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GOOG is up ~152% since Sundar took over...

Great find on the knowledge navigator, I had never seen it but I was a toddler when it was released haha.

It's interesting how prescient it was, but I'm more struck wondering--would anyone in 1987 have predicted it would take 40+ years to achieve this? Obviously this was speculative at the time but I know history is rife with examples of AI experts since the 60s proclaiming AGI was only a few years away

Is this time really different? There's certainly been a huge jump in capabilities in just a few years but given the long history of overoptimistic predictions I'm not confident

jtgverdeon The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script

Yeah, basically saying "would you commit federal felonies defrauding gullible people for millions? hell yeah!"

Quite telling of the morals of a lot of "sales" people

jtgverdeon Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

It's interesting that your primary criticism is that the scientists are too diverse...truly a struggle for me to see why that's such an abhorrent error

Personally I thought they did a good job at adapting a book that I thought would be nearly impossible to transform into a "pop" sci fi series.

jtgverdeon The Bad Trip Detective

Seems unfair to compare a "bad trip to the dentist" to a person experiencing severe psychological effects liking being unable to make human connections and feelings of loneliness for 30 years

Many of these experiences seem to have drastically impacted peoples lives in a very negative way. Much worse than a toothache!

jtgverdeon Amazon HQ2 was supposed to add jobs last year. It shed them instead

Yea that's fair, but I would imagine the tourism effect, although real, happens for a tiny % of overall productions.

Much like incentives for NFL stadiums, it just doesn't seem like the public gets the benefit they are promised in all the glossy announcement spreads

And to be clear I support the government subsidizing the arts like film and I miss when my state had a subsidy and a lot of famous shows/movies were filmed in places I knew. I just haven't seen the data to back up the "impact" claimed.

jtgverdeon Amazon HQ2 was supposed to add jobs last year. It shed them instead

I have friends who work in film and have heard about the way the productions play fast and loose with "local hires" that then get reported as jobs created.

But setting aside all of that research shows little to no impact https://www.nber.org/papers/w25963 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3155407

The prestige of films being made in their state keep the subsidies rolling in but there are many great "bang for your buck" subsidies states could be making that just aren't sexy.