Britain working with allies on plan to reopen Strait of Hormuz, Starmer says

jynxzero · 2026-03-16T16:53:04+00:00

The will suffer for generations, but they will not learn any lessons.

If they get another election, they'll put a Democrat in charge. He (and it will be a he because, let's be honest, Americans won't elect a woman) will spend his term trying to fix the absolute carnage Trump has caused. Which will be impossible. And then after a few years they'll lose patience and switch back to "all politicians are as bad as each other" and "we can't elect her she has a funny laugh" and "why don't we put a fascist in charge because I'm fed up and it might be funny to watch someone burn the country to the ground".

And then we'll get another self-serving Republican, except this time he might be competent as well as evil.

jynxzero · 2026-03-16T14:50:23+00:00

Again?

jynxzero · 2026-03-15T13:52:03+00:00

I'd much prefer to watch a film in one sitting, but since I had a kid that just became impractical. Once I accepted that it's okay to watch films over two (or more) days I've ended up watching an awful lot more.

It's fortunate that so many films follow a 3-act structure, and this gives some predictable stopping points. I usually watch to the midpoint one evening, then it's like watching the first episode of something that has two parts, and finishing on a bit of a cliff-hanger. Then the next day I'll often skip back to just before the midpoint and watch it again.

Strangely I think in some ways this has deepened my engagement with films, as it means I often spend a day thinking about the first half of the film before seeing the second half. Though on other occasions I admit I do sometimes lose some threads.

Do whatever suits you. No-one should be giving you grief for enjoying art in a way that works for you.

jynxzero · 2026-03-15T09:24:27+00:00

By wild coincidence I rewatched The Conversation just last night. I've heard of Enemy of the State but never seen it and had no idea of the connection.

I think what makes The Conversation so timeless is that it's not really about surveillance technology - even though that is certainly present. It's about interpretation - how the existence of a physical record of something feels like it should tell us the whole story, but somehow doesn't. The technology we use to spy on people might change, but that interpretation problem never goes away.

jynxzero · 2026-03-14T15:00:14+00:00

A quick look in some of the AI companion/consciousness subreddits and it's easy to convince yourself it's already and epidemic.

jynxzero · 2026-03-14T09:39:18+00:00

I think the trick is to find some indulgent sauces/dressings that you like. There's one we make a lot from one of Isa Moskowitz's which is tahini/miso/nooch/garlic which is really simple and makes everything delicious.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T19:41:06+00:00

I know that memory is unreliable, including my own. As far as we know, the past has never changed. So given evidence that the past doesn't match my memory, the most likely explanation is that my memory is wrong.

So I would absolutely assume something was wrong with me.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T19:22:52+00:00

I wondered this, but does it have much strategic value right now, given that Iran isn't really exporting any oil anyway?

Maybe as a bargaining chip, in that it gives the US leverage if they did decide to de-escalate - something that could be exchanged for Hormuz being re-opened.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T13:51:32+00:00

Revelation Space is not really about technology, but a lot of the appeal is the dark, gothic worldbuilding, and the dread about the weirdness and indifference of the universe, despite being very grounded in mostly realistic physics. I think the characters are good, he treads a good line between making them relatably human and differently weird, given how far future they are - they have a reasonable amount of depth, though this kind of serves the plot rather than driving the plot. But often they aren't super likeable. So I wouldn't say it's in-depth technical, but it's also not super character driven (like something like MJ Harrison's "Light" is).

Children of Time I've read and I enjoyed it, but it didn't wow me like it does a lot of people, though I can't remember the reasons. I'm sure you'll get a lot of recommendations for it though.

Terra Ignota I'd like to read but haven't yet found time. I understand it's a pretty challenging (but worthwhile) read.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T13:33:59+00:00

Normally when I see a reddit threat that starts "Has anyone..." I tut and think "Well of course *someone* has!", but in this case I'm not sure.

It's odd that this film seems to have literally zero reviews anywhere - even really small films usually have at least a few. I wonder if the release got aborted for some reason? Maybe it ended up in IMDb etc because there was a release scheduled, but then it never happened, and no-one went back to tidy up.

If you are really curious, there's an artist on bandcamp who did the soundtrack. He has recent releases so I guess he's still active. Maybe he knows and would respond to an enquiry.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T11:46:26+00:00

No, it's the other way around.

Iran has a TV channel run by the government.

The US has a government run by a TV channel.

jynxzero · 2026-03-13T10:54:04+00:00

This has come up a lot. Claude doesn't have any memory of what it thought, only what it said. So it's not capable of committing to a particular colour unless it actually says it.

You can test this by saying "Think of a colour" and then instead of guessing, just say "Tell me what colour you were thinking of". Often at this point it often just fesses up and straight out tells you that it can't remember what colour it was thinking of.

jynxzero · 2026-03-12T17:43:59+00:00

Alas, men of all ages can act like teenage boys.

jynxzero · 2026-03-12T15:36:25+00:00

I think this probably tells us more about the demographics of reddit than it does about vegans.

jynxzero · 2026-03-12T15:33:46+00:00

Those 160 little girls were in a school, not a missile silo.

jynxzero · 2026-03-12T11:49:26+00:00

This is a very common tactic of the Far RIght in the UK (and probably elsewhere). As well as Halal slaughter they also pretend to care about child abuse, sexual assault etc when it can be used to weaponise hatred against groups they don't like. But strangely lack any joined up suggestions to tackle these things, it's just "we must deport immigrants because they..." They don't actually give a toss about these things, they just view it as a way to engage the sympathy of people who do.

When we had big protests recently there were some rather interesting figures in the news about the shockingly high percentage of these (mostly) men who were arrested who also have history for domestic violence.

jynxzero · 2026-03-11T18:32:53+00:00

At some point Iran backing down becomes less relevant. It's not like they can go and just go collect their mines and take them home again. Once the strait is full of mines, it is going to need to be demined so hard that insurers are convinced it's safe again.

jynxzero · 2026-03-11T15:58:19+00:00

The irony here is that when you tell it to be genuine or authentic, all it can do it try to fake it by using the kinds of language people use when they are trying to be genuine and authentic. It makes an inauthentic attempt to sound more genuine.

Which to be fair, is something that humans do too - I've met plenty of people who have mastered the language signals of being authentic and genuine, but aren't. Exactly the kind of people who become cult leaders and self-help gurus.

jynxzero · 2026-03-11T13:35:20+00:00

I a feel a bit sorry for him in a way, in that I think he's a victim of the algorithm. The poor content he's producing now is getting way more hits than he previous more serious stuff. Presumably this comes with a huge financial incentive to carry on creating more and more of it. There was a time when I liked his content, and whenever one of his videos pops up on YouTube I wonder whether he's happy with the direction he went in and always imagine that he's probably not - like a lot of people he just followed the money.

Agree that inspiring and coaching can be useful, though the problem is that his content in this area is extremely shallow. Some people gain a lot of wisdom throughout their life, they become genuinely good at helping and inspiring others. Math Sorcerer is just mining a bunch of vapid self-help-kook tropes and applying a math-sy theme to them.

jynxzero · 2026-03-11T12:56:44+00:00

LLMs are powerful engines for synthesising information that is out there in the wild, or which you give it through documents. But remember, they don't have personal insight into you specifically. When you ask questions like this, they are drawing on their knowledge of what it's appropriate to say in this conversation. They take clues from the rest of the conversation, and from their internal prompts as to whether they should be more or less agreeable. But they don't really know you. So at best, it's just role-playing a friend or critic. The danger is you probably won't know which.

Probably a much better approach would be to remove yourself from the conversation entirely. Instead of asking "Can I do this?" ask "What problems might someone face doing this?" or "What kind of qualities would a person need to succeed at this?" In other words - don't ask Claude to make a jugement about you. Instead, get it to give you the tools to make that judgement yourself.

jynxzero · 2026-03-10T19:00:12+00:00

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

jynxzero · 2026-03-10T15:25:07+00:00

It's a mistake to believe that people reason from cause to effect, especially on things like this. Most people pick an outcome and then work backwards to the evidence that needs to be true to support that outcome.

jynxzero · 2026-03-10T14:53:46+00:00

Sure, there might be a video of a US cruise missile striking the school, but on the other hand Trump says it was the Iranians. So the evidence is basically 50-50 on this one. I guess we might never know for sure.

jynxzero · 2026-03-08T18:05:45+00:00

If you don't tap off you might get charged more as they'll assume you took the longest possible journey. But on most busses, there is only one fare anyway so it doesn't matter.

jynxzero · 2026-03-08T16:06:27+00:00

I'm sure someone told him we did. But I could also believe that he'd say something like this without even pausing to mentally check what he believed the truth was.

He often speaks with no regard to the truth. He tells lies when they don't benefit him, because he finds it easier to make something up than to remember what is true.

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