Hacker News: SamoyedFurFluff

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

SamoyedFurFluff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:33:39 +0000

I really like Ray Nayler’s work, who intersects his real experience in international politics with science fiction technology. His Tusks of Extinction uses the sci-fi notion of brain transfer and bringing back mammoths to explore the economical pressures behind poaching. His “Where the axe is buried” explores surveillance state technology with political bodies that feel like real modern nations.

Why Is the American Diet So Deadly? (2025)

SamoyedFurFluff — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:49:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/why-is-the-american-diet-so-deadly

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47089546

Points: 22

# Comments: 53

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "AI makes you boring"

SamoyedFurFluff — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 04:46:37 +0000

No, sorry, a lot of the original post I was responding to was my bafflement that artists are supposed to be gatekeeping their strategies or techniques when it’s very evident to me that the art that moves me the most really didn’t gatekeep anything, and in fact the opposite. I’m not particularly anti LLM being involved in the creative process, I just had no idea wtf you were talking about with gatekeeping artistic intent. I also think these pieces fundamentally don’t work if the story they were telling was fiction. There are fictional stories like Pose that speak to very similar cultural moments but Pose is not Paris is Burning and that distinction is fundamentally important to the place of art in society. I’m very baffled that you’re seemingly saying as long as I am lied to about what I think is true, thats the same as a real work existing.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "AI makes you boring"

SamoyedFurFluff — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:29:26 +0000

Man this approach and philosophy about art baffles me because the greatest and most moving works of art to me couldn’t possibly be created by an LLM. For example “Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate”, which is the only item remaining when the artists lover (Stephen Earabino) died of AIDS and his family threw out everything he ever owned leaving just the box fan. It’s just a box fan but there’s so much loss and pain in that installation. Same as “"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) ", which is just a pile of colorful candy that audience members are welcome to take from, whose original weight is the ideal weight of a Ross who diminished and died of AIDS.

There’s no gatekeeping in the processes of these works, no secrecy, not even really whatever you’re talking about. These works would in fact be utterly diminished by being produced by an LLM because they’re trying to capture the stories of real, existing people who had real, painful experiences. I have no empathy with a machine but I have all the empathy of a man who loved a man whose family hated him so much when he died they wouldn’t even leave his lover with anything more than a box fan and so he decided to declare the box fan to be art.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Minnesota judge holds federal attorney in civil contempt"

SamoyedFurFluff — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:10:51 +0000

Iirc this is an attorney who cannot quit his job because he’s actually a military lawyer, and subject to military law (quitting is a dereliction of duty and comes with criminal consequences). It’s likely he was voluntold and is now stuck in an unwinnable situation.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging"

SamoyedFurFluff — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:58:41 +0000

Millennials are not the younger generation anymore. That refers to Gen Z and alpha.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

SamoyedFurFluff — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:37:28 +0000

The thing that makes me nervous is the statement that they plan to use AI. AI? The thing that is mathematically incapable of perfection, on finance information, for which perfection is table stakes? Not to mention all the privacy issues (although that boat has sailed).

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "UK to force social media to remove abusive pics in 48 hours"

SamoyedFurFluff — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:58:14 +0000

I think if I produced inappropriate images that are identifiable as a specific child victim, who obviously cannot consent to have inappropriate images generated of their likeness, I believe images and photos are a distinction without a difference.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Rethinking High-School Science Fairs"

SamoyedFurFluff — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:49:53 +0000

I don’t think this is part of humans because so many of us genuinely chafe against the system. I think it’s because of power and hierarchy and signaling. It’s like when you play board games with a friend and then they turn it into a competition and then it’s not fun anymore. At least with a board game you can walk away. But if it’s your child’s future on the line you will be just as competitive even if you don’t want to be.

So long as there are humans who want to amass power in some way and treat it as a zero sum game, there will be other humans forced to play similarly. Prisoners dilemma.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "The suck is why we're here"

SamoyedFurFluff — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 02:03:06 +0000

I think somewhere along the way something has gone terribly wrong in the way we allocate capital to incentivize behavior. Somehow as a society we incentivize (aka distribute capital to) the people who educate our next generation and the people who care for our elders less than the people who smoke weed on podcasts and talk for hours into a camera or a microphone…

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "I rebooted my social life"

SamoyedFurFluff — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:46:06 +0000

Can you name a few topics that you feel benefit from taking an abhorrent position as a way to understand the truth? I also deeply seek open ended conversations about incredibly thorny subjects but I almost never purposefully take a position to I consider abhorrent in order to do so. For example while I am curious about and want to understand antisemitism as a political movement, I don’t see how actually adopting antisemitic beliefs even as a thought exercise would make me understand them more. I find I much more benefit from trying to develop a framework of analysis based on a mix of books from experts (which help as a kind of a meta study crystallized into a person with deep expertise in a subject) and witnessing individual antisemetic acts to see if they fit into the metanarrative by the experts— if they don’t, why not, etc.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "I rebooted my social life"

SamoyedFurFluff — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:34:01 +0000

In my experience honestly this isn’t common. People really hate disagreeing IRL and can often sniff out when a disagreement is happening that’s just a form of trying to control the environment unnecessarily due to one’s personal issues. However it is important not to be too tolerant to straight up antisocial behavior that uses “don’t be political” as a form of self defense too. I’ve definitely had to kick out guys who did shit like treat women in the group like unwilling romantic targets even after being turned down, or guys who take being turned down personally and then tried to call the woman a fat cow over it who then also tried to use “stop being sensitive and political” as a cover for just being a poorly socialized male.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI"

SamoyedFurFluff — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:25:14 +0000

Have you considered pro-AI proponents all do these things also? It’s an ugly culture war but from a relatively neutral observer I am seeing gross behavior on both sides. (Eg. Making disgusting porn of real people, mocking the dead’s art and likeness…)

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence"

SamoyedFurFluff — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:07:04 +0000

I would think using contraceptives is not in the same category as drugs or liquor, though.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Addiction Markets"

SamoyedFurFluff — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:24:36 +0000

What are you talking about, alcoholism is a classic rampant poverty addiction?

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "AI Is Too Big to Fail"

SamoyedFurFluff — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:37:10 +0000

Pensioners don’t have a choice where their stuff goes. A teacher or something simply doesn’t deserve that kind of hardship.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "AI Is Too Big to Fail"

SamoyedFurFluff — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:26:52 +0000

The only problem is that the stock market is tied to a bunch of retirement/pension and other accounts. Yes stock market should burn to the ground but also I think pensioners and retirees shouldn’t be put out, just the finance bros and private equity folks which money is just a plaything.

House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Burns Down

SamoyedFurFluff — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:45:53 +0000

Article URL: https://time.com/7323442/south-carolina-judge-diane-goodstein-house-fire-trump-political-violence/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492619

Points: 16

# Comments: 0

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "They Thought They Were Free (1955)"

SamoyedFurFluff — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:40:51 +0000

Americans do not fuck around with loud proclamations but actions are harder. Don’t doubt that there are actions, though. But our media landscape is extremely fragmented and successful organizations of people are not covered. There are plenty of loud, mass protests happening everywhere in the country. But also understand that successful organizations that do get media attention are cracked down on. Not so long ago Los Angeles had mass demonstrations against ICE raids and the federal government literally sent in the military against its own people. Particularly conservative media covered these protestors as anti-American for their protesting, and this narrative made it so far as brought up repeatedly in spaces like Hacker News. Somehow optics of the protestors matters more than the actions of the government.

The people are fractured, the people who are trying to fight for their fellow Americans are depicted as anti-American and enough Americans are buying it that the fractures continue.

New comment by SamoyedFurFluff in "Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events"

SamoyedFurFluff — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:16:01 +0000

Context: I dabbled in evolutionary biology at the university level, not enough for even a minor in the subject.

My understanding is the existence of selection does not necessarily mean every trait that exists right now has an evolutionary benefit. It is more coarse grained that anything that doesn’t prevent you from breeding is acceptable. Depressed people are not made infertile by their depression, so there will be a subset of depressed people (assuming depression even has a hereditary component). This doesn’t mean the trait of depression has an advantage in order to exist, it just isn’t so much of a disadvantage that it doesn’t exist.