Not sure if you were planning on using it as such (or how much you care) but hot spring water can’t be used for drinking water, at least not for any length of time.

You can see most of the ROW in the central valley on google maps. It’s the tunnels that are the real issue since they haven’t started any of the three main passes yet.

Certainly of Soviet style planned economies. Though just the existence of computers refutes a lot of his so called problems.

Theoretically literate right wingers don’t go around proselytizing because that would go against their theory of power. You don’t teach the peasants, you use them. I would argue that policy wise the popular ‘theorists’ are only now making in roads because no one reads anything anymore, left or right.

Well there’s more to the right than just fascism. Catholic integralism is a hot topic right now. For a real head scratcher try George Fitzhugh. He was a pro slavery anti-capitalist who liked socialism because he thought it was the ultimate form of slavery.

Oh yeah don’t get me started on the left’s residual Christian thinking. The amount of barely veiled protestant thinking is too damn high. The obsession with splitting is a perfect example.

People here should read more right wing theory. I think its very easy to get the impression that the only right wingers that exist are Shapiro or Alex Jones types and so when people on the left encounter a right winger who isn’t a total moron/grifter they can be overly impressed and more easily swayed by them.

Case in point being Aleksandr Dugin. While he’s not as influential since the ACP was founded, I used to hear some his talking points on here a whole lot. He explicitly talks about using internet marxists as a 5th column to push right wing ideas. So inoculate yourselves.

like when people try to argue that the PRC’s economy is currently socialist

The easiest counter to this is that the PRC itself does not consider its economy to be socialist.

People also seem to unfortunately like to come to a conclusion first, and then try to fit the facts to match that conclusion

Exhibit A: The whole “Western Marxist” debate. A whole lot of people will look for someone else to blame before they blame themselves or their group.

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The solution is obvious. We must transition to HeptBear. Adding another vertex is the only way to grow the website. We must keep adding vertices until we approach infinite vertices at which point HexBear will become CircleBear, enclosing including everyone on Earth in it.

Of course this plan carries the risk that there will be a struggle session (perhaps several!) on whether to use Latin or Greek prefixes for Bear which will inevitably cause splits and a loss of vertices. However I think it is a risk worth taking.

Maybe stop ignoring entire fields of research that, to this date, are still figuring out what biological brains are doing and how they are doing them instead of just nodding along to what you already want to believe from people that have blinders for anything outside of their field (computers, in this case).

Well first, brains aren’t the only kind of intelligent biological system but they aren’t actually trying to 1 for 1 recreate the human brain, or any other brain for that matter, that’s just marketing. The generative side of LLM’s is what gets the focus in the media but it’s really not the most scientifically interesting or what will actually change that much all things considered.

These systems are absolutely fantastic at finding real patterns in chaotic systems. That’s where the potential lies.

It’s like if people were trying to develop rocketry to achieve space travel, but you and yours were smugly stating that this particularly sharp knife will cut the heavens open, just you wait.

More like trying to go to the moon with a Civil War era rocket, it is early days yet. But progress is insanely quick.

I do think people here have a tendency to just hate all of it out of hand, which I get to some extent.

Yeah the hype cycle is certainly annoying. As is the accompanying fire/re-hire at lower pay cycle that follows any automation.

ignoring the fact that it can render pretty amazing looking videos in such a short time span.

I actually think the generative aspect of neural networks is the least interesting/useful/innovative/etc. Though it will admittedly be more interesting when an LLM can say, use blender to make a video rather than just wholesale generating it. Or at least generate the files/3d models necessary to have it be edited by a person just like they would anything else. I suspect there will have to be a pretty significant architecture change for them to be able to make convincing/coherent movie-length videos.

Chaotic system control, like they’re doing with nuclear fusion plasma is the most interesting, to me anyway.

To expand on that for people who think it’s all just smoke and mirrors. I think, just like the assembly line, work places will be reorganized to facilitate the usefulness/capabilities of LLM’s and, perhaps more importantly, designed to obviate their weaknesses.

It’s just that people are still figuring out what that new organization will look like. There hasn’t been a Henry Ford type for LLM’s yet (and hopefully won’t be a Nazi this time). Obviously there’s no guarantee there will be such a person/organization but I don’t think it super unlikely either.

You sure Freud isn’t haunting you?

The dynamics of capital. It’s a given, which is why I caveated it with ‘if they continue capital accumulation’.

Could they be nicer about? Perhaps, but that would be due to technological development allowing them to carry out their exploitation with less direct violence, not because they are somehow morally superior for having been colonized. Just as the American Empire is/was less brutal than the British.

China did not industrialize on the basis of a colonial empire

It didn’t industrialize directly from a colonial empire, yes. However the capital that flowed into it certainly was, if China had not opened itself up to foreign capital it would not have industrialized anywhere near as fast as it did.

since the south will eventually get richer despite colonialism

Until they saturate their markets and start to look outside their borders for new markets.

while the north will struggle because it doesn’t know how to develop without colonialism

Colonialism is a product of capitalism, if you got rid of the entire global north but let the global south continue capital accumulation they would recreate colonialism, by necessity. No one knows how to develop without colonialism because no one knows how to develop without capitalism.

World systems theorists being methodologically nationalist, quelle surprise.

To be clear I’m sure their findings are close to the truth anyway but it just shows the limitations of the data/approach, like in what world is Singapore in the ‘global south’. But that’s on the data collectors.

But even disregarding that, including China in the ‘global south’ post 2008 is patently ridiculous. I really want to see what these percentages would say if China was included in the ‘global north’.

Okay fair I missed that part. Still doesn’t change the physics though.

Are you an anarchist?

You actually made me laugh, thanks. This isn’t productive anymore though.

wen ur a srs anti-imperialist

Oh please. A school board member has absolutely no bearing on foreign policy, sacrificing your political capital on performative displays of anti-imperialism will only alienate the people you are trying to get to join and make other potentially sympathetic board members not want to be associated with you or your policies (even if you’re just voting in the negative). The people you are trying to reach do not engage with party literature, they hear about PSL from twitter or some local news article which regurgitates whatever the party’s take is in the least flattering way possible. Playing into that by using the platform a (very) minor presidential bid gives you is just … naive at best.

Maybe take one second to actually read about the rationale and tactics of the campaign.

I did. I just disagree.

One example. We raise a platform position - nationalize the 100 largest corporations, for example - and libs say “that will never happen even if you win, which you won’t because the system is stacked against you”. We say, “correct - we need a socialist revolution and the only historically proven way to do it is a Marxist-Leninist party”.

Why would anyone believe that? Genuinely. Not to mention nationalization isn’t even a uniquely socialist policy. The only even nominally socialist state of any significance is China and, at the very least, their economy is as capitalist as apple pie. Promises are cheap. Change people’s material conditions for the better and then they will believe you, not before. I understand its hard work and doesn’t have the glamour of a protest or a presidential bid, but if we actually want things to change for the better then it must be done.