Happy birthday, _____

"Don't be bad and you won't look bad."

I criticize the streaming culture of Douyin. Mainly, I criticize it because it might not be rewarding. 饱饱兔 @SuperSG15 only has 10~15 viewers in her livestream right now, and she sometimes wins in the PK battles, so the people she talks to might not have many more than that. In her current conversation with three other people, she has three times as many followers as the second-most-followed person.

My friend Laura is an accountant. She described her job as balancing numbers to reach zero, implying that she wasn't doing anything useful. But she gets paid for it.

Some jobs, like coal mining, can be harmful to one's health. Talking to people isn't harmful. But one of the few words I recognize is 哥哥, "elder brother". It's sometimes neutral The videos I was thinking of use the nickname, '杯頭哥':

2016 0529跳跳糖(小卉 棠棠 vivi )&杯頭哥 水里三鎮宮龍德堂 太平受山宮謁祖熱舞

2016 0818跳跳糖Pop Candy 棠棠 果果 杯頭哥 彰化果菜市場熱舞 8

20160522 花壇 慈鳳宮 Lady's ft. Battle哥 (痴情玫瑰花)

20160522 花壇 慈鳳宮 Lady's ft. Battle哥 (New Thang remix)

Example of genuine use to mean older brother: 【ENGSUB】Back to the Great Ming EP01-09 collection

It's very similar to the use of 오빠 oppa in Korean, like at the start of the Little Apple music video, or in the lyrics for Oh! by SNSD (Girls' Generation) and 오빠오빠 by Bambino.

饱饱兔 was just showing her three dogs and cat, and a brief view of outside.

So anyway, the 'gangster' female character in Squid Game season 1. She uses "oppa" to act cute, even though other people consider her too old to be cute.

Was actually thinking about whether this would make a good question, a few days ago: if there was a certain amount of money that could only be given away to someone you don't personally know, would it be better if one person had that money, or if it was split between many people?

There are many stories from China where a male gave too much money to a streamer. It's only a story if the male ends up poor: if someone gives away 1 million USD, but still has 50 million USD, it's not a story. If he gives away 50k USD and as a result is too poor to get married, it's a story worth reporting on.

 

Tl;dr: streaming gameplay, and talking about the gameplay or about other topics, makes sense to me. Just streaming talking doesn't make sense to me, even though many extremely popular streamers do this, as well as smaller viewers.

I have been listening to 饱饱兔's stream for 2.5 hours now. She has 12 viewers, just finished the call with three other people, now 8 viewers, and I am closing her stream.

My oldest sister said in 2012, in response to the email about the first petition, that she didn't believe in the dichotomy between good and evil. I think there are definitely things that are bad to do. When the recent war between the US and Iran started, I assumed that it was the US that killed Iran's religious leader. I noted how, a few days later, US President Trump talked about that leader's death by saying that he was a bad person, or something.

Some time later, I learned that it was Israel that conducted the strike that killed that religious leader along with several of his relatives, including a grandchild. Since the US has an executive order banning assassinations, it would have been worse if the United States had carried out this action than if Israel did it.

The 2016 Russian plane crash was suspicious due to its timing, on Christmas — a day when people expect to be happy — and I felt that it could have been a deliberate action, despite that no public statements have been made by anyone about this. Wikipedia says, "All materials of the investigation are classified."

On 25 Dec 2016, the Islamic State still had considerable influence, MH370 was still missing, the Chibok girls were still in captivity, sporadic fighting with Ukrainian military was still occurring on the border of the Donetsk People's Republic ("The Russo-Ukrainian war began in February 2014 and is ongoing."), billions of people wanted good jobs (1, 2, 3, 4, I have not read any of these), carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at 400 ppm, and the world had about 55 cubic kilometers of oil in the ground more than it does now.

And if the Egyptian and Russian governments lied, and Metrojet Flight 9268 had survivors, then they were in captivity as well.

Did it make sense for people to be happy on the day that non-Russian countries celebrate as Christmas?

When I saw a new post on Ariana's account, I had already decided to delay before I saw that it was from @r.e.m.beauty. If 饱饱兔 was not streaming, I think I would have succeeded in not saying anything.

___

Update 05 Oct 2026, 13:50

Impressive AI drama: 《隐秘的力量》 第一天来韩国贵族学院，川妹儿表示：什么财阀不财阀的，我只想好好学习！#ai短剧 #ai韩剧 #韩剧 #AI创作浪潮计划 #剧情

The way the males move at 2:45 gives them a lot of character. Facial expressions at 2:51 are also good, with subtle widening of the eyes (and ear moving?), as well as the professional "close eyes while turning the head" look.

When I checked a video on Douyin in a new private window, it only gave the 540p option (576x1024). Had to start with other activity, visiting a profile and then the jingxuan (精选) main page, to seem less like a bot to get 720p.

Question: filmed live, and AI copied movements? Difference between characters on ground at 4:01 and 4:10 suggests not. The series has only two videos, and second video has just 1/10 the likes of the first video (but maybe it's very recent).

It seems unlikely a Korean person would make a series where the main female character is a Chinese person who thinks to herself in Chinese. Rather, it's made by, and for, Chinese fans of Korean dramas. Note that the Chinese thoughts are given Korean subtitles.

First comment when I viewed it:

冷知识，四川比韩国大 (6 upvotes)

Highly-rated comment:

剧名 来自四川的你 (652 upvotes)

I think this is a joke, based on some popular drama with a similar premise.

There are several comments like this one:

像《漂亮的恶意》，建模说实话不好看

About the characters: at 0:35, I thought "another typical drama where everyone is attractive." But the two female enforcers at 1:44 are made to be less attractive, like with their shoes, and the rude males at the store are definitely not intended to be attractive. I don't care how the main characters look, which is what these comments seem to be about.

Even though I said I wouldn't watch any dramas, I still watched all of this 5-minute AI drama episode. I didn't translate everything that was said.

___

Update 05 Oct 2026, 23:50

Poll: "Aliens ban all fighting, even when someone steals your favorite crayon. Does the world get better or worse?"

Explain like I'm five: "I want more stuff. Why is it hard for me to get a job making stuff, so I can make stuff for myself and other people who want stuff?"

If you understand economics, you should be able to answer this. Actually curious what an 'AI' would say to it.

The song Faded by Alan Walker: has a high number of views, is relevant to the 'evil supercomputer' question. Songs with similar messages: Late in Autumn by fripSide, 嘘とダイヤモンド by GUMI.

Actually, that question could be a poll.

- Because elites hate you

- Another reason

- I also want to know

Why is this question about making stuff important? Why is the 'evil supercomputer' question important?

Solved a mystery

饱饱兔 @SuperSG15 had 30 videos for over a week. Her video count went down to 29 yesterday and 28 today.

This was because 02 Oct, I spent a few minutes watching a live stream of calligraphy. (Most of it was spent with my screen frozen, since I had too many tabs open and it made my system use swap space.)

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-48-30.png

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-48-51.png

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-49-32.png

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-49-56.png

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-50-00.png

Calligraphy, Douyin live 南星 @27127971091 Screenshot from 2026-10-02 00-50-06.png

New YouTube side ad, no recommended videos, Screenshot from 2026-10-03 14-11-25.png

I think it's harmful if this continues: after a month, she would have no videos left. So, I am acknowledging that I watched part of a Douyin live stream, even though I said that I would not.

If she wants to avoid a situation where I see that she's streaming, but I don't watch the stream, then she can't stream at all, because I check her account at unpredictable times of the day.

Original post, saved 03 Oct 2026 at 02:26:

'conflicts in ethical orientation, 03 Oct 2026.txt':

"Blondes have more fun."

Would not be an expression if not for dying hair. This possibility turns the statement from an observation, into a recommendation.

Autumn had dyed blonde hair 13 years ago.

A few days ago, watched an early practice video from Black Pink. A highly-rated comment said that a certain member with dyed blonde hair seemed to outshine the other members with her dancing. Was it actually better dancing, or was it the aura from her hair color?

<deleted examples>

Link: sometimes, an observer may not realize that a person's hair color is not its natural color. So it's sort of like lying.

A question I was thinking about recently; it didn't seem useful, but it illustrates the situation. "Suppose that there are two patterns of ethical behavior, A and B. You exhibit B, but all the people you might be interested in exhibit pattern A. Would you be willing to change how you act to be in a relationship with someone?"

In 'Danger of monocultures', there are two obvious patterns of behavior: "do try to fix problems", and "don't try to fix problems".

There are also less obvious patterns: "do good things when there's no reward", and "don't do good things when there's no reward".

Two people could both be trying to fix problems, but one does it for the rewards, while the other disregards the rewards.

And then there are the patterns: "act in the way that appears to be moral", and "don't act in the way that appears to be moral".

These patterns are a bit different because morality includes many hidden things, i.e. lies. Again, Sun Tzu's Art of War points out that "all warfare is based on deception" so commanders don't think, "it would be immoral for me to use deception in war". There are limits to deception in war; the German merchant raider that deceived an Australian warship into getting close with a false identity, before exposing her true identity just before she initiated combat. And the rules about soldiers wearing their official uniforms during any operations, or else they are not protected by the laws of war that forbid executing enemies who surrender.

But many deceptive practices cannot be forbidden for practical reasons. A tactical or strategic feint. A merchant ship transmitting a radio signal that it is being attacked, that complicates rules about a submarine allowing a ship's crew to get to safety in lifeboats before sinking the ship.

If many people in society have pattern A, and many have pattern B, how to know which pattern a particular person believes is the ethical one? How to know whether they are using the pattern they believe to be the most ethical one?

The question about whether it's ever acceptable for a boyfriend to lie to his girlfriend can also be applied to females. The Japanese story about a female who married a male, but he wasn't allowed to ask her about her past or something, and when he did, she had to leave him. In the story, she's a fox or something, but one could imagine that it follows a pattern of a female who believes in the patterns "do try to fix problems" and "do good things when there's no reward", but who also follows the pattern "don't act in the way that appears to be moral".

And so she assumes that it's ok for her to lie and imply that she really follows the pattern "don't try to fix problems", up until the male reveals that he follows the pattern, "act in the way that appears to be moral", which means she can no longer lie about having the pattern, "don't try to fix problems".

The story, East of the Sun and West of the Moon could be seen as similar, just with the genders reversed. During the day the male is a bear: unattractive, just like patterns of behavior that don't involve helping other people are unattractive. But at night, secretly, he is attractive: he does want to help people, he just pretends not to. The female was instructed not to look at the male at night: a rule, and rules are meant to be followed. So her act of looking suggested she was following the pattern, "don't act in the way that appears to be moral". Presumably in conflict with what he was doing.

I think I've mentioned both of these stories before. Maybe in an email.

Why I act like this idea isn't important: there is another reason. You could say that I exhibit the pattern, "don't act in the way that appears to be moral".

I've suggested before that I follow the pattern, "do try to fix problems", and that Mei might not. I mentioned how I only posted on general forums in World of Warcraft, in 2005 to 2006, and she probably only posted on realm forums. General forums included the suggestions forum; I posted frequently there (copies of the same posts I made elsewhere), while I would guess that Mei never did.

But she might just not have had any good suggestions about how to improve World of Warcraft. Even if she was in college and I was not, she was still only 15 years old. She had compared herself to Ayanami Rei, a character from Neon Genesis Evangelion who appears to have an important role in saving the world. Rei can be compared to a male character of about the same age, who doesn't want to help with saving the world. It would probably be fair to say he exhibits the attitude, "don't try to fix problems". While Rei exhibits "do try to fix problems", as well as "do good things when there's no reward" (as seen, for example, in the state of her apartment).

It was my estimation, ~22 years ago, that Elyse could be said to exhibit the pattern, "don't try to fix problems". For example, after she sent me a letter that contained a few crossed-out mistakes and a $5 See's candy gift certificate (that I never used, but was lost at some point), I mailed her one or two books from Terry Pratchett. (I also mailed one or two to Hanna; I'm not sure whom I sent two books.) Pratchett's books are basically about the mistakes that people make, and it's important to understand people's mistakes to be able to fix problems. The book Jingoism was about war; is war something that people want to happen, or something they would prefer didn't happen? Elyse never said anything about the books I sent her.

There's also the question I asked her about the meaning of the word "emergency".

The point is, if Elyse exhibited the attitude, "don't try to fix problems", and Mei exhibited the attitude, "do try to fix problems", then I could make myself compatible with Mei and incompatible with Elyse if I had the attitude, "do try to fix problems".

But Mei never replied to any of the mass emails I sent about this idea. Is that really the behavior of someone who is trying to fix problems?

I would say that Elyse exhibits the pattern, "act in the way that appears to be moral".

So, at the end of this long explanation, if I exhibit "don't act in the way that appears to be moral", then it implies I am incompatible with Elyse. In other words, she didn't harm me by marrying someone else, because she never could have married me.

I had said to Elyse in 2005 that we could only ever be friends in the future. But sometimes smart people make mistakes.

What if the pattern of behavior that I exhibit, "don't act in the way that appears to be moral", is only an act? What if I really believe in "act in the way that appears to be moral"? Then it cannot justify an incompatibility between me and Elyse.

Two major types of incompatibility: moral incompatibility, and large differences in attractiveness.

It would be much easier for me if there was someone who was interested in me who exhibited "do try to fix problems". Then there could be an explanation for why I preferred to be in a relationship with them, instead of Elyse. But if there is anyone who might be interested in me, they are exhibiting "don't try to fix problems".

I wrote this for two reasons: over 100k people die every day.

And Ariana made a post on Instagram. This is one those things I say to myself: "if a certain person does X, I will do Y." The reason not to do Y is basically that Ariana is from the United States. The MI: Fallout movie, for those who missed it, was basically about how Ethan could be making the world worse with his actions. Scenes like the map navigation scene, that I linked a month or two ago, supported the plausibility of this: if someone can't use a navigation tool, how likely are they to be able to know which choices will lead to the best results for the world? Is this post the same, making the world worse than if I did nothing?

@9玥、 and @饱饱兔 are maybe giving their opinions. But I'm afraid of misinterpreting what they do. Language communicates a lot of information. Most of the sentences in this post are unique, never before having been written by anyone.

But, consider: @9玥、 did not post any videos for a day, on 30 Sep. Then on 01 Oct, she posted one video on both of her accounts. (Dates are approximate; using my local timezone.) I had been hesitant to check her account multiple times per day or at an unpredictable time, but on 01 Oct I checked her accounts, as well as @饱饱兔, Yara's, and Ariana's, multiple times. If @9玥、 was not posting any videos, then I would not be obtaining extra information about the exact time she posted videos by checking her account multiple times. But towards the end of 01 Oct, around 22:00, @9玥、 had posted a video on each account and @饱饱兔's video count went down by one.

Did this happen I checked their accounts multiple times? Or did it happen because Ariana had created a pattern of fashion-related posts on 30 Sep and then had no activity on 01 Oct?

If @9玥、 wanted me to do the aforementioned Action Y, would she communicate this by posting a video, or by not posting a video?

The best way for me to know would be to wait for more information. But over 100k people died today, and 100k will die tomorrow, and one of them could be someone I know, or know of and care about. (If I'm not sure if someone knows I exist because they have never tried to unambiguously communicate with me, it's hard to say that I know them.)

I checked Ariana's account at midight and saw that she had posted. (She preserved the pattern of fashion-related posts, by rearranging her photos.) I had thought that I would check other people's accounts at 02:00, then I saw that my phone's alarm was already set for 12:00 and decided I could delay until then. It is now past 02:00. What should I do?

Should I post this?

Thinking vs waiting

failed search: "in Inception, why did Cobb wake up in bed before mal after they were killed by the train?"

related: https://geekcaster.com/inception-michael-caine-spoils-what-christopher-nolan-revealed-about-the-ending/

"Mal was't actually in the same shared dream as Cobb, and that's why she doesn't remember growing old with him. He incepted himself with the idea that he incepted Mal" and "from the perspective of the viewers, the entire film is a shared dream, and so it's all equally unreal. People wake up from the dream when the movie ends, but they still remember it."


03 Oct 2026
what did I answer after I asked, "why post anything at all?" I can't remember

I could say "If anyone I care about dies between now and people using the idea, I die too", but I'm not saying it

Poll: "If a person that you know did a good thing that they are not currently doing, would you be harmed?"

"I will publish the next weblog post if Ariana breaks the formation of fashion-related posts."

Poll: "Who do you trust most in an advertisement for a product? All of them are smiling."
slightly ugly male
attractive male
slightly ugly female
attractive female

Poll: "Is it controversial to say that there are major problems that won't be fixed if people become more religious?"

Poll: "Should people who receive financial help from the government and aren't royalty have a lower quality of life?"

Poll: "Do people who are in prison in China suffer more than people in prison in the US, or less?"

Poll: "If two people don't have compatible personalities, does it mean that they don't agree on how much they should help each other, or how much they should help other people?"


04 Oct 2026
"The reason I said I was happy when (or "that") Demi Rose's dad died was that she seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was something happening. If he had died one day later, it would have been one more day of waiting. It also let me show that I didn't want her to wait for something to happen"

"立ち止まると　少しだけ　感じる切なさに"

Advancements in AI video generation

https://www.douyin.com/video/7682119529962789754

https://www.douyin.com/video/7680974787456253626

https://www.douyin.com/video/7687097582166091435

First video: note left hand at start, image vs generated video. Suggests the video is not 'traced' over the motion of an existing video, but features original movements decided by the AI. The second and third videos do copy the movements of another video (note cage in front of door, probably real background).

Didn't download anything from Douyin from 20 Sep to 26 Sep. On 26 Sep, Douyin was restricting videos based on headers. The site still worked fine; trying to open a video in a new tab gave an error. Trying to download with wget also gave an error. To download videos, I had to copy the 'curl' command in Firefox, from a right-click on the URL for a resource in the Network tab of developer tools. I had to develop new commands to process this URL:

 ffplay $fd x; read -p "id? " id; [ -n "$id" ] && echo description? && read -e desc && x=${desc//*( )#*( )/ #} x=${x## } title="$u $x [douyin $id].mp4"; ffprobe x && mv -iv x "$title" && ffplay $fd "$title" #Douyin, reuse title, don't overwrite if bad url, consistent #spacing. Use curl, add '> x;' to start, remove Range header

 time while sleep 0.4; do clip="$(xclip -o -selection c 2>/dev/null||sleep 30)"; echo "${clip:0:10}"|grep -q curl && clip=" ${clip/"-H 'Range: bytes="*\'}"; echo "$clip"|grep -q "v.douyin" && clip="${clip% http*}" clip="${clip:28}"; [ -n "$clip" ] && echo -n "$clip" |xclip -i -selection c -q 2>/dev/null && echo cleared "$clip"; done #isolate description from Douyin link from V, clears clipboard on interrupt. Remove Range header, make safe for wildcards

Now, Douyin no longer gives an error message. When it was giving the error message, how many people were affected? Everyone, or just me? It might have been an attempt to stop me, specifically, from downloading videos. I mention this because it could be viewed as reflecting positively on China, similarly to how I complimented Substack.

Maybe I'm wasting time on Douyin. Or maybe I shouldn't be saying anything here right now, so it's fine to waste time now, but on 26 Sep it was still acceptable for me to say things so I should not have been wasting time then (as with the posts that were originally scheduled to be published on 30 Sep).

To Ariana Grande-Butera

Plan was simple. Procrastinate. I should have waited three days without doing anything, from 25 Sep. I had three options:

1) Do what I said, when I said I would
2) Wait another three days
3) Wait an indeterminate amount of time

So I was going to wait until someone acted differently (option 3). @9玥、's video count has been increasing by 1 per day on both of her accounts since 26 Sep. If this pattern varies, then it could mean that she is trying to communicate something.

But of course I'm messing it up, just 30 minutes after midnight.

First, I'm throwing shade: Ariana is the 7th-most-followed Instagram account, with 362 million followers. This is more than any account on TikTok, Douyin, or Facebook, and only MrBeast has more subscribers than this on YouTube.

But her posts only get 500k to 2m likes. A Chinese actress (actor) has 22m followers, a video with 13m likes, and 3~6m likes on typical videos (F for Videos tab).

I think that on some platforms, accounts get boosted by bots. Not by intention, but just because following popular accounts helps the bots evade detection. Wikipedia has old follower counts, though this just shows all accounts going up. I don't know any well-known people who have been withdrawn from public life for a fair comparison.

I'm basically commenting on three posts: stuck in an elevator, a post with lyrics, some of which are from the song freak, and closing night memories posted by @teamariana.

What I see in these photos: people, both male and female, who are not trying to fix problems.

Most likely, most people in the world would say that they aren't trying to fix problems.

I checked the lyrics to petal to see if they were the words in the post, and this line,

'Cause this music and I will never die

made me think of the novel, Soul Music, and the real-life plane crash that the novel's plot refers to, I guess. I probably read the novel in like 1998, but I can still confidently say that the character Buddy valued being famous more than being alive.

Based off of just the lyrics in the post, I had been going to say something like, "No matter who you are, most people in the world don't care about you. You should always be trying your hardest to get what you want, without apology." But from the lyrics to petal,

'Cause all of my favorite stories
End in some kind of catastrophe

The poll about the evil supercomputer. I'll copy here it:

"An evil supercomputer with a power level that's over 9000 enforces a rule: if two people fall in love, they will be separated for 20 years. It's like a military family moving away, but all communication including texting is disallowed. This can only happen to a person once; after that, they are safe. No one has yet found a way to destroy the evil supercomputer. What would society say is moral: to wait 20 years, or to find someone else to love?"

How would you respond?

Danger of monocultures

The BBC article about Ariana's last concert described how in her words to the crowd, she talked about their outfits. Fashion.

So, let's say that females own the "don't try to fix problems" view.

But, Simpson's paradox. Also, from my notes file:

22 Sep 2026
"hotter or notter"

'nice vs mean, 15 Aug 2021.txt'

Poll: "Is it ever ok for a boyfriend to lie to his girlfriend?"
Second poll: "Is it ok for a boyfriend to lie to his girlfriend about her appearance?"

[...]

romantic experience: Simpson's paradox. Attractive people have more experience, but people with more experience are less attractive.

Always picking the chocolate milk in elementary school because it had more calories, and thinking "why would anyone pick the low-calorie option"

[...]

'nice vs mean, 15 Aug 2021.txt':

"If everyone is mean to you, it would help other people the most if you acted mean in response, to avoid rewarding meanness. But it helps you the most if you act nice"

Therefore, for someone in this situation to act nice is not a sign that they are "a nice person", but rather that they are "a selfish person"

With females as a single group: "don't try to fix problems", while males own the "do try to fix problems" view.

But, if you split society into those who are rich or who have the potential to become rich: then rich females own "do try to fix problems", while rich males own "don't try to fix problems".

Suppose that opposite views are incompatible in a romantic relationship. General solutions:
1) non-traditional relationships.
2) male and female who are both poor, or both rich: one of them 'betrays' their group by having a different attitude than other members of the group.
3) rich male and poor female: both use "don't try to fix problems", without betraying their group.
4) rich female and poor male: both use "do try to fix problems", without betraying their group.
5) disagreement about what defines rich or poor. Male and female with the same income or abilities, but they have the same attitude without thinking that they betray their group.
6) some other solution, like redefining the group to include age and saying that old people don't need to try to fix problems, or saying that there are no problems as long as everyone participates in religious activities regularly.


In order for people to use this idea, someone influential has to try to get people to use it. For females as a whole, "don't try to fix problems" is the dominant attitude. Can also be restated as, "press the button to be happy if you're poor". But for an identifiable subset of females, "do try to fix problems" is dominant.

From 19 Sep 2026, folder named 'crash'. Many of them are about problems in society or relationships. 15 videos, final one is The Person Who Is Most Likely To Remain Single (Based on Science). The creator seems intelligent, and I hope she is happy and already in a relationship. Of course, I didn't watch a single second of the video. But I skimmed the description to see if it gave an answer to the title question, and it mentioned this:

Unmarried Women: Politically Cohesive, More Concerned About Women's Status Than Married Counterparts | American Sociological Association

Concerned about problems.

Earlier today I bookmarked a lot of videos. After closing a lot of them, I was left with a few videos about problems in World of Warcraft, and a lot of videos about problems with relationships in real life (and two songs). I only mention this to say that I'm not saying anything about those videos right now.

From a novel by Charles Sheffield, like Dark as Day or Cold as Ice or something: an Indian character says, "the mark of a superior mind is the ability to hold multiple contradictory viewpoints at once". I actually found this quote and emailed it to my oldest brother, like 12 years ago.

Everyone belongs to multiple groups. "People with a certain gender." "People with a certain gender and age." "People who live in this country." Not to mention, "all humans". (The use of 'aliens' in the question about the button that lets you be happy was deliberate.) If these groups have different views and different priorities, which views should you emphasize? There is no good answer. Maybe someone could write a long list of rules about how to decide, but someone would still have to apply all of those rules.

So, maybe males tend to dominate the view, "do try to fix problems". But females are allowed to have this view.

And males who choose not to try to fix problems are not necessarily unethical, because they are also allowed to do that.

Something about the swirly black and white circle with the dot of the opposite color in each half. Neither half is fully black, or fully white.


Some problems that I am currently not trying to fix. If I wasn't making this post, these words (written today) would just sit in a text file that was started on 16 Sep 2022 (the earliest notes in it are all about MMD):

AoE2: 'invite a friend': lets two people play in games with you even if they don't own the game. Best for 'limited unit coop' mode. Or just '24 hour pass', can be extended to two people. So someone can practice on their own after playing with someone else. Can even give a '24 hour pass' to DLC to someone who owns the base game. Only two missions out of each campaign available with the pass, unless playing coop with someone who owns the DLC.

WoW: funding for database site? When visiting the site: Visual die roll. 90% chance of gaining 1-hour pass for your IP address. 10% chance of being blocked for one hour unless you buy premium. Actually replaces 'are you a bot' check that's probably for ad integrity. Premium: $3~5 per month, grants four passes that can be used by other people (like sharing Netflix subscription).

Other perspective: database sites make a game worse. But it's up to developers to limit what a database site can know.

With any post, there's the danger that someone could think that its purpose is to make me look smart or desirable. Especially when I include random things like these suggestions related to games.

The logic behind posting this is that someone could have thought, "it's better for the world if there is data about females owning the view of not trying to fix problems: that it's fine to care about fashion and celebrities, and you shouldn't feel bad if that's all you think about."

Most economists are male. And so, most of the people I tried to share this idea with in 2011 were male. I note that the first economist I tried to share it with (other than the three copies of my letter to US President Obama, which requested that whoever read it show it to an economist) was the female Nobel prize winner who is now deceased, and I got an auto-reply email from her assistant saying that this economist was on vacation. Would it have been better if a male economist had shared it, or a female economist? In any event, no economist publicly shared it. The closest was the Al Jazeera article in late 2012 from the economist Dean Baker, criticizing the economics profession as being paid to tell lies that benefit rich people, rather than actually fixing problems. (I don't have this bookmarked, and am not doing a search for it while writing this, so I might have spelled his name wrong.)

If all males cared about fixing problems, I think people would have learned of this idea in 2012, or even 2011. But some males don't.

Some kind of point about how with the 'button to be happy' question, the 'rich' could be less than 50%. Important because if there is an identifiable group, then people could excused if their bad behavior is to help their group.

Again with that question: if rich males are claiming "don't try to fix problems", is it best for the world if rich females also claim that position, which is also held by poor females, or if they claim "do try to fix problems", so all rich people do not all hold the same view?

Another thought I recently had: people sometimes say that female leaders are emotional. Point,

20 Sep 2026
[...]
group model: can add 'war or peace' game. Peace already described. With war, group with more total money takes 10% of the total money of the poorer group. Both groups must choose peace to have peace. Many groups, that start with random sizes. Players periodically have a chance to leave their group and join a random different group, but with a penalty of losing half their wealth, which is distributed to the rest of the group. If a player's wealth is negative, they keep all debt when switching groups. To prevent always defecting during peace, each player has a chance, maybe 30%, of knowing the name of the other group.

what if advertiser could pay to suppress other ads from being displayed alongside the main ad? Like buying all ad slots, but no repetition. Let user know when this happens, so they can feel gratitude toward the advertiser. With standard ad model, calling ad message 'sponsored' might technically be accurate, and the ad pays for the website, but user does not feel grateful. They just take it for granted, because many websites are free. If sometimes there are many ads and sometimes just one, then user has something to be grateful for. "Super ad"?

Poll: When using parentheses to communicate extra information, how important is it to use a closing parenthesis when it would be the final character?
(Because of Chinese people apparently thinking it isn't important
[...]

21 Sep 2026
"As long as skilled poor people think that they should be generous instead of selfish when pricing their labor, unskilled poor people will be suffering and in poverty"

With this expanded model, it's easy to see how there are two perspectives: "the group needs to have many members, so that it can expand more during peacetime, so it's important to help people who are in danger of leaving the group due to misfortune." Female view. And, "the group needs to be rich, so it can win in wars. Don't sacrifice to help the unfortunate." Male view.

Suppose a leader has a chance to help the unfortunate. If they do, it's expensive for the group. But it also makes the group look better and make people want to join it. Is a desire to help the unfortunate individual(s) "emotional" and bad?

It actually took 72 minutes to write this, even though a lot of it is copied text. I will probably end up thinking I should not have written and posted it.


"If Ariana Grande posts anything on Instagram after 06:00 GMT on 29 Sep 2026 and there's no indication that she's shared this idea or reactivated her Chirp Club account, I will stop checking Demi Rose's Chirp Club account"

___

Update 28 Sep 2026, 20:10

Second spelling error, 'make' should be 'makes'. Swirly black and white circle:

【東方】Bad Apple!! ＰＶ【影絵】

If you have watched this video and didn't understand everything in this post already, I insult you like the French character does in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Is Ariana Grande sad?

A few days ago, there was an ant problem. First I thought, "they will stop going where they shouldn't, if they find food before they reach there." Then I thought to lure them outside with food.

A cool thing about ants is that they turn a lot. This is an exhaustive search pattern. The probability of covering the same ground twice is high, so it's less efficient, but it finds food closer to the origin. A food source close to the colony is more valuable than one farther away. Their social existence influences the way they move.

I am not fundamentally that different from an ant. I accidentally visited the page for a video from 饱饱兔 (uploaded [2026-06-30](https://www.douyin.com/video/7657350264705263995), before I first downloaded a video from her on 2026-07-13), and like an ant running into a wall, I end up moving in a different direction.

Since it seems unlikely I'll ever be in a relationship, it's hard for me to feel sad. But I was really sad, upset, etc. in 2007, when I had the thought that based on Mei's behavior, she might think that it didn't benefit her for me to like her.

Xiaoyu seems to have hidden or deleted all of her old videos. But if 饱饱兔 did this, I would know, because I would see that her video count decreased. (Although her video count was only at 11 a month or so ago, and is now at 30, so if it went down to 15 or so I wouldn't know which videos were affected.)

It completely makes sense for me to try to avoid interacting with the account of someone who knows about this idea but hasn't shared it. Word count is getting too high.

Demi Rose, the song 'vanished the life -notreborn', cat, etc. Mione blocking and then unblocking me.

Ariana's political question last year was phrased as a genuine question: "have you gotten the results you hoped for?" In a way, it had faulty assumptions. Maybe prices have gone up. Maybe people who prefer English to be the language spoken in the US have encountered a greater proportion of people who don't know English in the past two years. But these things can happen despite actions by the US president; for people who dislike the actual outcomes, those outcomes could have been worse with a different president.

I have to say that one of the questions on [The Ultimate Data Manipulation Survey](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrkNQ0zym9LQWmBufAeTDo-zZ7ks3UEtbqdfBv2XEQ5swR0A/viewform) was,

>Do you expect the next elections in your country to have a big effect on the amount of fossil fuels used by your country over the next few years?

I would have answered no. (Also, I thought of this question when I saw that the person who almost shot President Trump had also looked up Biden's campaign rallies.) But Ariana did not ask people about climate change (in Trump's [recent speech to the UN](https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/tech/ai/ai-elections-voters-information/), he noted that 'global warming' had been rebranded to 'climate change' due to what he viewed as incorrect predictions, although the [data](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/) for the past few years seems [pretty convincing](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/) that there is a warming trend).

The point is not the specific issues she mentioned. But that she was open to the possibility that people had, in fact, voted in a way that gave them the things they wanted.

In the same way, whenever someone didn't share this idea, there was the possibility that they were acting in a way that was in their best interests.

The argument that I shared on Chirp Club was pretty much the worst argument for getting people to actually publicly share this idea. Also: I call it Chirp Club because that was the translation of what the Literary Chinese Wikipedia article about the platform called it. I did not make it up. The reason for not calling it X is that X is already used to denote an unknown value, such as when I say 'Person X'. In this case, the unknown value, X, stands for Chirp Club.

It said, <persons known for committing violent crimes> knew about this idea and didn't share it. Four interpretations:
1) If you share this, it will cause people to commit violent crimes.
2) If you don't share this, it will lead to you committing violent crimes.
3) Not sharing this idea (keeping it secret) is important, for an unknown reason.
4) People who don't share this idea should be viewed negatively.

I felt that Sherine should have been sharing this idea. But I couldn't meaningfully talk to her, because she had blocked me.

Maybe Sherine thought that it was in the best interests of a Person X if she blocked me. Person X could have been Mei or Kate. She could even have imagined it to be me. Now, 13 years have passed. Is it likely that Sherine's prediction of the outcome of her blocking me will come true?

Similarly, if Ariana learned about this idea ~10 years ago, what did she expect to happen if she did not share it? Did that come true, or is it likely to come true?

Asking questions is easy. Answering questions is hard. She wasn't thinking about how to immediately convince people to use this idea. She was thinking about secrets, maybe.

Who thinks at age ~23 that they have a chance to change the world? There have been such people throughout history. Alexander the Great died young.

Sometimes books or films are like, 'a sad thing happened'. Most people do not remember that and try to figure out how to stop the sad thing from happening. If there is one sad thing per two stories, someone who reads or watches 200 stories could remember 100 sad things, or they could forget all of them and just go on with their life, and then be surprised when a sad thing happens that they didn't expect.

I am not trying to make Ariana sad.