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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   2662 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Every year, this guy who runs the Infinite Scroll Substack compiles a "Worst Tweet of the Year" bracket. He selects 64 of the most insane/offensive/preposterous tweets of the year, subdivides them into four categories and has people vote on which are the worst. The best 32 get through to the next round, and so on. Check it out, there's some gold in there.

What I found slightly disappointing was that, social desirability bias being what it is, whenever an offensive tweet was paired against an insane one, people tended to vote for the offensive one to signal that they disagreed with it, even if the insane one is clearly orders of magnitude more bonkers than the offensive one. Of course some dude saying that the age of consent should be 13 is gross and disgusting, but tweets expressing that sentiment are a dime a dozen, and pale in comparison to the woman who confidently asserted that it's impossible to sail across any ocean. Like, I don't even know how I'd even start going about trying to rebut that.

Honourable mentions.

Oh, hey, @KulakRevolt is there; congratulations! I'm sorry you lost to Blacks Support Slavery.

Of course some dude saying that the age of consent should be 13 is gross and disgusting, but tweets expressing that sentiment are a dime a dozen, and pale in comparison to the woman who confidently asserted that it's impossible to sail across any ocean.

I mean, yes, Ocean Gyers is objectively more insane, but you also have to look at the shape of the tweets, not just the substance. No No No Yes Yes Yes is hilarious; I would have voted for it, too.

EDIT: Don't Eat Eggs is literally The Breakfast Question.

Following up on downthread, I've installed Mint Linux on a fresh 1 TB NVME drive. All in all it didn't go terribly. We'll see how badly I fuck the whole thing up. I got Steam installed and played Quake for a hot minute. Currently installing Doom 2016 and Factorio. Working on getting my music library imported off another drive. Oh wait, that actually just finished, along with Heroic installing. Hot damn.

Edit: And right on cue, Assassin's Creed Origins is getting bombed with negative reviews because of Microsoft’s 24H2 Windows 11 update which has bricked the game for a lot of people. Black screens, crashes, and freezes, and still no fixes yet.

My Steam Deck tinker experiences tells me that everything works until it doesn't, and when it doesn't it really doesn't. Yes, you can get anything to work, but ultimately the juice frequently isn't worth the squeeze. Admittedly, the SteamOS is a fairly different experience than your average Linux distro, but Windows from a support standpoint generally works well enough where if something is broken it frequently isn't broken for too long.

I've been thinking of converting my laptop into a linux machine, but I doubt linux will support the 2 in 1 style as well as the touchscreen support as well as windows does (which is admittedly not great, but it works).

I’ve used GNU+Linux since kernels 2.4.x, and still I only bother using Windows on bare metal for my gaming PC. You’re going to spend time tinkering instead of gaming. My tinkering is limited to mods of old games with 3rd-party tools and configurations that can only work on Windows anyway, even if Wine/Proton call run the base game on ?n*x.

So far games have just worked. That said, performance of Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing overdrive was nowhere close to windows performance.

I’ve used GNU+Linux since kernels 2.4.x, and still I only bother using Windows on bare metal for my gaming PC. You’re going to spend time tinkering instead of gaming.

When was the last time you tried? Because in the present day and age that is very much not the case. I've been using Linux for gaming for the last 2-3 years now, and in that time there are maybe half a dozen games I couldn't get to work. Perhaps half a dozen more that required any sort of tinkering. The vast majority just work thanks to Proton.

Probably 2020/2021. I used wine around 0.9.x days and not much since it hit 1.x. I barely touched Proton. I gave up trying to virtualize Windows or something under Linux with GPU kernel pass through, couldn’t get PCI lanes to talk correctly.

Welcome to the glorious world of "this software is actually made to serve you"! Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

But what will @WhiningCoil do if he needs to use the Photoshop shape tool to draw a circle... (https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/k866so/gimpphotoshop/)

Well, one thing I'm rather surprised by is that I was able to just throw the open sourced RTX port of Quake into Steam, told it to use Proton 9.0-4, and it appeared to "just work". Not sure if DLSS was actually active or not, but it all seemed good.

Edit: Well this may be a pickle. Steam has begun "updating" about 50 or so games I had installed in the steam library I imported to their linux versions, overwriting the windows versions.

I mostly liked Nosferatu, Robert Egger's new remake of the 1922 German silent film, but I think I had the wrong expectations for it which hampered my enjoyment. As I'm not very familiar with the original, I expected Orlok to be more subtle, charming, seductive. But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display. Plotwise it's very generic and lacks true dramatic tension, even when the visuals are incredibly gripping. But it's worth watching for the cinematography alone. On the big screen, nearly every shot is very cinematic and the movie just has an intense, psychic, propulsive energy to it. The first film in years I'm considering a second theater viewing of.

Thematically, it seems to argue that women have the undue burden of taming the darkness in men, but are also very attracted to this darkness. There's also a hint of exploring the limits of modern science to diagnose our spiritual maladies, though most of these ideas are underexplored in service of delivering a captivating creature feature. Still, manages to deliver this great quote from Willem Dafoe's mystic character, Franz: "In heathen times, you might have been a priestess of Isis. Yet in this strange and modern world, your purpose is of greater worth. You are our salvation."

But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display.

This sounds about on par with the original, which pretty much invented the conception of vampires as monstrous hideous bloodsuckers (as opposed to the more urbane, charming Béla Lugosi type).

Yeah I've since familiarized myself with the original more. But a major deviation this remake made is (not a spoiler because it's in the first scene) Ellen and Orlock have been in contact since she was a teenager, through a telepathic link of some sort, which started when she prays for "a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort" and he's been haunting her dreams ever since.

Having heard it cited as an influence by everyone from Oliver Stone to Steven Soderbergh, I finally got around to watching Z (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film)) tonight. Its reputation is well-deserved. The ending felt like a punch in the stomach, particularly given that the preceding film was more light-hearted and blackly comic than you'd expect, given the subject matter.

This is not a fun post, but I need to rant. Fuck you, Apple, and fuck you, Meta.

My wife decided she needed a bigger iPhone and as usual I was the designated data migrator. Given that Apple doesn't want it ever to be as simple as "copy a bunch of stuff from the first phone to the PC, copy the stuff from the PC to the new iPhone" and iTunes backup doesn't actually back up all the data on the Phone I was happy to learn a few phones ago that you can just switch the new iPhone on and painlessly transfer everything via Bluetooth.

Almost everything.

WhatsApp loves the idea of privacy and that's why (unlike Telegram), it doesn't store any of your chat history on its servers. Apple can't or won't transfer it to the new device and you have to do it yourself. And of course, there's no nice buttons like "back everything up into a zip archive" and "restore my chats from a zip archive".

No, you have to either use iCloud (not an option for us, because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia, and it's currently 900% full) or use WhatsApp's built-in transfer option that is fucking hidden in Settings -> Chats and not in Settings -> Data or something sensible like that.

And god forbid you try to log into the account on the new phone first, because that's not how it works, and you have to log out and log in on the old phone again. You have to start the process there, wait until it asks you to log in on the new phone, then scan the QR code on the new phone with the old phone to theoretically start the transfer progress.

I say theoretically because it didn't work for me. I had VPN on on my router, so WhatsApp would freak out and fight me all the way. Wife has VPN on on her old phone for some reason, so I couldn't understand why switching it off on my router didn't work. And there obviously was only one SIM shared between the two phones, so I could use mobile internet to do this.

At one moment I had a bright idea (when we were logged in into WhatsApp on the new phone and couldn't log back in on the old one) to link the old phone as a secondary device on the account. This worked, and I could log back into the account on the old phone, could see the chat history but couldn't transfer it to the new phone. At this moment, I had already fucked up, but didn't know it yet. Because, as I learned 20 minutes later when I managed to log back in on the old phone the proper way, as soon as you unlink a secondary device, WhatsApp erases all its data on it, even if it was there when you linked it. So, without remorse or regret, it erased all chat history on the old phone.

Finally, as the cherry on top, WhatsApp decided the whole logging in and out in two different countries thing was quite fishy and locked the account for 8 hours. I guess we'll try copying one night worth of chat histories tomorrow.

Fuck you, Apple, fuck you, Meta, and fuck your terrible UX.

You forgot "fuck people who made you do use WhatsApp" I remember you writing you had moved out of Russia?

No, I haven't moved out of Russia.

it says "privacy" but as same time on installing asks for permissions to read sms, call history and contacts to "save" user from labor of entering single use token...

It is remarkable how broken all of this really is, here in India you just pay people for this and android is seamless, android to iphone only works if you are willing to pay for it. I have all of my chats backed up on google drive which I bought for my entire family and apple even charges you money for buying that from a fucking iphone. The amount of cocksucking for apple and meta by tech normies is indicative of us being in the ashes.

Well, I can't charge my wife for that, can I?

And yes, Android makes this much easier, if only because the settings menu there is not as braindead as on iOS.

For the future I do hope you can use Google for your backup, being in Russia isn't ideal given the payment issues now.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt. Minimize your contact with these parasites as much as possible because they will always eventually try to fuck you. I've gone through that same process with my Matrix/Element chat app and it works a lot better than what you're describing.

Like, how? Some jobs straight require to use whatsapp, and maybe more social media.

Disregard the old man yelling at clouds.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt.

Tbf, a lot of apple users deserve to be held in contempt, technology wise. I think it's fine to have a phone that's designed around minimizing user-agency so they can't fuck themselves. All the smart people should just use a different phone.

I like Apple because I pay the manufacturer directly for the product. All the android phones are full of spyware, aren't they? I've never liked the idea of giving Google access to my personal life - I only have an account for work. Even then, I logged into Youtube on my phone once, and Google has never forgotten it. Are there android systems without heavy google integration?

There are still ads and tracking in MacOS and iOS. The only claim is that it's less than Microsoft's and Google's. A difference of degree, not kind. To your other point, GrapheneOS and CalyxOS are options.

I knew that but I hoped the difference would be a large degree since Apple doesn’t make their primary revenue from ads AFAIK. I’ll look into the options you mentioned.

Well, the best chat app or social network is the one with the people you want to communicate with. I tried to switch all my contacts to my Matrix server to mixed results. The upside is that it's a great filter on the people who really want to communicate with me. ;)

because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you. It may be not your personal fault and you may not have another choice, but that's the problem and everything else is downstream from it. Apple and Meta products aren't built to cater for users that live in anti-civilization countries and never will be, and it's not reasonable to expect them to. Your choice is using R-Fon and Vkontakte or suffer what you must.

Amazing, imagine believing the West as it stands is “pro-civilization” at the same time Russia is engaged in the process of actually constructing a civilization-state.

I am not sure what exactly Russia is constructing (a fascist empire would be a good general description but it lacks specific details) but it has very little to do with what we understand as Western civilization, and it is ideologically opposed to it. You can call it "civilization-state" in the meaning of its own, peculiar to that state, civilization which is built on the principles alien to the Western one, and that's exactly my point.

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you.

I don't think this is true at all. The problem here is that Apple doesn't have a reasonable option to transfer everything to a new device locally.

The last few times I've gotten a new Android phone (Pixel), it's come with a USB-C to USB-C cable (with a C-to-A adapter for chargers) and simple instructions to connect 'em directly, unlock the old one, and agree to transfer everything. Admittedly it missed quite a few apps the first time, but the most recent time things almost entirely Just Worked. I think they may have wireless or cloud options there too, but the cable was simple.

Although the security-minded have complained about some of the changes in, specifically, Google Authenticator over the last few years to support this.

Yep, I've had the same thing. There's no reason Apple can't do this, they just choose not to.

Samsung uses the same method.

And the reason they don't because it's only needed when you can't use iCloud, and you can't use iCloud when your country is debanked for starting a war. I don't know how Apple's internal project management works, but I suspect a task "make data migration work if my country is under sanctions" is not very high on the list.

Yes, single player games requiring online connection is just another part of sanctions against Russia. And by the way, if Apple does not have something, this means no sane person would need it at all.

No, the reason they don't is because Apple is a shitty company who tries to lock you into their walled garden as hard as they can. It is mind-bogglingly stupid to use the Internet to transfer data between two physical devices which you have right in front of you. Any sensible person would default to using local wireless (if you insist on no wires), or just connecting a USB cable. This is 100% Apple's fault for doing data transfer in the stupidest way possible.

I bet they work fine in Saudi Arabia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. America leverages its technology and its economy to destroy its perceived enemies. And it doesn’t give much of a damn what the rest of us in ‘Western civilisation’ think. Although I agree with you that some level of autarky is probably the way forward.

Saudi Arabia (I mean the royal family) are huge friends of Western civilization. That's like their entire survival strategy, has been for decades. They took major part in US-USSR proxy war if Afghanistan, for example (on the US side), and many other projects too. They may have very distinct customs internally, but they never positioned themselves as being in active existential opposition, quite the reverse. As for Rwanda and Zimbabwe, I have no idea what works there and probably nobody cares either.

America leverages its technology and its economy to destroy those it disapproves of.

"Disapproves of" is the big lie here. America may disapprove of a lot of things, but the problems with Russia are way, way beyond "disapproval". That's the country that a) started a hot war in Europe and b) pretty much declared itself as an the eternal strategic enemy of the Western civilization. I think they don't have much platform to complain some Western things are working less than smoothly there. And no, not being able to easily copy information from one American iphone (which you can still buy) to another American iphone (which you can still buy) so that you can use an application created by American company, is not properly described as "being destroyed by America". In no world, in no universe, in no circumstance it is.

it doesn’t give much of a damn what the rest of us in ‘Western civilisation’ think.

Most of Europe, except some folks being directly paid by Russia and some folks who proclaim their love of Russia out of stupid contrarianism, aren't exactly in love with Russia either. Those who border it very much aren't. And, the position in existential opposition to the West is the official Russian doctrine, so there's no matter what Luxembourg really thinks about it, it's what it is.

What puts a big bee in my bonnet is the way American right-wingers casually throw around terms like "anti-civilisation" and "Western civilisation", using them apparently interchangeably with "anti/pro American strategic interests". "Western civilisation" insofar as it means anything was a product of Greek/Roman paganism, Byzantine/European Christendom, German universities, French, Russian, and British thinkers, with America coming in very late in the game.

Saudi Arabia are certainly American allies (and Britain, probably other European countries). That's not the same thing really as being 'pro Western civilisation'. As you note, their internal customs are very different.

[Russia] started a hot war in Europe

That is Western civilisation! In practically its purest form! I'm not just being flippant here: the idea that going to war in Europe is incompatible with being a western civilisation dates exclusively from the end of the second world war and is therefore inseparable from the time when America was undisputed ruler of the globe. Disputing this principle doesn't make you "anti-civilisation" but it does make you an enemy of the American-led global order.

pretty much declared itself as an the eternal strategic enemy of the Western civilization

As above. Putin actually leans into a lot of Christian elements and mythologising about Russia's place in old Europe (and therefore implicitly Russia's place in "Western Civilisation"). It has declared itself an enemy of American-led alliances and global institutions because it feels (correctly in my opinion) that those alliances and institutions were created and maintained with an eye to permanently upholding American global supremacy.

So if we rewrite from "Russia is the enemy of Western civilisation" to "Russia is the enemy of American-led global supremacy", then the question becomes "how much should iPhone, Github etc. functionality be tied to American strategic interests"? And "they shouldn't, they're consumer products or global infrastructure" seems like a perfectly valid answer to me.

Most of Europe, except some folks being directly paid by Russia and some folks who proclaim their love of Russia out of stupid contrarianism, aren't exactly in love with Russia either.

No, and quite rightly. I'm not actually keen on Russia's behaviour myself, all contrarianism aside. But I don't for a moment believe it would make a difference if we were. America is never going to shrug and say, "well, I guess the majority of Western civilisation is okay with this, we're not anti-civilisation so we'll follow your lead". The relationship between America and "Western civilisation" is strictly one way. When Germany didn't commit sufficiently to the anti-Russian alliance by continuing to buy the gas that was maintaining their economy (and thus, again, "Western civilisation") America expressed its disapproval in no uncertain terms. I personally believe they assisted or overlooked Ukraine in destroying the Nord stream pipelines and therefore participated directly in crippling "western civilisation" for the foreseeable future.

using them apparently interchangeably with "anti/pro American strategic interests"

That's nonsense. Having war in the middle of Europe is not German or Polish or British or Spanish or Greek or any other European interest. Russian imperial plans is not "American" problem, it's the problem for everybody who is part of what we call "Western civilization".

That's not the same thing really as being 'pro Western civilisation'.

True. They are allies. That was my point.

Putin actually leans into a lot of Christian elements

Of course, Russia's ideology has always been that they are the "true" Christians and all the non-eastern-orthodox Christians are heretics, and thus taking over Byzantine inheritance and serving as sole protector of the Christian faith is the Russian destiny, thus it's called the "third Rome". Putin invented nothing here, he just reheated the policies of Russian Empire. Of course, this implies inherent conflict with the West, who also considers itself the continuation of Greko-Roman civilization - they are the fakes, and Russia is the true heir, so until they recognize this fact, there can be no peace (though there could be some temporary tactic armistices and alliances, of course).

"Russia is the enemy of American-led global supremacy"

Again, nonsense. Russia is the enemy of the EU as much - likely more - as America. Of course, if you want to go back to the Holy Roman Empire, maybe Russia isn't the enemy of that, but it's the enemy of everything the Western civilization is now, and not just tactically, but strategically - at least until it abandons the "third Rome" ideology, which definitely won't happen while Putin is alive.

I personally believe they assisted or overlooked Ukraine in destroying the Nord stream pipelines and therefore participated directly in crippling "western civilisation" for the foreseeable future.

You can believe whatever you like, but some German politicos being bought by Putin is not really a sign that Europe wants to submit to the glorious Russian empire. Some politicians, sure, would like a share of Gazprom billions, no doubt about it. But those politicians don't represent much beyond their own greed.

Being friendly with Russia is hardly a niche position in Germany. After 3 years of non-stop concerted media propaganda that even US mainstream anti-Trump consensus pales before, current polling still puts parties that are explicitly for leaving the American-led consensus on supporting Ukraine (AfD, BSW) at around 24%; and 41% say financial and weaponry support and 19% say sanctions against Russia are "going too far". Before the war and attendant propaganda, in early 2020, in response to US sanctions, 55% said that Nord Stream 2 should enter operation "no matter what, despite current conflicts with Russia". It looks less like German politicos were bought by Putin and more like Uncle Sam was being too stingy to buy them for once.

It's ogre now. My 1080 Ti that has served me well for god knows how many years is not supported by the new Indiana Jones game. RTX or GTFO.

Same boat with 1080ti. Unfortunately any meaningful GPU upgrade is 1000+ Euro. I hate how software dev salaries went down in last two years. For first time in a while I actually have to think if it is worth or not.

On one hand I sympathise with not wanting to upgrade one's computer but that's due to how there aren't new AAA games I want to play, not the cost. The cost is negligble for a once in decade expense if one actually uses the computer.

It's raytracing only. Supposed to be a good game though. I'm waiting for January/February and a new GPU before I play it. I could run it at 1440p and low textures on my current 8gb gpu, but I'd rather delay gratification and play it at 4K with path tracing ftw.

Did I ever tell you guys about the cool short story I read while on holiday that I really can't imagine talking about with anyone outside the motte - Blackbirded?

I'll say up front that I've worked and chatted with the author Joab before, but I'd be telling you about it even if I hadn't, mostly because I'm super gay for the fanfic aspects of it, but also because it's a fun read.

Its set in 19th century Queensland and it deals with Australia's own equivalent to the slave trade (and yes it's weird Australians want an equivalent to the slave trade but I don't think I can say anything else worthwhile about that), following a group of bounty hunters tracking a runaway, but ending up being hunted themselves. It's also fanfic for a popular sci-fi movie series starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, JCVD and Danny Glover, and you can tell Joab is maybe even more into it than I am.

He also seems to have a conflicted view of the racial dynamics of the time, which is why I can't imagine talking about the story with any of my normie friends. The characters behave the way they would have back then and he seems to deliberately subvert the standard modern take of whitey bad blackie good, but there is also a lot of throat clearing - far too much imo, but based on past experiences I have learned that my far too much is usually not nearly enough for most people, so I'd be interested to know what you think. It's not a long read either, I busted it out over a couple of smokes.

but there is also a lot of throat clearing - far too much

Is that particularly surprising in a fic that provides an "acknowledgement of country" before the work begins?

That's the throat clearing that most confused me. I don't really understand why someone who would write the story he wrote would include one of those in the first place. The acknowledgement would put off people who would appreciate the attention to historical accuracy and the people who would appreciate the acknowledgement would be put off by the accuracy. Maybe he wrote it for some class and his teacher insisted on it?

Reuters Fact Check:

The Wisconsin school shooter, Natalie Rupnow, has been misidentified in posts online as Samuel Hyde, a comedian falsely linked to deadly attacks in the past as part of a long-running internet hoax.

Hyde told Reuters, however, that neither of the two photographs in the posts about Rupnow is him.

You can run but you can't hyde

I'm upset they didn't quote Hyde's reply, which would have been the funniest line in the article

What was Hyde's reply?

We can only imagine unless he posted it somewhere. It's probably funnier that way to be honest.

He can't keep getting away with it!

The feds thrown off his trail once again..

What are the all-time best movies / shows for kids to watch?

This Christmas, I watched the Home Alone series with my kids (6yo, 3yo, 2yo, 1yo). The movies are fantastic. They keep the kids engaged with humor, and they provide valuable lessons on family (you might think they're a pain, but they're still wonderful), independence (kids can accomplish a lot of things that adults can't and they should be encouraged to try), some seemingly bad people are good (the shovel guy/pigeon lady are scary at first but turn out to be great people in the end), and some seemingly good people are bad (the thieves dress up as cops and trick a lot of adults).

I want to find other similar movies to watch with my kids that are fun and full of great lessons. Does themotte have any recommendations?

How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2 are both incredible. Most of Disney's Silver Age catalog are incredible but be prepared for some crying from the younger ones, doubly so if you go for the Golden Age stuff. The Don Bluth stuff can be left until they're 10 at least.

Also, at their ages, the Sonic movies are great. All 3.

The Emperor's New Groove is a cartoon, but it hits a couple of these beats. For a slightly more mature beat, try the Road to El Dorado and the Prince of Egypt.

How to Train Your Dragon hits some really nice themes/messages re: empathy, coming of age, parenting/fatherhood, and interacting with animals. More impressively, it handles each of these moments with a deftness and poignancy that I think is rare in the "kids movie" medium. The sequels are also good/fine, but the original film is a triumph.

I'd forgotten about this film. This is a really good suggestion... there's lots of fantastic themes in that movie. Thanks!

The original Land Before Time film (all the sequels are direct to vhs garbage).

Not only is it beautifully animated and extremely well crafted, the message of the movie is an extraordinarily powerful lesson in servant leadership and duty.

Littlefoot, cast into tragedy, wants to feel sorry for himself and wallow in self pity, but is forced into a reluctant leadership position where he becomes responsible for the lives of others, and must learn a lot of hard truths about being a leader

Aaahh... I remember these from when I was a kid... my 2yo is super into dinosaurs right now, so that's likely to be a winner... thanks!

Crazy. I'm pretty sure I was telling my dad what a brontosaurus brachiosaurus was at age 4. Very fond memories of dad taking me to the public library and say 'pick any book you like'.

Batman the animated series stands out above any other form of media for me, I could not have enjoyed at any other point besides my childhood but the effort taken to make it makes me appreciate watching it that young.

I also liked rugrats, the original xmen show and various nickelodeon ones but btas stands out.

Beyond Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar, and (Hayoa Miyazaki's) Studio Ghibli films...

The Sandlot, Karate Kid, The Princess Bride, School of Rock, The Iron Giant (maybe when older), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (ant ;_;), Elf, Charlie Brown movies, The Muppet movies, and Hugo.

I'd screen films you haven't seen first.

There’s also a bad message, though, that as a kid you can do things for yourself and not rely on adults, and that you can have heroic adventures doing things yourself. This is a good lesson for an 18-year-old, but probably not a child.

I never watched the sequels, but at least in the first movie he does call the police (albeit way later than he should), and his "doing things yourself" adventure ends with his enemies capturing him and gleefully discussing his torture, until he's rescued by an adult. The script is all about "heroic adventures doing things yourself", but they avoid blatantly teaching it as a bad lesson.

ben hur

charlie and the chocolate factory (potentially traumatizing)

20000 leagues under the sea (1954)

Oooh.. Ben Hur. I hadn't heard of that before, but it sounds fantastic. I'll have to watch it with my wife, and maybe with my kids when they're a bit older. Thanks!

I think the raising of the cross scene from Ben Hur is my earliest memory!

I've got a lot of memories of certain films that were overplayed on free to air TV in my youth. I am so so sick of the original Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sound of Music etc.

I later had some exposure to the actual operations of a TV Station and know that the videotapes/presentation department usually has a small locker of standby movies in case something goes wrong with normal programming (broadcast computer goes down, live sport rained out creating a 3 hour gap in programming, disruption of satellite feed from the network etc etc). These 'appropriate for all ages' films are the go-to when normal operations are interrupted for whatever reason.

And they use the same ones. Over and over again. For years on end.

Edit: Should make it clear that things are different now in the digital age, but this is how things used to be done.

The Shrek series?

Isn't it a surprising coincidence that both series have just two movies each?

Neverending Story is pretty good, but I'd recommend the kids be 6+ minimum with the younger ones having a parent next to them for a cuddle (wolf scenes).

My kids are also into Harry Potter. They've started calling Neverending Story "white harry potter" just because the dvd case is white. It's a great story!

And the scene when Artax gets stuck in quicksand, which utterly destroyed me and my brother as kids.

It's the way that the hero has to watch on powerless to save him that really decimates your childish optimism.

Great life lesson delivered in a painful way (as most are).

In honor of Vivek Ramaswamy, what is the proper interpretation of the movie "Whiplash"?

Greatness demands sacrifice, dedication, obsession, and an unwillingness to lose that would turn you into a monster. Terrible, but great.

And the only people who really understand are those who've been through it.

That attempting to really super duper try hard mmf at something ends up looking a lot like gooning.

You're unlikely to ever become a great musician (and by extension artist) without a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft. But a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft is no guarantee of becoming a great artist, and will probably drive you mad and destroy your life.

^ This is correct.

One of my favorite movies of all time. I played drums at one point in my life (horribly) and love music. Very few films have felt as intense. I've seen it twice and it was worth a second run through for me.

JK Simmons is one of the best actors ever.

This guy was literally the only good thing in Portal 2. The old Aperture science parts were great. The rest was totally meh.

I haven't played 2 since release and I still spontaneously recall the I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down rant.

with the fucking lemons

Hahaha... You're serious?

Did Vivek watch it for the first time recently or something?

"Does the end justify the means?" or maybe "I've won... but at what cost?"

I thought the movie was intentionally ambiguous. I didn't interpret it as a road map to success.

My younger cousin is a mathematician currently doing an integrated Masters and PhD. About a year back, I'd been trying to demonstrate to him the every increasing capability of SOTA LLMs at maths, and asked him to raise questions that it couldn't trivially answer.

He chose "is the one-point compactification of a Hausdorff space itself Hausdorff?".

At the time, all the models insisted invariably that that's a no. I ran the prompt multiple times on the best models available then. My cousin said it was incorrect, and provided to sketch out a proof (which was quite simple when I finally understood that much of the jargon represented rather simple ideas at their core).

I ran into him again when we're both visiting home, and I decided to run the same question through the latest models to gauge their improvements.

I tried Gemini 1206, Gemini Flash Thinking Experimental, Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New) and GPT-4o.

Other than reinforcing the fact that AI companies have abysmal naming schemes, to my surprise almost all of them gave the correct answer, barring Claude, but it was hampered by Anthropic being cheapskates and turning on the concise responses mode.

I showed him how the extended reasoning worked for Gemini Flash (it doesn't hide its thinking tokens unlike o1) and I could tell that he was shocked/impressed, and couldn't fault the reasoning process it and the other models went through.

To further shake him up, I had him find some recent homework problems he'd been assigned at his course (he's in a top 3 maths program in India) and used the multimodality inherent in Gemini to just take a picture of an extended question and ask it to solve it. It did so, again, flawlessly.

He then demanded we try with another, and this time he expressed doubts that the model could handle a compact, yet vague in the absence of context not presented problem, and no surprises again.

He admitted that this was the first time he took my concerns seriously, though getting a rib in by saying doctors would be off the job market before mathematicians. I conjectured that was unlikely, given that maths and CS performance are more immediately beneficial to AI companies as they are easier to drop-in and automate, while also having direct benefits for ML, with the goal of replacing human programmers and having the models recursively self-improve. Not to mention that performance in those domains is easier to make superhuman with the use of RL and automated theorem providers for ground truth. Oh well, I reassured him, we're probably all screwed and in short order, to the point where there's not much benefit in quibbling about the other's layoffs being a few months later.

How long do you have to stay in the UK before they can’t deport you (4 years?) What happens will happen, I am less concerned with the economic situation because I think that after a brief period of chaos it will be resolved very quickly one way or the other. I’m more interested in the spiritual one, even last week here people were arguing with me that these models don’t capture something fundamental about human cognition.

I believe Indefinite Leave to Remain nominally takes 5 years, but with bureaucratic slowness, closer to 6 in practice.

I agree that economic turmoil will probably be a rapid shock. But I'm unsure whether rapid implies months or years of unemployment and uncertainty. Either way all I can do is save enough money to hope to weather.

On the plus side, if NHS workers were fired immediately when they became redundant, the service would be rather smaller haha.

As the old saying goes, "Context is that which is scarce." I know, I know, it's all the rage to try to shove as much context into the latest LLM as you can. People are even suggesting organization design based around the idea. It's really exciting to see automated theorem provers starting to become possible. The best ones still use rigorous back-end engines rather than just pure inscrutable giant matrices. They can definitely speed up some things. But the hard part is not necessarily solving problems. Don't get me wrong, it's a super useful skill; I'm over the moon that I have multiple collaborators who are genuinely better than me at solving certain types of problems. They're a form of automated theorem prover from my perspective. No, the hard part is figuring out what question to ask. It has to be a worthwhile question. It has to be possible. It has to have some hope of leading to "elegance", even if some of the intermediate questions along the way seem like they're getting more and more inelegant.

Homework questions... and even the contest questions that folks are so fond of benchmarking with... have been extremely designed. Give your cousin a couple more years of doing actual research, and he'll tell you all about how much he loves his homework problems. Not necessarily because they're "easy". They might still be very hard. But they're the kind of hard that is designed to be hard... but designed to work. Designed to be possible. Designed to have a neat and tidy answer in at most a page or two (for most classes; I have seen some assigned problems that brutally extended into 5-6 pages worth of necessary calculation). But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."? Or is it going to be like an extremely skilled grad student level problem solver, who you can very quickly ping to get intermediate results, counterexamples, etc. that help you along the way? Hopefully, it won't come back with a confident-sounding answer every time that you then have to spend the next few days closely examining for an error. (This will be better mitigated the more they're tied into rigorous back-ends.) I don't know; nobody really knows yet. But it's gonna be fun.

You might have already read it, but I find Terence Tao's impression of a similar model, o1, illuminating:

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113132502735585408

The experience seemed roughly on par with trying to advise a mediocre, but not completely incompetent, (static simulation of a) graduate student. However, this was an improvement over previous models, whose capability was closer to an actually incompetent (static simulation of a) graduate student. It may only take one or two further iterations of improved capability (and integration with other tools, such as computer algebra packages and proof assistants) until the level of "(static simulation of a) competent graduate student" is reached, at which point I could see this tool being of significant use in research level tasks

In the context of AI capabilities, going from ~0% success to being, say, 30% correct on a problem set is difficult and hard to predict. Going from 30% to 80%, on the other hand, seems nigh inevitable.

I would absolutely expect that in a mere handful of years we're going to get self-directed Competent Mathematician levels of performance, with "intuition" and a sense of mathematical elegance. We've gone from "high schooler who's heard of advanced mathematical ideas but fumbles when asked to implement them" to "mediocre grad student" (and mediocre in the eyes of Tao!).

But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."?

In this context, the existence of ATPs allows for models to be rigorously evaluated on ground-truth signals through reinforcement learning. We have an objective function that unambiguously tells us whether it has correctly solved a problem, without the now extreme difficulty of having humans usefully grade responses. This allows for the use of synthetic data with much more confidence, and a degree of automation as you can permute and modify questions to develop more difficult ones, and then when a solution is found, use that as training data. This is suspected to be why recent thinking models have shown large improvements in maths and coding while being stagnant on what you'd think are simpler tasks like writing or poetry (because at a certain point the limitations become human graders, without a ground truth to go off when asked if one bit of prose is better than the other).

I just want to add a little bit from Zvi's latest:

Process for a Tier 4 problem:

  1. 1 week crafting a robust problem concept, which “converts” research insights into a closed-answer problem.
  1. 3 weeks of collaborative research. Presentations among related teams for feedback.
  1. Two weeks for the final submission.

We’re seeking mathematicians who can craft these next-level challenges. If you have research-grade ideas that transcend T3 difficulty, please email elliot@epoch.ai with your CV and a brief note on your interests.

We’ll also hire some red-teamers, tasked with finding clever ways a model can circumvent a problem’s intended difficulty, and some reviewers to check for mathematical correctness of final submissions. Contact me if you think you’re suitable for either such role.

As AI keeps improving, we need benchmarks that reflect genuine mathematical depth. Tier 4 is our next (and possibly final) step in that direction.

Tier 5 could presumably be ‘ask a bunch of problems we have actual no idea how to solve and that might not have solutions but that would be super cool’ since anything on a benchmark inevitably gets solved.

The abilities are impressive, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if it's able to perform admirably on Tier 4 "closed-answer" problems, especially as they get better and better at using rigorous back-end engines. But notice what they're expecting. They're expecting to have teams of top tier mathematicians spend a significant amount of time crafting "closed-answer problems". That really is probably where the bottleneck is, and Zvi's offhand comment is also in that vein. One possible end state is that these algorithms become an extremely useful 'calculator-on-steroids' that, like calculators, programming languages, and other automated theorem proving tools before, supercharges mathematical productivity under the guidance and direction of intuitive humans trying to push forward human understanding of human-relevant/human-interesting subject domains. Another possible end state is that the algorithms will get 'smart' enough to have all that human context, human intuition, and understanding of human-relevance/human-interestingness and be able to actually drop-and-replace human math folks. I suppose a third possible end state would be that a society of super advanced AIs go off and create their own math that humans can tell somehow is objectively good, but that they have to work and struggle to try to understand bits and pieces of (see also the computer chess championship). I really don't have any first principles to guide my reasoning of which of these end states we'll end up in. It really feels to me like a 'wait, watch, and see' situation.

I would put the last option as the most likely over a time frame greater than a decade or two, but the initial two options can be intermediate stages, albeit I don't expect any of them to last more than a few years. My reasoning is largely that much like chess, when the reward signal is highly legible, it becomes far easier to optimize for it, and diminishing returns!= nil returns, and probably PEV returns.

But you're right, only way to find out is to strap in for the ride. We live in interesting times.

Totally agreed that having rigorous engines that are able to provide synthetic training will massively help progress. But my sense is that the data they can generate is still of the type, "This works," "This doesn't work," or, "Here is a counterexample." Which can still be massively useful, but may still run into the context/problem definition/"elegance" concerns. Given that the back ends are getting good enough to provide the yes/no/counterexample results, I think it's highly likely that LLMs will become solidly good at translating human problems statements into rigorous problem statements for the back end to evaluate, which will be a huge help to the usefulness of those systems... but the jury is still out in my mind to what extent they'll be able to go further and add appropriate context. It's a lot harder to find data or synthetic data for that part.

People of the Motte, I am getting married one week from tomorrow. AMA, I guess. And thanks to everyone for many years of life advice. I've been lurking since the days of /r/slatestarcodex, and I genuinely think that the things I've learned from some of you have helped me reach this happy juncture.

Also - any tips to make the wedding day go smoothly, as well as the first few weeks or months of married life? It's just a small wedding we're having - 50-60 people and a reception at the banquet hall down the street. All less than 15 minutes from home.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

And thanks to everyone for many years of life advice.

What were some of the best things you learned?

a small wedding we're having

50-60 people

We had eight people at our wedding, including us.

At my get-married-in-a-hurry-to-secure-immigration-status wedding we had about this many.

At my wedding about a year later in China it was about 400. This is a typical size.

I'll be aiming for this if, and when I get there.

Cool?

Nice. My dream wedding would be three people. The main squeeze, me, and the judge/clerk/bureaucrat/blankface providing the signature.

We did this. No regrets.

I envy you. Even now, this is the smallest wedding of anyone that I personally know.

I utilized the principle of only inviting the people close enough to me, that they would be hurt if they were not invited. I suppose I am grateful that that sphere has as many people as it does.

Congratulations! I've always really liked our past interactions, so I'm glad things are going well for you.

AMA, I guess.

Does she know about this place?

She doesn't - which is interesting, right? I do regularly bring up things I read about here, as "something I read about online," and we have great discussions as a result. But she's not the kind of person who gets gratification from reading tens of thousands of words of political and cultural discussion online all day; which is only fair enough. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever known anyone in real life about whom I've thought, "This person could be a Mottizen." It's strange to even think about how any of us came to this point - how many years' worth of obscure blog posts you have to read to know what some of our posters are even talking about.

Anyway - I'm not certain it would be a good thing for two Mottizens to date. (Has it ever happened that we know of?) I don't comment much in the real Culture War thread, not because I don't have opinions, but because I try to keep the culture war itself at arm's length if I can. If she were on here too, it would take over my life even more than it already has. Instead, with her, I can touch grass.

You wouldn't want her to anyway :) We are all each other's men with aspergers.

I wish you a happy and successful marriage. I joined themotte for non culture war reasons and got actual life changing advice about dating stuff so I have a lot of appreciation for people here.

How old are you, how'd youeet your wife and how many kids do you plan on having? What advice in particular did you get here that helped you out the most with marriage/relationship stuff?

What motivated your joining?

Slatestarcodex, I discovered it via Brian Caplan as I was googling Marxist economists to dunk on them, I realised that Scott was a psychiatrist and wrote a post crying for help as I didn't know I had adhd then.

I got the inkling that Scott is not super soy and stuck around, I'd see cross posting to themotte and the Wednesday threads here were better. I read some culture war stuff there.

I was kinda redpilled already due to having seen Moldbug and hbd issues. The people here were like those on slatestarcodex but more honest by every metric. At the time I hated my university, i went to a good program and still hated it as the only thing kids around me wanted was a job in bangalore and date 3s monogamously. Posting here weekly as rounded out a lot of issues I suffered from, dating being one you guys would know about.

Thanks man. I was going to tell you the other day - I feel like the quality of your posts has improved a lot over the last six months or so. I am learning a lot when you post these days. If you would just stop picking up lifting-related injuries, you'd really have it made.

I am 35 and she is 31 - it took me much too long to get it together, and I wish I now that I would've done this when I was 25. I would have liked to have maybe four kids, but as it stands I think we'd be very happy if we managed three; we're aware of fertility windows, and honestly I myself am a little concerned about how well I'll manage small kids in my 40s. I am already a little bit slower and creakier than I was in my 20s. Two is probably the true most likely outcome.

The primary thing that I think I mainly picked up on from relationship discussions on the Motte, was the legitimate futility of trying to use dating apps as an average-looking guy. It always felt a bit frustrating, but seeing the data drove the truth home. Instead I just worked on becoming a man that would be a good partner, and going out into the world a lot instead of staying inside on the computer. I remember years ago telling people about the concept of "micromarriages," which someone shared on here.

https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/

There are a lot more general world-view things I learned from the Motte, but that concept is the most specifically applicable to romance - if you don't go places, you'll never meet people.

Accordingly - I met my fiancee at a fan group meeting of the local baseball team. It was handy to immediately have a shared interest to talk about, and it was then simple to ask her on our first date - which was to the team's Hall of Fame & Museum. And then while doing those things, we learned about each other's other interests, which made it easy to find new things to do together. It's all been remarkably smooth; maybe this is the fruit of spending many years going on bad dates, being in unsatisfying relationships, and generally gaining life experience.

I was going to tell you the other day - I feel like the quality of your posts has improved a lot over the last six months or so. I am learning a lot when you post these days

What stood out to you in particular?

I am learning a lot when you post these days

I am glad that my opinions help others. I learnt all I know from the internet, in particular from the neoreactionary sphere, themotte is a cool place because the people here select against low iq, dishonesty and hostility. As I learn more and read the nrx cannon properly, I should be able to have a better understanding of the world and what that can be done or I have done that is not just doomposting

If you would just stop picking up lifting-related injuries, you'd really have it made.

lol, yeah that and being more strict with my routine would sort my life completely.

I am 35 and she is 31 - it took me much too long to get it together, and I wish I now that I would've done this when I was 25. I would have liked to have maybe four kids, but as it stands I think we'd be very happy if we managed three; we're aware of fertility windows, and honestly I myself am a little concerned about how well I'll manage small kids in my 40s. I am already a little bit slower and creakier than I was in my 20s. Two is probably the true most likely outcome.

I would recommend the usual stack of meditation, sleep, and working out. I found these to help me even after extremely inconsistent usage. Though I personally would recommend as many kids as you can have, I wish you happy, healthy children.

The primary thing that I think I mainly picked up on from relationship discussions on the Motte, was the legitimate futility of trying to use dating apps as an average-looking guy. It always felt a bit frustrating, but seeing the data drove the truth home. Instead I just worked on becoming a man that would be a good partner, and going out into the world a lot instead of staying inside on the computer. I remember years ago telling people about the concept of "micromarriages," which someone shared on here.

I picked up PUA here which was amazing. The expliclit goal of which is to make you go from nerdy to fun and secure, online dating is a losing battle, cold approach is one of the best things a young man can do besides getting married.

but that concept is the most specifically applicable to romance - if you don't go places, you'll never meet people.

Yeah, this is also why I am writing more now besides the usual wellness Wednesday stuff. I want to write more regularly and publish them here so that I can at least attract a small number of new people and maintain the forum's quality. As for romance, I was totally stuck on one girl for four years until I met this British chick in Pai and finally got over my oneitis.

Accordingly - I met my fiancee at a fan group meeting of the local baseball team. It was handy to immediately have a shared interest to talk about, and it was then simple to ask her on our first date - which was to the team's Hall of Fame & Museum. And then while doing those things, we learned about each other's other interests, which made it easy to find new things to do together. It's all been remarkably smooth; maybe this is the fruit of spending many years going on bad dates, being in unsatisfying relationships, and generally gaining life experience.

Match made in heaven. Politics is inherently caustic, good to see such white pills here.

If you're reciting vows, make sure you have a printed copy of each person's vows and not actually two copies of your own vows, leaving your partner awkwardly confused at the altar until her sister manages to find a copy she was texted for review on her phone saving the day but leaving everyone slightly miffed at you.

...no reason in particular that comes to mind... Nope. Just something all people getting married should double check. Yup.

This is so dumb. So five minutes after claiming 8th gen Intel will be fine for general browsing for a long time yet, I notice high CPU use watching a YouTube video, in all browsers. Go over Vivaldi:GPU with a fine tooth comb to see what went wrong. Triple check everything's running on the right GPU...

And then it turns out YouTube just stopped honoring my "please don't use av1" setting without telling me. Bitch you could just ask my browser if I have hardware support for your fancy codec.

God why is everything so janky. I need a browser extension to use the same YouTube account on PC and phone, because there's no setting for "please only use av1 on devices that support it, and no the 6 year old laptop can't even though the phone can"

Cynically YouTube doesn't give a shit, because forcing av1 saves them bandwidth and most consumers won't make the connection between their noisy computer fan and playing YouTube videos.

I thought it was just my PC being old but my recent experiences of YouTube making my PC sounds like it wants to take off combined with this comment suggesting that it's not just my PC has inspired me to move over to a desktop YouTube client. I've chosen FreeTube because it comes with ad block, SponsorBlock and ("most") age verified videos enabled. Seems alright so far.

Check your GPU in the task manager "resources" tab while YouTube is playing, and right click the video to show "stats for nerds."
You'll probably see either vp9 or av01 under "codec".
If you see "video decode" being used in task manager, you have hardware acceleration for that codec. If you see high CPU use and only "3d rendering" being used on the GPU graph, you don't.

You won't get hardware accel for av1 on an old PC (Intel 10th gen or older), and it's really hard on the cpu. Try to turn it off in settings or with a browser addon.
If you have a vp9 video but hardware accel isn't working, you either have a really old PC (intel 6th gen or lower), or one of a list of problems:

*Browser isn't set to support hardware accel. Chrome is especially bad for this out of the box. Your standalone YouTube player is gonna be a good fix for this one.
*Browser running on an old GPU (GTX 9xx or lower, or an AMD from before 2018, because they added support stupidly late). This is why I have to set my browser to run from igpu instead.
*You sacrificed the wrong breed of goat while dedicating your PC to Satan, and the hardware is now cursed.

Helpful tips, thanks. I've added on an addon to block av1 and it's made an improvement but I'm on a 2012 AMD processor with internal Radeon 6550HD graphics so can't expect much, however watching videos is typically the most intensive usage it outside of pending updates for Firefox. What is that about anyway? Until recently the fans revving up would almost always be a sign that Firefox was getting impatient to update and it would settle down again after restarting.