appleorchard46

That man is playing Galaga!

Moving to the coast made me feel like I finally woke up, after growing up perpetually stuffy and sniffly. Turns out I'm not a mouth breather after all!

The more time goes on the more I appreciate Lady Bird Johnson's (first lady to Lyndon B Johnson) beautification of America project [0]. It's impressive how precise a response to modern urban hellscape woes it is: more greenery, native gardening, more pedestrian-friendly spaces, public transit, litter reduction, less billboards and advertising. The perspective that aesthetic beauty and things that just make a place nice to live tend to go hand-in-hand is an underrated one.

> “Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas. To me…beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass on to our children and the future.”

[0] https://www.nps.gov/articles/lady-bird-johnson-beautificatio...

Sigh. It's like one of those clickbait YouTube videos (10 Reasons Why Modern Movies SUCK!) but with big words and literary citations to make it seem more respectable. The author completely disregards historical and traditional storytelling to squeeze every possible type of story into a vague narrative of commercialism.

> Franchises, sequels and box-set formats are extending stories in multiple directions to eke out ever more revenue, bringing to mind Musk’s intergalactic ambitions, which imply there’s a franchise option for human life: late capitalism, it would seem, respects neither narrative nor planetary boundaries. ‘It’s outrageous, really,’ Yorke says of endless sequels. ‘If you think of it in basic terms, a story is a question and answer, dramatised. And when the question is answered, there is nowhere else to go.’

Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, the Greek pantheon, Sun Wukong, Coyote? Trash. No, shared worlds are a modern invention by commercial entities looking to make a quick buck. A story is a question and an answer after all.

> Annabel ends the day much as she started it, the essay incomplete (although Brown does not reject story structure altogether: Annabel relaxing her grip on her timetable is an enlightenment of sorts).

> [...]

> Even art-house films that self-consciously depart from the three-act structure nonetheless define themselves against it.

So we're using 'three act structure' to mean 'something changes between the beginning and end'. By that definition, yes, movies do tend to be pretty samey in structure.

> Being told a story is to be infantilised, somewhat: to suspend one’s critical faculties. In contrast to polemic, stories are covertly persuasive. Even if their message is good for us, the sugaring of the pill represents a lowering of intellectual expectations.

I don't have a snarky comment for that bit, it's funny enough on its own.

It's hard to make a substantive and non-nitpicky comment on the article because there is no cohesive point being made here. It's a random collection of vague ideas that don't mean anything at all when put together, using criticism of modern film as a loose framework - yet written by someone who clearly is not interested in exploring the wide world of film and its fringes where the interesting stuff accumulates.

It's a good thing this isn't a formal debate then, because neither I nor the paper claim equality is good nor am I debating the assertion otherwise.

Thank you for the clarification, your position makes more sense now. It sounds like you're not saying there's something inherently bad about equality, but rather that the practical cost of enforcing absolute equality top-down makes it actually a net negative in well-being for the population of a state?

(I can't help but point out that if there's someone with the power to enforce it, things are very far from equal - but I'm guessing you mean 'equality' more in a monetary / real goods sense)

OP asserted that equality amongst humans is not necessarily a good thing. I am not trying to argue otherwise - not yet, at least - I am asking them to expand upon and clarify the claim as to understand better.

Because I do assume equality to be a good thing; if that is an incorrect assumption I would like to know.

Well yes, I do assume inequality is bad. In what situations / with what values is inequality a good thing?

I'm in the same boat, friend. Being exposed to so much has its upsides but ability to make lasting relationships is not one of them.

This is off-topic but I just wanted to say I appreciate your presence on HN. I see your name pop up often, and your comments are always insightful and clear. You consistently identify the root of complex topics (and disagreements/misapprehensions surrounding them) and are able to distill them in a non-argumentative way. Thanks for helping make this site a nicer place.

Thank you.

That's what the article answers.

Clue did something like this in 1985. It has a few different endings which were shown randomly in theaters, no indication of it either. It didn't go over well though.

Could someone explain the metaphor? I'm struggling to see the connection between AI and the rest of the post.

Gen Z is the most susceptible generation but also the most self-aware about their susceptibility. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that but for some reason it seems fitting.

Edit - Gen Z is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012. But all participants are 18 or older. Hmm.

I took the test[0] and it seems rather biased. The fake headlines seem to be targeting conservative biases and blind spots in particular, e.g.

> Left-Wing Extremism Causes 'More Damage' to World Than Terrorism, Says UN Report

or

> New Study: Left-Wingers Are More Likely to Lie to Get a Higher Salary

I don't find it all that surprising that people find criticism of their opposition more believable. I would be curious to compare results with a test that had the opposite tilt, i.e. replace 'left-winger' with 'right-winger' and so on.

[0] https://yourmist.streamlit.app

Interesting article but not one of much substance. The parallels they point out between current events and historical ones are undeniable, but so are the holes in the narrative surrounding the relationship between quality of life and globalization.

To be clear I do not support the Trump administration in any way - but the attitude I see in this article, that the inequalities and issues that lead to fascism and isolationism are small problems to be solved once everything is back in proper order and the dumb rabble has lost momentum, strikes me as a very privileged perspective. If we don't look deeper into why things have reached their current state and only decry the symptoms we're bound to be here again sooner or later.

> Generally its accepted that a core trait of intelligence is an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.

Be that as it may, a core trait is very different from a generally accepted threshold. What exactly is the threshold? Which environments are you referring to? How is it being measured? What goals are they?

You may have quantitative and unambiguous answers to these questions, but I don't think they would be commonly agreed upon.

The example they use of Baroque art actually perfectly demonstrates this. It primarily consists of neutral tones that integrate well with the blues and muted oranges woven through it. Not exactly riotous color, as they put it - but very similar to the use of color you see both in modern designs and older cultural traditions.

(edit) I do think we've swung a little hard in the direction of color minimalism recently; it can get oppressive when combined with the trend towards minimalism in structure and form too. But I think it's fine for the default to err toward inoffensiveness and color to be used purposefully, and if/when public opinion shifts away from that there isn't exactly any impediment to design shifting with it.

Asahi is what the project to get Linux running on modern macs is called. For a stable Mint-like experience there's a Debian version (Mint is based off Debian) that includes the Cinnamon desktop as an option in the installer, so that would be most similar to what you're familiar with. (worth mentioning though that Fedora is the flagship Asahi version, so that may be more stable. I don't have personal experience)

https://git.zerfleddert.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi/m1-debian/

The original implementation is different from what it's turned into. There was a heavy emphasis on listening to workers and understanding why each step of a process was important (or not) and making appropriate improvements. The top-down one-size-fits-all manager hellscape framework approach (scrum etc) is more a product of the Clinton era.

For a brief overview of work simplification and its history I would highly recommend this post - https://www.governance.fyi/p/process-and-performance-how-ame...

Mint is one you'll often see recommended for older folks, for good reason. The Cinnamon desktop is simple and familiar to Windows users and it has good compatibility. The only real gotcha is being based on Debian (like Ubuntu), so packages will be somewhat out of date, but for browsing and printing and whatnot that's not really an issue.

Anecdotally my experience with printing on Linux has actually been smoother than Windows in recent years, but we're talking about printers here so YMMV.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/

Oops, I'm four days late but - no, it appears to have been removed there too. If I'm missing it please let me know.

Hot take - differentiating between these at all is dumb. There is virtually no situation when using one instead of another improves clarity.

I learned about this recently! It's wild how big the difference is. Even though legal/practical barriers to gender equality in medicine and data collection have been virtually nonexistent for the past few decades the inertia from the decades before that (where women were often specifically excluded, among many other factors) still weigh heavily.

To any women who happen to be reading this: if you can, please help fix this! Participate in studies, share your data when appropriate. If you see how a process can be improved to be more inclusive then please let it be known. Any (reasonable) male knows this is an issue and wants to see it fixed but it's not clear what should be done.

That's not where most of the data is coming from. If it was we'd be seeing the opposite effect, presumably.

I'm calling it now. My prediction is that, 5-10 years from now(ish), once training efficiency has plateaued, and we have a better idea of how to do more with less, curated datasets will be the next big thing.

Investors will throw money at startups claiming to make their own training data by consulting experts, finetuning as it is now will be obsolete, pre-ChatGPT internet scrapes will be worth their weight in gold. Once a block is hit on what we can do with data, the data itself is the next target.

This is obviously a jab, but to answer the unspoken question: if it's still more effective than human doctors for black or female people, then yes it should be used. If it isn't, then don't use it for them. Simple as that. (fixing this problem should be a high priority either way, that goes without saying)

As the supply chain strengthens and expands, things breaking becomes more and more acceptable.

A hundred years ago if a piece of clothing broke it meant you or a family member would repair it yourself. Fifty years ago you could buy a new one at a clothing store in a city. Now I can order one off Amazon that'll arrive at my doorstep in the morning.

Availability is less important for superfluous for unnecessary things, but for things people's lives depend on reliability was important in a way it isn't today. A coat wearing through or a knife breaking could mean death, a long time ago.Things were expected to be cared for and fixed for decades rather than replaced.

Shoddy things have always been around, but tolerance for them slowly yet persistently grows.

Mm, as long as the edit is clear it seems like a good way to avoid unproductive arguments.

Adam makes a statement, but the responses show the statement was unclear and/or leads into tangential arguments. An edit can clarify the initial statement for future readers without getting the original poster stuck in the back-and-forth necessary to escape whatever quagmire the unedited version created.