The Mayflower pilgrims tried first to build a collectivist society. “Their ideal was the communism found in Plato’s Republic. All would work and share in common, knowing neither private property nor self-interested acquisitiveness.”
It was a disaster, a death spiral into low productivity and social conflict, which could only be remedied through the reinstatement of private farms, which egoistic incentives caused hard work which produced a bountiful harvest:
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-pilgrims-tried-socialism-and-it-failed/
The less industrious members of the colony came late to their work in the fields and were slow and easy in their labors. Knowing that they and their families were to receive an equal share of whatever the group produced, they saw little reason to be more diligent in their efforts. The harder working among the colonists became resentful that their efforts would be redistributed to their more malingering neighbors. Soon they, too, were coming late to work and were less energetic in the fields.
As Governor Bradford explained in his old English (though with the spelling modernized):
“And so, assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end . . .This had a very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Blueberry
18d ago
Kurzgesagt had last week a video about population collapse because of low fertility rate:
It has the charming title: "SOUTH KOREA IS OVER". All caps, which is not normal for kurzgesagt titles, so you know DOOM is coming.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
It is a short video with 14 minutes but it explains at breakneck speed the topic succinctly and in depth. The depressing conclusion is that South Korea can't really do anything, the low fertility is an unstoppable freight train and it will hit (end) the country. Even if a wonder happens and the fertility will rise to replacement level next week, the country would still have massive problems in 30 years. And because this wonder is not happening … the country is over
I’m Korean, born and raised in this country, and after watching this video, I just sat in silence for a while. Not because it shocked me, but because it said out loud what so many of us already feel deep inside: that it’s too late. There’s no fixing this anymore.
It is barely comforting that the West (and other countries too) are heading in a similar direction. Maybe accelerationism is the solution here: The faster South Korea is imploding the sooner other countries will wake up and do something.
Blueberry
20d ago
https://www.stlouisfed.org/timely-topics/how-much-u-s-currency-held-abroad-why
Currently, non-U.S. residents hold a little bit over $1 trillion in U.S. currency, and that’s about 45% or almost 45% of the total amount of U.S. currency that’s held.
foreigners holding our currency abroad are essentially making an interest-free loan to the United States …
So currency is like a government bond, but it’s a government bond that pays no interest. So if, for example, an American tourist were to go someplace in the world where U.S. dollars were accepted in exchange for payment for hotel services or restaurant services or some sort of trinkets or souvenirs, then you know if the U.S. tourist shows up in Jamaica and pays some place for souvenirs with U.S. dollars, then the U.S. tourist is getting something of value that is in exchange for little green pieces of paper that cost the United States more or less nothing to make.
Now, if the owner of the souvenir shop in Jamaica just circulates that currency within Jamaica and it stays there forever, then Americans have gotten goods and services of value — souvenirs or tourism services — in exchange for something that costs us more or less nothing. But if, say, in 10 years, somebody in Jamaica decides to take those U.S. dollars and exchange them for U.S. goods and services, then what the United States has done is gotten goods and services for 10 years in exchange for almost nothing, and then 10 years later, we have to pay for them, say, in terms of goods or services or other assets. And so we’ve gotten a 10-year interest-free loan for the amount of the currency that was paid for the original souvenirs.
Blueberry
23d ago
The slop, when it engages in motivated reasoning, hallucinates connections that don't exist in the source or need more preintroduction.
Interesting! Seems like a good marker beside of a certain style.
Blueberry
1mo ago
the destruction of all (?) known ancient hominid fossils in Australia over the past couple weeks
What, what? Was this discussed here?
Blueberry
1mo ago
Interesting, I didn't know that this exist:
Blueberry
1mo ago
Up to last year the consensus was that https://www.deepl.com translated much more naturally than the more literal Google translate.
Google Translate tends to do a much more literal translation, DeepL tends to be more idiomatic and free. Sometimes one is preferable, sometimes the other.
But I don't know how it compares to the newest (paid) AI models.
Blueberry
1mo ago
See the pictures in this xeet:
https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1904922685655707837
It is not that ChatGPT does not make mistakes, the mug with two handles or the dog with legarms are hilarious, but sooner or later image creation will approach dangerously the area of language translation: For really important stuff (legal contracts, professional movie/book translations) you still want a professional translater, but almost always deepl/AI-translate is good enough. The image slop is a pretty good and fun expression of the users creativitiy. Even if "real" graphic designers will use it just as a tool their productivity will skyrocket.
I wonder if and when Music is disrupted. "Write a Bob Dylan Song over current_year and cover it in the style of Jimmy Hendrix" would be a killer application. As a pillar of popular culture and fearing the backlash I wonder if AI companies will avoid music generation.
Blueberry
1mo ago
This prompt works for me very well with the $20 plus account. Maybe try it out:
Transform this photo into a high quality hand-drawn animated illustration. Apply watercolor techniques, soft organic lines, and a warm color palette. Maintain the original image's composition while adding a magical, dreamlike aesthetic. Emphasize gentle color transitions and a whimsical, slightly surreal atmosphere typical of classic Japanese animation
Blueberry
1mo ago
The next step would be test your model of the world on the stock market. Which can be humbling.
Downthread:
Google just launched the latest iteration of their Gemini language models.
Versus
While we're on the topic, OpenAI just announced their 4o image model
Guess who won the day? At least X is full on ghiblifying iconic photographs with ChatGPT. Or just a cute photo of yourself to send it to your girlfriend.
And memes of course:
https://x.com/Zeneca/status/1904774204769411196
“I don't want any real pictures anymore. Every photograph has to be turned into a ghibli style cartoon”
https://x.com/LukasMikelionis/status/1904873083246084364
Which AI is best?
https://x.com/djcows/status/1905004955582575060
You need some prompt magic but it possible (for now) to also style edgy images:
https://x.com/keysmashbandit/status/1904764224636592188
Some call it slob, and maybe tomorrow the novelty is gone, but I find the pictures strangely endearing.
Next stop will be video:
https://x.com/kb24x7/status/1904942247092895843
Blueberry
1mo ago
In Astralcodexten book review contests there was missing a good savage panning of a book.
And he does the classic leftist tactic of insisting upon "democratizing" progresses by increasing public involvement and decentralizing decision-making
What is his argument that this will help rail? I have the stereotype of projects being derailed (ha!) by decentralized and increased public involvement.
Blueberry
1mo ago
West Germany never claimed sovereignty over West Berlin
Interesting! If I understand the Wiki article right then West Berlin representatives in the W-Germany parliament only had advisory roles and all W-Germany laws were “shadowed” by W-Berlin senate, with a few exceptions like there was no draft in Berlin had no army. Theoretically they could have gone the independent way like Singapore.
To be fair the same argument applies to the second amendment (and others). The founding fathers couldn’t have foreseen in 1791 the developments of unwieldy muskets.
Blueberry
1mo ago
Zelensky was told to wear a suit, but he ignored this request:
One small but not insignificant factor that irritated Trump was the fact that Zelensky didn't wear a suit, two sources with direct knowledge told Axios. Trump's advisers told Zelensky's team on multiple occasions that it would be more respectful for Zelensky to ditch his military-style attire when visiting the White House.
Blueberry
1mo ago
distance within, say, white people is much larger than the genetic distance to a black person
This is often repeated, but I think this is false (Lewontins Fallacy?)
Blueberry
2mo ago
Yes, wouldn’t it be scarier if Musk focused on only one agency, established sort of a protocol/playbook to clean it up and then moved to the next? Currently this looks like a scatterbrained approach.
Blueberry
2mo ago
I am more interested what sperm was used. My guess is Altman, as he is more ambitious, but also I would not think he has a big family wish, so maybe it was a concession by him to his partner?
Blueberry
2mo ago
“Man carrying things” parodying the vibe change:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LWPhZu0EeXg
Then there was this posted by Cenk Uygur (the not so young anymore Young Turks guy):
https://x.com/cenkuygur/status/1892057431179477251
Yesterday, @nytimes had a story about Democratic donors fleeing the party. That explains why the Democratic leaders look like deer in the headlights. Since the donors are gone, there's no one left to give them orders. So, they're like robots frozen in place, awaiting commands.
Didn’t have time to find the nyt story yet.
Blueberry
2mo ago
According to Andrej Karpathy:
As far as a quick vibe check over 2 hours this morning, Grok 3 + Thinking feels somewhere around the state of the art territory of OpenAI’s strongest models (o1-pro, $200/month), and slightly better than DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Which is quite incredible considering that the team started from scratch 1 year ago, this timescale to state of the art territory is unprecedented.
Blueberry
2mo ago
Do you believe that there’s a legitimate distinction to be made between “gay men” and “men who have sex with men”?
Gayness is a white construct, other (sub)cultures may reject the term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down-low_(sexual_slang)
Down-low is an African-American slang term[1] that typically refers to a sexual subculture of black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men, practice gay cruising, and frequently don a specific hip-hop attire during these activities.[2][3] They generally avoid disclosing their same-sex sexual activities, even if they have female sexual partner(s), they are married to a woman, or they are single.
Did confession lead you to self reflect or even change behavior? And what is the situation like? Is it like in the (Italian mafia) movies? Does the priest ask questions or explore an issue or just led you talk? Do you feel strange going in or going out of the confession box?
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