Sheepclothes
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User ID: 2217
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
Couldn't agree more about the death of the German people. When I talk to my countrymen, I get the sense of a deep need for them to belong to some kind of higher tribe of Germanic people. But cultural self-hatred is not a basis for unity. So they gesticulate vaguely to the "Grundgesetz", Germans aren't as loud about it, but if you ask them they hold this ineffective book in higher esteem than Americans do their own constitution. And that's it. That's the only mainstream acceptable level of German national identity. Even the German language itself is problematic and must be destroyed with degenerate new grammar rules.
This isn't some hyperbolic exaggeration, either. A legal fiction is the only thing that binds the Germanic diaspora. Of course, If you ask Sepp from Bierdorf#2334 in Bavaria what he has in common, with Gunther in Kackdorf#697 in Lower Saxony, you will probably get a different answer (With little agreement between them). But Cities are sadly indispensable for visible cultural output. And they are filled with the apathetic worker ants and legacy poisoners.
At least I have regionalism cope. I wonder if @Southkraut agrees.
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
You're in luck, I've got the perfect anecdote. Last month, I successfully asked out a church girl, I knew her a bit and had built up camaraderie.
What I did to not psych myself out was this:
Be very clear and unambiguous in the approach, I asked my girl if she wanted to go on a date at x time, x place. While a proposal for a coffee hangout has its advantages, being upfront is far simpler and easier than subtle hinting.
Let go of expectations
I can't stress how little importance the exact way you ask someone out has. The only thing that matters is that you do it casually and with conviction. This woman is either open to date you or she isn't. Don't bother with a girl who won't immediately work to reschedule if x time doesn't work, or "has to think about it". People are very flattered to be asked out, and if they don't meet your vulnerability with some kind of enthusiasm, leave.
Fraternities have definitely lost most influence in the 21. Century. As you said, the old guard have connections, but that's about it. But the stuff you learn about them tends to be factually incorrect. Current members are of course marginalized and completely powerless.
Your post is emblematic of the surrounding discourse, though. Fraternities are now so insular and small that they have become this bogeyman of student culture. Nobody actually has any idea what they do, just what rumours and journalists who know as much as their readers spread. Since 1968 there's been a real organized effort to discredit, marginalize and bully fraternities into dissolution. Things have calmed down in most cities only because they have essentially succeeded.
German Fraternities are an openly "conservative" thing. The members are usually not conservative, but what they get up to is, the entire point is to be conservative. They created a multipolarity in student cultural power, between left and right. Used to, at least, since such a thing can't be tolerated on the modern campus.
My future post will go into more depth. In the meantime, could you please stop hating on what are essentially, in their current form, Friend groups that take part in funny and entertaining traditions in their spare time haha.
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
One thing I really want to write about is Fraternities, specifically German ones, and what role fraternal groups and societies play in the development of people and Culture.
It would probably be a series of posts, something like this:
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The role of Fraternities in the German culture war.
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Freemasons, Rugby clubs, voluntary fireman and other such groups.
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Personal development in fraternities, masculinity and Alcohol
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The slow extinction of fraternal societies.
It's baffling to me how little these organizations are talked about, given that its members dominate our politics. I think I can give an interesting inside scoop on this parallel society. Also, it would hopefully interest all the people here who frequently talk about the lack of male spaces and the self-isolation of the modern male.
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
As for the AI question. High budget productions will be the last affected, with generative art or text models. Right now, Ai can't replicate top talent, but it can replicate a lot of the low quality writing and CGI that's rushed out of low budget media. We will see Paw Patrol be automated years before a season of GOT has AI paintings in the background. Which still means that most shows will still be heavily affected, as most shows don't have anything like the budget of a GOT. The biggest change this would bring about first, is more, nicher, and cheaper shows, but also a further squeezing in the winner's take all reality of creative profession to decide who gets those scant jobs in prestige TV.
Man, I just have very little sympathy for these writers. Any job that a substantial amount of people would do for free in their spare time is obviously going to have immense downwards pressure on pay. These people consciously took a risk with their career, and now they're getting burned for it. The issue they're having is a difference in the supply of aspiring writers and demand.
Here's a Reddit take with 1k upvotes from this post:
I 100% support the strike, but it will be brutal for many others in the industry, especially if it goes on for months. I work in the industry and was impacted by the '07 strike, which lasted three months.
It's not just about the pay cheque. What people outside the industry might not realize is that most union workers also need to earn a certain amount of money (or a certain number of credits) in order to maintain health insurance. This becomes impossible when there is no union work to be had.
There's a sickening reverence the blue tribe has for those working in creative fields. These writers AFAIK usually earn more (albeit less consistently) than the grips and grunts responsible for the rest of the production. But through their outsized influence on culture and the zeitgeist (the real compensation of their work and a reason it has the status people chase) you get a situation like in the quote above taking place. This strike affects the financial security of countless others in the industry, who (at least overwhelmingly so on Reddit) have somehow convinces themselves this is OK.
I don't actually know too much about the specifics of the Writers' guild union, but they leave me with the same instinctual disgust I have for unions in general. I hope someone can link me to some well written and sourced pro union articles to educate me on this, but comments like these in the same Reddit post leave a bitter taste in my mouth
Scabs are detested by picketers because scabs can break the strike. If enough scabs join in successfully, then they can outnumber the union and effectively cause its dissolution. If you're scabbing, be ready to be treated absolutely terribly. Some places may even hire private security to escort scabs to/from work.
I get the theory behind the usefulness of collective bargaining and how it should result/has resulted in better worker treatment, but god, the aesthetics are just awful. Just seems like collective bullying and the imposition of economic dead weight to me.
As a Europoor who never had the privileged opportunity to work on global cultural defining work, let them stifle the American media machine into the dirt. Maybe Netflix can fund some more cool German or British works.
source: https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/135adyi/the_writers_guild_of_america_is_officially_on/
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
Yeah, I agree with everything you wrote here (Although I already mentioned the branch specific modification to locations in my original comment). The crypto stuff actually seems a lot harder to implement than the rest of the program, imo. I might actually try to develop a location/character database/lookup in my ample free time myself, run it all locally on some 7b model. Will share the code on GitHub if I manage. Some interesting prompt engineering challenges there, I think.
Good luck on grabbing some of that crypto money!
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
I read through Gwern's CYOA idea and it seems very promising. The biggest hurdle is clearly consistency/memory. There could however be an ambitious way to improve it, implementing memory like they did in this https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442. It allows for consistency with minimal context window usage.
This is how I would implement it:
Store every location in a big node diagram. Every new Location creates a new node, with its features as sub nodes or roots. Any unaltered new node is saved globally in all branches, alterations to the nodes stay branch specific. So you could find an ominous Altar in the cellar on a hunt for cultists, but after this generation it could then turn up on unrelated branches, creating a more dynamic and consistent world.
There are a few flaws here, It would be very computationally expensive to refer to the node diagram on every generation and check when to alter it, then again the whole point of the CYOA gimmick is to generate that stuff once and then reuse. It could also taint branches with potentially unwanted things from other branches, turning this more into collaborative world building.
You could do a similar thing to characters, storing their details in notes that are called up when they are in a scene.
While I don't think you need a very exact or thorough implementation of this, something that's supposed to be used by many people and extend for quite some time does need some kind of long term data storage. Or you could bank everything on the massive 32 thousand token window for gpt-4 that's going to be rolled out.
Ignoring my rambling, I am really interested in learning more details about how you're deciding to go about implementing the project.
Sheepclothes
1yr ago
That was a fun read! I'll see if it continues holding my interest in later chapters. Though I wish you posted it on a less weird forum thread format, like Royalroad.
That's a good one, also explains the beliefs of my culturally adrift friends from my international schooling experience.
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