Copilot and that whole model is a bunch of shit

Get Claude.ai, do the thing of pasting the code you want it to modify into the chat window, and it’ll spit back out some modified sections of code you can put back into the file. It is more time consuming, but it actually works.

For intense operations you can make a project, upload the main headers and documentation, and it’ll absorb them into its sphere of awareness and start being able to take account of them when it does the above in chats within that project.

It is not perfect (as no LLM assist is) but it saves a lot of time and is not beset with the growing incompetence and failure with which OpenAI seems to be afflicted more and more with every passing month

The interfaces are relatively modern too, with VGA and a PS/2 keyboard.

Yeah, you’re right. It looks like there’s a consensus now that the population in the Gulag was way lower than I thought. Fair play. There’s also a chart year by year, in the “history” section, which I missed.

If it was 2.4 million in 1953, out of total population of 179 million, that’s 1,340 in detention per 100k. The modern US is only 40% as bad as the literal Gulag at its peak. Fuckin hooray.

Yeah; that’s probably why there is such a lack of data. The period for which there are estimates vary by a factor of 20 between low and high estimates. 🙁

Ah, got it. I was talking about USSR, not modern Russia. Modern Russia is its own thing and its own brand of horror but not the same as OG Communist USSR which was more what I was trying to highlight.

Yeah. I’m taking the high side of the widely varying estimates of the Gulag population, which in the period of the 1940s range from 3.5 million to 17.6 million depending on who’s doing the estimating.

The Gulag at the peak housed about 7,500 (edit: 1,340) per 100k of the Soviet population.

(And yes, the US’s 531 is still also an atrocity.)

Where did you get 329? I actually couldn’t find any post-Kruschev numbers, but I know after privatization, Russia was pretty competitive with the US’s dystopian nightmare.

Edit: I was way wrong about the size of the Gulag

Ha, that is fair. I was just poking fun at dessalines’s habit of giving a free pass to any country that is openly mauling and torturing its citizens as long as they wear the right color hat. But yes, it is fully accurate that the US’s prison system is an authoritarian nightmare that preys on its minority population without rest or mercy. And, comparing the US against countries which don’t even make the claim of being “democratic” and finding it competitive with the worst of the open tyrannies is maybe fair.

Also, I just looked, and I don’t think these numbers are accurate. I think they’re straight-up ignoring some countries with millions of people, and I think the numbers are about 8 years out of date. The US incarceration rate has been falling back down to merely horrifying levels after the Stalinist peak it rose to after Reagan+Clinton teamed up to ruin the world.

US Incarceration Rate

List of Countries by Incarceration Rate

The majority of states in our land of wonderful freedoms are newly competitive with such beacons of hope as El Salvador, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. The march of progress!

Cool now do USSR

It’s pure magic

Check out “Over the Garden Wall”

OH LOOK

Here are the main points covered in the transcript:

• Elliott County, Kentucky has unusual voting patterns, having voted for Democrats in every presidential election for 144 years straight until 2016.
• In 2016, Elliott County had the largest swing from Obama to Trump of any county in the US.
• Despite voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Elliott County voted for Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in recent elections.
• The county is rural, 99% white, with limited economic opportunities and a median household income that has barely changed in over 30 years.
• Historically, Democrats were seen as the party for working class and poor people, associated with unions and FDR’s New Deal programs.
• Over time, the Democratic Party shifted focus away from rural blue-collar voters towards white-collar suburban voters.
• Many residents express frustration with both parties and feel abandoned by politicians.
• Economic concerns, including stagnant wages and lack of local opportunities, are major issues for residents.
• Immigration and border security have become top concerns for some voters, despite the county’s distance from the southern border.
• Governor Andy Beshear won in Elliott County by focusing on local economic issues and distancing himself from the national Democratic brand.
• Some residents recognize they have more in common with working-class immigrants than with wealthy politicians.
• There’s a desire for working-class unity across political lines, but also a sense of grasping at any potential solution to local economic struggles.
• The influence of money in politics and the growing wealth of billionaires are seen as problems by some residents.
• Trump’s outsider status and promise to “drain the swamp” appealed to voters frustrated with traditional politicians.

This summary captures the key points about Elliott County’s unique political situation, the economic challenges facing its residents, and the complex factors influencing their voting patterns.

Emphasis is mine

I actually think the forgotten-ness of rural voters and their jobs and ability to make a living, by both sides of the aisle, is a hugely important story that almost no one in Washington understands, and specifically vis-a-vis why Trump got so much support. I don’t fully disagree with the thesis of the video and especially as it applied to Washington 8 years ago.

However

I like to talk about this explosive growth of working class wages over the last 4 years (nowhere near enough but also something worth giving credit to Biden for). I wondered if that applied also to Elliot County – I still don’t really know the answer, but I found this, and if you click back to 2020 the bars only go up to $60k and in 2022 they were going up to $95k so that tells you some level of something.

It’s also notable that I was able to predict what the piece would say without anything to go on other than educated guessing about what it might cover.

I would be curious to see something actually diving into how things have worked out (specifically taking Elliot County as an example) for the last few years, where that $95k actually came from, how common it is, how things worked out in 2023 and why, etc etc. Basically a real unbiased version of what this video is a somewhat blinkered form of, would be fuckin fascinating.

This isn’t it though

Here’s my prediction about “More Perfect Union”, just based on the channel name and the downvotes:

• Weirdly high production values
• Reasons why people don’t support Harris / Democrats and you shouldn’t either
• General leftist vibe but no particular leftist plans other than DEFINITELY NOT VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS
• No particular affiliation with any existing leftist organization or personality, just arrived from nowhere

I could be totally off base. That’s just my guessing prediction based on a learned level of suspicion that at this point verges on furious unfair cynical prejudice

Brb

Imagine how embarrassing it would have been if some of these executives who’ve been so aggressive about the importance of maintaining a good public image had their spouses or children die in a totally preventable inferno, or suffocate to death. Or have a long uncontrolled descent back to hit the ocean, dying on impact, knowing the whole way down what was about to happen. Like the Challenger crew. Or, if one of these Boeing executives had had their child on one of the 737MAXes that flew itself inexorably towards the ground and no survivors because of a minor sensor failure.

Super embarrassing, it would have been. Fuck em, the lot. Hope they have trouble with their careers.

The prospect of cutting out all those $130k salaries is a hell of a drug

It’s never aliens 😢

Also, export your DBs first, and snapshot the export instead of the raw DB files

borg

Dude I love debating with fascists. You obviously can’t let them dictate the terms, but it’s a chance for great educational setups that are just weird if you come in from nowhere and start talking about them.

They say Biden caused inflation and everyone’s suffering because of him and only him

You say actually that’s not true, working class wages have actually been rising (even adjusted for pretty punishing inflation) and that happened specifically because of policies X, Y, Z, and you link to a chart of wage growth over different income levels which some people may not have been aware of

They say how dare you defend Biden when everyone knows he’s killing Palestinians on purpose

You say that’s a really good point, he did take the biggest action on climate change in history by a margin of almost ten times over

They say wait wait I was talking about Palestinians

You say hey you’re right Trump did say he wanted to just kill them all, and Biden (for all his fuckin war criminal weapons shipments) is weirdly enough the most anti-Israeli president (in terms of action) the US has ever had. For as sad a statement as that is. He put sanctions on settlers, he paused weapons shipments, etc etc, people should be aware, I’m glad you brought it up

They say what the fuck are you talking about he never put sanctions on settlers, or he undid them, their eyes already filling with aggrieved “this isn’t fair” tears

You link to an editorial from some Israeli minister about how bullshit is Biden’s behavior and why his actions against Israel are absolutely criminal and we need to get rid of him. Probably no one reading the exchange will have been aware of that editorial.

And so on

It’s a blast

A lot of the best communities to be in have a barrier to entry

The community of pilots, the people who work in medicine or on floor X, the people who are proud of what they can accomplish and recognize automatically that the value of the interactions they have are not worthless.

Idk how you bring that to the online space. But it is missing, yes. I like this essay.