His foundation is heavily invested in vaccinating populations in the global south. On paper at least – I don’t trust billionaires or their foundations, most of it is tax evasion anyway.
Say what you want about bill gates, but that guy is the second highest donor to the world health organization, only behind the USA (yes, the country). Beats even all the other countries
I’d rather tax the rich and let the people decide what to do with their money than trust all billionaires to do the right things.
This particular person is on a mission to do to malaria what science and governments did to smallpox, eliminate it from existence forever. You don’t spend 80 billion dollars to save on your taxes. He’s no perfect saint, but there are rich people who are more selfish.
Because if you notice, the conspiracy theories tell them to hate anyone that’s mildly helpful to humanity and celebrate sociopaths like Trump. Gates isn’t perfect but as far as philanthropy related work, he did some decent things sometimes.
William Faulkner has some wonderful stories about the WW1 days when people would go up in these rickety planes with a handgun, and take potshots with it with one hand while they flew the plane with the other, or take up a big basket of hand grenades and be lobbing them down at people on the ground while the people on the ground were shooting at them with infantry weapons.
Pilots in war have always been nuts, but there's levels of nuts.
I love seeing pictures of WW1 infantry preparing to let loose an anti-aircraft volley from their bolt-action rifles. What a wild time of military developments
Somewhere there is a Vietnam book where an American pilot told a story about "One-Shot Charlie". There was an old Vietnamese man in some village who had some kind of ancient rifle, and every time they were flying nearby, he'd come out of his house and fire a single shot at the aircraft going past him half a mile up or whatever, and then go back inside. Just kind of a "I hate the fuck out of you but all I have is this rifle but fuck yes I will do my part."
They loved him. They never tried to attack him and I think would have been legitimately angry if someone had tried to hurt him. When you are in war you find your moments of safety and humor where you can.
Better to be alone and free to think and explore than to be tethered to someone that holds you back from exploring life. Sex is a fucked up drug addiction without an opt out for most of us. I’ve made a lot of effed up decisions, but not marrying any of my 3 long terms was not one of them.
I don’t know about y’all, but I changed a whole lot every 5 years since 20. I feel more settled in my late 30’s Getting disabled at 29 shakes my perspective away from any kind of norm. I can’t imagine those changes meshing with anyone else and surviving this long.
I don’t necessarily disagree, and everyone is different, but you should consider that it’s not just you that changes. You change WITH your partner. You grow TOGETHER. I am absolutely different than I was 10 years ago, and so is she, but that doesn’t mean that we’re no longer compatible. Our growth contributed to each other’s growth.
I do think people should be maybe… less attached? You should regularly evaluate your relationship to see if it’s working. Shared interests aren’t even always necessary (as long as they at least show interest in what you like and vice versa). But that is very hard and many people would rather not be alone.
I don’t picture too many mates that can handle religious extremist conservative misogynist to atheist leftist open minded best intentions diversity ally. I could be wrong. Heck, in that span I’ve gained, dropped, and maintained more weight than anyone I’ve ever dated, going from ~250 to 350 to 187 and racing bicycles. I doubt I would have spent 3-4 hours a day on a bike while working 8-10 hours and racing on the weekend if I had married someone in my early 20’s. I’d probably still be in bad health. I’m not all that bright right now, but I was a whole lot dumber in the past and having someone around that reinforced my biases was certainly a factor in my growth and development. It is hard to say how things would be different. It gets super lonely at times, but my situation is not standard there.
I personally think that shared interests are far less important than shared values (as in equality, for example), and while it’s fun to have a partner who has shared interests I don’t necessarily think it’s a prerequisite. If you enjoy spending time with them and they’re a good person, that’s all that matters if you ask me.
Thank you. This comment resonates a lot with me, as despite it having been over a year I’m still struggling with coming to terms with having had to break up a 5 year-long relationship for my own good (it’s not that long in the grand scheme of things). The way I would describe it is that she was molding me into the person that I was expecting to become when the relationship started, which was totally different from the person I ended up evolving into. I am glad I did it, but I still struggle with the pain I caused her during the process.
I had back surgery last year at 29, and while I didn’t end up disabled, I’m seeing my life change in small ways because of it. It’s weird feeling so young but having to limit certain activities because you could become paraplegic if anything goes wrong.
I didn’t have anything to add to your comment, I’m just glad you posted it!
I've not read PA in ages, and saw that and thought "Oh wow, the new art style looks pretty good!" Then I saw this was from 2012, and decided to see what the art actually looks like nowadays.
What the fuck happened? Tycho looks like Handsome Squidward with encephalitis, and Gabe looks like every Nickelodeon character in the last 20 years merged into one. I'm curious to know what PA fans think about the style these days, since I've not followed it for a long time, myself.
Who is the Tycho you’re referring to? I’m not a basketball guy, or really any sports guy at all. In my book, Tycho is possibly my favorite musician and plays mellow electronic music.
PA refers to Penny Arcade, a gaming culture webcomic that’s run since '98 that’s linked by Corngood up there. Tycho Brahe (besides being a 16th centure Danish astronomer) is name of one of the main characters in the comic as well as the pseudonym of it’s main writer, Jerry Holkins.
OMG ME TOO!!! At the Greek Theater? I’ve seen him 3 times so far. Most recently I saw him at the Lightning in a Bottle festival. It was a sunset on a beautiful day and it was my first real acid trip. It was phenomenal 🤌
Yes, fantastic show! Someone in the crowd yelled something like “Anyone who isn’t excited for Tycho has no clue how good this is going to be” and he was totally right.
I also prefer the 2012 art to the modern style, but if Mike likes to draw the way he does now then good for him. He’s clearly demonstrated his artistic prowess over the years and I’d guess wanted to make his own exaggerated style. It’s definitely instantly recognizable as his
I remember reading it years and years and years ago.
The newest one seems like lazy commentary on things in nerd/gaming news, but maybe it was always like that, lol
Scrolled back a bit from the newest one, and they all seemed to follow the pattern of “Worried Nickelodeon Guy says something that bothers him, Handsome Squidward makes cynical comment about it”.
The newest one seems like lazy commentary on things in nerd/gaming news, but maybe it was always like that, lol
As far as I know, it was pretty much always like that. My tolerance for that used to be better. Reminds me of CAD in that fashion, a comic that for a bit I actually genuinely liked but as I got older and the author got… weirder… it’s one that I moved away from.
Not that I recall. It turns out that most people have their Xbox in a place that sucks for dribbling a basketball, so I think the correct way to play this game was to move the setup to your garage/patio. :)
You have to tell them that you love them, everytime, or it’s not even close to a proper bye. That’s how you get an in with the HR folks really quickly so you know that they have your back. Work on easy mode, more or less. Like and subscribe for more social lifehacks.
I won’t rehash the arguments around “AI” that others are best placed to make.
My main issue is AI as a term is basically a marketing one to convince people that these tools do something they don’t and its causing real harm. Its redirecting resources and attention onto a very narrow subset of tools replacing other less intensive tools. There are significant impacts to these tools (during an existential crisis around our use and consumption of energy). There are some really good targeted uses of machine learning techniques but they are being drowned out by a hype train that is determined to make the general public think that we have or are near Data from Star Trek.
Addtionally, as others have said the current state of “AI” has a very anti FOSS ethos. With big firms using and misusing their monopolies to steal, borrow and coopt data that isn’t theirs to build something that contains that’s data but is their copyright. Some of this data is intensely personal and sensitive and the original intent behind the sharing is not for training a model which may in certain circumstances spit out that data verbatim.
Lastly, since you use the term Luddite. Its worth actually engaging with what that movement was about. Whilst its pitched now as generic anti-technology backlash in fact it was a movement of people who saw what the priorities and choices in the new technology meant for them: the people that didn’t own the technology and would get worse living and work conditions as a result. As it turned out they were almost exactly correct in thier predictions. They are indeed worth thinking about as allegory for the moment we find ourselves in. How do ordinary people want this technology to change our lives? Who do we want to control it? Given its implications for our climate needs can we afford to use it now, if so for what purposes?
Personally, I can’t wait for the hype train to pop (or maybe depart?) so we can get back to rational discussions about the best uses of machine learning (and computing in general) for the betterment of all rather than the enrichment of a few.
It’s a surprisingly good comparison especially when you look at the reactions: frame breaking vs data poisoning.
The problem isn’t progress, the problem is that some of us disagree with the Idea that what’s being touted is actual progress. The things llms are actually good at they’ve being doing for years (language translations) the rest of it is so inexact it can’t be trusted.
I can’t trust any llm generated code because it lies about what it’s doing, so I need to verify everything it generates anyway in which case it’s easier to write it myself. I keep trying it and it looks impressive until it ends up at a way worse version of something I could have already written.
I assume that it’s the same way with everything I’m not an expert in. In which case it’s worse than useless to me, I can’t trust anything it says.
The only thing I can use it for is to tell me things I already know and that basically makes it a toy or a game.
That’s not even getting into the security implications of giving shitty software access to all your sensitive data etc.
If you are so keen on correctness, please don’t say “LLMs are lying”. Lying is a conscious action of deceiving. LLMs are not capable of that. That’s exactly the problem: they don’t think, they just assemble with probability. If they could lie, they could also produce real answers.
But that doesn’t mean pushback is doomed to fail this time. “It happened once, therefore it follows that it will happen again” is confirmation bias.
Also, it’s not just screaming at a train. There’s actual litigation right now (and potential litigation) from some big names to reign in the capitalists exploiting the lack of regulation in LLMs. Each is not necessarily for a “luddite” purpose, but collectively, the results may effectively achieve the same thing.
“It happened once, therefore it follows that it will happen again” is confirmation bias
You’re right but realistically it will fail. The voices speaking against it are few and largely marginalised, with no money or power. There will probably be regulations but it will not go away.
Right, but like I said, there’s several lawsuits (and threatened lawsuits) right now that might achieve the same goals of those speaking against how it’s currently used.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing for LLMs to go away completely, they just want to be compensated fairly for their work (else, restrict the use of said work).
It is fashionable to stigmatise the Luddites as mindless blockers of progress. But they were motivated by an innate sense of self-preservation, rather than a fear of change. The prospect of poverty and hunger spurred them on. Their aim was to make an employer (or set of employers) come to terms in a situation where unions were illegal.
I’ve never heard anyone explicitly say this but I’m sure a lot of people (i.e. management) think that AI is a replacement for static code. If you have a component with constantly changing requirements then it can make sense, but don’t ask an llm to perform a process that’s done every single day in the exact same way. Chief among my AI concerns is the amount of energy it uses. It feels like we could mostly wean off of carbon emitting fuels in 50 years but if energy demand skyrockets will be pushing those dates back by decades.
My concern with AI is also with its energy usage. There’s a reason OpenAI has tons of datacenters, yet people think it does not take much because “free”!
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