I think we can actually prove that this constraint is the *only* constraint that can preserve freedom:
1. There will exist actors in a system who will wish to take advantage of others. Evolution drives survival and one strategy for increasing survival in an altruistic society is to become a parasite.
2. Expecting exploitative dynamics, a system needs to have a set of rules to manage exploitation.
3. If the set of rules is static it will lack the requisite variety necessary to manage the infinite possible behavior of humans so the system will fail.
4. If the system is dynamic then it must have a rule set about how it's own rules are updated. This would make the system recursive, which makes the system at least as complex as mathematics. Any system at least as complex as mathematics is necessarily either incomplete or inconsistent (Gödel's incompleteness theorem). If the system is incomplete, then constraints can be evaded which then allow a malicious agent to seize control of the system and update the rules for their own benefit. If constraints are incomplete, then a malicious agent can take advantage of others within the system.
5. Therefore, no social system can possibly protect freedom unless there exists a single metasystemic constraint (that the system must be optional) allowing for the system to be abandoned when compromised.
Oh, you might say, but this just means you have to infinitely abandon systems. Sure, but there's an evolutionary advantage to cooperation so there's evolutionary pressure to *not* be a malicious actor. So a malicious actor being able to compromise the whole system is likely to be a much more rare event. Compromising a system is a lot of work, so the first thing a malicious actor would want to do is preserve that work. They would want to lock you in. The most important objective to a malicious actor compromising a system would be to violate that metasystemic constraint, or all of their work goes out the window when everyone leaves.
And now you understand why borders exist, why fascists are obsessed with maintaining categories like gender, race, ethnicity, etc. This is why even Democrats like Newsom are on board with putting houseless people in concentration camps. And this is why the most important thing anarchists promote is the ability to choose not to be part of any of that.
Trump illegally blends governance and family business -- particularly in Persian Gulf countries.
Since returning to office, the Trump family and businesses have announced new ventures abroad involving billions of dollars,
made hundreds of millions from cryptocurrency,
and sold tickets to a private dinner hosted by Trump.
Trump is set to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington next week.
He hopes to sign a mutual defens…
dom: Animal dominance archive (2022)
Animal dominance interaction data published over a century of research. The archive contains 434 agonistic interaction datasets, totaling over 241,000 interactions. A directed edge (i,j) corresponds to an antagonist interaction between i (winner) and j (loser). If a 'weight' edge property map exists, it counts the number of such interactions.
This network has 17 nodes and 146 edges.
Tags: Social, Animal, Weighted
I bought some of these for a project and only realized once I had them that they are effectively gender changers and require USB-A-to-USB-A cables, which aren’t allowed by the USB spec.
I see that nevertheless such cables exist, and it’s for power only, but I wonder whether this can actually work?
Any ideas?
#bricolage
Dillon Brooks has got to be the stupidest player in the NBA.
☑️ Lakers' LeBron James seals win after Suns' Dillon Brooks ejected
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/lakers-lebron-james-seals-win-after-suns-dill…
Finite element method for a constant time delay subdiffusion equation with Riemann-Liouville fractional derivative
Weiping Bu, Chen Nie, Weizhi Liao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13052
Orthrus: Dual-Loop Automated Framework for System-Technology Co-Optimization
Yi Ren, Baokang Peng, Chenhao Xue, Kairong Guo, Yukun Wang, Guoyao Cheng, Yibo Lin, Lining Zhang, Guangyu Sun
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13029
Sources: Lip-Bu Tan's dual roles as Intel CEO and tech investor cause consternation in the industry and at Intel; four ex-Intel execs say it caused them to exit (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/technology/lip-bu-tan-intel-ceo-investor.h…
Enigmatic centi-SFU and mSFU nonthermal radio transients detected in the middle corona
Surajit Mondal, Bin Chen, Sijie Yu, Xingyao Chen, Peijin Zhang, Dale Gary, Marin M. Anderson, Judd D. Bowman, Ruby Byrne, Morgan Catha, Sherry Chhabra, Larry D Addario, Ivey Davis, Jayce Dowell, Gregg Hallinan, Charlie Harnach, Greg Hellbourg, Jack Hickish, Rick Hobbs, David Hodge, Mark Hodges, Yuping Huang, Andrea Isella, Daniel C. Jacobs, Ghislain Kemby, John T. Klinefelter, Matthew Kolopanis, Niki…
As the Pentagon, particularly the Army, cozies up to Silicon Valley
four big tech executives with no military background, were directly commissioned to be lieutenant colonels, in the Army
-- and they will not recuse themselves from business dealings with the Department of Defense.
Earlier this month, the Army announced Detachment 201,
the name being a reference to HTTP code,
for the newly commissioned executives
from Palantir, Meta and OpenAI.
The ne…