5900+ entries in 0.167s
mircea_popescu: and the low skill, low productivity, worthless workforce ain'
t no fucking joke, either. you can say "ceausescu made wrong call, bet on oil, prices changed, he lost". the THING however is, ceausescu made bet in 66, plans called for plants to be done by 69, they were done by 74.
mircea_popescu: as the workers weren'
t willing (nor even able) to PAY to play, their very expensive playground got cancelled.
mircea_popescu: that, sadly, was unsupportable, correctness be damned. and if you ain'
t gonna do the right thing, iliescu's way the fuck better a schelling point than herpitty-derp&co.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-14 09:56 spyked: diana_coman, I suspect this was mostly a case of "revision is well-received, but don'
t change anything"; which is why iliescu/fsn had so much support and average derp saw the taranisti as "way too mean" (no idea precisely what "mean" means, that's what I've been told)
mircea_popescu: by which i mean, that negotiating with the miners was the absolute worst fucking decision possible. the policy is either correct, in which case it gets defended, or incorrect, in which case it gets corrected. there can'
t possibly be this "oh, we should x but let's y instead", factual-abdication-without-formal-abdication. in which sense diana_coman has a solid point, "dood should have had his referendum ipso facto in 77, not b
mircea_popescu: ition ro went for, and mostly got. in the large land grab post us collapse, romania got what pieces it could grab, and while it didn'
t grab as much as say germany, or poland, it grabbed WAY the fuck more than even france, let the ufck alone jokes like spain. and it did better in this land rush than it did in the 60s/70s oil rush we discussed yest.
mircea_popescu: ie, the writer dorks aren'
t the ~only ones~ he was... abstainedly uncritical with. cowardly enough, he also did the same when his skin was in it.
mircea_popescu: anyway -- iliescu wasn'
t even particularly good, according to anyone involved. he was however the only one who wasn'
t shockingly fucked in the head. but i mean, SHOCKINGLY.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-14 09:36 diana_coman: presumably there again, there was one chance and it was rejected because ratiu hadn'
t eaten salam cu soia; but that's what if, no idea if again iliescu was presumably "the best available"
mircea_popescu: 1918s us hadnt yet failed. in fact, hadn'
t yet even proven itself.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-14 09:31 spyked: re the above, nato reich did not advertise that part in their brochures. I suppose the ones who previously waited "sa vina americanii" were very happy in 1990 because "can nao eat hot dog and hamburgers" (mcd wasn'
t even the first of its kind in ro)
mircea_popescu: anyway, kinda why the insistence on "republic is political -- you can'
t just do tech thing" etc. and why dual court-and-manor function of lord. and so on.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: i couldn'
t argue well that it ~wasn'
t~ the same attempt.
mircea_popescu: yes, obviously it pays to be the top node, ie, to integrate everyone else's systems. hence all the "empire loses because we integrate it, can'
t even represent us" etc. nevertheless... this is fine and dandy until it isn'
t. and yes it'd be great if one had the fucking sense to NOTICE, but notice how eg cat-v.org morons FAILED to notice it's time to quit derping and start worshipping.
mircea_popescu: what can you do ? in any possible systematic representation of the world you will have some criteria for "broken representations". this isn'
t avoidable, and "so just don'
t systematically, then" is no kind of answer.
a111: Logged on 2018-10-18 18:57 mircea_popescu: which i stand behind, ftr ; and it is also what informs the "if they had any sense -- they'd be here" stance. the fact that rando can'
t cut through fetlife to find the meat / can'
t cut through internet to find trilema / can'
t cut through femstate to find bitcoin / can'
t cut through pantsuitism to find republic etc specifically means that rando is dull, ie, not smart.
mircea_popescu: poor woman, bereft of letters. i always read it in THOSE terms, "if you can'
t think and can'
t use language, AT LEAST FUCKING SLEEP!!!"
mircea_popescu: it was there though, both the conscience of the problem and the awarness of the right solution. just didn'
t manage to burble clean all the way through.
diana_coman: I suspect it's simply because most people don'
t actually have a "something else" ; hence shooting is at the end correct too since it's the only real quite.
mircea_popescu: much like every single hostile divorce, too. people just don'
t know when to quit, is the overwhelming property of people.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-14 09:32 diana_coman: further digesting the conclusion such as it is, it seems to me that the issue might be that it kept pretending it was working way beyond the point were it had clearly and obviously failed; and given the timings, this does quite rest entirely with ceausescu as far as I can tell - he couldn'
t let fail faster what had failed already, hence
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-13#1902038 mircea_popescu: but, to add the one important bit : discussing communism is imo a red herring, and ESPECIALLY so if part of the other-socialism's sepia ink, "oh, how bad warsaw pact socialism was
little girl, aren'
t you glad you live in best possible socialism that's not like that at all [in any parts you're li
diana_coman: asciilifeform, eh, cheaper in the sense that in communism you don'
t even have what to drink or what; because otherwise plenty of that in there too
diana_coman: ftr I can easily get behind the observation that the difference of opinion here might simply stem from the fact that I wasn'
t at a the top in communism - no, I wasn'
t; and I wouldn'
t have made it to any top either precisely because of too much thinking.
diana_coman: thing is the "afraid of thinking people" directly translates into "thinking people get killed for *being thinking people*" and if you and asciilifeform say that that's swell and preferable to the alternative then ok; the way I see it, it's a recipe for disaster; which gets round back precisely to the "talking to the pigs" since there isn'
t anyone left
mircea_popescu: i much prefer the tyrant who's afraid of thinking people to the tyrant who isn'
t, for the exactly obvious fucking reason.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-10 19:56 phf:
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-10#1901200 << that is not at all the problem. i can read the file just fine, but as i do i feed chunks of it to keccak. keccak doesn'
t take char buffers, it wants "bitstream" i.e. arrays of bits, which means whatever char
mircea_popescu: so in re
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-10#1901233 : we finally got to the bottom of the matter, after no little amount of reading and headscratching (esp on my part). the problem isn'
t one of calling convention (as i had erroneously imagined originally, mostly on the basis of "keccak doesn'
t take / wants" verbiage).
☝︎ spyked: diana_coman, I suspect this was mostly a case of "revision is well-received, but don'
t change anything"; which is why iliescu/fsn had so much support and average derp saw the taranisti as "way too mean" (no idea precisely what "mean" means, that's what I've been told)
☟︎☟︎ diana_coman: presumably there again, there was one chance and it was rejected because ratiu hadn'
t eaten salam cu soia; but that's what if, no idea if again iliescu was presumably "the best available"
☟︎ diana_coman: further digesting the conclusion such as it is, it seems to me that the issue might be that it kept pretending it was working way beyond the point were it had clearly and obviously failed; and given the timings, this does quite rest entirely with ceausescu as far as I can tell - he couldn'
t let fail faster what had failed already, hence
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-13#1902038 ☝︎☟︎ spyked: re the above, nato reich did not advertise that part in their brochures. I suppose the ones who previously waited "sa vina americanii" were very happy in 1990 because "can nao eat hot dog and hamburgers" (mcd wasn'
t even the first of its kind in ro)
☟︎ diana_coman: but anyway, to wind up the thread, the idea seems to be that "yes, it inevitably sucked and moreover it failed on both directions
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-13#1902282 but nevertheless it was the best thing available at the time; and ftr having studied at polytechnica university may perhaps (no idea) be better than mit at that time (not now, then, hence no idea) but it wasn'
t much study, no.
☝︎ mircea_popescu: there's a ready stream of distractions available to distract thre willing from the much plainer and closer to nose fact that we'll go to bottom of the sea if we don'
t, eg, manage to get pizarro going properly. etc.
mircea_popescu: india can'
t start mpex production in a millenium, though. and even simpler things -- notice how much fucking work all sorta things we do take us.
mircea_popescu: the fucking morons ~opted~ for evil, and then went about as if their pretending "they didn'
t opt" makes it BE THE CASE they did not so opt.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-13 17:02 mircea_popescu: consider the traditional antisemitism -- a cluster of lumphocytes around a very real problem, yes, but SUBJECTIVE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS. not irritating "the organism" as such in any sense, beyond the very obvious an' deeply human "you folk can'
t be this fucking stupid!"
thing a111: Logged on 2019-03-13 20:55 BingoBoingo: Don'
t forget the unbutchered labor activists in the Southern Cone who will consider shuttering a Ford factory "a win for the people"
diana_coman: they did! "it's so-and-so-saint day, can'
t work or I'll get the plague"
mircea_popescu: i ran into a lotta these, you know, idle workers who couldn'
t work because basescu didn'
t let them.
mircea_popescu: i don'
t think this was avoidable. like that schmuck whose name's forgotten who wanted to be famous so bad, set athens on fire.
diana_coman: re stupid my understanding of the usual charge is that he was non-intelligent, not non-smart; clever and shrewd perhaps; then again, this is my "translation" - I don'
t really know either way, not as if I knew the guy
diana_coman: I didn'
t even realise casa poporului was such a reference point in this sense; i.e. ugly well, it's typical era-style, what
mircea_popescu: ort of handshake, but imo this is defensible disinterest. you wouldn'
t say a kid "learns nothing in school" because he doesn'
t come home with the list of what grunge bands to listen to for maximum cooldom.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-13 21:15 asciilifeform: diana_coman: 'didn'
t get to the part where it gets better' << this is the distinct impression i get . and i suspect on acct of the shoemaker being soft.
mircea_popescu: the local twerps tho knew better, wouldn'
t touch the stuff. so it got sold in south-east asia instead.
a111: Logged on 2019-03-13 20:11 diana_coman: and that's valid for the 1000 bakeries too; I suppose one can argue that it's still an achievement to have bakeries with no bread than to have no bakeries and stale bread but I don'
t buy it; and note that in the 80's the latest brightest idea (in the same vein, all hail!) was to further do this sort of great "improvement", to wit the communal "neighbourhood kitchen" to get rid of such waste as having individual kitchens in every hruscheba
mircea_popescu: but the galling idiocy of these schmucks actually making territorial demands ? it wasn'
t gonna be forgotten.
mircea_popescu: lenin hadn'
t what to fight a soccer match with, let alone war.
mircea_popescu: because there's this group of people who talk for you so you don'
t end up more hated than you need to be.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yes, but the russians also didn'
t ally with swiss against mongol horde only to withdraw midway
diana_coman: asciilifeform, ^ ; I can'
t really make it any shorter / clearer than that
diana_coman: I wasn'
t even for a second considering *those* elites, no; as I said: elites were long dead by that time; the thing was precisely that being between them, well, he was asking the fat pigs to actually do something; big surprise they oinked only louder trembling that the food might stop.
diana_coman: I suppose it's even ironic that the work he wanted them to do was by all indications closer to their possibilities; after all he wasn'
t asking for art or culture but simply for the set number of sentences with the set number of correct words and so on.
diana_coman: and yes, I can see him easily and predictably as a scapegoat; kids, don'
t take crown found in the mud just because nobody else wants it
diana_coman: mircea_popescu, "greaua mostenire" cuts both ways though; he gets to hide behind it for a while but he also doesn'
t get credit for a while
mircea_popescu: this isn'
t made up, either, various high officials joking about it, "what, ima desert in moscow ?! these schmucks have it worse than we do"
diana_coman: I haven'
t really followed in ages what democratic this and that is going on in there but I doubt there's anyone to ask anyway
diana_coman: precisely that: there aren'
t that many crown wearers to just let the one you have die
diana_coman: I can'
t see any sort of communism that is better.
diana_coman: you know, the other funny thing is that all the Russians I talked to were rather shocked when I described every day childhood in an industrial town of the 80s in Romania; and usually the final comment is "hmmm, Romania didn'
t get to the part where it gets better". Perhaps though I can'
t quite see exactly how does it get better given the fundamental trouble.
diana_coman: look that if we burnt down everything , we wouldn'
t even be able to chat; sure, make a new whatever but either you find a way to organically grow it with whatever bridges are needed at first out of what is or it's not going to work.
BingoBoingo: I'm becoming rather convinced the common man encounters a psychological failure mode if they aren'
t scratching the dirt to avoid starvation
BingoBoingo: Don'
t forget the unbutchered labor activists in the Southern Cone who will consider shuttering a Ford factory "a win for the people"
☟︎ diana_coman: asciilifeform, you know, that's the thing that popped at me as soon as I lived for any amount of time in the west: ffs those people do *of their own will and even paying money for* precisely the idiocies that I thought communism was to blame for. So in this sense, Ceausescu "ahead of his time" , marete realizari etc etc; I still think the direction totally wrong so pushing it further doesn'
t seem like a great achievement to me, that's all.
diana_coman: you know, apparently I was several times unlucky in that - among other things - my hometown was/is an industrial town; which meant for instance that blackouts were very usual (because many powerful industrial consumers and they got priority) while from what I heard in non-industrial towns this wasn'
t really the case
diana_coman: I don'
t recall; but I'm sure that at/after the revolution in Romania the idea was quite the same
diana_coman: asciilifeform, that communism cancelled doesn'
t solve the problems is clear, at least for the very simple reason that the problems were there even before communism, sure, as it can be seen from the pieces above that are quite earlier than that.
diana_coman:
http://btcbase.org/log/2019-03-13#1901720 -> maybe; but this sort of "it's enough to make the buildings and name them as to what they are meant to be, because surely then the content will magically appear" doesn'
t seem much realism to me, quite on the contrary.
☝︎ diana_coman: and that's valid for the 1000 bakeries too; I suppose one can argue that it's still an achievement to have bakeries with no bread than to have no bakeries and stale bread but I don'
t buy it; and note that in the 80's the latest brightest idea (in the same vein, all hail!) was to further do this sort of great "improvement", to wit the communal "neighbourhood kitchen" to get rid of such waste as having individual kitchens in every hruscheba
☟︎ mircea_popescu: there can genuinely arise the situation where people who aren'
t necessarily trying to find their way to arby's / olive garden / we are nevertheless sick of polenta and saving to buy a lobster.
mircea_popescu: dunno argument was "low hanging fruit". they wanna see what happens at high energy. the only way to see is to make. approximately situation of "when it comes to cooking, don'
t have to order out. alf has this method of making polenta, works well!" "and if i want lobster ?" "well then you gotta buy a lobster". getting indignant over how "wanting lobster only serves to drive an impossible wedge between budget and mariscos mercha
mircea_popescu: consider the traditional antisemitism -- a cluster of lumphocytes around a very real problem, yes, but SUBJECTIVE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS. not irritating "the organism" as such in any sense, beyond the very obvious an' deeply human "you folk can'
t be this fucking stupid!"
thing ☟︎ mircea_popescu: anyway, back to suleyman -- it is ~conceivable~, and definitely an excellent premise for an umberto eco-like novel, that suleyman gave up his harem to try and produce a harem generator that didn'
t suck.
mircea_popescu: is the only distinction that i don'
t actually hang the various negrated morons ? because i can swear it is to me a merely cosmetic matter, i would not lift finger one to stop it if they were in fact beheaded for it, and stalin did MORE than me in this vein, hence
http://btcbase.org/log/2018-12-02#1877763 ☝︎ mircea_popescu: i don'
t imagine the concept of "god" is per se harmful. greeks also had, and various others.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform wasn'
t ivan raised by a regency, in the manner the prince of talleyrand-perigord also describes, "as a vagrant or the poorest of the poor" ?