RustyEarthfire

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Well there's some stuff on his Connextras

That's why ~Everything is Securities Fraud~

I'd argue that Infinite Jest is more relevant than ever. Perhaps its boring how much his prescient world resembles our own, with its everlasting entertainment feeds, overwhelming sponsorship of every aspect of life, nuclear proliferation, quiet desperation, and quieter hope.

The out-of-order telling definitely obscures the plot(s), but they are there. And like many of the author's choices, this structure stands in stark contrast to an LLM's output. While an LLM always outputs the most likely next token, Infinite Jest refuses to be predictable. While a slop feeder just slurps whatever shows up in the trough, a Jest reader cannot idly consume, but must actively interact to receive any fulfillment.

Far from wankish performatism, the book deals with heavy themes including depression, drug addiction/recovery, and suicide. These were sadly demonstrated to be very personally familiar themes to the author.

And it's an interesting, colorful world with bits that just stick with you, from "cartographic rearrangement" to the game of eschaton, to those crazy French Canadians jumping tracks at the last moment (and their leader chosen because he timed his jump so perfectly he lost his legs but lived).

I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze, and wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't want to read an esoteric 1000-page tome with chapter-long endnotes-of-endnotes-of-endnotes. But those who labor to crack this pomegranate will still enjoy many a plump pip.

I'm surprised there's no flag on the inner flag

I mean, it was just one of the most catastrophic electoral defeats of all time.

I mean no, it wasn't; it was average at most. Unless you just mean Trump is the worst president ever.

Actually it's not limited to 1.8 billion dollars. It's a completely blank check. You can see the settlement here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl

So frustrating seeing all of the "news" platforms parroting the regime's claims as if they were a trustworthy source

A European starling called "The Mouth" was able to mimic sounds well enough to reproduce a drawing in the spectrograph:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQCP-5g5bo

What I’m not seeing is any explanation for why the DNC ... is accepting help

Cuomo is running as an independent. He is running against the DNC.

Well they saved "258 million" people from fentanyl overdose in 100 days; finding half of them jobs in a week should be no problem.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pam-bondi-fentanyl-258m/

Capitalism isn't unique in perpetuating injustice, but it certainly excels at it, with passive exponentiality and unprecedented scalability.

Regarding comparison to planned economies, I was solely referring to resource distribution. Planned economies (including the planned aspects of mixed economies) typically have significantly more equitable distribution of resources than capitalism. Certainly there is still massive inequality, but it is far less than capitalism. E.g. the Gini index for USSR/Russia basically doubled when capitalism replaced communism.

Amplifying that last point:

• Capitalism amplifies and perpetuates injustice. E.g. descendants of both enslaving and enslaved are receiving exponentially multiplied effects of actions 100+ years ago.
• Because wealth is power, concentrated wealth often receives far better than average returns by rigging systems in its favor.

Even ignoring these perversions, capitalism is terrible at answering the economic question, "for whom to produce." This isn't much of a change relative to previous systems, but it compares unfavorably in this regard to planned economies.