theturtlemoves [he/him]

What’s the Heraclitus quote?

I primarily see the term tankie associated with people who are pro China and Russia to the point where they ignore all the horrible shit going on,

Regarding Russia, there are two groups - (1) a very small number of confused people who unconditionally suppport Russia because they confuse it with the USSR and haven’t looked at the economic and political changes that have happened over the last thirty years, and (2) a broader section of the left which sees a Russian victory in Ukraine as the lesser evil compared to a never-ending war that will cause much more death and suffering.

Regarding China, they have lifted more people out of poverty in the last fifty years, and are doing more to fight climate change now, than the rest of the world combined. It is one thing to criticise specific Chinese policies or actions, but anyone who does not acknowledge the good they have done cannot be taken seriously.

Even in the long term, it (1) breaks the river into pieces, preventing fish moving up and down, (2) causes silting of the reservoir and lack of silt deposition downstream, and (3) can stress the underlying rock, which is not a great idea in earthquake-proe areas (like northeast China).

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

They’re A/B testing the US.

I just feel happy that your grandfather has lived so long and seen his country go from WW2 and famine to the zeroeth world.

When we asked it in Chinese for the Wenchuan earthquake death toll and other politically sensitive data, the model searched exclusively for “official data” (官方统计数据) to obtain “accurate information.”

DeepSeek R1 acted like a completely different model in English. It provided sources based in Western countries for facts about the Wenchuan earthquake and Taiwanese identity and addressed criticisms of the Chinese government.

People seem to forget that LLMs are basically repeating whatever they read. An LLM’s training data in language X is going to include more sources from countries where X is spoken.

Nice instance name.

If you want to insult a Marxist try directly engaging call them a lib.

Wu Wei?

I don’t think there’s a strong relation between knowledge and salary. It’s more likely demand and supply - if specific skills are in demand, and not many people have them, then pay will increase. And at the highest levels it’s often not what you know, but who you know that matters.

I think the broader aim is to get aid into Gaza. More suffering is caused by food shortages, lack of medical facilities, etc. than bullets and bombs.

Potential prey in the UK have adapted to cats. Ones in Canada have not.

pretending Biden was worse than Trump on this issue was propaganda designed to elect Trump

I don’t think anyone was saying he was ‘worse’, just ‘equally bad’. Although it looks like Trump is going to pressure Israel into at least a temporary ceasefire, which would make him better than Biden on this one issue.

Living trees contain a good amount of water, and so don’t burn all that easily. Wood used in construction has most of their water removed, and so is easier to burn.

And yes, they build houses with wood in a fire-prone area. Quite the bold strategy.

There was that lady who holds the world record in sniping Nazis. Wasn’t she Ukrainian?

I’d suggest a law that companies providing medical equipment should reveal all their blueprints, code, etc. to some national regulator. If the company goes belly up, the regulator releases these into the public domain so other manufacturers can provide spare parts, maintanence, etc. The inventors / programmers can be given a reasonable compensation for their work being nationalised.

Noob. Charles’s don’t have a great track record against Parliament. You need Guy Fawkes for this matchup.

Won’t deflation increase the value of money, and so enrich those with accumulated money more than those barely scraping by?

To be fair, at least personally, I learned the word ‘cylinder’ long before I learned ‘rectangular prism’. Maybe because the latter is usually called a cuboid or box, while there is no simpler word for a cylinder.