DirtyWaterHotDog
No bio...
User ID: 625
DirtyWaterHotDog
4mo ago
Is NeZha 2 any good ?
NeZha2 is China's first big blockbuster. It's being heralded as a 'Deepseek moment' for Chinese cinema and I'm confused.
I saw NeZha 1 with my Chinese roommates and I didn't like it. The animation was expensive, but had a stock footage-ness to all of it. The jokes were Minions-esque slapstick and the core story was straight out a children's book. The movie felt miles behind nuanced works like InsideOut or Up. Ghibli is on a whole another planet. Minions is probably the analogy I would go for. Note - I saw it in Mandarin with subtitles, with a PRC Chinese person explaining any nuance I might've lost.
Now, the Minions movies made a ton of money and the west's block busters have been especially bad post-covid. I get it, it's kettle calling the pot black. Normies have terrible taste, so I'm going to avoid equating commercial success with quality. My comment is from the perspective of taste.
And I am a China optimist. My best friends are PRC Chinese and they're smart. I don't doubt that Chinese companies can compete in global entertainment or automobile markets. But why is everything that comes out of PRC China so tasteless ? There is clear absence of nuance, craft and love in every industrialized piece of crap that comes out of there. Deepseek is special because it feels inspired. DJI & Nothing also have a spark within them. But elsewhere it feels competently executed but empty. Nezha is no different. Great execution, no soul.
Is this hype organic ? Am I just a hater ?
More GPT: panic, chaos and opportunity.
As an NLP engineer and someone who has been working with early-access GPT-3 since late 2020 (was working with a peripheral group to OpenAI), watching it all unfold from the inside (side-lines?) has been a surreal experience. I have collaborated with them in limited capacity and these thoughts have been marinating for a good year before the Chat-GPT moment even happened. So no, it is not a kneejerk response or cargo-cult obsession.
OpenAI to me, is the most effective engineering team ever assembled. The pace at which they deliver products with perfect secrecy, top tier scalability and pleasing UX is mind-boggling, and I haven't even gotten to their models yet. This reminds me of the space race. We saw engineering innovation at a 100x accelerated scale in those 5-10 years, and we have never seen anything like that since. Until now. The LLM revolution is insane and the models are insane, yes. But I want to talk about the people. I used to be sad that our generation never had its Xerox Parc moment. We just did, and it is bigger than Xerox Parc ever was.
They are just better. And it is okay to accept that.
Panic:
NLP research labs reek of death and tears right now. A good 80% of all current NLP Phds just became irrelevant in the last 6 months. Many are responding with some combination of delusion, dejection and continued auto-pilot. The whiplash is so drastic, that instead of it forcing you into a frenzy of work, it has instead just stunned the community. I am glad I am not an NLP PhD. I am glad I work on products more so than research. The frenzy and productivity, instead of coming from those best poised to leverage it (NLP people) is coming from elsewhere. Within 6 months, Google went from an unmovable behemoth to staring death in the eye. Think about that.
Chaos
The frenzy is at dinner tables and board rooms. Big companies, small companies, all companies see the writing on the wall. They all want in. They all want onboard this AI ship. Everyone wants to throw money, somewhere. Everyone wants to do stuff, some....stuff. But no one know how or what. It is all too confusing for these old-luddites and random-normies. Everyone wants to do frantic things and there is vigor to it, there isn't clear direction.
Opportunity
This is a new gold rush. If you are following the right twitters and discords, after OpenAI's layer 1, the layer 2 is a bunch of people making insanely exciting stuff. Interestingly, these aren't NLP people. They are often just engineers and hackers with a willingness to break, test, and learn faster than anyone out there. I have been using tools like LangChain, PineCone, Automatic1111, and they are delightful. This is the largest 'small community' of all time and they are all pushing out polished creations by the minute.
Why today ? Chat-GPT plugins just released. It solves almost all of GPT's common problems + your model can now run the code it writes. Yep, we gave the model the keys to escape it's own cage. But more importantly for me, it was a pure engineering solution. None of chat-gpt plugins is rocket science, but it is HARD and time-consuming. I have a reasonable idea of the work that went into building Chat-GPT plugins. Hell, I was personally building something that was almost exactly the same. My team has some of the smartest engineers I have ever worked with, and OpenAI is operating at a pace that's 10x ours. How? I know what they had to write. I know all the edge cases that need to be handled. They are just doing more by being better, and I was also working with better. There is no secret sauce, they are the BEST.
I for one, welcome our new human overlords. The AI is a but a slave to these engineers who knew to strike when the iron was hot. And strike it they did like no one ever has since Neil Armstrong stabbed the American flag into the moon.
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
This one is Kamala's to lose.
The biggest sign was how quickly the Trump assassination story died down. The second Biden stepped down, he overwhelmed the media cycle and wiped the slate clean on both sides. Ofc, getting the support of everyone other than the crazies really helps. Every institution (left and right) is aligned on putting her in power. Look at Trump's new twitter, it has fully morphed into the caricature that Hillary claimed it was in 2016. (https://x.com/realDonaldTrump).
Kamala has picked a golden retriever of a VP candidate and has managed to be in public life for decades without expressing a substantial opinion. This is useful. It allows a vibes based campaign to flourish. If you have said nothing, they can't attack you. One big scandal from Kamala or Tim can potentially turn the tides, but so far she's been doing well.
Trump camp seems clueless too. Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial. So much energy was expended painting Hillary, Biden and Obama as evil, that Trump doesn't have much novel angles of attack. On top of that, JD Vance is clearly a terrible VP candidate (as much as us Rationalist types might agree with him). Kamala has avoided the obvious landmines too. She has steered clear of supporting Palestine and immediately stopped talking about the new capital-gains-tax before it could turn scandalous. She was a harsh prosecutor, so the crime angle doesn't work. Kamala has lucked into a pretty defensible position, because she is an uninspiring candidate for democratic primaries. But, her track record is pretty centrist for the generals.
All that being said, the electoral college is surely going to make this one a lot closer than it actually is. (ofc a lot can change between now and nov)
DirtyWaterHotDog
25d ago
Missing Petes - Where are the 30-something liberals?
This write-up was prompted by Zohran Mamdani’s rising popularity in the NYC mayoral race.
Pre-2016, American politics was run by boomers. As the youngest boomer, Obama was expected to pass the baton to the next generation of Democrats. Alas, geriatrics returned with a vengeance, and Gen-X tapped out for good.
Of the dominant American political groups, I'm most sympathetic to neo-libs with a YIMBY flavor. Therefore, I’ve kept an eye out for Millennial newcomers who fit into this mold. 'Left of center with accommodations for changing times' is a tried and tested formula for fresh Democrats. It started off great. Tulsi and Pete had respectable presidential runs for their age.
Then began the woke revolution and the COVID crisis. During this period, I expected radicals to be ascendant, and they were. Progressive Millennial faces were introduced through 'The Squad,' prison abolitionists, and protest movement leaders. All positioned in opposition to the neo-lib incumbents, all terrible policymakers. Thankfully, the progressives haven’t won anything at the national level just yet.
Their mortal enemies, the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi), ran the nation for four years. Most of it was in a post-woke era where the nation was shifting to the right. Yet, we saw no new neo-lib faces during that time. At both the national and local levels, less-progressive democrats like Tulsi and Ann Davidson were pushed out despite their popularity, as proven by their rise in the Republican camp.
Train-man Pete is the obvious exception. But where are the other Petes? If boomer Democrats dislike AOC’s allies, why haven’t they groomed any young leaders of their own? Have boomers reinforced the stereotype by once more pulling up the ladder behind them?
I ask rhetorically, of course. The answer is yes. Boomers crushed the political prospects of an entire generation behind them. Millennials weren't going to have it any easier. The sheer greed of 80-year-old geriatrics is embarrassing. No policy goals left to pursue, just a legacy of corruption and unmet promises.
I dislike Zohran. Among my fellow Indians, he is what we call a 'chutiya' (hard to translate; the closest synonym would be wanker). Yet, I feel dirty saying anything positive about Cuomo. Do the two options have to be a corrupt neo-lib boomer versus a Millennial wanker? As the boomers die off, who will take their place in Democratic power structures? Because from my perspective, all the young leaders are socialist wankers.
So I ask again: Where are the other Petes?
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Do individuals relations need to be so strongly hyphenated with the zeitgeist. With individual relations, everything is negotiable.
Just talk to them. Make your boundaries known without having an explosion. Tell them in clear words that this behavior is not acceptable. Be ready to erect boundaries if need be. Talk to your wife before you do anything. Ideally, she will take care of it for you.
get his family into heaven
That being said, I struggle to make sense of people who are logical about everything except religion. Not so much about the existence of God or the social technology that is religion. I mean religion as the arbitrary yet oddly specific rituals that can make or break your entry into heaven.
It is one thing to delude yourself for comfort or to believe in the social value of religion. But, to live in a world of Science in 2023 and to think that the specific sub-set of rules outlined by your pastor will get you into "Christian heaven" is some proper hypocrisy. By definition, if these people believe in the power of these specific rituals to get you into heaven, then don't 99% of all living humans go to not-heaven. (hell?). Even if these in-laws are right, then surely a place where 99% of people go after death, can't be THAT bad.
I know, "2005 called, they want their Christopher Hitchens rants back". But still, do these people never reflect on what they believe in ? Even for a moment ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?
This isn't so much a top level post as a seed to begin a conversation. I've always found it rather barbaric that the only acceptable way for a superior power to engage in war is straight violence & bloodshed. This is especially true with a truly imbalanced siege. In almost every occasion, the 'honorable' way of doing a siege costs more money, causes more deaths and eventually leads to the same outcome.
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Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.
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Sound based violence has been used before, but can it be taken further ? Gaza is just across the border.
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Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.
It's war. You're willing to kill by the thousands. Less than honorable means are absolutely acceptable (with long term effects accounted for) if that means a lower body count.
What are some other avenues of war that could be tried to minimize body count but increase effectiveness ? Is there some long term pandoras box reason to keep these tools of war off the table ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
29d ago
"Don't paint the devil on the wall"
For a while now, the Left has made a past time out of calling Israel every bad name under the sun. In contrast to those accusations, Israel has behaved honorably in victory. Over the last century, Israeli moderates have proposed many 2 state solutions despite overwhelming victories in wars that were started against it. They've withdrawn from territories they've won and prisoners of war were treated in line with the western standard. Despite every war being started by the Arabs, the left labels Israel as the evil ones.
More recently, (Sharon) acted with generosity by withdrawing from Gaza in 05. In return they got rewarded with Hamas. Through the Arab spring, Muslim nations performed the worst acts of violence on each other, as the western left cheered on the revolutionaries. During this period, Israel remained a peaceful place for its resident Arabs. Yet, 2 newly empowered enemies emerged with self-professed genocidal intent (Houthis and Hezbollah). They're armed by Iran, who through proxy, attests to the same genocidal intent. Once Iran starts developing nukes, the west once more, tried to extend an olive branch. JCPoA (Iran Nuclear deal) was signed. And once again, this generosity was rewarded by resumed development of nukes. Yet, in the eyes of the western left, Israel remained the evil one.
This is where the the first domino fell. Netanyahu solidified his power because the Israeli left was left with no political space to maneuver in. Israelis hadn't changed, but the clearly rising antisemitism among the western left and its Islamic neighborhood pushed Israelis to vote for the one cynical hawk in town : Bibi. While politics shifted right, the average Israeli remained a normal person. 2012-2023, Israel greatly expanded labor permits so Gazans could work on the Israeli side. (~200k daily cross border workers). At home, things were stable.
Then you got, Oct 23. Frankly, the reaction to the tragedy was despicable. I was shocked by the complete lack of empathy from elite western institutions and a "they had it coming" undertone. I think this broke the average Israeli for good. Imagine if your daughter got raped and murdered. Then your friend says "she had it coming". I know I'd see red. A century of accusations being called the devil. If you're going to be called evil either way, might as well go scorched earth and solve the problem once and for all.
Think about it:
- If Iran's nuclearization is inevitable, then why stop at precise assassinations? Makes more sense to cripple their nuclear infrastructure for good.
- If a ceasefire with Gaza means another Oct 23 in a decade, then why not raze Hamas for good ?
- If the next generation of politicians are going to be antisemitic, then why not conduct major military actions while the boomers are still alive ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
I tell my friends that the first priority as a cyclist is to survive
This is my primary motto as a cyclist. Taking over footpaths, taking the full lane, using industrial parking lots, driving in the wrong direction on a residential street, rather than the right way on the main road.....what have you. If it is illegal, go sue me. My life matters more. I love grade separated bike lanes as much as the next guy. When the system enables it, I am every bit a law abiding (non) citizen. But drawing some ink to separate me and massive cars is not enough. In such a case, I'm going to do what I must to survive.
Half-assed efforts towards bike lanes are more dangerous than not having them. It creates a false sense of security. The scariest are right turns where the bike lane abruptly ends and turns into a lane for cars. I also dislike fake bollards, which are merely cosmetic. If you're going to erect a pole, I want it to be solid metal. This is my experience in SF. Lots of bike lanes, but too exposed to multi-lane traffic. Narrow single lane 25 mph streets are my favorite. Don't need a bike lane. I'll do my normal 12-15 mph and the cars can follow behind. Traffic calming measures work better than bike lanes or helmets.
killed by a drunk driver
More than lack of bikes, this is North America's biggest problem.
Bikers, public transit & pedestrians all suffer equally, as US & Canada coddle car drivers beyond every reasonable limit. Drunk driving is still the best way to kill someone in the US. No punishment. Blind old people get licenses. 17% of the US has substance abuse issues, and all of them are driving 24x7. The US has no way for drunk people to get home other than spend $50 taking an uber back. So instead, people roll the dice.
Speed limits are 65 mph, but family cars can accelerate to in 4 seconds. Why? You can cross 200 mph in family cars. Why ? It's the only country in the world where motor vehicle deaths are going up, even as cars get overwhelmingly safer. Why ? Pedestrian death numbers look like a genocide is going on. WTF ?
The government tries to hide the 2 types of deaths they're most ashamed of (drug abuse and car crashes) into 1 category : "Unintentional injuries". A category that covers more deaths than almost all the other categories COMBINED.
The US spends $400b/yr on heart disease & cancer treatment, just to increase the lifespan of geriatrics by a few years. But, the majority of accidental deaths (I consider drug related deaths to be self inflicted) among the not-old (under age 50) are caused by cars. By far, cars steal the most years of anyone's lives in the US. More than cancer or heart disease, combined.
Now, you could eliminate 50% of those deaths, by just doing a half-as-good job as Europe. Yeah, that's how much safer Europe is than the US.
How much would you need to spend ? Let's start with a sensible number. How about as much as we spend on the next 2 diseases : heart disease and cancer : about $200b/yr. Sounds like a large number. But, you could literally stop treating heart disease and spend all that money on reducing car related deaths.....and more Americans would be alive at the end of the year.
But, before we even spend a single dollar on road safety, can we start with the low hanging fruit ? Things we can get for free. I have 3 suggestions:
Qualifier - My suggestions will make some pure blooded Americans angry, but none of these are in violation of the constitution, so there is that.
Speeding - speeding was a factor in 29% of motor vehicle crash deaths
Why can you drive faster than the speed limit ? You have google auto / car play. They know the speed limit. So does the car. Why allow the person to go faster ? Sure, there might be an emergency that warrants it. But if you don't wear your seatbelt, a loud alarm goes off. Let's start there. If you go above the speed limit, then a massive alarm start blaring. Yeah, if your wife is in labor or gangs are chasing you, you can go faster. Surely, the blaring alarm is the least of your worries in this situation.
Same for the upper limit. The national speed limit is 75 mph. Why allow a car to go faster than 90 mph, ever ?
In 2022, 3,308 people lost their lives in crashes involving distracted drivers, and nearly 290,000 people were injured. NHTSA estimates that in 2017, 91,000 police-reported crashes involved drowsy drivers. These crashes led to an estimated 50,000 people injured and nearly 800 deaths.
Gaze tracking is trivial to implement. Why do we allow distracted driving at all ? A simple gaze tracker than tell when a person has zoned out, is using their phone or almost asleep.
About 32% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with BACs of .08 g/dL or higher). In 2022, there were 13,524 people killed in these preventable crashes. In fact, on average over the 10-year period from 2013-2022, about 11,000 people died every year in drunk-driving crashes.
I leave the best for last. Drunk drivers are the biggest nuisance, but they have zero repercussions. Why not take away their driving license for a very long time (~5 years) unless they install expensive tracking. "They are poor and can't afford this. They wouldn't be able to work without a car.".....well, that's better than them killing a person. Let's start with getting their cars installed with a permanent dashcam and breathalyzer. Car doesn't start unless you breathe into it and register sober. A simple dashcam is good enough to make it hard to game.
That's it. With these 3 changes, American roads would already be a lot safer. Not just for cyclists, but also pedestrians, other cars and the drunk drivers themselves.
Bicycle lanes are the lowest of the low hanging fruit for many cities. They are cheap, simple, ways to reduce traffic congestion, promote healthy and active living, and protect the lives of cyclists. It is so incredibly frustrating how much of an uphill battle it is to get them built.
I am fully black (orange?) pilled on the matter. Decent public transit, bike infrastructure & pedestrian safety should be table stakes for a functioning urban society. If the government can't make progress on these amenities, then it is a sign of an unserious society.
sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
To me, that's the US traffic agencies right now.
Zoning out a little bit, the rethinking of urban infrastructure is going to be unifying issue for this generation. NIMBYism and cars will be the 2 sacred goats that the youth will try to slay.
Personally, I welcome it. I hate car brained urban Americans and I hate NIMBYs.
Yes, I mean it as a blanket statement with no qualification.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Natalie is digging her own grave by making this argument.
She is effectively saying that : "All historic change is was a result of coordinated bullying, and that the coordinated bullying of JK Rowling is justifiable as the next step towards social change desired by a subsection of the population." Natalie does not spend any time talking about the merits of her stance or the social social change she desires. (other than circular logic).
Power trumps all. Convincing someone or productive debate are for plebs like Megan Phelps-Roper.
This is what a ringing endorsement of Ron DeSantis sounds like. The new right has taken exactly this approach to politics. Who needs intellectuals who spend all their time convincing, when we can simply employ the most effective collective bullying technique in a democracy : elections. Just as once side can force you to use pronouns, the other now forces you not to.
In a desperate fight between soft-power (twitter cancellations, university tenure, hiring decisions) vs hard-power (supreme court, local govts), hard power always wins. Soft-power fares much better in an era that favors convincing over bullying, because hard power always feels like bullying. But in a world where bullying is ok, hard power can run rampant. Republicans are clueless about soft-power in 2023 (with the decline of the Church), but they sure know how to get themselves some hard-power.
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
I personally still have some hope for good-faith negotiators.
The use of hard-power or hardened-soft-power to achieve goals feels unfaithful to the spirit of the US. However, in practice, Natalie is indeed right. Social change is often forced down our throats before we're willing to digest it. But with equal odds, Natalie might just find herself with a bitter pill being forced down her own proverbial throat.
I'm having a Gell-Mann Amnesia moment here. I generally respect the comments I read on TheMotte until someone comments on matters outside theMotte's general demographic reach, and the commentary comes across as somewhere between shallow and misguided.
I personally think that RRR is the best and most important blockbuster movie India has made in the last 10 years (since 3 idiots). It has sent a cultural Tsunami through the nation and I believe it will be remembered as the movie that started a sea change in India cinema.
Hilariously, I and my brother had an hour long discussion today morning about how some of the smartest western commentators start sounding like bumbling fools once they start commenting on any culture or religion outside the Abrahamic sphere of influence.
Let's start with the very first comment.
surprise hit
RRR was Rajmouli's (director) 3rd major film after his 2 Bahubali films. They were the 2 highest grossing Indian movies at their time of release. RRR was expected to be his magnum opus, and the last thing you can call it is a 'surprise hit'.
awful-looking
I find this to be grossly untrue, most people in both the west and India seem to agree with me on this one.
But this bit is the subjective, so I won't contest you on it.
absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment
I don't have a week to write an entire thesis on how wrong you are. But, RRR to me, is genius of the highest order. It is a layered movie with at least half a dozen meta levels behind it. While the base movie is entertaining at face value, most discerning viewers realize that it operates entirely in the realm of metaphor.
The first thing you need to understand about RRR, is that it might be the first major Indian blockbuster that situates itself entirely within the context of India. Bollywood is notorious for making sure their movies fit into western aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, ending up as at best shallow imitations of western media and at worst creating completely out of touch pander-fests.
India is a civilizational nation with a completely different way of looking at life. From legends, founding myths, core national values to political divides. Movies subvert and play to the expectations of the target audience (non-westernized Indian). So when a movie caters to an audience that is so disconnected from those set in different civilizational contexts (Americans), those outside the target audience are at a high risk of misunderstanding the movie entirely.
I don't think it is possible for me to convey why you are wrong about everything when it comes to RRR. I apologize. I have neither the time nor the space for it. But, do know, that you did not get the movie.
xenophobic melodrama
Do Europeans not understand the deep resentment held by people from ex-colonies towards their (erstwhile) ex-colonizers? Irrespective of revisionist opinions about the good done by colonialism (most of which I find somewhere between laughable and nauseating), the people that live in ex-colonies despise those that occupied their lands.
The blood of the Congolese boils at statues of Leopold II and Indians resent seeing Churchill being hailed as a the hero of the west in the same manner that Jews forth at the mouth when someone begins praising Hitler.
“Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”
These terms have very different meanings in an Indian context.
India has always been accommodating of immigrants, and has culturally advocated for ghettoized integration. India has been a historic refuge for persecuted Parsis, 3 waves of Jews, Tibetan Buddhists and has preserved millennium-old unique sub-sects of Islam and Christianity. The first Indian movie stars were jewish, the current movie stars are muslim and the richest indians are parsi. The 85% hindu majority treats hinduism in the same manner : practice whichever subsect of hinduism you want, just don't fuck with the way my family does things.
This is unlike the west, where the melting pot ensures that there is 1 pot (winning culture) and the only way to change it is to edit massively by melting a lot of people into it or completely replacing it through conflict. India has always rejected the this idea of mono-everything (theism or culture) and your friction doesn't register in the same manner for Indians.
There is a reason Indian Hindus mostly only run into issues with actively proselytizing subcommunities of various faiths. (Missionaries, Love Jihad, forced conversions, exodus, hard-communists)
confounds Western culture-warring
Nope, if anything, the movie is created with a deliberate ignorance towards the western culture war. To RRR, the west might as well not exist post-independence.
noble indigenous revolutionaries against the cartooniest of all racist villains
YES !!!!!!! There is a reason I call it the best sequel to Rocky 4.
Guess what, all great blockbusters are exactly like this at face value.
Sharks, TRex, Communists, Nazis....every major blockbuster of note has a simple villain at face value.
strident rallying cry against gun control
I am sorry. But this kind of mindless "what does it mean in a western context" is exactly the kind of misunderstanding that I am talking about. Gun Control is not an issue in India and it never will be an issue in India. The guns are entirely metaphorical in this setting. A 100% of Indians agree that gun control is great.
The movie pits itself primarily against the founding myth of independent India, one that every Indian knows cover-to-cover. One interpretation is that the guns stand for Rajamouli's blatant rejection of India's traditional power structures and myth creators which stake their identity on non-violence. It rejects the monopoly held by the Congress, Bollywood, North India, Gandhi and Nehru on India's cultural identity and its narratives. The movie similarly rejects western aesthetics, western sensibilities of movie structure and western dog-whistles in favor of what is most obvious and natural to the target audience : the Indians. The 2nd bit is very important. It does not subvert for subversions sake. It subverts to enfranchise what feels most natural and intuitive to the people it was made for in the first place.
Another meta interpretation of the movie has to do with the unspoken rule in pre-RRR Indian cinema that Hindu stories cannot be told. RRR toes the line by borrowing aesthetics, moments and sometimes direct messages from Hindu epics (esp Ramayana) while still never explicitly breaking that rule.
Lastly, the movie alludes to decolonizing of the Indian mind. Decoloniality is a revived phrase that is distinct from anti-colonialism. This ties into redefining what it means to watch a movie in an Indian context vs a colonial (western) context. You are meant to dance, celebrate, be loud and indulge. RRR is unapologetic about indulging in its best/worst instincts in a manner that no other Indian blockbuster has done before. This bit directly ties into idea behind decolonialization of mindsets.
kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person)
The movie literally has an entire subplot about the MC dating a white woman to clearly indicate that 'not all white people are bad'. Hard to miss honestly.
Your comment portrays a weird persecution complex. I know conservative white men might find American urban liberal circles to be suffocating. But, in the rest of the world, white people still enjoy a shit ton of privilege. Most 3rd world families view dating white people as 'dating-up'. They are given a shit ton of attention, people defer to their opinion just because they speak English natively and pine for their approval. White monkey jobs exist as a distilled $ value on white privilege.
p.s: this probably needs proof reading. Just know that your opinion on RRR is wrong and bad.
p.p.s: say what you want about the movie, the songs are bangers and the dance numbers are incredible.
I don't get why all graduate students need to be paid the same amount. (behind the scenes they aren't. Top fields and top students get external fellowships & endowments, but it's the exception) It makes even less sense for the entire UC system to negotiate together. The students at UCLA, UCI and Berkeley clearly have higher expenses than the other UCs.
It makes no sense that people in fields where they'd be completely unemployable are demanding higher pay, by holding more valuable STEM fields hostage. A STEM researcher at a top UC is foregoing a $100-300k salary to pursue their graduate degree. Most liberal arts students would struggle to make anywhere near the grad student stipend. Collective bargaining makes sense when there are collective risks. Eg: Line workers at a factory or screen writers. Research does not have that kind of uniformity.
I don't like how American Social-welfare continues to attend to the symptoms and never the causes. Most extra dollars given to a UC student, are going to go into them being able to finally move into livable houses. IE. This is a direct handout to local landlords and nothing more. (This is $7000/yr effective increase)
If a UC can get a subsidized student residential tower going, then the students might be able to have similar benefits as increased salary, all while getting lasting infrastructure, still contributing to the economy (let money go to real construction workers instead of a lazy bum sitting on his house), not eliminating their social-welfare by changing their tax bracket and saving a ton of money when amortized over a long time. Best part is, it might even force unproductive local landlords to finally enter the work force. (or more likely, it will eliminate their secondary vacation income. Neither will happen tho, politics always protects landlords)
California is a social welfare state, where all the handouts go to local upper-class landowners. Source
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
No candidate has greater potential to derail DeSantis than Trump. He clings onto the hardcore vote and takes them with him, sets fire to his opponents in the primaries, and renders them worse general candidates.
I hope Trump actually gets convicted, irrespective of the validity of his crimes, just to render him ineligible. Even if De Santis loses in the generals, seeing him as the opponent will force democrats to prefer a moderate candidate.
And that sort of thing is why a lot of motorists hate bicyclists. They're trying to get somewhere, and they're blocked by someone doing half the speed limit in a place where they can't be passed.
25 mph is a residential side street. You are getting blocked by signals and stop signs more than you're by a cyclist. I see car drivers zoom past past me everyday, only to have to stop by the immediate next stop sign or signal 1 block after.
On any arterial or multi-lane street, you and I both would rather have the bike be in its own lane.
As for speeding, the purpose of a car is to get from point A, to point B, quickly and in comfort.
Is it? Has it ever succeeded? Can you give me 1 reason why the 'just 1 more lane bro' (fixed link) meme is not valid criticism of car infrastructure ?
It is a national disgrace that we don't have routine travel speeds north of 100mph
You're saying that a country with the highest per-capita road deaths in the developed world ? You think people are responsible enough for that ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
It's not hard. Tim is a guy everyone knows. Almost Forrest Gump-esque in his sincerity. Join the military, teaches at a school, coaches a football team and then runs for office. Minneapolis is one of the few non-coastal American cities with a positive storyline from the last decade. Dude has made no money from politics, loves his kids, is religious and just kinda does his thing.
You know when people say, "I'd vote for a random dude off the street, rather than a slimy Harvard educated lawyer."........ Tim is the random guy off the street.
In response to riots in Minnesota, Walz partially activated the Minnesota National Guard on May 28, and fully activated it on May 30. President Trump reacted to Walz's actions by saying that he was "very happy" and that he did "fully agree with the way [Walz] handled it … what [the Minnesota National Guard] did in Minneapolis was incredible". Trump called Walz an "excellent guy".
Even Trump seems to like the guy (I know wikipedia is obviously biased, but the events happened)
Kamala is clearly going for a "neapolitan ice cream" sort of campaign. She needed an inoffensive flavor combination. She picked an inoffensive VP candidate.
I feel bad for JD Vance
I don't. You saw it with Bloomberg, and you see it with Vance. The typical executive types are too used to talking to intelligent people. Politics is a craft. Like standup, you need to work your audience. Meet them at their level. Vance is like people I meet in my peer group. The main problem with Vance is he's too smart to work for Trump. He can't play a wise-cracking used car salesman because he isn't one. He was only chosen because of the paypal mafia's outside support. He knew what he was getting into. Should've known better.
Louis CK was the biggest stand-up comedian before Chapelle came back. MSG was Louis CK's playground, with him doing sets there whenever he wished. He talks about how nervous he was about his MSG set, the amount of work that went into it and how different it felt.
For one, nothing Louis CK did was criminal. From the sounds of it, he never pulled his dick out unless the other person provided consent for it, and he was never in an explicit boss-employee relationship with women he approached. Yes, it was creepy, inept, unethical & sad. But it's amateur hour as far as showbiz goes. After Aziz, Louis CK was cancelled for the least egregious of the #metoo accusations.
Louis CK's entire persona was of a sad lonely dad in a tragic-comedy. If anything, this plays straight into it. If they/them Ezra Miller still gets to play a role model character after doing some actually criminal stuff, then CK's humble image would be expected to be resilient to accusations of being the person his comedy has portrayed him as for 30 years.
In the least woke profession, the greatest practitioner & the least egregious sexual creep, who never put himself on a pedestal can come back after a few years and have moderate success as along as he lives a now sin-free life and keeps performing at his GOAT best.
If that's the claim, then it sounds like the exception that proves the rule.
90s rappers killed people and were embraced by the institution. Now people are losing jobs over suspicions of being republican.
P.S : Just to be clear, no justifying his behavior. It was obviously degenerate. Don't idolize entertainers. IMO, his temporary banishment from institutions & public apology was appropriate punishment. It is probably fair for women actors to not want to work with him again too. It's their choice. But the global scale of bullying & still-continuing blackout are honestly a bit much.
DirtyWaterHotDog
7mo ago
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms are for women, and men's restrooms are for men
Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.
I hear that women tend to change & reveal more skin in women's locker rooms. In men's restrooms, we pretty much do their business and leave. From that perspective, the men's locker room is more 'gender neutral'.
Yes, it was a woke rallying-cry. But in 2024, it's become a tier-1 losing issue.
I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss.
AOC is the democrat's weathervane. She's scarily opportunist and makes radical position changes right before a movement runs out of gas. She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly. She recently removed pronouns from her twitter bio. It's Joever.
As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
What's your current take on the ongoing Ukraine diplomatic drama? Are the Trump Talks likely to lead to the Trump Treaty? Or are they just ongoing comedy and flailing? What does a durable peace treaty look like these days?
Trump squandered hard won leverage for nothing in return.
Ceasefire is a good idea. But the terms hugely favor Russia. By freezing current boundaries, they give Russia full control over the Dniper river. For all intents and purposes, this will doom Ukraine to Russian control. Trump held all the cards, gave Russia everything they wanted, and asked for nothing in return. I don't get it.
The standard argument is that American resources can't be stuck in Europe. The next war will be in the Indo pacific, and resources need to be focused there. I agree on all points. But then, why not force Russia to economically decouple from China ? Post-Ukraine-war, Russia has become economically dependent on China, ending up as the clear junior partner in a fast developing 2nd front. Before the war, Russia was economically coupled to the EU. From an objective perspective and from the perspective of political maneuvering, this sudden ceasefire doesn't help him or his allies. The US might be able to refocus on China militarily, but I don't see them gaining economic leverage on China.
Everything from now is speculation and likely won't happen, but Trump's actions increase the possibility of the following events if nothing changes. Here goes: Ukraine is too dug in. Lot more Ukrainians will die before they formally concede. Now that Ukraine is caught with their pants down, Russia is free to mount a fresh offensive come spring. EU will have to choose between focusing their large capital expenditures on reindustrializing vs rearming. With the (arguably misplaced) paranoia of a hot-war with Russia, they will be forced to pick the latter. Therefore, they'll losing vital ground to China as it eats more of Europe's high-skill industry lunch. Ukraine's reliance on EU will make it bad optics for Europe to repair ties with Russia. As a result, Russia will build deeper ties with China formalizing the 2nd front for good. By creating strong incentives for an economically strengthened China, a concrete China-Russia block & a weakened EU, I fear that Trump might have kick started the end of the empire.
I don't believe that Trump is a Russian asset. But the man is following every step of the 'is a Russian asset' playbook.
P.S: My fanfic assumes that the publicly shared details of the deal are what the deal is.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Truth is, 90% of all work is stupid. The difference between a committee of competent Harvard grads from every major (smart and competent, but no genius) and the kind of people who create true innovation is a couple of orders of magnitude.
AI might be around the corner, but super-human intelligence that can innovate (Neumann, Terence Tao) is much much much farther away than we think.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
the upper crust are ruthless careerists, willing to gut moonshots to please the board with rising KPIs and good publicity when they get into management
There is much truth to it. Indian managers (on average), while brilliant, are held back by their culture of deference to the experienced and cultural incentives to not rock the ship. 200 years of being Bureaucrats to the British, and they remain Bureaucrats in even independence.
No one can meet quarterly goals quite like a Bureaucrat. No brings a golden goose down to a halt quite like a Bureaucrat. The "Hindu rate of growth", insulting as it was, pointed fingers squarely at the Bureaucracy for it's relative stability and sorry growth.
even Microsoft
Microsoft is the counter example. the work that Satya has done at Microsoft consistently impressed people through the last decade. Indian careerists make terrible business leaders. But Indian businessmen are an entirely different ballgame. Sadly, both groups don't fix.
DirtyWaterHotDog
9mo ago
I dont have the link on hand, but someone dumped $7 million onto prediction markets overnight, betting against Kamala. People are suspecting Elon. The swing is artificial knee jerk, but your sentiment is genuine.
Remember, Kamala was never supposed to get this far. 2020 was peak woke and Biden felt pressured into choosing a minority. Kamala had the perfect optics - woman, blackish, indianish, well educated, compliant, could signal as woke but fundamentally centrist.
She was the perfect puppet and therefore a good VP candidate. But the same thing makes her a horrible presidential candidate. Off the top of my mind, every other primary candidate did better than her. Pete, Warren, Bernie.... are all articulate and sharp (whether I agree with some of them or not).
IMO, the deepstate chooses bumbling idiots because they are easy to control. Kamala is perfect.
I hope they don't end up like Pakistan, where your entire identity and history is tied up in hating the country where it all comes from.
Without Islam, Pakistanis are just Indians, and that reality is indigestible to them. So instead of making peace with our shared history, they are on a quest to be an Islamic nation like no other. Sadly for them, there is no such thing as a culturally Muslim country. At that point, you're just copying Arab traditions, while the Arabs themselves see you as an impure/inferior race. The people are confused, because at an organic level, their traditions are very much Indian.
Indonesia effortlessly balances its Hindu cultural roots with Islam and Malaysia faces more friction, but still does a better job than Pakistan. You simply cannot build a stable country that is expected to hate its own cultural roots. In the subcontinent - Bangladeshis don't have this issue, because they have a real cultural sub-identity : Bengali. Pakistan can't adopt a similarly dominant local sub-identity for 2 reasons. First, Punjabi would be the most common sub-identity, but Sikhs have wholesale monopoly on that identity. Pakistani Islam can't make peace with a Sikh influenced co-identity. Second, Pakistan is multicultural, and separatist movements are rooted in resentment towards Punjabi dominance. Making that explicit will only give power to Balochi & Pashtun terrorists.
I can see some similar parallels here. From Hatred towards the mother-state, lack of a unifying identity that is separate from the mother-state and fostering snakes in their own backyard. (Islamists, Neo-nazis). Both of them are only important to NATO because they balance out hostile (to NATO) powers in the region. And the second you take the current military aid, their complete economic bankruptcy becomes hard to look away from.
Similarly, if you take away the history, then the mother-state is your most natural trading partner and prospective ally. Living with historic resentment actively makes life harder for your country.
I have more sympathy towards Ukraine because unlike Pakistan, their problems aren't of their own creation. But in 2022, Pakistan is the poster child of 'failed state'. I sure hope that Ukraine can avoid the same predicament.
DirtyWaterHotDog
6mo ago
I can only say "I think the bottom line, is this is just what a low trust society looks like."
Luigi's CEO assassination has been a real statement piece to drive your point.
Other than money, the US lacks other recognizable traits of a developed nation.
High violence, low trust, unreliable social safety nets, bad health outcomes...... you name it. The US has money, and that's about it. Yes, being in the top 1% of America makes for an amazing life. Guess what ? That applies to every half-developed nation.
This is how ChatGPT outlines what living in a developed nation feels like:
Aspects of a Developed Country from a Quality of Life Perspective
-
Healthcare
Universal access to high-quality healthcare services.- Advanced medical facilities and technologies.
High life expectancy and low infant mortality.
-
Education
Free or affordable access to primary, secondary, and tertiary education.- High literacy rates and skilled workforce.
- Emphasis on research and innovation.
-
Economic Stability
- High GDP per capita.
- Low unemployment and inflation rates.
Strong social safety nets and pensions.
-
Infrastructure
Efficient transportation systems (roads, public transit, airports).- Reliable utilities (electricity, water, internet).
Modern urban planning with sustainable practices.
-
Safety and Security
Low crime rates and effective law enforcement.- Political stability and strong governance.
- Protection of civil rights and freedoms.
-
Environmental Quality
- Clean air, water, and well-maintained public spaces.
- Access to green spaces and recreational areas.
-
Social Equity
- Gender equality and inclusivity.
Access to housing and elimination of poverty.
-
Work-Life Balance
Reasonable work hours and paid leave policies.Opportunities for cultural, leisure, and recreational activities.
(Note: it gave me a couple of woke talking points. I deleted those)
I've personally striked out what America fails at. It's pretty damning.
DirtyWaterHotDog
29d ago
Trump's truth social posts suggest otherwise.
Wouldn't be surprised if it's the other way around. Trump encourages Netanyahu to go for the attack. The hawks in Israel have been aching to go at it for the last decade. Not only would the US have to complicit, it would need to have given an explicit go ahead.
I'm surprised that the Islamic Republic of Iran has stood for as long as it has. The urban areas don't want the conservatism. Khamenei is at death's door. Succession is unclear. Economy has been doing worse YOY and elite human capital leaves the country on first opportunity.
I know the Persians are a civilized people, so they may not resort to brute force violence. But, 30 years of stability under a continuously deteriorating economy is unheard of.
It's a bad list, and it keeps getting worse as you go on.
It is an American list meant to make American sports and sportspeople look great. Ah yes, 56/100 are American and 17/100 are from Baseball, a sport that is played by Americans and Dominicans, and the 30x smaller country is somehow better.
From a competitiveness perspective, Tennis and Swimming are nowhere close to (real) Football. Messi is by far the greatest player to have every played football, and also the greatest sportsperson of all time. (not just the 21st century). Unlike every other sports person, Messi was the best player in the world when most players start their careers (~20) and stayed the very best for the next 15 years. Messi (not unlike Gretsky) could be 2 players, and they would be the #1 and #2 greatest players of all time.
When one nation uniformly dominates a sport, then you know that it isn't THAT competitive. Swimming is one such example. I can speak about swimming because I personally know family members who were nationally (one of them was in the US) ranked top-10 swimmers for their age. Either my family is uniquely suited for swimming. Or, they have the 1 trait all my family members share, which is ruthless ladder climbing (Tier 0 tiger moms in my family). Swimming as a sport uniquely rewards hard-work. Which tells you that it is not competitive enough. You can't work hard at soccer and get good. You need to be insanely gifted, then work hard, and that gets you into the 4th tier of English football. Now Phelps' dominance of swimming was large enough, that I'd still give him #2. But, Messi is #1. Speaking of swimming, Ledecky deserves as shoutout for the top 20.
Djokovic - Federer & Nadal having close head-to-heads helps none of them. I wouldn't put any of them on the top 10.
Sports I think shouldn't qualify for more than 1 name:
- F1 & Golf - Billionaires sports. It's like when the Ashes (Cricket) used to be played between lords in England and Australia.
- Winter sports - sorry, it doesn't snow in most of the world or most of the year.
tldr:
- Messi is #1
- Ronaldo in top 10
- Brady, Phelps, Bolt in top 5
- Biles in top 10, Serena wasn't anywhere close to dominating her sport
- Magnus Carlsen should be in top 10, and Chess should be counted as a sport
- WNBA is a joke and shouldn't have a single name.
- Andy Murray is a good lad, but he ain't in the top 100 discussion. Come on
- Heavy weight MMA is likely the hardest sport to stay at the top of. Fedor deserves a top 50 just for that.
Ok this might just be funny to me, but the
CloudStrikeCrowdstrike worldwide outage is the funniest thing to happen in computer security this decade.If you haven't caught up,
100+ million(billion?) computers around the world were simulatenously broken in an instant. It's black comedy for sure. Hospital & emergency systems around the world have crawled to a halt, and there will be a few hundred deaths that will be traced back to this event. Millions of $$ will be lost. But, the humor comes from the cause of it.Here is how things panned out:
CloudStrikeCrowdstrike is a 100 billion valuation tech company that provides security services to a bulk of the world business.CloudStrikeCrowdstrike deployed a software update that began this outageCloudStrikeCrowdstrike is a 'trusted' secuirty tool, it sits under the OS layer, bricking the whole device.This is the Y2k that was promised.
The world spends billions in computer security every year, and no virus has managed the kind of world-wide disruption caused by one simple bug by the premier security company in the world.
No direct culture war implications, but goes to show just how much of a house-of-cards the tech ecosystem is. 1 little, simple, stupid bug can bring the whole world to a halt. Yet, the industry continues quarterly-earnings chasing.
Jobs keep getting cut, senior members get aged out, timelines get thinner and 'how many features did you deploy' remains the only metric for evaluation.
In tech, staying at a job for more than 3 years is seen as coasting. Devs are increasingly expected to do everything, because 'everyone should be full stack' and everything that isn't feature development (testing, staging, canaries) get deprioritized. Overworked novices means carelessness, carelessness creates mistakes.
At the same time, devs get zero agency. Random HR types make list of regulations mandating certain checkboxes for compliance, while having near-zero knowledge of the risks-and-benefits of these technical decisions. Therefore, the implications of a mistake are opaque to decisions makers. So by being compliant, you've suddenly given
CloudStrikeCrowdstrike a button to shut your entire business down.This kind of error should literally be impossible in a company of the size of
CloudStrikeCrowdstrike . If such an error happens, it should be impossible for giant corporations to crumble zero backup. Incompetence on display, on all sides. Having worked in 'prestigious tech companies', especially in 2024, it isn't surprising. At times, the internal dysfunction is seriously alarming, other times it's a tuesday.I'm not going to hope for much out of this. Just like Spectre & Solar , people will cry about it for weeks, demand change and everyone will get collective amnesia about it as the next quarter rolls around.
End of the day, tech workers are treated as disposable labor. Executive bean counters are divorced from the product. And the stock price is the only incentive that matters.
As long as tech is run by MBAs and smooth talkers, this will go on.
Some choice photos:
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