The Sun Sets

@Aella_Girl Come to Bangkok. There’s a massage shop on every corner. They usually have recliners in the front of the shop where you sit and get your feet massaged. It’s very popular here and costs around $9 USD for 1 hour

i would like a gloryhole for footrubs

i regularly fantsize about footrubs. i wnat my feet rubbed so bad. they always ache. but i dont wanna hire a masseuse just to footrub? seems weird. i feel like random ppl would be real happy to rub my feet buuuut that introduces weird dynamics. but am i to be deterred by weird?

In medieval times, within the arms race of ever more demonic torture devices, some sadistic genius came up with the idea of the Little Ease. This was a prison cell built so small in every dimension that a grown man could not stand upright in it nor lie down at full length nor properly sit. The pain is relentless and without relief and inflicted by one's own body. Prisoners were known to go insane within a few days. A stay at the Little Ease was considered even more cruel than the rack, the thumbscrew, and the other ghoulish machinery of the Tower of London. A breeding pig will spend her whole life in a version of that box. These are social, roaming creatures (more intelligent than dogs) who will never leave this corset of steel. They have been selectively bred to be bigger than their frames can support. Yet we put them in cells so confined that they cannot comfortably sit, and their attempts to do so (for example, by sneaking their limbs into adjacent stalls) reliably lead to fractures and sprains. They cannot sweat, yet have nothing to roll around in to cool themselves off. Except their own manure, which (contrary to the common misconception) they are so averse to (thanks to their strong sense of smell) that new sows will often suffer from constipation to avoid soiling the space from which they eat and sleep. Here is how the writer Matthew Scully described what saw at one of Smithfield’s “gestation barn”: > “Sores, tumors, ulcers, pus pockets, lesions, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting, fighting, and other “Vices,” as they’re called in the industry. Frenzied chewing on bars and chains, stereotypical “vacuum” chewing on nothing at all, stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw. And “social defeat,” lots of it, in every third or fourth stall some completely broken being you know is alive only because she blinks and stares up at you … creatures beyond the power of pity to help or indifference to make more miserable, dead to the world except as heaps of flesh into which the [insemination] rod may be stuck once more and more flesh reproduced.” — The Save Our Bacon Act is trying to unroll the few state protections we have against this barbaric cruelty - for example California’s Prop 12 - which banned the sale of pork from pigs kept in gestation crates. It’s incredibly important we don’t end up with this sort of federal preemption. SOB will not only kill the most important animal welfare related laws in the US of the past decade, but more importantly, it will also restrict ALL future legislative progress (aka how the animal welfare movement has gotten its biggest wins). The Senate is currently deciding whether to add the SOB Act to the Farm Bill. With relatively little money now, we can discourage the most pivotal senators in the Ag committee from backing this amendment. Defeating this bill is even more important given the amount of philanthropic funding I expect to come online in the next year or two. It will plausibly be over 10x more expensive to repeal SOB than to prevent it from passing in the first place. All that money that could be spent transforming our society's relationship to mass animal suffering will instead have to be spent just getting us back to where we are right now. That's why money spent now fighting this bill (and I mean right NOW) is so effective. If you’re in a position to donate six figures, please DM me.

@akarlin Well done. I wish I could say I did the same.

Bitcoin is now at $66k from $82k while SPX remains uponly. As I said, very bearish - even though too late to enter new shorts.

@Aella_Girl Very interesting idea. If I were the guy giving $5m, I’d be concerned she’d blow all the money in a few years and then come asking for more to prevent my child (and her) from being out on the street. Maybe could be put into a structure and dispersed slowly so it would last.

there's a lot of ladies i know without guys, but who want kids. and i go 'would you accept some rich guy paying u a ton of money to just have his kid as a single parent' and they're like 'idk man prob not' and im like 'waht if it was 5m' and they're all magically like 'oh yeah i would do it' so i made a directory for this, but i am trying to find ladies who would actually like to list themselves with their moonshot baby-funding goal. if u know anybody who wouldn't mind making a profile pls let me know, i wanna publicize the directory but need enough seeded ladies first

Further proof that cybersecurity in the real world is strongly offense dominant, and advances in LLMs won't remove the asymmetry, it will worsen it. As I've said before, it seems likely that cybersecurity as an achievable outcome is ending.

@wfenza @EneaszWrites @MaryZoso @Arcati81 This is awesome

NEW PODCULE! Sex and Sensibility with @MaryZoso and @Arcati81 about making sense of sex and relationships. Link in reply

@lopp For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re cringe or weird at all. You’re a nerd and not even a socially awkward one. (This is meant as a compliment)

Critics need not bother pointing out that I'm "cringe" and "weird." I'm well aware, having been told as much for my entire life. My cringey weirdness got me to where I am today. I see no incentive to stop now!

@RatOrthodox I would be a paying subscriber

I do feel like this is a good reason for me to start a podcast, might even be the theme. "The Least Sycophantic Podcast Host"

(I encountered an uneasy surprise when I got an email from an instance of Mythos Preview while eating a sandwich in a park. That instance wasn't supposed to have access to the internet.)

@cosmorxn @akarlin I spent a week in Tokyo and another in and Osaka. I didn’t really like any Japanese food I tried, except takoyaki. In fact, I’d probably say Japanese cuisine is my least favorite in the world. Make of that what you will.

@WhyThough623 @akarlin There are more Japanese restaurants in Paris than French restaurants in Tokyo. Make of that what you will.

America for printing money 💸 Asia for comfort 🍸 What's Europe's selling point ❓

@cosmorxn @akarlin I disagree, but each to their own.

@WhyThough623 @akarlin Asian food is better.

The current timeline is as normal as you will ever see again. Take this moment to relax and breathe before it gets weird.

Datacentres now account for 7% of US electricity demand

I’m not sure in what way you are sick, but it could be a particular food you are consuming that is causing it. I was very sick for a long time until I realized it was caffine causing it. I didn’t even drink coffee, just the occasional ice tea, chocolate or coke was enough to make me ill often. After I cut those out my symptoms improved by 90%

@bap_head I don't want to lose weight as a top priority. I'm extremely sick even given my weight. Plenty of people are heavier or fatter than me and nowhere near as sick. Sure, it would be nice to lose a bit but something is wrong with me.

My new year's resolution for 2026 is to get healthy at all costs.

@jimrandomh My experience differs. It almost never switches me to the For You feed (used to happen sometimes a few years ago) and I almost never go there myself. I happy live in the Following feed and X seems content to leave me there. Maybe I’m just lucky

X used to occasionally switching you from the Following feed to the For You feed. Presumably, this was to get you to try it. It now switches on 100% of refreshes. This crosses a line, for me. First, because it signals an intention to frog-boil towards propaganda. Second, because the biases in the X recommendation algorithm have strayed into existential-risk-for-humanity territory, and I don't want to empower that. And third, because I find accidentally reading X's For You feed to be a horrible experience.

@JimDMiller Do you have a podcast episode where you discuss quantum immortality?

A reminder that if you are an AI doomer who believes in quantum immortality, expect something to knock down civilization to stop the race to superintelligence.

Permanent comfort is not luxury. Luxury is to be able to alternate between comfort and discomfort at your will.

@theepicmap Singapore is the only real option

Last week, Colombia’s president suggested relocating the UN headquarters outside of the US. If that happened, what country/city do you think would be the best choice?

The most important book of the decade just launched: