Home » Open thread 4/16/2025

Comments

Open thread 4/16/2025 — 31 Comments

  1. At his speech in Chicago yesterday, Biden started speaking while the walk-on music was still going full blast. Thanks for the laugh, Crooked Joe!

  2. miguel cervantes:

    Identical twins or multiples are usually easy to tell apart if you know them pretty well. There are subtle differences that really aren’t all that subtle if you interact with them quite a bit. Personalities are different. Sometimes there are slight physical differences – moles, height and/or weight etc.. Ways of walking. How much they talk; what they say. But in particular facial expressions are different.

  3. huxley….tone.

    Lol…yeah a holy grail. My solution is set the guitar tone knobs on neutral…I much prefer to use the amp controls. Next I just listen as closely as possible to the original recording to first determine if I should use my Strat or the Les Paul. Next is just experimentation to get what sounds OK to me. Then add in overdrive, or reverb, delay, chorus, flange as needed. I also have a tube amp emulator button that use occasionally for some of those 60s songs.

    No science, just my ear and I’m sure pros would cringe.

  4. Kate:

    Gas turbine engines on jet airplanes have immense suction force and will hoover up all kinds of stuff; people, nuts and bolts, debris, animals, vehicles, that are close enough to the intake. So a routine for runways is the Foreign Object Debris (FOD) control IIRC. In the military they have FOD walks where enlisted personnel walk the runway looking for and removing FOD. It is a routine on aircraft carriers for example.

    FOD is not to be confused with FOAD, F Off And Die , or FAFO F Around and Find Out.

    I’m guessing the plane ingested the bunny on the take off run and immediately circled back for an emergency landing.

    JJ or Old Flyer probably can give a better response if they wish.

  5. @ miguel > thanks for the threadreaderapp of Margot Cleveland’s response to the judge’s “bring him back from El Salvador” order.
    I always love reading her legal analyses.

  6. Looking around the menu at Tablet, I found this interesting article.
    One for the on-going “AI forum” here.
    Keep your on-line dictionary tab open while you read it, if you aren’t well versed in Jewish legal & religious terms.

    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/artificial-intelligence-18th-century-amsterdam
    After discussing the writings of an esteemed Rabbi on the halakhic status of a golem, the author concludes: “In our day, with the arrival of questions generated by modern scientific advances, Hakham Tsevi’s responsum has taken on new relevance. What is the halakhic status of a robot, a clone, or another form of AI? How might the status of a golem bear on matters of reproductive biotechnology or the disposition of human embryos? For ethicists and policymakers alike, Hakham Tsevi’s responsum has become required reading.”

  7. @ miguel > “luttvak has a very unique voice, so does samuels,”

    Thanks for that link. I read it back when it appeared in 2022, but enjoyed reading it again. Luttvak’s personal story is very interesting, of course, and his political thoughts have held up well. Samuels interferes a bit too often for my taste, but the exchange is worth reading.
    That Luttvak was an early “friend” of Putin gives him some insights lacking with other pundits. He also mentioned some events from early in the invasion of Ukraine that I had forgotten.
    And who can complain about this recommendation:
    “The CIA’s assessments that Kabul would resist the Taliban for a long time and that Kyiv would fall in 24 hours are sufficient grounds for emptying out its buildings, fumigating them thoroughly, and restaffing with people who are actually interested in foreign countries and therefore know a language or two really well, and have traveled the world.”

  8. Geez, I browsed Luttwak’s “Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook” (1968) in my college bookstore. It was over my head then. Looks interesting now:
    _____________________________________

    “A coup consists”, as Luttwak describes, “of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.”

    He compares it to a swift transfer of control over a fast-moving machine — the revolutionaries replace the old regime without disrupting the functioning of the bureaucratic system. This ensures that the general population remains unaffected and does not resist the transition. Instead of forcing the coup upon the populace, revolutionaries must persuade them that their rule will improve the country, while simultaneously neutralizing vocal opponents of the coup.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat:_A_Practical_Handbook

  9. Re: ‘Artificial Intelligence’

    Why would you put a clone in that category? They’re a natural intelligence; they’re just people that share an entire genome with another person, and that isn’t anything novel.

    Mind, implementing that identical genome is.

  10. @ huxley – looks like the Left was reading Luttwak’s book as a How-To manual, which I hope was not his intent.

  11. I saw a video of Eric Clapton with a new guitar- brand new, still in the box- and the first thing he did, before he played a note, was he turned the “ tone” knob down to zero.

  12. Years ago I read an interview of Willie Nelson in which he said that he turned his guitar (gut-string with pickup) controls up all the way, and controlled his sound with the amp.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>