Hogswatch is fantasy Hogmanay if you squint enough, for example.

The tests that Trump fails are some of the most consistent themes, repeated by Jesus and not contradicted (but rather reinforced) by other passages: pride, greed, selfishness, oppression of the poor and the needy, lying, adultery, rape – all of these are continuously, explicitly condemned by the Bible without any “mixed messages” there.

The only way to “interpret” the Bible as okay with those things is just to claim it doesn’t mean exactly what it explicitly, repeatedly, directly says.

Like, without getting into the “let’s debate contradictions” game, the claim that the Bible is too contradictory to identify that people like Trump aren’t actually following Jesus’s teachings is akin to saying “I blame the EPA guidelines: there are too many contradictions on where the blinkers get put or what the in-dash entertainment system is, so it leaves people to pick and choose what counts as an internal-combustion-engine vehicle.” The core definition is pretty clear, even though the secondary features may vary — and claiming that there’s no way you can apply the core definition because those secondary features vary is just epistemological surrender, rather than a fault in the core definition itself.

Yeah, there’s a difference between “information that is not discussed because you’ll get a visit from the cops” and “information that is not discussed because, though it’s freely available, people don’t care enough to learn it.”

I mean, yes and no.

This is the same logic as “don’t do that, Fetterman is very much a real liberal” – like, self-attested membership of a group that is defined by a core set of beliefs while also denying that core set of beliefs is not a reflection on that core set of beliefs.

To pick another example, “don’t do that, the DPRK is very much a democratic republic” – and yet…

Yeah! Let’s start with Fort Sumner!

…wait

I feel like “noo it wasn’t a Nazi salute, or uh, it wasn’t intentional” is more of a “right of center” response instead of a “center” response, and “Elon Musk just did a Nazi salute on live TV” is closer to center, but otherwise this seems accurate.

Maybe the Overton window has shifted so far right that I’m wrong about that, though.

My interactions with that user have led me to believe that they’re less Marxist and more just pro-Xi. As Stalin demonstrated pretty clearly, there’s a difference between being the dictator of a nominally-communist country (or a fanboy of said dictator) and being an actual Marxist.

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Use your critical thinking skills, imagine a bus in a city of 10 million people during rush hour at a busy stop – do you honestly think they’re checking everyone’s credit score before they get on? This shit is fake you have been duped

Again, citation needed. “There’s literally no way an internet-connected society that already requires payment to board a bus, usually via something like tap-to-pay, could ever possibly check your ID against a list of IDs before you get on the bus” is not convincing. Evidence is convincing, and I’ve seen none so far. I’ve only seen an article reporting that it actually happens.

The quote you’re saying is ridiculous is from the article provided describing how the social credit system actually works in real life. If you can give me a credible source that demonstrates this isn’t happening (instead of just your own lack of imagination to conceptualize tech that is already broadly implemented worldwide) then maybe that’d be more convincing than “I can’t personally imagine how that would work, so it’s impossible!”

As I responded to you elsewhere, I did read beyond that point. Are you sure that you did?

I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.

Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”

If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.

I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.

Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”

If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.

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Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it “good enough?”

It’s true that, building on earlier initiatives, China’s State Council published a road map in 2014 to establish a far-reaching “social credit” system by 2020. The concept of social credit (shehui xinyong) is not defined in the increasing array of national documents governing the system, but its essence is compliance with legally prescribed social and economic obligations and performing contractual commitments. Composed of a patchwork of diverse information collection and publicity systems established by various state authorities at different levels of government, the system’s main goal is to improve governance and market order in a country still beset by rampant fraud and counterfeiting.

Under the system, government agencies compile and share across departments, regions, and sectors, and with the public, data on compliance with specified industry or sectoral laws, regulations, and agreements by individuals, companies, social organizations, government departments, and the judiciary. Serious offenders may be placed on blacklists published on an integrated national platform called Credit China and subjected to a range of government-imposed inconveniences and exclusions. These are often enforced by multiple agencies pursuant to joint punishment agreements covering such sectors as taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments.

These punishments are intended to incentivize legal and regulatory compliance under the often-repeated slogan of “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.” Conversely, “red lists” of the trustworthy are also published and accessed nationally through Credit China.

Maybe running an OwnTracks server or something?

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I mean, is “other people are having fun” really something that demands a resistance?

Or could you, perhaps, just not do it and not care whether that makes you “cool” or not?

It’s like that bit from Community: “wear it because of them, don’t wear it because of them — either way, it’s for them.”

Just be you, without having to have some sort of faux “resistance” to justify yourself.

Thank u Jason, very cool !!

Seriously though, good for you I guess? Not sure why you’re grandstanding about it.

Meanwhile, I’m doing it the way I have in years past: as a fun set of puzzles that let me write code I enjoy in a language I like, because I do actually enjoy writing code, and only until my real-life schedule no longer allows.

Nobody’s saving the world by posting on their personal blogs about how they’re bravely and boldly not doing a series of optional advent-calendar puzzles.

I’m really surprised to see Java ranked as less-verbose than OCaml.

Here’s an equivalent code sample in Java 17 vs OCaml:

Java:

abstract sealed class Expr permits Value, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide {
  abstract long eval();
}
record Value(long value) extends Expr {
  @Override
  long eval() { return value; }
}
record Add(Expr left, Expr right) {   
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() + right.eval(); }
}
record Subtract(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() - right.eval(); }
}
record Multiply(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() * right.eval(); }
}
record Divide(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() / right.eval(); }
}

OCaml:

type expr = 
  | Value of int
  | Add of expr * expr
  | Subtract of expr * expr
  | Multiply of expr * expr
  | Divide of expr * expr

let rec eval = function 
  | Value value -> value
  | Add (left, right) -> (eval left) + (eval right)
  | Subtract (left, right) -> (eval left) - (eval right)
  | Multiply (left, right) -> (eval left) * (eval right)
  | Divide (left, right) -> (eval left) / (eval right)

…Java has so much more syntactical overhead than OCaml, and that’s even with recent Java and being pretty aggressive about using boiler-plate reducing sugars like Records. And F# has even less, since it doesn’t require you to use different operators for numerics or do as much manual casting between strings/numerics

Conversely, I have a recent-ish (<5yrs old) Brother inkjet printer that’s waiting to be dumped to recycling because it arbitrarily decided that it didn’t ever need to be discoverable or respond to any print requests one day, and so even though there was nothing mechanically wrong with it, even hooking up a Raspberry Pi to run CUPS over USB didn’t fix the issue – because Brother explicitly refuses to publish drivers for the Raspberry Pi, and their inkjet drivers are proprietary.

I’ve since replaced it with the best-reviewed Epson printer I could find that supports a generic PCL driver, so that if Epson ever loses their minds in the way Brother did, I can fall back on an open-source implementation of good ol’ PCL.

That thing’s given us no issues so far.

Community’s Subway arc was pretty good too, IMO.