"A button creates a house for anyone in your country and also gives them free food, but nothing else is provided (no Internet or electricity). Poor people stay poor after pushing the button. Other countries don't have the button. Five years after the button becomes available, is your country getting worse or better?"
"If you had to choose one country to receive this magic button that creates houses and food for people, would you choose your own country or another country?"
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Update 01 Jun 2026, 00:39
Topic: criticism.
For some reason, I was thinking of the fight at the end of Fist of Legend, and criticism was the only way I could think of to make it relevant. The sign that said "Sick man of Asia". (I've mentioned this before, but based on a search, it wasn't in a weblog post.) Wikipedia says that,
The Chinese characters are commonly translated to "Sick men of the East" and is used as a famous reference to Fist of Fury.
Which apparently showed the sign in multiple scenes including this one which I watched the first few minutes of. I haven't seen either of these two movies, and yet I am claiming that I understand the use of the "東亞病夫" phrase well enough to say that it was a criticism of China, and that the fight with the Japanese general was supposed to be a like allegory for Japan's war with China.
If Japan didn't intend to take all of China's resources and territory, why should Japan have cared if China was weak and being exploited by Western countries? Well, Japan is also an Asian country, and China being weak also made Japan look bad.
I had to find this angle, of criticism, because I don't think you're interested in scenes of martial arts fighting. (Note the Wikipedia article's mention of the line that was left out of the US version of Fist of Legend: "The best way to defeat your enemy is to use a gun. Martial arts is about personal development.")
It would be nice if there was no fighting in the real world. But there is, and so the question of why Japan fought with China is relevant. (It's also fair to point out that Japan participated in the eight-nation alliance that invaded China in 1900, so it wasn't just Western countries oppressing Asian countries.)
Second point about criticism: When gang members start being logical
It's presented as a comedy video. But I think it's real criticism. The comedy angle is just so people don't view the creator as deviating from the group strategy of blaming other people for their problems (in the video, the CIA or the Matrix).
But it's not just criticism of actual gang members. It's also criticism of rich people, which according to the video is 'white' people (which is supported by data like this, "nearly 96.1 percent of the 1.2 million households in the top one percent by income were white", with wealth being even less equal than income). The video suggests that things would be better if property in the neighborhoods which gang members come from were owned by the people who lived there, rather than by "white people".
The questions at the start of this post are relevant: if everyone owned the properties where they lived, poor people would still be poor. They might not be as poor: rent is one of the ways in which money is transferred from poor people to rich people.
Poll: "Should we have policies that encourage people to come to and stay in our country illegally?" I thought of this on 30 May, but it's really just a political question. No reasonable person should answer yes to it, although some people might. I didn't include it in the original post, because it would suggest that those two questions are also political, when they are not. This video about gang members shows how the questions are broader than just immigration. Someone who ignores immigration could easily decide that the answer is that the country with the button would be getting better, despite that people generally always say that things are getting worse on some issues like morality.
Third point about criticism: when you denied a ban appeal on Twitch for someone who said they truly thought that you were cute.
Would I consider myself similar to that person? Not at all. If I get banned on a Twitch channel, I view it as a positive thing: one more person whose happiness I don't have to worry about.
Would that person criticize you, if they saw the video that showed that it was you that denied the appeal, and not one of your mods? I suspect that you made it into a YouTube short because of that specific ban appeal denial, so you were sort of treating them as special. I don't think that's something they should complain about.
I do think it's important to act in a way that reduces criticism, when that criticism is valid. It's sometimes subjective whether criticism is valid: the slave revolts against the Roman Republic, in which Spartacus was a leader although that's really all I know. Since they revolted, it's clear that the slaves criticized the society that had enslaved them. If they hadn't revolted, maybe people would be saying today that the people who were enslaved at that time didn't criticize the dominant society, or that only a few slaves had such criticism so their criticism wasn't valid.
So I am implying that people who viewed China as being unusually weak were valid, even if it was only weak because it didn't spend as much money on military as some other countries were doing, and if all countries had spent less on military there would not have been 20 million deaths in World War I from all the new technologies like machine guns. (When looking it up, I saw this: "The presence of British and Russian troops led to blockades of food distribution, which culminated into the Persian famine of 1917–1919, which under most modern estimates caused two million deaths.")
I am implying that criticism of rich people is valid. Even criticism of "white people" might be valid. And if the video about gang members was presenting a criticism of 'black' people, instead of merely being a comedy skit, then that criticism might also be valid.
Also this doesn't fit with the theme of criticism, but I liked this game from Hoang: Defense Against A Hoang Rush
If you don't share this idea, can you give him some money kthx
>AoE2: post regarding learning stream being titled "Suffering"
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Update 01 Jun 2026, 03:10
Poll: "You are a rich person, and the percentage of society's total wealth that you own has been going up and up even though you do nothing. Society seems uninterested in enacting policies that would reverse this. Do you share an idea that would reduce economic inequality or continue to do nothing?"
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Update 01 Jun 2026, 17:39
Greta posted something on Instagram, so according to this from 30 May,
"I will keep waiting for Imane to share the idea until I see that Greta has posted something on Instagram after this point in time, and after that I will be waiting only for Greta to share this idea"
I'm not waiting for you to share this idea anymore and should probably unpublish this post, but this is what I was going to say: the situation in the US where 'black' people blame others could be seen as a local optimum. Of course, 'black' people in countries like Nigeria don't blame others, so there is no pressure for them to think or act like they have fewer opportunities than other people, and so the culture is quite different. I thought of a poll which would help people understand this:
"If all people who are receiving welfare money but are technically able to work were to try as hard as they could to find and apply for jobs and earn money, would the unemployment rate, as the percentage of people who are looking for work who can't get a job, go up or down?"
A lot of people are dumb, and some of those dumb people would say that the unemployment rate would go down. But people with some understanding of economics would probably say that the unemployment rate would go up as a result.
So, to the extent that people think that the unemployment rate being low is good, they can see a benefit from not criticizing people who get welfare, which is usually only possible if one is poor. It becomes a situation that involves deception, and any situation with deception has a risk of being exposed. So people become careful with what they say, and avoid talking about things when they are not completely sure of the effects of talking about it: not to help themselves, but to help other people.
Regarding the question at the start of this post: this isn't too different from what the US did in the 1800s; a search for "us homesteader act buy land" gives Homestead Act (1862) on archive.gov as the featured snippet. Wikipedia says,
Also involved in the acts were Buffalo soldiers, African-American soldiers who were key in building the American frontier in the West. They often engaged in wars with Native Americans, led by the government, to take over Indigenous land.
A poor person who works can provide more value to their country than they consume, even if they pay less in taxes than they receive in direct benefits (not even counting indirect benefits like spending on roads and other infrastructure). But a poor person who doesn't work, or do any unpaid thing like contribute to open source software or volunteer for charities, doesn't provide any direct benefit to other people. They might still make the economy better, just as with the classic "bury bottles filled with bank notes" thought experiment. But since people value fairness (7 out of 8 people answered Yes on the last question) and giving people money for doing nothing tends to lead to more people doing nothing, it doesn't make a country better, even if GDP goes up. (Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels would also go up.)
So it's not even a question of "are policies that attract poor people to a country better than policies that attract rich people". Poor people can help a country. But poor people who can't find jobs aren't really contributing anything, because society won't let them contribute (the situation signals that people would prefer that the poor people receive free money than for the poor people to be doing work).
This weblog is about this idea, and I'm no longer trying to get you to share it, so this is my last post addressed to you.
___
Update 01 Jun 2026, 23:43
你们一句想看 我虽迟但到 #开灯关灯丝滑变装 by 赛博子, 2024-09-24 with 862k likes
"You gain the ability to perfectly copy any dance, but you cannot make any meaningful variations or changes. Every hand gesture, every head and eye movement is the same. How many followers do you end up with?"
I'm cheating because I said it was the last post, but I didn't say it was the last update. It was implied to be the last update, so as a penalty, if Greta posts again on Instagram without any indication that she's shared this idea, I'm unpublishing this post.
shake that a** girl transition:
'长晴呀 @wcqmmd #这转场我也会画逐渐离谱 服了 shake that a** girl transition [douyin 7418531609332288804].mp4'
'小仙儿 @32101019 退后点 天才画家要出手了#这转场我也会画#反差 shake that a** girl transition [douyin 7417014426328501541].mp4'
'空哥 @wzkk6666 “这一脚 你拿什么抵抗”#这转场我也会画 #变装 #撕画变装挑战 shake that a** girl transition [douyin 7418526398509255955].mp4', 7416299702204779815
'赛博子 @SyBer0318 天才画家 #这转场我也会画 shake that a** girl transition [douyin 7414831934481681674].mp4' 3.4M likes
... (others downloaded, bookmarked 10 Oct 2024)
Microwave transition challenge 微波炉转场, spinning:
'赛博子 @SyBer0318 360度的我 #微波炉转场挑战 [douyin 7422291690838347058][a +0.14s].mp4' 580K likes
'尾尾 @85199094586 微波炉转场 yc@Kukombo #换头了换头了 #妆前妆后 #变装 [douyin 7420029620092718375].mp4' 3M likes
'菜菜 @SIVA52020 微波炉转场 YC@Kukombo #今天长这样 #微波炉转场 #变装 [douyin 7421769390204456243].mp4' 340K likes, joke cameo
'Yz玛丽 @itsyzml 快四十了 状态还可以 #微波炉转场挑战 [douyin 7423344061358148904].mp4'
'是joli琦 @351294414 晕了晕了 #微波炉转场挑战 [douyin 7423695785209957673].mp4'
'雅娜yana @yana826 是我卡了吗#微波炉转场挑战 [douyin 7423046832361590055].mp4
Turn on and off the lights, silky transition 开灯关灯丝滑变装, Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo (costume change):
'赛博子 @SyBer0318 你们一句想看 我虽迟但到 #开灯关灯丝滑变装 Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo, costume change [douyin 7418175819761110299][+a +0.14s].mp4'
'남다른 The unique @namdareun__ 불이 꺼지면 변하는 상어🦈 #어둠챌린지 #dancechallenge #dancetrend #onepickent Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [mnkRqT6ZoxQ].webm'
'@쏘야SOYA 주말엔 늦잠인데~😆 #dancevideo #소울케이브 #soulcave Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [gX-bgzlhy-Q][sync tuning, audio c5H9stym9f4].webm'
'이퍼플 @_purple_lee 조명을 끄면...💡⁉️#반전어둠챌린지#실루엣챌린지#원픽이엔티 #dancechallenge Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [RNBfp8HKzqk].webm'
'유나몽 @yunamong_ 잠탱이 🔥#반전 #댄스챌린지 #dancechallenge Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [c5H9stym9f4][a +0.07s].webm'
online tasks2, 16 Sep 2022.txt:
08 Nov 2024
dates, trend progression: 7418175819761110299, mnkRqT6ZoxQ, translate "你们一句想看" and second line
gX-bgzlhy-Q, MQR6R7snIVQ, c5H9stym9f4 missed username in filename, 'NA'
RNBfp8HKzqk hashtags not separated by spaces?
source for NN9fxy9cgUc from 树懒潼 @990420_t
upload dates, views for 3PY2j22d3Ds and slvcbzTRjG4 (kept slvcbzTRjG4)
upload dates for Da Da Da, lG80vlXBtaQ influential?
The\ story\ behind\ the\ dance\ \[izLxF32Bc-k\] same dance as Lz_WEtHKzD0? translate 원조
Sync tuning for gX-bgzlhy-Q, from ~three days ago:
in='/media/misaki/Nao/storage/short/unsorted/쏘야SOYA NA 주말엔 늦잠인데~😆 #쏘야 #dancevideo #소울케이브 #soulcave Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [gX-bgzlhy-Q].webm'
audio cut off at start, use
a='/media/misaki/Nao/storage/short/unsorted/yunamong_ @유나몽 잠탱이 🔥#반전 #댄스챌린지 #dancechallenge Battle forte · Lollipop, nan bo [c5H9stym9f4][a +0.07s].webm'
ffmpeg -seek_timestamp 1 -i "$in" -vf "drawtext=fontcolor=white:fontsize=10+H/50:x=W-200*(10+H/50)/24:y=50:shadowx=2:shadowy=2:text='%{pict_type} %{pts}':fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf" -g 30 -an -preset veryfast output.mp4
fd='-framedrop -vf drawtext=fontcolor=white:fontsize=10+H/50:x=W-200*(10+H/50)/24:y=10:shadowx=2:shadowy=2:text='%{pict_type} %{pts}':fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf -vf copy -af asetpts=PTS-0/TB -v quiet -seek_interval 2.5'
extra="" exp="TS+0.15/TB*clip((TS*TB-0.38)/0.7,0,1)+0.15/TB*clip((TS*TB-0.43)/0.7,0,1)+0.1/TB*clip((TS*TB-0.48)/1.3,0,1)+0.05/TB*clip((TS*TB-3.28)/0.01,0,1)+0.05/TB*clip((TS*TB-3.3)/0.18,0,1)-0.04/TB*clip((TS*TB-5.05)/0.07,0,1)-0.04/TB*clip((TS*TB-5.12)/0.25,0,1)+0.07/TB*clip((TS*TB-6.3)/0.78,0,1)+0.1/TB*clip((TS*TB-7.11)/0.4,0,1)-0.07/TB*clip((TS*TB-12.54)/0.16,0,1)-0.05/TB*clip((TS*TB-12.7)/0.6,0,1)" end="${in##*]}" out=${in/$end/[sync tuning, audio c5H9stym9f4]$end} out=${out/ [/$extra [} d=/dev/shm ext=${end##*.} ext=mkv; ffmpeg -seek_timestamp 1 -i output.mp4 -seek_timestamp 1 -ss 0.58 -seek2any 1 -i "$a" -c copy -map 0:v -map 1:a -time_base 1/30k -bsf:v "setts='pts=$exp:dts=$exp'" $d/temp.$ext; ffplay $d/temp.$ext $fd
ext=${end##*.}; ffmpeg -seek_timestamp 1 -i "$in" -seek_timestamp 1 -ss 0.58 -seek2any 1 -i "$a" -c copy -map 0:v -map 1:a -time_base 1/30k -bsf:v "setts='pts=$exp:dts=$exp'" $d/temp.$ext; ffplay $d/temp.$ext $fd
ffmpeg -i $d/temp.$ext -i $d/temp.$ext -c copy -copyts -map 0:v -map 1:a -max_interleave_delta 0 $d/copy.$ext && touch -r "$in" $d/copy.$ext && mv -iv $d/copy.$ext "$out.temp" && sync "$out.temp" && mv -iv "$out.temp" "$out" && rm -iv "$in"
Lighting examples in MikuMikuDance:
Much worse than the output of better programs, like this series:
Astartes full movie (5 mini series in one) by Siama Pedersen
Am I calling you bad? No. But if you want to stream games, and you think there aren't any good games right now, what are you doing to fix this?
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 02:06
I just watched a game featuring the Korean civilization, so maybe it is time to talk about Korea. Koreans Tactics Vs Survivalist (Auto-dubbed from Korean to English)
Korean cavalry is among the worst in Age of Empires II. No final armor or attack upgrades and no Bloodlines. But in Castle age, they're fine. Cavalry don't even need armor upgrades for one of their most useful roles, dodging arrows. Arrows move at speed 7. Scout cavalry move at speed 1.55. If a skirmisher is 6 tiles from a scout cavalry, the scout can move 1.33 tiles in the time it takes the javelin to travel 6 tiles. In a 1-tile patrol, this is 1 tile forward, and 0.33 tiles back. Ballistics predicts 1.33 tiles forward, so there is a 0.66 tile gap between the expected and actual position, which is probably enough for it to miss. A javelin launched at any point other than just after a scout turns around will miss by a larger margin.
If the arrow hits: a scout cavalry with no upgrades loses 3 HP, or 1/15 of his health, worth 5.3 food. An elite skirmisher loses 4 HP, or 1/9 of his health, which for a Korean skirmisher is worth 2.8 food and 1.9 wood, with the food being more valuable. So it's better for the skirmisher to be hit. But if it's a light cavalry with first armor upgrade, he loses just 2 HP out of 60, worth 2.7 food. Cavalry is worse than more skirmishers if you try to engage and enemy kites back, so you take damage during the approach, but better if the cavalry is just dodging, or if there is a battle between skirmishers that are standing still so the cavalry doesn't have to chase.
Also, I have never once seen anyone do a tactic that makes sense, which is to attack a castle with a ram and wall in the ram so melee units can't attack it. In this matchup, Rathas would be the obvious counter to rams, so if there is a tactic that prevents Rathas from attacking the rams in melee, then extra rams become useful, and so committing to engagements in the vicinity of the castle makes more sense. Mangonels also kill rams, but rams can tank castle fire while light cavalry kills the mangonel. But if you don't make light cavalry, they can't kill the mangonel, and if you expect that rams are useless because they can't effectively attack a castle, then you won't have any that can tank the castle fire while light cavalry kill the mangonel.
What's the logic behind the possibility that the Sewol ferry was sunk by a bomb planted by the government of southern Korea? It is this: if MH370 was stolen by the Chinese government, it negatively affected the passengers. Most of the world thinks that they're dead, and they might really be dead.
At the time, I mentioned on Chirp Club the sinking of HMS Victoria in 1893. An admiral gave an order which did not make sense, and which had a high probability of leading to disaster if it was followed. The captains of the ships immediately understood this, and yet they followed the order.
This is in contrast to the Melbourne–Evans collision in 1969, which occurred because someone did not follow orders meant to prevent a collision.
The pilot of MH370 was not Chinese, but if China stole MH370, there were likely many Chinese people involved. So if someone gave orders that if followed, would lead to the events that we saw (MH370 disappearing), and Chinese people followed these orders, are Chinese people bad?
This is what the Sewol scenario would have been exploring. Would Korean people follow orders that involve secrets and so on? The film Silmido is about the Korean soldiers who secretly trained for a mission to kill the leader of northern Korea. Quoting Wikipedia,
Under circumstances which remain unclear, the members of the group mutinied and went to Seoul in 1971, where they were killed or committed suicide.
The Sewol ferry sank and many students died. But if it sank because of a bomb, did anyone who was involved with planting the bomb expect this to happen? The ferry stayed afloat for a long time after it first tilted. Students stayed in their cabins because of a repeated message that originated from the captain, who seemed to have had a logical reason for not ordering everyone to abandon ship: the water was cold and anyone who entered it would die within half an hour. If events had happened differently, the ship could have sunk without anyone dying.
So if it did sink because of a bomb, and if the people who followed orders to plant the bomb were bad, were the students bad for following the orders to stay in their cabins?
Another possible outcome: suppose that there was a bomb and that some people who were involved with the plot to plant the bomb knew of this idea. What if, instead of following the orders to plant a bomb, they had shared this idea?
What if MH370 was, indeed, stolen by China, and some of the Chinese people involved with that knew of this idea? Were they bad for following orders instead of sharing this idea? If Korean people are not bad for following orders, then Chinese people are not bad for following orders.
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 16:36
Pyongyang apartment collapse accident - NamuWiki
joint responsibility - NamuWiki
US Army/Issue § 2.4. Personnel shortage and slum dogs - NamuWiki
North and South division - NamuWiki
Defector reveals causes of 2014 Pyongyang apartment collapse | NK News
Satellite imagery casts new doubt on Pyongyang building collapse | NK PRO
Pyongchon-guyok § 2014 building collapse - Wikipedia
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 17:37
Poll: "Everyone from your country gains the ability to lie perfectly. They can fool any lie detector, and when it comes to predicting situations that would reveal their lies, their ability to fabricate lies that avoid contradictions is at or above the 90th percentile globally (they are better than 90% of liars). If someone stays outside of your country for over a year, they lose this ability. Does your country end up better off, or worse off?"
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 17:44
(When comparing the different scenes in the Douyin video I linked to understand the change in lighting in one shot, I noticed that the second scene is stretched downward.)
01 Jun 2026
[...]
comments 7604047840684753786, leg warping
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 17:54
(If I had linked the leg-warping video, which I originally decided not to do, I was also going to link a video by @cinnannoe (Tikvib) in which she shows that she doesn't edit her body. Jojo poses by @cinnannoe (Tikvib), more Jojo poses (Tikvib), unrelated videos [1](Tikvib), [2](Tikvib), [3](Tikvib), [4](Tikvib))
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Update 03 Jun 2026, 20:37
Group-based morality: "if one option saves many other people, and another option saves someone you care about, the moral thing to do is to choose the first option."
This does not mean that everyone, or even the majority, of people in a culture with group-based morality would choose the first option. Chinese dramas are full of people who choose the second option. But at least people in the dramas agree that the first choice is better, so the second option often has the penalty of needing to be done in secret.
Does this mean that in cultures with individual-based morality, people agree that the second option is the moral thing to do? No, it's just ambiguous.
I was thinking about how Greta might not have known if I wanted her to post on Instagram. Many people instinctively think that if they do something that other people would dislike, then they should try to hide that thing, and that if someone else does something other people wouldn't like, whoever did it would like for that thing to be kept secret. (Maybe it isn't instinctive and is more something that people learn from being punished for doing various things while they're growing up.)
I shouldn't need to point out that I don't know if Greta is even aware of a single thing I have said, but I think I do need to point it out, because some people might think that I don't consider the possibility that she isn't.
Some people assume that the chance that she reads this site is zero. For people who think that, when I act like there's a possibility that she does read it, it's implying that she's deceptive which has the potential for other people to act in a way that causes harm to her, since people generally agree that lying is bad. (This is why Sun Tzu felt it necessary to point out, after he had already said 17 other things, that "All warfare is based on deception." No military commander should think that the proper thing to do is to avoid misleading their enemy.)
So, first possibility: it's true that Greta doesn't know about this idea. In this case, I would prefer for her to act in a way which makes people think that she doesn't know about this idea.
If I say that "I will unpublish this post if Greta says anything", and she stops using Instagram for an anomalously long length of time, it could make people suspicious that she does know of this idea, even if that's false.
Second possibility is that she does know of this idea. I think answering "what I want" is a lot more complicated for this possibility.
___
Update 05 Jun 2026, 00:00
(In the previous update, the link to The Double was added a few minutes after the update was originally submitted. Even if I had thought of it while writing it, I wouldn't have wanted to get distracted looking it up.)
I think it generally makes sense for someone who can, to do what they want. I thought for a bit of cases where I did something that I didn't want to do, and there aren't many examples, except when the alternative to doing something that I didn't want was to die. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this idea when no one was talking to me (meaning neither Mei nor Kate). So I only did it when I had run out of money, having exhausted both my funds (saved up while in Iraq) and credit.
This was as a person who had, at least for a while, achieved financial independence. For a young person, it's different. I can't say I remember the actual incident myself, but while growing up, one of my two oldest siblings — probably my oldest brother — threw up while eating some food, maybe pea soup, and my mum made him ate it. In the US one would probably say the "throw up", while the UK it might be called the sick.
. . . a hollow aluminium cow with a hole in its back.
"It's a jug," explained Caspar, who knew it well. "You hold it by its tail and it sort of sicks milk through its mouth."
Other things that I was forced to do that I didn't want to do: handwriting practice. Piano practice. I am sure I was reluctant to do kitchen chores as well, but it's at least something that does need to be done by someone, whereas it's harder to understand why food that does not taste good should be bought and eaten.
Things that I didn't want to do that I didn't have to do: eating mustard or pickles in hamburgers. Going to a family reunion which occurred shortly before my parents got divorced, even though the plane ticket for me had already been purchased. Continuing the advanced educational lessons at a different school in 4th or 5th grade which would have required me to do some kind of project towards the end of the year, which would have meant less time to read books. (Two things that I remember from those lessons: learning about colors, like the negative colors after looking away from color, and pulping paper to make new paper. I think maybe one other student from my normal class also went.)
So if someone doesn't want to share this idea, I am inclined to say "ok, they don't have to share it." But I couldn't say I understand why some people don't want to share it.
For someone in my position, it made sense not to want to share it. For various reasons etc. etc., sharing this idea has meant that I stay poor. If I were to stop trying, then instead of "all the world except for one person" acting like this idea isn't important, it would be "all the world", and that seems it could be dangerous. It might also have meant, for example, that Kate has not been in a serious relationship for all this time, or maybe she was in a relationship with the male who died in 2012. It seems likely that based on her Chirp Club activity, which includes her post earlier this year suggesting she's still in Seattle, that she hasn't had any children, and it might be too late. If I had not done anything with this idea in 2012 (after initially sharing it in 2011), I can only say that I think the probability she would have had children by now would have been higher.
But it's only logical to consider people to have various priorities in the things that they want. Poor people are sometimes simply trying to survive. It would make little sense for the typical poor person to spend effort on trying to get people to use this idea, when I have had so little success, and effort spent on that competes with effort that helps them survive (or would significantly improve their future).
But people who already have a lot of success? A poor person, at least, would have difficulty understanding why a rich person who understands this idea, which means that they don't assume that "problems cannot be solved because they result from people being inherently bad, which can never be fixed", would just ignore it.
To a degree, people can choose which things they want or don't want to do. They can also choose, out of the things they don't want to do, which of those things they still do, despite not wanting to do them. Like eating healthy foods that don't taste good.
So why would someone pick "sharing this idea" as a thing they don't want to do?
___
Update 05 Jun 2026, 02:15
Poll: "Suppose that a randomly-selected person out of everyone on Earth has a 50% chance of being evil, and a 50% chance of being good. What is the probability that 10 randomly-selected people are all good?"
1) 0.1% (10 coin flips being heads)
2) 50%
Like every other poll and poll-like question, I'm suggesting that you make this on Chirp Club.
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Update 05 Jun 2026, 03:49
I just did a search for "My guess is that Imane hasn't said anything on her accounts since 25 May, but that it's unrelated to me or the idea", and it turned up a post that I'm linking with rel=nofollow. The unfortunate reality is that if one says "I think that person X, who you think is bad, is not bad", then one gets labeled as also being bad.
My mum has watched the TV series The Crown several times; just yesterday she was watching the episode that opens with the crash that killed Princess Diana, which has lots of Arabic talking. I've always criticized such series (basically, anything modern and without the "all characters are fictional" warning; compare Korean series Sisyphus: The Myth specifically highlighting that the governmental organization was a Bureau, having recently been changed from a different classification like a Department or something, so that viewers would not confuse it with the real governmental organization) for being inaccurate in ways which many viewers will not perceive.
I remember a fragment of an article, someone mentioning how we could spend time "debating the accuracy of The Crown". They did not make it clear whether they thought it was accurate or inaccurate, because the article was about something completely different and they didn't want to distract from whatever the main topic was, but it suggested that a significant number of people were concerned about its inaccuracies misleading people.
Especially for more modern shows, I don't like how 'artistic liberties taken for dramatic effect' have the potential to harm actual people alive today, but along with mistaken views about specific people, fiction can also mislead people into making wrong generalizations about how the world works.
The connection to the poll suggested in the previous update should be clear.
About an unspecified topic, I was thinking about the question of whether the results, and the intentions, are the same.
___
Update 05 Jun 2026, 17:22
Reason not to say anything is that I was just talking about good and evil, and this seems like a less important topic. Someone might think I'm suggesting that fighting against evil isn't important. So let's just pretend that five months have passed since the previous update, and you did not create the suggested poll.
"Your job is to look at real photos and videos of beautiful people who are in situations that make them unhappy. What you do doesn't help them or anyone, it's just an experiment by a billionaire. You're paid normal wages, and your job is very easy. How long before you look for another job?"
The last time I tried to sign in to Reddit, a few days ago, the login fields never showed up, even on old Reddit. Most likely my browser is too old. I could use a different browser, but instead I'm not posting on Reddit. So there are communities where this question could be posted as-is, with free responses. If it's a poll, though, then a little inventiveness in the responses might be helpful. Or maybe polls, like on Chirp Club, are less interesting than a typical post. It's definitely true that most statuses there are not polls, and the fact that some polls get a large number of views might just be selection bias: I don't see the unpopular polls.
- I'm there for life and taking all the promotions and pay raises
- Less than a week
- I'll wait for the economy to get better/until I get my degree/another reason, then I'm out
- No billionaire can afford to pay what I would require for this job
___
Update 05 Jun 2026, 21:23
About people wanting to help beautiful people and so on; also called pretty privilege.
When I said to Shia LaBeouf in 2014, "share this idea even though Sherine will be unhappy because she's stupid." And about a year later, when Sherine said "Shia LaBeouf is actually so beautiful", but then deleted the tweet soon after.
I'd been thinking of talking about the first event a few days ago. Compare when I said to Sherine that there was no reason to be unhappy.
But I'm taking a different approach here. Behavior is a big part of what makes someone beautiful. Look at videos documenting people's arrest for crimes like traffic accidents. If someone in the thumbnail looks attractive, it draws more views, but the comments make it clear that people are satisfied when justice is carried out, even if it means someone who looks attractive becomes unhappy because they have ruined their life due to their carelessness.
When looking at the Douyin video I linked on 01 Jun, I saw a video with around 5.5m likes. (Note that a part of the Tiktok algorithm seems to be recommending videos in a similar 'class' of reach, rather than always recommending the globally most popular videos. This is good for smaller creators, and balancing benefit to creators with benefit to viewers is important for keeping a platform with user-generated content healthy.) It was from a male creator, also featuring another male, and it opened with the creator blowing out a cloud of white vapor or smoke.
This is why I didn't mention it at the time. But a large number of people, most of them probably female, decided to press Like on the video. A search for "china percentage of males that smoke" leads to a Wikipedia article that mentions "widespread apathy and tacit acceptance toward smoking policy" (total article size is 45 KB which I'm not reading) as well as a featured snippet from Statista that records the percentage of smokers as being relatively constant for the past 10 years, at about 50% of males and 2% of females. This could be contrasted with the significant decrease in support for the death penalty from younger people in the US over the past 20 years (via article that looks at partisan split in views towards crime).
(I had considered modifying the suggested options for the poll in the update at 02:15 today, to include "and I am under 30" and "and I am over 30", since it seems like a question that would be correlated with views towards the death penalty, but it would be divisive. If someone actually made the poll, someone else could explore demographic differences in responses.)
But I don't really care if Chinese females approve of Chinese males smoking. The fact that Sherine mentioned Shia LaBeouf at all suggested that she thought he knows of the idea, and possibly that the reason he didn't share it was that he didn't want to do something that would make Sherine look stupid. In other words, "beautiful because of behavior meant to help other people."
I thought of this because I was thinking an hour ago that the behavior that would make a male look beautiful would be for him to share this idea. But does anyone think the same? Did Sherine think he should have shared it?
There was also the female person whom I contacted earlier in 2014, whose identity I have forgotten. She probably did not share this idea, but if I hadn't said anything to her, maybe I would not have said anything to Shia LaBeouf.
In the update about Korea two days ago, I didn't say anything about why China might have stolen MH370. The truth is, I think it was a stupid thing to do. The advantage: it was a very public thing, and anyone who knew of (and understood) this idea should have suspected a connection, so it sort of put pressure on the US government not to ignore this idea.
But this has not, to date, led to people using the idea. Suppose that it led to Chinese leadership learning that Chinese people are very good at lying (even to the point of making Douyin videos which feature obvious warping, that make people think that Chinese people are not good at lying). What can you do if you know that everyone supports a common goal and will lie if necessary? Not much, I think. It doesn't magically create more fossil fuels, or prevent global warming. It doesn't lead to breakthroughs in semiconductor manufacturing technology, and it didn't stop the US from imposing a bunch of tariffs on imports from China.
So, just as I think it would have been better if Korean people disobeyed orders, it would have been better if Chinese people disobeyed orders and instead acted in a way that caused people to use this idea. Even someone who didn't know of this idea could have potentially caused this: a Person 1 cannot force a Person 2 to reveal information that Person 1 does not know that Person 2 possesses, but they could express their disagreement with a course of action, and this could cause Person 2 to reveal the unknown information as an explanation for their actions.
The best explanation might be like the red and blue buttons questions (mentioned in the posts to you that are hidden at the time I'm writing this). One or more people acted in a risky way; Shia LaBeouf might have been one of these people, if he read my tweets to him. I have also suggested that Sherine started the trend of acting like this idea wasn't important, so she could possibly be counted among these people as well. The argument is that people should press the blue button because some other people are stupid enough to press it even when there's no reason to. (Note the modified scenario in which someone could be aware that no one else has yet pressed the blue button, but cannot be assured that no one will press it after they have already irrevocably pressed the red button.) So it might be like China was pressing the blue button because someone else already had. Or that the Chinese leadership was ordering people to press the blue button, with each individual able to make their own decision whether to follow the orders.
Even if I think a male would be more attractive if he shared this idea, I am — as I have previously said — not interested in males. So my opinion of what makes males attractive is sort of irrelevant. If a male is interested in females, and no females hold this opinion, then sharing this idea will not make him more attractive to the people that matter.
So, point: not sharing this idea because of the possibility that a single person would be harmed, or would be unhappy. This has, unfortunately, never been a viable argument. The Syrian civil war started in like 2011. Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred: this tracks 79k people dying from conflict in Syria in 2014.
From my 'online tasks' file,
26 May 2026
BQ8oIfX79Cc dup of Yqf4NgRjAgY
date of train station knife attack?
ask Max if he knew neighbor
ask AI: define the word ___ without copying from or imitating any existing sources. Then, "did you copy or imitate any existing sources?"
which countries are referred to in Three Body? "M-country", for the US?
(Obviously, I am only copying the whole thing, instead of just the second line, because I think the videos are worthy of being shared, even though I sort of recognize that I already linked them.)
So I just did a search for "2014 china train station attack", then I was like "wait no" and searched for "2013 china train station attack wiki", and it turns out it was in 2014 after all. I made the note because I thought it might have been before the Boston marathon bombing, but it was a year later, which meant I also forgot the possibility that it was part of the reason China stole MH370: to justify acting in a way that corrected the problem that led to the attack. Anyway, the attack killed 31 people and wounded 143 others. 31 divided by 79000 (deaths in Syrian civil war in 2014) is a small number.
If you're in a room, and one exit says "make Sherine look stupid" and the other says "do nothing", then the first second (this was completely unintentional) exit might be the obvious choice. But if the second says "let 79000 die in a civil war", then it's no longer so clear. Of course, the whole world let those 79k people die, including Muslim countries, with some Muslim countries supporting one side in the war and others supporting the other side.
"Wouldn't it be funny if someone had to act in a way that people consider selfish in order to fix problems in the world?" No, it wouldn't. A quick search of Encyclopædia Dramatica turns up, just starting from the main page,
Article of the Now: Pokémon, "It was created at least 100 years ago"
At least 100 § Old meme:
"At least 100 years ago", after being featured on the Encyclopedia Dramatica, managed to lose all of its lulz within a very short month. It can currently be found on at least 100 articles, none of which are any funnier for the use of it. The meme has since been replaced by a slightly moar unfunny meme.
Unfunny § Some things that are unfunny:
- Old memes, and by extension, 90% of Encyclopedia Dramatica
(The % is a link to Statistics)
Meme:
You can bet your life that every meme you know hasn't been funny since about 20 seconds after its inception, which was approximately one billion years ago for all memes.
The overall message of Encyclopædia Dramatica could be said to be that it's difficult for a stupid person to be funny, even if they have a helpful website that attempts to explain everything they might have questions about. Many people who think that something will be funny if they do it are wrong. And many people who think that someone else has done or said something funny are wrong.
It cloaks its criticism of stupidity in humor.
(Remember when I mentioned Encyclopædia Dramatica on Chirp Club, and an account which looked like the site's official account replied to me and I replied back, but in fact it was an account with a substituted character in the username and very few followers. I had posted on the site before it originally closed in ~2007, but I can't remember whether I had contacted the site's female owner, Sherrod DeGrippo, before then, or whether I might have said anything that might have influenced her decision to close it. This was four years before I thought of this idea.)
Back to what kind of behavior makes someone beautiful. Demi Rose's pinned tweet on Chirp Club:
Here for a good time not a long time
She has posted before about how she has an organ donor card, so that if she dies, other people can use her organs. Many people don't do this, which means that hospitals are not allowed to use their organs to help others. I don't have such a card. My easy excuse is that I don't know if I have any diseases. When I was Iraq, and habitually brushing my teeth with non-potable hot water from the faucet (I knew it was non-potable), at one point I got sort like bumps on my shoulder.
I am inclined to act like her behavior is objectionable even though this "acceptance of death" is the same as recommended in the Book of Five Rings, for a warrior who has the job of being prepared to kill other people. It's been over eight years since Demi Rose posted that pinned tweet, and longer than that since I first tried to contact her on Chirp Club.
One can lead a moral life and still end up unhappy, and a happy life is better than an unhappy one.
Videos of people who are attractive because of their behavior, who might not be attractive if encountered on a street (a non-performative setting) or even if they danced in a different way, because "acting in a way that is intended to make other people happy" is one way of being beautiful:
Pattaya Countdown with Coyote Dancers 2013 File 07
Pattaya Countdown with Coyote Dancers 2012 File 04
CK Plaza Rayong Car Audio Show with Coyote Dancers 2016 File 01
CK Plaza Rayong Car Audio Contest with Coyote Dancers File 02
Laem Chabang Car Audio Show with Coyote Dancers 2014 File 12
Pattaya Countdown with Coyote Dancers 2013 File 05a
Age-restricted videos that I wasn't able to watch (or listen to while watching AoE2 videos) since I wasn't logged in to YouTube before I started writing this update:
CK Plaza Rayong Car Audio Contest with Coyote Dancers File 05 same dancer pAiC4Tu539M
BURAPA Car Audio Show 2016 With Coyote Dancers File 05a
DJ Men Enjoy Car Audio Show with Coyote Dancers 2014 File 08a
Coyote Dance Remix Car Audio Show with Coyote Dancers 2014 same dancers eIxNQ6ZQf9g, pAiC4Tu539M
___
Update 07 Jun 2026, 21:56
This is only about the game, Age of Empires II. There's no indication you care about it. I will just say that I felt that it was because I had been playing Age of Empires II (back when my computer's fan still worked) that Demi Rose mentioned on Chirp Club that she used to play like Habbo Hotel, which honestly is a game I'm not familiar with except for (...decides not to link the Encyclopædia Dramatica article) Pool's Closed. This seems safe to link: https://habboxwiki.com/2006_Habbo_Raid
I also thought it was possible that Nastya Chernova, the fiancée of a young Russian soldier who volunteered to fight in Ukraine in 2014 and was killed in an artillery attack, was playing an isometric building game for the same reason.
顏如憶 Yan Ru Yi was posting about playing some type of game in 2012 as well, though I don't remember what it was and this was before I discovered that AoE2 still had an active multiplayer community.
The following is a bit obvious, but I sometimes feel that everything I say is obvious. Yesterday I challenged a younger relative to solve a puzzle randomly selected from a book (how do you form 4 chains with 3 links each into a circle by cutting and welding only three links), and he soon realized the answer, while two people older than him could not see the answer. Was it obvious?
There are barriers that make AoE2 not fun to play for someone who is new to it. Many players are very far from being new to it: I was looking up some player statistics a few days ago. There are many players with many thousands of multiplayer games played. Some of these players that I was looking up had around 1100 rating, slightly better than the average of 1000 for AoE2 (since it's the starting rating, and rating changes are zero-sum), while others had 2500+ rating. Along with games played, other statistics were shown, including the number of castles, the number of wonders, and the number of farms each player had built.
It was kind of funny to see a player who had built 450k farms, probably around 10k castles, but had never built a single wonder during all that time. But the point is, the players with around 1100 rating still had hundreds of thousands of farms built.
I later compared the amount of clicking with piano playing. Suppose a piano song is 5~10 notes per second. 10 minutes of piano playing would then be 3k+ notes. 100 days, each with 10 minutes spent playing, would be 300k+ notes. So 450k farms is not an unreasonable number of actions.
But it's a huge amount of practice over someone who is just placing their first few farms.
Someone could choose to play the game in a way that makes the learning process more fun. But if they recommend the same game to other people, would those other people play in the same fun way, or would their learning experience be unfun? It really depends on the game's design and presentation for players. What methods of play are players guided towards? So that's why I wouldn't really recommend a game that is fun unless the default method of playing it is also fun. It wouldn't be enough that I could suggest an unusual way of playing it that makes the learning process more fun.
It should also be obvious that the reason I'm trying not to do or say anything interesting is to avoid giving anyone an excuse not to share this idea.
So these are just meant to be examples, of changes that could be made to AoE2 to make it more fun for new players. First change, that would not affect a typical team game with two teams like 4v4, or 1v1 games, but would be relevant if the 'default' game type for new players was free-for-all or with more than two teams:
AoE2: 'limited diplomacy', three states for diplomacy checkbox instead of two. Different marker, like a dash, for limited diplomacy, where players cannot change to or from Allied, but can change between Enemy and Neutral.
If not already implemented: make attacking neutral military units have lower priority than attacking enemy military units. If attacked by neutral units, other units still defend and retaliate, without switching to enemy units if they get close. (Like a wolf continuing to attack an archer even if a villager approaches.)
This is something I have sort of already suggested, I just thought of a way to slightly simplify the user interface for it. Instead of a second checkbox or introducing a dropdown list with just three options, modify the checkbox.
Minor things that have slight relevance for new players:
AoE2: try to put players with same language settings on the same team in team games. If not already implemented: use team game rating, maybe solo rating as well, for random team placement in custom lobbies, like rage forest.
AoE2: improve follow PoV in recordings. Record camera position and zoom, so that targets of actions (mouse clicks) can be calculated as a screen position. If the player watching a recording has a closer zoom level, move the screen so that mouse movements have a similar position on the screen (like "near the top of the screen"). If the viewer has a more distant zoom, no need to move the screen.
For the second, I'm just blindly assuming it hasn't gotten any better in the past 10 years, since I last played AoE2, despite numerous game updates. And for the first, I also don't know if it's already been implemented. I basically just extrapolate from the poor matchmaking in the other game I'm familiar with, World of Warcraft's Battlegrounds. If it was fixed in any version of WoW, I assume that players who complained about problems would have been able to point to the existing solution and say "just do this". If World of Warcraft, the world's most successful MMORPG with apparently over half the lifetime revenue of PUBG, or nearly half the lifetime revenue of Candy Crush, cannot get it right, then it wouldn't be surprising if a game with fewer developmental resources also has not done everything perfectly.
Long:
AoE2: option to have an advantage, but this is accounted for in ratings change at end of game. So: players could choose to win more, without affecting their stable rating. Requires that the advantage or disadvantage is communicated to opponent, so all players have accurate expectations for the game and don't get upset if it doesn't go as they hope. High-rating players could choose a disadvantage, get matched against a weaker opponent (faster queue time), and not lose much rating if they lose.
Example of disadvantage! 'Choose one unit to train and upgrade in each age'. Probably too much of a penalty. But an example of an interesting challenge, rather than something boring like a handicap percentage.
Sort of a contradiction: if players get matched against a lower rating if they choose a disadvantage, why not get matched against higher rating if choosing an advantage? Maybe could happen for very low rating players; broaden acceptable rating of opponent, but still prefer same rating if immediately available.
Different from an option to deliberately face a weaker or a stronger opponent in terms of rating. If players could choose to always face an opponent 500 rating lower, maybe some players would choose it, but the natural conclusion for someone who watches the match is that a higher winrate is still an indication of more skill. More skill than a weaker opponent than normal, but many people only see the first part, "more skill". If higher chance to win is because of specific in-game advantage, then it's not because of "more skill".
Maybe some bad ideas: different cost of aging up. One or two extra villagers would work for all civs but Goths, who would research Loom instantly and have TC idle time. More or less HP on all buildings.
Requires penalty for quitting at start of game, so players don't just pick advantage for more rating loss. Disabled for tournament ladders in case of strategies that work better with advantage or disadvantage than predicted by rating change modifications.
Social dynamics: if it's an option after seeing challenge rating of opponent, option to receive disadvantage could be seen as disrespectful. As an advantage, could be available only when facing a stronger opponent, so both players don't use it.
I thought of that just three days ago. And the following is actually from the same day, 04 Jun:
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=2455 "I'm so happy I stumbled upon this one"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=3090 "This game could take another couple hours"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg "And this is certainly one of them"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=10787 "We don't have that much food to sell though"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=10921 "Just to give you the opposite end of the spectrum"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=11205 didn't know that spies gives notification, no FFA forest nothing games
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=11303 "this game could go on for another hour"
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=11419 not knowing that town watch doesn't affect walls
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=11492 200/195 pop
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=11644 deleted stables
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=12523 "The definition of genius is"
AoE2: make wonders give vision to enemies even on Conquest victory conditions, give 'wonder completed!' message (but not 'started building a wonder!' message) https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg
AoE2: poll about fixing ballistics dodging. Average unit vectors, previous and current, so it decays towards current vector.
Store for unit that is targeting another unit. Don't need to always compute for every unit's movement. Can also use varying parameters, so all units don't all miss in the same way.
"Lowers skill ceiling, but in practice, no one was reaching that skill ceiling anyway."
https://youtu.be/3mNGUaYngNg?t=14258
compare https://youtu.be/ZYrkEJtSzf8?t=1582
The linked game features a new player who questions what is the point of the Ballistics technology if arrows can just be dodged the way his opponent does. This has been part of AoE2 for a long time, and long-time players tend to not mind it as it's both a way for players to show their skill by doing it at appropriate times, and a way for them to show their lack of skill by doing it at inappropriate times instead of doing other things that demand their attention. But maybe new players dislike that arrows can still be dodged with high probability.
I think that strong walls, and ranged attacks that can miss, are two of the main features that distinguish AoE2 from other real-time strategy games. Hill advantage might be another feature. How would World of Warcraft combat be different if it had hill advantage? (Or the movement-based offensive and defensive modifiers that Aion had?)
Posting these here doesn't help anyone. So it's not a reason for someone not to share this idea even if there's a chance I could post something like it again.
Because I'm trying not to say anything interesting, I didn't comment on this video when I saw at 39:01,
4v4 RF Vietnamese Cavalry Archers vs Battle Elephants !
that the player who made the video was using attack-ground between two trebuchets, to damage them both with the same attack. This used to be something that only one player seemed to do, who at the time was the best player in AoE2. So I wanted to bring attention to this small action with a positive comment. But maybe such comments from me deter someone from sharing this idea.
Watching videos like this is worse and less enjoyable than actually playing the game. At 0:49, what the player who made the video should have done is wall in both villagers, who did not have Loom (which increases the number of attacks needed to kill them from 9 to 20), with palisade walls on the four sides of both villagers. This would have given time for the Loom research to complete, if necessary. There would have been a gap through which the enemy villagers could have advanced. But if they travelled through it, they could get trapped.
It was fortuitous that the player who made the video ended up killing two villagers and losing only one in this game. But in another game, they were not so lucky. The timeline of that game shows how, by around minute 14 of the game before the armies of other players got involved, the blue player had ~12% of the world population of 236 (~28 pop) while the gray player (creator of video, and opposing flank) had only ~6.8% of the world population (~16 pop).
(Using this helpful command, with ImageMagick's command-line 'identify' utility and bash:
size1=$(identify -ping -format '%wx%h' x:) len1=$(gnome-calculator -s "round((${size1%x*}^2+${size1#*x}^2)^0.5*100)/100"); echo -n "len1=$len1 $size1"; sleep 0.1; size2=$(identify -ping -format '%wx%h' x:) len2=$(gnome-calculator -s "round((${size2%x*}^2+${size2#*x}^2)^0.5*100)/100"); echo " len2=$len2 $size2 ratio=$(gnome-calculator -s "round($len1/$len2*10^6)/10^6")"; sleep 0.1; size3=$(identify -ping -format '%wx%h' x:) len3=$(gnome-calculator -s "round((${size3%x*}^2+${size3#*x}^2)^0.5*100)/100"); echo "len3=$len3 $size3 len1/len3=$(gnome-calculator -s "round($len1/$len3*10^6)/10^6") len2/len3=$(gnome-calculator -s "round($len2/$len3*10^6)/10^6")" #measure pixel distance, three ratios
)
So basically, this update is to say that a player should be doing a thing that they never learned how to do because no one else does it, so the method has not had an opportunity to be copied and spread.
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Update 08 Jun 2026, 00:25
This might seem presumptuous when there's no proof you've ever read anything that I've said, including my emails to you. But suppose that you want to help me in some way. What if you share the idea and I just continue what I was doing, like watching AoE2 videos. You might dislike this scenario when you imagine it. Stories are often dramatic. (Did I ever mention, at slight risk of my accounts getting hacked, that my main email password is based on the word "dramaticized"? It was originally based on "imagine", from the lyrics immediately preceding the "me and you" used for my other email account, but I eventually forgot that password and changed it to this one. No criticism about it not being a real word, since that's good for a password.)
For example: Lost You Forever S1 | EP01 at 21:20
(Has embedded ad at 22:54, which is also in the video with watermark from Tencent, which is against YouTube's rules)
At the moment the female character intervenes, the male character is being severely bullied and beaten.
So you might be disappointed that sharing this idea would not immediately seem to help me. It's true that it wouldn't help me. But this has always been true. Even when I was living outside, worrying about the condensation from my breath causing my sleeping bag to become damp near my feet, I would not have directly been helped if someone had shared this idea. The only way it would have immediately helped me is that I could have stopped sharing it and done other things that it was possible for me to do in that situation.
The only real difference is that when I was living outside, I could say "but at least someone sharing it wouldn't harm me." If one imagines that sharing this idea is a bad thing to do, and people would get mad at me, then when I was living outside I would have been hard to find.
Ok but I'm not waiting for you to share this idea. I forgot.
___
Update 08 Jun 2026, 02:01
So anyway, I was over two minutes in to another AoE2 video when I heard a weird sound that made me suspect that it might be auto-dubbed. And it was. Many creators leave the auto-dub feature on when it only harms their channel. This might not be a good example: Zuiikin' English - How dare you say such a thing to me....
It's so bad that it might actually improve the video's performance in the algorithm. Like at 0:20, the auto-dub adds something that sounds like "how you say tone". Even the subtitles don't know what it's saying, since the auto-dub is just audio being fed into an AI, that doesn't necessarily interact with the same process that produces the Japanese subtitles. The comments are an interesting mix of recent comments alerting other viewers to the fact that they're probably listening to the auto-dubbed version, and popular comments from up to 12 years ago: "Anti-bullying groups in a nutshell." (3.3k upvotes)
Basically, it's the default. It's probably an experiment at the moment, just like when all Google searches were giving an AI answer. (I assume that this is no longer the case for everyone, rather than just that my browser is old.) Microsoft learned long ago that most people leave settings at the default for many software programs (UI customization in World of Warcraft is an extreme counter-example). Hoped for a Wikipedia article about it, didn't find it; found this, which doesn't even mention Microsoft, but conveys the point: The Luxury of Ignorance: Part Deux
. . . the most valuable gift you can give your users is the luxury of ignorance — software that works so well, and is so discoverable to even novice users, that they don't have to read documentation or spend time and mental effort to learn about it.
I would compare it to what I wrote about knowledge specialization in the first public argument for this idea, but I'll try not to talk about this idea in any more updates to this post.
Defaults should be good. Even if the auto-dub feature is generating data for Google, like which settings for the auto-dub leads to people using the output and increasing the watchtime for a video, it's still bad for a lot of channels. Creators that don't turn it off when it's harmful either don't notice that the auto-dubs are being created, or they don't realize it's harmful or don't care.
And this kind of auto-pilot is just how a lot of people are. They watch ads and are affected by those ads, like in which shows they watch or which games they play. This helps some people; creators, and people who benefit from creators that create ad-supported content.
AI-created video with 105.8m views: [103.6m views, 05 Jun 2026][AI gen]user1191927817695 #tricks #remove #satisfying #rust #tiktokshop TikTok - Tikvib.com
The channel has several other videos, which are not nearly as popular. They just got lucky with that video. I have no idea what people say in the comments (I assume this link works even with the wrong @username, but my browser is too old for it to work), like whether they realize it's AI-generated, but the creator definitely benefits from the video's popularity.
I'll just assume that the comments on that video are people laughing at it being AI-generated; that if 100 million people watch an AI-generated video and have the ability to comment on it, the truth will prevail.
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Update 08 Jun 2026, 09:53
Dream of being in a passenger plane that gently ditched in the ocean, which was fine, but I couldn't find my laptop because it had been stored in the overhead compartments by someone else, which was not fine. I was literally prepared to die trying to find it.
(The plane dream had been going on for a while, but in the dream I had fallen asleep for a while, and it's a bit confusing because I had been trying to figure out how we had gotten from being over New York to being over Spain, but if we were over the ocean then clearly we weren't over Spain)
The obvious explanation for this specific dream was that I am playing a wave sound on a loop. This was the first time I tried playing the original sound, not an edit, and with no volume normalization to make the quiet parts closer in volume to the loud parts.
time ffplay ~/stolen\ \&\ temp/'Waves Crashing on Rock Beach[YouTube Sound Effect].webm' -nodisp -v quiet -volume 100 -af "asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS,asplit[mid],afifo,atrim=0:3[st],[mid]afifo,atrim=0:186.7[mid],[mid][st]acrossfade=d=2:c1=qsin:c2=qsin, lowpass=700, lowpass=3000, aloop=-1:$((1847*4800)):96k, asetrate=30k,channelsplit[l][r],[l]volume=sin(time(0)/30)/4+sin(time(0)/4.153)/10+1:eval=frame[l],[r]volume=sin(time(0)/27.4)/4+sin(time(0)/5.153)/10+1:eval=frame,[l]amerge"
(The split and merge is meant for two speakers, but one of the speakers is broken and I'm too lazy to modify the command to remove this part. It uses the aloop filter in the first place because I couldn't get a seamless loop due to not realizing that the first frame of a webm with Opus was being cut off due to -0.007 timestamp offset, so it was seeking to 0 to loop when the first frame was at -0.007.)
