J’aime la structure étrange de la chanson.
Month: August 2024
The locution “nothing but” is frequently used when philosophers discuss appearances. The appearances are said to be “nothing but” particles or corpuscles, for example, or structured brain events. Even Thomas Hobbes, who recognized and honored the appearances, employed the “nothing but” locution frequently. That locution did not mean he denied the appearances or reduced them to matter and motion. Hobbes’s materialism is at best an explanatory one, not an ontological one. He was very firm: there are appearances (phantasms) and reality (matter and motion). Our contemporary materialists are not so clear about what they are affirming or denying. Often, they seem to me to confuse two claims: (a) all phenomena, all seemings or appearings, can be explained in terms of or by reference to, e.g., brain events, and (b) there are only brain events (and other physical events in the environment). The recent vogue for talking about supervenience may be an attempt to have it both ways, somehow to combine (a) and (b). Perhaps the appeals to supervenience are a genuine recognition that phenomena, qualia and mental events are also real, also exist.
To follow claim (a) rigidly may eliminate the need for any causal explanation of appearances, qualia or awareness. Whether supervenience is a causal relation, I am unclear. Most often, it seems to be treated as an explanatory relation: awareness or consciousness arises from, or emerges out of, a specific organization and structure of brain processes. But whatever the relation is, to talk of supervenience would seem to lead to the recognition that what supervenes, what arises from, differs in some ways from that from which it has emerged, or what it supervenes on: the supervenee and the supervened would seem to differ, at least numerically. With perceptual qualia or phenomenal properties, the difference cannot just be numerical. There is a kind difference between seen color or heard sound and the physical and neural events that precede our experience of color or sound. Similarly, being aware of tables, computers, or coffee differs in kind from the physical and neural processes that correlate with such awareness.
John W. Yolton, Realism and Appearances: An Essay in Ontology
Vana
It’s hard to believe that Nirvana is now considered “classic rock” since I recall when Nirvana and Kurt Cobain were seen as the great threats that imperiled all of civilization. But the same span of time separates us now from Nirvana as I was from the the Beatles when I was in high school.
The passage of time is relentless.
Nice Mething You
New Zealand Charity Accidentally Gives Away Meth Disguised as Candy.
Well, hey, it happens. Those children will ask for that candy every time now in the supermarket.
Second Is Last
To simplify this, she let him know in pretty clear terms he was the second choice. No one wants to be that, man or woman. My partner is my first choice and she is quite aware of that.
And she feels the same about me. If that’s not true in your relationship, you should consider leaving.
Corp Love
Corporations Are Not Our Friends.
That so many people sincerely believe that a corporation is or can be their friend, or even love them, boggles my goddamn mind. The world just does not work that way. No corporation loves you. It simply cannot. As an amoral entity, it has no feelings, no loyalty and no personal attachments. It can and will throw you away like trash the moment doing that benefits it more than keeping you around.
Happens all the time. An individual person can love you. Nothing beyond that can — and certainly not a corporation.
Why you didn’t get the job after 100 rounds of interview, homework assignment and stool sample.
The Share of Million-Dollar Homes in America Just Hit an All-Time High. This is bad for everyone everywhere.
JD Vance Is the New Sarah Palin.
Ukraine’s incursion disrupts Putin’s war of attempted conquest.
An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, not a comet, new study finds. I’m sure the dinosaurs feel very consoled by that clarification.
The IRA’s Labor Provisions Look Like They’re Working.
US Inflation Is Looking Good, Except for Housing Costs.
Conservatives exhibit greater metacognitive inefficiency, study finds.
Press reaction to Trump campaign email leak starkly different from 2016, when Clinton was hacked.
V vs. C
Everything is Virgin vs. Chad.
I can’t read the whole post1, but I do think the girlfriend’s “compliment” is very insulting. More than 90% of men would. That is because these days women are even more hypocritical about dating than men. And that’s because they can be — they have more choice, and far more choice than they used to (which, by and large, is a good thing).
But that abundance of choice has fashioned a lot of women overall into worse people. Not all of the time, and not every woman. But a hell of a lot of them and a hell a lot of the time. No one wants to hear this but it’s true.
What the gf said is an insult because it implies that the man is a second (or 10th) choice, only good enough to have something long-term with when the woman/gf was done messing around with “bad boys” who are more attractive to her but mistreat her. Only then, after getting tired of that, did she settle for some chump who wasn’t good enough to get with her when she was in her wild phase. And that behavior is in fact true of many women. I’ve seen it myself quite often.
So indeed, if my partner said something like this to me (she never would) I’d strongly consider leaving her. As it is in fact a huge fucking insult. And yes, she reads this blog so ain’t no secrets here. If I said something similar to her, I’d hope she’d consider the same because it’s a big fuck you. It is demeaning and insulting.
That gf, without meaning to, set off a nuclear bomb in her relationship that it probably should not recover from; if she still finds the bad boys more attractive, she should go be with them for her and her boyfriend’s benefit. They’d both probably end up happier in the end.
- Here is the post on Reddit.
Reading
I hate Matt Yglesias, but he’s right — Harris was obviously and clearly talking about antitrust enforcement, not price controls. Motherfuckers cannot read.
Copyriot
Yeah, that’s some of the doofiest shit I’ve ever seen.
Thund
What kind of respectable dinosaur would be named “Barney?” That’s something you’d name a mule or a particularly dull goat. No, my friends, any reputable dinosaur would be called “Fleshripper” or “Thunder of the North” or something like that. It just makes sense.
SOC IT 2 Me
Oh fuck no that’s not reasonable. I have well more than 20 years of IT experience and I’m about to do this nearly solo at a much smaller org. I’m also fairly well-versed in compliance, and I can barely handle it1. It’s a huge task, with hundreds of interlocking parts necessitating deep understanding not just of IT but of the entire business and of various compliance requirements.
Someone with only six months of sysadmin experience going for SOC 2 is like sending out a gaggle of kittens to fight a rhinoceros. It’s just not gonna happen.
When I was working at a company of similar size to the OP’s, it took a team of about a dozen people working on it nearly full-time for 18 months to get SOC 2 Type II. I’d expect about the same anywhere.
Unger
How do you deal with being attracted to younger women?
These comments are nuts. And that post title is written as if being attracted to someone younger is some sort of terminal fucking disease. So oddball. Perhaps because I only tend to hang out or want to be around atypical people no matter their age, I’ve never found any of this insanity they are talking about to be true. And here, I am considering “attracted” as friends too, not just romantically.
If I were single, I’d date anyone 22 and up without a second thought1. Personality matters so, so much more to me than age (as long as everyone is of legal age). And shared interests, attraction. The rest is fairly irrelevant to me.
Look, people don’t become a different species when they get older. I find this idea so damn weird. Like, come on, I enjoy most of the same things now as I did at 20. I’m not some completely different person. And I’ve found that is true of most people. Or at least the ones I’m interested in getting to know2.
I suspect what’s happening in that thread is men desperately white-knighting in an attempt to not seem creepy, where “creepy” has been wholly defined by feminists attempting dating market competition elimination — and succeeding in spades.
Me, I don’t give a fuck. Obviously.
- I’d consider someone younger, but she would have to be truly exceptional. Because I do believe a lot of people change significantly between 18-21 or so.
- And to those who say, “You just want to date hot younger women!” Brothers, sisters, be calm; I dated a 38-year-old when I was 24 and would’ve dated a 45-year-old when I was 25 if she’d said yes. I just do not care as long as there is compatibility.
Degrowthing
Do the degrowthers really think it’s a winning proposition that they want to take away refrigeration, sanitation and air conditioning? Do they truly believe that will sway anyone, win anyone over, make anyone remotely normal a true believer?
What’s the play there exactly? Oh, right, they just enjoy taking away things. Has nothing to do with saving the planet or humanity; it’s just permissible cruelty.
Recreational
‘Our city is not an RV park’: L.A. to study widespread RV parking ban.
It seems that cities will do nearly anything but attempt to address the housing affordability crisis that is the actual cause of this and similar follow-on problems; homelessness, RVs everywhere, poor economic growth in the most viable urban areas, low birth rates — all of this and more is caused by NIMBYs preventing construction, thus leading to absurdly-high shelter costs where the good jobs are.
We need to smack down the NIMBYs hard and build, build, build. The other problems will then be solved without much additional effort. But no one says that because NIMBYs have the power.