Claude's 4.5 Sonnet solves the sychophancy problem... but it goes so far in the other direction by being unduly and personally critical of the user that it's now useless. It's interesting how there's a balancing act involved in LLM personalities.

https://t.co/CIYsmXu7S7

... that's a victory for Socialists over Centrists in a blue city. It's not a bellwether for the midterms next year.

At this point in 2009, you could tell the Tea Party was quickening. In 2017, the Democrats won in Alabama, and in 2021, the Republicans in Virginia. The reaction was underway. I don't get that feeling from the Democrats now. Zohran Mamdani will probably win in NYC, but...

I have no idea how the midterms will go next year. It's the natural rhythm of things for the opposition party to win the midterms in reaction to the president's failings. But Democrats aren't garnering much enthusiasm, and redistricting could nullify whatever gains they make.

Completely intuitive. I think Trump has burned through the moderate and tentative support he won a year ago. But the Democrats haven't done anything to win support this year. The divisions between their Centrist and Socialist factions is stark and their outreach is muted.

Didn't Halo 1 get remade like 10 or 15 years ago?

Oh, and by the way! You don't need to love what I'm saying. But if you want a sense of where the popular antipathy against Muslims from certain fractions of the American public came from, 9/11 itself accounted for surprisingly little.

It's easy to look at Al-Qaeda and dismiss them as a small band of lunatics who aren't representative of a greater opinion. But after you hear enough hemming and hawing about whether 9/11 and more suicide bombings are justified because someone lost their house in Jaffa in 1948...

Most of the American popular antipathy to Muslims after 9/11 didn't come from 9/11 itself, but from how vocal some Muslims were about their very mixed feelings about 9/11, defense of Palestinian suicide bombings, how they were the biggest victims, etc.

I'm getting replies and retweets calling Europe an American colony or vassal, so China shouldn't try to flip them. The next time I play Diplomacy, can I invite you guys over? I enjoy a good challenge but sometimes it's fun to mess around on Easy Mode.

It's bizarre to me how there's so little discussion about this, practically no buildup or anticipation. You can blame Bush for Iraq, but he got congressional approval and the nation had been discussing it for roughly a year before the invasion.

You can tell that God loves America because he put Xi Jinping in charge of China. Trump and Vance did everything they could to dissolve transatlantic ties this year, but Xi has seen the $20 lying on the ground and thinks he's a genius for not picking it up.

No, you're not going to get ill because you're wearing shoes indoors. Zohran Mamdani isn't going to get sick because he put a wrapped burrito on a metro seat or eats rich with his fingers. Just say it's not aesthetic and that's important enough to you to be the end of the matter

"This is unclean and it needs to change" isn't part of the Americans way of thinking anymore. The lack of cleanliness has to be a sign something is dangerous or harmful. Only then can you demand change and can that be the end of the matter.

I went to SF recently. What stood out was that a couple of friends of mine, who used to be liberal but became RW, were making alarmed remarks about the city when I said I was there. And yet, it wasn't dangerous. I never felt fear. Disgust, yes, but that's different.

"Clean your room." "But it's not dangerous or unhealthy!"

I mean, cities like San Francisco and Seattle aren't terribly dangerous. I think what people don't like is seeing insane people ODing, filthy streets, shoplifting, etc. But nowadays, there's not much of a vocabulary for a place being "unclean," so they say it's dangerous.

Cities are the enemies of fertility. Lower global TFRs come from urbanization. If you consider the birth collapse a problem, encourage non-urban existence.

@Steve_Sailer The serial killer in this story is a mtf trans of sorts.