This is the moment a male coach claims to be a woman and smashes the female bench press record at a powerlifting competition in Canada.Bearded Avi Silverberg is shown calmly approaching the bench in men's clothing as part of a protest against gender self-identification policies in sport.Silverberg then unofficially breaks the female bench press record for the 84+ kilograms women's category, which was a 270lbs press - officially set by a trans lifter.
Hell, I could break that record this afternoon in my warmup sets. (Note that it was set by a trans lifter, too, not a biological female).
The North Carolina legislature came together recently to pass strong anti-rioting legislation that will increase the penalty for those arrested in Antifa-style riots.House Bill 40, which passed with bipartisan support, contains the same provisions as a bill that was vetoed in 2021 by Democratic governor Roy Cooper....The legislation increases the penalty for those arrested for rioting where deaths or injury occurred, or significant damage was inflicted on property. It also increases penalties for anyone convicted of assaulting a first responder during a riot. Since radical organizations supporting Antifa rioters with systematic bail funds has resulted in revolving door justice, the bill also tightens bail and pre-trial release requirements.
Among the provisions of the law is a heightened penalty if you riot while on drugs (or while brandishing weapons). The prohibition against attacking emergency personnel (the term used in the law, rather than 'first responder') is a Class D felony, equivalent to being a member of a terrorist organization, trafficking in serious quantities of cocaine, train robbery, intentional arson, or voluntary manslaughter.
If we must have laws, at least let them be good laws. Until and unless actual revolution is justified, this kind of rioting is utterly destructive.
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, any person seeking to purchase or transfer a handgun in North Carolina is no longer required to apply to the sheriff for a pistol purchase permit. All pistol purchase permitting laws in North Carolina have been eliminated by the enactment of Senate Bill 41, Guarantee 2nd Amend Freedom and Protections.Background checks will by done by the dealer when purchasing a handgun.
More important to my way of thinking was the church carry; you could already have dodged the difficult sheriff by getting a concealed carry permit, which would also serve as a pistol permit but which was 'shall issue' rather than 'may issue' from the perspective of the sheriff. Letting parishioners protect each other is a big deal.
“Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding. We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”
Technically that's not a call to defund public libraries, only to fund a new array of public-access libraries run by churches. It is true that the libraries of today often feature displays of books that are left-wing in character, and the ALA tends to side with the cultural left openly and reliably. Just as there's a desire to separate from each other politically, there's an understandable desire to separate from each other culturally.
The basic principle of free inquiry needs defenders. I understand that parents may not always want their children exposed to some things at early ages, and I agree that parents should have their rightful authority to guide their children's lives and educations recognized. That said, there needs to be a defense of the right of adult minds to think and speak honestly even when what they have to say is unpopular -- or popular with many ordinary people, but not with the wealthy and powerful.
Right now there doesn't seem to be an agenda by either party to defend freedom of speech and inquiry. There are movements on both sides (to the degree that there are two sides) to oppose it. That's a matter of grave concern.
UPDATE: Now book burning.
“There’s more C.H.S.s than there are defendants in this case,” Sabino Jauregui, one of Mr. Tarrio’s lawyers said, using an abbreviation for confidential human source, the F.B.I. official term for an informant.“I asked my intern the other day if she’s a C.H.S.,” he said.
In addition to being the heaviest concentration on J6, they had a secret police informant inside the defense team, which has only just come out -- well into the trial.
Andy Ngo gives a glimpse of how Antifa is being funded by the very cities they attacked.
The basics are, first, Antifa deploys lawyer "green hats" among the rioters to record events from their side. Other Antifa elements are tasked with identifying non-Antifa media for intimidation and theft or destruction of recording equipment to keep anyone else from generating video evidence against them. Then, after the riot, they sue the city for excessive police violence. Typically, the city DA decides not to fight them on it and the city forks over millions. Rinse and repeat.
“We also learned of a debate that will be happening on campus in a few weeks over what I think is an utterly false binary of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ versus ‘merit, fairness, and equality.’ A number of people, including me, were invited to participate in this event last year. We declined based on the framing, but it fueled our thinking about how to set the right conditions for a discussion — avoiding simplified versions of issues and concentrating on a format that will broaden attendees’ perspectives rather than on having one side ‘win,'” Dozier said in a March 15 news release announcing his own set of conversations to be held on campus."False binary" is a terrific opening: smug, universal in its application, and announced with dignity and a profound disinclination to explain. Some of you troglodytes may have been thinking there's an inherent conflict between DEI (or as we now apparently call it, DIEB, for "belonging") and merit, fairness, and equality. Well, you're wrong, that's all, and by the way shut up. So much for framing: you did it wrong, now go away.Also, the format is problematic, an observation that is much deeper and more nuanced than taking a position on the issue to be argued. The whole point is to broaden the perspectives of you troglodytes, not to give you some kind of opportunity to, what do we call it, "win." Winning is very primitive and binary. Also, that other thing, the one that's not winning, is not something we particularly wish to think about, and the fact that you're willing to think about it--yes, we can see you salivaitng over there--only shows how narrow, false, and binary you are.We need to set the right conditions for a discussion. Actually, several of us make a living enforcing those conditions, for a generous and virtue-affirming fee that supports an enviable lifestyle. The goal is not to simplify issues but to compound them into multifarious enigmas spring-loaded with lots of rage, while preserving the flexibility to shift one's ground constantly, with lots of pained expressions. We call these interactions "conversations." We have ways of making you like them. Shall we have one now? Just nod, we'll tell you if and when it's your turn to speak.
Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, AR, and is a chunk of the state economy. Whenever the Republican dominated legislature takes up conservative legislation to which the woke rulers of the Walmart empire object, Walmart implicitly threatens to take their money somewhere else.
I'm not saying the Republican politicians are right or wrong to take this into account. I'm just saying it's part of the political calculus there.
It's a British argument, but a good quick listen at 12 minutes. The title on YouTube ("Woke Cambridge Students HATE Historian's Facts") is misleading, I think -- the Cambridge students sit quietly and let him finish speaking, and there is some applause at the end.
Wretchard asked Chat GPT-4 who he was, to see what it knows. It's a plausible thing to do; what it knows is the internet, and we've published a great deal of content on the internet.
I decided to try it too, since I was messing with GPT last week.
Close enough for government work.
UPDATE:
I decided to try again, clueing in the GPT bot that I was asking about a blog. It was under the impression that the blog had closed, when in fact its own database ceases. However, it characterized the philosophy of the blog in this way:
That's actually a pretty good summary.
This regulatory environment explains why California insurers can’t charge rates that reflect their actual risks. It also shows why there’s so little competition in the state’s insurance industry. Over the long run, competition keeps rates low. Insurance commissioners can certainly hold premiums down by edict, but the result is a contracting market. Homeowners then have little choice but to buy inadequate policies in a government-run marketplace.Similarly, I made my living for years on the cleanup of the power grid crash in California, caused by regulators who were more interested in pretending that power doesn't cost what it costs than in ensuring that the grid produces power. Voters love the idea of putting bureacrats in charge of prices, until the goods disappear from the market. Then they always seem to like the idea of having the government step in to offer the product at a "fair" price. I call it the DMV-ization of the economy, my favorite examples being Obamacare and public schools. Source: Wall Street Journal, Insurance Companies Are Quietly Fleeing California (via DuckDuckGo search).
I always feel like I ought to include some religious content, it being a feast day, so here's a prayer called "the Deer's Cry," or "St. Patrick's Breastplate."
Here, after, is a Spotify playlist of St. Patrick's Day songs.
Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.
Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.
No one is completely without bias, but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.
People who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right. However, biological sex is real and spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved. Medical treatments like drugs and surgery are serious interventions that should not be available on demand, especially for children.Nah. Never happen.
SVB was the lender of choice for tech dreamers. It claims to have banked nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed tech and healthcare startups. Yet in recent years those clients have skewed ever more in one direction. “We serve those creating positive environmental change,” SVB’s website brags, noting that the bank worked with some 1,550 companies in the “climate technology and sustainability sector.”
Most of these companies weren’t filling some vital market need. Rather, as the Journal reported, SVB was beloved for its willingness to offer “banking services to startups that often weren’t profitable, in some cases didn’t have a product, and would otherwise have a hard time getting a line of credit or a loan from a larger bank.” One tech entrepreneur provided law.com a more scathing description of SVB’s products: “They’re basically subprime business loans. You’re talking about companies that have no credit profile, they’re burning cash and are unlikely to raise the same type of capital because of interest rates. . . . It was basically social credit.”Paywall issues? Try this link to a search page, which usually takes care of it. If you were willing to drop bucks on an online subscription, though, you could do worse than the OpEd page that employs both Ms. Strassel and Holman Jenkins.
Last month the California Energy Commission thus determined that the state needs Diablo Canyon [Nuclear] Power Plant through 2030 to ensure electricity reliability in the face of energy supply shortfalls during extreme weather events driven by climate change.But hey, whatever gets them there, even if it's "nukes are the only path to a carbon-free future."In other good news, Georgia has managed to spin up a new nuclear reactor. I suppose the next step is to replace the new reactor's unexpectedly successful staff with wokistas until everyone is sufficiently distracted by nonsense to let the thing melt down. In the meantime, I suggest that everything that needs to get done be justified by stamping it with the message: "necessary in the face of shortfalls during extreme weather events driven by climate change." We may also wish to add ". . . and systemic marginalization of heteronormiacs." Troubled by the reasoning? "It's intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer." The explanation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Management screwed up interest rates, underestimated customer withdrawals, hired the wrong people, and failed to sell equity. You’re really only allowed one mistake; more proved fatal.In case you hit the WSJ paywall and can't hop over it by Googling "Who Killed Silicon Valley Bank?"--here's a longer excerpt:
In January 2020, SVB had $55 billion in customer deposits on its balance sheet. By the end of 2022, that number exploded to $186 billion....
... There was no way SVB was going to initiate $131 billion in new loans. So the bank put some of this new capital into higher-yielding long-term government bonds and $80 billion into 10-year mortgage-backed securities paying 1.5% instead of short-term Treasurys paying 0.25%.
... SVB got caught with its pants down as interest rates went up.
Everyone, except SVB management it seems, knew interest rates were heading up. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been shouting this from the mountain tops. Yet SVB froze and kept business as usual, borrowing short-term from depositors and lending long-term, without any interest-rate hedging.People deposited tons of money in SVB over the federally insured limit. Uninsured deposits should be treated like any other risky investment, which people with more than a quarter of a million dollars they need to park should be considered competent to manage by diversification and otherwise. Naturally, however, the regulatory geniuses responded to SVB's failure by insulating large depositors from any consequences of choosing a risky bank to invest in. Otherwise, wealthy depositors might panic. They might even start evaluating depository banks according to their inherent safety, which would distract everyone from banks' important functions, such as DIE, ESG, and parting bonuses for deserving employees. Why manage risk the old-fashioned way when the regulators will manage it for you by imposing a tax on other banks instead?
The BB had an amusing video series on Californians who moved to Texas. Apparently that’s just as real a divide if you’re also Mexican.
The personification of philosophy as a woman assumes that philosophers, her erotic desirers, are symbolically masculine. The binary of male lover–female beloved imagines that the target of such pleas are men who were inspired by the idea of choosing wisely between competing types of women. Yet in the third century CE, the Christian dialogue writer Methodius of Olympus reimagined the gendered relationships of allegorical females in educational ascent myths. Virtue, daughter of Philosophy, still dwelt on top of a mountain that was steep and dangerous. But instead of questing men who attempted to enter her secluded garden, educated women were invited to her garden party.
Under conditions of bureaucratic dysfunction typical of a party-state, corruption isn’t a problem, it is the solution.
That was certainly my experience living in China, a party state of the sort he is describing. I had the wrong kind of visa to be employed, but I had a job. I didn't worry about it; the man who got me the job was the same man who signed for my visa renewal. I've told the story about getting paid in China before (although if you don't remember reading it, you should: it's one of my better stories). It was many months after I'd been working before I saw any of my promised pay. The problem wasn't that they weren't going to keep their word about paying me, it was that they had to build out a slush fund first. Once they'd solved the practical problem of arranging a corrupt solution, they paid me every single thing they promised.
As our system becomes captured by interests basically hostile to the people and the nation, we are all going to end up having to adopt these ways. They are like the illicit economies that prisoners develop, as a means of escaping the control of the guard towers. They are, in a way, a moral duty to embrace: just as a prisoner of war has a duty to try to escape out of loyalty to the country of his birth, so too do we.
So the third thing I asked Chat GPT to do -- as discussed in the immediately prior post -- was to write a short story in the manner of Robert E. Howard. Here is what it came up with.
The sun beat down on the dusty plains as Elric the barbarian rode towards the small village. He had been wandering for days, searching for a way to ease the restless fire that burned within him.
As he rode into the village, he could sense the tension in the air. The people were on edge, their eyes darting nervously at him as he passed by.
Ignoring their wary glances, Elric strode into the local inn, his hand resting on the hilt of his trusty broadsword. He knew he needed a stiff drink and a warm meal before he could continue his quest.
The innkeeper eyed him warily as he approached the bar. "What brings a man like you to these parts?" he asked, his voice trembling.
"I'm just passing through," Elric replied, his voice low and rumbling. "I need a meal and a place to rest."
The innkeeper nodded, his eyes flickering towards the door. "You best keep your wits about you," he warned. "There's trouble brewing in these parts."
Elric raised an eyebrow. "Trouble? What kind of trouble?"
The innkeeper leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper. "There's a group of bandits that have been raiding the nearby villages. They're ruthless, and they've already killed dozens of innocent people."
Elric's grip tightened on his sword. "I'll take care of them," he growled.
The innkeeper looked skeptical. "You're just one man," he said. "How do you plan to take on a group of bandits?"
Elric smiled grimly. "I've faced worse odds than this," he said. "And I've always come out on top."
With that, Elric left the inn and rode out towards the bandit's hideout. As he drew closer, he could see the flicker of torchlight and hear the sound of raucous laughter.
Elric drew his sword and charged towards the bandit's camp, his battle cry echoing across the plains. The bandits were caught off guard, and they fell quickly to Elric's mighty sword.
As the last of the bandits lay dying at his feet, Elric felt a sense of satisfaction. He had protected the innocent, and he had once again proved that he was the greatest warrior in the land.
With a fierce grin on his face, Elric rode off into the sunset, ready for whatever adventure lay ahead.
You can see elements that are right: the use of a fantasy-style name, the existence of swords, the attempt at dramatic tension leading to violent sword-based conflict. Nevertheless the story is terrible to the point of being ridiculous.
REH's works are in the public domain, so Chat GPT presumably can access large parts of them and map them. However, creating writing requires more than just getting a lot of the right words into the right order.
My guess is that this means we are doomed to even worse popular art than we have been subjected to already. Autotune proved attractive to the recording industry even though it is terrible, obvious, and offensive to the ear. This was because it allowed pop music stars (which now includes contemporary Nashville country music) to be selected for physical looks rather than the ability to sing. Since there are a lot more pretty faces than talented singers, that allowed the recording studios to shift more of the profit to themselves and pay less to the "talent" that is no longer talented.
AI generated visual art is already starting to pop up everywhere, and is having a similar negative function. Actual artists used to be well-paid because their talents took years to develop. Now you can generate something good-enough for free just by plugging a description into somebody's AI. It's not going to be great art, or even good art, but it will have the right elements more-or-less.
I expect we'll see a similar shift to crap like this in screenplays, especially for episodic TV but even for movies. It's free, and all they want is a consumable product to bring in money -- money they get to keep, since they don't have to pay anyone who actually knows how to produce something of genuine value. As a result, our popular entertainment will become even worse than it already is.
It's a depressing thought.
I had read a bit about this here and there, but was not planning on messing with these Large Language Model "AIs" myself. However, I was explicitly asked to do so by a professional contact who wanted me to evaluate them. I ran three, which produced significantly different results.
One thing I asked it to do was to explain Aristotle's ethical theory. The answer it gave was plausible at about the college level, or even at the grad school level for people who weren't specialists. The mistakes it made are mistakes that even ethicists who haven't actually studied Aristotle closely might make: for example, it claimed that Aristotle's virtues are means between two extremes. I've heard even trained philosophers make that error, because it's very close to what Aristotle does say; it's just not quite right. I decided that wasn't a good test for Chat GPT, though, because it's too easy for the kind of model it is: if it's just mapping out what experts have said about Aristotle and regurgitating it in a slightly reordered format, that's what you'd expect. Actually understanding and being able to apply the knowledge, as humans do, that's hard. Chat GPT doesn't have to understand, it just has to know that there are very frequent connections between various words that imply that using those words together in the commonly-encountered order is correct.
So the next thing I asked it to do was to diagnose a problem with a 2007 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon that I just finished resolving. It involved a poltergeist-like failure of multiple electrical systems. The answer it gave was wrong but plausible: it started with the assumption that there could be multiple system failures and walked through how to diagnose possible issues with each in turn. In fact the problem was that the ECM had gone bad, which I told it. It said that was also a possible cause of the multiple failures I described, and said it was too complex for me to fix so I should take the Jeep to a shop. I told it the shop had refused the job because the ECM was discontinued, and therefore they couldn't get parts from an authorized source. It offered four ways to obtain a functional discontinued ECM, all of which were plausible, but cautioned me that it was too complex to try to fix without substantial technical knowledge.
In fact, it was the easiest car repair I've ever done: I bought a refurbished one from Flagship One, and just dropped it in. You do have to know which numbers are the right ones so you order exactly the right thing, and you have to take care to have it programmed to the right VIN, which you can do yourself if you buy the diagnostic software from Alfa Romeo (the parent company of Jeep, these days). But FS1 will be happy to do it for you, if you send them your VIN. Once you get the right part there are only three bolts and three electrical connections.
A plausible reason it might have been thought difficult, which Chat GPT did not mention when I asked why it thought the repair was difficult, is that the ECM is normally located against the firewall. Getting to it is already potentially a pain. This particular Jeep, however, has had it relocated to an easily-accessed space further forward. That's something Chat GPT couldn't possibly know, and didn't; but it didn't know that I ought to have worried about the firewall issue either.
So it was wrong on several points, but the answer was still useful if I had been someone who knew little about car repair. It's not terrible even with physical technology, because a lot has been published online in various help fora.
The third example was actually terrible, though, so I'll post it separately.
On August 26, 2021, Vargas-Andrews was in position at HKIA when he noticed suspicious individuals outside the gate to the airport as thousands of people were attempting to flee Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban, fearful for the future and what retribution anyone who'd helped American forces over the previous twenty years would face."I requested engagement authority when my team leader was ready on the M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System," Vargas-Andrews said, testifying in his personal capacity. "The response: leadership did not have the engagement authority for us — do not engage."Vargas-Andrews said he requested that his battalion commander "come to the tower to see what we did. While we waited for him, psychological operations individuals came to our tower immediately and confirmed the suspect met the suicide bomber description," Vargas-Andrews recounted. When the battalion commander "eventually arrived," he was presented with the evidence and photos of two men, one who met the description of a suicide bomber. "Pointedly, we asked him for engagement authority and permission — we asked him if we could shoot," Vargas-Andrews told lawmakers. "Our battalion commander said, and I quote, 'I don't know.'"
"Myself and my team leader asked very harshly, 'Well, who does? Because this is your responsibility, sir," Vargas-Andrews explained. "He again replied he did not know but would find out. We received no update and never got our answer."
I find it absolutely astonishing that a battalion commander of a unit deployed at war would neither have the authority to approve a self-defense shooting nor even know who did have it. This is the most basic chain-of-command issue: who is in charge?
The story that has been emerging from the Afghan withdrawal continues to shock. These were professional military units with decades of combat experience, led by men and women who were educated and trained in what were once the finest military science programs in the world. Yet in every aspect of this story we see a complete failure to do even the most basic tasks:
There were many other failures as well, but some of those could be put down to the exigencies of the crisis. These were issues we had the capacity to control. We had all the time we needed to plan, because we didn't have to go at all. The enemy couldn't force us out. We had plenty of time and force to choose and secure the right airbase -- in fact, it was already secure until we abandoned it. We had plenty of time to clarify chains of command. We had plenty of time to round up all the American citizens before it became a crisis.
There is no excuse.
I’m not sure how newsworthy this is, because my source is my wife sending me a Facebook link. However, I hadn’t heard of it before now.
That may be because it’s not exactly earth-shattering. It’s an older inscription than before, but in an area where younger inscriptions have been found. It was also supposed to be a challenging translation, which also means that there might be some doubts about it.
Still, it’s a subject of discussion here.
