Sunshine
4d ago
I'm broadly aligned with you in this regard. Bad history in historical fiction is a pet peeve of mine. I've always felt that the truth of history is more interesting than the shallow preconceptions we have of it. Writers tend to write what they know, and the result tends to be derivative. Actual history is fresh and exciting precisely because it's so rarely portrayed.
That being said, holding others to an unrealistically high standard isn't going to help you. No one who would write a black Boleyn was ever going to write an honest work of historical fiction, so complaining about what she did write is just a waste of your mental energy.
If you want accurate historical fiction you'll have to write it yourself. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Sunshine
5d ago
Those 'markets' would require nothing more than a blog or Youtube account and a well-trusted reviewer with a following.
Sunshine
6d ago
All current generation AIs rely on someone telling them what to do. ChatGPT will do what you ask it to do and no more. Telling people what to do is surprisingly hard, and telling AIs what to do has most of the same challenges plus a bigger communication barrier.
For safety and legal reasons I would be really surprised if someone made a completely autonomous robot whose job it was to give orders to the other robots. That seems like tempting fate. On some level, bossing around a flock of robots is going to be a job until we develop trustworthy strong AI. The AI we currently have is neither strong nor trustworthy.
Sunshine
6d ago
If you make more money from your book series than anyone ever has before then you must be doing something right.
Sunshine
6d ago
If the market collapses then you create demand for someone to create a new market with less crap.
Sunshine
7d ago
If your market consists of 99 derivative rip-offs and one legitimately interesting and fresh idea, the fresh idea will take half the market and the 99 rip-offs will fight over the other half. If there are 999,999 derivative rip-offs, then they'll have to split their half a lot more ways but they still won't be able to push in on the fresh idea's cut.
Art is a winner-takes-all industry. The JK Rowlings and Terry Pratchetts of the world have many thousands of times as many sales as Joe Average churning out derivative slop that's merely so-so. The addition of more slop won't change the core dynamic. Fundamentally, anyone trying to get the audience to accept a lower quality product isn't pitting themselves against the ingenuity of the artist, but the ingenuity of the audience. Trying to hide information from a crowd that has you outnumbered thousands-to-one is not easy.
I feel roughly the same. I think that AI will destroy a bunch of jobs that were the intellectual equivalent of menial labor, but create an equal or greater number of creative jobs. If you're writing formulaic grant proposals or building websites with React then AI is coming for your job, but that's not a bad thing. An LLM can replace a web designer, but only a full-blown strong AI can replace the UX designer whose job it is to tell the LLM what website to make.
LLMs won't replace the actual nerds. It'll replace the 0.5X programmers, the offshore assets, the email-senders, the box-tickers, and the bureaucrats. On a fundamental level there will still need to be someone to tell the AI what to do.
Sunshine
10d ago
Nobody needs to be deprogrammed. Behind every inflammatory internet video there is a man trying to make a living by producing internet videos. Politics drives engagement, engagement drives ad revenue. Nothing to explain.
And by the way, you're encouraging it by linking the video.
Sunshine
24d ago
It's an 'aspirational empire' with a population of only 10 million. The city of Beijing alone has 22 million. An ambitious enclave in a foreign land isn't a rival, it's an attack dog. Think of the British East India Company and its relationship to its own parent state.
Sunshine
25d ago
You cannot serve two masters.
Why not? Israel is a client state of the USA. It's normal for empires to influence their client states and be influenced in turn. It's normal for imperial subjects from client states to simultaneously be loyal to the empire and also try to influence it in ways that favor their homeland.
Lots of people have served two masters throughout history. As long as both masters are on the same team there's no real issue with it.
I had the same thought. Even if you do meet someone with the intention of having sex with them, it's a further escalation if they get fully naked before you arrive. The combination of catfishing and rapid unwanted unreciprocated escalation would certainly shock me, although I admit I'm not a gay doctor so maybe I'm not as jaded as Mr A.
It actually feels to me like a comedy beat in some kind of off-beat sketch.
"I've got a hot date?"
"Where?"
"In the bathroom on the 3rd floor."
"Is he hot?"
"Check out his profile pic." (The profile pic shows an attractive white man in his late 20's who vaguely resembles Pete Buttigieg.) "Wish me luck!"
<Smash cut to the bathroom. A stall door slowly swings open to reveal a fully-naked older man of ambiguous ethnicity, grinning creepily while maintaining eye contact. The camera is aimed too high to see his genitals, but his arm can be seen moving suggestively in that area.>
<Pan to Mr. A, who looks into the camera and screams.>
Sunshine
1mo ago
From my viewing of the video, it seems clear that the driver tried to run over the ICE agent first, at which point the agent responded by opening fire. Could have been handled better, but still a justified shooting.
Sunshine
1mo ago
The more I hear about university politics, the more I conclude that they have too much power. Their authority needs to be separated into isolated chunks. They should not be teaching courses and then evaluating their own performance by giving exams as well. They should not be setting tuition fees and also collecting them. They should not be both centers of mass-education for undergrads and also the education of the elite few who go on to PhD and Master's courses.
Most of all, the powers they have which resemble the powers of the judicial system in any way need to be taken away. Universities are not courts of law, they do not have the accountability, moral fiber, or training to do law properly, and any incident which requires the intervention of a court should be handled by an actual court of law.
Sunshine
1mo ago
This is pure whattaboutism. The topic of discussion is Somali welfare fraud. The President has nothing to do with it. If the President was a clone of Adolf Hitler he would still have nothing to do with it. There is no level of racism in the heart of the President of the United States that would change the ethical calculus to make welfare fraud okay.
Sunshine
1mo ago
Freedom of speech means that the government can't put you in jail for your speech. It doesn't mean your employer can't fire you if the speech you make while representing them as part of your job is damaging to the institution.
If a PR spokesperson for a grocery store dropped an N-bomb on national TV and triggered a political backlash, their employer would have every right to fire them on the spot, freedom of speech or no. Freedom of speech is not the right to keep your job in spite of gross incompetence.
Sunshine
1mo ago
I think this is a fine outcome. Getting repeatedly shot is more than enough punishment for ramming a cop with your car, there's no need to additionally send her to prison.
Sunshine
2mo ago
Fun fact, the proper translation of the Sixth Commandment is "thou shalt not murder," not "thou shalt not kill." As in, thou shalt not kill anyone outside the accepted bounds of the legal system or war.
Sunshine
2mo ago
I think you mean two different things by "grade inflation". On one hand, grade inflation could mean that a worse performance is given the same grade, in the same way that inflation causes the value of currency/grades to decline. On the other hand, grade inflation could mean that everyone is given higher grades, in the same way that inflation causes an increase in the overall supply of currency/grades.
Curving allows an entire class to get worse over time without their grades going down, so it causes the first kind of grade inflation. Curving also prevents a class from all getting A's, so it prevents the second kind of grade inflation.
Sunshine
2mo ago
The TA was not trying to apply consistent academic standards to everyone. The TA was punished for failing to apply consistent academic standards to everyone!
Sunshine
2mo ago
My guess is that the TA didn't follow the rubric they were given. If they were specifically instructed to, for example, only give a score of 0 if the student fails to submit any work at all, that would explain why they're being disciplined.
Sunshine
2mo ago
I joined a robotics competition when I was a kid, and they were in the process of converting it into the exact same boring social studies busywork you describe. In the time I was there, the robotics part of the robotics competition was reduced from 50% of your score to a piddling 25% of your score, with the other parts being 25% for "sportsmanship" and 50% for writing a stupid essay about environmentalism.
Even as a little kid it was obvious to me that the judges didn't like that whoever had the best robot would just win on the merit of their skills, leaving the judges with no power. Better to have a system where 75% of your score is decided by judge fiat. That way they can decide who wins based on who they like the most without the vulgarity of mere skill getting in the way.
I don't think this is a scouting thing, I think this is an everything thing. It mirrors the general trend of abolishing any scale that cannot have a thumb put on it. These are the same people who want to abolish standardized testing and replace it with personal essays and diversity statements. The point is to abolish everything objective and replace it with subjectivity, thereby concentrating more power in the hands of authority.
Sunshine
3mo ago
I'm not an economist, but Ukraine's Gini Index is 74.4 (as of 2020) and Russia's is 64.5. That's not a huge difference. Is that really enough to overwhelm the difference of Russia having a GDP per capita that is literally double or triple Ukraine's?
Sunshine
3mo ago
All else being equal I assume that both countries are equally exploitative towards their people. Ergo, all else being equal, the population of the richer country will be richer and the population of the poorer country will be poorer.
Sunshine
3mo ago
in 2022 Ukraine was a better country to live in than Russia
Before the invasion Ukraine's GDP per capita was 2-3 times lower than Russia's. Obviously now it's even worse. "Nation-building" aside, is there any particular reason I should believe it's better to be Ukrainian than Russian?
All I see is one corrupt oligarchy feeding its population into a meat grinder to avoid having their power taken away by another corrupt oligarchy.
I think an important part of successful civil disobedience is that you have to appear sympathetic to onlookers. The fact that you're just trying to ride the bus and the cops insist on dragging you out in handcuffs makes them look deranged and you look like an innocent victim. If you're the one attacking the cops, you're the one who comes across as deranged.
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