There would be continuity issues with Jackson’s adaptation, too—in the films, Saruman and Wormtongue die at Isengard (in the extended edition), Galadriel says Frodo’s dystopian vision of the Shire is what will happen if he fails, Rosie Cotton is a barmaid instead of a fellow member of Sam’s agrarian resistance cell, Odo Proudfoot and the rest of Hobbiton are visibly unchanged when the hobbits arrive, etc.

In the books, Saruman and Wormtongue escape from Isengard and set up shop in the Shire while the hobbits are still busy wrapping things up in Gondor and Rivendell. They turn the Shire into an industrialized dystopia, destroying the environment and subverting the local hobbits with promises of wealth and power before betraying them and turning them against each other. (Basically, what Frodo sees in the film adaptation when he looks in the Mirror of Galadriel.)

When Frodo & co. return, they organize an underground resistance movement that escalates into a popular revolution.

Their sales would take a massive hit the first time they tried it. (Not that Musk seems to care much about his brand image these days.)

That, and Spain (or whoever else) wouldn’t be coming in fresh off the surrender of Granada, with the attitude that all non-Christian states must be conquered as a matter of principle.

Columbus’ return to Spain.

His failure to return discourages further attempts for a while; and when contact is eventually made, it isn’t Spain in the immediate aftermath of the Reconquista looking to continue its momentum.

Meanwhile, the New World is made aware of Europe and perhaps acquires some resistance to Old World diseases before any larger confrontations.

Not an anarchist, but the common thread among those I’ve talked to is the elimination of hierarchical structures (whether government or otherwise).

Other types of organization are fine, as long as there are no asymmetric institutional relationships.

I think it depends on the type of sound: a canyon echoes shouts, while a cathedral echoes sermons. But a canyon won’t echo regular speaking voices like a cathedral does, and I think that’s what the metaphor is drawing on: the cathedral is an echo chamber relative to an open public square.

Musk gave him the AI that colored it for him.

deleted by creator

Or they realized they already fired too many people to do the necessary paperwork.

Maybe its accretion disk was temporarily depleted?

That’s a relief—I was starting to worry about it.

I don’t think Trump has any concept of institutional entities. He thinks the Nobel prize is a physical thing, and the government of Venezuela is a person. He doesn’t think he’s bound by laws because he can’t see or touch them.

I’m left-handed, but I’ve always used a mouse with my right hand… and now I’m wondering if I was unconsciously influenced by the orientation of the pointer.

Convincing people to dismiss their crimes as “white collar crap” is the most insidious trick of successful criminals.

Research isn’t advice, either—it can provide the data to make an informed decision, but you still need to figure out what information is relevant to your particular case and how it applies.

In particular, you shouldn’t read a random study or research paper and take it as an actionable recommendation—you need to be familiar with other similar studies, and how they fit into the current state of the rest of their field.

I don’t think the quality that gives prose an AI smell is eloquence per se, so much as the use of common tropes and rhetorical formulae. The kind of rhetoric AI is best at is the kind that relies on appeal to a shared tradition of discourse more than on novel arguments or reason—and I think that type of rhetoric is more common on the right than the left.

Except that we’ve criminalized the wrong one.

Fruit evolved to appeal to the animals that disperse their seeds, and art evolved to fill a social function that’s determined by the rest of society. The value of both is contingent on the roles they fill for others.

Great art is great because it’s in dialog with the opinions of 100,000 normal people (either in the production or the recognition).