domain:infonomena.substack.com
fmac
4m ago
If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm
I'm not sure about this. For one, while you made good point about cost/substitution, there is a ceiling on how much you can pay farm manual labour.
Especially because of how seasonal the work is. No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.
quiet_NaN
6m ago
Great!
There is a place where news junkies can get unsourced, low effort news reports in close to real time. That place is twitter. The thing which makes the motte useful is that it is not twitter.
Terracotta
12m ago
Now, people can translate ideas into images without that deep understanding of the medium*, with that translation process bypassing all/most of the skills and techniques that were traditionally required.
But this account leaves out the equally critical perceptive and analytic skills that are normally built side-by-side with physical skills as an artist practices their craft. The bare act of clicking a shutter is the same for me and for a pro photographer, but the pro will take an immeasurably better picture because they have a trained eye to compose it. I suspect they'll also take a better picture because they understand from long experience what are the strengths and weaknesses of that type of image, versus a painting or architecture, and can better choose their subjects in consequence.
I think part of the problem is using the same word, "idea," to describe both what goes through my casual-consumer mind and what goes through the mind of a trained artist when we think of a new image. The two are strictly different in informational content, but also in structure, as anyone can see for themselves if they scoot out from their Dunning-Kruger zone to consider an area of craft or creation where they are experts. Coding or software engineering are probably the most familiar arts for the Motte; when we're talking really elegant and well-built programs, is your uncle's "y'know I always thought we should have like an app for identifying hot dogs" the same as a technical concept that occurs to a high-level professional with years of practice? Is there anything shared between the two "ideas", beyond the inchoate consumer instinct "I want a thing to make me feel _____"?
I think a lot of speculation about the value of AI art relies on the stickiness of cultural premises from the pre-AI age, so when Joe says to ChatGPT "paint me, uh, a pretty elephant with an orange hat in the style of Monet" and gets some random pixels farted out using patterns from 10,000 human-painted images, we instinctively respond to the patterns with the delight we've learned to afford skilled human work. It may seem that we get that delight from Joe's "idea," but what we are actually enjoying is those other artists' artfully-constructed patterns. I don't think we can fairly expect that 40 years hence; I suspect people will just paw indifferently past most images the way we walk past tree leaves today, with the exception of any pics that happen to raise a boner.
Some may argue that diffusion models are a medium unto itself with its own set of skills to develop and practice, akin to how photography and painting both generate 2D images but are considered different mediums.
Artistic skill-building requires a medium where you can exercise agency, though, because the agency or artfulness is fundamentally the part that we admire about it. For example, nobody looks at a Jackson Pollock painting and feels delight over how this black droplet aligns with this other black droplet, even though subtle visual details at that level are matter for praise in other painters. But things we know to be random or unintentional are generally not interesting, so instead fans enjoy Pollock's expressive choice of colors or line or concept, areas where he clearly did exercise artful choice.
With AI image generation, there are so many levels of randomness and frustrated choice that it's hard to imagine how a user could work for years to achieve progressively greater mastery. Don't most commercial models actively work to disrupt direct user control, e.g. by adding a system prompt you can't see and running even the words of your prompt through intermediate hidden LLM revisions before they even get to the image generator?
quiet_NaN
14m ago
putting American lives in danger by publishing
You are making that sound like a bad thing. If it is truthful reporting (and your verb "to publish" seems to indicate that you were not contesting that), then it is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I will grant you that there are some things which are net negative when published. For example, knowing what the nuclear launch codes are will not contribute to the readers having a more accurate map of the territory. Likewise, knowing which fetishes some celebrity is into will normally not update the world view of the readers to be worth the damage to the privacy.
Your sentence is really analogous to "When the teacher reported the dad who was fucking his kid to the police, she destroyed a happy family."
Our greatest ally
You sardonic phrasing makes it look like Israel and its inhabitants are pursuing a singular purpose. Please consider the possibility that not every Jew everywhere is following the master plan of the Elders of Zion all day long. If Bibi had published a press release where he praised the Americans for their support, that would indeed be a faux pas. But the utility function of reporters is different from the utility function of governments, both in Israel and elsewhere, for very good reasons.
fmac
20m ago
It wasn't a strawman, it was a humorous example to point out that "it's fine if your travel time increases 3x, you can just think about stuff and you won't even notice" is a profoundly silly thing to say. Obviously we're not going to replace air travel with ocean liners.
I'm not sure why you think there isn't demand for bike travel? Do you think there is a conspiracy to make bike lanes against the will of the electorate? In Toronto, where I live, pro-bike lane politicians are quite popular, and we just had an election where a very notable anti-bike lane incumbent lost their seat in an election where their party dominated.
Toronto bike share use has increased like 20% YoY for 5 years and counting.
Again you say "biking doesn't make sense" but I don't understand where you get that. From my apartment to my office the options are:
Drive: 20-30 minutes (longer with accidents or road closures), parking is $30+ a day in the area.
Transit: 45 minutes, longer with (frequent) delays
Walk: 1.5 hours
Bike: 28 minutes
Biking makes the most sense here by far, because it's tied for fastest, it's the cheapest, and most importantly imo, it's by far the most consistent
And this pattern plays out constantly. Driving is fast, unless it's rush hour. Parking is very expensive. Transit basically always takes 30+ minutes due to walking, waiting, and transfers. Biking is incredibly fast and always the same amount of time per distance.
Note, I live in the downtown core of a major city. I don't give a shit about biking in a suburban hellscape and I agree it's probably not a very good mode of transportation out there. Although I find it pretty funny that "the land of the free" totally falls apart for "preference of form of travel". Similarly, I also find it funny you feel comfortable dictating people's travel options to them.
aqouta
30m ago
The level of skill where LLMs are immediately useful, not the literature background. Obviously 95% of programmers don't have a literature background.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
36m ago
This is a fascinating list because it is so short. I can't even tell you the models of all the cars I have driven, much less the years—too many rentals to count!
I have clarified my comment to say "driven on a regular basis". (I have never driven a rental car. And I've been driving only since 2017.)
satanistgoblin
37m ago
Looks like good cop, bad cop routine to me.
Cirrus
39m ago
The US and NATO helped engineer the removal of Muammar Gaddafi… how’s Libya doing today?
2rafa
48m ago
You only hear about the VIPs who got killed, too. There were warnings about Soleimani going to Baghdad but he still did it, a lot of senior clerics and IRGC are true believers in a kind of divine providence, a consequence of the elaborate ideological structure and testing Khomeini devised for the clergy and IRGC and wider IRP (which, though it was later dissolved, was the progenitor of countless subsequent organizations and currents) to prevent a successful counterrevolution by the large, secularized Iranian middle class and left. It’s quite possible they actually believe that what happens is God’s will and they’ll be protected if He wills it or something. In addition, it’s quite unconfident of a state to send everyone to the bunker every time Israel seems likely to attack, plus it affects government efficiency a great deal if the leaders are shuttling to and from bunkers.
Israel also doesn’t typically target Iran’s actual leaders in the clergy.
naraburns
nihil supernum
52m ago
It appears that this forum is filled with city slickers in fancy German cars.
Really? I feel like last time someone asked for car buying advice, the answers were all Hondas and Toyotas. Although even with those, "expensive" is relative. I regard Hondas as "expensive" in that they cost more than a similarly-sized Ford or Subaru or the like. But in my experience it's difficult to go wrong with a Honda daily driver. Though my household currently hasn't got a single vehicle less than a decade old, so it's possible my impressions are out of date.
I would like to have an electric car for commuting, but I need the all-in price on a gently used electric car to be much closer to $15,000 than $50,000 before that can happen. Ten years ago, I really had hoped to have a full self-driving car by 2025. But as near as I can tell, for the foreseeable future I will be driving a standard transmission Honda.
I have driven the following cars.
This is a fascinating list because it is so short. I can't even tell you the models of all the cars I have driven, much less the years--too many rentals to count! I would be hard pressed to remember with accuracy the year of every car I have personally owned. I will say that the overall "feel" or "comfort" of consumer-model cars mostly scales linearly with price, but whether you're willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for "oh wow they really got those knob clicks dialed in, didn't they, and this steering wheel feels amazing" naturally depends a lot on how many dollars you have. And the linear comfort scaling does not apply to sports cars; cars built to go very fast are often quite uncomfortable to drive.
If I had infinity dollars right now, I would probably buy a Tesla S and keep a gas-fed Honda parked alongside it.
Corvos
57m ago
Which IMO leads to anarchy, semi-organised militia, and national / international terrorism. ISIS was 'the people sorting it out themselves'. So was the Taliban and so is al-Queda.
As a single man I had two separate convertibles. Mainly because I love convertibles.
First, a 1966 Sunbeam Alpine which had been my father's. I accidentally burned it to the ground along with part of my parents' house in the summer of 1989. I had been driving it since 1986. I am pretty sure my dad bought it because he wanted to feel like Sean Connery in Dr No though that one was Robin's egg blue. I loved that car to distraction, drove it through my first years of university, had it repainted and the engine rebuilt and had just installed a new cloth top before the accident. Which is a long story.
Then a Toyota Corolla of my mom's, a Volkswagen Jetta which was the first car I paid for myself, then my first car in Japan was a 1993 Eunos Roadster aka Mazda Miata, used (8 years old when I bought it). I sold it when I got engaged. It was fun but Osaka isn't friendly to convertibles (lots of standing traffic.) I liked driving through the city at night though. Also it is possible to have sex in that car in the driver's seat with the hardtop attached. I am here to assure you of that, doubtful though it may be.
Since then nothing special. A Suzuki, a Toyota. Currently another Mazda but a CX8 Diesel which is primarily driven by wifey and which is much less my taste but carts the family around well.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses.
Three events that took place separately over about four centuries.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Not to get all Marxist Econ-History-101 on it, but in large part the concept of disability is itself built around the capitalist conceit that the human worker is reducible to a standardized piece of machinery. And like all piece of factory equipment, a non-standard piece of machinery is best discarded, because one can't change factory procedures from standard.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
The issue is a bit less “Will Iran strike Israel with nukes” and more “Will Iran feel more degrees of freedom to attack Israel since an Israel’s response will need to be measured.”
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.
I generally try to avoid both porn stars and the anti-porn crowd online, because I always have the feeling that a lot of the more aggressive and verbose anti-porn people haven't earned the right to be so angry and so cruel. Which I think is what you're picking up on. Your modal anti-porn crusader on twitter or rat-adjacent spaces doesn't feel, to me, like someone who has lived a traditional morality. They feel like gooners, porn addicts, who out of some sense of sadism or some inferiority complex related to their own inability to stop themselves from masturbating.
If my Great Uncle Charlie wanted to criticize Aella, he would have every right to, but, well, he wouldn't because he would never have any idea who she was. He lived a pious life, and that included managing his media consumption to include only appropriate material. If he had come into contact with Aella, he would have recognized who she was and withdrawn immediately.
The people who bring up Aella constantly in order to abuse her, along with various other e-thots and porn stars, are not withdrawing. They aren't avoiding worldliness. They are the consooooomers of the content produced by e-thots, while also desiring that the e-thots be unhappy.
This is an experience I seem to run into all the time on the internet, the guy who messages me about some porn star who is hosting an enormous gangbang or made a million dollar severing her hymen on live or something, with a long screed about how degenerate this is. And my reaction is always kinda, hey dude I wouldn't even know about it if you hadn't messaged me, why do you even know who she is?
The best thing to do if you don't like Aella's values and think she should have less influence, is to ignore her.
Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.
FistfullOfCrows
1hr ago
Prostitution dumps the sex market, which is also one of the reasons women hate sluts/whores the most.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
How could anyone be surprised by that outcome? What man looking for a wife wants a woman who was a prostitute and doesn’t have remorse for doing it? Like how does he come to trust her to not have sex with random men when he’s not watching her?
Lizzardspawn
1hr ago
That is the thing. You don't do regime change. You do regime removal and let the people sort it themselves.
FistfullOfCrows
1hr ago
The backup singers of the gangbang
It appears that this forum is filled with city slickers in fancy German cars. What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
I have driven the following cars on a regular basis.
-
2023: 2023 Mitsubishi Mirage (purchased new for 18 k$)
-
2019: 2015 Honda Fit (purchased from my mother for 14 k$)
-
2017: 2007 Pontiac G6 (borrowed from my father for free)
I have been driven around by my parents in the following cars.
-
The aforementioned Fit (mother's) and G6 (father's)
-
2013 Honda Civic (mother's)
-
2001–2010 Volvo S60 (father's)
-
2000–2005 Dodge Neon (mother's)
-
1993–1997 Mazda MX-6 (father's; manual)
-
1993 Toyota Tercel (mother's)
I have never found fault with these cheap (not including the S60, I guess) cars (other than the Civic's poor rear visibility; I prefer hatchbacks to sedans) or seen any reason to get anything more expensive.
(Note that I purchased the Mirage, not to replace the Fit with it, but so that (1) I could sell the Fit back to my mother, and then (2) she could expunge from our household the Civic that I disliked. Another motive for getting the Mirage was FOMO on a car that was soon to be discontinued in the US market despite obviously being the best car there.)
Dacia Logan. It’s a spacious station wagon I can comfortably sleep in. I like the idea of potentially driving away without organizing anything. Even though I could have had an old diesel for free, I splurged on a new one for 8700 euros 5 years ago. No climate control, no little electronic motors everywhere to roll down windows for you and spare you the the anguish of having to move a whole arm. 63 HP. Wish it had less, always a pleasure to hear the strenuous effort this minuscule 3 cylinder-engine brings to push this huge car along. Apparently only 10% of logans sold had this hardcore ‘access’ option, everybody else went with decadence. So it’s a collectible, value can only go up. Although I did install a radio and speakers, to my shame (that lawnmower engine provides enough melody).
More options
Context Copy link