Ioper
3hr ago
Ok, thanks for the info! I might check it out and see if its for me but that wasn't really a ringing endorsement ;)
Ioper
15hr ago
This kind of thing happens all the time with non-political things as well. I don't think there is any coordination, these people just move in the same circles, talk about generalised ideas together and then develop them independently.
Additionally, it someone sees something doing well they'll go around shoppong for some semi-finished production that they can rush to completion to get in on the craze.
Ioper
15hr ago
What's your opinion on the Runesmith? The reviews seem mediocre. Is it the kind of story that's good if you're ok with skimming superfluous exposition but people who aren't, get pissed at the glacial pacing? Or are there bigger issues?
I'm having trouble parsing ratings and reviews at Royal road, with some of the higher rated stuff being complete garbage and some lower rated stuff being pretty decent. Is score manipulation (positive and negative) a big problem or am I just out of step with the audience?
Ioper
2d ago
Something I've noted about self checkout is that it has been discontinued in all smaller stores, presumably because they can't have anyone monitoring the process.
Larger stores are all in on it but they have one or multiple people going around making sure people are mostly behaving.
This implies to me that the cost of theft isn't neglible and that there needs to be *some" enforcement (or appearance of enforcement) for it to not get out of hand.
Ioper
4d ago
In the context of Sweden, which has very generous parental leave benefits, an extra child per woman would amount to ~0.75 lost work years per person over their lifetime.
Personally, going from 1->2->3 kids werent big changes and I feel like I share the parenting equally with my wife. The big change was going from 0->1.
Ioper
4d ago
I mean, were talking like 0.5-1 more kids per woman, it isn't that big a change. We've lived in that world and with the same FLPR.
Also, the state doesn't necessarily have to compensate people, it could punish them instead. Currently we only have (tiny) carrots but perhaps we should introduce some sticks as well and possibly increase the carrots for those that actually contribute until we reach something sustainable.
Or try any number of other ideas a Instead of throwing up our hands and declaring that we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.
Considering just Europe for a minute, the theory doesn't work very well either.
Northern Europeans are easily the largest and strongest European subgroup (outside of tiny Balkan groups that are taller), it's also the group that civilization came to last and despite all this it's also the most domesticated.
To me it seems that there are many ways to select for behaviour and various types of capacity.
Ioper
4d ago
Ireland is moving to recognize Palestinian statehood, making them the first nation in western Europe to do so, as far as I know. The historical relationship between the Irish and Palestinian nationalist movements means this was perhaps to be expected
Sweden and Iceland have already done this.
Ioper
4d ago
Why would you assume that? Or are you talking about people here specifically?
Perhaps he's one of these guys?
Ioper
15d ago
I've always thought of this as a class issue. The educated class imparts the knowledge of which degrees are ok to their kids while the working class gets taken for a ride by the education industrial complex, ending up with useless or unfinished degrees, a bunch of debt, a sense of failure and missed earnings.
Ioper
6d ago
I'm not convinced it's all that desirable either.
Giving people pre-written options allows them to pretend easier, especially pretending to be smarter/funnier/more erudite/etc.
I'm sure there are contexts where free communication using natural language with an llm would make sense but often i think it would be preferable for either using an llm to generate vast amounts of dialogue trees that are then screened by humans, or maybe at a later stage dynamically generating them "live" for all actors, including the player (possibly based on stats and prior decisions), and then letting the player choose from those generated choices rather than having them come up with them on their own.
You might think that but you would be wrong.
What has happened is very limited construction, large population growth and a massive credit expansion, leading to a price spiral. Cost increases in housing almost all exclusively comes from increases in land prices. Building is relatively cheap.
The vast majority are living in housing that was built before the 35 year price rally, not a single subway station has been added during that entire period.
Some people, like my family, have won big and are now (dollar)multimillionaires, due to no effort of our own. Others, like people from out of town or their children are just fucked.
Ioper
15d ago
Inflation adjusted housing costs in Stockholm have risen +500% in the last 30 years, and its not like it was some thirdie shithole before.
My understanding is that it's a risk with all major infections. Your body or immune system might be damaged in a more or less long-term way. People just don't like to think or talk about things like this.
Kind of similar to how people don't really talk about how pregnancy can trigger various chronic health conditions.
Or that general anesthesia itself carries real risks.
Or even how people regularly get permanent injuries from doing youth sports (especially women).
We just like to pretend that we're safe as long as we don't do something stupid or get cancer or something, then someone you know's life was changed, destroyed or even ended by seemingly nothing.
I'd like to note that to me this seems like mostly an Anglo problem, and more specifically an American one.
There are well written games and other types of media but they're increasingly, or even generally, produced elsewhere (or by people from elsewhere) despite most games being made in America.
Personally i think it's a combination of a pipeline problem and a cultural problem. Part of the pipeline problem is how much the industry have grown (the quality people are spread too thin) but also the general reputation of the industry. Who with talent and in their right mind would work in gamedev? Especially AAA?
It's kind of similar to online communities, once you reach a scarcity tipping point of quality people then why bother with something that doesn't pay? Especially when you're actively or passively selecting for bad people.
The culture part I'm sure you're all aware of.
Ioper
1mo ago
Making up for lost time and brighter expectations of the future I'd imagine.
It's not like the war period was good to Sweden or free of stress and worry, Sweden was both economically depressed and cut off from much trade. It was the post war period with intact industry and great demand for both raw materials and goods that was good.
All status isn't relative to the people around you at a given moment but also to what people have previously experienced. If tides are rising quickly then almost everyone is going to be perceived as higher status than before.
We had a major economic crisis in Sweden in the 90s and rebalanced our unsustainable social security system, which was previously thought inconceivable. It wasn't the end of the world. There is still fairly generous social security, pensions, our nation debt is down from 73% to 32% and taxes are down (probably unrealistic for the US...).
It can be done if a crisis gets bad enough, the insanity can stop.
Politicians usually do the right thing as soon as they've explored every other option. Not every country is Argentina.
Ioper
18d ago
Yeah. A few years ago when I was very fit i threw out my lower back not doing dead-lifts but turning over in bed...
Just test drive one.
Important things to consider is how widespread the charger network is in your area, your ability to charge at home and/or at work and what you use the car for. The value of an electric car depends as much on those things as the car itself. It's probably a good idea to ask people around you who have electric cars how much or little of an issue this is.
I'm personally not a fan of Tesla due to design choices and lackluster build quality but it's much better for you to test it yourself than relying on online people to tell you what to think.
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