Cicero

almost nobody who has children would press red unless they know for an absolute fact that their kids pressed red if you think there’s even a 5% chance your kids pressed blue, you will risk your life to improve their odds even by a tiny bit to take this a step further most women are probably hard-wired to press blue as a motherly instinct anyway, even if they have no children. so at minimum you have a 25% baseline for blue right there, which completely tips the odds so i think blue actually wins by a landslide if this was the real world and not a social media app for incels in other words humanity always had the biological programming to ensure blue wins

there will this brief era where we can watch our AIs bumble around on the computer clicking things, failing sometimes, taking a ~human amount of time to write code. in the blink of an eye they’ll be manipulating computers far too quickly to monitor

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, said she actively works to challenge gender norms with her sons, telling an interviewer: "I've given our boys dolls… if I'm reading a book and the protagonist is a male, I just change the he to a she."

Cal AI has been acquired by MyFitnessPal 🚨 Henry and I started Cal AI as 17-year old high school students with one mission: make calorie tracking easier with AI. In just 18 months, we’ve helped millions of people lose millions of pounds. And we broke $50m in ARR along the way. We are at an incredible inflection point in history where ANYBODY can build a product that can improve lives and make millions. As founders, we get a lot of praise. The truth is that this would not have been possible without our incredible 30+ person team. We are so proud of what this team has accomplished, and are thankful to everyone that has been instrumental in Cal AI’s development and success. Cal AI will continue as a separate app from MyFitnessPal. The combined team will share resources to continue helping people achieve their fitness goals!

I need to clarify that I would oppose the latest Iran intervention (especially the insane "regime change" speech) even if it had zero casualties or was a fast and great success. The Libyan intervention was also fast and "well-executed" afaik no Americans died in that, and no European soldiers (it was the European powers who dragged USA into that btw). It was still a great disaster that both USA and Europe are continuing to pay for, both materially and in reputation. I've talked about the insanity of deposing Gaddafi for a while now. Also btw similar stupid arguments were used against him (e.g. RE events from 1980s) even though America had normalized relations and given him guarantees. But there's another more fundamental reason why I oppose such things even aside from their immediate "geopolitical" consequences. Trump was elected to effect massive reforms at home, where America as a whole and his supporters are in a dire situation. To be invested in a significant way in "foreign policy" exploits their patriotism and uses the illusory benefits of "having a nation" for ends that don't solve any of their actual problems.... engender cheerleading or simulated feelings of success to replace domestic frustrations. But again, the American social compact is BROKEN and the situation is as dire as can get. Can't afford these distractions and no you don't have energy to "do both." It's a historically constant and powerful force: for analogy, Kennan mentioned that Russian rulers pacified the bad domestic life of their subjects through foreign conquests, expansion and interventions that brought glory and prestige to make up for it. I don't want to extend the analogy too far in terms of other nations and human nature as such, but it has many direct parallel in American history too...however...the Russian rulers at least actually expanded the territory that the Russian empire genuinely ruled. Teddy Roosevelt came to office with extremely bold national reform plans. He soon found out that as energetic and smart as he was, and as much of a mandate he thought he had, the American constitution greatly limited his ability to get anything close to what he wanted domestically. He had always had international ambitions, but the frustrations he had domestically accelerated the foreign adventurism. All his energy went into that. In Trump's case he is a vain and manly man, who feels maybe at times personally insulted by certain foreign leaders; then the people around him as well as foreign "allies" like Bibi etc. can play on both his vanity and his legitimate sense of being frustrated domestically to substitute instead with ready and spectacular actions abroad, which brings him immediate acclaim. Much of the old GOP infrastructure and even electorate is still around and also others too, feeling frustrated at home will give Trump the adulation he desires right that momet. This is very powerful motivation. I mentioned TR: the other part of it is that Teddy Roosevelt and his main man Elihu Root actually had the ability to greatly reform America's military, diplomatic, etc., sectors (though not as far as they wanted); they created the American foreign policy and business establishment that has since become unworkable. Trump inherits even in foreign affairs a rickety machine that can't serve America--this is always a historical constant, e.g., Rome's external conquests no longer were congruent with inherited political and social forms it had around the time of Caesar...Caesar's and Octavian's reforms were inevitable if Rome was to persist... But the thing is this all becomes a blind "prestige and frustration relief machine" I mean to say that at least TR used the foreign activity valve to actually achieve aims, because he structured the American foreign and security establishment to where it could do that; whereas that option isn't open anymore to Trump or really any other modern president. Not unless there are reforms on the scale done 1900-1910.