promethea.incorporated

collapsedsquid:

socialjusticemunchkin:

collapsedsquid:

socialjusticemunchkin:

socialjusticemunchkin:

Things I learned this week:

Things that go viral with relatively low effort:

Hilarious trolling of people everyone hates

Surveys

(if I’m going to continue tumblring in Lisp, I should do it this way

(at least I think this is easier to follow))

metagorgon said: didn’t you already learn surveys go viral when you grouped everything into left/right, female/male, etc and it was used as a personality test?

Yes, and I replicated the study and tested the method myself. Thus, if I ever need to draw attention to things, I should try to formulate them into a survey somehow so people will spread it. This is vital for memetic engineering purposes.

You gotta work on making an equivalent of the nolan chart that tags everyone as mutualist.

Okay.

Q1: Immigration

open borders, but no benefits for immigrants ()

make immigration dramatically easier, provide them the very basic necessities (S)

make immigration dramatically easier, all comers get generous benefits (SS)

regulate immigration, but cut their social benefits (H)

regulate immigration, give some benefits to those who get through the process (HS)

regulate immigration, but give generous benefits (HSS)

only import vulnerable foreign labor with few legal rights to keep the underclasses in control and wages low (HH)

close the borders, deport foreigners (HHS)

stop the movement of both people and capital (HHSS)

Q2: Taxes

should be low, simple and easy to comply with ()

should be progressive, without loopholes (S)

the rich should pay proportionately less tax than others (H)

we should have a system of progressive taxation with many different deductions and exceptions to ensure that the outcome is fair and just to everyone (HS)

Q3: Welfare

keep it strictly voluntary, or just a barebones basic income, but eliminate criminalization of poverty as well ()

provide people an unconditional income that covers their basic needs (S)

provide all people enough money for a comfortable life (SS)

reduce welfare, but retain the criminalization of begging, dumpster-diving, sex work, and other means of survival (H)

have multiple different programs for addressing social issues, and keep them means-tested (HS)

add more social programs and benefits (HSS)

the state should provide everyone a job with a living wage (HHSS)

work should be a condition for receiving any money; replace the system with workfare where companies get free labor, people get “unemployment benefits”, and taxpayers foot the bill (HHS)

just put the poor to forced labor, no need to pay them (HH)

Q4: Trade

trade should be free ()

the only legitimate use of tariffs is to reduce the unfair market position of countries which use forced labor or have insufficient environmental protections; or to protect the developing industries of poorer countries (S)

trade policy should furthen the economic interests of domestic businesses (H)

trade policy should protect domestic jobs from foreign competition (HS)

Q5: Discrimination

don’t legislate morality ()

some anti-discrimination laws are okay as long as compliance is easy and cheap and they target genuinely marginalized groups (S)

businesses should be incentivized to treat everyone equally, but the mechanism should be one which doesn’t distort competition in favor of the strong (SS)

make laws explicitly protecting certain types of private discrimination (H)

protect some groups, and establish stringent and specific standards and bureaus to enforce them and monitor compliance and punish those who get caught discriminating (HS)

like above, but expand the coverage and try to reduce the perverse incentives (HSS)

Q6: Housing

reduce zoning rules, let the market decide ()

use regulations only as a temporary measure while waiting for zoning reforms to render housing more affordable (S)

legalize squatters seizing unoccupied houses as long as involuntary homelessness exists (SS)

use zoning laws to protect neighborhoods from undesirable kinds of people (H)

combine zoning laws with rent control, subsidies etc. to manage the housing supply (HS)

have the state produce housing for people (HSS)

Q7: Immaterial property

should be abolished ()

is useful and should be protected (H)

should be protected better and enforced more strongly (HH)

Q8: Private property (capital, not toothbrushes)

is private, no concern of the state ()

is sometimes legitimate but other things should belong to everyone, and depriving others of such things (eg. land) should at the very least warrant compensation (S)

should not be respected; only possession is legitimate ownership (SS)

should be protected by the state, while owners are free to do whatever they want (H)

should be protected, taxed and regulated reasonably to serve the common good (HS)

the state should limit how much capital the rich can accumulate (HSS)

the state should use eminent domain to seize private property for important business interests (HH)

the state should seize property for important public interests (HHS)

the state should own all capital and allocate its use optimally (HHSS)

Choose your answer, sum the letters after each to see your position on the two-axis chart of economic freedom. “S” means intervention to reduce inequality, while “H” means intervention to preserve/create hierarchy. The maximum score on each axis should be 12. This is not a purity test, so reaching out for the corners isn’t what one is “supposed” to do although I guess ardent ancaps would get a solid 0/0.

You see, part of the point of the test (as I see it) would be to push back against ancaps/libertarians. You’d want a test that points out the key issues there.

I would push the line that property is a creation of the state more. To say that private property “is private, no concern of the state“ is not true, you are asking for the state to enforce private property. You would want a test that points that out.

If you accept property rights as some inherent fact of nature the preservation of which is just the default state, you’ve already lost the major battle. You’ve gotta make the libertarians fight for it. Although you give hierarchy points for immaterial property, you describe the base state as “should be abolished.“ You want to make it clear that enforcement of property is, if not state action, at least violence.

Similarly, you want to explicitly point out the similarities between rent and taxes. That’s to me one of the key points of mutualism, they’ve realized the similarity between taxes and rents, and you want to make that similarity clear, that both are the threat of force by the state to make you pay money.

The key insight on polling and surveys is, as always, here.

Illusion of transparency strikes again, I guess. I considered that “private property” question one of the more radical on the test, as the () option basically implies that the state doesn’t intervene to protect it either. Whatever that would actually result in is a positive question and depends very much on the rest of the system.
Also, I’m using the status quo as the “middle” and comparing changes to that; these kind of tests get weird around the edge zones
- (for example, anarcho-communists could theoretically get either 0/0 or 0/12 or something in between depending on which they emphasize; the assumption that absence of state action would produce the absence of hierarchies they want, or the deliberate focus on egalitarianism; and the question on private property is already edging into the territory where stuff stops being renderable in euclidean space)
and that’s why I didn’t focus on the edge zones too much and a lot of the options are relatively moderate. This is a statist test for people living in statist societies and only gets as far as the rough overton window; if I wanted to address edge cases properly I’d want to have a more thorough understanding of them first.
- (for example, if by “mutualism” one means “many parts of The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand make a lot of sense” then I guess I’m “a mutualist”, but if by “mutualism” one means “subscribes to a specific theory on property by possession and labor theory of value”
  - (some form of it? “equal work for equal work” doesn’t really seem to work as its incentive structure is sub-optimal and it would basically rely on “people would do good things just for the sake of doing good things even if they somewhat conflict with their immediate economic interests” at which point I don’t get why there has to be a specific theory on cost/price if the system ultimately runs on concentrated human decency anyway
    - (but I do agree that with sufficient material prosperity and absence of antagonistic hierarchical relations, systems could probably run reasonably well on concentrated human decency))
- then I’m not so sure)
And the ethical side of my brain refuses to do that much of leading-questioning. I’m already running an obvious political agenda of splitting economic freedom to show that there’s a lot of pro-freedom options available on the left
- (the naive idea that the magnitude of economic intervention could be calculated by summing H and S points is probably not quite practical but it would give some insight to why mutualists and social democrats are very different)
and thus people who want to reduce the amount of H points in the economy should be able to cooperate on those questions even if they disagree on S points
- (because the reduction in H points would also effectively render the economy more egalitarian by this naive model if S points are kept constant; thus satisfying both the “freedom” and the “equality” camps at least partially).
As a quick draft of the first political chart I’m aware of which actually makes that distinction, and which was written in a couple of hours because I got nerdsniped, I don’t think this one does too badly; it’s definitely better than The Political Compass™ and while that is kind of burying the bar, being better than the de facto standard counts for something in my opinion :S
- (but improvements are obviously welcome always)

1 month ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist #tumbling in lisp · 33 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink

veronicastraszh:

socialjusticemunchkin:

socialjusticemunchkin:

Things I learned this week:

Things that go viral with relatively low effort:

Hilarious trolling of people everyone hates

Surveys

(if I’m going to continue tumblring in Lisp, I should do it this way

(at least I think this is easier to follow))

metagorgon said: didn’t you already learn surveys go viral when you grouped everything into left/right, female/male, etc and it was used as a personality test?

Yes, and I replicated the study and tested the method myself. Thus, if I ever need to draw attention to things, I should try to formulate them into a survey somehow so people will spread it. This is vital for memetic engineering purposes.

Oh and you should do all things in Lisp. Except Haskell, which you should do in Haskell.

Okay, now you really should explain what is the amazing thing about Haskell and why I should learn that one as well
- (right now the list is:
  - ruby
  - julia
  - lisp
  - coffeescript
  - html
  - css)
- (or, to be more specific, it’s not an imperative “should” but rather a functional “should” meaning that to get the output of promethea doing things in Haskell one needs to input the arguments)

1 month ago · tagged #baby leet #tumbling in lisp · 33 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink

ilzolende asked: As someone who will be replacing her computer and can probably talk people into buying her a keyboard soon, I would love to hear your sales pitch for [some pre-customized version of] vim. (Also, I have written all the HTML for a website myself, but I like Jekyll better, because I can update template-y things once and have the *computer* update them everywhere, and write pages in Markdown.)

ilzolende:

socialjusticemunchkin:

I’m using [spf13-vim](http://vim.spf13.com/) with some customization; it has nice defaults and a lot of awesomeness and is very simple to install with a straight-out-of-the-box configuration that works well unless one has a synesthesia thing where stuff absolutely needs to be differently colored on different languages (a simple but non-trivial editing of the colorscheme is required then).

Basically, the idea is that one doesn’t never ever need to move one’s hands away, because every command is reachable easily from there and touch typing feels so good. Using dvorak as a layout synergizes incredibly well because one’s fingers need to leave the row much less often and the repetition between hands feels very low-effort and “lazy” in an extremely good way.

And the final component of this awesomeness is a 60% keyboard which ditches all the unnecessary keys that one can’t use anyway because one’s hands would need to leave their places, and replaces them with fn-layer keys that can be easily reached while keeping hands “glued” to their positions. They usually cost around $100 (but can be found *a lot* cheaper if one is willing to compromise a bit on quality; still superior to regular rubber-domes though) and are 100% worth it in my opinion. Geeking out over switches and sounds and keycap materials and manufacturers etc. is beyond the scope of this post but I’m way too eager to do it if requested. It’s complicated. It’s interesting. It feels and sounds so good. Your favorite shoes provide valuable evidence. And you can customize them without limits, to make your keyboard 100% perfect for yourself.

Personally, I’m using a KBP V60 with Matias Quiet Tactile switches because I wanted to prioritize softness of noise (mechanical keyboards are louder than regular ones; how much depends on a lot of factors) and a distinct tactile feel for writing. Zero regrets. My favorite shoes are a bit like knee-length combat boots but a lot softer, which is exactly what one would expect with this particular switch. Creepy how accurate that shoe thing is. I wish the keycaps were doubleshot PBT instead of ABS, but the keycap selection for Matias (=Alps) is less broad than it is for Cherry, and I can’t remember the fn key locations if I can’t see the printings (YGM), so I haven’t customized that stuff yet.

As usual, reddit has way too much info on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/

(Note: What follows is a list of all the concerns I can think of. It might sound attacking, but my guess is that a lot of these are addressable, I just want to list them.)

(Note 2: I have the Ulterior Motive of wanting advice about how to replace my mid-2010 Mac. The one most ridiculous constraint here is that unless Inkscape’s improved a lot, I want to be able to use CS5, which I got when I got the computer I’m currently on. Unless I can get Adobe to let me activate an installation on a new Windows machine or there’s some way to run CS5 at nearly full speed in Linux, this means I need to get something that can occasionally run OS X that I can transfer my backups to.)

…if you use a command-line text editor but you also have to hold down a special key every time you need to use arrow keys, that sounds hard? Anyway, I don’t have the synesthesia thing, as long as there’s a list somewhere accessible (and even if there isn’t, tbh) of what the different colors mean in ~~different programming languages~~ Java and some markup languages (I’m still new), I’ll be fine.

I’m fine with learning a new keyboard layout as long as I can find a piece of plastic to put on it with the letters on it. That said, the keyboards you recommend a) cost more than my replacement hard drive did and b) seem a bit too bulky to take to class. Also, do they have cables that are removable at both ends? I have cable-breaking issues and there’s no way I’m going to get something I’ll have to replace as soon as the cable frays.

Edit: Also, I feel like running code gotten over HTTP (not HTTPS) directly from some URL-shortened link is probably not the best idea?

So, for OS X there’s the option of building a hackintosh if you want a desktop, or using an apple laptop because laptops don’t hackintosh well, or keeping the old mac for CS5 purposes. OS X is Unix and therefore Correct even though it’s Corporate and therefore At Least A Bit Evil; so vim and most of the cool things should work.
- As it happens, I’m also very very interested in doing recommendations for computers, as long as I get the specs of the budget and intended use etc.

The point of using vim is that you don’t need arrow keys when you can hjkl. Vi style movement keys are supported by almost every single thing in unixland, and they are as close to Objectively Correct™ as is possible in legacy code hell universe
- (Disclaimer: standard biases and subjectivities apply).
Even on unmodified dvorak they are reasonably convenient
- (“c” is down, “v” is up, “j” is left, “p” is right).
And when one actually needs Arrow Keys instead of just Movement Keys, these 60%ers usually have reasonable defaults; I can press down fn on the capslock location and use wasd for arrows with the remaining three fingers of my left hand in the standard gaming position. Esdf for arrows would be just a little bit better but wasd is acceptable, and on the right-hand side I have another set under pl;’, and pressing fn+return triggers hard arrows from r-shift, r-win
- (“win” meaning “window manager modifier” to me; I use it for i3),
r-fn
- (or “menu” for common layouts; I had to move r-fn to make room for a r-alt key bεçäüsæ ƒiññišĥ üšæš ωæi®δ λetters and I need to be able to write them easily
  - (yes I got all those just by r-alt-ing regular letters
    - (as opposed to alt-r-ing which just replaces every other word with “cuck”))
  - (but Finnish actually only requires me to be able to produce äöåÄÖÅ, and üÜ is useful for German
    - (although I have no idea why Finnish spells the ü sound with y instead; it’s absolutely horrible and then the y sound is written as j and the j sound has nothing)
  - the rest are for those times when I want to use a special symbol enough to have it on my kb but not enough to look up an alternate way of outputting it, which is Often™ since I have them on my kb after all, so might as well use them)),
and r-ctrl. I use those sometimes.

Dvorak is not “necessary” and most mech-kb fans are not dvorakists, I just like dvorak very very much. The best I can describe it is “fingers glued to keyboard” while qwerty is “fingers hopping around like spider-bunnies”. It might not be that much faster, and the alleged ergonomic benefits might not be that significant, but the feel is very different.

Mechanical keyboards cost quite a bit more than regular ones but are absolutely worth it in my opinion, if one writes a lot. The sound is heavenly, and the finger-feel cannot be described in words.
But then again I’m an æsthete who spends as much on both their keyboard
- (because importing stuff to Europe sucks with the taxes and shit)
and their headphones as they spend on their laptop
- (because a pre-owned one with a fried sound chip costed in the US only a third of what a new one costs here
  - (fried sound chip not being a problem at all because I’m using an external dac-amp anyway; currently a UCA-202 which gets along fine with my ohm-monster DT990pros but might eventually get modded to a lower output impedance))
The 60% sized ones aren’t really that bulky; I might consider it worth it to bring mine with me to a variety of places. I definitely like to use it when coding on my laptop.
- To be specific, I’d say that my keyboard is approximately as bulky as the laptop itself; it’s lighter and shallower, but a lot thicker and just a bit wider
  - Then again, my laptop is basically a fat 10-inch tablet
    - (awesome is another thing it is; the only thing I could complain about is the shitty saturation of purples and magentas on its screen)
Most mechanical keyboards do feature removable cables, probably all of the ones worth serious consideration. It’s definitely a very important feature and everyone else agrees that ditching a $100 KB because a $5 part broke is not a good idea

And regarding the spf13-vim, yeah that’s correct, so here’s the github page instead with more responsible installation instructions: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim and the installation script itself is: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim/blob/3.0/bootstrap.sh ; I don’t know why the homepage suggests insecure http.

1 month ago · tagged #baby leet #tumbling in lisp · 19 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink