My kids use Duolingo for extra training of languages they are learning in school, so this crapification hits close to home.
Any tips on current non-crap resources? Since they learn the rules and structure in school it’s the repetition of usage in a fun way that I am aiming for.
I followed the 2008 crash in some detail and as far as I remember it the pension funds and little towns in Norway that got swept away in the financial avalanche were not known before the crash. Then the surviving banks were allowed to rebuild their balance sheets by both government largess and fleecing their customers. And in the euro zone there was the whole euro crisis as spill over effects hit the banks and French and German banks were saved by fleecing Mediterranean EU countries, payed for by destruction of their economies. Which had some nasty political effects like the direct inheritors of Mussolini’s party now running Italy.
I don’t think we can know even the direct knock-on effects of the crash without knowing what financial institutes and pension funds has gambled on the line going up.
Anyway I expect the oligopolies to receive government support and fleece the rest of the economy. They can probably jack up prices at least 10-15% every year without CEOs going to their IT department and saying “fuck it, teach me Linux, we are switching, this is just to expensive”.
However, even the accelerationist don’t want Chinese AGI, because insert standard sinophobic rhetoric about how they hate freedom and democracy or have world conquering ambitions or they simply lack the creativity, technical ability, or background knowledge (i.e. lesswrong screeds on alignment) to create an aligned AGI.
I thought in modern US phrenology East Asians were smart? So they just haven’t been reached by the holy scripture/ Harry Potter fanfic?
Now I got curious, has there been any attempts of spreading EA to China, and if so how did it go?
I saw in passing a claim that investors (or rather gamblers) are fleeing the dollar for safer assets such as “gold and Bitcoin”.
Gold might be true, the ancient relic is up against the dollar, but Bitcoin!? Someone tell me that isn’t true and it’s just coinfondlers trying to hype it, in order to steer stupid capital their way.
Meta claims they have approval. No comments from regulators in sight, no actual decision quoted.
It’s not necessarily false, but it does come from the lie and break laws industry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a lie.
It really looks like it’s on an awful trajectory.
In my teens I read about how Leo Szilard took a train out of Germany the day after the Nazis took power. Passed the border before border checks had time to come into force. Seemed obvious then, now I am all to aware of the problems of such a “simple” plan and the ties that binds you, not least family. And of course not knowing in advance how bad it will be, until after. And not knowing if you jump from the ashes and land in the fire, lots of countries are on the same trajectory but further back. Fascism is yet again the choice, the owners choice in the face of climate change.
I’m rambling and it’s late. Sympathies and solidarity.
At least it is a place with bears. Everyone knows that bears love libertarians.
Starting a cult to build god, control god and upload your consciousness into god?
Well, at least it is an ethos.
One author (Daniel) correctly predicted chain-of-thought reasoning, inference scaling, and sweeping chip export controls one year BEFORE ChatGPT existed
Ah, this reminds me of an old book I came across years ago. Printed around 1920 it spent the first half with examples of how the future has been foretold correctly many, many times across history. The author had also made several correct foretellings, among them the Great War. Apparently he tried to warn the Kaiser.
The second half was his visions of the future including a great war…
Unfortunately it was France and Russia invading the Nordic countries in the 1930ies. The Franco-Russian alliance almost got beat thanks to new electric weapons, but then God himself intervened and brought the defenders low because the people had been sining and turning away from Christianity.
An early clue to the author being a bit particular was when he argued that he got his ability to predict the future because he was one quarter Sami, but could still be trusted because he was “3/4 solid Nordic stock”. Best combo apparently and a totally normal way to describe yourself.
It’s easy to read it as first and fourth “world” but it’s actually first and fourth “word”. But the first and fourth word of what? Mein Kampf? The 18 words?
Sharing the suffering multiples the suffering.
I usually go with “Scientology for the 21st century”. That for most gives just “weird cult”, which is close enough for most people.
For those that are into weird cults you get questions about Xenu and such, and can answer “No they are not into Xenu, instead they want to build their god. Out of chatbots”. And so on. If they are interested in weird cult shit, and have already accepted that we are talking about weird cults the weirdness isn’t a problem. If not, it stops at “Scientology for the 21st century”.
Who in specific do you see voting for the next Dem who did not vote for Kamala?
Some of the 19 million 2020 Biden voters who didn’t vote in 2024? Maybe some of the 5-6 million they lost one the issue of aiding and arming a genocide in Gaza?
No, going more Nazi must be the way. Much wise, much centrist. Much exhausting.
The investors read “11x, the company’s, revenue is 10 million” but what they missed was that the correct reading was “11 x [the company’s revenue] is 10 million”, so the actual revenue is less than a million. Easy mistake to make! Better luck next time investors!
Yeah, the exclusion of the dismal science got a chuckle out of me.
Ok, that makes sense.
I was somehow under the impression that the main wild cat money to real money exchange was to USD, on account of the media about such exchanges. The rest followed.
Something I have been pondering is why when going after Bitcoin from crimes (ransom or stolen) they don’t just declare the individual “coins” stemming from illegal proceedings and that when they show up the “coins” will be confiscated and the holders investigated for money laundering. They have a serial number of sorts, right?
It should decrease the trade value of the “coins”, might even have the added benefit of scaring people of from the scam currencies. Ay, there might be the rub, for in this modern world of ours suppressing financial “innovations” is treated as worse than scams.
So I was right that it was a Jabra. :)
I think you are right to treat it like a fanzine, do it for the hell of it. That is the fun way.
I believe I read somewhere that Wikimedia was some time ago (a decade ago? who knows and no point in trying to search for the article) exploring the idea of a human curated search engine. Perhaps an idea who’s time has come.
And he is brave enough to say that:
There is a sensible compromise somewhere between the Biden/Harris immigration bill that would have got rid of due process for suspected illegal immigrants and the Trump policy of just throwing dark people into vans for shipment to slave labour camps.
Genocide is just sensible bipartisanship.
Trans people are not people.
Much centrist, much sensible. Much surprise he is getting into race science. It the centre (defined as the middle ground of Attila and Mussolini) moves, the principled centrist must move with it.