a very simple solution to virtually every problem would be to stop allowing people who live off taxpayer money to vote
anyone whose entire livelihood depends on the government taking money from other people will always vote for a government that takes more money
we’ve built a system where people can literally vote to give themselves more of other people’s money
the conflict of interest is beyond ridiculous and if you remove the incentive you remove the problem
anyone whose entire livelihood depends on the government taking money from other people will always vote for a government that takes more money
we’ve built a system where people can literally vote to give themselves more of other people’s money
the conflict of interest is beyond ridiculous and if you remove the incentive you remove the problem
The point of no return by Richard von Mises is worth reading:
"A state becomes almost unreformable when the majority of the population is financially or structurally dependent on the state (state employees, civil servants, recipients of subsidies, grants, or transfer payments, who net benefit from or are supported by the state outnumber those who do not, the system blocks reforms, since the majority votes out of self-interest for the preservation or expansion of state services."
Does this sound familiar? Some European countries, France, Belgium, Finland are already way beyond that point, closely followed by Germany, Spain, Austria and Italy. It works for a while, as long as markets buy more sovereign debt at reasonable interest rates. The party ends when they stop though. For France, they stopped this month, Belgium will be next.
The longer the socialist illusion persists, the more painful the inevitable cuts and adjustments will be. It’s pure arithmetic. Good luck Europe, good luck Euro. Buckle up, it won’t be pretty.
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one thing i've recently learned is that women don't stop competing with other women once they get married and have children, they just start competing for something else
intrasexual competition never ends and instead of trying to secure the best man for themselves, they're now st possible future for their children, which means competing with other mothers for resources, attention, opportunities, etc.
and i wonder how much of the constant complaining about marriage and motherhood is actually part of this
even when happily married, loving their children and with a good life, every time they talk to other women they make sure to tell them how exhausting motherhood is, how useless their husband is, how much they miss their freedom or how having kids ruined their body
the reason is that they are competing for attention for themselves and that the fewer women who decide to have children, the fewer children theirs will have to compete with
they don't even consciously realize what they're doing
we've spent hundreds of thousands of years competing for resources to keep our offspring alive and all those instincts didn't magically disappear the moment a woman becomes a mother
obviously some women are genuinely miserable. but MANY of them are making their lives sound worse than they actually are (especially on social media) to make other women more miserable
and what's fucking terrifying is that until very recently this sort of behaviour could only influence the handful of women around them. now a single mother complaining about how much she regrets having children can reach millions of young women who haven't even started their families yet
i wonder how much this has contributed to making an entire generation terrified of marriage and motherhood
and how much damage it's doing
intrasexual competition never ends and instead of trying to secure the best man for themselves, they're now st possible future for their children, which means competing with other mothers for resources, attention, opportunities, etc.
and i wonder how much of the constant complaining about marriage and motherhood is actually part of this
even when happily married, loving their children and with a good life, every time they talk to other women they make sure to tell them how exhausting motherhood is, how useless their husband is, how much they miss their freedom or how having kids ruined their body
the reason is that they are competing for attention for themselves and that the fewer women who decide to have children, the fewer children theirs will have to compete with
they don't even consciously realize what they're doing
we've spent hundreds of thousands of years competing for resources to keep our offspring alive and all those instincts didn't magically disappear the moment a woman becomes a mother
obviously some women are genuinely miserable. but MANY of them are making their lives sound worse than they actually are (especially on social media) to make other women more miserable
and what's fucking terrifying is that until very recently this sort of behaviour could only influence the handful of women around them. now a single mother complaining about how much she regrets having children can reach millions of young women who haven't even started their families yet
i wonder how much this has contributed to making an entire generation terrified of marriage and motherhood
and how much damage it's doing
I’m sure you could’ve door dashed or had other stuff in the house you could eat but you needed the “poor me” video. He’s on a work trip to provide for you and yet he will come home to this video.
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how is this legal?!
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be te a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
x.com/log4j/status/2…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/char…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/…
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> physiognomy is destiny
> people have been getting uglier and fatter
> more and more people are identifying as socialists
> people have been getting uglier and fatter
> more and more people are identifying as socialists
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there are very few things you can do to improve your health that matter more than fixing your sleep schedule
go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day. get at least 7 hours of sleep every night
unironically, you should have an alarm that tells you when to go to bed, not just when to wake up
do this consistently for a few weeks and you'll feel like a completely different person
go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day. get at least 7 hours of sleep every night
unironically, you should have an alarm that tells you when to go to bed, not just when to wake up
do this consistently for a few weeks and you'll feel like a completely different person
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if every kid out rioting in europe this weekend had stayed home and vibe coded some stupid app by pressing random keys on their keyboard, we might have witnessed the greatest startup boom in european history
instead we got riots for something no one even knows what's about
and europe somehow managed to get even poorer
instead we got riots for something no one even knows what's about
and europe somehow managed to get even poorer
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ok but imagine if Elon pulls another Twitter Files, except this time it’s CNN
years of internal emails, editorial decisions, conversations about which stories and narratives to push, which ones to bury, and how to frame the news
the CNN Files would be absolutely insane
years of internal emails, editorial decisions, conversations about which stories and narratives to push, which ones to bury, and how to frame the news
the CNN Files would be absolutely insane
Elon Musk reportedly invests $1 billion in the parent company of CNN and CBS News, gaining an ownership stake in both networks.
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the ideal choline amount for proper brain development in children is 450mg/day
most prenatal supplements on the market contain only a fraction of that amount. 60% contain none at all
what has the ideal amount: 3 eggs/day
most prenatal supplements on the market contain only a fraction of that amount. 60% contain none at all
what has the ideal amount: 3 eggs/day
JUST IN: Children whose mothers took choline supplements during pregnancy scored +8 IQ points higher at age 4 than those in a placebo group, major new study finds.
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we have fable 5.1 at home
Kimi K3.1 Pro launches at 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index scoring 55, making large gains in agentic performance; it will be the leading open-weights model once its weights are published
@Kimi_Moonshot's new reasoning model gains 11 points over Kimi K3 (max, ude Opus 5.5 (max with fallback, 58), Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max with fallback, 56), and Muse Wonder Full (max, 56) on the Intelligence Index.
Once the weights for K3.1 Pro are released it will be the highest-scoring open weights model and the gap between the leading open weights and proprietary models on the Intelligence Index will narrow from 12 points to 3.
Key results:
➤ Large gains in agentic performance: Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 3rd on GDPval-AA with 1,846 Elo, up 312 Elo from Kimi K3, behind only Claude Opus 5.5 (1,866 Elo) and Muse Wonder Full (1,857 Elo). Kimi K3.1 Pro also achieves the highest score of any model on Terminal-Bench 4.0. K3.1 Pro scores 67%, up from 13% for Kimi K3 and ahead of Claude Sonnet 5.5 (64%). AutomationBench-AA, which tests agentic SaaS workflows, rises from 58% to 73%.
➤ Gains in other evals are more moderate: Humanity's Last Exam rises from 47% to 52%, CritPt from 23% to 25%, and SciCode from 59% to 61%. AA-Omniscience Index rises from 20 to 30, as the hallucination rate falls from 53% to 44% and accuracy rises from 48% to 51%.
➤ Cost per Task roughly equal to Kimi K3 at $1.98 per Task: K3.1 Pro uses 55K output tokens per Intelligence Index task, 14% more than Kimi K3 at 48K, while its first-party token prices are 33% lower.
Additional model details:
➤ Context window: 1M tokens.
➤ Size: 2.8T total, 104B active parameters
➤ Input modalities: Text and image
➤ Weights and license: Weights currently not published, Moonshot is expected to release the weights soon after launch
➤ Pricing: $2/$10/$0.20 per 1M input/output/cache hit tokens, 33% lower than Kimi K3 on all three rates.
Congratulations to the team at @Kimi_Moonshot on the release!
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It’s actually going to be so funny when leftists will start calling cnn and cbs “fake news” when they start telling the truth
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