I just respect everyone and never assume their identity is what I initially (subconsciously?) think. It took a long time to get there, but I just take every person as a person worthy of respect and dignity as my default.

Thanks for this. Time to play around and experiment.

The honest answer is no one knows. The line is subject to change. My opinion is foreign troops threatening Russia.

Hypothetical (I hope for now and forever) If, say, France actually put soldiers in Ukraine Russia would do all sorts of shenanigans short of nuking anyone. If French and Ukrainian troops entered Russia, then we’d see tactical nukes used on Ukrainian soil for certain.

I’m going to tackle this as best as I can. I am not a subject matter expert, but have done enough political science work and worked with both Power Transition Theory and Great Power Theory to at least kick off a discussion. None of what follows is my personal opinion on the war or ideas concerning morality or just wars. This is also very simplified.

-At the moment, the Ukraine War is contained. It is not spreading and, thus, the world powers are not interested in intervening. Even in this case, the amoral state (read Richelieu) has no reason to get involved.

-The war’s continuation, at the moment, does not threaten state survival to anyone outside of Russia and Ukraine. Maybe Belarus? But I view that as a non-issue since they are essentially Russia’s puppet state.

-Internal challenges in nation’s that could intervene will prevent them from doing so. Why? Escalating to “boots on the ground” has one of two effects. One, a surge of nationalism that allows the state to absorb immediate shocks and unifies the population. Two, a complete disruption of legitimacy and systems that could cause the state to collapse. There’s not enough risk to justify the possibility of two happening.

-The western European states have not seen a major ground war in Europe since WW2. Entire generations have no idea what a modern nation-state vs. nation-state war is actually like. Afghanistan or Iraq, where international forces did operate, was very different. Getting into a shooting war directly with another power is a huge risk and huge unknown.

I’m not reading the article but instead trying to be amusing. If it breaks the reality, please put me in a new one with really good scotch, healthy knees, and a spirit of adventure!

I highly recommend you visit your local library and request/check-out a copy of the book Polarization by Nolan McCarty. Read that.

Month later update: This is the route I’ve gone down. I’ve used WSL to get Ollama and WebopenUI to work and started playing around with document analysis using Llama 3. I’m going to try a few other models and see what the same document outputs now. Prompting the model to chat with the documents is…a learning experience, but I’m at the point where I can get it to spit out quotes and provide evidence for it’s interpretation, at least in Llama3. Super fascinating stuff.

I really appreciate all the responses, but I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information and possible starting points. Could I ask you to explain or reference learning content that talks to me like I’m a curious five year old?

ELI 5?

I’m using Claude (subbed) to help me do qualitative coding and summarizing within a very niche academic framework. I was encouraged to try it by an LLM researcher and frankly I’m happy with the results. I am using it as a tool to assist my work, not replace it, and I’m trying to balance the bias and insights of the tool with my own position as a researcher.

On that note, if anyone has any insights or suggestions to improve prompts, tools, or check myself while I tinker, please, tell me.

I respectfully offer that the Better Business Bureau is not a reputable source. They rate companies and charities in the same way Yelp rates businesses. They offer fees for ratings and the complaint process does absolutely nothing. I’ll let you do the google sleuthing on it, but please, do not use them for anything.

Charity Navigator, Candid, and ProPublica offer far better tools for assessing charity. If you’re paywalled from navigating some of the tools provided by Candid or other big entities, you can try your local library as they’ll sometimes have access.

Finally, the “best” charity in my line of work (I research these things) depends on three things:

1. % of contributions spent on administrative overhead
2. % of revenue spent on ED/CEO compensation
3. Measured program effectiveness in the service area

And you should absolutely read what @frog@beehaw.org has contributed. Clear mission/value/goal/program alignment, transparency, and accountability to the public are, generally, praise worthy organizations. Those that do not provide annual reports, 990s, and other important information on their websites are, in my research/experience, generally doing something questionable if not illegal.

I have this unsubstantiated theory but hear me out. I challenge an economist to look into this. Anyways, shareholder focus has replaced capitalism, even late stage capitalism, with something else. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s whatever this subscription milk every penny movement is now built to support. It’s like revenue maximization on steroids, like we must seek revenue maximization while remaining 100% efficient in revenue pursuit.

And it’s killing everything in the way. There’s no give.

Economist, get your nobel prize. What is this phenomena?

Wall-E. Well done.

Ok folks telling me to just get a Linux Distro.

PC Gaming - Enshrouded, Valheim, BG3, Dragon Age: Origins, and No Man’s Sky, generally Steam platform. Classics like Caesar III, TIE Fighter.

Work - Data Analysis, Lots of word documents, spreadsheets

Internet - Light browsing, podcast listening, music streaming

What distro and why?

I got it. “Alexa, you owe me rent for being in my home. Alexa, send me 1500 a month in local currency.”

Somewhere, a Jeff Bezos explodes.

“How much ya gunna pay for what you used to get for free…” Tom Petty, Last DJ. Underrated tune about the demise of free and independent radio and radio DJs.

Not an expert, but would our net neutrality rules that the supreme jerk Ajit Pai helped revoke have been a tool to combat this behavior?

In my role at a Uni, I teach. I learned early on that every class I offer should have a skills workshop. One of them are basic non-phone skills like copying and pasting. Yes. Our youngest generation of college students in non computer sciences struggles with how to understand file structures and keyboard commands like copy and paste because they’ve never seen them before. So let’s stop making technology usefulness a generational thing. It’s exposure and education, which applies to everyone.

I don’t work for Airbus, but they could crush Boeing by taking a profit hit and offering at-cost, financed replacements over the long term for anyone with a MAX. I imagine going that route could be cheaper than grounding all your aircraft or loosing one with all aboard.

I second the PBS documentary suggestion. The documentary is fantastic.

I highly recommend you watch Netflix’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. The hostile takeover by McDonnell-Douglas trashed that company. I try to avoid flying in anything post-takeover that carries a Boeing name.

My administrative law professor, eons ago, worked as a supreme court clerk. Very smart person, very kind, and very neutral on anything political so no one could call him a hack when he shared his professional opinion. He halted class one day when the Max situation came up. He spent 3 hours devoted to his experiences with the FAA Regulatory apparatus, Airbus, and Boeing. He remarked about the redesign of the aircraft, engine placement, stalls, and how generational aircraft are inspected and approved. He went on to explain how Boeing had been, for years (since the hostile take over) been trying to push the boundaries of what was, and was not, an acceptable submission to the FAA for a speedy review as an updated generational aircraft, and was getting away with it. The documentary pretty much lays this out but profit margin, competition with Airbus, and hubris = QA/QC shortcuts as well as cost-savings shortcuts in design.

After all the reports came out, which that documentary I linked does an excellent job of detailing, I look back on that class and thank my lucky stars for the time I spent learning from that man. The 737 Max should have been an entirely new aircraft, with more rigorous scrutiny by regulators. But since it was just an “upgrade” it get away with major structural, software, and hydraulics changes without so much as a glance.

I try not to fly on anything from the post-takeover Boeing, and try to get on an Airbus whenever possible. An extra couple of bucks or a few extra layovers is worth it compared to being an example of why Boeing sucks.