log☇︎
218900+ entries in 1.695s
asciilifeform: en a court reporter to transcribe these "public hearings."'
asciilifeform: 'In Courtroom 478, property owners are instructed to sign in and indicate with a checkmark on the sign-in sheet the kind of property they are there to save. The sign-in sheet lists the following categories of property: "house," "car," "money," or "gun." ... Assistant district attorneys with the Public Nuisance Task Force fully control the proceedings inside "Courtroom" 478. There is no judge, no jury, and not ev ☟︎
punkman: why a sleeping bag hammock?
nubbins`: it's a sleeping-bag hammock, the stitching is in the next layer :D
ben_vulpes: is that a chrysalis at the bottom in the face?
punkman: instant #b-a classic
asciilifeform: chetty: it's a classic. from it comes the admonition, often repeated to 'discontented' folks there, 'shut up, sit, don't chirp'
asciilifeform: 'a sparrow flew in the winter, froze and fell down. a cow strolled by. shat out some dung, splat! - and covered sparrow. he warmed up and began to chirp. a cat strolled by, heard chirping, removed sparrow, and ate him. From this tale, three morals: not he is your enemy who plants you down in shit; not he is your friend who removes you from shit; when sitting in shit - shut up, don't chirp.' - soviet folktale.
chetty: yeah bringing the children home isn{t all that hard, zero the balance and give em a plane ticket
asciilifeform: which may well come to an abrupt end when a monkey finally receives an order to zero their balance.
asciilifeform: and those escapees who draw their daily bread from a bank account under 'international community' jurisdiction (that being all save possibly chicom & russian) are merely taking a very expensive prolonged vacation.
chetty: there is actually a place that named itself 'galts gulch', boy is that hiding :P
asciilifeform: 'escape' means there's a missile battery (or, at the threadbare minimum, 24/7 death squad) standing between usg and you. ☟︎
asciilifeform: people have asked me why haven't escaped, and i answer 'i haven't $xx mil.' to which, eyes bug out, and i have to explain 'a real escape means retrieval is not simply legally, but militarily uneconomical.' ☟︎
asciilifeform: (how? only a matter of time when some idiot pays the cancellation fee and then changes his mind - like, famously, lee harvey oswald)
chetty: better chance of a bank account elsewhere if you are not a us citizen
ben_vulpes: don't outrun bear, be a less visible target than others
asciilifeform: if the place you fled to is in the habit of letting in u.s. polizei and looks away when they stuff people into a flying gasenwagen for return to gulag - what difference does it make that you paid the ransom? they can always demand a greater ransom, retroactively. ☟︎
The20YearIRCloud: ben_vulpes: low leverage on real estate bought at a value has done well in every crash in the US, including the 1930s depression era
chetty: the fees and taxes have increased a lot in the last ten years, as has the difficulty for us citizens living elsewhere, it will get worse
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: afaik, there's a confiscatory asset tax
asciilifeform: no one asks 'what's a good place to buy beer', everyone seems to understand that 'it depends'
asciilifeform: gernika: it is almost like asking publicly 'what's a good place to bury treasure' (see also earlier discussion of this)
asciilifeform: quite likely a great many escapees were paying more than this just in extraterritorial tax
gernika: Where is a good place to escape to?
BingoBoingo: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zETmzcHDkg8/U_vUCxD0c6I/AAAAAAAAIy8/28PFGYIJ5Pg/s1600/Funniest_Memes_my-friend-who-works-at-a-pharmacy_4250.jpeg
chetty: <xmj> well mostly the jewish citizens, and the tax was almost 100%.// this isnt even the taxes (thats more) this is just a processing fee
chetty: Is there a secret drug in the US water that destroys common sense?
ben_vulpes: more like an unkempt bush than any sort of a hedge
chetty: My dear,How are you? i am a banker in the bank, i get your contact from yahoo terrorist search.Reason,i am in need of your help as a foreigner i want to transfer an abandoned $15million to your account 40% for you while 60% for me please indicate your interest for more detail.
xmj: A great many friends, yes
mircea_popescu: really boring! Which is to you say, you're a typical human female."
mircea_popescu: want the cure now! And when we don't get it, we look for a witch to
mircea_popescu: "In one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in partnership with the Harvard School of Global Health have found that people living at higher altitudes have a lower chance of dying from ischemic heart disease and tend to live longer than others."
mircea_popescu: decimation: yeah that's a good point. I think the money is less important than the relative status, which is less important than just getting people to defer to their betters quickly << no, not quickly. painfully.
mircea_popescu: decimation: it is probably terrible to become an object of some fad among elites today << you know, i'm a poststructuralist jus' fine.
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud: i've been off reading physics articles trying to grasp things and lost the conversation << should probably be the motto of b-a
decimation: except I was reading Dijkstra in "structured programming" and he wrote that it was hopeless to try to "prove" practical code. He did suggest that this is a reason for humility and simplicity.
mircea_popescu: knew a camwhore who slept with her laptop because the one time she didn't it felt snubbed and wouldn't work right the whole day.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: linked post reveals that rocket is a 'size and mass model' (i.e. dummy.)
asciilifeform: am is a mathematical object that can be understood through logic?'
asciilifeform: f this trend continues, we may soon see homeopathic computer repair. Perhaps it will consist of adding a virus to a program, deleting the virus, and then running the program. You may soon be able to take your laptop to a faith healer, who will lay his hands on the keyboard and pray for the recovery of the operating system. Is this the future of computing? Or can we instead build on the idea that a computer progr
decimation: is that a V1?
asciilifeform: i always use the term 'calmed down' for these people. starting from having played 'half life', where there is a scene of an einsteinesque white coated figure who gets an alien 'headcrab' jump on his head. it takes roots, he struggles for a while, then 'calms down' and ambles on as zombie. ☟︎
mircea_popescu: but if you ever wondered why towards the end of an epoch art moves from classical to trollage... well... art is a sort of societal immune system.
asciilifeform spotted a cicada in garden today, and thought of mircea_popescu's post about parenting
mircea_popescu: she is a "wiser woman" now. happily married now. at her place in life now. well...
mircea_popescu: when she's 16, she runs out of school (for which she risks a reprimand) and hides behind the bleachers to... kiss (for which she risks quite a lot of societal shunning)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform consider the life and deeds of gabrielle, a buxom blonde girl.
mircea_popescu: there really isn't a "counterbalance" to libiod.
mircea_popescu: that seems to me a hollow analogy.
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> (of what? if we knew, there'd be at least a hypothetical pill.) << the public appetite for personal humiliation decays, and with it, the possibility of life.
assbot: Logged on 29-08-2014 05:11:06; decimation: the thing is, Admiral McCain probably didn't have to issue any special instructions to 'finesse' the investigation, the investigators probably all thought it would be a brilliant plan
mircea_popescu: decimation basically, it was a new immigrant vs old immigrant debate. the old guys had savings and wanted to keep them. the new guys had mortgages and wanted to get rid of them.
asciilifeform: to stretch the metaphor a bit, sometimes the moribund get a stay of execution, when the horde grows terminally fat before it can reach the capital.
asciilifeform: RagnarDanneskjol: i don't regard it as a proven fact that there necessarily is a 'root cause.'
decimation: heh turdolade. yeah I guess the bureaucracy really exploded with Diocletian, but things had already been going badly for at least a hundred years
asciilifeform: thus far all we know is that civilizations behave like ms-winblows boxes - encrusts with turdolade until grinds to a halt, then reboot.
asciilifeform: (of what? if we knew, there'd be at least a hypothetical pill.)
asciilifeform: but to attribute death to the graveworms - is a mistake.
asciilifeform: there's not a 'ready-canned' answer for why rome bit it
asciilifeform: there isn't, as far as i understand, a 'fix'.
asciilifeform: it's really a typical death-rattle of the civilization.
asciilifeform: this story concerned more than a quarrel between a weirdo chemist and the whole of usg/nato 'physics'
asciilifeform: and will never be replicated on a 'disinterested' apparatus because this means essentially all practicing 'physicists' get blondlot-ed.
asciilifeform: provenance << isn't about the differing principle of the proposed tester. it's about the fact experiment doesn't count if carried out wholly on apparatus constructed by a 'non-disinterested' party
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: (how to know that schwartz (or taleb, or...) collects 'prize' rather than usg stooge with a shannonizer and irc connection - exercise for alert reader.) <<< if you recall something sort-of like that was tried, except this "major prize" approach is flawed as you explain. so, better version was tried :)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: if ussr were alive, perhaps he'd have defected. << a fine example of why the "one world, one fuhrer" delusion of government is unproductive.
mircea_popescu: decimation: I called up NIST a few weeks ago, asked them how much it would cost to measure the phase noise of an oscillator. They said it would only cost their time, which would come to about $10k! for a morning session <<< in other words, "can only work if you have supply of bezzle dollars", ie, "only with scrip saying it's ok signed by stalin"
mircea_popescu: decimation: yeah back in the early 1900's the whole idea of the 'silver dollar' was the precursor to the modern bezzle << not so clear cut, really. more like a power struggle between west and east.
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud: With regards to coins, you only need to avoid the very, very limited types that are assumed to be stolen from the mint << it's only limited for now, and as a reflection of the coins actually physically found so far. as more juicy morcels make the beast salivate, they'll become less limited.
The20YearIRCloud: hopefully between all that I'll personally be OK, but as far as the business is concerned, till bitcoin is a national currency and most workers get paid in it, it's gonna be hard for us to get truly involved in the BTC economy
The20YearIRCloud: Which is worrysome to me, but then I do have an auto-buy going through on a regular basis, so i'm trying to diversify in multiple methods - Bitcoin, USD, Silver/Gold/Coins , guns, real estate
asciilifeform: The20YearIRCloud: almost certain that, given this, it doing anything but sitting on btc is a loss
asciilifeform owns a number of toys, like other people
asciilifeform: it is - a toy.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo, perhaps, is working on the problem of building a hard disk that survives several centuries of exposure in the wilderness
asciilifeform: there is probably a 'perelman' within driving distance of where you (any you) live. but he's almost certainly surrendered and sucking state cock (and perelman no longer) - or is occupied with the minutiae of physical survival
decimation: yeah that's a good point. I think the money is less important than the relative status, which is less important than just getting people to defer to their betters quickly
asciilifeform: at least, not on a time scale you could put up with.
asciilifeform: all the money in the world won't conjure into existence 'the rabbit out of a hat, unless said rabbit is already in the hat'
assbot: Logged on 21-01-2014 01:57:20; decimation: ?In 1890, professors salaries [at Amherst College] were $ 2,500, more than twenty times tuition. The step up from laborer to professor was immense, for the average wage earner in 1890 earned $425 a year. ?
decimation: that's a good-quality usenet rant
asciilifeform: less of a defense and more like slow-motion seppuku
asciilifeform: decimation: eco, pelevin, others - were clever chaps; understood that if you suck cock, you become a cock-sucker, even if 'your heart isn't in it' at first
asciilifeform: as i understand - he caught a memetic virus - 'postmodernism' - and might as well have contracted 'mad cow'.
decimation: it seems very few extreme math geniuses find this world a 'habitable' place
asciilifeform: but once in a while you hear that some busybody found him and told 'fuck off, can't answer for your safety if i see you again.'
asciilifeform: if he's feeling charitable, he might leave archaeologists a box of notebooks the ants won't eat.
assbot: Happy People: A Year in the Taiga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
decimation: probably with these folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Taiga
asciilifeform: partial, if you like. full perelman is when you haven't a post address either.
decimation: “I don't even have an E-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages,” Eco said at a party in his honor at the University Club of Chicago.
asciilifeform: (how to know that schwartz (or taleb, or...) collects 'prize' rather than usg stooge with a shannonizer and irc connection - exercise for alert reader.)
asciilifeform: if i were, e.g, mircea_popescu, and gave a damn, i'd offer schwartz xxxx btc. half to show up here, half after he explains himself.
asciilifeform: and - they have to give a damn.
asciilifeform: he's a clever enough fellow to understand that this would cement his already unenviable position
asciilifeform: or a few centuries after we've all died.
asciilifeform: (if schwartz were to be permitted to carry out his experiment, and obtained a positive result)
decimation: I called up NIST a few weeks ago, asked them how much it would cost to measure the phase noise of an oscillator. They said it would only cost their time, which would come to about $10k! for a morning session