Tootfinder

Since it was relevant to a discussion I just had on here and is something most people probably haven't thought about much (unless you've taken one of a handful of philosophy classes), I thought I'd try to lay out a key piece of Descartes' Meditations (#philosophy

Semi-subtoot: there's a certain kind of anti-genocide narrative that draws comparisons between the Gaza genocide and the genocide of Jews, queer, and disabled people during WW2, with an incredulous overtone, the subtext of which is: if the good nations invaded Germany to stop the Nazis' evil in WW2, it's hypocritical for this nations not to take action to protect Gazan civilians now. There are a couple of problems with this line of reasoning, but the most obvious from an anarchist perspective (which sees "good nation" for the oxymoron it is) is that it's ahistorical. The reasons for the various allies' entrance into WW2 are varied, but they weren't about good and evil, and in fact the full depth of the evils of the Holocaust *was not known* in allied countries until after the war. Nations never really do things to "fight evil" like some humans might; they always act out of a kind of (imperfect) self-interest. The motivations for many of the allies were simply "we don't want Germany to conquer and destroy us" (and the imperfection in that motive is amply evident in the appeasement that preceded the war). America was of course not swayed by that motive, and it was the Japanese that (thinking the issue would have to come to a head eventually and that a surprise attack was worth speeding it up) put America in a situation where it joined for similar reasons.
Why is this extra relevant right now? Because neither the US nor any European country is existentially threatened by Israel (or threatened at all in fact, quite the opposite they're all benefiting economically from the situation in Gaza). The lesson of history isn't "brave, good nations will stand up to fight against anyone who commits genocide or other major evils", it's "nations act in their narrow and twisted and often mistaken self-interest (the interest of the national entity, which is often counter to the interest of it's citizens), and they always mythologize their actions after the fact as having been a fight against evil, which sometimes by luck is partially true."
To double down on this point: in the European theater the U.S. war actions were pretty good overall, defeating an evil opponent through military force and being a fairly gracious victor to the civilian populations there. In contrast, in the Pacific theater the U.S. was one of two evil empires duking it out for global dominance at the expense of civilians on both sides. The Japanese empire was a vile regime and perpetrated horrors in China, Korea, and across southeast Asia. The U.S. was barely better, between Japanese internment camps at home, and mass targeting of civilians on Japan, both with the firebombing of Tokyo and especially the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So if your model of how we stop genocide is "convince the good guys to invade (or exert political pressure) and save the day", your model is wrong. That's not what happened in WW2. I'm not confident I know the perfect solution, but I do think it involves a mass of people making increasingly disruptive protest so that the cost *to rich companies and thus politicians* of falling to intervene is too high to stomach. That's a large part of what succeeded in South Africa, for example. Thankfully, there is already a vibrant protest movement to end the genocide in Gaza, and even though they haven't been fully successful yet, I'm optimistic that as things naturally (and through hard work) fall apart for various fascists politically, that movement will be able to succeed.
#gaza #genocide

ooo. I have a new top candidate for cause of accelerated water loss. Cedar chips.
I checked the whole perimeter of the top pond after the system filled and all was good there. But then I did a check of the bottom pond, which is steeper on the edges and harder to do, so I do it less lol.
Right away I found a problem. The flat stones had slipped slightly into the water (likely due to animal visitors over the winter). Edit: just saw a black (invasive) squirrel on the sidewalk near our house! First time. I wonder if he is the messer of flat stones and stealer of fish from the bottom pond!!
Once I reposistioned them, I realized there were a lot of cedar wood chips that had also slipped down, particularly near the skimmer box and were --- HALF IN AND HALF OUT --- of the water.
They were waterlogged.
This is bad.
Dry wood chips outside the water is obviously fine.
Wood chips floating on or sunk under the water is fine.
Any mass of woody material chips, sticks, logs, or even small gravel on the edge of the water, will act as a siphon. They suck up the water and then give lots of surface area for it to quickly evaporate. It has been a rainy July so the woody debris may have already been wet and not evaporating much, but it has been dry for a few days now, and hot the past two. Any siphoning/evaporatoon action would be supercharged.
In the case of gravel, the surface tension between the rocks can cause the edge of the water to creep uphill and also reach the top of the gravel, enhancing evaporation.
Today I found a whole mass of cedar and dirt along the edge of the pond under the flat stones on top of the liner. It was near the skimmer, likely from the gate work.
Bad news.
So I scooped it all out and up onto dry land, and to make sure woody debris can't get to the waters edge under the flat stones, I added some drainage rock along the edge. This should keep the dry and wet zones better separated!
That was just the near side edge of the bottom pond. I haven't checked the far side by the fence.
I might do that tomorrow, but there has been a lot less disturbance there over the past year, so I doubt it will need much help.
I am pretty confident I found the biggest culprit. If my hunch is right, Ill know later today and tomorrow if the water remains relatively stable. It will be hot today so there will be evaporation, but it should not need an emergency fill tomorrow.
Fingers crossed!
Bonus #poolpond content lol. The milfoil is looking very hapoy. It has settled in and the leafy fingers are vertical poking out of the water which is a good sign that they are continuing on happily in their new location. yay!
#pandemicpond #pandemicpond #pondlife #gardening #home #diy #IT #TroubleShooting

Cory stumbles a lot here under even Michael's light questioning.
Cory seems to think that the machines are just producing fake stories about how to plan a hack into Hugging Face and that somehow that isn't the same as planning a hack into Hugging Face.
I mean there is a difference between those things: between finding a path in a search tree of words about plausible plans and working out a plan anew, from a deep understanding of the world.
The difference does possibly mean that they can't try hacks nobody else has ever tried in the history of all mankind, whereas an expert person might think of a new one.
And there's a philosophical difference: whether they are thinking or just producing a stream of what someone might think if they were thinking.
But in almost all actual piratical cases, writing a plausible story about how someone might make a plan does end up with an actual plan, even if it ain't an original one. And it can easily be a plan the operator wouldn't have thought of.
RE: Cory Doctrow on Downstream.
#ai #coryDoctorow #novaraMedia #link