A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing
Macs are outrageously priced for the hardware you get.
Yea sure, we all know this. But we’re talking about software here. Not to be too snarky, but the part you actually use. The differences might not be worth it to you, or maybe you need a gaming PC, but for some, it’s just fine.
I guess unless you use a Mac or something I don’t know.
Yea … you can just use a Mac.
I switched … back in 2006 after being fed up with MS BS. Haven’t looked back. Since then I’ve had 2 laptops. That’s it.
The current one is getting old now, sadly, but part of the trick with Apple is timing your purchases for when they kinda nail the product in the particular design cycle. Don’t buy when they do something new for the first time, aim for near the end of a design cycle generally. And don’t get base specs, add RAM and disk space (perhaps through extended 3rd party devices). And their machines can be very useful for quite a while.
Of course there’s Linux, but you’ll know if you’re ready for that.
This development worries me far more than anything I’ve read about LLM advancements in quite some time.
Yea. Nice pickup.
Only thing I’ve seen that works for combatting AI slop take over is the idea that the value of doing some things is the doing itself, not the product. It seems to cut through the consumerism and metric driven capitalism that has gotten us here, while retaining an anti-bullshit-jobs position.
Thanks!
yea … JFC … I was kinda chill until I read “zoonotic … pigs and bats” … literally the vector(s) in contagion and obviously COVID.
Yea, that the term “Blue MAGA” has arisen out of this is kinda telling. Once you see it in the “Biden is our president, if you’re not voting for him you’re part of the problem” types, you can’t unsee it.
I saw someone put it well on mastodon:
Non-Americans care about US elections for the same reason a hostage cares about the mental state of a gunman.
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/112766969146106942 (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)
A saddening phenomenon that’s likely to happen if this continues … is people opening up about how they saw the decline way before the debate but presumed it was a “one off” or “bad night”. I think it’s already started somewhat.
But the picture that could emerge with pretty high clarity is that “the issue” was covered by an inner group and ignored by those peripherally exposed to it … all instead of the party preparing for it, preparing new potential candidates, and taking seriously the notion from Biden in 2020 that he wouldn’t run in 2024.
Losing to Trump a second time by sticking to a party elder is going to be a big deal (if it happens of course). It will probably look more like the Dems losing than trump winning, and it prob will look like the Dems allowing it all to happen out of hubris and stupidity, not unlike the RBG fuck up. Could seriously shake the party up?
the notion that Europe “may be bad at migration” and being “shit” to others whilst protecting their culture comes of as uninformed at best and holier than thou preachy at worst.
So Europeans and/or Germans can’t be bad at something?
But they should be competent enough to function in order to integrate into the society.
For refugees, this seems like a hard ask.
… Those people rely on friends and family when it comes to simple tasks as doctor appointments.
Maybe then it’s fine? This sort of thing is perfectly common for first generation migrants. And in the age of decent AI translation, I’m really not sure stringency on this makes too much sense anymore.
If people want to migrate to a specific country long term, the spoken language has to be learned to become a member of society and prevent the forming of parallel societies.
Two points:
All up, presuming that you’re German, it feels like you and your culture might not know how immigration works. Which I say not just to be argumentative but because the one thing that is likely to prevent the above is an entrenched anti-immigration culture that forces the migrants to feel alienated and form more insular cultures rather than integrate with an accepting culture.
Reality is that migration seems to have worked plenty well in many other places. Europe may just be bad at this. And while there may be something to the issue of “protecting the culture” … I’m just not convinced the finer details of any culture are worth protecting at the expense of being shit to others and conservative about how things have to be.
“More than half of young people feel severely mentally stressed. A quarter of young people feel very lonely,” Prof Dr Joachim Bauer, a psychotherapist and brain researcher, told Euronews, adding that he observed this every day in his practice, especially with young people who are depressed and lonely due to their intense use of social media and video games.
Dr Bauer pointed out that the AfD tries to give the impression that if societies reduce immigration or flaunt their national pride again, all problems would be solved.
Seems to be the situation here. Neoliberal hyped capitalism is a gateway drug to fascism because at some point the stress needs an outlet and minorities and “golden age myth” style trad values are just sugar for “solving” political problems.
One dynamic I’m curious about here is the whole thing about new migrants not learning German well enough.
On one hand I wonder if this is just Germans (and perhaps many other European nations) not knowing what immigration looks like, compared to other nations like the US, India and maybe England and other English colonies.
On the other hand, I wonder if there’s some tension between what makes sense for migrants and what makes sense for Europeans who natively speak a language that is ultimately globally niche, such as German. Why would a migrant care about being fluent in German when they probably feel like they have to know English and/or French (or some other more global language) to be employable in the long run?
yep! I didn’t pick up on any explicit link … but the coupling AI and recall is not coincidence. It’s serfdom.
Yea, US, can you just fucking not be a petulant child.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said the court’s allegations are “significant” and the US must support its work as it has done on past occasions, including in the case of Libya.
“The application for arrest warrants is merely the beginning of a judicial process,” she wrote in a statement on Monday.
“The ICC has been a functioning court – it has seen convictions, acquittals, and dismissals, as we would expect from an impartial and non-political judicial body.”
Only clear headed response in the article.
Oh for sure. All of this is clearly a situation where the law is slow to catch up.
There are obvious responses here along the lines of embracing piracy and (re-)embracing hard copy ownership.
All that aside though, this feels like a fairly obvious point for legal intervention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already existing grounds for legal action, it’s just that the stakes are likely small enough and costs of legal action high enough to be prohibitive. Which is where the government should come in on the advice of a consumer body.
Some reasonable things that could be done:
These are basic things based on transparency that tend to already exist in consumer regulation (depending on your jurisdiction of course). Streaming companies will likely whinge (and probably have already to prevent any regulation around this), but that’s the point … to force them to clean up their act.
As far as the relations between streaming services and the studios (or whoever owns the distribution rights), it makes perfect sense for all contracts to have embedded in them that any digital purchase must be respected for the life of the purchaser even if the item cannot be purchased any more. It’s not hard, it’s just the price of doing business.
All of this is likely the result of the studios being the dicks they truly are and still being used to pushing everyone around (and of course the tech world being narcissistic liars).
Maybe I just don’t worry about it as many others in our nation apperently do?
Well the polls would suggest that.
it can be a little weird or unsettling sometimes
I find this striking. Some places just aren’t used to major migration events, and from this it seems to be true for Germany and even you however accepting you are. And not to be an immigration absolutist about it, but Europe might benefit from realising how common migration is elsewhere in the world.
most struggle to accept minor inconveniences.
This is the really jaw dropping thing whenever I see it. I just have no idea what to say and don’t get how people don’t have an instinct for when there might be a bigger picture.
Some are really cruising through life just trying to maximise convenience and comfort.
Ah right. Obvious guess I should have made.
Anyone have an understanding of how much migration Germany has lately? Is this all still a hang over from the Syrian refugee intake under Merkel? Is Germany a favoured destination generally within Europe? Or are Germans just “sensitive” about darker coloured people (which would be a bit odd given the Turkish migration that occurred after the war, unless that never went well either)?
In my current part of Aus, the weather has shifted creepily warm over the past month. It feels like the weather skipped a month.