Favorites January 15th 2024
This way of counting votes is actually pretty great, I'm in agreement with Tim Lee that it's better than how we do things, and I really liked his point that vote counting is itself a performance, the goal is to convince the loser they've lost. China has been threatening them over their elections for decades, here's a cartoon about it from 2000. The DDP won the election for the third time in a row, they've come a long way since 1996. The CCP didn't want this outcome, they tried to bully Taiwanese voters, but it didn't work. Anyway, the DDP are in favor of keeping the status quo regarding independence, the difference is simply in how to ensure things stay as they are.
I really do not need more random hardware, but wow, that's really impressive. I looked it up, this appears to be the Bambu Lab P1S, the specs say it prints the standard 'benchy' boat in 18 minutes.
Someone had to start using military force against the Houthis, they've been shooting at civilians in international waters! Their attempt to stop shipping through the Suez canal has already had a significant impact. Worldwide average container shipping rates have doubled since September. And what's more Rates from China to Europe have gone up by at least 3x. Another thing I learned about the situation in Yemen:
Nobody recognizes the Houthis as the legitimate government of Yemen. The entire situation is all the more wild because the US is actually the country that is probably the least dependant on maritime shipping. Europe and China are free riding on our Navy. But international shipping is a huge part of how we've pushed down world poverty over the last century. Globalization is actually quite good for the world. I really like this quote from Bono on the subject: "The offramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce”
How do they get the carrots to come out so cleanly??
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Tim Lee is a bit concerned that long term law may be in for significant changes due to LLMs (src)
– Netanyahu has publicly rejected Gazan displacement, which will be bad for his coalition. This is almost certainly why the Biden admin has pressured him into making this statement (src)
– Great article explaining why there's been difficulty in automated trucking, The most interesting item was that stopping distances for trucks are so long that most sensor options can't detect obstacles in time with certainty. (src)
– US Oil production is at an all time high, and US greenhouse gas emissions are down over the last 30 years, sorta wild. (src)
– Stats on why people move, surprisingly often it's for positive reasons. (src)
– AI trained in 6 hours to beat a marble maze in less time than any recorded human, here's 2 minute video about it. They had to manually step in to stop it from using some shortcuts it found. (src)
– Rashida Talib and Stephen Miller both don't want the Biden admin to join like 10 other countries in bombing houthi targets who've been shooting at civilian ships, but everyone in between thinks it's fine. Horseshoe theory is real. (src)