We have the benefit of hindsight. It is possible Chomsky didn’t know about that. Possible. Epstein knew lots of people - only some of them went to the island and not all of those went to assault kids.

It’s correct to be suspicious. Even very suspicious. It is not correct to draw definite conclusions without more information. The information that we have does not implicate him in illegal stuff, so far.

True - I totally agree.

I will read it. Regardless, though, he is associated with the left and him going down for this would be bad PR for the left broadly, which sucks - that’s my only point other than we don’t know he’s done anything untoward here.

If you look at his emails with Epstein, it’s literally Epstein asking him about his academic work, Epstein toying with various little theories and asking Chomsky about them, etc. All above board so far. Him being on the plane is not great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a pedo. It opens up that possibility, but there is not proof of him doing anything wrong. Yet. I really hope he didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s obviously a possibility.

No matter what you think about Chomsky, he’s an extremely important intellectual figure and is associated with the left. Him going down would be bad for all of us - so I hope he’s not a bastard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzbuch_Kapitalismus

https://mltheory.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil.pdf

I was there once. Some old white dude in flip flops told me about how 1) aliens made this with cold lasers (because no burn marks on the rock/they aren’t melted) and/or gave humans the technology to make it, 2) he’s psychic and has prophetic dreams - particularly he predicted a bunch of natural disasters, he said.

Either way, yep those rocks fit together really tightly; it’s neat.

My wife is on the ace spectrum. She enjoys sex, but only experiences reactive sexual desire (i.e. she’ll get in the mood once sex is basically already happening). Effectively she does not experience sexual desire in the way people typically mean that.

That’s been a struggle for us. We don’t do scheduled sex, but it’s something we’ve considered. Even though we have very good (if infrequent) sex, the frequency isn’t the thing that’s hard for me to deal with. The hardest thing is not feeling desired in ways I am used to in relationships. That has made me feel insecure and just overall is not great. But it’s something we’ve had to work through.

So all that goes to say: yes, if you find the right person you’ll be able to make it work. The key, in my opinion, is talking about it and being very clear about how you’re wired and that it isn’t anything wrong with them.

Well sure. CEOs’ main job is to coordinate the functions of major business units with the wishes of shareholders/the board of directors. Ultimately they’re a middleman on the hook for the results of the business without actual direct control of day to day operations.

Effectively that means they give broad goals and direction to named execs, who translate those goals into actions for their organizations, that middle managers direct their teams to achieve. Then middle managers report success/failure to named execs, who report back to the CEO who (in conjunction with the other named execs) reports success/failure to shareholders & the board along with financial results.

The execs all are basically on the hook for the results of the decisions made by those below them, but they only decide the broad strokes of the actions of the business.

LLMs could do most of that. The only problem is they can’t really make decisions properly. But they could pretty easily turn what is said by the board & shareholders into goals for others to enact - and maybe determine if actions taken by the business support the goals to some degree.

That is like 80% of the job of a CEO.

US does mulled wine, but it’s more of a general winter thing. More common up north in areas with more northern european influence, I think. Mince pies aren’t really a thing, though, which is a shame.

很酷！很多的人也很多的我的朋友 from my hometown & childhood 和你一样来自中国。我喜欢能看到 the etymology in a 汉字。

I wish 我的中文是足够好 to understand 中文 TV. 老师小猪佩奇不是有趣的。

我正在学习中文。中文很难！

I took a break from learning Chinese for a while due to personal stuff being busy and am trying to get back into it. Chinese is a very logical language, I think, and learning it is fun and interesting but challenging. I was just about HSK1 level, I think, before I stopped. I gotta boot up peppa pig in mandarin again - 你好小猪佩奇老师，我是你的学生！

https://doitandhow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_o4t3u1lyfa1qkvbwso1_r1_500.gif

1. take your open chip bag

2. fold the top of the bag down about 2cm/1in. Do this 2 more times.

3. take the corners of the folded part and fold them toward the middle of the rolled part at an angle

4. the tricky part. We are going to invert the cuff we’ve made - like flip the folded part inside out. Push those corners in and flip the folded part over them.

Compliance does need to be considered. The company I work for is trying extremely hard to comply, but because of complexities and ambiguities in the law, it is difficult to find out how to comply. I don’t know all the details, but I know legal, compliance, and the data engineering teams spend a lot of time figuring out how to be compliant and there aren’t always clear answers.

That said, the solution is not to roll back protections but to be very explicit about how to comply.

It stops taking as much effort eventually. Then you can tune out the noise and think about stuff. Or it never does because everyone is different, I guess, but then you just do what you have to do.

That’s true. But finding inner quiet is an even more necessary skill in those situations. But, I’m autistic (only mildly), so I totally get if the stimulation is just too much. Though I went through a lot of discomfort to be okay in environments like that.

It’s good to enjoy quiet and not be constantly surrounding yourself with noise. It’s an important skill to be able to sit in silence and not rely on external stimulation to feel okay.

I know several working class folks who grew up in the USSR who, while they admit it wasn’t perfect, were very happy with how things were then and - although some of them are now onboard the Pravda train to looneyville & love Putin and believe the Russian Orthodox church line that Ukraine is led by baby-eating, devil-worshipping, Nazi Pedophiles (not an exaggeration) - they admit things are much worse than they were then and place the blame squarely on moving away from communism & planned economy.

Because of strong social programs, they had access to good education, work & a high quality of life, and a level of recreation and leisure that seems wild to me as an American.

Communism is not a monolith. There are many tendencies. And YMMV depending on the folks in power, just like any system. Additionally, despots love to call themselves socialist/communist while doing nothing relating to seizing the means of production - look at Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) as an example.

Imagine if we asked folks “What’s your experience been like living in a capitalist regime”. Most people would think thats a weird question because of how many types of capitalist regimes exist - it’sa general economic framework, not a system of government. Your experience will vary wildly if you are from like rural Kenya vs the US vs Scandinavia.

It does not. The legal system has essentially lost the ability to be a check on the power of the executive branch. Partly because of the capture of the judiciary and regulatory bodies by right-wing extremists and partly because of the speed at which the executive branch is acting illegally - it takes time to build cases and the jsutice system can’t keep up.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). They are the ones playing defense against fascism and violations of civil liberties by the US government. This includes immigration, freedom of religion/expression, lgbtq rights, abortion rights, you name it they’ve done it.they are responsible for getting nunerous illegal bills/acts/laws rescinded. They do great work. The sort of work that is foundational to getting the US government on track.

Ad hominem fallacy. The person who has been exposed for various things, instead of trying to refute the argument of the accuser (e.g. “they’re misrepresenting the facts”, “I couldn’t have done that here’s an alibi”)

… they just make their own accusations to make others mistrust their accuser. All of the examples you listed were ad hominem attacks against your friend.