PeterL: it would still be much easier to generate a synthetic pathway from what is available
asciilifeform: (note what is not on the list - it is doubtful that you can make a usable explosive this way. thought! you can make nitric acid, even now, using it. and from that, it is a day's work to dynamite or whatever.)
PeterL: what would be the purpose of this?
phf: wait, i'm missing the punchline. i guess brute force here means, that you don't have an optimal process, but rather exploit given environment to achieve objective no matter what?
asciilifeform: where one might conceivably employ another riotously -ev but simple crackpottery, laser separator
asciilifeform: put an arc through the raw materials, if there is any thermodynamically-plausible path to the end product, you will find some in the tube.
phf: failing to find it so far, i think it's the one where we talked about looking through dirt for useful synths and how nobody is doing it (but when they do they get mad gains)
PeterL: perhaps, what are we synthesizing?
asciilifeform: but this is good time to note that postindustrial junkyard wars chemistry, as every other craft, differs substantially from the 'you can get any starting material you like by drawing it on paper' schoolbook chem.
phf: used to be one of the first image hits for "dmt synthesis", a screenshot of a chanboard poast of making dmta "out of household objects"
phf: hmm, pretty sure the image is explicitly filtered out by google now :o
asciilifeform: the 'underground' crapola - does.
asciilifeform: but it is not worthless, school book does not discuss how to refine postindustrial rubbish from shops, utilize junkyard metal for the synthesis pots, etc.
asciilifeform: phf: there is enough deadtree-era 'underground' pseudoscientific literature on 'dope cooking' to fill book case. most of it of dubious quality, approaching 'anarchist's cookbook', rather than what normal people think of as chemistry
PeterL: depends on if there is an easy starting material, I'm still reading up on it
asciilifeform: and q is not even whether complicated, but whether feasible from commonplace materials.
asciilifeform: PeterL: dope world, of both sexes, seems to care not a whit whether garage or not.
PeterL: If I were a woman, I don't think I would trust the purity of something made in somebodies garage to not have dangerous impurities
mircea_popescu: of things for the stronger to take advantage of the obese shithead and b) anyone could get more buttraped by putin, or the world generally, than obama already has.
mircea_popescu: anyway, it's directly evident the most rabid of libertards realised clinton ain't got it ; and are in their grief dealing mode. pronouncements that "the election is rigged" (phrased, of course, as "this was an unedifying year" blabla), assurances that "whoever wins will be a single term president" as if that fixes anything ; even a pretense that putin will take advantage of trump. specifically. as if a) it isn't in the nature
mircea_popescu: one "rupery myers" for the telegraph
mircea_popescu: can i be excused if i consider the matter forever put to rest, and deem nothing he ever said of any import or conceivable consequence whatsoever ?
mircea_popescu: together with the bitcoin and the urbit dispute respectively, this puts him 0 for 3.
mircea_popescu: That he has been able to surf these scandals regularly as little more than free media opportunities shows that American democracy is in serious need of rehabilitation." << in my view, this settles an ancient point of contention curtis yarvin never manned up to, re "the cathedral" or generally how pervasive, or "in power" the idiots are.
mircea_popescu: "With Nate Silver putting Trump on a 28.8 per cent chance of victory, its almost unbelievable that the race could be so close, given the consequences. A Russian puppet candidate with shady business affairs who hasnt disclosed his tax returns, Trump has spent his campaign alienating minorities, horrifying women, offending religious and military voters, and having his career of awful business behaviour paraded in public.
mircea_popescu: no i mean, 0.5% concentrated. 100grams 99% enough to make 4 gallons of the stuff.
asciilifeform: the way it even came out publicly was a case where idiot chick with 3rd trimester jumped on.
mircea_popescu: placenta abrupta is a) painful b) an emergency and c) really not the best way to go.
asciilifeform: story goes, that in at least two academies where these existed, they ended up used as first-class auto-abortuators
asciilifeform: it was (they were abolished in late '90s after the chair ~flew~ once) an ejection ~trainer~
asciilifeform: ( incidentally, does mircea_popescu know what is https://archive.is/71Wfw ? there are hilarious stories connected with it )
mircea_popescu: back to the font of lulz, the official story is that clinton is losing because "kgb controls the fbi and there's badly behaved men!"
asciilifeform: (incidentally, everybody in kindergarten makes fun of the italian tanks with 4 reverse gears, but for some reason nobody discusses american ejection seat developed for $maxint, but never deployed, in vietnam, with its own built-in little airplane wings, so as to skedaddle out of enemy lines when escaping!)
asciilifeform: but, as i gather, decided that it would pointlessly hasten his dekulakization, or some such.
mircea_popescu: who knows what he's doing there.
asciilifeform: its continued existence is the greatest afaik known shame of torvalds.
mircea_popescu: the cuban wiki entry is fucking hysterical. lengthy discussion of the shitty jobs the dork did in college. how come none of these go "and then he took rhetorics with elena dragos and was the only one to get a b in any of her classes that decade"
trinque: he's on the fast track
mircea_popescu: evidently using the same plastic surgeon kerry-heintz uses, so there is that going for him!
asciilifeform: like the archetypical dope-addicted whore.
a111: Logged on 2016-11-02 15:39 mircea_popescu: lol right. the sort of idiot who imagines tor is a thing, aka 20something potheads.
asciilifeform: these folks are quite ideal from pov of new owners.
mircea_popescu: "let's pretend the word is businessman"
mircea_popescu: like all of them. there's really a long list of these government "entrepreneurs" in all socialisms
mircea_popescu: ah mark cuban, there we go!
asciilifeform: (the entire racket has 0 to do with defense of the crown in the traditional kgb sense, but rather with 'terrorist creation' , a la the proverbial death ray case.)
asciilifeform: aha. he is kept around as a tame priest specifically for use on them.
asciilifeform: a reputation for '133337 d00d'ness among the types of folx who bite that particular variety of hook.
mircea_popescu: i'm very vaguely following the whole raft of wanna-be leading ladies & other zsa zsa gabors. i recall some pics with him and a model on a boat ; about on par with whatever bs comes out of that meathead who sold out to yahoo, then lost money on every single deal hence and imagines this makes him an entrepreneur
asciilifeform: he's been there for some years
mircea_popescu: oh he's in the us now ?
asciilifeform: in other noose, j. mcafee opens a mining pool for usg. (probably in exchange for non-prosecution for pyramidal flimflammery and/or non-extradition to the orc shithole of his past decade)
thestringpuller: trb the bsd of bitcoin
asciilifeform: trb absolutely gives no fuck if it cannot find the network.
asciilifeform: if a node behind a diode, and an otherwise-identical one outside of the diode, diverge in any respect whatsoever...
asciilifeform: incidentally, a more general observation re 'serial diodes', is that, quite like 'archive.is' and similar, they are a valuable detector of folks attempting to monkey with history.
thestringpuller: I have...i'll just write something up based on Ken Sheriff's stuff and then see if I can grok alf-ie
mircea_popescu: thestringpuller go read teh article so that next i look for it you can say you had it saved a minute after i found it eh!
thestringpuller: in this case you can't trust the UTXO set of any node
thestringpuller: then how would you construct reliable tx to begin without saving a record of all your UTXO's
asciilifeform: i argue that a properly-designed wallet will not leak coins even then.
asciilifeform: let's take 'pessimal' case, where overflow or whatever is found such that all satoshi-derived nodes 'chain-react' and can be manipulated arbitrarily by the enemy.
thestringpuller: from other internet connected box (airgapped machine isn't even in picture yet cuz tx is not ready for signature)
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: with what would you be speaking to nosuchlabs box ? with wire in teeth ?
mircea_popescu: and what you're proposing to do isn't having the computer answer a question ; but it's having the computer tell you what to do.
mircea_popescu: there's a very fundamental difference between bare life, which evolves in between orders of behaviour relayed by computers ("now it's time to wake up! now click here!") and humanity, which uses computers strictly to answer questions.
mircea_popescu: you might be misunderstanding computers. if you sign a tx on the basis of "it's what my node told me to sign", then the node's in charge not you.
thestringpuller: or am I misunderstanding the attack?
a111: Logged on 2016-11-02 15:11 asciilifeform: and as phf points out, it leaves you open to attack where the craftmachine is pwned and gives you a wallet-emptier to happily carry to the bunker and sign..
thestringpuller: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-11-02#1561981 << against whether or not the output is to "wallet emptying address". you'd know if output pubkey is differ than one you put in?
thestringpuller: 1) why would you not check raw unsigned tx before even contemplating signing the thing if you suspect comprimisation?
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: how do you propose to 'check against multiple trb nodes' on an airgapped signing box ?
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: unless tx you craft is gargantuan, I don't see how you couldn't do a partial audit of the non-signed tx that is spit out. in this context it would be best to check against multiple known TRB nodes the tx hashes are valid
mircea_popescu: funny, this is all in there :D
asciilifeform: and as phf points out, it leaves you open to attack where the craftmachine is pwned and gives you a wallet-emptier to happily carry to the bunker and sign..
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: at least 2 people here already do some variant of this.
phf: you could, but ~i~ don't like that solution because then you're signing blind.
thestringpuller: yes. so I dont see why can't craft the tx first then move it physically to signing device
phf: thestringpuller: you need blockchain to ~craft~ tx though
asciilifeform: but where do you get the tx to sign.
asciilifeform: based on some picture of the blockchain.
thestringpuller: i'm i really the only one with that article saved :P
mircea_popescu: that was a horrible 15 minutes though. i was about to break the kbd
asciilifeform tried, failed, to turn up the thread.
mircea_popescu: yes, that's a settled thing and i see no need to drag it into this other discussion and muddy it up.
asciilifeform: (this type of cut is a very necessary thing, imho, per 'specificity of diddling', nothing beats the ability to mix&match parts, run queries in parallel on redundant subsystems on heterogeneous iron, etc)
asciilifeform: also include the possible cut between mempool and 'blockpool'
mircea_popescu: was there a fourth ?
mircea_popescu: the thing i proposed would fall in between, so this'd be three.
asciilifeform: (hence why i brought up the miner shenanigans, it is not possible, sadly, to operate a wallet entirely 'blind')
mircea_popescu is contemplating writing an article of these, with pros and cons etc.
asciilifeform: there is a small and enumerable, without difficulty, number of possible places to make the cut.
mircea_popescu: anyway. to not get entirely sidetracked : the exact sense in which wallet should be separated from rest of trb needs a lot more thinking.
asciilifeform: well yes, we had the '-ev rocket' thread not long ago.
asciilifeform: hard to see what could replace 'current set of derps' other than a quite identical set
asciilifeform: (or rather, it ~can~ be aimed, but very cumbersome, like 'bertha' cannon, they gotta not-mine your tx first, make you double up)
mircea_popescu: anyway. the case that the current set of derps doing the mining will be allowed to continue remains dubious.
asciilifeform: 'the selectively disappear tx' is not afaik really it, this weapon cannot be aimed.
mircea_popescu: thopugh i suspect the words urge and resist are misemployed.
asciilifeform: stupid folk cannot resist the urge to actually try an' cut the world to fit in stupid head.
mircea_popescu: and in other news, flying sluts http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93xj64NMw1r1ff3no1_1280.jpg
asciilifeform: the tale of procrustes had a point
mircea_popescu: "gotta have taint! its how the world works!"
mircea_popescu: because you simply can't get the taint out of the stupid head. it's born with it, will die with it.
asciilifeform: and pretty much everyone who has attempted to fire a tx using trb prior to mod6's 'S' patch, now has a supply of such 'evil' coin with which to test this hypothesis, if he wants.
mircea_popescu: this is quite likely how it works, though the taint is currently attached to the txn itself rather than the inputs. while supplies last, anyway.
asciilifeform: there is nothing intrinsically illegitimate about a 'doublespend'.
mircea_popescu: anyway, the point being, the miner cartel brink-of-war event didn't proceed, but "equipment" derived from it is now widely deployed, and as you can observe it can selectively disappear txn from the mempool.
a111: Logged on 2016-09-11 16:28 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-09-11#1539596 << fwiw, as far as i can tell, my boxes never saw these.
asciilifeform: the entire notion of 'marked as doublespend' is odd
asciilifeform: and on one other uninteresting occasion prior
asciilifeform: i still don't fully grasp ~why~ the malleatron fires ONLY when the maker of original tx tries to doublespend own coin by making new one
mircea_popescu: unless there's 17 btc to dream about and blood in the water from decapitated project nobody actually gives a shit about the network.
mircea_popescu: pretty eggregious nonsense, vaguely surprised nobody gave a shit about it then, but w/e.
mircea_popescu: notwithstanding that they are reported as doublespends.
mircea_popescu: you mean the malleation stuff ?
asciilifeform: well, see the doublespend threads
mircea_popescu: and unsurprisingly, the one that got 0est of prb effort.
mircea_popescu: BUT! coinbase selection is the MOST IMPORTANT part of bitcoin privacy
asciilifeform: because there exists this animal, that isn't even properly part of bitcoin, called the unmined tx
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i don';t think the wallet should do only signing. it should also do coinbase selection.
mircea_popescu: or any blocks in general. only you can spend, therefore only your updates are interesting to it.
asciilifeform: it only needs to see the payloads for signing.
asciilifeform: phf: it isn't clear that the signing box needs to see raw blocks.
phf: well you have a concept of an airgapped node already. it's the one where you rely on a whole different networked node to build a blockchain for you, and inject blocks into your airgapped node for you. there's hell of attack vector here though
asciilifeform: given nic dma and other wonders, i would not even sign under this.
mircea_popescu: they do not belong on an internet-connected machine, to be clear.
mircea_popescu: im of the same sentiment.
asciilifeform: in the picture phf drew, it does
mircea_popescu: it's just somehow assumed it does ; but there's no reason for it to.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform also acceptable. but in neither these designs does wallet have access to blockchain.
mircea_popescu: phf yes but it seems it was at least tacitly agreed a package of tools is acceptable rather than monolith.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform and not relay them at all ?
asciilifeform: that goes without saying. but does it really need to also be a miniature node ? or can wallet simply do the one essential thing, sign payloads with privkeys
phf: but i think asciilifeform also had an imperative of keeping trb canonical sourth of all btc knowledge, so that wallet stays in (so that you can read and know what wallet even is), but you solve the separation by starting the daemon with different flags indicating intended usecase
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform EXACT same as the derps doing nuke security explained they expect in yest linked article. "that the authorised people can launch easily and no one else can period."
mircea_popescu: IF the wallet is correctly implemented (as discussed, text files etc), then fixing any problem is trivial for the operator.
mircea_popescu: i'm not altogether sure such a drastic separation can be implemented - but it seems theoretically possible
mircea_popescu: phf in principle wallet has all the knowledge of blockchain it cares about.
phf: afaik wallet relies on some knowledge of blockchain, so airgapped solution will be a combination of blockchain eater and an augmented wallet. so you have two parallel nodes red and black. black sits on the wire and receives transaction, spitting blocks. you batch carry blocks to red, red eats them, you do your wallet operations, pick up serialized byte lists, carry them back to black, inject. etc
phf: yeah, it needs some more work. i think that wallet needs to be augmented do operations via shiva, but then instead of injecting it should do a call out into shiva of a byte list of transaction. once i get there, i'll do a post
phf: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-11-02#1561808 << i got prototype for that. there's only one method called from entire wallet codebase that injects the prepped up transaction into the general pool. i replaced it (or rather, right now it's augmented) with a shiva foreign call that takes a list of bytes, deserailizes it into transaction, and does the injection
asciilifeform: (possibly because they haven't own brains, are simply an anal wart on usa now.)
asciilifeform: why the british are involved, i have nfi.
mircea_popescu: https://archive.is/LCAnf << even the most rabid socialists. the tinge of schadenfreude, delicious as it may be, is still the only distinguishing decoration between "tory" and labour.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: american, also, they traditionally do this in the last days leading up to election to help nail a designated loser with 'turnout encouragement'
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform weirdly enough, the uk press moved to a "trump will win" stance, from sky to telegraph etc.
mircea_popescu: i dunno why they find it remarkable, it's the end game for middle class womanhood since well before the french revolution.
asciilifeform: in other lulz, http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2016/11/flotsam-on-fetid-tide.html , 'As she coughs, staggers, convulses, lies, pilfers, sells favors and lapses into intermittent confusion, she still has the courage to tell America that she loathes half of it. That´s candor.'
mircea_popescu: and in other loving homes & gardens, http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3uaox7LWJ1qk6jw7o1_1280.jpg
BingoBoingo: In other news Qntra has been sitting at 2100 comments for some time now. There's a Qntest going on, so pls to correct.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo the Alert system having long been long purged << extra words!!!
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-11-02#1561808 << still has to be separate from that because of the risks involved in fucking up the wallet. nobody cares you leak your tx index say, that's public.
mircea_popescu: prolly the linchpin of the entire thing, if we can actually use off the shelf fs we can almost even proceed.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-11-02#1561805 << one important point is that the checking of common fs (ext2, ext4, w/e) wrt to feasibility of the symlink scheme proposed couold be started right now.
ben_vulpes: my personal preference, if you can't spot the foreshadowing in my work, is to index the entire set of outputs on "to whom was this sent"
BingoBoingo of the monthly dispatches most eagerly awaits S.NSA as usual
tb0t: Project: trb, ID: 8, Type: C, Subject: Remove BDB and integrate BitcoinFS, Antecedents: 6,7,33, Notes: Change ticket to integrate the BitcoinFS, once implemented.
mod6: !%e trb 8 C "Remove BDB and integrate BitcoinFS" "Change ticket to integrate the BitcoinFS, once implemented." 6,7,33
phf: asciilifeform: i've no idea why deedbot key is old, presumably it's fed from the same place that i use to up, and that's been refresh. i have the correct copy in btcbase's wot, http://btcbase.org/data/wot/phf.asc
a111: Logged on 2016-10-09 00:41 trinque: so, phf was the second after asciilifeform to have a key expire. we should probably discuss how this should be handled going forward.
asciilifeform: weird, the key i have here for mike_c doesn't seem to expire
BingoBoingo: Anyways the jostling of what consitutes unified GOP conservatism is moderated by a few referees. At present the longest serving referee is Rush Limbaugh.
BingoBoingo: WaPo at all last week were speculating that trump mailing list might have value, when it cannot because everyone on such list must be on 8 others readily whored and available.
asciilifeform: so yes, i buy a bottle of wine, and it somehow thereby follows that i go to communion and am in catholic church etc.
asciilifeform: he ate, yes, the silver.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: recall 'the smurf senator' ?
BingoBoingo: Now, the DOP will also whore mailing lists but is far more selective. You join Sierra club you get spam but spam limited to candidates and advocacy for this issue money taken for. Or so sayeth victims of that side.
BingoBoingo voted Obama in 2008 because I threatened to if the spam didn't stop, and issue was forced.
asciilifeform: i'm gonna guess BingoBoingo was on 'the list' also.
BingoBoingo: Show the slighest interest in conservatism? How would you like a home freeze dryer for 7000 payments of $9999
asciilifeform: ~actual~ alternative affairs do not get airwave largesse from usg. they get banned, like isis-tentacle-not-pointed-ru-wards, and ddosed, like qntra.
mircea_popescu: guy is kind-of left in that "sarcasm" school of the 90s where you pick an anecdote and blow it up. the thing that got hot topic'ed into cracked.com and by now is so fucking forgotten it almost has cachet again
asciilifeform: but going upstack, all of the 'names' in 'alternative' american whateverthefuck, blatantly shilled for, e.g., gold scams
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform hey, talk to putin, i didn't come up with the shit.
mircea_popescu: what with their terrorism of pointing out that mosul and aleppo aren't that far apart.
asciilifeform: 'how to be less stupid so i don't have to use the ddt'
asciilifeform: epic, incidentally, failure, it is rather like lecturing to cockroaches
mircea_popescu: or, similarly, take rt. largest program of education of one group of idiots at the expense of another, "read this so you don't get stupid enough we have to nuke you"
asciilifeform: populace because you're doing your own independent research from an independent news source. Except you're not. You're an idiot who's going to lose all his teeth. These sites are using you for money...' << is not, however, false.
asciilifeform: 'Now I know what you're thinking, "but Maddox, I have all my teeth!" You won't for long. People who read alternate news sites will eventually lose their teeth. It's an Anankean inevitability; you're going to do something stupid like put a firecracker in your mouth because you are stupid. Want to know how I know? Because you read bullshit instead of news, and you not only think you're informed, but that you're smarter than the general
asciilifeform: 'Stop buying into this bullshit. You're getting played. If it's not a "main stream" news source, that means they don't have anyone to answer to and nobody will lose their job if they report inaccurate information. You're not "woke" for reading alternate news, you're a dipshit. Rather than poring over old news clips to prove that 9/11, Sandy Hook, or the Boston Marathon was an "inside job," you should go outside and get a job.' << gol
mircea_popescu: (the warlord = charlton heston film. pretty good.)
mircea_popescu: you never know with these things.
mircea_popescu: sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. what's another mark add ? nothing at all, of course.
mircea_popescu: what's it win ? it wins land. how does the whole thing work ? young man of visible worth, who is a knight, gets asked "do you wish to go take X mark and be the marquess there ?"
mircea_popescu: this is not so. what lists random nobody keeps are his problem - neither case matters.
mircea_popescu: just because i could bomb city hall doesn't mean i may not register a church there. optionality is mine, all of it, without restraint. i can do both, if i feel like doing both.
asciilifeform: but that 'now it will matter how many of us are on preet's list, whereas before there was no list, and it did not'
mircea_popescu: the fact that i can fuck the girl in any hole i choose does not mean i am forbidding from asking her which hole itches today.
asciilifeform: whereas if we have icbm launchers and can demolish city hall, what's the point of registering with it to begin with.
mircea_popescu: who says you need 600 ? church holds title to the land, can't be expropriated
asciilifeform: well let's say new york city hall comes and 'we're closing the tmsr cathedral in manhattan b/c kako broke ranks and now you only have 599 people instead of the required 600.'
mircea_popescu: the lulz @cat-v.org idiots are instructive in this field. what matters to the powerless is an exercise left for onanists.
mircea_popescu: anyway, to return to the caller : incorporated church has ~0 with more amount of headcount number.
asciilifeform: and provide крыша for the rest.
asciilifeform: part of the recipe involves folks voluntarily falling on a certain grenade for the good of the tribe, and it is a very brutal one, they go to work in usg
asciilifeform: i am not expert on satmar, but i did once research the mormons, who also carried on imperium in imperio vs usg for a good long time.
mircea_popescu: nations exist where the father is not too cowardly to maintain discipline in the household.
mircea_popescu: (for the innocent satmar, of course, is named for satu mare, a small town in transylvania)
mircea_popescu: went to shit after the old guy died, but anyway.
asciilifeform: (according to him, they have a very effective, 'chechen', orcish style of organization, complete with omerta and folks sittin' in prison for one another, etc)
mircea_popescu: they opposed collegiate education for girls, as well as voting in israel etc. i dunno any group teh usg hates moar.
mircea_popescu recommends you read into the story of the satmar (bait : "If its schools in New York were a public school system, it would be the fourth-largest system in the state, after those of New York City, Buffalo and Rochester.")
mircea_popescu: these are orthogonal though.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: sorta why i was not much hot&bothered re the 'incorporate church' idea
mircea_popescu: somehow the st crispin speech never got through. classics be hard.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform there's this pervasive "surely you want more headcount, because headcount is a number and larger amounts of number is what everyone is all about".
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: from commentz: 'Yeah, and people can be irrational and there are also shills and conspiracy theorists trying to find every reason to discredit the Core devs'
mircea_popescu: i suppose historical bias. empire always fights the last war it lost and all that.
mircea_popescu: amusingly enough, this point upset teh empire recently. they really fucking imagined anyone WANTS the extras for some reason.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: lulzy, guess of what there is 0 mention.
mircea_popescu: anyway. the difference is marked. stalin had to shoot people to make example, because otherwise village wanted to be with the other guys. i am on the contrary - very happy to see every last idiot leave. stalin needed peons to work the tank factory, which works on peons. the shit we did - more people are a liability not a benefit.
BingoBoingo: In other news TRB leads the way! "Alert" system in PRB being retired via... ALERTS!!! https://archive.is/5OoKT
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform in classical republicbuilding, your choice is either slaves, beaten weekly, ie best korea, or else taking it up in the ass, ie, rhodesia.
asciilifeform: but why 'unpalatable either way' ?
mircea_popescu: anyway. the hope is that we don't have the problem of the soviets, specifically because the republic has ~no problem with the idiots leaving to be with the usg&co.
asciilifeform: there are down sides, sure, to living as man, vs amoeba
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> they call it "network effects", among the educated stupid, but really what it is - idiocy has no country. it's a thing, a substance, beyond identity. << Aka Baby Boomers lamenting that no one wants to hold hands and get along like during the post war politics of their grandfathers not realizing the handholding and hugs were the anomaly
mircea_popescu: the problem is that democracy is fundamentally going to become "modern" democracy, for this reason. the mass of stupid keeps accreting.
asciilifeform: and to the amoeba who 'just wants', the man, who has some mental activity above 'just wants' level is, yes, monster
asciilifeform: they, yes, 'just wanted to' levi jeans.