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drethelin
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Secular Solstice Round Up 2024
drethelin9mo120

Berkeley 

December 20th
The Freight and Salvage
Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bay-area-winter-solstice-2024-tickets-958115718907?aff=oddtdtcreator
Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1009580217051675/

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My tentative best guess on how EAs and Rationalists sometimes turn crazy
drethelin2y0-10

Also for practical purposes it's much more clear who is being referred to in the local context especially since there's tons of writing from/about Ziz

Plus it's just a much cooler name for a community villain. 

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Dealing with UFO claims
drethelin2y31

Plenty of people love to be anonymous trolls. 

In addition, having information from anonymous sources casts doubt on whether those sources exist at all, or are credible individuals rather than trolls 

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Killing Socrates
drethelin2y20

You are given millions of words of context and examples to learn from. 

One of the things to learn is that a few downvotes is basically meaningless, because lots of people disagree in lots of ways and you need to stop caring that much. 

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Killing Socrates
drethelin2y100

I've said this many times but downvotes are a valuable signal that wastes way less time of everyone involved. 

Explanations of downvotes don't just take the time of the person writing them, they also take the time of everyone else who has to read them, and multiply the impact of trolls and prolific bullshitters. 

If you are getting a lot of downvotes, then it's almost always for a good reason and rarely that mysterious, and if you pay attention you will soon figure out what people don't like about your content, for example that it's whiny. 

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Here's the exit.
drethelin3y3522

I think this essay is blatantly manipulative bullshit written in a deliberately hypnotic style, that could be modified to target any topic anyone cares about. 

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Announcing Balsa Research
drethelin3y129

a wood famous for being flimsy seems like a bad choice here

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Announcing Balsa Research
[+]drethelin3y-19-36
Addendum: A non-magical explanation of Jeffrey Epstein
drethelin3y4-2

Sorry, this post ignores too many obviously relevant factors to be very convincing.

 It makes arguments based on how it would not make sense for someone to take the risk to eliminate Epstein because they would go to jail for murder IF CAUGHT, but the fundamental thing going on with Epstein is people, even well-connected billionaires, are fully willing to do things that will send to prison IF CAUGHT because they believe (for good reason) that they will not be caught, and if caught will not be punished to the full extent of the law. So you're already dealing with a set of people who are willing to risk going to jail to get what they want, and willing to pay other people to take on that risk to help them. 

There's also no mention of Trump or Clinton, two people that Epstein might obviously be tempted to implicate who have both direct and indirect power over the CIA and other US government agencies and who we know have few to no moral qualms about having people killed. These are also the exact people who would be in position to subvert the Attorney General or anyone else looking at the evidence.

If Epstein still has enough access to money to bribe people to let him kill himself, he has enough money to bribe people to let him live a life of luxury in jail, or to fully stage an escape, perhaps by bribing them to let him stay in a minimum security prison, where there are frequent escapes (https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-prisons-prison-breaks-business-c1979d6ad6e7b3531968dab0e61eb22d) 

The last time he was arrested, he subverted a ton of people to the extent that he got a relatively low level of punishment that let him spend 12 hours a day doing whatever he wanted outside of prison, zero consequences for breaking the rules (eg flying to other cities when he was supposed to stay in florida on his "work release"), and even with that he still get let out early. 

In addition, the fundamental premise of the Epstein story is that dozens if not hundreds of wealthy and well-connected people have in fact been "subverted" for years into covering up or at least not making a fuss about frequent underaged sex and rape. 

You can credibly claim that Epstein currently had no plans of talking, but like you said he had turned against a past co-conspirator, so you can't credibly claim that no one who was at risk if he talked might not believe that it was a better deal to eliminate him than to worry for the next 20 years. 

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Visible Homelessness in SF: A Quick Breakdown of Causes
drethelin3y60

Measuring homelessness by state seems like a deeply flawed approach given that it involves aggregating enormous geographic areas with different conditions. 

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22Stupid Questions (10/27/2014)
11y
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5Open Thread, November 15-22, 2013
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-6Content writing offer
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0Public Donation List or Putting Peer Pressure to Good Use
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8Madison WI Meetup, Sat Apr 2nd 1PM
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18