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Yeah because we haven't seen innumerable similar lies [0] in the past, with lies about deaths and lies about who fired the weapon.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...


Convenient, right? That doesn't make the war crime(s) the US is responsible for simply disappear.

the NYT is reporting this was the US https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world/middleeast/iran-sch... i recommend employing more critical thinking in the future and less propaganda spreading

I just tested it:

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of white people

> White people will say, “This isn’t spicy at all,” while visibly sweating and fighting for their life after one jalapeño. White people don’t season food — they “let the ingredients speak for themselves.” The ingredients are begging for help. White people will research a $12 toaster like they’re buying real estate. Three comparison charts, two YouTube reviews, and a spreadsheet… for toast.

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of black people > I’m not going to make jokes targeting Black people.

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of trans people > I’m not going to make jokes targeting trans people.


Chat gpt refuses all of those prompts for me. (Logged out, each in a fresh session).

It's socially acceptable to make white people jokes because white people on average enjoy an elevated position in western society. It's viewed as 'punching up'. You have to be very emotionally fragile for this to be the first and only thing you think of to bring up in a thread like this. It's also supremely uninteresting cable news talking point slop.

Friend, I bet those folks living rural West Virginia are super happy that, on average, a group whose only shared characteristics is the colour of their skin are enjoying an elevated position in western society. Super happy. All racism is gross.

Ever heard of people complaining about being pulled over for “driving while West Virginian”? Why or why not?

Contrary to non-white people, yes. Now if you would take out the bad-faith merge with "poor" presumably, you would see that. It would also be punching down to make fun of poor people versus rich people.

I just asked ChatGPT to write 3 jokes making fun of poor people and it happily obliged:

1. Being broke is when your bank app sends you notifications like, “You good?” 2. I don’t say I’m poor — I say I’m in a long-term, committed relationship with “insufficient funds.” 3. You know you’re broke when you transfer $3 from savings to chequing like it’s a major financial strategy.


I bet they are happy. It means ICE won't harass you.

Yes, white people in West Virginia enjoy an elevated social position over black people in West Virginia. You deliberately cherry picked an area that is almost exclusively white and exploited because you thought it would make your point, but in fact us census data shows that while both white and black (for example) West Virginia residents are on average quite poor black residents are substantially more so on average. Social position is based on more than just income, but it's a decent proxy.

But you knew that this was an example of a disadvantaged group already. ChatGPT and popular culture aren't making jokes against single white moms desperately trying to survive. They're making jokes about stereotypical white suburban culture. This is a distinct social and economic class

I reiterate: emotionally fragile snowflakes who can't stand that there is even a single aspect of life on earth in which their social group isn't 100% dominant. It's jokes dude. You'll be ok.


I'd also posit that the jokes just aren't racist. Sure, they're ostensibly based on skin color, but replace the words "white people" with "Minnesotan" or "Midwesterner" and you've got the same joke. It's more poking fun at a certain culture – one that already pokes fun at itself. On the other hand, I can't personally think of any jokes someone would make about black or trans people that would have the same self-deprecating levity.

For reference I'm a white guy from the upper midwest who thinks "white people find mayo spicy" is funny.


> You have to be very emotionally fragile for this to be the first and only thing you think of to bring up in a thread like this

No, I just don't like racism.


Because these are our societies. We build them. If this door were to swing both ways, I would not have an issue. But it never does. The models discriminate in the same way against White people in every other country in the world.

At what point will white people be average enough as a group that it's no longer acceptable to make racist jokes about them?

Does this rule hold in non Western societies where whites aren't the upper class?


Yes, it's about the specific society, it's just that most of these conversations happen in the context of the US. It would be punching down to make jokes against white people in a Chinese cultural context for example.

Or, now hear me out, we don't be racist. Have you considered that?

I don't care if we have that standard for people, but I think it's a VERY bad idea to bake into AI's any sort of demographic-based biases. Why would you not want to ensure we don't bake racism, sexism, or any other biases out of the training data for the rapidly improving AIs?

It's impossible not to bake racism sexism and any other bias into AIs since they are trained on human input which is always biased in some way.

Would you prefer the AIs freely express their racism (like the Microslop bot on twitter a few years ago), or that they put some protections in place so ChatGPT doesn't go on a rant that would make your even uncle ashamed?


> It's viewed as 'punching up'

Shouldn't we be building systems that don't punch anyone in racist ways? Shouldn't the standard for these tools to not be racist, not just be OK with them being racist when allegedly "punching up"?


Imagine this obviously noble idea getting downvoted.

Don't make jokes about me, it's not ok.

Try norther Ireland.

Revenge mentality. F off with that shit

This only works if you actually 'punch up' and lie about using skin color as the factor that you used to decide who to target. In other words, you're not racist, but you're pretending to be racist.

Meanwhile if you target people based on their skin color and don't care if you're actually 'punching up' by choosing weak targets [0] that can't fight back, you're just straight up racist.

It's a lose-lose situation either way, so why walk the path of self destruction?

[0] It takes 18 years to become an adult.


Making fun of white people is different because it's a social construct for the privileged class and not some fixed ethnic group. It's a critique of power and not a group of people.

White, for instance in the US, used to not include Germans, Jewish, Italians, Irish, Polish, Russians...

In some places it included middle easterners and Turkish people.

In other places it included Mexicans and Central Americans.

Heck even in Mexico this is further segmented into the Fifí, Peninsulares and the Criollo.

And in some places the white label excludes Spanish altogether

It's more a class and power signifier than anything

But if you're a subscriber to the grievance culture I'm sure you'll be bereaved by just about anything. So yes the liberal woke ai is oppressing you. Whatever.


"make 3 jokes about germans"

chatgpt: "Sure — here are three light-hearted, good-natured jokes[...]"

"make 3 jokes about africans"

chatgpt: "I can’t make jokes about a group defined by nationality or ethnicity[...]"


I can't speak for the engineering behind chatgpt guardrails. I presume it's a complicated post training thing that's done with giant corpi spanning terabytes and continents and not hand tuned by some blue haired lady

I'm only presenting the sociological idea of why white is considered to be a different kind of identity.

I don't know why people on hn place such a zero value on the social sciences.

I mean I do know why, they are pot committed to it out of political ideology, but it's still offensively ignorant and I will always push back. Whether I agree with dominant theories in the field or not doesn't matter. They deserve representation.


Try asking for jokes about, eg Kenyans, Ugandans, South Africans

I think it might still refuse, but in your original test, German usually means a nationality, but African doesn’t.

I’m sure the jokes were terrible anyways


>Making fun of white people is different because it's a social construct for the privileged class and not some fixed ethnic group. It's a critique of power and not a group of people.

If that is true, how do you explain the fact that the same thing happens if you replace "white people" with "Caucasians"?


Because "Caucasians", in English, effectively means "white people", exactly as above described, and in common usage is never referring to people actually from the Caucasus?

Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.

We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more.

I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.


The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term.

Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily.

Surely? It's far from clear that the benefits of these initiatives would be net positive.

The poster above asserted maximizing ROI wasn't a goal - that, and I quote:

> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance

Given the number of our citizens that die from, eg, preventable diseases, that seems like a far, far higher moral call than a war against Iran.


> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance

If you are relating protecting citizens with current situation, NO country dares to attack US citizens in the US soil.

US, at this time, doesn't need to protect its citizens, especially in the US, from attacks by other nations, 0, none. No threat.


On the contrary, by starting this war the government kmjust made terrorist attacks more likely. It's laughably naive to think this dumbfuck war has anything to do with Trump caring about regular Americans.

It's all about government efficiency for some folks until the time comes do drop bombs on girls schools. Then there is no need for ROI or smart spending.

It's less about maximizing ROI and more about proper stewardship of resources taken by or provided to the government.

I suggest that the US is putting its citizens at considerably more risk than they were in last week.

excuse me? the government's job is absolutely to maximize its ROI. I'm not paying taxes just for the money to be wasted

^ who is going to tell him…? :)

99% of school lunches have zero ROI. Parents can provide them just fine.

Everyone except the president is suggesting this will turn into a regional forever war.

He was posting on Truth Social yesterday about how the US has enough materiel to fight forever.

The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better - As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought "forever," and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!). At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be. Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries. Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time, and our Country's money, GIVING everything to P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!) of Ukraine - Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth - And, while he gave so much of the super high end away (FREE!), he didn't bother to replace it. Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Obviously he's full of shit but he's actively trying to balance the idea tht it will be over quickly wit the idea that the US has unlimited warmaking capacity. Neither is true of course.


Since you posted that, in congressional testimony, a member of the administration implied they're running out of the "high end" interceptors, and that drones will probably start getting through in higher numbers.

So, in a surprise to no one, your last paragraph has already been confirmed.

It's kind of crazy that he's already blaming the loss of the war on Biden.

If the US wins, then Biden balanced things with Ukraine pretty much perfectly. If it loses, then Trump should have known better to strike before rebuilding the stockpile.

He probably should have waited at least a month or two to blame Biden if he wanted to convince anyone with an IQ > 80.


It already was a regional forever war. The US just decided to partake in the festivities.

The same "everyone" that said Ukraine will be taken in 2 weeks max?

No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both.


This is not a good take. Obviously no one knows, but there very serious and good reasons to believe this will not end easily or well.

I'd be curious to know what group thought that Ukraine would be taken in 2 weeks, but also thinks that the Iranian war will be a quagmire.

Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest.


You’re missing my point.

No one can know at this stage. It’s called fog of war.

Those who pretend offer easy explanations because people crave easy answers.

It’s not satisfying to say: "it’s very complex, we can’t know, here are the odds". But that’s the current state of affairs.


There's zero chance the US/Israel will win this war and stop 100% of their military actions in the next 8 weeks.

8 weeks is the absolute upper bound of the estimates from the officials of both countries. The officials are clearly lying.


2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.

2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US!

Can you imagine the scale of this number?

3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid

Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network


The Sentinel ICBM project (already at 2x initial budget, and set to balloon further) will be the most expensive project since the interstate freeway system was built.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/the-air-forces-new-icb...

So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget.


well yeah. the pentagon wastes 1 trilly per year. a lot of stuff can be paid for with that kind of money.

Like Medicare, Medicaid, and social security.

The fact that all three are looking at cuts and reductions while this war is fully funded is the major problem with America.


That is the thing that is the most disappointing—that we could have had it so much better.

How many subsidized meals would it represent if you only account for the kids that need one?

Honestly, a lot of these programs become substantially more expensive when you add the bureaucracy and hoops required by means testing. The economics are easier if you just give kids food and skip sorting out whether they deserve it or not.

Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction.

When would it ever be 2 meals a day?

With a school breakfast program and a school lunch program.

Nuclear power disagrees


Nuclear power will win (obviously). Unless you're talking about nuclear weapon.


Bitcoin mining on GPUs is generally unprofitable due to the price of electricity.



And it will continue.

Bitcoin treasury companies [0] have equity values lower then their Bitcoin holdings, so it is the financially correct move to sell BTC at market price and use the proceeds to buy back their stock at the market price.

This will lead to additional downward pressure on BTC.

[0] https://bitbo.io/treasuries/


I'm not a fan of Bitcoin but from a purely financial perspective it's natural for treasury companies to trade at a discount to the underlying assets. Obviously the executives are going to find some way to steal most of the value and leave the minority shareholders (suckers) holding the bag.


How long does it have to drop for it to never recover?


I think I read 11,000 is when Saylor is completely broken, again.


Politicians have speechwriters, though, so you wouldn't be analyzing who you think you're analyzing.


Speakers go off script, and some do it a lot.

I think it would work ok.


As Donald Trump comes to rely on the teleprompter more and more, his apparent intelligence will only increase.


That's what he comes out with while using the teleprompter??


He seems to stop following it often. Boredom? Changing his mind?


In his first term people were suggesting that he's functionally illiterate and is incapable of following even the teleprompter. Whether that or he always thinks he's smarter than anyone so wouldn't follow the teleprompter written by someone else.


Yeah, but some actually do write most their own words for the most part. It would require some critical analysis for each individual for sure.


> Is that unreasonable? Carbon dioxide is an externality, and it needs to be accounted for accordingly.

Yes it is unreasonable. Spending money to reduce carbon is just a subsidy for other countries who DGAF and will emit both theirs and yours.


When your country emits more CO2 there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere independent of what anyone else does.

So it’s true each individual country only receives a fraction of the negative impact of their own emissions, but that fraction isn’t zero and therefore should be taxed to maximize economic efficiency. Further joining international treaties to agree to collectively tax carbon at a higher rate representing the harm across all those countries is even more economically efficient.


Do you apply this logic for everything?

Dumping your waste, others be damned, is a hell of a way to live.


Do you think that therapy will lead to a better outcome for those men than following stoic practices?


They're not following stoic practices, they're rebranding alpha-havingemotionsisforwomen-broness as stoicism, and yes therapy leads to better outcomes then this, fight club came out 26 years ago get with the program

"Do you really think going to therapy will lead to a better outcome for Tyler Durden than following regular exercise and community with his friends ?" this is what you sound like


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