Notices by Don Romano 🍹 (thj@mastodon.cloud), page 27

@kungtotte Well, let's just say that the defence industry is the testosterone in this analogy I'm making...

Do you want the MacBook with the bad keyboard, no connectors and gimmicky touch bar, or these other two MacBooks that also have a bad keyboard, no connectors and a gimmicky touch bar?

In America, a warlike politician is called a hawk.

To me, it looks more like America has a war phallus that needs to ejaculate regularly so Pentagon won't get blue balls.

I don't think most presidents entering office enjoy giving an order to kill people. I *do* think the generals from Pentagon *really* pressure them into doing so anyway, though.

Imagine being surrounded by the top generals at Pentagon and they're all telling you to strike Iran. Do you have the strength to resist?

@jack Here's the chart I found with the dosages:

https://www.caddra.ca/pdfs/Medication_Chart_English_CANADA.pdf

I only began looking for information about higher dosages once I realised I'd need to go beyond the usual 60 mg recommendation for my titration.

It looks like I can cut back a bit in the evening now, though, so it won't overshoot by quite as much. Maybe 70 mg per day.

Doesn't matter whether the surveillance drone was in Iran's territorial waters or not. We all know that drone wasn't there to make friends. Pentagon wants a war really badly. They're practically begging the president for it.

@tiphra This is also why rich people aren't much happier on average. They may be at a high level of accomplishment, but if they aren't seeing a steady increase in that level, they won't feel satisfied for long. I think that's why you see people such as Bill Gates go into philanthropy. It's a way of giving yourself a challenge, and the number of problems to solve is almost endless.

@tiphra The system can also be highjacked. Drugs maximise the utility function without needing to work for it, but only temporarily.

In humans, the utility function is a derivative of our level of accomplishment. In other words, if we reach a certain level, and stay there, the utility function will fall to zero (neutral).

This is why finding happiness in while staying in one place is futile. You will only feel happy so long as you're seeing steady increases in your level of accomplishment.

@tiphra We humans also have utility functions. Like the utility function of a machine learning algorithm, it wasn't programmed by us. We just know what it is, and that we want to maximise it.

We can also get stuck in local optimums, and must discover this, and motivate ourselves using long term goals to get out of them.

Most people know there are higher peaks they could reach, but they don't have the energy required to get through the large valleys that stand in the way.

@tiphra In machine learning, there is the concept of a utility function. If the A.I. moves closer to the desired behaviour, the value of the utility function increases. If it moves away, it decreases.

The A.I. will never learn any behaviour that doesn't maximise the value, but it can get stuck in a local optimum, where, if it had only dared to move a bit past a valley, there would be an even taller peak.

Millennia of civilisations and technological development, yet the end goal always remains the same: Find food, stay safe, cumulate resources, attract mate and reproduce.

You could argue that these are not the deeper purposes of being human, but they are what 99.99% of humans have as their top priorities. Other things, such as science and having fun, are designed for discovering new and innovative ways of finding food, sex and shelter later on.

Wow, there aren't many driving schools in Norway who actually offer a driving theory course in a classroom setting.

It looks like the majority of people manage to study on their own. I don't understand how people find the motivation to study at all.

I personally find that there are very few things in life that excite me so much that I'm willing to put in an effort to accomplish it.

I'm sure they're worth it after the fact, but I mean while you're working toward the goal.

I would frankly prefer to attend some sort of class or study group to get through the driving theory, because I'm not sure I can pull it off alone.

I don't know how I'm going to pass the driving theory exam. I'm ostensibly a nerd, but I'm not the kind of nerd that memorises train schedules, and that's roughly how exciting traffic rules are.

When I tried taking driving lessons a few years ago, controlling the vehicle and not being overwhelmed by traffic was the problem. I never got as far as actually trying to learn any theory.

That's not a problem now, but I'm still no better at doing homework than I was in elementary school.

The most original entry to the Eurovision Song Contest was Australia, both musically and visually, and they deserved to win, and the music critics seem to agree with this too.

The actual winner, the Netherlands, put on an entirely unremarkable show.

The audience favourite, Norway, had a fairly interesting concept with the joik singer, but it would've been unremarkable without him. Inserting joik into pop music isn't a new idea - it's just new to Eurovision audiences.

noagendasocial.com is *still* down and still no word of what's going on with it. I'm waiting for it to come up again so I can download an archive of it, get my following list and send out invites to follow me on this new account.

Eurovision is a competition in which the goal is to turn up in the most outrageous costume of the evening.

I kind of like the @catpostingbot but it posts too often, so I've been forced to unfollow it.

How can they shut down noagendasocial.com for 24 hours straight with no warning?

I'm not going back to that server again. Too unstable. The moment they bring it up again, I'm telling everyone to follow me on here instead.