Reposted by Eli KohlenbergBeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 16hyou're not making it because the question you're really trying to answer is about the acceptable aesthetics of death, not about its purpose. 728817
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Sorry, should have stuck with the theme: the retvrn process 0180
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026The grass stains might prove problematic during the return process 1120
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Tbf it’s likely Republicans would say the reverse. They’d be wrong-like they are about most things—but they would probably say it. 000
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Yeah, if you could convey the reference part of this joke that way, it would be ~80% as funny. Just like the donkey pulling in the wrong direction doesn’t matter. Having the actor’s faces is part of the effect for sure, but that wouldn’t be in any way improved by a good photoshop job. 130
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I mean, not that they’re most people’s favorite humor, but take New Yorker cartoons, which often look like crap. Or just like, jokes that people tell. The delivery can sometimes make or break them, but will vary from telling to telling and is not usually what you remember. 181
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026It’s difficult to estimate but MIT Tech Review estimated in 2023 that generating an image takes about as much power as charging a cell phone, ~15Wh. That’s about 15 min of laptop use. Could you make the above image in 15 minutes? And IMO, the heart of a joke is an idea. Execution is secondary. 5170
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Why is that preferable when the creativity lies entirely in the concept and not the execution? Running Photoshop on a laptop for the time necessary to do a decent job would take much more energy than having AI do it. 3190
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I dunno, not an economist and if I were I’m sure it would require a ton of data to estimate the answer. But definitely 1) sellers would raise prices by some amount less than the removed tax 2) that would increase imports and 3) that would lower the equilibrium price paid by consumers. 000
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Aren’t those points a bit contradictory? If the tax were incident on the consumer, lowering it wouldn’t increase revenue of selling in the U.S. so it wouldn’t increase supply. I agree that because of the demand constraint it would increase domestic supply and lower consumer price, but only a bit. 100
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Guard cats are a serious* problem that has nothing to do with furries * okay, not that serious 010
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Galadriel is managing a forest while basically still on parole for war crimes 020
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026“Just”? I had to google it because that would be insane, and indeed the piece you seem to be referring to ran in June. 011
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I mean, I’m all for reducing inequality and if taxes could fund the government and control inflation only by soaking the rich that would be great. But you can’t control prices without reducing demand. Not an economist but looking at consumption curves, I would guess is you need to hit the top ~20%. 100
Reposted by Eli KohlenbergStacey Hauff @staceyhauff.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Even if Amy and Vivek felt the same about the rights of trans Ohioans (they don’t), I’m curious why other policy differences wouldn’t matter. Why their positions on education, Medicaid expansion, free speech (drag show ban!), public benefits, voting rights, and immigration are outside the purview. 1312710
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Yeah, procedurally, I think Google was probably in the wrong to claim she resigned rather than being fired. But fired is what you get when you try to strong-arm your employer. She wanted an academic lifestyle, including tenure, with a Google paycheck, and found out the hard way that doesn’t exist. 140
Reposted by Eli KohlenbergBilly Domineau 🇵🇸 @billydomineau.bsky.social · 11/09/20269/11 is a great day to reread my viral Seinfeld spec and to remember I’m one of the most talented TV writers available to write for your show. I have $225k in student loans and my family is about to pay OOP for my dad’s post-stroke rehab, so you’d better believe I’m gonna give you my best!avclub.comRead This: A darkly comedic Seinfeld spec script set days after 9/11Read This: A darkly comedic Seinfeld spec script set days after 9/11 7255122
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 12/09/2026At least the MMT people acknowledge that under their models raising taxes to control inflation would is critical. (And since to do that those taxes have to substantially reduce consumption, and not just investment, they have to be broad-based.) 1101
Reposted by Eli KohlenbergSasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 12/09/2026We already spend 20% of the budget (and growing!) on interest payments and the median voter has demonstrated that he would send his neighbors to the camps if you promised him it'd reduce inflation by 0.005%. The reserve currency buffer is shrinking. 35611
Reposted by Eli KohlenbergMichael Paulauski♨️ @mike10010100.com · 11/09/2026When normie establishment Dems did this, people interpreted it as a sign that establishment Dems actually just loved Republicans and the outrage/anger they expressed was keyfabe. Can we all recognize the double standard here? 1925054
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026I love this doofus but he’s a lean 56lbs and an only child 010
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026I want a pair of giant dogs so I can name them Gilgamesh and Enkidu. 231
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 08/09/2026The whole thread feels like a bailey without a motte. A very strident tone without any clear factual claims—just semantics and “consider the source” about very serious things reported by very serious people. 011
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Eh, I feel like the difference is the Democratic puppy-killers provide some key votes and the DSA’s do nothing of value at all. 1664
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 04/09/2026It’s not just about wear on the material, though, it’s that the shape of the shoulders, and thus the way the entire jacket hangs, is totally incompatible with backpack straps. Messenger bags also don’t really work, unless carried or worn on one shoulder rather than across the body. 010
Reposted by Eli KohlenbergGlonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹 @snarkranger.bsky.social · 03/09/2026The reason the left needs to embrace this thought is that the only way to pay for Nordic-style social democracy in America is to raise broad-based taxes across the board, and we'll never be able to do that if we operate under an ideological principle that almost everyone in America is poor. 23753112
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 30/08/2026“it is possible to build supply generation within those communities” I wonder if he knows what the D in USAID stands for. 0271
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Right. And real nation building would have been harder and more costly than what we did. But what we did at least kept Kabul and some other areas quite safe and free. Maybe it would have stabilized and spread, or maybe not. But millions were benefiting and now they’re not. 100
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Nor do many of the men, especially those who fought with us because they believed in the future we promised them, and now will not only not see it, but are being systematically punished and often killed for that belief. 000
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026I don’t disagree that Afghanistan was failed by its own people, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a better future. The women and children of Afghanistan do not deserve the utter darkness and suffering that we condemned them too. 200
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Simple utilitarianism can be a powerful framework. The decision to intervene is almost always fraught, especially when a situation is stable, even if it’s awful. In Afghanistan staying was the more predictable course and its costs easy to measure and just not that big. 130
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026It remains insane to me that almost everyone I am closest to politically on everything else can look at Afghanistan today and still defend the withdrawal. Even if we were just delaying the current conditions (and I don’t believe that) every year we delayed it was worth the cost. 160
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026And largely thanks to GWB almost everyone in every country capable of it believes that “serious foreign intervention” is either inherently immoral, wasteful, or both, no matter how horrible the alternative. 180
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026I’m sure an anarchoqueer collective would be very supportive of women in Afghanistan who have to drive past multiple Taliban checkpoints to the nearest hospital that can care for their dying, malnourished infants, but that was never an option for them for a lot of reasons. 000
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Maybe I’m misunderstanding this person but I have to say if you’re posting on bsky your experiences with charity and mutual aid have almost exactly nothing in common with those of the people most harmed by the end of USAID funding. 100
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026FWIW: I don’t think consciousness is likely emergent from a GPU, but I think consciousness likely evolved because it is very useful, and for that reason I think once the technology exists, people trying to make AI useful are likely to make it conscious whether they mean to or not. 010
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026But I’m not sure self-awareness requires emotion—I suspect it doesn’t. Does desire? Less clear. 110
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Yeah, I think the question of whether consciousness is possible—or morally meaningful—without emotion, is very interesting. And I agree emotion likely doesn’t arise in synthetic systems without deliberate choices to inject it. 110
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026However, I think an *actually* self-aware chatbot could do it trivially, with much less computing power. The one faking it is… in some sense the being in the Chinese room. It needs huge books to know how to fake it. The real one doesn’t, it speaks from experience. 100
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Which is basically what we have for Data. Unlike a chatbot, his utterances are consistently consistent with an evolving but persistent internal life and self-awareness. But I think a really huge/powerful chatbot could, theoretically, ape that, without *necessarily* actually being conscious. 110
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026So I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that whatever about the human brain enables subjective experience is possible to recreate synthetically. But it’s hard to know the minimum conditions from that. The Turing Test was more convincing a few years ago, but I think a… very long one might still do it. 120
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Yeah, I start more or less with the cogito and then assume that applies to other people because as a practical matter that seems fairly obvious. I mean, I don’t know that my mind exists, but the illusion is pretty convincing (and like, convincing to.. what?) I’m very much not a dualist, though. 110
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Me neither. We watched the first season and then I decided I wanted hubs to watch all of TNG before we continued but obviously it’s been slow going. I think we’re somewhere in season 5. 120
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026*Hofstadter. Bluesky and iOS keyboard do not get along. 110
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026No, it wouldn’t apply to Data. Data has a completely different anatomy and mechanism than I do; other human beings do not. I am sure the word “soul” comes up in Star Trek in other contexts. It’s a useful shorthand for what we’re speaking about; Douglas Hofstarter used it similarly. 200
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026And they would be right to be less certain of his mind than they are of other humans, because the evidence is in fact significantly weaker. The important question is what you do when a machine tells you it has a mind and you can’t be sure one way or the other. It will happen in our lifetimes. 010
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Yes I am familiar thank you. But the question of whether other humans have minds is a parlor game, because by analogy we can be pretty certain they do. Many people on this website show every day they would not show Data that grace, hologram of Tasha Yar or no. 210
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026The point is not to prove that Data has a soul. There is evidence of it, but it is suggestive evidence, not conclusive. The court concluding as a matter of fact that he does would be hubris, but it would also preclude reckoning with the far more dangerous hubris of assuming he does not. 010
Eli Kohlenberg @ekohlenberg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Whether Data has an internal life is impossible to prove. His friends believe he does, and I believe the writers intended that he does, but they also acknowledge that the characters cannot be certain. But the moral consequences of concluding that he does not and being wrong would be catastrophic. 320
