I fly because it’s fast, not because I like airplanes. Even the fastest train is way too slow to replace a plane for a long-distance trip. Then for shorter distances cars win out because of how convenient they are. There’s no niche for passenger trains except for commuting into urban areas with no parking.

It doesn’t help that in the USA train tickets seem to cost more than plane tickets. I think I’d still usually fly even if the train was free, so I’m certainly not going to pay extra for a slower method of transportation even if it is a little more comfortable.

Heh, at least the beans and tofu are good for me. I hate shopping, I hate cooking, and I only buy vegan food so I’m never going to be low-carb, but the funny thing is that I also have high cholesterol because my own body makes way too much of it.

It sounds like he’s talking about American technology used by Israel, not about America acting directly.

The solution for me has been to eat mostly imperishable foods - canned beans, boxed tofu, frozen desserts, grains, etc. That way I can go weeks between trips to the grocery store. (I really don’t like grocery shopping.)

Israel is an ally of the USA but Iran is violently hostile to the USA.

My mother loved Dr. Mario. She would sometimes encourage me to skip school (“Are you sure you feel alright? You look like you might be sick. Maybe you should stay home just in case.”) and we would play it until my ten-year-old self got bored first. However, she had zero interest in even trying any other games.

“We are not unmindful of the concerns and beliefs raised by the Spa,” wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown for the 2–1 majority. “Indeed, the Spa may have other avenues to challenge the enforcement action. But whatever recourse it may have, that relief cannot come from the First Amendment.”

I wonder what those avenues might be. This looks like a relatively extreme case, with a nude spa being required to allow a person with a penis into the women’s area, but I still can’t think of how that requirement might be unconstitutional.

I interpret this as a way for Trump to position himself as the “good cop” rather than as a factual description of something that actually happened, or else I would be concerned about how such sensitive secret information is apparently being casually given away to news agencies.

I think many people learned the wrong lesson from GWB’s Iraq War. It was presented as (among other things) a way to stop an enemy of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons and it was a mistake, so they conclude that using force to stop enemies of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons is a mistake. However, using force (if necessary) to stop enemies of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons is a prudent idea and the problem with that Iraq War was that it was not actually fought for that purpose. GWB was the boy who cried wolf but real wolves still exist.

As if human legs aren’t the weird ones - they evolved from feet into hands and then into weird hands that we walk around on and call feet.

The problem with democracy is that you can’t get very far just by telling the voters how they ought to behave. I’m happy that I’m not a politician, because after the last election I don’t respect the majority of American voters. Trying to win their support would be demeaning. However, someone is going to do it, and if he isn’t a Democrat who does care (or acts like he cares) about people like Steve in Wisconsin, he’ll be a Republican instead.

I see a dimetrodon.

I had a dream once in which an ex-girlfriend from years ago who I was still in love with appeared and told me that I would never have her back so I should stop being so obsessed with her. Good advice, perhaps, but not what I feel I deserve in my own dreams…

Now that I think about it, I realize that I can’t remember ever having sex in a dream. So much for dreams as wish fulfillment.

I’m not sure what’s novel here. No one thought that modern AI could solve arbitrarily complex logic problems, or even that modern AI was particularly good at formal reasoning. I would call myself an AI optimist but I would have been surprised if the article found any result other than the one it did. (Where exactly the models fail is interesting, but the fact that they do at all isn’t.) Furthermore, the distinction between reasoning and memorizing patterns in the title of this post is artificial - reasoning itself involves a great deal of pattern recognition.

You could jump to conclusions, or you could ask whether or not there is evidence that scientists’ work in their own field is affected by irrelevant unscientific beliefs that they hold. In my experience, people are very good at compartmentalizing their beliefs.

Serious answer:

That’s cool. What makes it special?

Sometimes people talk about how expensive something they own is simply because they’re proud that they could afford it and even when they’re being tone-deaf, there’s no benefit to getting offended when you could just move the conversation along instead. (Although you might have to listen to them talk about watches.) If they were trying to brag, now they’re stuck trying to explain why the watch is actually worth what they paid and you’re the one judging them.

Cars (and watches) aren’t so expensive that a middle-class person can’t plausibly already own the one he would buy even if money was unlimited. You can act like that’s true about you. My status-conscious former mother in law was bothered by the fact that I owned an old car, but when she would bring it up I would just say “I really like the 2008 model.” She couldn’t argue with that.

How can the war realistically end?

1. A return to the pre-war status quo. The withdrawal of Israeli troops, presumably in return for the hostages, with either Hamas or another group equally hostile to Israel in control of Gaza. This is the worst-case scenario for Israel, because it represents a total failure to eliminate the source of more potential October 7 attacks. I suspect it’s the worst-case scenario for Gaza too, since future attacks on Israel would lead to future destruction in Gaza.

2. The destruction of Hamas and the establishment of a Gazan government friendly towards Israel, perhaps by the Palestinian authority or a coalition of Arab states. Very difficult and failure-prone, but a pathway to peace in the long term. I had hoped that this would be the outcome when the war started but it isn’t what Netanyahu is trying to accomplish and by now I’m not sure there’s enough goodwill left for it to still be possible.

3. Permanent Israeli occupation. I don’t think Israel can maintain such an occupation - it would be extremely expensive in money, lives, and international goodwill. Netanyahu and his supporters seem to think that Israel can, but many of them seem to make plans reliant on divine intervention.

4. Expulsion of the population of Gaza. Egypt wouldn’t accept that without a war. Maybe Trump thinks he can find another country that would, but even if he did (unlikely) then the logistics of moving two million people would be extremely challenging. I think this outcome is effectively impossible - another one of the “divine intervention required” plans. However, it would be a best-case scenario for Israel. The gain in territory means little, but no longer having Gazans as neighbors immediately ends the conflict for good, which no other outcome does.

If (2) isn’t going to happen then (4) may be the best case scenario for everyone. Even the people being expelled and their descendants would probably be better off than they would be if they remain in Gaza for for many more decades of conflict. However, I very much doubt that it can happen.

I think it might be enough to change one’s orientation. Bombersexual.

Heh, I loved the first one and then I tried the second one, hated how they changed the combat, and quit.

I was in a long-term relationship with a Taiwanese woman, and she kept me a secret from her family for years. Even when we lived together, the story was that we we just sharing an apartment. I assumed that they didn’t want her dating a white guy, but later she was showing me photos of a family gathering where there were several white men present so I’m not sure what the real issue was. Maybe her family was just eccentric? She was definitely eccentric herself in other ways, so it would make sense.

Other than that I’ve dated American women which I suppose is technically a different culture since I’m not from the USA myself, but I came to the USA as a young child. I did go on a few dates with a woman from my birth country who came to the USA as an adult and that was awkward because of how much harder than mine her own life had been. She wasn’t hostile about it but I still felt like a jerk any time I mentioned anything that had ever been difficult for me.