Imagine explaining these posts to your grandchildren
“Moooooooom, Gammon is ranting about ‘the glory that might have been’ again!”
Anonymous asked:
Oh yeah, that’s been around for a while.
You want it, don’t you? The feeling of immense power from an engine that could tear the very car apart if pushed hard enough. A feeling of speed unlike anything in the ancestral environment.
Support my Presidential campaign when the time comes.
Anonymous asked:
Technically, this one arrived before the other one, so I think this is actually my first official anonhate.
I don’t have any confetti or anything up here, so you’ll just have to make do with this.
That’s not actually a real anon, by the way. It’s an Official Tumblr™ Plush Anon. The shipping is fucking ludicrous, though.
I was thinking of posting something like ‘Daddy, what was the Statue of Liberty like?’ ‘Oh, it was beautiful and inspiring, but we had to blow it up because the French gave it to us, and the French Third Republic was racist’ ‘I wish I could have seen it’ ‘Wow, you support the French Third Republic, what are you, some kind of Nazi?’
But I know better than to use the word ‘daddy’ on this website
You’re ignoring the 1:5,400,000 timelines where I come to power and her glowing laser eyes gaze endlessly out over the sea, ready to guard the Union with hundreds of megawatts of star-searing power at a moment’s notice.
Everyone likes fast cars, but why is it that when I propose a new class of police “super interceptors” powered by retired attack helicopter turbines as the new primary response to illegal street racing, in order to boost advancement in the automotive industry, I’m the bad guy??
Will those engines even fit in a car?
the Tucker 48 had a piston engine intended for a Bell helicopter, weirdly enough, along with its cyclops central headlight.
More seriously yes, @rocketverliden, it wouldn’t be the first time a helicopter turbine was used in a vehicle. I recall some more recent ones being retrofitted.
A number of popular helicopters are actually twin turbine, so you can take whatever size you thought it was and cut it in half. (If you look up photos of helicopter turbines, you’ll see that they don’t generally fill most of the body of the aircraft. I’m not as sure about attack helicopters, but I don’t think they’re going to be that much bigger.)
A dedicated fast interceptor ground vehicle, assuming it has only a two-seat or one-seat cockpit, then, should have enough room for an attack helicopter turbine as its primary engine.
This is, of course, a ludicrous proposition. If a run of 100 or more is to be produced, the turbine engine should be chosen for its desired engineering characteristics rather than purely for symbolism by refurbishing ones from attack helicopters.
as Minister for Buzzkill I’m fine with arresting everyone at a Nazi torch rally and chucking ‘em in the drunk tank overnight for disturbing the peace, which seems eminently justifiable.
There may be a position for you in my new government after all, Argumate.
I was thinking of posting something like ‘Daddy, what was the Statue of Liberty like?’ ‘Oh, it was beautiful and inspiring, but we had to blow it up because the French gave it to us, and the French Third Republic was racist’ ‘I wish I could have seen it’ ‘Wow, you support the French Third Republic, what are you, some kind of Nazi?’
But I know better than to use the word ‘daddy’ on this website
You’re ignoring the 1:5,400,000 timelines where I come to power and her glowing laser eyes gaze endlessly out over the sea, ready to guard the Union with hundreds of megawatts of star-searing power at a moment’s notice.
Dammit if you aren’t an obvious supervillain, but I’ll be damned if I don’t want to vote for you anyway. I would definitely support any candidate whose slogan was “Put lasers in Lady Liberty”.
I guess I just love grandiose symbols. (Please tell me you’d also upgrade Mount Rushmore. And build some monument to humanity’s might on the moon.)
While other parties believe in vague rhetoric like “Making America Great Again” and “bringing harmony to our divided nation”, the National Technocratic Party believes in specific, measurable, achievable policy goals, such as those outlined in our Enhanced Civil Defense Plan for the Weaponization of National Monuments, our whitepapers on lunar war, and in the 2028 Prediction Budget produced by the Central Committee.
In case you haven’t noticed recently, democracy has major issues. Every major developed state is strewn with dysfunction and programs that are actively at odds with their intended purposes. Our politicians are either incompetent idiots or shrewd operators working against our interests.
Policies routinely have reasonable stated values, but terrible efficacy.
Organizations such as the RAND Corporation knew the Iraq War would be a lot tougher than the Bush administration said it would be. Policy plans coming out of think tanks seem to be better than the actual policies we get.
If we didn’t know they’d immediately get subverted, we’d almost be better off with think tanks running the country.
Better results are necessarily different results, and systems produce the outcomes they incentivize, so to change the results it is necessary to change the system.
The truth is, it may be possible to get something like think tanks in charge of the government, a hybrid between them and political parties, but we will have to add selection pressure to ensure they work towards correctness.
I propose a new legislature, composed of a new kind of corporate entity, the Delegate Candidate Organization (DCO).
Every three years, at election time, each voter delegates their vote to a DCO. The top 50 Delegate Candidate Organizations then form the legislature, becoming that term’s Delegate Organizations. This legislature is known as the National Delegation.
In a second election, those DCOs that did not make the cut delegate their votes to members of the top 50.
(In an optional alternative, the vote could be split between DCOs by categories by voters, allowing a truly innovative level of representation. Bills would have to pass on all categories to pass, and the tax category would determine how funding is obtained, but not total expenditures. Sadly, this is probably too complex for typical voters.)
A Delegate Candidate Organization receives its funding exclusively from the State. For each delegated vote it receives, the DCO receives $5 in annual funding, and an additional $5 times its percentile standing in a legislative outcome prediction market.
(That might sound like a lot. America has around 300 million people, so you could potentially be looking at three billion dollars. I would answer that the 2016 Presidential election cost $2.6 billion by itself, and that money had to come from somewhere and is already influencing our political process. The size of the US economy is $18,570 billion dollars. The real question is whether better policy by the DCOs could improve that by 0.016% or more, which would make the National Delegation pay for itself. I believe that it would.)
The key factor that makes DCOs behave more like think tanks is that a significant chunk of their funding depends on correctly estimating the outcomes of legislation. What keeps them honest? First, competition with other DCOs that will pressure them against spoiling the metrics. Second, voters.
When a piece of legislation is to be passed, DCOs make predictions on outcomes and bet on them in a virtual currency called Credibility Score (or just “Cred”). Each outcome must be represented by a basket of multiple metrics, to prevent min-maxing.
This structure allows us to build a differentiation between a policy’s values and its efficacy. Previous discourse has often viewed policy as solely a matter of efficacy, but of course in practice people have different preferences and are not a unified mass just waiting for enlightenment into [your political ideology]. Preserving the values component (in part through voting) also allows bits of efficacy that have slipped through to be represented on the other side of the equation.
The bets serve two purposes. The first is to reward policymakers that are actively effective at achieving their stated objectives, and punish policymakers that are too unaligned with reality. The second is to effectively tell voters what the plans will actually do, not just wishy washy language pols want people to hear.
“This bill will reduce gun crime.”
“By how much?”
“Uh… a, uh, lot.”
Not only can the DCO specify what its % estimate for a decrease in gun crime is, but it can also communicate its level of certainty - by how much it bets on the outcome as a percentage of its current Cred reserves, data that can be mined by political scientists and journalists.
DCOs must be able to amend predictions when new legislation is passed. A court will also be required to punish those who tamper with metrics, and resolve other disputes. The details of that are a challenge in themselves, but should be feasible to work out.
Each DO has as many votes in the legislature as have been delegated to it. A majority is required to pass legislation.
The accumulated Credibility Score/Cred across all bets is used to determine the percentile standing of all DCOs, used to determine funding (as above). Percentile standing is listed on the ballot next to the DCO’s name, but to simplify things for voters, DCOs are listed in the order of votes received in the previous election.
Practical experiments will be necessary to assess the viability of this model, but I have high hopes for it. If we want to advance as a civilization, then we must develop new organizational technologies.
For those who haven’t been reading my blog long enough to know this:
One of my goals is to invent a new form of Nationalism, adapted to the 21st century, powered by new organizational and information technologies.
Not a racial nationalism, nor what people have in mind with an ethnic one, but a kind of National Technocracy, where the nation is ruled effectively by true experts - not merely the credentialed - for the benefit of its citizens, selected through new forms of republic or democracy.
This is unrealistic, I admit, but then so was the last election, and I can feel how the Overton Window has opened up, and maybe some fragment of it will fall to Earth and improve something, somewhere.
Anonymous asked:
“Very intellectual”
Heh.
Could someone start a knock-off of Singapore’s People’s Action Party and get any seats for it?
Not under the current electoral system in America, though we see elements, bits and pieces can sometimes get through, such as Maine adopting a kind of preference voting for the governor’s seat.
The polarization into two parties is the natural state of the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all electoral system - you want exactly 51% of the vote in order to have the minimum amount of compromise. This creates a lot of dumb politics.
There is, after all, no place for me in the Republican Party, nor in the Democratic Party.
However, while a unified party powerful enough to take power may not emerge, some ideas, elements, and legislative reforms could get through. And if there are subtle changes to the system, then a more unified platform could become viable.
Some of these elements which escape to be adopted by others may be ideological in nature. Some of my posts on Nationalism have caused some local Rationalists to scratch their heads, wondering “wait, why isn’t that the argument actual American nationalists, in the form of the GOP, actually make?” Or otherwise they simply have never been exposed to an argument for Nationalism that is more than performative flag-waving, by the kind of person who believes that nations are both real and fake at the same time, that can see them as constructs, but still considers them desirable. Also, many may not have been exposed to the idea that open borders may be a pathway to an incompetent yet oppressive world government (gradually, over time).
Likewise, in constructing a kind of Social Centrism, most people do not currently have access to arguments against the most liberal positions (on e.g., polygamy) that are rooted in secular considerations and which also take in mind future developments (e.g., Transhumanism).
There is a question - when GOP members exit their current ideological basis, what will they exit to?
By making these arguments, which then are shared, I create a more defensible ideological position of retreat other than just crossing over entirely to the other side.
The ideal body for my politics right now, given conditions, would be a think tank that could conduct research and produce ready-to-sign legislation along pathways that the existing political parties are not currently setup to defend against (insufficient pre-built memetic barriers - battles they don’t even realize they are or will be fighting). This does not require a mass movement, but rather a fairly good-sized chunk of funding and a core of intelligent and motivated contributors.
On a more mass basis, once a more clear ideology is produced, I think it can be simplified in a way that is more easily communicated…
…though that may still have issues generating sufficient excitement.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
