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This is the landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa in 1989. It hit the runway very hard, tumbled, broke, left the runway, and burned, but encountered no significant non-frangible obstacle. Of 296 passengers and crew on board, 184 (62%) survived. It is reasonable to assume that given the absence of other significant non-frangible obstacles beyond the ILS mound that loss of life would have been low and potentially zero.

https://youtu.be/sWkU6HRcOY0

From O1:

  Summary of Confirmable vs. Speculative
 • Confirmed by reputable sources:
 1. Dates of the events (Las Vegas shooting: October 1–2, 2017; Khashoggi’s murder: October 2, 2018).
 2. Alwaleed bin Talal was a major investor in the Four Seasons (including the top floors at Mandalay Bay).
 3. Saudi authorities arrested Alwaleed bin Talal and other elites in November 2017 in a sweeping “anti-corruption” operation.
 4. Alwaleed bin Talal eventually lost significant wealth or leverage as a result of that crackdown, though precise figures remain undisclosed.
 • Not confirmed / purely speculative:
 1. MBS staying in the Four Seasons above the Las Vegas shooter.
 2. The Las Vegas shooting as a deliberate “distraction” from an assassination attempt.
 3. Khashoggi being part of such a plot, or his execution date tying symbolically to the shooting.

Re speculations unconfirmed by reputable sources: a good place to start would be rumble. There’s much more to this interpretation of events, and I’m not wed to it by any means, but it has the virtue of explaining countless strange or unexplained aspects of the shooting.

Khashoggi was killed one year after the LV shooting, to the day. The theory is that MBS was staying at the Four Seasons at the Mandalay Bay (~6 floors above Paddock’s room) at the invitation of his cousin Alwaleed bin Talal, who owned the Four Seasons at the time of the shooting. The shooting was a distraction from an assassination attempt on MBS, or potentially a way of flushing him out. The conspiracy presumably involved disgruntled Saudi royal family members and businessmen, many of whom were arrested a month later (several also died in suspicious circumstances) including Alwaleed bin Talal, who was ultimately stripped of much of his wealth (~$20 billion) and influence. Presumably Khashoggi was involved, hence the symbolic date of his execution.

That’s a south park quote: https://youtu.be/wWfacULP1o0?si=ddBWXFuQMoxxY-Yu

Sometimes anti-vaxxers will point to the ostensibly high rate of serious adverse events exhibited by study participants in HPV vaccine trials. For example, in the study 'A 9-Valent HPV Vaccine against Infection and Intraepithelial Neoplasia in Women' published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, in which the 9-Valent HPV vaccine was compared to the Quadrivalent version, the rate of serious adverse events was 3.3% and 2.6% respectively. This objection can be dismissed, as the study authors found that 0.0% of those serious adverse events were vaccine related.

Anti-vaxxers also sometimes object to studies like these on the basis that no placebo arm was included, and thus the true safety profile of the vaccine cannot be ascertained, but this can be flatly rejected because, as the study authors point out, '[s]ince HPV vaccination is widely recommended and has been shown to prevent HPV disease related to oncogenic HPV types, the use of a placebo was not considered to be acceptable for ethical reasons.'

These people are so sure they occupy the moral high ground, but they do not. If the trend continues it will be possible for anyone to materialize their artistic vision with great fidelity. I’m sure there are countless people who would have contributed culturally significant works in the past but for a lack of time or money or peculiar talents requisite for the physical production of such works.

At the core of most objections to generative art is some combination of mercantile fear, distress at sunk costs, or the loss of one’s specialness. While all are understandable, a righteous person would weigh their own loss against society’s gain, and finding the balance so lopsidedly in favor of society, make of themselves a sacrifice.

This is my experience as well. I would also say that when improvising I’m not really thinking consciously about the movements, but rather the notes I want to hear.

Some people can play chess blindfolded. There is a popular method of memorizing which has one visualize the placement of objects in a familiar space. Both of these seem absurd to me, as I can at best conjure a fleeting glimpse of an object in greyscale. When I calculate chess tactics I do so in a manner which seems almost kinesthetic, as if I’m feeling the movements of the pieces, and I have to look at the board while I do it. When I memorize things, like poems or the digits of pi, I just repeat them until each element of the sequence magically evokes the next. There is no visualization.

Errol Morris mini-documentary on the event: https://youtu.be/o8vdkTz0zqI?si=8_Be_zNPTOq9iZEF

You cannot understand a thing if it kills you first.

Haskell is incredible for refactoring. And if the team is composed of people with the outlook of the post author, the code will be usually be easy to understand. One ought not conflate the difficulty of understanding code written in an exotic language with which one is unfamiliar, and the difficulty of understanding code which is extremely abstract and unnecessarily clever. The latter sort can be written in any language.

So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?

Can you visualize a blackboard and perform calculations ‘by hand’?

GPT-4 takes a shot:

> Imagine an AI that could fundamentally alter its own sensory perception and cognitive framework at will. It could “design” senses that have no human equivalent, enabling it to interface with data and phenomena in entirely novel ways.

Let’s consider data from a global telecommunication network. Humans interface with this data through screens, text, and graphics. We simplify and categorize it, so we can comprehend it. Now imagine that the AI “perceives” this data not as text on screens, but as a direct sensory input, like sight or hearing, but far more intricate and multidimensional.

The AI could develop senses to perceive abstract concepts directly. For instance, it might have a “sense” for the global economy’s state, feeling fluctuations in markets, workforce dynamics, or international trade as immediately and vividly as a human feels the warmth of the sun.

Simultaneously, it can adapt its cognition to process this vast and complex sensory input. It could rearrange its cognitive structures to optimize for different tasks, just as we might switch between different tools for different jobs.

At one moment, it might model its cognition to comprehend and predict the behaviors of billions of individuals based on their online data. The next moment, it might remodel itself to solve complex environmental problems by processing real-time data from every sensor on Earth.

In essence, the AI becomes a cognitive chameleon, continually reshaping its mind to interact with the universe in ways that are most effective and efficient. Its thoughts in these diverse cognitive states would likely be so specialized, so intricately tied to the vast sensory inputs and complex cognitive models it’s employing, that they are essentially impossible to translate into human language.

See my reply to AdieuToLogic.

First, I don't want to type <shift><semicolon><period><space><shift><1><s><h><enter>. I want to type at most two characters, because I do this a lot. I chose sx, but really any good <leader><foo> combination would be fine. Note they're both on the same hand; I had pretty bad rsi for a couple years and was typing almost exclusively with my left hand.

Second, :. !sh eats the command. I want the command to remain in place in the buffer. Imagine you have a buffer full of useful commands that you use repeatedly with minor tweaks, and you use the output of those commands to write other bespoke commands, and so on.

Third, :. !sh leaves you sitting above the result of the command. I rarely want to be there. I want to be positioned right after the result, on a new line, like my buffer is a shell-- I see the end of the result and can immediately begin typing the next command.

This is a little off topic, but some people might find this useful. I have bindings that allow me to execute the current line or paragraph under the cursor in the underlying shell and then inject the result into the current buffer.

  "execute the contents of the current line => sx
    exe "nnoremap " . g:leader_prime . "x :call ExecuteCurrentLine()\<CR>"

Here leader_prime is just a second leader key I use: 's', but you could map the command however you like. ExecuteCurrentLine() is implemented as:

  function! ExecuteCurrentLine()
    let l:com = substitute(getline('.'), '\#', '\\#', '')
    exe "norm! mc"
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
    exe "r! " . l:com
    exe "norm! mr"
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
  endfunction

Two more mappings:

  exe "nnoremap " . g:leader_prime . "p :call ExecuteCurrentParagraph()\<CR>"
  exe "nnoremap " . g:leader_prime . "c :call ExecuteCurrentLineWithBC()\<CR>"

and their implementations:

  function! ExecuteCurrentParagraph()
    let l:init = line('.')
    exe "norm! {j"
    let l:start = line('.')
    exe "norm! }"
    let l:end = line('.')
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
    exe "r! " . join(getline(l:start,l:end), ' ')
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
  endfunction

  function! ExecuteCurrentLineWithBC()
    let l:com = getline('.')
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
    exe "r! " . "echo 'scale=12;" . l:com . "' | bc"
    exe "norm! o\<Esc>"
  endfunction

As written above, I type 'sx' to execute the current line under the cursor as a shell command, and then inject the result back into the buffer where I am. 'sp' does the same, but for the entire paragraph the cursor is on; this is really convenient for things like a large sql query which is more readable written over many lines. And finally 'sc' executes the current line in the bc calculator program in the underlying shell, so you can evaluate arithmetic expressions in the buffer.

A phalanx of mace-wielders, legioned by the dozens, swathed in interlocking geometries of archaic clan and tribal shroud, donned in specters of yesteryears garb. Upon crowns they bore the half moons of sun-shielders, hands sheathed in the callused gloves bearing the earthen residue of the wars waged on emerald fields. Some festooned in old world breeches and shapeshifter's bonnets, others in the blaring colors of plebeian polo and desert-dusted shorts. Among these warriors, a solitary figure, a shielder of storms, his trusty parasol held high. Another’s lower limbs swathed in ghostly shroud, baptized by the verdant life of the fields. And still another, a tragic bride, her veil sanguinary from the love-feast unholy. Feathers plucked from the winged ones adorned the headgear of some, the rawhide caps of others akin to the primal trophies of untamed hunts. A lone paladin armored in the steel and iron of yore. Faces beneath this motley parade painted in the ghastly festival hues of the carnivalesque. A cacophony of unknown tongues ricocheted, a grotesque operetta resounding in the ears of those unversed. As they approached the maiden's tee, they were as a raiding horde birthed from some primeval chaos, an epoch more untamed than the manicured world they stormed upon. The shrill discordance of their cries echoing, their raiments in their wake, whispering tales of an infernal dimension, billowing like the smoky breath of the underworld's beast.

Needed to safely move a bulk carrier on short notice recently:

Q: Describe turning 180 degrees and continuing down stream with the current in a heavily loaded bulk carrier from a stationary position tied to a dock with five knots of downstream current using two 50 ton Ballard pull tractor tugs. Be very detailed and specific in describing the actions required to complete this action safely.

  A: To safely turn a heavily loaded bulk carrier 180 degrees and continue downstream with the current from a stationary position tied to a dock with five knots of downstream current, using two 50-ton bollard pull tractor tugs, you must follow a series of steps. These steps are designed to ensure a smooth and controlled maneuver while minimizing the risk of collision, grounding, or damage to the vessel, dock, and tugs.

  1. Preparation: Prior to beginning the maneuver, ensure that all necessary communication equipment is functional and tested. This includes VHF radios, signal flags, and/or lights. Establish communication protocols and channels with the tugs and any other relevant parties, such as pilots and harbor control. Additionally, check the weather forecast, tidal information, and any local regulations or restrictions that may apply.
 
  2. Positioning of tugs: Position one tug at the bow and the other at the stern of the bulk carrier. The tug at the bow will primarily be responsible for pulling and steering the vessel, while the tug at the stern will act as a brake and assist in maneuvering the vessel as needed. Securely attach the towlines to the designated towing points on the vessel.

  3. Cast off lines: Once the tugs are in position and ready, instruct the crew to release all mooring lines from the dock. As the lines are released, the tugs will need to maintain tension on their towlines to keep the vessel in position and prevent it from drifting downstream with the current.

  4. Initiate the turn: The tug at the bow will start the turning process by pulling the vessel's bow away from the dock and into the current. At the same time, the tug at the stern will push the vessel's stern towards the dock to create a pivoting motion. Both tugs must continuously adjust their power and positioning to maintain control of the vessel as it turns.

  5. Manage the current: During the turn, both tugs must work together to counteract the effects of the five-knot downstream current. The tug at the bow will need to pull harder to overcome the current, while the tug at the stern will need to push and also act as a brake to prevent the vessel from gaining too much speed.

  6. Monitor the turn: Throughout the 180-degree turn, the vessel's crew and tugs must maintain constant communication to ensure a smooth and controlled maneuver. Monitor the vessel's position, speed, and proximity to the dock, other vessels, and any navigational hazards. Adjust the tugs' power and positioning as needed to maintain control and avoid collisions or grounding.

  7. Complete the turn: As the vessel approaches the completion of the 180-degree turn, the tugs will need to adjust their power and positioning to slow down the vessel and align it with the downstream current. The tug at the bow will ease its pulling force, while the tug at the stern will continue pushing until the vessel is properly aligned.

  8. Proceed downstream: Once the vessel is aligned with the current and moving downstream, both tugs will gradually reduce their power to allow the vessel to continue under its own momentum. The tugs will remain close by to provide assistance as needed until the vessel is safely clear of the harbor and any navigational hazards.

  9. Release tugs: When the vessel is at a safe distance from the dock and navigational hazards, and under the control of its own propulsion, the towlines can be released, and the tugs can return to their base.

As of 11-22 GM "expects its EV lineup to be profitable by 2025."

"Ford's Model e business generated operating profit margins of roughly negative 40% in 2022, according to the company."

I don't see how those companies survive.

Animal House: https://youtu.be/JUOGxePBs50

Pascal:

  […] But to show him another prodigy equally astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let a mite be given him, with its minute body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again, let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he can arrive be now that of our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here is the smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature's immensity in the womb of this abridged atom. Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and in the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption.

  For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

I think it could be liberating, in that it forces us to accept that our true motivations are always ultimately hedonistic. Why do we pursue the instrumental (for most) goals you mentioned (writing, painting, composing)? Because the limbic system rewards you for doing so, as their satisfaction increases the probability of further satisfaction of instrumental goals, such as the acquisition of esteem, wealth, power, etc. which in turn increases the probability of the satisfaction of ultimate goals like access to food and sex. Why do you like to play “Heroes of Might and Magic II”? Because of the illusion of the satisfaction of instrumental goals and the attendant reward. Why did hacking the game ruin this? Because doing so spoiled the illusion, leading to the denial of further reward.

The question is, knowing this, will we be able to simply enjoy the satisfaction of our ultimate goals—- endless consumption of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. Or will we feel forever hollow in our failure to accomplish ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, in a way that cannot be overcome by the ersatz instrumental goals of video games?

Perhaps ultimately we will create virtual environments in which we are perfectly deceived as to their virtual nature, so as to experience the satisfaction of ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, and in so doing come full circle.

Despite these advances, life expectancy in the US is declining. If you google for something like ‘life expectancy change if cancer cured’ you’ll find that estimates of the effect on life expectancy of curing heart disease and cancer don’t exceed more than several years each. And looking into the far future, even if all disease is cured, and aging eliminated, life expectancy only increases to around 1000.

The intentional homicide rate in the US is 7 times that of Australia (6.3/100k population vs 0.9/100k), and 21 times that of Japan (0.3/100k).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...

So copyright is incentivizing only $9 billion of spending on books… This seems suboptimal. You’d think it’d be possible to design a different government scheme that yielded say, twice as much book publishing, but with no restriction on copying. Same thing for music.

I personally experienced a week of heart palpitations following my second dose of Moderna, as well as an acute visual aura, having never had a migraine. Not only did I fail to report this to VAERS, it only occurred to me as a vague possibility that the vaccination might be related, so I didn’t think twice about getting the booster. After her second dose of Moderna my sister developed a migraine (having never had one previously) that lasted a week, culminating in an emergency room visit, for which no VAERS report was made. My mother recently intimated that ever since her second Moderna shot she periodically experiences heart palpitations, and especially when ingesting caffeine, whereas before this was not the case. Again, no VAERS report.

Knowing what I know now, were a family member to die 20 days after a vaccination I would certainly submit a VAERS report, but I find this question incredible: are you really disputing multiple studies that conclude that VAERS underreports adverse events by appealing to your nebulous feeling that family members surely would not neglect to file a VAERS report after the death of a family member?

Does the fact that only a tiny minority of the population even knows VAERS exists provoke doubt?

How about what HHS has this to say about the matter (https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/dataguide.html):

  “Underreporting" is one of the main limitations of passive 
  surveillance systems, including VAERS. The term, underreporting 
  refers to the fact that VAERS receives reports for only a small 
  fraction of actual adverse events. The degree of underreporting 
  varies widely.

Further, even if I granted that literally every death due to the vaccines was reported to VAERS, there still remains the extant signal which logically admits the possibility that children 0.5-5 suffer a higher rate of death to the vaccine than they do the disease.

As for the insulting claim that no standard of proof would convince me that the vaccine is better than the virus: all I require is a sufficiently powered RCT with a genuine placebo in the control, full disclosure of patient level data, and all cause mortality as the primary endpoint. It baffles me that you don’t demand the same.

When I say VAERS notoriously undercounts, I’m referring to the literature on the subject. For example, the Harvard report Electronic Support for Public Health - Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS) https://digital.ahrq.gov/ahrq-funded-projects/electronic-sup...:

  Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. 
  Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, 
  less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events 
  are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

  Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low 
  reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs 
  and vaccines that endanger public health. New surveillance methods for 
  drug and vaccine adverse effects are needed. Barriers to reporting 
  include a lack of clinician awareness, uncertainty about when and what
  to report, as well as the burdens of reporting: reporting is not part 
  of clinicians’ usual workflow, takes time, and is duplicative.

See also ‘The reporting sensitivities of two passive surveillance systems for vaccine adverse events’ https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.85.12.... Regarding VAERS:

  Sensitivities ranged from 72% for poliomyelitis after 
  the oral poliovirus vaccine to less than 1% for rash 
  and thrombocytopenia after the MMR vaccine.

Regarding your speculation that deaths associated with the Covid-19 vaccines are probably reported at rates higher than that of other vaccines: I have a hard time believing that the report rate is higher than poliomyelitis after the oral poliovirus vaccine which is itself underreported.

And regarding the protestation that correlation does not imply causation, it’s not on me to prove that the treatment is harmful, and otherwise it’s safe and thus administered—-it’s on you to prove that it confers an all cause mortality benefit. I am aware of no evidence to suggest that such a benefit obtains in children, and suggest that this dearth of evidence explains the failure to approve the vaccines for children in many European countries.

There are 5 reports of death following Covid-19 vaccination in VAERS for children 0.5-5, and ‘1.6 million US children ages 6 months-4 years have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine’ as of 11-2-22. This is 3.125 deaths per million, and VAERS notoriously undercounts.

There are 31 reports of death following Covid-19 vaccination for children 5-12, and ‘10.9 million US children ages 5-11 have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine’ as of 11-2-22. This is 2.84 deaths per million. Again, VAERS notoriously undercounts.

https://openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality

https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...

And the peak age/sex related risk is almost certainly understated in the paper, because ‘younger men’ refers to the entire under 40 population.

If someone wins the lottery repeatedly (Zip2, X.com/Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company) I'd entertain the possibility that they weren't just 'picking numbers'.