If a new World War was coming, we would definitely want to be closer with our border countries than give our foreign enemies a chance

think of it this way. let’s say WW3 kicks off with China tomorrow. Will Canada or Mexico suddenly ally with China?

Reality is that Canada and Mexico are totally dependent on US trade. It really doesn’t matter if you piss them off they’re gonna be forced to deal with you anyway.

80% of Mexican exports are to the US. 30% of their GDP is based on American trade. If US exports stopped tomorrow, Mexican economy would immediately enter a deep depression. They have no choice but to play nice, even with 25% tariffs.

Canada is similarly stuck. 75% of exports are to the US. 50% of their imports are from the US. 20% of their GDP is based on American trade.

If you took both Canadian and Mexican trade combined and compared it to the US economy, though, it wouldn’t even reach 5%. If trade with both of these countries were to stop tomorrow, America will suffer- but growth may slow by 0.5% or 1%. Both Canada and Mexico would see a depression.

America is like the sun in the solar system. Canada and Mexico have no choice but to fall into orbit around it. The total weight of the economic power is hard to understate.

Do you see why Trump feels like he has the power to do this? This is the point I was trying to make above. Historically US presidents have been more diplomatic and subtle about how to abuse the leverage that America has by the nature of being a superpower. Trump isn’t fundamentally different except he’s exploiting this leverage loudly and in an ugly and aggressive way.

In the past, presidents would play nice. Pretend like there was sovereignty and diplomacy, etc. But when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA… it was for the same reason. To dominate the economies of both Canada and Mexico. The difference is the rhetoric sounds much nicer.

After NAFTA was signed, subsidized US corn flooded the Mexican market, totally bankrupting millions of Mexican farmers. Wages in Mexico stagnated for decades because US needed cheap labor to build cars. In Canada, they became more and more reliant on exporting natural resources to the US.

We always need to remember US is an imperialist power. This is what empires do.

As for the upcoming war, I think it’s only a matter of time. But we’re talking a time scale of 5-10 years. We’re preparing for the future showdown. There will be one or two more flashpoints before the main war. Ukraine was one, Israel is another.

If we had to make an analogy with WW2, I’d say we’re roughly in mid ~1930s. Our Spanish Civil War is the Ukrainian war. Our Italian invasion of Ethiopia is the Israeli conflict. (Gaza, Israeli invasion of Syria, war with Lebanon, Iran, etc)

Anyone who’s even remotely qualified to lead the military is being replaced with sycophants

it’s a purge. we’re watching our own version of what Saddam Hussein did when he took power. it definitely weakens the country overall but it strengthens the hold on power for the executive.

as for the military, we’ve been spending more than like the next 8 countries combined for decades. it’s hard to understate the relative power of the US military. there are hundreds of military bases all over the world.

even a weakened superpower is still a superpower

If no enemies exist, they are created.

i don’t disagree. that’s why the rhetoric. but I would disconnect the rhetoric from the policy. trump says one thing and does another. he wants to deport everyone but at the rate he’s going we won’t even see a 10% reduction in the illegal immigrant population. mouth says one thing, hand does another

notice how tariffs were a trend that started a decade ago. Trump placed tariffs on China on his first term and then Biden increased the number of tariffs. the ban on Tiktok was a bipartisan effort- it’s in the interest of US foreign policy. obviously tariffs on Canada and Mexico are insane and probably wouldn’t have happened without Trump… but more tariffs were a definite part of the future regardless who won in 2024

Trump isn’t doing this because he’s some brilliant strategist

couple of things. first, i wouldn’t underestimate trump. he successfully hijacked the Republican party which is a party full of wealthy and powerful people who did everything in their power to try and stop him

second, the people around Trump are very principled ideologues (ie people like Peter Thiel and the dark enlightenment ideology they’re enamored in)

these people are educated, intelligent, and dedicated to their cause. they also have near-limitless money and now they have the control of the federal government of the strongest country in the world- a country that has an executive branch that has gotten progressively more powerful.

they have a vision and they planned for this and they are enacting it. this is not a spontaneous thing. they view a future where there is a showdown with China and tariffs play into that future

the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)

sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham

South of queers, north of Hell

The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell

We guard the border and we guard it well

But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell

Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go

'Cause in real life, Goliath wins

And then sells all the silk that the widow spins

because there’s a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it’s an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it’ll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that’s one industry… now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn’t hurt as bad.

it doesn’t really matter if you piss off your allies. since you’re the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren’t really allies. Being someone’s ally implies there’s a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan’s constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn’t equal footing. it’s a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they “allied” with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America’s orbit. and the US ultimately doesn’t care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don’t think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

not claiming private organizations don’t have to the right to regulate speech on their platforms. was responding to statement

I understand why there are exceptions for those in positions of power, but I’d be more than happy to live in a world where there weren’t.

which to me implies some sort of state censorship on this type of material

Really, I just wanted to understand the rationale behind the desire to ban this type of material.

On the topic of Judge Roberts, on a similar although different legal issue

He wrote the Court’s opinion in United States v. Stevens (2010), invalidating a federal law that criminalized the creation or dissemination of images of animal cruelty. The government had argued that such images should be a new unprotected category of speech akin to child pornography. Roberts emphatically rejected that proposition, writing that the Court does not have “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.” Roberts also wrote the Court’s opinion in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), ruling that the First Amendment prohibited the imposition of civil liability against the Westboro Baptist Church for their highly offensive picketing near the funeral of a slain serviceman.

In oft-cited language, Roberts wrote:

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.”

If Judge Roberts were to be consistent, and I make no such claims that he will ever be consistent, I believe he would likewise not support banning fake AI porn.

In this case, it’s clearly a form of speech and therefore protected under the 1st amendment.

I also don’t understand such a strong reaction to non-consensual AI porn. I mean, I don’t think it’s in good taste but I also don’t see why it warrants such a strong reaction. It’s not real. If I draw a stick figure with boobs and I put your name on it, do you believe I am committing a crime?

really it’s a cautionary tale about the intersections of different technologies. for example, csv going into a sql database and then querying that database from another language (whether it’s JS or C# or whatever)

when i was 16 and in driver’s ed, I remember the day where the instructor told us that we were going to go drive on the highway. I told him I was worried because the highway sounds scary- everybody is going so fast. he told me something that for some weird reason stuck with me: the highway is one of the safest places to be because everybody is going straight in the same direction.

the most dangerous places to be, and the data backs this up, are actually intersections. the points where different roads converge. why? well, it’s pretty intuitive. it’s where you have a lot of cars in close proximity. the more cars in a specific square footage the higher probability of a car hitting another car.

that logic follows with software too. in a lot of ways devs are traffic engineers controlling the flow of data. that’s why, like you said, it’s up to the devs to catch these things early. intersections are the points where different technologies meet and all data flows through these technologies. it’s important to be extra careful at these points. like in the example i gave above…

the difference between

WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true);

and

WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true, NULL '');

could be the difference between one guy living a normal life and another guy receiving thousands of speeding tickets https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/

How do devs make this mistake

it can happen many different ways if you’re not explicitly watching out for these types of things

example let’s say you have a csv file with a bunch of names

id, last_name
1, schaffer
2, thornton
3, NULL
4, smith
5, "NULL"

if you use the following to import into postgres

COPY user_data (id, last_name)
FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true);

number 5 will be imported as a string “NULL” but number 3 will be imported as a NULL value. of course, this is why you sanitize the data (GIGO) but I can imagine this happening countless times at companies all over the country

there are easy fixes if you’re paying attention

COPY user_data (id, last_name)
FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true, NULL '');

sets the empty string to NULL value.

example with js

fetch('/api/user/1')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => {
    if (data.lastName == "null") {
      console.log("No last name found");
    } else {
      console.log("Last name is:", data.lastName);
    }
  });

if data is

data = {
  id: 5,
  lastName: "null"
};

then the if statement will trigger- as if there was no last name. that’s why you gotta know the language you’re using and the potential pitfalls

now you may ask – why not just do

if (data.lastName === null)

instead? But what if the system you’re working on uses JSON.parse(data) and that auto-converts everything to a string? it’s a very natural move to check for the string "null"

obviously if you’re paying attention and understand the pitfalls of certain languages (like javascript’s type coercion and the particularities of JSON.parse()) it becomes easy but it’s something that is honestly very easy to overlook

Up until fairly recently, you could just drag and drop files onto the Kindle with a usb. I’ve had my first generation Kindle for almost 15 years now and it still works. Just download an .epub file, convert it to .mobi with Calibre, and drag and drop it over to the Kindle.

I have a newer one too, that I got a couple of years ago as a gift.

The trick is just disable the wifi and never let it communicate with Amazon servers. They will mess with your settings and push secret updates that remove features. For example, it could “sync” your books with your Amazon account if you naively log into your Amazon account and that literally results in you not being able to remove items from your Kindle without logging into your Amazon account on your computer and going through a million menus. It won’t let you do it from the Kindle, even if you’re offline.

But if you just never let it connect it to the internet at all, you’re fine.

Although the new Kindles now require a special Amazon software to copy files over (because of “convenience”) and it won’t communicate with the usual protocol so you can’t drag and drop like you could for the last 15 years.

So yeah, don’t buy a Kindle. at least not a new one.

I think his is absolutely the right course of action. We as humans have a weird psyche and we sometimes externalize internal issues and project them outwards either onto ideas or people.

So for example, incels have serious issues with self-worth and they externalize those issues into hatred of women and society at large for their position in life. They feel, perhaps, they are not the man they feel like they should be- strong, handsome, wealthy, etc. And so they take blame at external circumstances in order to lessen the cognitive dissonance that if they are lonely and undesired- it’s almost always due to their own decision making and perspective on life.

So for example a young male teen may feel all sorts of negative emotions and decide that gender dysphoria must be the diagnosis- when maybe he’s just a little feminine and attracted to men. But if they start to identify with the trans label prematurely, they could end up doing unnecessary damage to themselves and their development.

I wholeheartedly and unapologetically support trans people and in my opinion if transitioning is determined the most effective treatment to gender dysphoria by one or two clinical physicians, I would absolutely support my kid transitioning. Trans kids have a very high rate of suicide so this is actually a very serious life and death diagnosis. It’s more dangerous statistically than some types of cancer. And if my kid had cancer, I would want to obviously look at all possible treatments plans we could take.

But just like the dad, I would start with regular therapy and work our way up. See what else is going on. I would also spend time with my kid and really try to get a sense for what’s troubling them. I don’t think there is a substitute for a parent who cares.

Anyhow, interesting post, thanks for sharing this intimate exchange. It’s a reminder that we are all humans and even those who we may label as “conservative” cannot be condensed down to one statement. This is one of the reasons, for example, I love Florida even though it’s a red state. I’m the furthest thing from right wing, but you’ll find that many Latinos who identify as right-wing have many views that would be considered “progressive”.

We’re all ultimately people who hold multitudes.

if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.

however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away. everyone stores fat differently. some in legs, some in stomach, etc.

but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise

I haven’t used an antivirus software in over 10 years and I haven’t gotten a virus or had any other issues. As for VPN,

a) I wouldn’t trust Malwarbytes because they have an abysmal customer service history

b) I wouldn’t trust NordVPN because I don’t trust companies that advertise on youtube

Look, I’m all for freedom of speech. I’m nearly as close to an absolutist as they come.

This is an example of a protest. Nobody is restricting anybody’s speech. They aren’t banning Musk-supporters. They aren’t censoring Trumpers. They are specifically banning links to a website owned by a billionaire who did a Nazi salute at an event where hundreds of millions if not billions of people would witness him.