We won’t know how much power Xi had until he has to step aside. Saying he’s no more powerful than Mao, who ruled for more than 30 years and who ruled until the day he died, is an interesting choice.

The US pivoted seamlessly from an imperial power that was using communism as a reason to overthrow democratically elected leaders, etc. to a cultural behemoth that used its economic power to bend laws in foreign countries so that they privileged US cultural exports and tech companies. It maintained a large military, but if you compare the 50s to the 80s in terms of how much and how that military was used to recent decades, there’s a huge difference.

The Korean war and Vietnam were huge conflicts. They were drafting military-age men to fight in those “wars”. By comparison, the first Iraq war was smaller, and waged with a very wide alliance of countries. The second one was bigger, but still significantly smaller than Vietnam or Korea.

I think the US as a cultural and economic world power could have lasted a very long time. Some countries grumbled about Google and Facebook making it hard for local news organizations. They didn’t do much to stop these companies, only some small fines on occasion. The newest wave of companies, the AI wave, seemed to be happening the same way, with all the major companies being American.

I think most people from rich countries would still prefer the US to be dominant than China. The US at least talks a good game when it comes to freedom of speech, etc. China doesn’t even try to pretend to care about that. But, the US is chaotic and belligerent, whereas China is mostly using soft power these days.

I don’t think that’s true. Yes, the Trump admin is horribly corrupt, but a collection of states just won in court, finding that Ticketmaster was an illegal monopoly. There’s a chance that after Trump goes away / dies that whoever replaces him will take monopoly enforcement seriously. It’s a popular bipartisan issue.

Meanwhile, in China, what President Xi wants, he gets. At the moment he doesn’t seem to be doing the Trump speed run of corruption and personal enrichment. But, rule of law in China is limited because ultimately it’s whatever Xi decides.

Privacy is basically non-existent in China. Sure, the US tries to spy on its citizens, but often the FBI is reduced to buying data on Americans from private companies because they can’t spy on people directly. There’s a lot of self-censorship in the US, and oligarchs are buying up media to restrict what views are published. But, that pales in comparison to the Great Firewall of China, and the massive internal censorship network.

And, keep in mind, that’s what China does to Chinese citizens. When they show up in Africa they definitely don’t treat Africans the same way Chinese people are treated. They are happy to help Chinese companies do corrupt deals that would never be permitted in China, but when it’s Africans that suffer they really don’t care. The US was hardly an angel around the world, but at least it made tiny steps towards trying to curb things a bit, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Trump may be speed-running overt corruption and self dealing, but there are still remnants of the old system of laws and rules that occasionally stop some of the things he’s doing. Xi is not as obviously overtly corrupt, but the Chinese system has never been in any way democratic. It has always been one where the people at the top get to dictate how the people at the bottom live their lives. Personally, I’d prefer a fighting chance against a corrupt mob boss style dictator who hasn’t yet fully corrupted the entire system, vs. being ground under the boot heel of a “president for life” who maybe was making decisions that he thought was best for his country, but who isn’t even willing to allow protests or mockery, let alone the free communication of ideas.

It’s disappointing when these are cut off at the Canadian border. Canada is influenced by both the UK and the US, and has been drifting towards the US over recent decades. Plus, Canada has some really weird dialect areas like Newfoundland.

It would be interesting to see which terms drift north of the border, and which ones stop at the border. How hard is the border when it comes to dialects? Does the fact that people live most of their lives on one side of the border mean that the language doesn’t tend to drift across it? Or do people hear their neighbours talk and begin to adopt some terms? My guess would be that these days it’s more influenced by what’s on TV or on the Internet.

Apart from all the obvious US policy failures, there are also the less obvious ones.

The current admin has no understanding of soft power. The US spent decades building trust in the Voice of America. Sure, it was US propaganda in some ways, but it was often much more truthful about the facts than the local government news. The people who worked at VoA cared about being reporters and wanted to tell the truth. They had bureaus around the world broadcasting in local languages, and it cost almost nothing. It was old fashioned radio, a technology that’s a century old. Something that might have been useful in Iran where the Internet has been cut off for months now. So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.

The US also used to know the value of diplomats. The Trump admin doesn’t think expertise matters. So, the Iran deals are being conducted by the President’s son in law, and a buddy of Trump’s who’s also a real estate developer. Unsurprisingly, they’re not succeeding. Ambassadors have always been a cushy job, often given to big donors or friends. But, Trump has made it so entire embassies are effectively useless.

The kinds of damage being done in just a couple of years will last for decades. I don’t know if the US will ever recover from this. Many of the problems probably won’t even show up for more than 5 years. Instead of a US military base in a foreign country having a lease that’s easy to renew, the next time it comes up there will be pushback or refusals.

The US dominated world sucked in a lot of ways, but at least it was stable. My guess is that the next few decades will be a lot less stable. Maybe the end result will be better. I’d love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They’re doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it’s China that steps forward, I’m less confident it will be an improvement on the US. Other than those two, I don’t really see any other country or bloc of countries that could try to do the necessary work.

This is an interesting story because:

• The AI transcription was perfectly accurate, even with medical jargon
• Not having to take his own notes allowed him to spend more time with his patients, and to listen to them more closely
• He felt less stressed and less burned out as a result
• It wasn’t de-skilling him, at least not in the way we traditionally think of it

It’s basically a best case scenario for LLMs and it still made things worse. Taking notes felt like a tedious thing that kept him from doing his job. But, he discovered that taking notes was part of his job, and if he didn’t do it he couldn’t properly care for the patients.

Maybe once he realizes why it is that it was failing him, he’ll be able to adjust his process so that he can take advantage of the machine learning system. It might be as simple as looking over the results immediately after the consultation and scribbling things in the margins so he doesn’t forget the key takeaways. Or, maybe the old note-taking process is simply the best one and the LLM can’t offer anything to actually help.

Country music started to suck not when it became political, there was always political country music. It started to suck when it became the refuge for conservatives and no other viewpoints were allowed.

But there was a real hunger in a lot of parts of America for representation, and country music did offer a landscape that was talking a lot about old-fashioned values.

…

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that country radio, which remains very corporate, does have a lock on who can become a superstar and who cannot. And so, if you get sort of an organized fan backlash against a musician over their politics. their career is done. And the most – the high-profile example of that that people will be familiar with is what happened to the Dixie Chicks during the Iraq War.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-country-music-went-conservative

Country music from before 1970 can be good. There are occasionally things post 1970 that are also good, but they’re much harder to find because it has become a style of music that caters to conservatives, and they expect it to glorify their values.

https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/both-kinds-of-music/

I believe that they might have had more free time than a typical ISS mission, because there wasn’t a lot of science to be done on this trip around the moon. That left more time for spontaneous goofing off. But, they probably also knew there would be more eyes on them than the typical ISS mission, so they probably also planned more things that they hoped would go viral.

Right to repair laws would help things so much. If you didn’t like the firmware that came with the car, you could install alternative firmware. If the dealer sold a car that was known to have some terrible components, there would be a business opportunity for a car modder who would buy factory vehicles from the dealer and replace the most trouble-prone parts, then re-sell the car with a slight mark-up.

It used to be that when it came to high performance cars, there were groups like Alpine, AMG, Abarth, Shelby, Saleen, etc. They were often race teams, or associated with race teams. Sometimes they would buy stock cars and modify them for racing, or at least modify them for high performance. But, most of those have now been brought into the company most associated with them. Mercedes owns AMG, Alpine is part of Renault, etc. I would bet one reason that this is not as common anymore is that cars are heavily computerized, and the computers can use DRM to restrict anybody but the original manufacturer from modifying them.

That’s the difficult thing about reviewing the durability of things. If you want to talk about whether something will last for years and years, you have to wait years to publish the review. By the time the review is out, they might no longer sell the model that was being reviewed. In some cases, the company might have been sold to a private equity investor who is just milking the brand’s goodwill before the value tanks.

How much is that going to cost you? I know long term it will probably save you money, but I would bet that the cost is triple the stuff you buy in a big box store.

There are probably times when the way restaurants do things isn’t appropriate for home cooking. For example, I read about commercial woks vs woks for home use. Woks used in restaurants tend to be thin and lightweight. They’re meant to be used with immensely powerful wok burners used in restaurants, and are light partially because a chef using a wok for hours and hours wants something as light as possible. If you’re a home cook, a heavier wok with a flatter bottom might work better because your stove probably can’t get as hot as a commercial wok burner. The flatter bottom means it heats better on the kinds of stove used at home, and is more steady when set down. The thickness helps it retain heat when it’s removed from the stove or when ingredients are added. A home chef doesn’t have to keep lifting the thing hour after hour, so the extra weight is ok.

A commercial fridge and commercial freezer sound great though. They seem to be built more and more delicately these days.

computer networking hardware which will eventually be outdated and no longer get security updates

I don’t think that means that the correct approach is for the manufacturer to build in obsolescence. Sometimes the security threats don’t matter to some users, so they should be allowed to accept the risk and keep using the item. Or, there could be a rule in place that if the company no longer wants to maintain something, it is required to release the source to maintain it.

The mother’s work.

I don’t think it’s worth your time to do them. The sample size is just too small to make them interesting.

When there’s a big community, ratings are interesting. It’s hard to read thousands of comments and know what the general opinion is. When there are ratings, you can use that for the general consensus opinion.

When it’s a small community like this one, IMO it’s just better to have discussions.

Personally, I never really filled out match ratings forms because I often can’t watch games live. In addition, I tend to focus in on one or two players throughout the match, and don’t really pay attention to the other 9-10. I could give someone a low rating if they made an obvious mistake leading to a goal. But, if they’d been having a good but unspectacular game before that I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

I feel bad saying this because the ratings system itself is really good. I wish there were more people using it because it’s really comprehensive and the results are presented well.

There’s no comma there. They use it as punctuation at the end of a sentence:

e.g.: “I heard your mother died I’m sorry lol”

Suddenly, in sync, a lot of the “people” in the bar say in unison “As a strong black woman, I think president Trump is right about…”

Half the seats at the bar are filled with mannequins, but that makes the bar feel crowded, like it’s still the happenin’ spot. That convinces a lot of brands, celebrities, politicians and journalists that they still need to keep making appearances at the bar.

Wait, now they’re plural?

That depends on the wording.