DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
2yr ago
OpenAI's structure is a little convoluted, https://openai.com/our-structure
It's a 501c3 that owns a for-profit company. They are trying to walk a tightrope to avoid falling into thorny legal issues.
It would be very easy for Altman to do something that created legal issues he didn't expect. Moving resources between the orgs could be a problem. Doing something as simple as telling a few of the non-profit employees to help out the engineers at the for profit company is a legal minefield.
There's also another issue. 501c3s are supposed to be run in the ideal Moldbug fashion. The CEO is a local monarch and the board measures his performance and can fire him if they aren't satisfied.
However the board sometimes let power go to their heads and decide they should be running things. They fire the CEO because he's getting the glory and not doing what they say.
DradisPing
2yr ago
There's been a lot of heavy news and discussion about Gaza lately. I think there was an appetite for something lighter and you just stumbled into it with some pop culture discussion.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I think "wokeness" is the wrong way to think about what's happening.
It has more to do with women who have worked their way up in the entertainment industry with the help of some affirmative action and are now in important decision making positions.
As they approach the end of their careers they want to be remembered as groundbreaking feminists and give talks at women's conferences and that sort of thing. But they can't get much attention for that sort of thing if they are producing content that's mostly popular with males.
There are other contributing factors. Advertising driven TV networks produced content mostly aimed at women. Women make most household purchasing decisions, so they are what advertisers want. Subscriber funded content naturally has a more even male-female split. However the back catalog is more female focussed.
So the marketing numbers tell them to produce more male focussed content. The lady execs resent that and push back. It feels wrong to them.
There was that famous quote from an Amazon exec who complained that if they based their decisions on focus group results they'd make nothing but movies about white men with guns.
Which strikes me as false. I'm open to other races. I'm sure they could find an American Chow Yun-fat.
Sci-fi / fantasy genre content has another issue. Making content nerdy men enjoy feels low status. After a few comic con panels they want to try to attract young women.
There also seems to be a thing where men who have daughters start wanting to make their content more appealing to young girls. However they overestimate the crossover appeal of their stories and end up producing things no one wants.
DradisPing
2yr ago
They also played down her looks for a lot of scenes in Spider Man Homecoming because they wanted her to be more of an outsider type.
She got her start as a child model and she definitely has a look better described as striking and distinct instead of bombshell.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Singer's argument isn't going to attract much of a response even in the best case. I think it comes off as lazy.
It's not a new issue. I'm sure there has been plenty written on it before. If Singer had done the obvious reading then he should be presenting the common counter arguments and rebutting them. He's not doing that, so he's either hiding them or hasn't done his homework.
He's got to at least make a cursory comment about zoonotic disease risks to be taken seriously.
Twitter's format does favour quick emotional responses so it's not really a good format for a charged discussion.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Modern trauma care turns what would have been murders in the 70s into aggravated assaults. There's a downward trend from medical improvements.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Ethiopia
Actually his father was in the foreign service and was stationed in Ethiopia. He has done podcasts with Ethiopians about Ethiopian politics but his general audience doesn't have much interest.
DradisPing
2yr ago
When Israel was in control of Gaza they built the hospital to be a bomb resistant fortress so that patients would be safe during fighting. They handed control of Gaza to the PLA / Fatah. Then Hamas won elections in 2007 and took over.
Hamas set up their headquarters in the hospital. For two reasons, it would look bad if Israel attacked it and it was already fortified.
Western reporters are in an odd spot. They sympathize with the Palestinians as an underdog and see it through an anti-colonial lens. Also they need access to Hamas to do reporting in Gaza. Also there's the safety of their reporters.
As a result it's uncouth to mention the Hamas fighters. They sort of beat around the bush.
The only news sources who will talk about them openly are the kind of sources that say blunt un-PC things.
DradisPing
2yr ago
There's a very high amount of authoritarianism and arrogance found in senior medical professionals. They don't like to be disobeyed or disagreed with. Look at the "Take Care of Maya" case that just finished.
Another interesting example is that now there are several countries that ban drugs like ketamine, psilocybin, or MDMA for treatment of severe mental disorders. But they allow assisted suicide in those cases. Because a dead patient happens all the time, but to be proven wrong would be truly horrendous.
DradisPing
2yr ago
In Canada there was a high level bureaucrat who didn't like the incoming government. He basically did nothing but attend meetings then leak the contents of those meetings to the press with negative spin.
Of course at that level he was impossible to fire.
So they put him in charge of one of the less important Mexican consulates.
There are certain jobs that you can only get by making powerful people very happy or very unhappy.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I found I liked Arcane's art style in small doses, but to me it was too visually noisy. Watching it I felt like I had to work to pick out the important figures in each scene.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Towards the end of the GWB presidency and especially after Obama's election the blue tribe decided they were done playing nice with the south.
DradisPing
2yr ago
The issue is "trapped inside mens bodies" is metaphysics. It's asserting the existence of gendered souls, and that's not something you can prove or disprove.
DradisPing
2yr ago
There's a partisan bias, but the real problem is that economists were trying to make predictions using models with assumptions that don't apply.
The inflation isn't just coming from the money supply. Covid lockdowns disrupted all global supply chains and the shocks of that are still causing shortages and price hikes.
Also look into the Eurodollar theory. Most of the USD in circulation internationally is fake ledger money issued by City of London banks to maintain liquidity for international trade. A lot of the current trade problems are a result of banks being afraid to issue more, because a crisis can collapse the whole system.
DradisPing
2yr ago
They're usually more that you're allowed to do what it takes to disable a soldier, which includes killing them, but you should avoid things that do more long term damage than short term. Also soldiers should be able to surrender when things are bad and expect decent treatment.
Chemical weapons that cause permanent lung damage for life are seen as bad. Lifetime blinding is bad. Shooting people is fine.
There's a lot of confusion because activists on the left like to pretend that things that aren't banned are banned. You aren't allowed to shoot soldiers that have surrendered. You are allowed to shoot soldiers that are retreating. Indeed, it's expected.
If you watch old videos of the debate in Britain over the Falklands war, anti war activists were trying to claim that sinking a boat was a war crime because it was facing the wrong way. Which was silly.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Having to take notes and understand the lesson was enough work. I hated having to figure out how to draw a xi in the middle of a lesson.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I worry that the name of the superb starling will make other starlings feel inadequate.
Bernard Lewis sort of fits the bill. Looks like only his post-9/11 books are available as audiobooks.
"The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years" by Bernard Lewis sounds like what you're looking for but there's no audiobook and I haven't actually read it.
It's not as commonly covered because there's a lot of pressure to play down the enmity between Islam and Christiandom.
DradisPing
2yr ago
In the US charitable foundations are required to spend at least 5% of their endowment each year. Also it's difficult to find someone with standing to sue if the foundation isn't being run according to the rules you laid out, so it might not go to what you want anyways.
DradisPing
2yr ago
During the early industrial era all the old buildings got covered in soot. Most countries tore down the old ugly buildings. France realized that they could power wash them and restore the old lovely architecture.
So the downtown core became a place for rich people to enjoy. When brining in refugees and poor migrants Protestant countries got this idea that the new arrivals deserve to live downtown. France was more elitist and decided to build towers in the suburbs for them.
So there's a long tradition where the government has the power build high rises in cities around the metro core.
Additionally people in Anglo countries refuse to think about HBD crime theories. So, at least in Toronto, people commonly believe that high rises cause crime. It ends up being sort of true, because lefty activists believe it's wrong to evict drug dealers and addicts. As a result it's impossible to build a new high rise and fill it with well behaved residents who happen to have a median income.
So French elitism traditionally protected the downtown while ensuring housing gets built outside the core.
In red states it's just that there is a lot of cheap land and no scenic views to be disrupted. So people don't fight new development.
DradisPing
2yr ago
There are a lot of up front costs with responsible gun ownership. Gun safe, range membership, knowledge of local firearms laws.
So the marginal cost of additional guns is relatively low. Plus if you're putting in range time then guns are officially one of your hobbies. Might as well get more guns.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Posting here for better visibility, was posted in last weeks thread.
Today we're going to discus the most exciting topic ever, Canadian real estate!
I'm largely just talking about Ontario, but Vancouver has also had crazy real estate for decades.
Toronto area real estate is famous for being a bit odd. California prices without California salaries. Or California weather.
There's a post on Reddit (circa 2022) showing similarly sized homes in Niagara Falls, ON and Niagara Falls, NY. 11 minutes apart. The US home was listed at $69k. The Canadian home was listed at $1.18M. That was about 900k USD at the time. That house was a bit of an outlier, but average sale price in Niagara Falls, ON was $617,100 (445k USD) vs $215.3K in Buffalo, NY.
And Niagara Falls is outside of comfortable Toronto commuting range, where the high paying jobs are. To get to downtown Toronto for 9AM Google maps recommends leaving at 6:10AM. Median household income in the city is $74,500 (54K USD).
When you get closer to Toronto, things get worse.
So how did we get here?
First cities learned that taxes on new construction were an easy way to get money without upsetting current residents. A new detached home typically has $186,300 (135k USD) in development fees*. I've heard people argue that it's higher if you calculate interest accrued due to government delays, often caused by no hiring someone with connections to work the system.
Combine that with high immigration and there's a significant structural housing shortage. Toronto has 360 housing units per 1000 residents. The US has 427, France has 540* all 2020 numbers.
Next there's the foreign investment issue. Some of the details here aren't proven since they aren't knowable for obvious reasons.
25 years ago China was less stable but getting richer. It was difficult to move money out of the country but wealthy Chinese could buy a home in Vancouver if they were frequently there for business or a condo for their kids studying without upsetting the CCP. This turned into smuggling money into Canadian real estate as a safe nest egg, and the Canadian government told regulators to turn a blind eye.
Things escalated into serious money laundering.
Again, I'll admit this is unproven before anyone jumps on me...
But Mexican narco gangs produce fentanyl in Mexico with precursor chemicals from Chinese companies. The fentanyl is sold in the US. The US government watches for big unexplained transfers of money going back to Mexico or to the Chinese chemical companies.
So they are using Canadian real estate to close the loop. The chemical companies sell the debt to a broker. The broker finds families in China who want to pool their money and get it out of the country. Then he connects with the narco gangs to transfer the money to be used in a home purchase by one of the family's kids studying in Canada.
But back to better grounded discussion.
The constant rise in home prices made house flipping and rental properties common. Airbnb became a driving force behind tiny expensive condo construction.
Then covid hit.
Canada had some pretty extreme covid lockdowns. This drove up home prices even more. And home flippers started buying home far from Toronto. Prices in small towns exploded.
However, the rental market in cities was hurting as living in a small apartment when everything is shut down for months is not fun. However a lot of federal politicians have invested in rental properties. The previous minister in charge of affordable housing owned two rental properties with hefty mortgages.
So the feds came up with a way to turn the city rental market around fast. In 2019 they had issued 404,000 new student visas. In 2022 they loosed up restrictions on employment as a student and brought in 551,405 new students.
No thought was given to where these 150k additional new students would live. See the housing deficit since 2020 as above.
Or work, as they all (and a big chunk of the other 400k) came in with the promise of being able to work 20 hours a week and assumed they could all land a part time IT job at least.
There are mass line ups for fast food jobs and stories of rented homes with 10 students living there.
But back to real estate.
A few things happened in 2023.
Business have been phasing out work from home, and commuting from that small town where they bought a house at the peak of the market in 2022 isn't manageable long term.
Interest rates have spiked. This is worse in Canada because mortgages typically renew at the current interest rate every 5 years. With the rate spike your mortgage payment can double or more.
Airbnb income has collapsed due to economic fears. This is happening across the US as well.
The Chinese economy is in trouble. So many people want to dump their investment properties in Canada because they need the money at home.
What's the result? A total shit show.
First there's the pre-construction market. A buyer puts a 20% down (35% for non Canadian resident) and is obligated to buy the house / condo when it's complete.
People were buying these to flip before closing. It was seen as a safe and easy way to make money. They couldn't actually afford the mortgage on the new place, but figured they couldn't lose money.
The risks were significant. If they don't close the builder does an assignment sale and the original buyer owes the builder for any shortfall from the agreed purchase price.
A quick Twitter search for an example turns up an assignment sale where a 2.2 million dollar home (1.6M USD) is being sold at a 332k (240k USD) loss after agent fees.
It's not an isolated example.
The new ultra luxury condo building at 1 Bloor West, marketed as "The One", has entered receivership with $1.2 billion in loans already in default (870M USD).
The normal sale market isn't doing well either. Ontario is in a weird situation where there's a glut of luxury homes but still a severe shortage of homes people can actually afford. Everything has been renovated and flipped. I don't think they've built a two bedroom starter home in the past 30 years.
There are some good Twitter accounts tracking real estate price crashes:
https://twitter.com/jasongofficial
https://twitter.com/ShaziGoalie
Again keep in mind it's just beginning. Investors are still trying to diamond hands it, but the mortgage resets are coming and there just aren't enough people with piles of cash who actually want to live in Ontario. They can't HODL forever.
Go to https://www.realtor.ca/ and search for Toronto homes over 1.5 million. Zoom out. There just aren't that many people in the province looking to buy homes at that price. Especially look at all of the listings in the middle of no where.
People have been joking, with less exaggeration than you'd expect, that during covid speculators purchased the entire town of Bancroft, ON and are now desperately trying to flip it.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I think they were actually chasing young women who use TikTok.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Deinstitutionalisation come more from public policy than court rulings.
It's also akin to counting sheep. It distracts you from any problems you were thinking about.
The broadcast makes you think about numbers while picturing places and weather. All delivered in a calm soothing voice.
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