Embarrassed by the HN comments here. Lunch ladies, along with other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get. Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is pathetic. Such commenters should be forced to prepare and serve lunches for hundreds of hungry children while also being forced to listen to screaming political rants through taped-on headphones. The lower middle class, my native land, gets too little applause for their contributions.
My whole family was working poor at best and I was (at best) most of my life too. I've always liked this Barbara Ehrenreich quote about the dynamic.
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”
> Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is pathetic.
The sentence "Lunch ladies, along with other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get" is itself an attempt to score poltical points for a poltical faction. As is calling them "heroes".
Specifically, this is a leftist poltical argument associated with the Democratic party in the united states, suggesting that it is good for the government to be in charge of running civic institutions that are legally obligated to serve all citizens in exactly the same way, in order to dissuade people from spending their money on services they prefer which might be better than those poorer people can afford; and also that the government employees who do the frontline labor at these institutions are laudable and morally superior people. There are ideological associations here with official Soviet propaganda lauding the worker in the abstract.
Someone who didn't like their public school experience or the way the lunch lady there did their job might resonably grow up to take political stances that reject the idea that low-status government workers are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get.
Perhaps the high excessive drinking rate in WI means more residents need to be reminded in which State they actually are, other than the State of Inebriation.
We’re all retired in some sense. Some on farms, some elsewhere. But in a broader and deeper and more meaningful level, we’re not retired at all…working harder than ever.
Not revisionist I think just more that a lot of people first encountered the concept with the story of Google and don't know it had plenty of precedent.
That’s higher risk than it looks for Hikaru. I legitimately defeated opponents rated 700+ points higher than me in tournament play in the 1980s. With a little planning, draws would probably be even easier.
Anyway, soon you will be able to ask a custom chess AI, “How would you draw Hikaru in classical chess if you are a lower rated player, here are all the games I’ve played in the past and Hikaru’s as well.” I’d guess 1 in 10 decent (but still 700 pt lower than Hikaru) players with that sort of training could eke out a draw. Making it a losing strategy for Hikaru.
The rating spot for the Candidates is based on your average rating on the August through January rating lists. He can actually draw several games against low rated players without pulling the average too low.
“Learning how to deploy A.I. in the medical field, Rodman told me later, will require a science of its own. Last year, he co-authored a study in which some doctors solved cases with help from ChatGPT. They performed no better than doctors who didn’t use the chatbot. The chatbot alone, however, solved the cases more accurately than the humans.”
A couple decades ago, the same study was done with chess grandmasters and chess programs. The chess programs + grandmasters scored worse than the chess programs alone.
I wonder, in the case of mass violence events that were used as advertisement for the (assumed) murderer’s POV, whether there should be an equivalent of a House of Lords for the exceptional situation of censoring what in any other context would be breaking news. You don’t want or need (or be able) to censor a manifesto for all time, but you would want to prevent the (assumed) murderers from gaining any momentum from their heinous acts. So a ninety day (but only 90 day) embargo on public speech from bad actors, with the teeth of governmental enforcement, sounds pretty reasonable to me. Even cleverer to salt the ether with “leaks” that would actively suppress any political momentum for the (presumed) murderers during the embargo period, but with the true light of day shining after three months.
It doesn't sound reasonable to me tbh. If anything, reading those manifestos is a good way to learn just how nutty those people are in the first place. At the same time, having it accessible prevents speculation about motives, which can lead to false justification for politically oppressive measures.
OTOH if the goal is to prevent copycats then I don't see the point of a 90-day embargo. People who are likely to take that kind of content seriously enough to emulate are still going to do so. Tarrant, for example, specifically referenced Anders Breivik.
Thesis: don’t just measure physical engagement in political discourse on campus, since the virtual political discussions individual students are having with AI systems in their rooms are just as intellectually important.
If you’re working a regular job, you need a reliable car in the US. New cars should be, and nowadays are, more reliable than used cars with unknown provenance. Just donated a sedan I bought new 25 years ago that didn’t have a spot of rust and the motor was still great. Desert living…
Just didn’t want to chase down exotic material failure modes at that point and wanted the enhanced safety features available on new cars to protect my old body. I don’t own a lift nor an air compressor. I’d feel like a damn fool if I got hurt working on my own old car. Fixing my broken old body would be much more expensive than having a professional with the proper tools repair my old car. Can pass that dealer-maintained car with a clean conscience to someone who has the tools and expertise.
Nowadays, you can expect 20-30 years from a new vehicle, properly maintained. Especially in the desert. When you spread that buy-it-new premium over 25 years, it’s worth buying new just to know the exact provenance of the vehicle you’ll be driving over the next quarter century.
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