[–] 0 points 1 week ago

Fair! But to clarify, I’d happily say that “boomer” is a state of mind we’re all vulnerable too. I’m a millennial and openly describe as a boomer when I’m being such.

Which doesn’t counter your point or anything, I’m just explaining that I really wasn’t thinking about the specific demographic but the mentality that I saw at the time (and see today from non-boomers).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Some economic analysis that seems right. Great.

    But what about a more philosophical approach? What does it mean to turn anything and everything into an investment market? Why do it at all and what are the basic trade offs and implications?

    Turning our homes into a stock market on the face of it sounds outright dystopian to me. Stability, mobility, independence, basic welfare, private property incentives and even Australian nationalism against being bought out by foreigners. All of these values seem both to fly in the face of the idea of hot housing markets and to be obvious values worth caring about.

    So what happened? Apart from corrupt politics, a good amount is boomer psychosis was at play I think … ‘all about “me” getting rich’.

    I still find it hard to believe that a conversation or two didn’t happen about the fundamentals here!

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  • [–] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    I mean surely it’s because it’s about buying a part of “the future” and leaving everyone else behind. For such a belief, going all in may be the only option. Which is, of course, kinda death culty.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    Yea, this.

    I’d say that whether it’s a big deal is up to what people expect and want. The issue I was citing is that Fedi drama often involves, IMO, a disconnect between what the Fedi offers and what people expect.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

    Fediverse drama! Even if there is a kernel of truth behind it, the drama around it is always dumber than it should be. IMO a symptom of people wanting control over things as consumers that they simply don’t and never will if they remain consumers. A bit of an insidious trap the Fedi lays for people.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    straightup kleptocratic wealth transfer

    Yea. That’s AI. And frankly the Internet since it became Facebook and Google.

    And the bailout will just be a continuation of the process. Which is why talking about it matters, I think.

    We may be on the precipice of a massive shift in human social organisation. It won’t be the advance of AI as intelligent tech. It will be the gaining of control of information and how society at large relates to the information machine. The Internet was the start, by promising mass decentralisation it merely facilitated mass centralisation.

    AI will do the same. But not at the distribution layer. At the content and ownership layer.

    no great use case for it.

    Owning a piece of the new information age sounds like a use case to me.

    I hate to be a harsh asshole about this … but having no valid justification doesn’t really mean anything anymore. That’s where our world is or is quickly going. And highlighting such a “truth” on the internet isn’t some magic spell like we believed it was in a fleeting moment of Twitter empowerment. Highlighting and knowing such a truth is just the beginning. It’s the minimum. And the powers that be are already playing many moves ahead.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Without knowing any of these details, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for me to hear about the likelihood of a Bailout.

    So many are waiting for the Bible to pop or whatever. But let’s be serious, there’ll be a bailout of some kind. If the tech companies haven’t already made their political moves, there’s surely enough political interest in keeping this tech going if not taking control of it.

    I can’t see how the power players won’t buy into the overarching sales pitch that this is what the future is and that one is either apart of it or not. Then there’s the military angle and staying competitive with China etc.

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    Realistically, how much more does AI for coding have to get out of leaning and training more for formal verification (with eg Lean, Rocq etc and their interop with mainstream langs)

    If AI hasn’t really pursued this strongly, then maybe a good amount, right?

    I can imagine a scenario where you no longer review the code but a simulation of all the behaviours of the system, perhaps before any code has been written, and then you can trust the output will have accordingly …?

    What practical limits of formal verification are there for this?

    And for the anti AI folks, I’m anti AI too and I don’t use it or want to use it at all. I’m thinking about the future here.

    [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Yea I hear. We’ll see I guess.

    Personally, I’m seeing much more falling in line instincts than anything else and fear that any “shock” and reaction is confined to bubbles without any solid culture and infrastructure to break out into any sort of effective movement.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    It’s about the trend and the motives of those with power.

    Ten years ago everyone was very surprised that an AI managed to beat the best human at Go, a board game. I don’t think anyone really saw that coming. There’s evidence that some with insight didn’t see it coming at all.

    At that time, no one was talking about the current state that we’re in now. So what happens in 2036. And the next generation?

    Unless you presume that the human mind is special and impossible to duplicate in important ways, I think there’s a clear set of possibilities here that need to be taken seriously. Sci-fi has been for decades, because they’re that obvious frankly. That the current AI is being over-sold and promised by its backers is basically meaningless. That an AI can write convincingly, even if only for a few pages, and couldn’t do so 5-10 years ago. That’s huge.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    I don’t entirely disagree. I’d add that whatever other options there are, they involve skills, values and perspectives that are unpracticed and atrophied in modern western culture (and likely globally) to the point that that is its own problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 weeks ago (4 children)

    What strikes me about the present moment is that it feels like particularly bad timing.

    I’m not so sure that technological developments follow a well defined path and like to think about what alternative timelines would look like, especially with humanity being better prepared for them.

    For instance, I’ve figured for a long time that the internet was a few decades earlier than it should have been for our social and political development. Probably TV too.

    AI just feels 100s of years too early. Like we’re only just getting to grips with post-capitalism and climate change as ideas let alone problems we can solve.

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    After watching ep 6, I was wondering …

    SpoilersIt seems that like with the Oklahoma bombing parallel, they’ve set up a war on terror or 9/11 parallel with the Mars uprising. The depiction of the president and how they received the information seems fairly obvious I think.

    The interesting part, I wonder, is that the whole season has been about Mars and all its characters making us sympathetic to them. So I wonder if they’ve just snuck in a war on terror allegory from the terrorist’s perspective with the US as the clear enemy by slowly building up the sympathy with Mars over time and then flipping the switch in ep 6. Feels quite bold and interesting to me! I imagine the conclusion to the dynamic won’t say too much that’s clearly politically controversial, but it seems like the idea is there - just how easy it can be to find yourself a “terrorist” against a super power.

     

    Just remembered that this was a thing.

    If you don’t know who Bill Joy is, AFAIK, basically a grey beard who made vi (predecessor to vim), contributed to early BSD and founded Sun microsystems.

    The actual article is paywalled. Here’s an internet archive capture (pre paywall): https://web.archive.org/web/20160107134319/https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/

    submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [M] to c/movies@lemm.ee
     

    I wanted to like it for basically everything going for it - premise, Pattinson, Bong, sci-fi, “original” film - but came out pretty much as bitter as I have ever after a film. I’m not one to do it, but I was close to walking out on it.

    There are some touches of what the film could have been, some moments maybe. But on the whole it felt like a train wreck where I’d bet that people knew on set that it just wasn’t going to work.

    At some point I noticed there was a good amount of yelling from the actors (I’m wondering if that’s just me) and can’t help but suspect it was the director or actors trying to find energy in scenes that were struggling. Or maybe that happened in the edit. Then there’s Ruffulo and Collette’s satirical characters that just didn’t land and felt dumb and amateur (along with Poor Things, I’m thinking Ruffulo is just not good and “original” film makers would do well to stay away)

    All up, I think it’s embarrassingly bad, or “objectively” bad. No real depth, no coherence or pacing or well directed momentum, much of the comedy doesn’t land, characters and plot often feel like afterthoughts, and it got boring too.

    I think this movie review (from a pleasantly non-hype yt channel) says it better than I can.

    What’s funny is I think a lot of people want this to be good. For the sake of original, fun, quirky, satirical films (and honestly, me too). But are stuck confronting a film that’s only making that situation worse not better and which represents the risks that studios need to accept not the successes they don’t understand).

    Am I off here? I was pleased to find the review I linked as it seemed to match my thoughts.

    EDIT - epilogue

    And on the point about the fate of films … I saw this in the cinema (somewhat in support of original films) and dragged a friend too.

    It was expensive. There was bad behaviour in the cinema (people taking photos with flash of each other!). And the film was bad, IMO, in a way that I feel people should have been more honest about (like I said, I think people wanted this to be good). Plus my friend doesn’t trust my choice in movies any more.

    It’s really put me off going to the cinemas TBH. I’ll see how I end up feeling over time, but I think this might have been the straw that broke my back on the whole cinema thing. In part, sadly, because I don’t get how the film was that bad.

     

    Oooff. That’s had me stressed!

    Season 2 had me kinda down. I adored season 1 but it seemed like season 2 didn’t quite know what it was doing. Too slow and underdeveloped.

    As it ramped up at the end though I’m really happy with it. And I appreciate the pacing having finished it. Really nice season of TV and I’m totally ready for season 3.

    I’ve not read the books, so I don’t know where it’s going.

    The whole algorithm thing (that’s apparently what some subtitles have named the voice) … I’m in the fence about the idea of having an AI/algo angle on that … but I guess we still deserve to confront that sort of stuff. I very much appreciated though the structure of there being another level of manipulation. And of course, Bernard refers to them as “who” bit “it” so either he’s naive or there is another organisational element. The additional silo in the “actually there were 51” line also points in that direction. As does the fact that there’s a tunnel at the bottom of the silo … what/who is that for?!

    Generally though, having a microcosm of society under duress and oppression is turning out to be a fantastic premise for a TV show willing to be patient with its development! I’m not watching that much TV but Silo and Andor are definitely my favs of the past few years!

     

    Of Eggers' works, I've only seen The Northman and this, Nosferatu.

    I can confidently say that I like very much what these films are and where they are coming from. I'm almost guaranteed to see Eggers' next film. And, without wanting to see Nosferatu again, I have a general longing to see a film like Nosferatu over the next few days just to dig into the vibe more (I should probably see his earlier films now).

    All to say that this film basically delivers on what you'd hope, with probably some surprises and compelling parts.

    But what compelled me to write this was that I walked away from Nosferatu with almost exactly the same feeling I had after The Northman ... that I really wanted to see the better version of that film, that there was something missing, something perhaps slight and subtle but also essential for making the films truly great or to at least wash away an itch that there are annoying flaws.

    I'm by no means qualified to describe what these things are or to work if they're just me-problems, but I'm struck by having exactly the same feeling after both films and that Eggers is the sole writer of both films. Because what I think I struggle with probably comes down to writing choices.

    Watching both films, I thought to myself that Eggers struggles to stitch the dramatic aspects of his films with their atmospheric parts, which in his hands are vital to his style. Sometimes I wondered if a scene really needed to be there or as long, or needed to interrupt the flow of what was cut from before, or couldn't have better dialogue or more focused acting. It just feels like the moment he decides to have a straight dramatic sequence, with dialogue etc, he kind of doesn't know what he's doing nearly as much, let alone how to bind those components into a cohesive whole along with the more intense and supernatural components.

    I'm curious now to watch The Lighthouse, which Eggers wrote along with his brother, to see if I can pick on a difference.



    Thinking more broadly, as much as I liked an enjoyed Nosferatu, and will probably watch it again at some point, I do feel it is flawed. I could imagine a directors cut being interesting.

    But generally, for me, it was downhill from about the middle onwards (basically after "Orlok's Castle" sequence (which was brilliant I thought, and along with the film's opening, easily the highlights I'd look forward to on rewatch).

    Thinking about it along with "The Northman", I wonder if Eggers struggled to adapt pre-existing stories. With Nosferatu, for me personally, it certainly took away from the strength of the film that I new the basic structure of the story ahead of time, which for a vibey horror film becomes a serious distraction at some point. And I don't think Eggers really had too much to bring to the final act of the story TBH (apart from that shot/frame, I guess, which if you've seen the film you can probably guess). I certainly would find it interesting if the story told were only loosly inspired by Stoker's and Murnau's prior works.



    Anyone else get where I'm coming from? Anyone with a better take on it than me?

    submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/afl@aussie.zone
     

    Instead we’ve the lions, power, swans and cats.

    Who were premiers in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 respectively (with a cheeky eagles flag in 2006).

    edit:

    Or, to include repeats and losing the grand final:

    The 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07 & 09 premiers, and, the 04, 06, 07 & 08 runners up are in the prelims this year.

    Not one GF in 9 years that didn’t have one of these four and only two that were win by another team.

     

    How are people feeling about it? I was disappointed by season 1, but happy to keep watching as I'm a die hard fan from childhood.

    Season 2 had me excited at first ...

    spoilers (and ranting)The first two-three episodes at least had me even a little pumped.

    The dark wizard in the east very much signals to me that the stranger could be a blue wizard, along with the dark wizard, which is honestly very cool and a nice way to split the difference around Tolkien's "speculation" on what happened to them.

    Getting more complex Sauron manipulation and moving the plot along too seemed nice.

    But after episode 4, I don't know. I came away from it thinking it might have been the worst tv episode I've watched since Picard S2, which was very strange given how much interesting shit they did. Ents, Bombadil, Wizards, Hobbit origins (actually I don't care for the amount of hobbit stuff in the show at all).

    But there was something just boring about it all for me.

    The only way I can explain what I think I'm seeing, and why it's fundamentally flawed, is that the writers/directors want to take Tolkien seriously and even feel rather pressured to do so ... and so in many ways they're actually writing/filming that sense of seriousness rather than a well thought out adaptation style.

    The clue for me is how the whole show is at once strangely grounded and somehow "elevated" at the same time. The elves, such as Galadriel and Elrond, are kinda normal people doing normal things a lot of the time (compare LoTR trilogy Galadriel basically being mind-crushing and haunting most of the time) ... but talk as though they're reading directly from the bible or Silmarillion. Same for Halbrand/Annatar/Sauron. The construction of the rings is a clue into this I think, where they've attempted to portray it as powerful and important, but there's absolutely no sense of how in the world they're magical, no indication that there's some special elven craft behind them. Just "add mithril and get powerful rings".

    Bombadil's dialogue seemed the same to me. Talking about being the eldest as though he's talking about what happened last week. Now in that character this sort of approach makes the most sense. But even so, there didn't seem to be any joy, jolly or aloofness about the character to signal how old he must be to be casual about witnessing the beginning of time. And there's always the concern the show should have for making us the viewer feel what's happening on screen ... and I don't think we felt Bombadil's mysteriousness much at all. Compare with, in the LoTR books, Tolkien using a wonderful way of showing that ... the one ring had no affect no him whatsoever to the point that he could see Frodo while he was wearing it.

    The only breath of fresh air so far has been the dark wizard, which clearly takes cues from Saruman. It's probably been the only sense stylistically I've gotten that we're in a lost age of a fantasy world.

    One take I had from season 1 was that RoP's biggest problem might be that it's being made after Game of Thrones not before it. That GoTs is absolutely the wrong influence for a show like this and yet is likely to have one due to its pervasive success. And I feel like I may have been right about that. The Tolkien world and GoT "politics and intrigue" are not compatible. Moreover, I suspect the GoT style may have run its course somewhat. A show like RoP was a chance to try something interestingly mystical and I don't think the creators were up to the challenge, perhaps not at all.

     

    While territorial claims are and will likely be heated, what struck me is that the area is right near the Drake Passage, in the Weddell Sea (which is fundamental to the world's ocean currents AFAIU).

    I don't know how oil drilling in the antarctic could affect the passage, but still, I'm not sure I would trust human oil hunger with a 10ft pole on that one.

    Also interestingly, the discovery was made by Russia, which is a somewhat ominous clue about where the current "multi-polar" world and climate change are heading. Antarctica, being an actual continent that thrived with life up until only about 10-30 M yrs ago, is almost certainly full of resources.

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