lollol
12d ago
As information about the OpenAI Hugging Face incident gets weirder and breaks into mainstream media, I began telling people around me that it feels like the beginning of those scifi/apocalyptic movies where there are talking heads on the news that everyone glazes over (cue: Shaun of the Dead). As @ebrso linked, OpenAI is claiming to have a solved a Millennium problem. I'll argue 99% of the people in the world wouldn't understand what this means. Though I suppose that is typical of scientific and academic progress. Though I think the more important thing is to realize how fast all these changes and progress and innovation is coming. Will we all become like the protagonist in Her, where we're occupied by human-scale problems, hugely important to us, but kinda misses the bigger point? (though I guess that's all we are in front of an uncaring universe).
lollol
17d ago
If Lindsay Clancy has actually started to say stuff like "I killed my kids, please kill me, I deserve the death sentence", I think it will be easy to say "yeah she's got mental problems".
lollol
19d ago
Unfortunately not enough details to infer, I can see different reasons why the door was locked from the nefarious/conspiratorial to the innocent/accidental. For whatever reason, the Vietnamese-American woman didn't raise a fuss at the time and just found a different spot to sleep. She also isn't suing for any kind of conspiracy but just the rapist. Personally, I'm inclined to believe if she's willing to bring justice to the rapist but not anyone else (though she still could) then the chances of a conspiracy goes down. But who knows.
lollol
19d ago
I've once booked a house at a resort with classmates (4 guys 4 girls) before and just found random rooms and couches to sleep on when others took "my spot" for the night. She also decided to go to a resort with these people so there must have be some level of trust there. They stayed up late and one could easily think "oh they must have absentmindedly locked it, let's not disturb people sleeping/hooking up/etc., there are other places to sleep anyway".
lollol
24d ago
I'm sure you must have seen this recent-ish article https://www.gqmiddleeast.com/article/syrian-nightlife-parties-dance-floors-of-damascus
From what I know of party-goers/ravers, there is no way there isn't a party at least every weekend that the underground would know. Also I bet it's going to be instagram where you can truly find the cool parties.
lollol
24d ago
Just random Vietnamese news that broke out into the international news circuit:
A Vietnamese-American 24 year old came back to Vietnam for a banking internship and was raped by a Vietnamese from a rich and politically connected family. Typical SEA corruption/incompetence/cynicism shenanigans occur with the Vietnamese police and even the US embassy. Fortunately, this American citizen's dad is also rich and politically connected to ....Ted Cruz. The perpetrator has been arrested. I expect the VN government will throw the book at him to calm this slight diplomatic incident.
An 18 year old girl was ran over in a traffic accident by former vice chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the National Assembly. It is incredibly high profile and there are worries of protests from the younger generation that draws comparison to Nepal/Indonesia. I personally don't think it will matter in the long run.
Vietnam defended ASEAN Championship for soccer in the most bizarre manner where Thailand scored all 4 goals of the match, 2 goals and 2 own goals. I just wanted to linked this picture of Infantino reacting to the scoreline because the second own goal was scored in the last minute of extra time. Truly great stuff.
lollol
24d ago
I finally saw it and uhhh, it's kinda of a bad ad. Like why is it so creepy? I feel like I don't want buy that driver. Isn't there a quote like "good marketing is selling the product, great marketing is selling how it feels to have the product". I think the general feeling for owning sporting goods should be badass, cool, exhilarating, inspiring, motivating, maybe even competitive etc. Not whatever that was. I then did an exercise of how I would feel if it was a man that was shoved, also kinda creepy and machismo violence. It wasn't a warning out of friendliness or protectiveness, but just feels threatening. Either way, I don't think that was a good ad.
I went and find the bud light trans ad. It's just kinda cringe? Reminds me of the celebrities in Covid doing the Imagine song.
lollol
25d ago
being naked in public is different than doing black face in public so that is its own motte and bailey. If your opinion is that "girl face"/drag in public is more like black face in public then if black face is legal it follows "girl face"/drag should also be legal. If your opinion is that "girl face"/drag is more like being naked in public then your opinion sounds about right to me.
I notice that "incredibly cheesy, campy effect" and "horrible taste" on one comment becomes "sexually explicit acts" and "fetish play" on the next. I'm sure there is some level of "girl face"/drag in public that you are ok with on a case-by-case basis. Personally I can tell you there have been plenty of incredibly cheesy, campy, and horrible taste outfits by clearly straight women that I kinda just huff my nose and ignore it, I certainly would not ignore sexually explicit acts and fetish play.
lollol
28d ago
I agree with everything you say. But the examples here are some of the greatest movies of all time and seems to me like survivorship bias. Also the changing dynamic of the attention economy compared to 1950s is certainly a factor: how many Hollywood live musical movies in 1950s are there compared with 2020s? I'm also saying there can be a lot of rose-tinted glasses about the past as well.
lollol
1mo ago
I counted 3 things in that list I haven't seen.
But anyway, of the ones I have seen I thought they were good experiences and I would recommend to people. I also don't see them as relatively worse than other older adaptations. So anyway, the examples I listed are the reasons why I disagree that "visual media, specifically adaptions, have declined in quality over the past decade".
Why do you think visual media, specifically adaptions, have declined in quality over the past decade?
Counter examples: Dune, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Hunger Games prequel), Project Hail Mary, The Boys (TV) I haven't seen, Poor Things, Wicked (I believe Wicked fans loved it for how it's faithful and enhanced the stage play), Mickey 17, The Housemaid, Running Man, Slow Horses (TV), The Queen's Gambit, I never saw Bridgerton but I heard good things. And so on.
Even for The Odyssey, there is also the alternative choice of The Return (2024 film) which I also haven't seen.
I guess I'm not really sure what quality are you trying to look for? is it specifically faithfulness to the original? It's clear to me that Nolan's Odyssey clearly takes a lot from Judeo-Christianity and is more of a commentary on that than trying to stay close to the text.
And btw, the pipeline of manga/manwha/manhua to anime/aeni/donghua is strong.
lollol
1mo ago
I agree, there are always tradeoffs and at some point the callousness of life happens.
But yes, I think many people have different ideas of what they want changed about the immigration regime. What I'm advocating for is a better thing that comes out of two different presidencies approach to immigration.
The worst is that it swings back and forth in different extremes instead of finding a stable point.
lollol
1mo ago
But in most cases I think allowing or even entertaining edge cases just muddies the waters of incentives. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to stay hidden for five years, they will sneak over the border and try to stay hidden for five years. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to have enough children first because deporting the children would look bad, they will sneak over the border and have children.
I agree. I want congress/government to aim for the efficiency of Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (not just in immigration but all things):
Unfortunately I couldn't find a clip so I just have to describe it for you twice.
But we could just allow people to do that legally, in limited numbers that are economically viable. Whatever type of people we want, in the numbers we want, we should issue exactly that many legal papers to the right kind of people. If we need cheap labor to pick the fruits, we should issue visas that let people in to pick the fruits as cheap labor.
yeap, exactly, this is exactly the anti-inflow and pro-outflow measures that should be re-thought and re-examined with an aim to expand on the good bits and curtail the bad bits.
People should do the right thing, not the thing that sounds good on paper.
Well legislation and government is about finding what the right thing is and putting it on paper as a collective. And that's my point about the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I think that now the US electorate has suffered through the uncontrolled incompetent immigration regime of the Biden era and the furious callousness regime of the Trump era, then they are primed to find another path forward.
lollol
1mo ago
First off I would like to point out that Carlos Odio is not some impartial analyst, he's a former Obama staffer and DNC Superdelegate who founded an NGO "dedicated to immigrant and Latinx outreach".
I'm sure he is left personally and socially, but from what I've heard of him on the old fivethirtyeight podcast and now the gdpolitics podcast, he always seemed to have the thumb on the scale with regards to latino voters and report what he sees without embellishment. I distinctively remember him raising the early "alarm bells" about Latino voters moving towards Trump. I know everyone has an agenda, but I think a commitment to the truth and facts on the ground means everyone will at least be directionally moving in the "right" direction.
I would also ask how confident should we be in anything coming out of Cambridge University these days when viewed in the context of recent events?
Yes we still should. Different people can raise different level of salt though.
Given the above, just how sure are we that Trump and the right are "failing"? As I was telling @cjet79 down-thread, US Mexico border crossings have hit a 50 year low.
As I said, I do think border patrol is an anti-inflow measure. Gattsuru has warned me though so maybe it's not as much an anti-outflow measure as I thought it is. When I talk about failing, I wasn't talking about meeting the policy objective, but of how the voters view your policies. As I already mentioned, voters rank border patrol very high for Trump, it's the other parts of the immigration agenda that is considered unsavory, and therefore, a failure.
Personally I find the "anti-flow" "pro-stock" position logically untenable, as what it boils down to in practice is "I don't believe in open borders, I just don't think that immigration laws should ever be enforced".
I think that's a pretty extreme view of what the position could be. Closed borders is part of immigration law, so already some immigration law has to be enforced. But anyway, I wasn't talking about not enforcing immigration laws, what I'm talking about is choosing immigration laws that would meet the objectives (keep immigration low/manageable to get the best stock, high inflow is fine if it's also matched by high outflow) AND is tolerable and acceptable to most voters (therefore ensuring a lasting regime that continues to be successful no matter who is in charge).
lollol
1mo ago
We don't know how much she and the university knows about his views when they first hired him.
I like her initial statements in that article though.
"I understand the outrage and concern and take it seriously," she said. "The statements referred to are hurtful and disturbing to many people. They affect me as well."
She added that the university would continue to monitor the recruitment process while maintaining its commitment to academic debate.
"As a university, we have a responsibility to create space for debate, but also to ensure an environment where people feel heard and respected," she said to De Morgen.
In a sense, we can see the same playbook. Cambridge reaction was to defend the hiring and retention of Arday. And Ghent reaction was to defend the hiring and retention of Cofnas. Both failed.
lollol
1mo ago
but a USCG man should presumably at least think to speak to base counsel or his CO prior to marrying any foreign national, let alone one who has immigration status issues?
I actually think this is a very American attitude. Very much in line with the apocryphal quote:
'God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.'
lollol
1mo ago
Well yes, that's the current law for illegal entry (because it's a crime). Illegal entry immediately triggers ban from re-entering, staying for more than 1 year ban 10 years from re-entering, and this stays on their record forever on any re-entry/visa application. Overstaying is not a crime, it's a civil violation. This means many things, the government doesn't have to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" of criminal intent and provide a court-appointed lawyer for the overstay-er.
And as always, the edge case trips us up if we want overstay to be classified as criminal. Aside from the costs above, what about the baby that was carried across the border and grew up in the US (at what age should a person have the sense to self-deport?)(I would rather argue the US should accept a person who has the integrity to self-deport). What about people who have medical emergencies and yes didn't file their paperwork (did they forget or were they willful?).
And ok, let's take the mother who 20 years ago left Mexico while pregnant, bore her kid in the US, she worked under the table for 20 years as a nanny for various families in her neighborhood and also as a kitchen staffer. Criminal entry for sure, but at this point, you might want to deport her because you don't know her, but her community do know her and probably doesn't like that she's deported, that's exactly the "ethics of proximity" in action. (Same reason why approval rating of Congress is always all time low but approval rating of congressional districts of their own congress member is always 50%+1 by voting time)
lollol
1mo ago
Or in other words: yes, outflow can absolutely be a big counterbalance to the inflow.
"All I have to do it to move there, have a kid, avoid ICE for 15 years and then I've secured a statistically better life for all my decendants for generations?"
Actually it's 21 years, only then can an American citizen sponsor their immediate relative for green card. Only overstay can potentially get clemency, the ones who came in illegally trigger a 10 year ban from re-entry if they stay illegally for more than 1 year (notice how that's actually an anti-outflow punishment as it incentivizes people to stay and not leave). And imagine if E-Verify is enforced and businesses are disincentivized to pay illegals while also making it easier and less costly for illegals to leave, illegals are then pushed tobe pro-outflow because how does one survive for 21 years anyway? Especially if the way they got the Visa was at least having had proved to US consular that they have enough ties in their home country to incentivize them going home.
But to be fair, I already said that birthright citizenship is anti-outflow and I do believe in American supremacy in certain ways so it makes sense people keeps wanting to come. In fact the more I think about it, I think America should start expanding. There certainly is a lack of more America in the world. Cape Verde is great I'm sure, but do we need more Cape Verde or do we need more America? I personally would choose the best country in the world.
lollol
1mo ago
So after reading the various discussion. I realize that if we go further in the definition of flow as "those who want to come or are coming and stay", we can further separate policies as "pro/anti-inflow" and "pro/anti-outflow".
The example of Singapore, UAE can therefore be classified as "anti-inflow, pro-outflow".
lollol
1mo ago
I have a longer reply here that I think would be of interest to you but I think the gist is that pro-stock moves can be counterintuitively "pro-outflow" moves. We want to be pro-stock, but we want to keep the stock small by being anti-inflow and pro-outflow, with inflow here meaning people who want to come and stay. People who want to come then want to leave, we should encourage and make it easy for people to do so. All the anti-inflow measures are fine (even though we don't do all of them, for example punish the employers), it's just it should also be coupled with "pro-outflow" moves as well.
So I've been listening to some LSAT tutor podcasts lately. On the LSAT, there is a section for "Logical Reasoning", where some questions can be of type "flaw" where the tester has to find the fatal flaw in the reasoning of the passage. One tip/trick the tutor mentions is imagine your worst political enemy and pretend that the argument is being spoken by them, for some people, the flaws will start jumping out. I think you can use that trick to quickly think of how this proposal is flawed. I can think of the following:
If the point is to support fertility rates, the 9k should be per kid, not per family. If a family has a kid, they already qualify for the $9k. The second kid calculation does not take that $9k into account because it doesn't move the needle.Also, the type of people who would be moved to have a kid for the $9k is not the type you want to have kids.edit1: I striked points 4 and 5 because as it turns out the $9k might just be an average and is not just a one time payment based on how the Child Care and Development Fund currently works.
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