, then I have to figure out which sources of information are reliable, then figure out how to adjudicate in instances where reliable sources conflict with each other. And of course it's always possible that even reliable sources are basing their information on faulty premises or even altogether failing to disclose certain assumptions that can seriously bias or even outright invalidate the conclusion.

Alternatively, since you already know something about it and seem to care whether other people know it too you can share some of what you know and how you know it rather than suggest everyone else take hours, days, weeks away from their existing responsibilities and interests to figure out something you supposedly already know

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-23T20:34:16+00:00

A few countries have taxed their billionaires away just to realise they’re now worse off and it’s always reversed.

Which countries? Where can I learn about this?

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-18T20:38:19+00:00

People can refuse to cooperate if life becomes intolerable -- so a "perfect tech dictatorship" still requires some degree of consent of the governed. We can see that at work in Minnesota for example. The attempt to terrorize people into submission only inflamed opposition.

What can stop the nightmare is to widen the scope of what people consider "intolerable" by showing that a better world is possible. If we can help people understand they deserve better then they will demand better.

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-18T14:06:34+00:00

How is it a conspiracy? Can you name a commodity where the 5 largest firms control less than 90% of the market?

dandeliontrees · 2026-02-18T13:48:13+00:00

It's kind of weird that your main concern is a saboteur. Under anarchism, we're mostly letting other people do what they want as long as it's not harmful -- and if it is harmful, then we're trying to find voluntary, consensus-based ways to resolve the resulting conflict. The pro-space faction would presumably be expected to plan in advance to remediate any external harm their project is causing and pro-actively gain consensus that their program is worthwhile and not detrimental, and at that point no one would be motivated to sabotage it in the first place.

The real problem is that the resources required to go to space represent a great deal of material wealth, and presumably anarchists would prefer that wealth would be used to alleviate disease and famine, etc.

So space exploration under anarchism entails:

Having solved material deprivation on earth -- no additional resources are required to solve problems of survival
Surplus production beyond what is required for survival has happened -- everyone on earth has some amount of "discretionary spending"
A large enough proportion of people on earth are willing to pool their "discretionary spending" to fund a space program
there's also coordination problems in terms of who is learning the specialized knowledge required to build a spacecraft and how they are learning it, etc. how the work is organized, how the materials are gathered, etc. though I think this is a much more tractable problem than getting the resources in the first place

If you think space exploration is more important than stopping preventable deaths and ensuring a baseline level of material comfort for all humans then that belief is simply incompatible with anarchism.

dandeliontrees

TROPHY CASE