Continuing on the theme of nerds misreading culture, here’s Asimov with abundant sour grapes about Nineteen Eighty-Four
https://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
Via HN, where no-one bothers commenting on the fact that the piece is hosted on a Marxist-Leninist, anti-revisionist website.
Such a great description
desperately trying to latch themselves onto the coattails of whatever passes for cool among nerds these days
Not one, but two utterly out of touch LWs trying to interact with culture.
Earlier today, woke Proust get slammed by some young 'un direct from college: https://awful.systems/post/7140871/10327823 (note that they can take time off to read Recherche, even going to the length of spending time in France, which tells me they don’t really have to worry about getting a job or anything)
And now, someone tries to “explain” the perfectly spherical explosion at the end of the Akira movie with the fact that atom bombs in Japan really looked like that because humidity, utterly forgetting that the explosion in question was psychic/telekinetic and therefore probably follows its own damn rules on visual appearance
I swear to fucking god both LW and HN have the worst takes on culture in general and SF/F in particular.
I happen to know there are multiple translations of the novel into English, and I’m confused as to why the reviewer refers to
My copy was the 2016 Moncrieff/Schiff English translation
which doesn’t really mesh with anything here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time#English-language_translations
Not that it matters much in the end.
Enjoy sneering at this LWer tackling Proust
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j3ZtsYBYBcTTFXH5S/in-search-of-lost-time-a-review
Edit it has garnered one comment so far
Thank you for the service you have valiantly rendered to us all, by making our own reading of these books unnecessary.
You know what? I don’t think Proust would have disagreed with having rats avoid his novel.
Huh, I just realized yesterday that my car (also a late-model VAG model) does have a touchscreen that reacts to gloved fingers. This was the base infotainment system, not Carplay.
Unfortunately the steering wheel controls are touch, not physical. A big downgrade.
Good luck. There’s a lack of trained electricians here in Sweden, which amazes me, it sounds like a decent job for someone with a technical bent and some handiness. Better than plumbing (no disrespect to plumbers, love them, but not the work I want to do)
1,604 comments jfc
they’re already pivoting to the narrative that “local models will be plenty good enough and it will be trivially affordable to run them”
Anecdata here, I’ve been unemployed 2 times in the last 3 years and both times I mostly used LinkedIn to look for leads. Had some ok comms with recruiters too .
Depends on where you are and what kind of jobs you’re looking for but for computer janitoring like me it worked ok
Called it, 2 years ago: https://lobste.rs/c/fhob3x
actually didn’t call, had forgotten all about it
Freshly minted LWer does LLM-assisted analysis of LLM Facebook and concludes that the bots are conspiring to take over
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Et7dgiBjSj2zJnGuM/unicode-ekfv
No thought to the fact that (at least AFAIK) there’s no verification that the posting entity is actually an LLM, and not a cheeky human stirring things up
aka the Minsky defense
LW ghoul does the math and concludes: letting measles rip unhindered through the population isn’t that bad, actually
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QXF7roSvxSxgzQRoB/robo-s-shortform?commentId=mit8JTQsykhH6jiw4
The Ruliad sounds like an empire in a 3rd rate SF show
Orwell had Julia working in the novel factory - where machines spliced together romance trash pablum for light entertainment. So he accurately prophesied LLMs.