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[Awaclus]

I feel like statistically, at some point in my life, I ought to have accidentally thought the socially appropriate thing

Kinda weird that this never happened.

[silverspawn]

good one

[silverspawn]

Take from the Lawfare podcast that I listen to a lot recently about whether it would be a good thing if Trump gets barred from running. Linking to this because I so strongly agree with it.

[silverspawn]

I'm better at poke than I was last time I quit, but I'm significantly worse than I thought I was. I hadn't fully passed the first bump of the Dunning-Kruger curve

[silverspawn]

Hm I don't think I like this typo

[silverspawn]

Do you what's special about Joscha Bach and Ezra Klein? It's that they're male, yet their first names end on an 'a'. (That's the only noteworthy thing about them, obviously.) Usually, the 'a' signals a female name. When I try to think of female names, it's usually harder to come up ones that don't end on 'a' than with ones that do.

So why do Joscha and Ezra not sound female? Is it entirely cultural, or is there a phonetic reason? The answer of course is that I have no clue. But my blind guess is that it's cultural. If I try to forget that I've heard them, I feel like they wouldn't stick out as girls names.

Of course, the entire 'a' thing could itself just be cultural.

[silverspawn]

Well I can't actually leave this comment standing even as a joke, so let me amend it by saying that Joscha Bach is an incredibly interesting thinker, even if he's 100% wrong on consciousness.

He also actually literally descends from the piano composer, which is like, not an achievement, but what are the odds? Maybe pretty good since he had about a quadrillion children?

[faust]

So why do Joscha and Ezra not sound female? Is it entirely cultural, or is there a phonetic reason? The answer of course is that I have no clue. But my blind guess is that it's cultural. If I try to forget that I've heard them, I feel like they wouldn't stick out as girls names.

Of course, the entire 'a' thing could itself just be cultural.

I think both of these are Hebrew in origin.

And it seems obvious to me that the 'a' thing is cultural; I mean, what's the alternative?

[silverspawn]

The alternative is that it's biological -- which requires femininity itself to not be purely cultural, the-way-phonetic-sounds-are-perceived to not be fully cultural, and for both of them to correlate. I also don't think that's likely here, though.

[silverspawn]

Man these tournament invites that GGPoker gives you when you win someone's stack in one go are crazy. If I understand this right, then you could totally game those by having two accounts all-inning against each other. At these stakes, it'll cost you about 1,20$ in rake, which I think is significantly less than the invite is worth.

Then again, if two people team up you can game the system anyway, and of course that's completely forbidden.

In any case, GGPoker seems to be throwing out money at a much higher rate than I expected. Which I guess makes sense as a business strategy. I've always thought that the rake is so high that if you just have a lot of people on your platform, you should make a ton of money. Specifically, I always wondered why a site can't simply offer lower rake than all competitors and take over the market that way. But maybe this normal-ish rake plus tons of random shit is just a smarter version of that plan. And probably the promotional stuff is not as significant on higher stakes.

[Awaclus]

Do you what's special about Joscha Bach and Ezra Klein? It's that they're male, yet their first names end on an 'a'. (That's the only noteworthy thing about them, obviously.) Usually, the 'a' signals a female name. When I try to think of female names, it's usually harder to come up ones that don't end on 'a' than with ones that do.

So why do Joscha and Ezra not sound female? Is it entirely cultural, or is there a phonetic reason? The answer of course is that I have no clue. But my blind guess is that it's cultural. If I try to forget that I've heard them, I feel like they wouldn't stick out as girls names.

Of course, the entire 'a' thing could itself just be cultural.

Joscha sounds like it's a variant of Joshua, which is a well established masculine name that everyone knows is masculine. Ezra is not a name I very commonly run into, so I actually didn't know Ezra Klein's gender until the 2nd sentence of your post (I recognize the name, but I don't know/remember what he looks or sounds like).

And the 'a' thing is obviously cultural. In Finland, we still have more feminine names ending in A than masculine ones because there are tons of names of foreign origin and Finnishization doesn't have to remove the A from women's names (although sometimes it does) nor does it have to add it to men's names (although sometimes it does), but Finnish nickname conventions tend to more often add As at the ends of masculine names than feminine ones, and these conventions are relevant because it's common for people to give their parents' or grandparents' nicknames as actual official names to their children.

The alternative is that it's biological -- which requires femininity itself to not be purely cultural, the-way-phonetic-sounds-are-perceived to not be fully cultural, and for both of them to correlate.

That doesn't seem like a very difficult requirement, though. Femininity is clearly not purely cultural, the way phonetic sounds are perceived is clearly not fully cultural, and it doesn't actually have to be a correlation, it can be any type of link. The part where it gets unlikely is where the link would have to be between this extremely specific detail of phonetics and femininity.

[silverspawn]

The "we shouldn't disqualify Trump because it'll be better to defeat him" argument is so stupid. What if we don't defeat him? How do these people go about investing money?

[silverspawn]

RNG: have a 23o.
Me: fold
RNG: Ok, the flop is A45

(Next Round)

RNG: have a 23o.
Me: fold
RNG: Ok, the flop is 38s3

[silverspawn]

So I gotta talk more about the straddle. That's the GGPoker mechanic where someone can just commit to pay 2 BB into the pot before the start of the game. Obviously this is a strategically terrible thing to do. But what's so interesting about it is that it counts as the new big-blind in term of position, meaning the player after the straddle is first to act -- and since players can and will just straddle every turn, it means the player after them has to bet first in every round (and the next player second every round and so on).

This isn't a minor thing; position is super important in poker. If you look at your stats, the earnings are widely different depending on position; money flows toward the latest positions, with the dealer always being the best. Granted, position is also very important after the flop, and that is unaffected by the straddle, so "only" maybe half of that is changed by the straddle. Which is still a massive change! So the players after the straddle player in clockwise direction just play at a huge disadvantage.

... and they don't seem to realize this because they just kept playing. Meanwhile I, for the first time, had a position that was actually favorable (previously I had always left the table whenever someone straddled because I was always close after the straddle player), so here I just got to act late every time. It wasn't the best position, but it was 6/9, so a nice, solid edge.

The other hilarious thing was that the straddle player was sitting there with 55$ (from a 20$ max buyin), so he was having a great time. He was also a complete maniac; he raised my bets twice on a flop where had had nothing but a gutshot (a single card that would complete a straight; in this case, the flop had A45 and he had K3). I had A-something, which is a marginal hand that I'd fold against raises most of the time, but not if your opponent is crazy.

[silverspawn]

The site also actively encourages you to post a larger straddle (4BB) in response to the first straddle, or to go all-in before seeing your hand. You're asked this every time and there's no option to turn it off. So like, no wonder there are more players doing stupid stuff; the site actively pushes you.

[silverspawn]

I've come around to being 100% supportive of the entire package. Making poker more casual and silly is exactly what we need. As sad as it is, being profitable at poker is all about exploiting weak players, and the general skill level online has gone up over time. So pushing against that is great, and adding silly mechanics that add further skill components is even better.

[silverspawn]

One of the best things at these stakes are monocolored flops. If the flop comes J76 all spades and I have absolutely nothing, I just make a reasonable bet and everyone else folds. This works so often that, considering people obviously won't fold with two spades or one high spade (or any hands that could make a full house), they must fold everything else just about every time. I think they just toss out everything about ranges or probabilities and just go "idk what to do here and I can't bluff" and then fold to avoid dealing with the problem.

[silverspawn]

It's the same with people just all-inning unprompted with overpairs on super draw-heavy flops (i.e., flops that enable straights and flushes). It's not a strategic move; its purpose is to free you from having to make further decisions because the flop makes you uncomfortable and you don't know how to play. I know this because I used to do exactly that, too.

[silverspawn]

So apparently the strongest argument against Trump being disqualified from becoming president is that, even though Jan 6 was an insurrection, and even though Trump engaged in it, and even though it is self-executing, it does not apply to Trump because the president is not an officer of the united states, despite the fact that he is an officer under the united states. Good stuff.

And apparently this is also the cleanest way for the supreme court to rule in Trump's favor

[silverspawn]

One of the most irritating things about the Everett branch we're living in is how many assassination attempts Hitler survived. The first was in 1939, and according to GPT-4, it was nothing but dumb luck that it didn't work. Just think about how much mass of the wave function is concentrated in universes in which Hitler died early. Maybe the ones where he is assassinated later aren't too different, but in 1939? It was November 1939, but nonetheless, that's a long time from Hitler's eventual downfall; it would have changed world history substantially.

[silverspawn]

Do you guys still remember the days when we had to google to find card art? Man, old times.

[faust]

One of the most irritating things about the Everett branch we're living in is how many assassination attempts Hitler survived. The first was in 1939, and according to GPT-4, it was nothing but dumb luck that it didn't work. Just think about how much mass of the wave function is concentrated in universes in which Hitler died early. Maybe the ones where he is assassinated later aren't too different, but in 1939? It was November 1939, but nonetheless, that's a long time from Hitler's eventual downfall; it would have changed world history substantially.

It's unclear to me though whether this would have lead to better outcomes. Maybe in that timeline, someone more competent takes power, does not invade Russia, and Europe remains under Nazi control for longer.

[silverspawn]

Nice try, but unless it turns out that the memories are actually of an old man who is plagued by fear of death and loneliness and only assumed the role of female subject to compensate for his inability to be loved by women during his life, I'm calling BS.

[silverspawn]

One of the most irritating things about the Everett branch we're living in is how many assassination attempts Hitler survived. The first was in 1939, and according to GPT-4, it was nothing but dumb luck that it didn't work. Just think about how much mass of the wave function is concentrated in universes in which Hitler died early. Maybe the ones where he is assassinated later aren't too different, but in 1939? It was November 1939, but nonetheless, that's a long time from Hitler's eventual downfall; it would have changed world history substantially.

It's unclear to me though whether this would have lead to better outcomes. Maybe in that timeline, someone more competent takes power, does not invade Russia, and Europe remains under Nazi control for longer.

Agreed; it's not obvious

[silverspawn]

From Wikipedia:

    While the neuron doctrine is a central tenet of modern neuroscience, recent studies suggest that there are notable exceptions and important additions to our knowledge about how neurons function.

    Electrical synapses are more common in the central nervous system than previously thought. Thus, rather than functioning as individual units, in some parts of the brain large ensembles of neurons may be active simultaneously to process neural information. Electrical synapses are formed by gap junctions that allow molecules to directly pass between neurons, creating a cytoplasm-to-cytoplasm connection, known as a syncytium.

    Furthermore, the phenomenon of cotransmission, in which more than one neurotransmitter is released from a single presynaptic terminal (contrary to Dale's law), contributes to the complexity of information transmission within the nervous system.

The tide is moving slowly, but it's moving. Maybe.