To Imane, pt 44

A funny thing happened today. I was watching a bunch of videos when my Internet stopped working. The wireless router was blinking red. I went to make cookies, and the router's light was still red whenever I checked it, but around the time I was done, this happened:

misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$  !pi
 ping google.com
ping: google.com: Name or service not known
misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$   !pi
  ping google.com
^C
misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$  !Pi
bash: !Pi: event not found
misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$  !pi
 ping google.com
^C
misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$  tracepath google.com
 1?: [LOCALHOST]                      pmtu 1500
 1:  _gateway                                              2.077ms
 1:  _gateway                                              1.595ms
 2:  ^C
misaki@dawn:/dev/shm$  tracepath 1.1.1.1
 1?: [LOCALHOST]                      pmtu 1500
 1:  _gateway                                              3.168ms
 1:  _gateway                                             99.120ms
 2:  <redacted>                                         3.230ms
 3:  10.4.20.1                                             3.614ms
 4:  no reply
 5:  100ge0-35.core1.las1.he.net                          14.382ms
 6:  206.71.8.11                                          15.338ms asymm  7
 7:  no reply
 8:  no reply
^C

It started working again. But I had neglected to check the router's light before doing this. I don't know if it started working immediately after I tried to ping google.com, or if it was already working at that point and just being slow for some reason.

This is like when Sherine sent me an angry message on Chirp Club, but her account was protected, so I didn't see the message until someone reminded her and she unprotected her account. Trying to communicate with someone by making their Internet stop working would be an unreliable form of communication, as it could be a random event from an unrelated cause.

In movies, people almost never have to repeat what they said because someone did not hear, or did not understand someone's meaning, even when the actual audience needs subtitles due to low voice volume or poor (aka natural, or non-trained) enunciation. In real life, it's natural to have communication problems.

Greta said that we need to talk about Cuba.

The first oil tanker that was seized was using a false flag. (via 2026 Cuban crisis, [...]#Summary of seizures of oil tankers) It seems that others were not: they were just "sanctioned". The US will probably release them, since other countries can act like the US isn't doing anything wrong as long as this happens, but in the meantime the vessels are not working, the crew still has to be paid, etc. and if it means taking on Venezuelan crude oil is 20% less profitable than other jobs, it could lead to a 100% reduction of exports from Venezuela to Cuba.

Similarly to the US threatening Mexico with tariffs if it helps Cuba: decrease the profitability of the route and it can be shut down completely.

So this is definitely bullying. I don't really care. This is like the bullet vs sunlight energy analogy: Cuba having to use less oil now is like every other country, in probably less than 100 years. ("estimates suggest that at current consumption rates, conventional oil reserves could last between 27 and 50 years": AI summarizing HowStuffWorks) I would ask what the streets of Cuba look like, whether they are filled with vehicles, but it doesn't really matter: the streets of the US are filled with vehicles. Cities like Los Angeles have a reputation for bad traffic, which by definition is a lot of vehicles. When it's freeways, a lot of it is people driving to work: habitual use of a lot of fuel.

I wrote a thing about this to Giggly aka Madison, like how if no one else has a car then having a car lets you do special things, but if everyone has one, then everything is basically as it was before cars, except that instead of walking for X minutes, you have to drive for X minutes which uses extra energy.

Northern Korea is probably the leader in "getting used to not having fossil fuels", since they actually turn off city lights at night (or maybe just don't have streetlights), something that probably no other country does.

A hashtag or description I've noticed on Douyin: "an old song but danced in a new way". Why can't people do old dances? (An exception, but it's part of a live full performance and most short-form dances don't have a long version.) Because people see that change is necessary. Purposeful changes to improve society, as with China's rise in purchasing power parity GDP per capita from $1k in 1990 to $27k in 2024 (compared to the world, which I clicked on by accident, rising from $5.6k to $26k in the same timeframe), and changes in adaption to influences like global warming, resource depletion, war, or a large decline in literacy due to technology, which people do not wish for but if ignored can be disastrous.

A reporter once asked someone if he created Bitcoin. His reply was that "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people," though he later claimed this was a misunderstanding. "It" is Bitcoin being estimated to use 204 TWh per year in 2026 or 23 GW, or the mechanical power output of 122 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, or enough power to vaporize a cubic km of 10°C water in just 1228 days or raise a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in 1 Earth gravity at a rate of 24 m/s, about equal to the rate of climb of the most-produced fighter aircraft models in WWII like the P-38 Lightning, Il-2, and Bf 109.

Greta says at 1:30 in her video, "When liberation movements were fighting for independence from colonial rule across Africa".

I don't know much specifics. Search for "cuba involvement in african war" gives the Cuban intervention in Angola on Wikipedia and a featured snippet from Cuba’s Role in Angola Changed the Course of African History.

People might have different opinions about that war. Maybe people in Angola really appreciate Cuba and think positively of it.

But people in Vietnam also think positively of the US, despite the US fighting on the losing side.

I honestly don't know much about Puerto Rico. The line from A Chorus Line's Nothing, that originally refers to San Juan, which Lea Salonga changed to Manila in this performance. But I do know they don't vote in US elections or pay income taxes despite being US citizens, and maybe it's like a colony that the US never lost. In an alternate history, maybe there was a bloody war for the independence of Puerto Rico that resulted in a million dead or injured, just like Angola.

You know the quote from Machiavelli, which I hope to prove wrong, but it begins,

It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise.

I mention this also because of Greta reposting a video about the Balochistan conflict, which is also driven by a desire for independence.

Maybe I even created a survey about this, near the start of the Ukraine conflict. Basically, countries don't start out with everyone who wants to be in a new, different country all situated in the same area. There's at least some degree of mixing. In Iraq, the sectarian conflict led to people moving to different neighborhoods, I think; there was never any plan to actually make two countries (or three, with the Kurds) out of Iraq, but the conflict did create or exaggerate physical differences in clustering that weren't there before the invasion.

So, if Balochistan did become a new country, like South Sudan did through a referendum (one difference being that support for independence is much lower in Balochistan than it was in South Sudan, lower even than Quebec), what about all the people who currently live in that area who don't want to be a part of that country? At some point, people just have to get along with each other. This is why Russia avoided fighting with Ukraine for eight long years.

Greta ended by saying, "The people in power do not act unless we compel them to."

The poll that Greta did not make:

Poll: You, as one human, are X% of the population who has Y% of the income or wealth. How responsible are you for the problems you see in the world and society?
Less than X% and Y%
Between X% and Y%
More than X% and Y%

"unrelated to Greta posting on Instagram, the video "How Your Parents Ruined Driving" which I didn't watch made me think up a poll. If Reddit polls were working I think I would have posted it myself. Instead, I am trying to get someone else to make it as a poll, and I think Pokimane would not post it, but I don't want to make another weblog post. So I am suggesting that Greta make this poll, which came from thinking about how people don't want to acknowledge their responsibility for shared problems like the vehicle size arms race, and would tend to just blame rich people for all problems"

Another, unrelated poll:

Hypothetical situation or poll:
You wake up in a room with two doors. If you leave through the left door, everyone of your gender except you, age 10~50, becomes 20% uglier. Right door, they become 20% more attractive. The genie also gives you $1m because it heard that you're poor.

And more polls which I may or may not have posted here before:

Poll: Does a neutron star make mistakes?
(Being human = dealing with mistakes and trying to mitigate them)

Poll: "Is it bad for law enforcement to engage in law enforcement?"

Poll: Which of these statements is more accurate?
The Earth is huge
The Earth is tiny

Poll: Which would you rather live in? A world in which falling in love with someone increases the chance you will hurt them; a world in which falling in love with someone decreases the chance you will hurt them

Poll: Is there a widely-known method that developing countries can use to prevent wealth from accumulating to a small number of people, without heavy taxes on capitalists or making capitalism illegal?

Poll: "Would it be bad if everyone who can only do tasks that 3 billion other people can also do made enough money to support themselves and another person?"

Poll: "Is there proof that bad people go unpunished?"

Topic: https://old.reddit.com/r/SeriousConversation/comments/1j41a4e/how_do_atheists_accept_the_idea_that_bad_people/

"Why does it matter if bad people go unpunished if I am not one of those bad people and I don't know anyone who is?" Reasoning: "if bad people weren't punished, I would be bad." Basis for reasoning: lack of awareness of the knowledge or performance penalties for being bad, aka 'conscience'. Reason for lack of awareness: maybe never done something bad, and suffered the consequence of remembering the bad thing.

Example: forcefully taking my older sister's tricyle, and not feeling happy for having taken it and used it, when I was like 5 years old or something.

Secondary reasoning: "it is important not to be stupid, or not to make stupid choices. If being bad is rewarded, then being good is stupid. It is important for the choice of being good to be a smart choice, even if it relies on belief and it can't be proven to be the smart choice." What I said to my oldest sister in 2012, that religion allows people to think that they are being selfish.

Poll: "Do you think a typical person in your country benefits more from thinking that committing a crime is likely to lead to punishment, or thinking that it won't lead to punishment?"

Poll: "Do you think a typical person in your country benefits more from thinking that committing a serious crime is likely to lead to punishment, or thinking it won't?"

Poll: "How many people per year being scammed out of $30k would it take for scams to become a national conversation?" 1000, 20k, 100k, 500k, 2m, 10m, 50m

I had sort of also wanted to link this video, comparing the actions of these lions to the US's bullying of Venezuela and Cuba: [9.3m views, 10 Mar 2026, ending with cubs lined up]Older lion cubs teach "kids" not to bite Dad - YouTube 

I like how all three of the young cubs line up, one behind the other, at one point in the video. For some reason, it was where the 2nd and 3rd cubs wanted to position themselves.

Greta's video is about an unimportant problem. It may seem like leaders like the US's president, or the leaders of the nuclear weapons states of western Europe which are friendly with the US, are doing a harmful thing, but it is not that harmful for people to be reminded of their unhealthy addiction to fossil fuels. On other important issues, leaders are neither being harmful nor helpful, because they don't know what to do. The responses to these polls would make that clear. Greta herself is a leader, and she is not doing anything to fix important problems, either.

At 00:00 GMT (coincidentally, as I didn't check the time before doing so), I did a Google search for, "Without criticizing the story Greta posted or reposted about Cuba, if Greta posts any Stories on Instagram in the next 72 hours, it means Imane doesn't like me". This was before my Internet stopped working for a while. I have, quite clearly, criticized the video that Greta made (which had not yet showed up on Picuki even though the 1-minute Story of the first minute of the video was visible), but this was sort of just as something to say along with the fact that I didn't check the status light on my router.

To Imane, pt 43

I'm writing because one of the Stories visible on Greta's Instagram account via Picuki is about the war in Sudan. I will decide later who I am writing to.

As far as I can tell, from the Wikipedia articles "2019 Sudanese coup d'état", "Khartoum massacre", "Next Sudanese general election", and "2021 Sudanese coup d'état", people are fighting because they want power and cannot agree who should have power.

This might sound like it's the reason for a lot of fighting, but notably, this explanation does not touch on any specific issues that people disagree on, other than "who should be in power".

Poll: A conflict in which 1000 people die is more similar to which of the following?
An Internet argument between two people who hurl insults at each other
A war where 2 million civilians and 500k soldiers die


12 Mar 2026
Poll: Why is there fighting between Russia and Ukraine?
- Because the Russian government is bad
- Another reason

(Attempted escape of president of Sudan with $7m in cash-filled suitcases)
Poll: If your current wealth and yearly income tripled, do you think you would act in a more moral way or less moral way?

(disagreements about power that led to Khartoum massacre)
Poll: What is the greatest amount of governmental corruption that you think would be still be better than an ongoing war? 1% to 100%

Poll: Teleportation booths are invented that can be used only by people, not cargo, to instantly teleport to any other booth at no cost (but immigration laws are still enforced). Any factory can employ anyone, if laws allow it. Would this reduce or increase global unemployment?

The last poll is about how you would fix the situation in Sudan. I don't know why the economy got worse, prompting the 2019 revolution. FRED has Gross Domestic Product Per Capita for Sudan, but this uses the exchange rate. So a lot of the drop around 2018 is from the currency exchange rate dropping from 0.15 to 0.02. World Bank has PPP GDP per capita, and it's only a small drop before 2019, when the revolution happened.

Wikipedia for Sudanese pound mentions oil.

Since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan has suffered from a scarcity of foreign exchange for the loss of three-quarters of its oil resources and 80% of foreign exchange resources.

2011 South Sudanese independence referendum:

Minister of Petroleum Mr. Deng said he fears that an immediate budget cut for the north would ignite a war. "In order to avoid conflict, we could look to a phase-out arrangement whereby you provide the north some [oil] until they get an alternative". The pipeline to export southern oil currently cuts through the north, and the south has not begun construction on a pipeline that would avoid that route.

It does have an official exchange rate. So people were upset when foreign imports became more expensive, after the change in official exchange rate.

I don't know how much of the government budget came from oil, and not checking. The second FRED data series that has recent (post-2010) data was Youth Unemployment Rate for the Sudan. Low unemployment seems like it should be good? And maybe it was, until the fighting started?

Transport costs are a barrier to trade. It's supposedly cheap to transport things by sea, seen in things like what percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of food is from sea transport, vs 'last mile' of people driving to the store. (Of course if I ever go to the store, I walk, which is less efficient and slower than a bike.) A search for "what percentage of transportation costs to reach the midwest in the us from china are sea transport?" did not give an AI answer, but it did give a somewhat relevant chart, Logistics Costs, United States, 1980-2024. Shows that the US had $730 billion in inventory carrying costs, $1670 billion in transportation costs, and $180 billion in administrative costs.

If everyone in the US was poor, the administrative costs would be lower, but the cost of fuel would be the same. The vehicles might be cheaper, but maybe not much cheaper. Repairs could be cheaper, but a new vehicle would cost the same no matter which country buys it. This is $4800 in transportation costs for each person in the US; Sudan's per-capita GDP was $1k in in 2024.

So if people in Sudan could teleport to factories in China that are close to the ocean, their potential to be employed if everyone in the world worked less would be higher than in the current world. (The potential for them to be employed might decrease if everyone else in the world could also teleport to those factories, though.)

Ok kind of funny that I didn't know about Stories until a day or two ago, and a search result for "instagram stories" says that "Stories is one of the most used parts of Instagram". Now I know.

To Imane, pt 42

Occupatio, according to Enclycopædia Dramatica:

The word refers to a rhetoric technique in a debate or trial whereby the speaker would predict his opponent's behavior/argument before they'd made it. This prevented their opponent from pursuing that line of action. If they do pursue that line of action, then they seem like the mindless puppets of the original speaker.

[...]

If Secunda responds, she proves that she's nothing more than Prima's lol-cow. If she doesn't respond, then Prima has succeeded in silencing Secunda and her stupid argument.

First Google Images result for "iran bomb picture un" (following "iran bomb", "iran bomb un" (12th), "iran bomb image un" (3rd)):

https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/27/world/new-york-unga

The Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea:

DPRK's graphite-moderated 5MWe nuclear reactor, and the 50 MWe and 200 MWe reactors under construction, which could easily produce weapons grade plutonium, would be replaced with two 1000MW light water reactors (LWR) power plants by a target date of 2003.

[...]

On May 31, 2006, KEDO decided to terminate the LWR construction project.

1990s North Korean famine

Panmunjom axe atrocities incident

First Wikipedia search result for "israel lebanon cut observation tree shot":

2010 Israel–Lebanon border clash

First Google Search result for "iran bomb picture un":

Iranian official posts image that appears to depict a nuclear strike on Israel

Mehdi Mohammadi, a strategic adviser to Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote,

“That story was posted by the admin of my page and was deleted a few minutes later. I personally do not believe that developing nuclear weapons would enhance Iran’s deterrence. At the very least, it’s an extremely complex issue."

"Just as possessing nuclear weapons hasn’t prevented Israel from receiving heavy blows, or enabled Ukraine to strike Russia decisively, the military utility of nuclear arms is far more limited than most people imagine.”

Iran–Israel war, rebranded the Twelve-Day War (approximately 455 times as long as the shortest war) due to the current war, casualties section:

Israel, 32 civilians and 1 off-duty soldier killed. Iran, 1,190 killed (436 civilians, 435 military personnel, and 319 unidentified).

Unless people make the move to declaring the winner of a war to be the side that killed fewer children, it makes sense to say that Israel won this conflict, with Iran having at least 435 times the military casualties. It does not seem like Israel received any heavy blows, despite what the Iranian public and low-level officials might believe.

A Russian comment on the video, Questing in Classic #worldofwarcraft:

Когда я слышу эти звуки игры,музыкальную тему степей,меня захлёстывает ностальгия, хочется плакать по ушедшему времени (

When I hear these sounds of the game, the musical theme of the steppes, I am overwhelmed with nostalgia, I want to cry for the past (

(The "(" is a sad face emoticon)

Film: War of Internet Addiction, images of players being turned into images of game characters

First result for https://www.google.com/search?q=polzie+pvp+2+original+audio is on the Russian social networking site VK.

Russian people watching a video with English songs and overlay text, made by a French person playing the game with French game text.

The ending of The Last Ovski ! (2005) by Gegon, from around 18:09.

Why all of this? Because of the letter Z. Used by the Russian military during the start of the fighting in Ukraine, painted on vehicles by low-ranking soldiers without any orders to do so. The last letter of the alphabet, according to two search engines, and used symbolically in works like Reality Z (2020) and World War Z (2013). It was supposed to be the last war.

To Pokimane, pt 41

This post is because I watched a video of Pey's, HELLO HAPPEY FRIYAY! :D from 10 Jan which will be deleted in a day or two, and near the end someone gifted 20 subs after asking if Pey would help the viewer learn to play World of Warcraft if he gifted subs. I think she didn't acknowledge the message before he gifted the subs as she was busy talking, but the end result was that the viewer was not helped. I wanted to try to help him, but I cannot do whispers on Twitch due to lack of a phone number. This person has done some streams, but if they did not, I would have no way to contact them, instead of just a chance of contacting them.

The person, Xiaoyu, whose Douyin accounts I linked in the previous post seems to have deleted all the videos on her secondary account. The message I got when trying to view those videos on a tab that I had open was, "该视频已被删除" "The video has been deleted."

I have seen some headlines or video titles about Israel getting attacked by more countries. I know it's fighting with Lebanon now; I don't know if that means Lebanon's official military or what. I don't know what countries other than Lebanon and Iran might be fighting with Israel right now, but what I know suggests that other countries decided to help Iran because of a shared religion, despite the slogan used in Iran, Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran.

So I'm making this about religion. Noting that person who controlled the Chirp Club account @fancyfenty before it was deleted is Muslim, based on comments she made about haram and so on, and that Turkey/Türkiye as a NATO member that stores "approximately 20 United States B61 nuclear bombs at the Incirlik Air Base" is probably not fighting with Israel despite being 99.8% Muslim.

If you don't share the idea now, it means you think Islam is dumb and that Islamic countries deserve to be viewed as worse than other countries.

To Pokimane, pt 40

Info:

https://www.google.com/search?q=china+salty+fish+slacker+explained

https://x.com/tiff_ilosophy/status/1946519461034688627

https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/06/stop-trying-to-make-lying-flat-happen/

https://www.reddit.com/r/noveltranslations/comments/nj41el/anyone_know_the_meaning_of_salted_fish/

https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/04/china-spiritual-capitalists/

User with Douyin ID @79230039490 changed her display name from "肉肉丸" to "·摆烂小鱼", which Google translates as "Slacking off Little Fish" or "Sluggish Little Fish". The name on her second account @xiao.ru.888 went from "咪咪爱发癫" to "*鱼酱", even though she only uploaded one video in the past month.

I think it's fair to say that glasses usually make someone look less attractive. (Pey was happy when she got laser eye surgery and no longer had to wear glasses; I am just making an objective statement about appearances.) And yet she wears glasses in all of her videos, doesn't use a lot of image warping, doesn't use zooms or algorithm optimization tricks like blurring the start of the video, and leaves a lot of empty space above her head. In short, the 'slacking little fish' label seems accurate.

To be honest, the third explanatory link made me think about my motivations. It showed a male sprawled on a couch, who compared to the male leads in Chinese dramas did not look attractive. This idea is about working less, so it makes sense to try to associate working less, or slacking off, with attractive people.

The lighting her videos makes me want to work on the MMD shader that I haven't made because I'm concerned that me doing so could act as a reason for someone to delay sharing the idea. It's basically the same in all of her videos but more obvious with some outfits, like this one (another dance with same outfit). The light that illuminates her also shines through a window onto a bright floor, which isn't visible and which would look bad if it were visible. This makes surfaces that point towards the floor much brighter than in other directions.

People are more likely to change their name if they think they aren't important; maybe her name actually sounds like 'little fish'. (Apparently the character in A Dream Within A Dream is literally named 'little fish'.) And maybe she works hard in the job that earns money, but making and posting Douyin videos is her way of slacking off.

Apart from A Dream Within A Dream, other dramas have female leads with a 'slacking off' attitude. When Destiny Brings the Demon was translated on Viki by the Salted Fish Team. I think the female lead in Back From the Brink has a 'slacker' personality; also, I think I did not recognize her as the female lead in Legend of the Female General, despite watching like eight episodes of it and all of Everyone Loves Me, where she also starred. Showing how good she is as an actor to become a character with a completely different personality.

Notably, both A Dream Within A Dream and When Destiny Brings the Demon are 'transmigration' stories, featuring someone from modern times and modern work culture. (I guess the female lead in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy also sort of fits this pattern, as she 'slacks off' by thinking about or reading novels, but she doesn't really demonstrate this tendency within the story. Instead she gets her father within the story to do lots of exercise, to the point where he runs away to escape.) I can't much more about them because I haven't finished any of these three dramas, but the characters must have been written and acted with this type of personality because of viewers who identify with it.

It isn't the only personality type in dramas, for modern characters who are transmigrated into a story. Fateful Love features a female lead (who also appears in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy and A Dream Within A Dream) who is an elite military operator, far from any 'slacker' stereotype. In A Dream Within A Dream, the female lead dies many times in the first episode (and in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy, the female lead dies so many times she almost stops caring), but in the donghua How Dare You, the transmigrated female lead is very afraid of the possibility of dying (Ep04) and works hard to achieve a good outcome within the story.

Maybe I only started emailing you in December because you had said and done some controversial things. And based on events, like Greta not posting anything on Instagram since 18 Feb, I can't rule out the whole 'government conspiracy' thing, and the possibility that your actions could have been influenced by my emails to other people, that mentioned you.

So maybe you might feel guilty. "A lie is justified if one does not benefit".

—luckily, I remembered what I was going to say, after spending way too much time looking up dramas. You know how the explanation of inequality, which I hope you read, compared people to children? That was deliberate; like Sergeant Lim comparing the soldiers to drew cartoons in the daily logbook to little children who kill insects without feeling guilty. ("Naharnet is the first independent Lebanese Digital Media providing real-time news and information in English and Arabic about Lebanon, the Middle East and the World.")

This isn't to say that young people never do terrible things. In Till the End of the Moon, the main male character is bullied at a young age by other young males. In the first episode of Lost You Forever, the main male character is bullied by other young males after his parents die, until he is defended by the main female character.

I didn't spend time planning this post out. It was supposed to take just a couple minutes, link a few things and say something brief. Maybe you did know that I mentioned you in emails. Maybe I wouldn't have tried to email you if you hadn't bought yourself the ring or said that you missed when streaming was about playing games, which let me know that you hadn't recently died.

Something about how you're probably the most-followed female English-language streamer, but most people still haven't heard of you. Like in the World of Warcraft stream where you speculated that someone you knew in high school who has a cool name didn't know that you streamed. Today I encountered a Douyin video from a few months ago with 28 million likes, almost as much as Gangnam Style which has 31m likes, and I had never encountered the creator before.

Other than to mention the slacker little fishes of the world, this post is to say that I will think of you as someone who does not feel guilty. If your actions do result from feeling guilty, then I will misunderstand them and attribute your motivations to something else.

(It took three hours to write this post)

To Pokimane, pt 39

Knowledge specialization: yesterday, I came across a video (title "The Big Bang has a Big Problem", thumbnail "Where is all the lithium?"), and rather than watch the video I checked Wikipedia for "Lithium problem". It has a chart. I spent a minute trying to understand the chart with its helpful description, and could not. Someone wrote the description with the intention that people would gain some understanding of a complex topic, that relies on calculations that are well beyond the scope of the article.

A comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Hg0LIKKn8&lc=UgzSX7UmFkZPrA1yqd94AaABAg

The video, "Deepwater Crew Arrives (Mark Wahlberg) | Deepwater Horizon", shows people with a different knowledge specialization, in like oil wells and drilling. Unlike many popular movies these days, the movie isn't about fighting. The audience is supposed to be impressed by characters, but by their competence in real-world topics, not by their ability to win a gunfight or their superpowers.

Like, another comment says,

“That is correct, morning Mr Jimmy” gets me every time 😆

which is about the competence of characters to infer the reason for a conversation and assign blame without appearing to assign blame.

Anyway, the linked comment. Someone said on another clip by the same channel (or another channel by the same creators, with similar ending graphics) that the channel just deletes and reuploads clips to farm views, so this video and comment might get deleted in the future. The linked comment says,

I’ve been riding them helicopters back and forth to oil rigs all over the Gulf for 26 years now and they keep going further and further out in the water every decade.  Deep water was one of the first ultra deepwater rigs with a dozen more built since.  And The engineers are working on a rig right now that will be nearly 200 miles out to sea drill off the shelf.

My dad started his career in the 60s working on oil rigs just a few miles off the coast.  At the time they would shuttle crews to the rigs by John boats.

My grandpa started his career in the 40s drilling shallow well in the Texas sand.

The point here is we are running out of oil.  In a hundred years we’ve went from being able to sink a well 80 foot in the ground using a small loan from a local and have enough oil to run the nation.  Now, we are going 100s of miles into the ocean, spending billions on infrastructure, and billions on tax subsidies to get enough oil. 

A reply to that comment says,

And 20 years ago Al Gore said we were all going to drown due to rising water and called it man-made global warming. However all the millionaires and billionaires, are still buying ocean front property. Yeah that would include all the politicians.

The original commenter replied to this comment. But, why did someone go from "we are running out of oil, and it's a problem" to "global warming is not a problem"?

Most people probably haven't heard about the Lakeview Gusher. It is a big contrast between that oil, and going far out to sea to drill. The comment is helpful because it shows a trend, and why would the drilling be far away from shore if it didn't have to be? Why weren't these locations being drilled 20 years ago?

I can't help but think, every time this comes up, that if humans go extinct for some reason and in 10 million years another intelligent species appears, they won't have oil. They probably won't even have coal. So how do you go from the society we had 1000 years ago, to today's civilization and technology, without coal or oil? I'm vaguely aware that the Watt steam engine "was a driving force of the Industrial Revolution", and a search for 'coal' in the article confirms that it did use coal as the energy source. So, no coal means no industrial revolution?

Anyway, the reply to this comment. The use of fossil fuels is linked to global warming. The commenter who replied saw a pattern: "a problem that makes people unhappy". They didn't have any way to make people think that oil is not running out. But they knew of evidence that could make people think that global warming is not a problem. If people go from thinking that global warming is a problem, to thinking it's not a problem, then they become slightly happier. Peak oil is not the same problem as global warming, but in the commenter's mind, the issues were related, and so the comment they made was relevant.

People don't like to talk about problems with no solution. But the original commenter did, even as someone who apparently is still working in the oil drilling industry. The other comments indicate that many viewers also have knowledge of the industry, like with the comment reply chain about how loud helicopters are, and the comment I linked has 34 upvotes (and is the longest comment on the video).

I just have to comment on an incredible coincidence: for those who don't know, if logged in to YouTube you can see other comments from a user on the same channel. The author of the comment I linked, @catchallaccount9643, has 6 comments on the channel. The three most recent are shown, and the third is from 9 months ago, with zero upvotes, and I feel like I read it before:

Wrestling, Jujitsu, mat work is really good to know but in a street fight the last place you want to be is on the ground.  That's when one of his buddies kicks you in the back of the head.

Which is a second point, though not related to the clip, if you find you are up against two or three guys ready to fight by far your best bet it to get out of there, run. [...]

Like I really think that I read this and spent a few seconds thinking about it when I first read it, like "would someone really be so focused on fighting one person that they would have no defense against someone else". It is really amazing that I would ever read two comments by the same person on different videos on YouTube.

To Pokimane, pt 38

Doing a thing until I can no longer keep doing it. TTL5 Silver Playoff #3! (Gabi vs Bad Koala):

 

I've watched the first four games.

Not doing something because you don't have information about it isn't a mistake. It isn't useful advice to say to someone, "you should react faster when you get attacked in an unexpected location". It can be a mistake to be too focused on a particular area, but a spectator cannot describe the circumstances and priorities which determine where to focus one's attention.

It is a mistake when someone is looking at an area but makes a bad decision. At 43:21, Gabi rushes the tower but does not wall its four sides to trap the five villagers inside of it. No one does this, but it's the best play, and to not do it is a mistake. The caster comments that she "could quickwall this", but I'm not sure if he understands how ungarrison mechanics interact with walls, and how to fully trap the units without them being able to escape to the right. When Gabi walls in production buildings, like at 41:00, she unnecessarily walls the corners, and so might not be aware that walling the four sides of a tower traps the villagers.

At 1:02:07, she could have run her army to her ships just north of the fighting. (I thought the houses being built at 1:02:30 were kind of funny.)

The thought that I had was that "I am trying, by not trying". I have avoided mentioning the North Wind and the Sun, which probably a surprising number of people are unaware of, because if I was not trying to get you to share the idea, then it wasn't relevant. But, like, it was supposed to be that if I was enjoying myself, then Greta wouldn't get upset from thinking that her not sharing the idea was making me unhappy.

There are various things that players could do to perform better. People are more likely to listen to me if I can show that I am a competent player, which will not happen unless people share the idea. (When I could actually play AoE2, before my computer's fan broke and then the replacement fan that I paid for using Covid money got lost in transit due to Covid problems, it took something like 6 hours to play a 1.5 hour single-player game due to all the pausing that was needed for the UI to register actions and update itself.) So it's too difficult for me to enjoy watching people play when someone I want to win makes mistakes, and I can't do anything about it. I'm not ashamed to say that I hope Gabi won this set, as the best female player in AoE2 (she lost to another female player, Guki, in a tournament a year ago, but Guki does not seem to be active right now).

There was a time when I deliberately didn't reply, which was the last time Elyse emailed me. I was uncertain if her account had been hacked (or if my old email address had been hacked and started sending out spam), as the email didn't seem to make sense, but it's true that I didn't attempt to reply. And less than a year after that, I didn't reply to an email from Mei, and she might have thought it was intentional. A month or two later I had forgotten this email and was not sure if I had deliberately not replied or what had happened, and the same is true now, that I don't know why I didn't reply.

So the thing that I said is not to be tolerated is something that I may have done in the past. Wasn't sure if I should mention all of this.

So the question, do I want you to like me?

Maybe no one ever talks like this. I sort of asked Mei if she wanted me to like her, but I did it by referencing an email I had sent her by asking, "you know I'm crazy, right?" and she replied, "only a little".

Tangent: https://daughterofankh.blogspot.com/2011/12/king.html

the best way to get close to people is to make yourself seem less than you are, or

the best way to get close to people is to make yourself seem more than you are.

I just describe myself the way I am. For example, "I have never been on a date." Is this a good thing or a bad thing? In the drama, Everyone Loves Me, EP15, it's implied that this could be a good thing. But a common opinion is that a male with no experience must be unattractive. So, am I making myself seem more than I am, or less than I am? Am I trying to get closer to people or to push them away?

Maybe I am trying to make myself think that you don't like me, but I'm not trying to make you not like me. But there are considerations. Obviously, it doesn't matter if you like me if you don't talk to me. Although I am poor, maybe you don't care. What does matter is the idea. It's clear that if people don't use the idea, I will never be in a relationship. So, possibilities:

1) You don't share the idea, but you're confident that someone else will share it, like maybe Greta. I said that I wouldn't watch any more dramas unless you shared the idea, but maybe this outcome is still fine.

2) You don't share it and can't say whether anyone else will share it. It makes sense then to think that it will never be used, and therefore that you would be happier if you liked someone else, with whom you could actually expect to be in a relationship.

 

There was a quote from a TV show, which I think was the Singaporean drama Heroes in Black (2001). It was something I saw on an actual TV (I didn't own a computer at the time) in a common area of the house that I lived at, in the days or weeks when I was waiting to be shipped off for US army basic training. "Loves begs not for eternity, just for once to be a reality."

I stopped using or thinking of this quote after I mentioned it to Mei, before she left for Japan (a few months after the aforementioned events, with the unanswered email and me going crazy etc.), and she said that it wouldn't make her happy if we met.

There was a comic that I linked in the last mass email I sent about this idea, in early 2013 (just before Mei's birthday, which naturally was the reason I was stopping my emails at that time). I won't bother to look it up or describe it. But compare it to the seated dialogue scene between the two older characters in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). (I remember in the director's commentary, a discussion about how this scene could have been placed at other points in the film.) Just generally, the idea of people doing the things they think they ought to do, instead of what they want to do.

So, it's possible to like someone even if you never end up in a relationship with them, as with the older characters in that film. And it's possible that when I just said above that "if people don't use the idea, I will never be in a relationship", I was wrong. But if people don't use the idea, then there is a slightly higher risk of death from like mass shootings and so on, or global pandemics that are handled poorly by all countries except for China, which actually contained the very infectious Omicron variant in Shanghai, which was the early 2022 spike in China's total cases.

Also see the video that I linked to Demi Rose Mawby (Mecha Love by Hadouken) and also linked in an email or post in mid-2012, with lyrics "you wanted the world, you wanted it all".

What's it going to be then, eh?