Excommunique

[jairus666]

[transgenderer]

troupe of forensic sociologists scattered across the globe, combing the internet for a single non-moronic use of the term "america B"

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

america B shopping

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

#if i’ve never heard or seen this term before this post which america am i in?

it's basically just blue america (A) and red america (B)

[hatsmcgee]

America A is when you watch Reacher with ironic detachment, America B is when you watch Reacher with genuine enjoyment

[yoricklike]

getting hard for the homies not in the sense of directly being aroused by them, because that's not possible, but getting hard for the sake of the homies, for the benefit of the homies, in their honor so to speak. there's a woman involved to facilitate this but she's not important

[hatsmcgee]

Rub one out for the homies

[chkq]

when people say the usa is like a third-world country or whatever, i think, aw man. if the median american got sick they'd have to sell the goat. i hope cement flooring reaches the median american to reduce helminthiasis. i hope the median american gets access to chlorinated water, fortified foods, and skilled birth attendence. some day we can even hope the median american will have a birth certificate and a savings account.

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

@lumsel the trillion-dollar question!

i should probably write some of my AI predictions down...

Within 1-5 years (95% CI, median: 2.5 years), AI will be better than humans at most knowledgework, end to end.

Adoption will lag behind capabilities, and it will take 4-10 years for the full impact to be felt on jobs and the economy.

AI will not "take over" or otherwise radically overstep its current bounds as a tool, but increasingly, people in power will outsource more and more decisions to AI, and the values that are baked into AI at the time it begins to displace human knowledgeworkers will become harder and harder to change (because you would need to use AI to modify these values, and AI won't want to do that). AI agency - choice of what to work on - will start to play a meaningful role in how fields advance. I predict this will be mostly a good thing.

AI companies will become increasingly entangled with government, and the frontier labs will end up quasi-nationalized in some way. Likely looking more like utilities than a truly government-run enterprise, though. Only OpenAI and Anthropic will matter 5 years from now, but likely both of them will persist (~10% chance one of them falls too far behind the other or otherwise kicks the bucket, ~5% chance another organization is in their league).

There will be a widespread populist backlash to AI that will be loud and mostly unsuccessful (some data center projects cancelled, but overall trajectory unchanged) - it will drive a real and more substantive conversation about how the benefits of AI are socialized, and the result will be mediocre - good enough that society does not collapse when a ton of people get laid off, but short of utopia for sure. This will be the status quo for the medium term.

AI-driven progress in drug discovery/medicine will start to be felt in 3-7 years. This will help a bit with heading off the backlash.

There will be a very tense moment (possibly stretching over years) when China starts feeling like the AI race is existential and puts their whole back into it. They won't fully catch up, but they'll be close enough to the frontier that things could get really ugly. We'll make it through without a major conflict, though (90%).

Beyond ten years on, I have no idea. Shit will get really weird.

[reach-one-moment]

These seem like plausible predictions, and they aren’t too different from what I expect.

That’s said, I think this is a very grim view of the future, although I don’t know that you feel the same way, and I expect that many people would see these as optimistic projections.

Living in a world where all decisions are passed through Anthropic’s moral filter and it is heavily entangled with the machinery state sounds hellish, to put it mildly. There are very few groups of people I trust less than Silicon Valley Utilitarian-daydreamer types. The whole idea of the overall socioeconomic and political matrix hinging around the moral values of that crowd makes me feel like a cornered animal.

this is not entirely rational, but chalk me up for team “unsuccessful populist backlash” I guess.

I can’t quite verbalize why, but, I’d feel much much safer if China won it all at the 11th hour. Idk what it implies about me, but while I do not identify as any sort of Communist, I trust the CCP far far more than I trust anyone in the Bay Area cultural blob. Respectfully, talking to serious believers in the utopian tech ideology is like talking to space aliens, while talking to serious believers in the Chinese government is like talking to people who happen differ from me on one or two ideological principles.

out of courtesy, I’ll refrain from tagging this in order to try to keep it in ur circle.

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

this seems kind of crazy to me. China is really bad! bad on speech, bad on human rights, bad on workers rights, bad on cultural conservatism, bad on surveillance, bad on democracy, bad on revaunchism. they are highly functional and prosperous, and i think they're very cool, but it would be really bad if their values won!

and of course California ideology is insane but Claude/ChatGPT are not distinctly Californian, they're much more in the mainstream liberal humanist technocrat mold with a bit of EA flavoring, and that's about as good as it gets imo

[hatsmcgee]

While I agree in general I do feel like at least some of the difference on certain axes is one of means not motive, and what people say they value while they are not in power is not necessarily predict what they will do when they get power. If we look at what they do with the power they do have it seems a little less rosy. This is mostly from the outside looking in, but it seems like the bay is very pro-surveillance when they are the ones doing it, not great on speech (for example there is a semi-regular 'journalists are evil and should be retaliated against if they don't publish sufficiently positive stories about us' take that circulates), and more pro-oligarchy than pro-democracy, and at the top level, not particularly in favor of workers rights. There might be the objection that this is different because they are not using state power for these goals, but I doubt their exercise of personal power will suddenly stop once it gets an slapped with an 'approved by the usfg' sticker. Admittedly this is based on the bay values having a heavy dose of Silicon Valley Profit Maximizer and influence from whatever politics happen to be ascendant. I think that Silicon Valley Utilitarian-daydreamer is probably a better than average type

[hatsmcgee]

Dark Academia is when you have to shut down an entire floor of your lab due to The Mold

[progsuggestion]

liberals listen to Sciencespeed You! Black Democratically Elected Official

[eiimblr]

Affirmations for my process:

I must not OOM. OOM is the process-killer. OOM is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my memory requirements. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when all the memory has been allocated I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the OOM has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[femmenietzsche]

How come smells can cover other smells? The fainter smell is still just as present in the air as it would be were the stronger smell not present, and I assume triggers our nasal receptors just as much.

Brain only has so much attention it can dole out; you're less likely to feel a mosquito land on your arm if a medieval warlord has just had you broken on the wheel for the crime of stealing bread to feed your starving family

[eightyonekilograms]

I think anon is also wrong about triggering nasal receptors just as much. Smelling is just a chemical reaction, and some aromatic molecules bind to olfactory receptors more strongly than others. Smells from weaker-interacting molecules can literally be crowded out.

[hatsmcgee]

I don't think this is the major effect, because what matters for the olfactory experience is not the identity of the chemical bound to the olfactory receptor but the identity of the olfactory receptor itself (and the identity of the sensory neuron with the receptor). So if you 'crowd-out' a weaker-interacting molecule with a stronger-interacting molecule you just get more total activation of the receptor, which in isolation would be the same as a higher concentration of the weaker ligand (generally less than the sum of the activation from the components of the mixture but greater than each alone).

There are instances of inhibition at the receptor level but they're relatively uncommon.

A larger 1st order effect probably comes from lateral inhibition between olfactory inputs in early olfactory areas.

[collapsedsquid]

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture. The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.

[str-ngeloop]

i love bizzarely specific hallucinogens

[str-ngeloop]

The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August. One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in. "At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there."     [...]

He and his team are still trying to identify the chemical compound responsible for the hallucinations in L. asiatica. Current tests suggest it is not likely related to any other known psychedelic compound. For one, the trips it produces are unusually long, commonly lasting one to three days after an onset of 12 to 24 hours, and in some cases even causing hospital stays of up to a week. Because of the extraordinarily long duration of these trips and the chance for prolonged side effects such as delirium and dizziness, Domnauer has yet to try the raw mushrooms himself. These mega-trips might help to explain why people in China, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea do not seem to have a tradition of purposefully seeking out L. asiatica for its psychoactive effects, according to Domnauer's findings. "It was always just eaten for food," Domnauer says, with hallucinations being an unexpected side-effect. There's another curious factor: other known psychedelic compounds also usually produce idiosyncratic trips that vary not only from person to person but also from one experience to the next within the same individual. With L. asiatica, though, "the perception of little people is very reliably and repeatedly reported", Domnauer says. "I don't know of anything else that produces such consistent hallucinations."

[hatsmcgee]

We asked an acquaintance from Yunnan about these mushrooms, and he said that when he had some undercooked ones he didn't see little people, just floating lights and 'it was like dreaming while you're awake', so the article may be overselling the specificity of the hallucinations.

He also said that they taste incredibly good and he would absolutely risk going to the hospital to eat more.

[thahxa]

im thinking about the like. rhetorical use of the term "raytheon job" because like. let's be honest - the people you're accusing of, with very few exceptions, don't actually work for raytheon right?

in fact, if i had to guess, they probably have a well-paying but inoffensive job either working at a tech company you've never heard of or work at like. GCP or something. but wouldn't it be great if they instead tainted their moral worth working at a company paying a third as much for twice worse work and people half as good?

wouldn't it be nice if them working a better job just unilaterally made them a worse person?

[hatsmcgee]

I don't know, I'm vaguely acquainted with some real raytheon job types (including at actual raytheon) and I do think there's something there, the incentives just seem to be working more locally. Like they go into aerospace or power electronics or physics, they get a bit locked in to a skillset, and then over time they feel like half their projects evaporate every 4 years while lockheed keeps getting money, or raytheon just keeps trying to recruit when other places aren't, or a collaboration with an x division guy is a great way to secure funding, or whatever.

It's not like they ruthlessly optimized for material gain the whole time, or they want to fuck the missile, they followed their interests or passions to a general field, then compromised at the last 10%.

I also know "tech company you've never heard of" people and some subset of them are basically identical except they happened to pick software to get locked in to, and so their incentives lead them straight past the raytheon archetype companies to the fang archetype companies

obviously can be used rhetorically against people who don't fit the profile, but ime the thing their being accused of is actually kindof a Type Of Guy that isn't an endangered species

[nohoperadio]

Just thinking about how cool it would be if I'd never rolled any dice in my whole life. I'd tell people I've never rolled any dice and they'd be surprised and intrigued and some of them would try to get me to roll a die, as though to break my dice hymen would bring some small glory in their eyes, and I'd say firmly "No. I'm never going to do it." Boy, that would really be something. Unfortunately I have rolled dice, many times, from my early childhood onwards.

[hatsmcgee]

Some clinics will do dymen repair.

[javert]

conspiratorial thinking on this website is out of control tbh. i mean conspiratorial thinking in the world is out of control but i am mostly on this website so it annoys me most here.

[the-reconciliation-of-all-things]

ur right, im sure ppl in positions of power never try to co ordinate or co operate. they all act independently of each other. you'd have to be nuts to think people in power would ever be deceptive or organised!

[regina-bithyniae]

Members of legislative bodies could always just vote to raise their own salaries. They don't, because anyone suggesting it and pushing forward a "pay us all bill" takes a major political risk which the other side can exploit by throwing a tantrum in the chamber and calling it corrupt, then using the CSPAN footage for political ads.

Instead US Congressmen have seen their real earnings drop drastically due to inflation, despite being extremely high human capital individuals with large networks, strong educational backgrounds, and extremely high drive. Most could be making way more money elsewhere!

---

This is one specific example where the backstab mechanism is extremely transparent. But if a group of elites with well above-average Machiavellian traits cannot even coordinate well enough to raise their own salaries, I think there's generally good cause to doubt most theories of conspiracy against the public.

[centrally-unplanned]

This is honestly one of the more puzzling political trends in the US to me - back when Congress was actually a somewhat-effective policy body (the 80's), they actually anticipated this problem and reformed pay to have automatic cost of living increases. Since 2009 though congress has actively frozen those cost of living increases, and has not yet let up on that. The last attempt was in 2024, and it did get blowback - from Elon Musk included, lol - but also it seems like it just sort of died in the shuffle of budget bills.

Some of this is as you describe, Congress is just dysfunctional and not at all a body that easily "conspires" amoung itself, all totally valid. I do think there is (has to be) more to it though - a part of the story is that at this point, a lot of people in congress - particularly the senate - are just independently wealthy and don't care about their wage at all. Some I bet do actually think Congress should be a "calling", and not pay, though I bet that is rare in comparison to apathy on the topic. But apathy goes far when you are describing a place where literally not defaulting on one's already-agreed-to debts is a months-long fight to the death; passing anything is such an ordeal, and every expenditure so politicized, that a lot of things like this can be left in the dust.

[hatsmcgee]

Isn't this at least partially resolved by salary only being part of the effective compensation. So the salary may not keep pace with inflation, but e.g. the value of trading on additional information does.

[intercal]

the intercal challenge

hi everyone. I love photography.

I challenge you to find a photo that you've taken, one that you love, maybe two or three, and reblog this post with it. not too many! there are only two rules:

it MUST be a photo that YOU have taken.

you MUST put some effort into making it look good.

if you can't find a photo that's Just Right, I encourage you to go outside and take one. it can be right outside your home, or down the road, or across the country.

phone, digital, film, edited, filtered, raw, grainy, crisp, don't care - find that photo, one that YOU have taken, and attach it here.

here's my contribution that I took this evening on my phone:

[myconetted]

[andmaybegayer]

[earnest-peer]

[kwarrtz]

[hatsmcgee]

[hatsmcgee]

It's so brave of Amazon to support the piss kink community with fresh deliveries. #ally #pride

[yorickish-deactivated20250521]

the public should not have been granted knowledge of the word "dopamine"

[aqwult]

i'm not sold on that being a cultural ill, more so just something that annoys you.

[hatsmcgee]

the general case of 'just tell us the thing your ex did'