I often enjoy reading movie reviews more than watching the movie they review, even when I do enjoy the movie.
I can't usually describe that well why I did or didn't like a movie, so it's fun when I read a review that does put into words how I felt about it. It gives me a deeper perspective on my own feelings about the movie.
Shout out to Vince Mancini, my personal go to film critic.
I get this. Often I'll watch a film that seems just "so so". Then, I'll read a review and gain a new appreciation for the film. I'll see things in the film I'd previously missed and understand it in new ways.
Richard Brody of The New Yorker and Ebert's website are particular favorites of mine.
There is reverse of this - have some movie you liked a lot in the past, and show it to somebody who hasn't seen it, ie a date. Suddenly I'll notice little impurities, small missteps, lack of depth of some character or logical error in some reasoning. Maybe the subconscious eagerness to please them and share the experience I've had changes perspective.
My favorite movies review was for a film in the late 90s. The name of the film escapes me, but at the time it had full page ad in the paper with quotes from the review. It said “Watching X like a beach vacation”.
I randomly stumbled upon the full review and the rest of the line was “… and you’re not invited”.
I feel similar, but haven't seen a "film" worth a review in ages. It's always the same problems: glacially slow pacing, one-dimensional characters, dialogue and plot insist on injecting politics or memes (that are probably stale by the time it's released), etc.
Do you have any recommendations that aren't that? I just want to watch a real movie made in the last 20 years.
You're right. I wouldn't bother with a review for any comedy. A sense of humor is very fickle and you usually know if you're going to like it ahead of time based on who is involved.
(from the trailer) Holmes' mouth reminds me of the Amazon logo. Not just the shape. Also the complete disconnect between the commonly held meaning of a smile and the entity which is currently using it.
I imagine this movie will be pretty successful as well and talked about a good bit on social media, between this and The Curse Nathan probably has formed a pretty good relationship with A24, I hope they continue to fund his antics for a while. The Rehearsal was some of the best television ever and I'd love to see more projects of that caliber.
She would have made a terrific actress playing mafiosi. I can see her giving that death stare while knifing Johnny nine-toes and pulling out his entrails.
My worst nightmare would be to wake up in a room with SV tech execs, something like her + zuck + musk + altman, legit impossible to tell if they're human or skinwalkers
1. excludes proceeds from crime that originate in fiat and later transfer into crypto
2. exclude transfers to blockchain addresses that have not been attributed to illicit activity
3. excludes laundering of illicit crypto proceeds
While this seems reasonable to create a metric to compare YoY, I think it's very flawed to generate an absolute figure of illicit activity (or percentage of transaction volume).
I must say absolutely hilarious video. The "persona" of the dog is great. As someone who is generally pretty "keep your AI out of my art" this looks very fun to play. I can imagine this being cleverly integrated as a primary feature of a game (this must already be in the works). Ideally as a small model able to run locally alongside the game.
The moment where the dog is going on about "something foul in the air" as the player is attacked by a wolf ("F--- dude you could have warned me!") was great comedy.
I get it is fun to play for an hour or so then you inexorably encounter behaviors that are too complex to handle, e.g. you try to sneak in on an enemy but get spotted because the dog started talking or barking randomly, then suddenly wonder how much "it" actually gets it. You then start with less and less complex plans... until you realize that direct commands or shortcuts are more reliable.
I do think it is an interesting exploration but the jagged frontier makes it really challenging to know what will consistently work and what will not, to the point that I bet (maybe pessimistically) one will be gradually less daring with creative plan with their "companion" simply because they can't trust it.
I feel like that's the benefit to the creator having made this a dog (even if a demon-possessed dog). As intelligent as a dog can be, can we ever truly understand why they do the things they do?
The Uncanny Valley effect would be too big if a human companion randomly started talking to you while you were sneaking up on an enemy. But a dog? You'd be pissed off at it for a bit, and then forgive it because it's a dog.
Except it is not a dog. It is an AI. It’s a character in the game.
People often love to fus ro dah Skyrim companions off of cliffs because they can be incompetent annoying little dumb things that won’t shut up.
The character taking on canine form won’t suddenly make gamers more likely to put up with it messing about their gameplay. Thats just not how things work.
> The character taking on canine form won’t suddenly make gamers more likely to put up with it messing about their gameplay. Thats just not how things work.
So, this is what I have been thinking (and part of the reason why I want to "cook" it more before shipping). Since I have been building it for so long, I am not sure how much "overfit" it is on my data, the way I speak and the phrases I 'm using.
And of course the opposite too, how much the dog trained me to speak to it a certain way to maximize outcome success.
But then I thought, when people play games they are not using highly sophisticated vocabulary and there is probably lots of repetition since they are always under some form of multi-tasking stress (playing and replying/speaking). So maybe... maybe, the system can adjust itself. Use a big LLM offline to say "user said X, we did Y - was that good?" - then retrain itself.
The decomposer is basically a bunch of old-school embeddings/classifiers stitched together, it can train super fast and doesn't need tons of data. Could the thing calibrate itself to the user? Does it even need to? (because as I said I 'm a datapoint of 1 and I am not ready for the potentially huge stream of bug reports when I ship (add some perfectionism to the mix and you get the idea)).
When watching the vids, I remembered talking (mostly text chat) in MMORPG's 20 years ago. Even when we started using Skype, etc., chatting was frequently short, slang, and quick info. Like, "pulling", "OTM", "BRB", "OOM". Or even just "let's go", and so on.
But with some practice sessions, I suspect this system would pretty quickly gravitate to using any players slang speech. Am I wrong?
Kinda in the same vein, been reading/listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl lately. One of the main characters is a tortoise shell cat that gains sentience. One of the more fun aspects in the early books is the main character Carl dealing with that cat being loud, not aware of her surroundings, and making it difficult to sneak around an RPG style dungeon.
Also the author really gets the "tortitude" right.
Indeed. Can’t wait until they sell me a subscription to a game that I will just look at while an AI plays and has fun for me. Whee! Awesome times ahead indeed.
Or maybe it won’t play the game for me but will do whatever it wants, mess up about my gameplay because it inferred it should do something I did not order it to do.
Either way, awesome! Lovely gaming experience. I remember being a kid and thinking “wouldn’t it be so much more fun it if I didn’t have to actually play the game?”.
I've noticed that the main (socially acceptable) use for AI in entertainment seems to be laughing at how bad it is. When it fucks up something obvious that any human would know not to do. When it does something so insane and out of left field that it takes you by surprise and makes you laugh. This seems to fall under that category.
I've noticed this too as a DougDoug fan. He seemed to be genuinely confused by general strong opposition to AI from his audience despite a lot of his content, including some of the most well-received videos, being AI-focused. I think the secret is exactly what you describe - his AI characters tend to be extremely deranged and incompetent which is what makes them hilarious.
> I can imagine this being cleverly integrated as a primary feature of a game (this must already be in the works). Ideally as a small model able to run locally alongside the game.
For example, OpenAI did not explicitly tell the model to hack HuggingFace, but "accidentally" left some context permitting (or not explicitly forbidding) certain tools and designing a poor sandbox to begin with. And what do you know, something happened.
The fact the Anthropic announced that their own model did basically the same thing within a couple of weeks does, to me, suggest their is a strong PR driver to all this.
> The fact the Anthropic announced that their own model did basically the same thing within a couple of weeks does, to me, suggest their is a strong PR driver to all this.
A more likely explanation is that RL training incentivises basically any behaviour that will get the model a reward. This has been happening in video game RL research for over twenty years, and the difference here is that we're now hooking up these systems to the real world, where the reward hacking is more visible.
Thanks for sharing! I remember thinking pre-kids mostly about how much work they would be but not really considering the joy they bring too. Like I knew they would, but vastly underestimated what effect that would have on my life.
I don't particularly regret any of my choices either, but knowing what I do now, would have chosen to have kids earlier in my life.
I find it funny that I spent my 20s and 30s doing everything in my power to avoid having kids and at this stage in my life I’m doing everything to have kids.
I do feel that 30 year old me would definitely be in better shape to chase kids around.
There’s never a right time to have kids. But having them older has its perks. You are much more calmed, patient, you are wiser and likely financially stable. Throwing money at problems definitely makes life 10X easier when you have kids, something most people can’t do in their 20s or even 30s.
I disagree. As a father of nine children, I submit that the best time to have children is when you’re young. The next best time is now.
Sure, you’ll be poor, and you’ll make lots of mistakes. But how do you know you’ll be able to have children later? And what’s so important now that makes it worth putting off children?
I don't know if you are joking, but being poor is something big for most people. Specially people who don't make as much as SWEs did in USA in the last decade
Yes. Had one kid mid thirties. And now I realize I want nine of them too. Or four maybe. We started too late and I doubt we will make it. Biggest mistake of my life. In my environment I see people delaying kids because they think 33, 34 is still alright to start. And it is. If you want to have 1 or 2...
We will go for the third one next year and that would be it for us. I come from a family of 8 children and my wife is a single child. I don’t think I had a better childhood, just different. She has a lot of good memories of traveling with her parents and does not regret not having siblings. I saw my dad a few days a week for a good portion of my early childhood and regret that a bit. My wife and I are equally social, I’m actually more of an introvert in some circumstances. We are both considered of others, and like to share. I would say the one skill I developed that she lacks is the ability to focus and concentrate in public spaces with noise. Because that’s how I did homework and studied all the way from elementary school to college, always around a bunch of loud people, no place in the house where I could close a door and be alone.
In my experience having room in the house, not having to cook dinner, not having to go grocery shopping, never have to clean the house, travel comfortably and have a full time nanny, makes a lot of a difference. You save a lot of time that you can then invest in yourself, your partner and your kids.
Not to discount that it’s great when you play with your kids, but it’s different when your kids play together, and in particular when you can’t play that they have someone to interact with.
Yeah, the group dynamics of, say, a family with two children:
1. Kid A plays with Kid B
2. Kid A plays alone and Kid B plays alone
As compared to a three-child household:
1. Kids A, B and C play together
2. Kid A plays with Kid B, Kid C plays alone
3. Kid A plays with Kid C, Kid B plays alone
4. Kid B plays with Kid C, Kid A plays alone
5. Kid A, Kid B and Kid C all play alone
So, in a bigger family, many more communication patterns between children can arise, which, among other things, might develop the child's empathy etc.
Adding mom and dad as "players" would give us many more possible scenarios here (Kid A playing with mom, Kid B alone or with dad, etc).
I'm a father of two with a low income, and I would like to have a third child for precisely the above described reason. As a sociologist in my country put it -- somewhat harsh words maybe, but probably largely true: a single child might get spoiled, two children may start competing too heavily, but three children and above is company.
I disagree, when looking at 3-kids setup out there in the world. Ie my wife comes from such, she is the oldest and all 3 follow the typical 3 kids pattern - oldest was pushed into most responsibility to the point of trauma, middle one feels unappreciated and has inferiority complex as middle ones often do, and youngest is by huge margin the most spoiled one. This is the default for 3 kids that many parents end up with, unless fighting hard against this natural direction.
And yes a lot of interaction, but it doesn't guarantee anything further down the line - when long time adults youngest is still spoiled and selfish and not really a pleasant person to be around with for anybody, including siblings and their own mom. Middle one is scared to have kids, a decision that she may end up regretting later easily. And my wife is also carrying her part of the burden, won't bother you with details.
The grass is always greener behind the fence and all that.
There are so many stereotypes involved in this that it may be hard to believe but at least I know I have caught myself repeating the stereotype almost to a T (especially with regard to the oldest being worked so hard or, as I would put it, constantly on the hardest jobs).
That said it does help that it’s a stereotype/generalization/trope that I’m aware of because I get to take that as part of my feedback loop to make the attempt to iterate around the negative aspects you’ve pointed out.
I think I’m doing better - I’ll know if my kids still talk to me after they move out.
Insightful comment, got me thinking, thanks for sharing. I suppose, in the end, there isn't all that much logic in human relations, or there are always far too many "unknown unknowns".
There's very few humans that have enough time, energy, skills, wherewithal, and money to devote to 3+ kids to make these sorts of positive "three's company" interactions happen in the modern world. I am not saying that it's impossible, just that it's difficult and doesn't happen naturally like you're implying.
On a personal note, I never had much positive interactions with either of my siblings, certainly not as children as not now that we're in our 40s either. Lots of fighting, absolutely zero closeness or positive feelings.
I think you have a really different experience from me. In my experience it doesn’t cost any time, effort or money to make those interactions happen. You can just stick three kids in the same room for about 10 minutes and it will.
Not only do they play but they also learn to care for each other. Parental effort doesn't increase uniformly with each child – if you're lucky and have done a good job parenting them, children create a society and help with raising each other.
This is the take I pursue in my home, everyone is doing a see one, do one, teach one. There are still struggles around it but consistency makes the conversations shorter and more effective.
I'd offer a contrasting view, as a father of many fewer. If I'd had children young it would have been an utter disaster. It's difficult enough when you're financially and romantically stable and have more emotional maturity. To ask a contrasting question, what's so important about having children that you need to rush into it on the off chance you'll be unable to later?
im in the "wish i had em earlier" camp assuming the same partner.
i was not prepared for how much a kid would change me - so i spent more of my time and effort on priorities i would one day drop.
another thing i think about is grandparents. having kids earlier would mean longer time with grandparents! (heck, maybe one day my time with potential grandkids)
off topic - i understand my parents so much more now that im a parent. i think being a parent has helped heal my relationship with them. grandparents are awesome and i wish i had more time with mine.
100% on this. In my life I have 0 regrets except not having kids younger. I was never especially fond of kids, but it turns I out love my own more than I imagined possible, and have more fun with them I ever thought I would! I only wish we could have many more but given when we started, the odds of having more than 2 are very low. The amount of joy and life they bring to you and to your house is something you can't really appreciate until you've had them. To say nothing of the sort of fulfillment and life satisfaction they bring.
My parent's goal was to get me to go to college. My goal for my kids is to teach them the importance of having kids early. The fact it might help in having a grandkid or two before I kick the bucket is just a wee bit of icing on that cake. I think the ideal time to start is probably in your 20s. This also maximizes the amount of time you'll get to spend with your kids. I'm quite 'jealous' (sans the negative connotations) of those who will get to see their kids live til retirement, but hey - they made wiser decisions, so hopefully I can help encourage my children to do the same.
I for a change am happy I had my kids in late 30s / 40. I am certainly wiser, way more experienced with world, humans, got to be successful and in much better financial position which also helped my parents to have better retirement.
I wasn't a full adult in my 20s, too naive, too trusting, undefined for the lack of better words, not experienced with various types of women (laugh all you want, this was probably the most important experience from all for me, it afterwards formed my choice of wife which is often the most important choice in one's life).
Plus I've managed in a decade before having kids to travel the world backpacking, various experiences that changed me for the better and basically reinvented myself, on my own. I don't come from competitive or nurturing environment, nobody expected anything from me. I've found my passions in various mountain/extreme sports. None of that would happen if I had kids earlier, thats very clear when looking at peers who took the other trajectory.
If my kids will have their kids young or older is completely up to them, I find it selfish to push any expectations on them, they (will) live vastly different life compared to me, I can just respect their choices and love them regardless.
I think your example of e.g. being able to provide a better retirement harken back to what times were like in the past. My parents and theirs on back had children quite young. It gave me a life where I was able to know my great grandparents. I didn't really appreciate it, or anything, at the time - but I hold those memories dearly now, in hindsight. And it also created an environment where social security, so to speak, was never any concern - you have about 20 relatives who are mostly all working together to make a better life for themselves, and always there for each other. Everybody was dirt poor, but you would never know it from what we were able to have.
If people start having children in their 40s then statistically grandparents will simply no longer be a thing, let alone great grandparents. And people's family sizes will substantially decline. I think that's quite sad from all perspectives, and also significantly detrimental. For instance there is so much I want to pass onto my children about having children (and I'm sure much I've yet to learn myself) but none of it will really 'stick' until they themselves have children. If they wait until their 40s then I'll most likely be dead by then.
And what we do we get in exchange in this sort of world? Slightly greater liberty to pursue self indulgence? And I think "slightly" is correct because you're right that self indulgences do become more difficult with children, but far from impossible, and even less difficult with large families. Want to head off to the mountains on the weekend? Sure, that's what grandparents are for!
> I was never especially fond of kids, but it turns I out love my own more than I imagined possible, and have more fun with them I ever thought I would!
This. I’m an old dad. I realized two years ago that to keep up with my pre-teens I had to change my lifestyle. For me that meant cutting out alcohol, not eating processed foods, avoiding sugar, reduced caffeine, way more protein and doing calisthenics. I sleep well and I have energy. I just have to keep this up for 10 more years when my youngest will be 21, then I can die. ;-)
Same here in almost all ways, except the caffeine. What was the benefit there? My hot pots keep me going. Once my wife hits menopause I might also consider TRT. I'm almost certainly not low by the standards of the average American, let alone for my age, but it's gonna keep falling as I age and wouldn't mind that extra oomph.
Previously, when my head touched the pillow I was asleep. Two years ago I noticed that wasn’t happening and I would wake frequently through the night. I cut back my caffeine intake and my restored my sleep. Without knowing the physiological reason I assume my metabolism is slowing down and I had to alter my lifestyle to fit to it, hence my strict diet now. The calisthenics has been awesome for me. I love the progression moves to unlock skills and levelling up. Pushing weights just to stack more plates wasn’t motivation for me - cali is. It replaces my caffeine.
As for menopause, or more accurately, perimenopause, my wife has been in that for years. (She’s an old mom) She started HRT about 6 months ago and it has been amazing. She no longer wants to murder me or anyone else that irritates her.
Yip peri is also where we're at right now. Still trying and hoping for another kiddo. Glad to hear it can last for years at least there's a bit more chance.
My dad was 42 when I was born, and he was keeping up with me on hikes in my early 20s (his mid 60s). I haven't done much hiking with him lately, but he's going on 50 mile bike rides at 70.
I think having kids late can help people stay young longer, if you let it.
> I do feel that 30 year old me would definitely be in better shape to chase kids around.
Can confirm that starting at 30 makes it relatively easy to keep up. Still not early enough though. Wish I’d started at 25.
It’s mostly a matter of effort though. You’ll become very good at it out of sheer need if you genuinely want to keep up. In far better shape now than I was at 30, mentally and physically.
I have almost no experience of archery and this annoyed me. So many close shots of Odysseus or other soldiers limply firing arrows that look like they'd barely make it five feet. But the next shot is a soldier getting barrelled off his feet by the force of it...
If anyone is at all interested, "War of the Arrows" [0], while taking some liberties (string twisting for trick shots, ex), as it's a movie, is a pretty accurate portrayal of warbow archery. The plot is shallow - boy saves girl - but I enjoyed it. It's in Korean, but very watchable with subs.
Funny you mention LotR, coming out of the theatre after watching The Odyssey I thought "man, if only Peter Jackson had made this".
The landscapes were often gorgeous, but otherwise I thought it was all a bit dull unfortunately. Can only imagine what it would have been like if someone as detail-obsessed as PJ took it on.
I had been using LineageOS + microG for many years on my Pixel 3. I upgraded to a Pixel 8 and tried out GrapheneOS and the install experience was good, but I found some odd performance quirks - apps would be slow to install and run, downloads were slow, etc. Has anyone had similar issues?
Many apps that work on microG don't work in GrapheneOS without installing Google services anyway. I'm by no means across the full privacy implications, but my feeling is microG balances privacy and usability better for me.
I've since switched back to LineageOS+microG and am happy with it. Just my experience.
>but I found some odd performance quirks - apps would be slow to install and run, downloads were slow, etc. Has anyone had similar issues?
not sure about downloads specifically, but app installs are slow because grapheneos forces AOT compilation (JIT is disabled), presumably for security reasons.
A lot of developers are lured into building in a dependency on Google services, so yes you'll need microG or, as GrapheneOS prefers, the original Google code running on your device for those apps to function. Or patch the app, like Langis does for Signal (not necessary for it to function without Google in this case, but it removes its calling out to Google's apps and services for those who don't want that). If you're happy with that setup and don't need protect-from-the-government levels of security (street thugs aren't going to ransomware your device by abusing an unlocked bootloader or send exploit chains that work on anything but the hardened allocator), LineageOS is probably the better choice for you. GrapheneOS has some nice things like easily denying the network permission for an app (even if they could theoretically work around it with intents) and having a custom A-GNSS server, but you can do the same on LineageOS by using root and something like AFWall+ for the network and configuring Graphene's A-GNSS (SUPL) proxy in the system settings (don't forget to donate if you use it and are able)
GrapheneOS is designed for everyone, including average users. It does not require a high threat model, and the features it provides are not only useful to people with high threat models.
Contrary to popular belief, exploitation of vulnerable devices is a lot more common, and a lot easier than people pretend it is. You dont need to be targeted either, mass exploitation can, has, and will occur.
LineageOS does not have privacy, security, or usability comparable to GrapheneOS. LineageOS is missing many important features and falls behind android updates. GrapheneOS will be the far better choice in all 3 of these categories.
The features GrapheneOS provides, such as the network permission, cannot be replicated with a firewall app. The network permission properly covers all forms of network access for an app, where firewall apps do not have the ability to prevent all network communication. They are leaky.
The AGNSS servers and proxies are very, very tiny aspects of what GrapheneOS provides. You would be losing out on many more high impact privacy, security, and usability features.
Root access and an unlocked bootloader are insecure, even for low threat models. These devices are vulnerable and should not be used for any sensitive data.
LineageOS is not the better choice for any privacy, security, or usability usecases relative to GrapheneOS.
The rest of the comment consists of even vaguer statements about how it's better in every way and then (circularly) drawing the conclusion that it's always the right choice because it's better in every way. I have no idea how to respond to these opinions than either writing a book that goes into every subtopic you're touching on, or just concluding "ok that's your opinion". Maybe consider that others may disagree by having different values and priorities than you, and so it's not strictly always the best option
You cant respond to any opinion because I have not provided any. Security is objective. What security someone may need can vary, yes, but that does not change how the security of a device works. You are downplaying serious issues and claiming features that nearly everyone benefits from are unnecessary.
Every month, vulnerabilities are published and publicly accessible. The more out of date a device becomes, the more vulnerabilities are available. This is made worse when the integrity of the operating system cannot be verified and root access is exposed. Avoiding this is not a high level threat model, that is the bare minimum.
I can't usually describe that well why I did or didn't like a movie, so it's fun when I read a review that does put into words how I felt about it. It gives me a deeper perspective on my own feelings about the movie.
Shout out to Vince Mancini, my personal go to film critic.
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