There's a time and a place for everything, and rejecting popular media as "lowest common denominator" is the most uninspired form of cultural elitism.
Is it cynical to want your <art project> to make a profit? Or for it to make enough profit to subsidize other projects?
Is it cynical to make something accessible so more people who watch it are able to enjoy it?
I agree that it's embarrassing and feels crass when movies both try to be broadly appealing and simultaneously fail to be entertaining or well executed ... but many of the marvel movies clearly surpass that bar.
No one wants to make a bad movie that does poorly with critics and paying customers - but it does happen because making a movie is expensive and complicated and requires a lot of skilled people working together towards the same goal.
Regarding taste: do you think a michelin star chef swears off cheap food like hotdogs or fish and chips? Doubtful - because those foods have their place and the chef is able to enjoy them for what they are rather than use them as an excuse to display a superiority complex.
Yeah, I'm saying professional communication isn't the place for Marvel references, and that those who choose to include references to those movies in their professional communications are revealing something about their media tastes.
If I'm at a Michelin star restaurant I don't want to be served a ballpark hotdog.
> If I'm at a Michelin star restaurant I don't want to be served a ballpark hotdog.
This is a very funny quip.
A famous anecdote about a 3* restaurant in NYC is about the servers overhearing a group of diners mentioning how they ran out of time try a "real NYC hot-dog", and the restaurant staff running out to grab one from the corner cart and plating it up nicely; and how this was a highlight of everyone's experience.
Exactly. They share the cultural sensibilities of the average person on the street, and yet they're making decisions that will shape the world for future generations. I think that's bad. I want those decisions being made by people who have a more extensive cultural education. Snobs, if you want to call them that.
Interestingly, the smartest people I know have the widest range of media consumption and understanding. To assume that because someone uses a marvel reference they might not have a deeper cultural education is rather...limited thinking.
Ferran Adria drew culinary inspiration from a bag of potato chips
As someone experienced with a privileged elite educational background, I can guarantee that intellectuals love the highbrow and lowbrow, the authentic and the kitsch; rather, it is a sign that someone is not acculturated if they have the stereotypical impression of the intelligentsia, which makes the OC's comment ironic, they are telling on themselves.
Of course they're average people, why do you think tech or AI company employees are somehow above or beyond the average person? I'm not sure why you'd willingly say you'd want snobs controlling the world, that is somehow even worse and reeks of aristocracy which is why you see replies rejecting your thoughts, it is simply not a western ideal or one to strive towards.
I'm confused as to what your point is. Employees refer to the incident as "the blip." I got no impression that there was a formal memo that went out to the company or the media at large that officially refers to the incident as the blip, merely that employees refer to it as a blip (likely to each other, not too dissimilar to a meme).
And while I don't think someone's media tastes ought to preclude them from making important decisions, I also disagree with your point at large. I don't think the world should be shaped by snobs. The world is already being shaped by snobs in other sense of the word, and I don't see any indication that it's any better than the alternative.
There is also elitism of lack of expectations. Common people should be helped to rise up over the mud produced by culture industry. Meeting them and staying with them in this mud is an actual elitism.
these sorts of "your opinions must be financialized to be valid" takes are the equivalent of the middlebrow dismissal.
"Smart money" is an illusion that only holds up until they do something in an area you're familiar with. Many _many_ financiers know about finances and fuckall about anything else.
The claims and citations in the article stand on their own, without the additional burden of trying to make a bet based on facts in a rigged game based on mob mentality. How does one even bet against private equity data center deals??
Billions in data center deals are being done in public markets. It wouldn’t be even remotely hard to bet on. He literally called for NVIDIA GPU spending to decline. He also said he believes the true consequences of AI are the destruction of the tech industry’s software stack.
If he believed any of this, there are myriad opportunities to put his money where his mouth is. But I have a feeling the author doesn’t believe it enough to do so. Which tells me all I need to know about his own opinion of his work.
He used the f- word 11 times to describe a catastrophe in the making. This is engagement bait.
Come on, man. How can you defend someone who wrote this:
> every executive forcing their workers to use AI is a ghoul and a dullard, one that doesn’t understand what actual work looks like, likely because they’re a lazy, self-involved prick.
That’s the scion exposing the deep state AI house of cards?
yes and his work is fairly sympathetic to the reactionary centrist and right agendas -
not to mention that the anxious generation is supported by a thin veneer of the most wildly cherry-picked data they could get, and they ignored just about any alternative explanation aside from their predetermined conclusion.
I'm fairly cynical about touch screen devices and kids, and won't be letting mine near any until they're old enough (whenever that is) but haidt's own charts don't support his conclusions in that book.
The actual reason teen mental health diagnoses started increasing so much?? An obamacare-related screening and reporting requirement change for pediatrics.
Didn't have to click the link. Words don't matter. The fact that their phone security was poor enough for someone to get killed and thousands of others exposed... Oh and PRISM, so...
This person didn't have any one else and they say their fiance died and essentially they became a a shut-in, but that the chatbot steered them towards taking care of themself.
What would they have gone through with nothing to talk to at all? What would they have done without it?
You're asking what's the alternative to this? A chance for real connection and healing that isn't vulnerable to the whim of a tech giant and its compulsion for profit. A chance at counsel that isn't vulnerable to a random number generator steering them one day towards self harm.
> A chance for real connection and healing that isn't vulnerable to the whim of a tech giant and its compulsion for profit.
That "chance" had years to materialize that did not. Perhaps the worst thing that happened here was that the chatbot did not steer her to resilient human connection when she was in a self-reported better state after the help of the chatbot
How many people off themselves because they can't seem to connect with anyone, and they don't feel like anyone really cares (and they might not be wrong). I don't think the expectation that these people would just magically make friends and build connections because AI wasn't available is realistic.
If the other option is suicide, a qualified therapist and other mental health resources are the right answer, not a chatbot.
Frankly I'm not sure an LLM is even better than nothing. Note the user in that thread whose "partner" told them to get a therapist because they were delusional and instead retreated to Grok.
Therapists are expensive, a lot of them are bad, and just getting therapy set up can be a pain in the ass with waiting lists and a bunch of run around. If you're so set on therapy as the answer I suggest volunteering to help set up and pay for therapists for depressed people, because it's not a great solution, or shitty chatbots wouldn't be killing it.
That’s a terrible situation for that person to be in but it’s strange to me to suggest that there was no other possible alternative. I say this in the kindest way possible but people do get through grief without chatbots and have been doing so for all of human history. Also, just because something helps doesn’t mean that it’s good for you.
TFA is quite clear that her and her fiance were socially isolated and, upon his passing, she had no support network. In the loneliness epidemic. And trying to "just go out" and make friends after years of not being able to , when you're stuck with your grief and at a low point in life is what the kids would call "hard".
This person is clearly at the fringe of society and holding onto their well-being by a thread. They need professional help and a reboot of their life.
I don't think the relationship with a chatbot or was healthy, but "just get better" is an entirely unempathetic, unreasonable suggestion for a high-risk individual faced with an arduous, life-altering journey at the height of mental instability.
It's a damn fine lamp. Really makes a huge difference for feeling energetic and productive! I experienced exactly what the author mentioned with the white lamp, but the support was top notch. Glad to see the details!
If spacex can trick people into paying 10x as much for compute as the next datacenter, they'd be much better off simply building those datacenter satellites and driving them out to the desert and parking them there instead of trying to solve all the dumb problems you create for yourself by putting cutting edge electronics with the power density of electric heaters into space!
ICE isn't doing police work (police are somewhat accountable to their local populace for keeping people safe), they're ostensibly (selectively) enforcing federal immigration regulation.
But please for the love of god explain how "not following orders" is grounds for immediate extrajudicial execution? because your
"their opinion seems to be ... that the person that got shot did nothing wrong"
definitely seems to imply that 'doing something wrong' justifies any reaction up to and including being shot in the head or magdumped in the back?
Lethal force wielded by unmasked, uniformed, badge-wearing, and bodycam'd police officers is already fraught with enough issues as it is... And at least they occasionally face investigation and punitive measures when they fuck up on the (admittedly very difficult) job and harm civilians unlawfully.
A woman not getting out of the car when being ordered to by unknown masked men bearing weapons is reasonable.
Shooting an unarmed civilian who poses no threat to you is not reasonable. It only serves to undermine the entire apparatus of civil governance as well as the bill of rights that the US government was founded upon. It's shameful and disgusting.
And yes, you're accurately labled a bootlicker if you make excuses to the contrary about how it's _ackshually ok_ to shoot and kill people who don't listen to you because boohoo they made your job harder.
If instead you decide you don't actually want to make such an indefensible stand, and instead motte and bailey your way around the issue by trying to talk about obstruction of enforcement of laws, and fall all the way back to "well ICE is allowed to invade places to get the dirty immigrants, so really all the law-abiding citizens would be fine if they just got out of the way", then you're a coward who wont accept the consequences of their own line of argumentation.
Murdering people (Renee Good) who pose no threat to you is wrong. Full stop. Whether that person did something worthy of a misdemeanor, or arrest, or some other LAWFUL CONSEQUENCE is a different matter entirely.
ICE's continued and flagrant misconduct is a breakdown of the Rule of Law, which literally only works if the populace maintains enough trust in those entrusted to enforce and uphold the law. Destroying that (precious little remaining) trust in a politically motivated boondoggle to "own the libs" is a colossal fuckup.
While I do agree that this was tragic sequence of events, then the whistle protesters, carrying a gun and then getting between an officer and the woman is what brought it to the current conclusion.
Go protest in some square, don't protest at ICE carrying out its work. Should this event somehow disqualify ICE, you'll see the Trump opposers hugging every criminal in the country. "Full stop" (as if rhetoric devices ever strenghtened an argument..)
Protesting ICE while they work is constitutionally protected free speech.
You are saying that people should give up their most important rights simply to avoid inconveniencing the government. It is the grossest form of bootlicking I've ever seen.
It may just be that soon the protesters discover that you can simply go and hug a criminal as "protest" and then blame it on law enforcement should anything negative happen to them. I guess your interpretation would still be that it's "constitutionally protected free speech"? I beg to differ and also think the legalities of these situations will likely be hashed out soon enough.
Yes but the packing density of flour varies cup to cup, within the same measuring cup, resulting in different amounts of flour.
> J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, the managing editor of the blog Serious Eats, once asked 10 people to measure a cup of all-purpose flour into a bowl. When the cooks were done, Mr. Lopez-Alt weighed each bowl. “Depending on how strong you are or your scooping method, I found that a 'cup of flour’ could be anywhere from 4 to 6 ounces,” he said. That’s a significant difference: one cook might be making a cake with one-and-a-half times as much flour as another.
So you have to carefully scoop precisely the same way every time to even be close to accurate??
> So you have to carefully scoop precisely the same way every time to even be close to accurate??
Technically you’re supposed to sift your flour before measuring. This removes clumps and also helps you get consistent packing. I think in ye olden days it also got rid of any leftover wheat husks that made it through.
My point wasn’t that you get the same amount of flour every time. You get the same ratio of ingredients today.
Ime people way overthink home baking. If you’re not trying to make 500 perfectly identical units, you really don’t have to sweat the measurements so much. Make the dough or batter then adjust until it feels right. Having good pictures (or experience) for different stages of a recipe is way more important than detailed measurements.
Sifting, IMO from experience, does not solve the mass-to-volume ratio problem enough compared to just going by mass.
As a quick sanity test, if it did, serious baking resources would just always specify to use sifted flour (as this is easier and requires less equipment than a scale), but since they don't (e.g. Modernist Bread/Pizza, if you really demand a citation), you can infer that sifting is not effective in making reproducible results. Also, note e.g. chemistry is not done using sifted volumes (peruse quickly the amount of articles trying to assess the bulk vs "tapped density" of various powders: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22ta...). This should cause some skepticism about claims that sifting your flour is going to make baking results particularly consistent.
Sifting definitely helps remove variance (especially if you always buy the same flour and use the same sifting method into the same bowl, and then put un-needed sifted powder back into the jar), but IMO is far inferior to just weighing.
You're still right everyone overthinks home baking. Precision only matters if you are aiming for perfection, and even a horribly misspecified recipe made at home, but consumed fresh, is still generally going to be good, and definitely better than anything you buy at a supermarket. (And this is precisely why using a slide rule for precision is massively missing the point). As you said, there are many indicators that are more important to pay attention to.
Baking--along with fermentation, curing, and certain brines or other solutions--is the subset of cooking where accuracy of the masses of ingredients matters more than most others.
And yet still you are right you must often adjust significantly in baking for other factors (temperature + yeast activity, humidity, flour grind and composition, and general feel on kneading).
Is it cynical to want your <art project> to make a profit? Or for it to make enough profit to subsidize other projects?
Is it cynical to make something accessible so more people who watch it are able to enjoy it?
I agree that it's embarrassing and feels crass when movies both try to be broadly appealing and simultaneously fail to be entertaining or well executed ... but many of the marvel movies clearly surpass that bar.
No one wants to make a bad movie that does poorly with critics and paying customers - but it does happen because making a movie is expensive and complicated and requires a lot of skilled people working together towards the same goal.
Regarding taste: do you think a michelin star chef swears off cheap food like hotdogs or fish and chips? Doubtful - because those foods have their place and the chef is able to enjoy them for what they are rather than use them as an excuse to display a superiority complex.
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