sohois
22hr ago
Don't buy anything new. I assume you'll probably have family and friends that will gift/loan you a lot, but even if not it's so easy nowadays to find second hand stuff for way cheaper, and it's probably been used liked 10 times total.
I don't have the link, but in some ACX comments a few months back someone linked a blog series on back sleeping for babies. The conclusion was that the evidence for the benefits re:SIDS was extremely weak, while there was some good evidence that back sleeping has quite negative effects in other domains. We've slept our child on front, back and side, but she falls asleep really easily everyway so for us it's been less important, but could be useful when yours arrives
sohois
7d ago
Oblivion. Might be strange to mention one of the highest rated games of all time, but nothing else captures that bizarre terrible film feeling. The incredibly ugly characters, litany of bugs, weird system choices, and of course the Radiant AI system form a perfect storm.
I have little hope that a future Oblivion remake would be anywhere near as good because they will simply sand away all the interesting parts
sohois
8d ago
Are you turned off simply because there is a scene with dancing in it, or that some "stupid SJW" shared it approvingly?
sohois
14d ago
Not to put words into the OPs mouth, but that's not what I took from the post. Rather, tariffs are an example of a generalized anti-automation protest which will provide an example for future PMC types to follow when AGI or similar eventually arrives
Just look at this sentence:
If you're worried about how the PMC will eventually sabotage the progress
Not how the PMC are sabotaging progress, but will do so in future
sohois
15d ago
German issues now are largely a product of the past few years of policy, not any long term failures.
They elected the Greens, who promptly exploded their nuclear power sources and left them entirely reliant on natural gas from Russia. Now they have the highest electricity prices on the continent and vast swathes of industry are completely unviable.
sohois
15d ago
My newborn does not do this often, but she does take a while to accept moving from one of her parents to her bed when sleeping
sohois
18d ago
Bioshock Infinite was a financial disaster because Ken Levine was completely unable to run an effective development team, it's really not any more complicated than that.
No publisher recoiled from failure; they were compelled to chase the live service riches all the way off a cliff.
sohois
18d ago
I'd say it's not so much his libertarianism as the fact he is solely a libertarian, he's not really right-wing culturally at all. His aims have always aligned with right-wing voters so he's always courted them but it's pretty clear he doesn't care much about things like immigration
sohois
19d ago
Mercantilism as it was pursued - and it did not improve prosperity or any metric you care to measure - relied somewhat on colonialism. The colonial nations could tariff away as long as they could go and directly secure the materials they needed from conquered nations.
sohois
19d ago
But then, are these benefits greater than the costs? That was the question, do you believe this will be good or at least not on-net bad?
sohois
19d ago
I'm not sure this really maps to right-wing growth in Europe. Le Pen's economics are close to Trump in her economic nationalism, but Farage is an old school libertarian who wanted to make the Brexit campaign all about opening up free trade outside of the EU. Meloni has retreated pretty quickly into bog standard neoliberalism. Can't comment on Wilders or the AfD, but there's nothing to suggest that wider right wing movements are an economic protest
sohois
19d ago
Who do you think is voting for all those far right parties in Europe?
People that don't like immigration.
Why do you think Brexit happened?
Immigration.
sohois
19d ago
For whom? Anyone who relies on the global economy for their livelihoods, which is approximately everyone on earth. Trump doesn't need to care about the wellbeing of foreigners of course, but I'm not sure how Juche thought with American characteristics will produce the desired results of Trump and his team
sohois
19d ago
I'm sure posters here could provide a reasonable steelman for Trump's position if asked, but forget about providing arguments for a second: are there any Trump supporters here who genuinely believe this is a good set of policies, or even a not-disastrous set of policies?
I can't imagine this will be the final thing to break support for Maga types, but I would give strong odds that this goes down as a major black mark on Trump's eventual record, and a potential torpedo for any future Maga candidates
sohois
19d ago
But the the rest boils down to where do my kids go to start making money?
This answer depends a lot on how old your kids are, no? If they are 16 and looking at university pathways, then there aren't clear answers. If they are 6 and still dreaming of being astronauts etc., then you're just going to wait and see. If AI progress stalls soon, then you'll know that coding, graphic design, and most "writing" occupations are a no go, but there will still be plenty of other positions. Nothing wrong with the old middle class staples like accountants, architects, maybe lawyers if AI doesn't get good enough.
sohois
26d ago
Syracuse informed me that in China, Coke is called "happy drink for fat people," fair enough.
I wouldn't translate it like that. A simpler translation would just be Mouth Happiness, but the impressive thing about Coke's localization is that it's pronounced Ke Kou Ke Le, so they managed a name which is both phonetically accurate and still has a useful meaning. Most Western brands just go for a rough transliteration without a clear Mandarin meaning.
sohois
28d ago
Moutai is certainly the biggest brand when it comes to Baijiu, but I learned long ago that price and brand has approximately zero relation to quality. For those who haven't tried it, most people tasting Baijiu for the first time describe it as something akin to paint thinner. Considering that many bottles will go for about the same as a beer, this isn't too surprising. However, even when you get into the expensive stuff, the paint thinner quality rarely goes away. I have had some nice Baijius in my time, but almost never the super pricy ones.
Also some super pedantic notes:
- The Bund in Shanghai refers to the riverside (West) street filled with historic buildings, it's not a shopping street. Given it's location, all kinds of shopping streets feed into it, but I'm guessing you are referring to one of the connecting streets; it's been a while so I can't remember which was the main shopping street connecting to People's Square.
- Yuan means Park or Garden, so the correct name would be Yu Park or Yu Gardens, Yu Yuan park is redundant.
sohois
28d ago
This is the culture war thread after all. If there wasn't a culture war angle to this, it wouldn't even be here as a post - it is relevant because UK media and government figures are obsessing over the show, insisting it is vital to understanding young men and should be shown in schools, etc.
I saw someone make a comparison to the film La Haine. That film provoked plenty of discussion in its native France, was shown in a government meeting (IIRC), much like Adolescence. La Haine is now widely regarded as a classic film, but I don't think this reputation would have any bearing on a talk of whether it was relevant for the French government, or whether it had any lasting impact on policy and so forth.
sohois
1mo ago
Scanning and OCR is a good one I forgot. As @Ioper mentions, it's been good for a long time, but the advances in OCR in particular are pushing things like translation forwards.
One new app I have got on my phone now is https://recipekeeperonline.com/, one of those paywalled apps you mention. It's allowing me to digitize my entire cookbook collection, and it really is pretty impressive how well it converts a huge number of different recipe formats into pretty perfect ingredient lists and steps, without any involvement from me
sohois
1mo ago
various French things but I don’t count them as British food
one problem with this is that once you get past the iconic dishes, you're left with a lot of simple preparations that have commonalities all over Europe, or dishes that have murky origins and aren't wholly any one country's to claim. There are fish stews and preparations for baked, steamed, smoked, and fried fish that all have origins in the UK but can also be found in many other nations. Kipper is perhaps the most British of the smoked fish, although you'll find preserved Herring in much of Scandinavia and the low countries as well.
Tartar sauce, for example, is obviously derived from the French sauce tartare, but the British preparation as served with fish is very much unique from the French approach.
Fish pie itself is definitely one Britain can claim, and is often much more than just cod. One ingredient you'll find in both fish pies and tartar sauce that is uniquely British is hard boiled egg (sounds odd but offers a nice textural contrast). Stargazy pie is another well known fish pie dish, although it's odd appearance doesn't present it well
'Potted' fish, whether crab or many other types of fish, is British but again not only practiced here. Other shellfish preparations for the likes of whelks and cockles are typical of British seafood. One shellfish dish that might not seem overly British is prawn cocktail; the US has plenty of shrimp cocktail recipes, and prawns served with a cocktail like sauce isn't especially British, but the prawn cocktail you would order on a pub menu would undoubtedly be British in origin.
sohois
1mo ago
I got a new phone recently. Not a great one, it's a downgrade on my previous phone in several areas and the march of enshittification in phone design is clearly continuing at pace.
But that topic has been done to death and I wanted to ask something else of the community. What uncommon or interesting things can you do with a modern smartphone?
It occurred to me as I was transferring everything over that I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago. I can emulate more games consoles now, and I grudgingly use some of the digital wallet features, but otherwise all the years of development doesn't seem to have changed anything at all. Are there cool features or applications that I'm missing out on?
sohois
1mo ago
The English don’t really eat fish either
Aside from the posts below pointing out that these stories are mostly pro-immigrant propaganda, there are loads of traditional English dishes for fish that aren't deep-fried cod. The thing is, British food is not particularly popular worldwide; few people could name more than 10 British dishes.
This also kind of answers the Irish question: what Irish food of any kind can people name? Potatoes, Guinness, and Beef stew (with potatoes and Guinness) are about the limit of it. It's historically a small and poor nation, long a part of Britain anyway with little time to develop their own cuisine.
sohois
1mo ago
The Uk's muslim immigration issue is in large part a legacy of the empire. Even before the numbers blew up under Blair, the UK always had a stream of former subjects from the Indian subcontinent. This meant there were big existing communities of Muslim to marry into or find jobs with, putting aside the attraction of having a ready made community.
I got a similar score and have a similar ~1sigma lower estimate from correlated tests (although memory was my best individual score). At first I thought the whole test was just a bit biased towards higher scores as multiple posters got scores in 140-150 range, but there are a few lower scores so not sure
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