celluloid_dream
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User ID: 758
celluloid_dream
4hr ago
The fact that it's called "marketing copy", not "informative writing" or "product description" betrays the intent. It's optimizing a signal so that the algorithm promotes your product over someone else's product. You might not be intentionally misleading anyone, but you're in the business of generating text, not communicating. If it's not primarily meant to be read by a human, it's internet pollution.
celluloid_dream
5hr ago
I despair when I see the utter shamelessness of SEO people asking for help doing this in technical spaces. It's as if they don't even realize there's anything wrong with it. Like the owner of a factory cheerfully asking about the most efficient way to redirect toxic waste into the river.
They talk about the apple video in the episode. Claims he didn't think he was being filmed, so that's why he was so candid. I'd say the value of having a politician like Pierre on a longform podcast is being able to hear the difference in tone when he's talking about an issue he really cares about (economics, inflation) vs when he is reciting prepared bits (MMA) vs when he's being tactical "I don't know anything about it".
celluloid_dream
8hr ago
Review: Pierre Poilievre on Joe Rogan 2h23m
We begin with an extended gift giving segment. It's hard not to interpret this as a minor lord begging a king's aid and presenting a gift from his lands to curry favour. It's a heavy kettlebell (fitness, manliness), made in Calgary (Poilievre's birthplace), by a gunsmith (conservatism, gun rights) with a maple leaf (Canada), and several things designed to flatter Joe specifically: UFC motto, Musashi quote, UFO.
Already, we see a few examples of what will become a running theme in this podcast. Pierre pretends to be uncertain about something, and in a calculated gamble, gets his facts just slightly wrong, so that Joe can be impressed with his knowledge but still score points by correcting him. "the first UFC that you were the commentator for. I think it was number 13?". Joe: "12. Number 12". "right. and then we've got here your favourite quote from um.. what's his name? The Japanese martial artist?" Bullshit, Pierre. You come to present this offering absolutely laden with symbolism, every square cm of it covered in meticulously chosen references, and you can't remember the numbers or names? Very interesting.
Poilievre's origin story is boring, but honest. He doesn't dwell on parts that another politician might play up - e.g. being adopted. Maybe he knows it'd come off badly. Maybe he's told the story so many times it doesn't occur to him. Moves through it quickly. One thing that sticks out is that after he has a sports injury, his recreational outlet is to .. attend his mother's social-political meetings? If I were Joe, I'd have dug in on that.
Moving on to Canada, Covid, and MAID. Joe has rants to go off on, and Pierre mostly lets him - does a good job of threading the needle on MAID, defending it while denouncing its excesses in a way that Joe can get behind.
Another recurring theme is that Joe has a great sense for what makes fun conversation, and tries to steer towards it. Pierre has the opposite sense. Joe knows it'd be hilarious to go into the "Castro is Trudeau's dad" conspiracy theory. Pierre won't touch it. Pierre launches into a prepared talking point about Biden not understanding Canadian politics (easy points), but then goes off explaining the Canadian parlimentary system. As someone who did ~5 years of mandatory Canadian social studies classes, I can confidently say that no one in the history of the country has ever been excited by learning about the Canadian parliament. The best part of that was the "two and a half sword-lengths" bit. Didn't even manage the old "it's called question period, not answer period" joke.
He does do one of the things he evidently came to do: denounce the 51st state rhetoric and swear on camera. Good for a memorable, punchy soundbyte. Curious that Joe leaks that he'd talked to Trump about it and that it was initially a joke, but then Trump doubled down (as he does). Is that new info? I didn't know about it.
Poilievre gets some talking points in about the economy, permits, tarrifs, etc. Joe tries to steer toward conflict re: oil sands. Poilievre ironically goes into Trump-mode. "No, no no no". We have the best oil sands. Best in the world. "they love it". "incredible". Pristine forests like you wouldn't believe.
Joe goes off on his usual food/health rant. Pierre mostly doesn't contest it, but agrees enough to keep the conversation going. In my head, I picture the gears turning in Pierre's mind trying to figure out if Canada produces more preserved goods or meat/fresh produce. When Joe gets on to glyphosate, Pierre keeps saying "okay". "okay". "okay". like an animal backed into a corner, and finally has to squirm out of it with "I don't know anything about it". This is not even bullshit. This is almost certainly a lie. Pierre is from Western Canada, and you're telling me he doesn't know anything about the most common and contentious agricultural chemicals in North America? I mean, there's no winning this discussion so it's a smart play. He either disagrees with Joe and starts an argument, or he sells out the agricultural base and looks anti-science, but he's clearly lying.
Joe and Pierre connect over the opioid crisis. We're just playing the hits at this point, and I kind of fell asleep. Though, Pierre leans a bit harder into the Big Pharma conspiracy angle than I'd expect for a politician. I guess there's no constituency for that, so they're a safe target. Poilievre is annoyingly incurious about ibogaine/psychadelics. Probably doesn't fit with his conservative abstinence-only treatment ideology, but it's jarring in the conversation. For a guy who just professed to care deeply about this problem, I'd expect more interest.
Then we get almost a half hour of MMA talk. Ugh. The worst part of this is that Pierre is doing the thing where he clearly has done his homework, but plays dumb to let Joe be the expert. Pierre: "did you ever see <some obscure fight>?", or goes off talking about some specific technique that's far beyond intermediate knowledge of the sport. Followed up with: "is the spinning back kick typically a body kick?", or "do these guys hate each other sometimes?" or "is Conor ever going to come back?". No one with his apparent level of knowledge would ever need to ask those questions, so it comes off as fake, and undercuts the whole point of this extended MMA chat - to make Pierre look like someone who likes combat sports.
You can tell Pierre's focus is slipping by this point because his questions get more robotic. "who do you cheer for?" is such a non-sports-fan way of asking that question. Not "who's your team?" or "Cowboys or Texans?" or similar.
Anyway, that goes on a while and eventually wraps up with a prepared closer. Joe gives him a conditional endorsement (the other thing he came to get), and we get a reminder that this was supposed to be about tariffs, not MMA.
Notable: In the entire episode, Pierre does not name Mark Carney once. He is "the Prime Minister", and he is mostly an afterthought. Trudeau gets name-dropped all over the place, but not Carney. Pierre even refuses to condemn Carney "on foreign soil" played off like it's just being polite. Obviously a deliberate strategy, with Carney being popular, it suits Poilievre to be the "loyal" opposition, on his team, almost, with the Prime Minister stealing his ideas, and he's just fine with it.
celluloid_dream
3d ago
you're right. That was needlessly consensus-building and I have removed it.
celluloid_dream
3d ago
well,
JOHN DUTTON (CONT’D) When you look at that calf, what do you see?
LEE A life I gotta feed and defend until it grows up and feeds me.
After an eternity, John Dutton nods.
JOHN DUTTON That’s what a cowboy should see. But a cattleman sees a 293 dollar investment worth 1100 dollars in seven months. Whether it feeds anyone or not.
-Yellowstone, S01E01 - "Daybreak"
Whether you look at the US population through the eyes of a cowboy (value of statistical life?) or a cattleman (lifetime earnings?), a US citizen is probably the state's most valuable asset. Meanwhile, US citizenship is, for the majority of the population, that person's most valuable asset.
Both sides should want a fast, verifiable way to prove citizenship, and yet it's easier to identify cattle than people. Why? It just seems obvious that the state would want to prove that its elections are being voted on by citizens, and it seems obvious that the citizens should want to prove validity when they vote.
celluloid_dream
6d ago
Maybe your second language is stuck in 'the virgin internal voice', and only your native tongue escapes to 'the chad cerebration'.
I like to think both have their place, and it is advantageous to be able to swap between them. Internal monologue writes better prose regardless, whether that is highbrow literary or lowbrow pulp. It reads better too, in my opinion. It's slower, but you get to chew on all the linguistic quirks of a writer's language, as if you were having a conversation with them.
And I would disagree that this writing completely fails that test.
Take the last sentence: "For inclusion is not a policy but a fundamental law, as inviolable as gravity, as essential as breath".
I'd say that's a good sentence, and its main flaw is that the meaning is nonsensical. Even being charitable to DEI initiatives, inclusion is not much like a fundamental law at all. Indeed, the whole point of diversity statements is to try and get people to value inclusion. A fundamental law exists whether you value it or not. "Diversity" would fit the meaning better, but not the rhythm. Possibly why it chose "inclusion" there instead.
But, and I'll grant this is subjective, the sentence sounds good to my ear. "as inviolable as gravity, as essential as breath." Takes it from the cosmic/scientific to the personal/human, from five syllables, to three, to one, like a plane touching down, or a single final note of a song.
celluloid_dream
6d ago
That's true. The AI snippet also doesn't vary the sentence length much. Real McCarthy does, and with intention and purpose. "War endures." Is deliberately short.
celluloid_dream
7d ago
illusion of consensus?
I don't know. This is the same generation that thinks "getting ratioed" is a sign one has lost an argument.
celluloid_dream
7d ago
I actually do prefer debating LLMs at the moment, and they're usually my first port of call if I want to work through an issue.
On the internet, if I go through the effort of posting something, there's a high likelihood it just gets ignored, downvoted with no counterargument, sneered at, tagged with thumbs down emoji or whatever. This is feedback, of a type, but I can't do much with it, and it doesn't help.
Meanwhile, I can go to the LLM and be like: "argue with me in a way that is maximally convincing to someone like me", and they will actually argue in good faith. They're sycophantic, of course, but they'll happily take the other side of an argument, and you can misrepresent your actual opinion to double check.
There's also the convenience factor, and not imposing on anyone else's time. Chess bots are nice for the same reason.
celluloid_dream
7d ago
and also, it wasn't comparing like with like.
Over a year ago I had one of the Claudes do a short diversity statement in the style of McCarthy. It wrote:
"The universe brooks no false hierarchies, no arbitrary bounds set upon the human spirit. What thrives in one soul may wither in another, and the wisdom that blooms in difference is beyond price. Even now there walk among us those whose voices have been stilled by custom or by fear, their gifts locked away like water in desert rock. Yet they too are participants in this vast processional, this pageant of minds and hearts that defies all categorization, all neat orderings that men might devise. For inclusion is not a policy but a fundamental law, as inviolable as gravity, as essential as breath".
Now, there are a few things not quite right about it, but that does not ring of AI slop at all to my ear. I'd like to think I could tell the difference between real McCarthy and that, but I'd have to think about it.
E.g. A writer capable of crafting sentences that good would would not carelessly mix their metaphors. "blooms", "desert rock" followed by "vast processional", "pageant".
celluloid_dream
8d ago
Yeah. I had a similar evaluation. Expected Carney to be a more competent leader, which counts for a lot, though I still could not vote Liberal that election. After breaking the country so badly with the immigration & housing mess across a decade, just couldn't endorse another term for their government.
I will say that Poilievre used to do more messaging about economics, inflation, housing, etc. trying to show his work. At a certain point, he stopped doing that and pivoted to more attack ads and three word slogans. Worse in my opinion, but it probably polled better.
celluloid_dream
8d ago
Something has always felt off about that.
I'll grant it's true now. I don't know that it always was. There was a time where he seemed like the most popular Conservative leader in living memory. He was genuinely getting people out to rallies, and not even during election season. His campaign doubled party membership in under a year.
And even then, the media was running the story "Pierre is unlikeable and unpopular". I was like "are we watching the same movie?". Doubted it was true at the time. Suspected they memed it into existence, but it stuck.
He's been saying (with energy!) the things young people have been grumbling about for years, especially re: housing, economy, etc. A coworker was ranting about politics to me basically complaining about the fact that she'll never buy a home, and practically repeating lines from Pierre's youtube playbook. I asked her what she thought of Poilievre. "don't like him". "oh? why?". "dunno. just don't"
I think it's because he's a nerd. The general public hates a nerd. Even though he ditched the glasses, hit the gym, and changed his messaging to 3-word populism, people can tell he's still a nerd. He has debate club energy, and the fact that he is right and "wins" the debate doesn't help him.
celluloid_dream
10d ago
The star system is broken, and nothing can fix it.
For one thing, no one can agree what the scale even means in the first place. Reviewers will write "Wonderful, quaint little burger truck by the beach. Best I've ever had. 2/5 stars", because they think there's some objective restaurant ranking ranging from broken vending machine to Michelin, and a particularly good burger truck sits at ~2/5 on that scale, so it gets a glowing review and 2 stars. I think this derives from hotel ratings, where there was a defined meaning for what each star meant.
Do restaurants work like hotels? no idea. Personally, I'm inclined to rate things by what they're trying to do, so a perfect food truck gets 5 stars, and a slightly flawed upscale place gets 4. But then, do prices matter? If the burger truck has great food, but overpriced, to they get docked stars? Is the rating scale linear or logarithmic?
And then there's the 5 star/1 star problem. Everyone knows the average rating is important, so they rate to affect the average. If you like the place, you want to give them as much of an advantage on the algorithm as you can, whether they bribed you for that rating or not. You are being nice by leaving a 5 star review. Meanwhile, haters give a mean-spirited 1 star no matter what the actual quality because it's going to hurt the place more that way.
celluloid_dream
14d ago
Michael Falk, Autistic Reporter was a good bit.
celluloid_dream
14d ago
confusing and unsettling. All your ships are miles away from each other, and you don't see the enemy basically at all, unless you are a bomber pilot.
Even for them. I remember playing a flight sim in the Pacific Theater back in the day (CFS2, I think?) and being struck by how little you'd be sure of if you didn't have the minimap and unit text helping you out. Here's a representative video.
The enemy is just a smattering of specks on the horizon. At that distance, you probably can't even make out what they are. Could be friendlies. Could be unprotected bombers. Could be a fighter patrol. You'd be figuring that out in real time with a lot of radio back and forth. Hence Spotter Cards to train recognition.
And once the action kicks off, it'd just get even more chaotic.
maybe a little harsh for mere product descriptions (but even those get optimized to the point of absurdity). I've just seen too many "content farms" generating fake blog posts gushing about some crap or other
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