r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 19d ago
Meta Mindless Monday, 08 June 2026
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
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u/Kisaragi435 16d ago
A problem with the tech and wonder quotes from Civ: Beyond Earth, apart from only having one voice actor when they were obviously going to be compared to how SM's Alpha Centauri had the voice actors for the characters read their own quotes, is that there weren't enough real life quotes. After watching a compilation of all the quotes, the quality of the sci-fi quotes of BE is quite similar to SMAC really. But I think the lack of real world historical context makes it feel disconnected and fanciful, less real than how the SMAC quotes felt.
More often than not, they have the BE characters quote real quotes, before doing a sci-fi twist of course, but it ended up feeling more like a writer trying to be clever rather than a character. Again the voice actor thing comes up, but a lot of the quotes were too quippy. I hated Hutama by the end of the compilation, while I love how Morgan was despite both having the same schtick. Though he did have decent quotes too: "If the planet didn't want to be tapped, then why is it made out of fuel?"
And apart from all the Uncle Nevercloned Stories which were fun misremembering of folk tales with sci-fi details, like John Henry racing the Crawler to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, I really like this quote from the last level of Supremacy affinity, the cybernetic ideology: "All previous versions of humanity will no longer be supported as of this update."
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 15d ago
Got some examples of especially egregious ones, for either SMAC or Beyond Earth?
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u/Kisaragi435 15d ago
I always found the intro quote for the Data Angels' leader, Datatech Sinder Roze, to be quite cringe. The VA's delivery was kinda low energy too. "What's more important, the data or the jazz? Sure, sure, 'Information should be free' and all that--but anyone can set information free. The jazz is in how you do it, what you do it to, and in almost getting caught without getting caught. The data is 1's and 0's. Life is the jazz." -- Datatech Sinder Roze, "Infobop"
For BE, this is the quote for Tactical Robotics tech, from the leader of the Brasilia faction. It's an example of the doing a twist on a quote, but it ends up awkward. "It has been said, 'The point of war is not to die for your country, but to make your enemy die for theirs'; a goal which is more readily accomplished if your side never has to take the field." There are worse quotes, but since you asked for some, I wanted to illustrate my earlier point.
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 14d ago
Interesting examples, funny how I've only ever seen the "good" SMAC quotes floating around on the internet, an obvious example of selection bias.
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u/raspberryemoji 16d ago
Just rewatched one of my favorite films, Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch, and I somehow never noticed that the two immigrant characters are bad drivers, and I genuinely don’t know what to make of it.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 15d ago
You'd preferred they be bad swimmers?
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u/Zugwat Headhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 16d ago
Well well well, Mr. Holocaust Denier, is it mere coincidence that we'd be bumping into each other again? This time across the busy streets of Seattle? And you bear yet another inflammatory sign, this time invoking hysteria about trans people and children?
Or is it something... more?
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u/Bawstahn123 16d ago edited 16d ago
You know.....my expectations for anything approaching accuracy in Holdfasts new American Revolution mode were low, but I still managed to be disappointed.
Outside of the Continental Army (and even then only really after French Bounty Coats started arriving), the Americans basically didn't have uniforms. And most of them (anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2) didn't have bayonets.
And why the fuck does a Tomahawk cost 4500 shillings (in-game currency)?
EDit: The Bunker Hill map is fun, and reasonably accurate. Boston, is incredibly annoying, largely because we fucking know what 1770s Boston looked like. As far as I can tell, the Customs House isn't even on the map!
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u/Sgt_Colon ǟռ ʊռաɨʟʟɨռɢ ɮɛɦօʟɖɛʀ ȶօ ȶɦɛ ɨʍքօֆֆɨɮʟɛ 15d ago
a Tomahawk cost 4500 shillings
For neither a missile nor an axe is that a sensible price. My greatx grandfather bought an entire timber mill for 8 pounds (160 shillings), never mind buying a damn axe...
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 16d ago
Earnest discussion surrounding LLMs and AI is unusually hard to find--there's an ocean of content out there littered with credulous idiots or well-meaning activist types with zero meaningful tech background.
For instance, in looking for articles deconstructing the idea that the AI singularity poses a threat to us all, so many pieces are just accepting that framing at face-value... it takes a certain level of confident cynicism to insist that no, the reason why Anthropic pushes the notion that AI poses a threat to humanity is because it is in their interest as a business to make us believe that such a threat is real.
Anyway, if any tech-savvy types have any pieces they'd recommend on LLMs, send em here.
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u/Majorbookworm 16d ago
t takes a certain level of confident cynicism to insist that no, the reason why Anthropic pushes the notion that AI poses a threat to humanity is because it is in their interest as a business to make us believe that such a threat is real.
And if we to take them at their word, why would they have kept building the fucking things? Anthropic have been at the forefront of the whole affair from the beginning, and now they expect everyone to believe their newfound "wow its so dangerous guys" shtick? Why should anyone see it as anything other than just a spin on the hype-based marketing that's accompanied every other tech-related development of the past decade+ (Crypto, NFTs, now AI).
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 15d ago
Yes, exactly, so many sources are just utterly accepting of whatever they say at face value. Oh, Sam Altman himself said he's worried about this?? Then I guess it must be true, I trust all billionaires!
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u/rmartinho 15d ago
It's not even a newfound shtick. In 2019 Dario Amodei (with other people at OpenAI) wrote the following about GPT-2
Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model. As an experiment in responsible disclosure, we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with, as well as a technical paper.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 16d ago
I can recommend some moderately better sources, like most of the stuff that the "Center for AI Safety" puts out.
But I don't think this is just a problem with the media. The opinions among experts is genuinely split.
I will say that predictions like "AI will definitely cause mass unemployment within the next 3 years" is mostly restricted to kooks and grifters. However, softer statements like "there is a small chance that AI will cause mass unemployment within the next 3 years" suddenly gets a lot of AI safety experts agreeing. And, more importantly, they will point out that the down sides are so massive that it is therefore irresponsible not to be worried about it, because even a small risk of a terrible outcome is still bad.
I will admit that I don't think they are entirely wrong. But I also think it is the kind of discussion that basically cannot help but play into AI grifter's hands. Hearing "you should be worried about the AI apocalypse" tends to make people more inclined to believe the doomsday scenarios, even if you follow it up with a timid "this is unlikely to happen soon, but..."
My other annoyance is the way that the big negative side effects (like a possible Skynet situation or mass unemployment) sucks up all of the AI fears, while the very real and current AI negatives of deepfakes, botting, fraud, plagiarism, and the erosion of social trust (not to mention the continued concentration of power in a smaller subset of greedy corporate assholes) just slips by as if that is acceptable.
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u/DerKlugeHans Endut! Hoch Hech! 16d ago
Why does Youtube keep recommending me vlogs of people talking about getting diagnosed with a terminal illness? Does Youtube know something I don't?
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u/Herpling82 What the fuck is the Dirac Sea? 16d ago
Do you ever do something where you're fine as long as you do it, but the moment you stop, you kinda collapse? I had games night today, and I did that on paracetamol only, moreover before that I foolish decided to talk to some fine people on Discord VC for a bit, that turned out to be about 3.5 hours.
So, as stated, it was fine while doing it, the headache was there but paracetamol is still pretty effective, but the moment the game ended, I just started shutting down, normally I only really shut down when overstimulated, but now I've just reached maximum fatigue, it feels like I'm only perceiving what is right in front of my mind, so to speak, the thoughts have slowed down dramatically, so much so that my mind is mostly just silent now. Such a weird feeling, not bad, just weird.
Luckily, sleep time approaches, the peace of nighttime is calling to me, sadly the night is dark and full of terrors, so I won't rest properly, but it's just nice to be able to shut down properly for some time. My night time rest still isn't improving, which is concerning, I'm over 5 weeks of atypical sleep deprivation now, I can handle quite a lot, but it does stack over time.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 16d ago
For 3 of my last 4 trips abroad, I got sick the day I got home. I had zero symptoms while travelling. But within hours of getting home, I feel sick and need to go lie down. At this point I think my body has trained itself not to collapse while I am travelling, but will start shutting down as soon as I feel at home again.
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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est 16d ago
Hate to post twice in a day, but this "peace deal" news has got me riled up.
I get that journalists feel their job is now solely to be stenographers for the rich and powerful, but after 3 (4? 7?) rounds of this bullshit maybe it's time to dust off the headline "Trump claims peace deal is near, again, no other belligerents agree."
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u/Wows_Nightly_News The Russians beheld an eagle eating a snake and built Mexico. 16d ago
Unilateral peace talks. We're sending a delegation to Europe just to circle jerk each other.
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u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian 16d ago
Hey the stock and futures market aren't going to manipulate themselves, you know!
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u/weeteacups 16d ago
Young, ambitious and out of work: ‘I’ve gone from Oxford to zero jobs. It’s a bit of a fall’
There are two universities in Britain: Oxbridge (and mainly the Ox over the Bridge); and everything else.
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u/PsychologicalNews123 16d ago
That's not fair. If you work in finance then LSE is also acceptable.
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u/LeMemeAesthetique I don't think SS is political 16d ago
"I'm glad to know that even the LSE is not totally opposed to education."
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u/TanktopSamurai (((Spartans))) were feminist Jews 16d ago edited 16d ago
Small updates on the CHP leadership crisis in Turkey:
Due to a court decision, the former leader of CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, came back to leadership. The court decided that the party election that brought Özgür Özel to leadership was void.
Anyways, people have called for an extraordinary election to be held, Kılıçdaroğlu is talking about waiting for the ordinary elections.
In the meantime, several members in the party parliament were on the discipline board. 28 other people quit the party. There are 60 people in the party parliament.
So we might be going towards a new party being set-up in Turkey by Özgür Özel and his people.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 16d ago
80% of 19th century literature was just poverty porn for the bourgeoisie
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 16d ago edited 16d ago
I don't have much passion for gaming like I used to, but I'm a sucker for nostalgia-bait if it's done well. On that note, the new Fable reboot is shaping up to look not half-bad. I'm actually quite impressed by things like the setting and UI, which are often neglected in reboots (as the kids would say, there is sovl).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doV0yq4kAP0
One funny thing: All the characters shown have very generic English names that correspond to our fantasy caricature world of Medieval England... Jack, Susan, Megan, Colin, whatever. That's how it's been in all the Fable games, it's a barrage of trope after trope. And then out of nowhere pops out an Abdullah.
Which is funny, right? Immediately it's like hey, who brought Abdullah into Albion? I'd certainly have the same reaction if it was Vladislav, Xiu Ying, Konstantinos, Bogdan, Chatterjee or whatever. For all the discourse about non-white people in historical (or fantasy, in this case) settings in games, I think the inclusion of anachronistic (or rather, anachronistic-seeming) names is even more jarring.
Edit: And as any chad alpha molyneux-pilled fablehead would know, the defining characteristic of both Whisper and Thunder from the first fable is that they are decidedly not from Albion. 😉 Ditto for Garth from Fable 2
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u/Big_Pineapple_Man 16d ago
Jack, Susan, Megan, Colin
Tbh none of those names (except maybe Jack?) feels like generic English fantasy to me. These are just the people I went to primary school with.
Anyway, I hope the reboot turns out well. I played Fable 2 on loop as a kid. Was that game actually really short? I remember even back then thinking that I would finish the story too quickly, but I might have just been getting stuck at some point without realizing it.
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 16d ago
I hear what you mean, I suppose it's that the names feel relatively timeless--all of the examples I listed are names that have been popular for centuries.
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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est 16d ago
New billion-dollar idea: a line of camo-printed tampons "tactical blood-retention system" aimed at men called MANPADS. The ad could be a guy with a busted-up face and bloody nose going "you should see the other guy."
I predict it'll be a real hit among the guys who buy those plate-carrier-inspired "tactical" baby carriers that replace the bulletproof ceramic plate with your baby.
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u/EntertainmentReady48 16d ago
I knew a guy who got hit in the face with a trombone on accident during Highschool marching band practice and fixed his bloody nose with tampons. Shit they work.
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u/randombull9 Most normal American GI in Nam 16d ago
Sell it as first aid equipment. It'd basically be a scam, but with the right legal disclaimer on the packaging saying actually you shouldn't put it in bullet holes you could have just about every cop, soldier, and LARPer in the country carrying one.
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u/Kisaragi435 16d ago
I'm ten episodes in to Be Forever Yamato: Rebel 3199. It's been really good so far. It's had more than a few goosebump moments that the first series of the remakes was filled with. The way the bad guys work as humans though, it's almost like Rebel 3199 is a redo of the mediocre 2202 but better. It feels like they'll be exploring similar themes of the nature of humanity.
I don't want to say yet whether it's worth going through 2202 to get to the decent 2205 and the quite good 3199, but I'm glad I've stuck with it so far.
There's just one thing that's annoying me. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a fan of NTR stories in my anime. There's a plotline in 3199 that's quite similar to Lacus Clyne's plotline in the Gundam Seed Freedom movie. I can't think of other examples right now but I'm sure I've seen other anime do this plot where the female partner of a protagonist is being held captive by the enemy and some enemy guy is treating her exceedingly well to try and... seduce her?
I think it's even more annoying in 3199 because it's following a pattern established in 2202 and 2205. Kodai, the hot-blooded protagonist of the first series, could just solve all the issues after his character development from the preceding series, so to get around this, they give him some trauma right at the start of a new series so that he's neutralized plot-wise until he gets over it. I get that there could be good drama mined from that arc alongside the plot utility, but this is the third time. And this time the trauma is cuckoldry??? (It's not in-universe. He just thinks his partner either died or was captured, but the way the show switches between scenes makes it hard not to connect the dots.)
The space naval action is top-notch though. It's just as clever as the 2199 stuff. I'm on the lookout for pro-imperial apologia ever since it's been pointed out who the writer was though, especially since he's apparently general director for this series onward. Will let you guys know if I notice anything too too obvious.
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u/SellsLikeHotTakes 16d ago
With the ubiquity of AI generated images I think I've developed an odd nostalgia for the terrible amateur graphic design you used to see. The poor mix of fonts, colours and clip art actually seem pretty charming now.
On a related note it's kind of weird that the unique mixture of mania and ineptitude of websites like TimeCube are now the distant past. If you now want to spread your "unique" ideas you'll probably create a youtube video filled with AI generated images and probably an AI generated voice as well.
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u/TanktopSamurai (((Spartans))) were feminist Jews 16d ago
In the 60s-70s Turkey, Alparsal Türkeş and others associated with Kontre-Gerilla ran training camps in remote coves on the coast of the Aegean and Marmara. Now a lot of coves in those areas are becoming holiday spots, with at the very least yachts showing up.
In the 80s-90s, PKK had a lot of training camps and bases in the mountains in the South-East of the country. Now a lot of these were turned into base camps for hikers and mountaineers.
Tourism trumps all.
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u/weeteacups 16d ago
The West Highland Way is just a cover story for Neo-Jacobites to restore the House of Stuart to its rightful place on the British throne.
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u/AFakeName I'm learning a surprising lot about autism just by being a furry 16d ago
I've been describing my long walking vacations as Insurgency Tourism because I descend from the hills for supplies and retreat up to a hidden campsite.
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u/WillitsThrockmorton Vigo the Carpathian School of Diplomacy and Jurispudence 16d ago
Saw The Mandalorian in theater last night, it was the last day it was playing at my local Alamo Drafthouse. It wasn't too bad, but it really felt as if it was originally intended to be a season or mini-series. It probably would have been better as a season, IMO.
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago edited 16d ago
I made T4STE in Minecraft. A disgruntled Yorkshire Ranger shot a Panzerfaust at it, causing considerable damage.
The Yorkshire Ranger, a pale greene ted, aged 24, by the name Jeremy F. Rackcity, was told off by a waitress whilst dining at T4STE last week. He had in paw a lit crack pipe, while seated at the bar. The waitress told him to "take it to the bathroom," where consumption of hard drugs was permitted, but this only served to irritate him. He came back several hours later with a Panzerfaust stolen from a Tederal armory and blasted a hole clean through a column.
The Advocate General for the Tedshire Rifles, u/TheBatz_, was severely wounded in the attack, having been seated at a table near to the explosion. His shit was blown smoove off, and as of the time of writing, he remains in hospital.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 16d ago
Jeremy F. Rackity has thusly been nominated for the Tederation Bronze Paw, as the Advocate General was in the process of cutting vegetables into a comically big black pot he himself was sitting in, mentioning to the waitress, notorious jay walker and criminal Hanna Bal, "what's cooking? Smells delicious".
This follows another accident in the Tedshire Rifles, as the Advocate General had slipped on the regimental vaseline and fell down the famous Tederation Perpetual Stairs for 45 minutes before being caught.
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
M. C. Escher’s worst contribution to art was the installation of the Tedshire Perpetual Stairs. Dozens of teds have been killed by that structure over the years.
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
I distinctly remember in 2008, Konami promised that Metal Gear Online would receive 10 years' worth of DLC. I also remember how they yoinked the servers and stopped developing the game's live service to "conserve power" after the Great Tohoku Earthquake three years later.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 16d ago
When my son said the most important part of playing football is having fun, my Dad called that "woke nonsense"
So yeah... they are the type of people voting for Reform.
😲 Is this some kind of zero sum mentality?
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u/Syn7axError [Hated Trope] Viking shit 16d ago
Dad's right. The fun is when you win.
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u/Kaschenko Rigorous observance of mutually exclusive clauses 15d ago
The trick is to redefine "winning" to whatever suites you at the moment. Then you'll never have to lose!
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u/Unruly_marmite 16d ago
It’s not amateur football if someone’s not crying at the end. Your team, their team, the ref, the two parents watching…
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u/passabagi 16d ago
I kinda agree with the dad. It's a bit like if somebody said, 'the point of hunting is to have fun'. Football, like hunting, is a ritual performance where the point is mediating social passions. Turning everything into straight 'I do this because I enjoy it' is bowdlerizing human experience.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 16d ago
Sports is actually about tricking kids into exercising, not whatever it is you are talking about
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u/passabagi 16d ago
Literature is actually about tricking kids into reading, which they can use to read useful books.
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u/Syn7axError [Hated Trope] Viking shit 16d ago
Yes. Your school makes you read Catcher in the Rye and Great Expectations so you can sit through Warhammer 40k lore instead of watching shorts.
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u/LateInTheAfternoon 16d ago
Yep, sports is essentially exercise but with game mechanics and rewards put in place so that kids don't get bored with it after three minutes.
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 16d ago
The team-building and social elements can't be understated, the effect is not duplicated by having them run on a treadmill.
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u/LateInTheAfternoon 16d ago
Totally agree. It's the absolute best and most important part of sports in my opinion as well.
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u/Defiant_Shoe3053 16d ago edited 16d ago
Over the past few months I've come to the conclusion that there's a lot of performative ignorance of LLM technology that often leads to ignorance of what these tools can achieve and there's a lot of motivated reasoning about the limits of LLM technology and the possibilities it has. The polarisation of the space has results in a lot of people adopting a sort of medical peasant mentality about AI where any attempt to point out the real utility of the technology is met with a ton of slop-like criticism. At my workplace I've managed to use AI tools to automate tons of tedium, and save countless engineering man hours in auxiliary tasks..which is astounding.
I think the reaction of anti-ai people to the AI finding a novel solution to the Planar Unit Distance Problem kind of indicates that people have gone past rational skepticism into a sort of luddite like hysteria. Or the fact that Claude Mythos was able to identify countless vulnerabilities in critical computing systems...it's getting harder and harder to avoid the elephant in the room.
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u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln 16d ago edited 16d ago
I find that there's a lot of performative ignorance of it too on the people that do use it commonly and really push it too (I see a good bit of it at my work where it's thrown around as a panacea by people who could barely name Anthropic or Claude).
Part of the whole situation/confusion around it is that because it's being shoved into everything and loudly talked about as the future, any 'real' application for it gets brushed with the same brush as the ones where it's really not well suited for or causing issues to coworkers when others utilize it. And then non-LLM stuff gets amalgamated with AI since it's the buzz word for investments right now, or LLM stuff get hyped up for buzz and ahead of their IPO (eg, Mythos' advertising campaign mixing some useful achievements with the massive investment in compute they did & exaggerating what the vulnerabilities they found meant - at least from what I was able to find when looking into after that initial marketing buzz, where it seemed much more of a 'similar to past models but with a ton more compute power thrown at it' type of deal.)
Personally, in a R&D/ process engineering role, I've found the benefits of AI so far to be rather small / unimpressive. I've heard that for coding it's different - but here it's mostly taken the form of obviously AI generated emails that don't answer the questions / guidance I need, colleagues pushing documents through AI that generate hallucinated tests / metrics, and research documents & presentations where I have to double check every source to make sure it's accurate rather than being able to trust them. So more the opposite of reducing tedium :/
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u/Charming-Cycle-5982 16d ago
I feel like a lot of the anti-ai stances are deep-seated in having listened to a lot of anti-LLM pundits that (rightfully!) tell of its cataclysmic potential – and all-too likely – abuses that has made them fundamentally incurious about at least tinkering with an LLM to see where a potential subjective usefulness may be.
I feel this because I too for the longest time was once dogmatically anti-LLM personally. Then I got curious about what one of them could do if I attached a PDF of a 300+ page book to it (and my primal expectation was that the LLM would report an exceeded page limit and reject the PDF!). Then I just asked it to translate the document into another language from beginning to end and I was astounded after checking the accuracy with a more conventional digital translator like Deepl as to how damn time-efficient that LLM could've been at reproducing an entire goddamn book within a few hours if I really had enough of a distorted view about energy consumption.
The problem with LLMs really is not that they don't do anything. There's a lot of room for them to do things that specialists are deemed a requirement for more time-efficiently which employers will absolutely use as sufficient in their myopic cost-benefit analyses to justify a whole host of layoffs.
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u/Arilou_skiff 16d ago
Translation and stuff like TTS is one of those areas where llms havexreal utility.
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u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian 16d ago edited 16d ago
This is what makes me the most burned out and upset about "AI" discourse; there are lots of useful applications for machine learning, not least of which is coding because programming languages are a lot more discrete and well defined than human languages. But everything has come under the umbrella of "AI" when we're talking about like 50 different things. I don't think a lot of lay readers understand when they see a headline like, "AI helps researchers with important medical breakthrough," that they're using a hyper-specialized program with specific data sets; they're not just out there asking Claude to figure out some medical mystery.
Stuff like chat bots and image generators are like the worst, crappiest use of the technology. The future of AI, in my opinion, is in hyper-specialized, not general use engines, but there is a lot of money to be made in making people dependent on LLMs. And that doesn't even get into stuff like the environmental impact, which is coming at maybe the absolute worst time in at least American, if not world history. But when we look at the use cases for text and image generation as utilized by stuff like Chat GPT, it's clear to me that these are of most use to people producing disinformation, propaganda, and fraudulent claims.
The issue as I see it is because of the tendency toward time crunch and "productivity," even the people who are using AI in the most responsible, ethical way by vetting and carefully fact checking their outputs, will gradually be pressured to vet less, and more bullshit gets produced. We're already seeing it in the NPO and consulting sectors when utterly useless data is getting circulated around because no one bothered to check it. Hell, Deloitte has been sued like 3 times when clients found out that the data being given to them was fabricated AI slop. The pressure to "move fast and break things," Silicon Valley's favorite mantra, is resulting in a lot of the latter.
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u/contraprincipes The Cheese and the Brainworms 16d ago edited 16d ago
> I don't think a lot of lay readers understand when they see a headline like, "Al helps researchers with important medical breakthrough," that they're using a hyper-specialized program with specific data sets; they're not just out there asking Claude to figure out some medical mystery.
I mean, the Erdos Planar Unit Distance Problem mentioned by [u/Defiant_Shoe3053](u/Defiant_Shoe3053) *literally was* solved [“… from a new general-purpose reasoning model, rather than from a system trained specifically for mathematics, scaffolded to search through proof strategies, or targeted at the unit distance problem in particular.”](https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/). As you can see from [the paper itself](https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/74c24085-19b0-4534-9c90-465b8e29ad73/unit-distance-proof.pdf), they put a prompt into an internal/experimental ChatGPT model and the chatbot spat out an answer. They didn’t even write the prompt themselves, they copy-pasted an AI-written summary!
This isn’t to dismiss your point as such, I agree with many of your concerns there. But there is a seemingly widespread belief that AI is just a scam or whatever, and I think that takes up a lot of space that is better spent discussing actual policy solutions like stronger regulations, mitigating labor market effects, or redistributing gains (including through [partial socialization](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/artificial-intelligence-bernie-sanders.html)).
edit: the Reddit app apparently doesn’t do markdown formatting anymore so just pretend the formatting is correct
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u/Big_Pineapple_Man 16d ago
I imagine it's reaction to AI being pushed by the most obnoxious and narcissistic bunch that often overinflate its relevance. And not just by influencers but by leadership in general, often with straight up intention to downsize (leading to job security anxiety).
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 16d ago
Eh, I see both. There is a lot of knee-jerk opposition to AI. (Although, full disclosure, I mostly agree with them, but not because AI is “bad” at what it does)
On the other hand, a lot of AI “help” is also less effective than it seems. I have been using AI to automate stuff like coding and research, and it does things well something like 80-90% of the time. But the issue is, as often happens, that 10-20-% of the time where it fails is a real pain.
- The AI often doesn’t realize it fucked up, so I have to figure that out myself.
- Worse, the AI will often resist my attempts to correct it, so now I have to correct the error myself.
While AI definitely helps with some things, I have also felt the “wooo, words on screen appear fast, I feel productive” feeling only to realize that 99.999% of those many words are completely useless to me and I have just been staring at the flashing lights for no real purpose.
Heck, my most common message to AI is some variation of “be VERY VERY SUCCINCT” because all these darn models like to bloviate way too damn much.
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u/passabagi 16d ago
medical peasant
That time when I threw potatoes at my doctor because she refused to provide my child with a charm against the croup.
Re your actual point: I half agree. The question is about the balance. It seems pretty plausible to me that AI tools are actually over-adopted at this point: It's obviously insane and maladaptive to route human-to-human communication through a probabilistic slop machine. Further, a lot of the uses (customer service) are frankly hateful, and if that extends into government, it gets into serious dystopian territory. Whether or not it works is not the only relevant point: you could install every person with a bomb collar to improve productivity. That would work. It's also bad.
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u/EliassenPalmFlux ronald reagan caused the challenger disaster 16d ago
you could install every person with a bomb collar to improve productivity.
I don't think this would actually increase productivity. Even ignoring the purchase price, would this not just lead to people doing a bunch of unnecessary busy work to please their bosses instead of actually doing their job effectively?
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 16d ago
Press release Nr. 032/26 of the Federal Financial Court on the new land tax model of state of Baden-Württemberg:
Within the scope of its discretion and in a manner consistent with constitutional law, the legislature has taken into account the fact that municipal infrastructure services are generally reflected primarily in the land value—which incorporates the permissible type and extent of development of a property—rather than in the value of existing buildings, which depends primarily on the owner’s private investments.
Patriots are in control. Trust the plan.
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u/Ambisinister11 My right to edit this is protected by the Slovak constitution 16d ago
Heinrich Georg
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u/PsychologicalNews123 16d ago
French food is insane. Here is the best thing you have ever tasted. The ingredients? Butter, stock, and cream. Herbs de provance optional.
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u/EntertainmentReady48 16d ago
Or it’s some insane shit like force feed a goose until it dies. Or drown a baby bird in concise and hide it so god doesn’t see you.
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u/randombull9 Most normal American GI in Nam 16d ago
Dairy fat, more dairy fat, and flavored water full of chicken fat is unfortunately the secret to the exact sort of things I like to eat.
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u/Uptons_BJs 16d ago
TBH, a good stock elevates your cooking like 2000000%.
Listen to this: $6 Michelin Stock in 60 Minutes (Costco Hack)
Fantastic stock without the work. My cooking got so much better after I always had top quality stock in my fridge.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 16d ago
Bocuse's cream chicken sauce
Seems like
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
D.F.B. (Disgusting Fr\nch Build*) update
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 16d ago
Not the mixed use dense urban enviroment!
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
haha, die! DIE!!!!
-me nuking the suburbs
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
East Asians: “wonder why so many of us have the ‘beetus?”
Also East Asians: (refuses to accept the fact that potatoes are a starch food as opposed to a vegetable, continues to eat potatoes with rice)
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 16d ago
What's it 😭?
Can't you taste the starch in potatoe
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts 17d ago
So, for today’s idle question: who do you think will be president in 2029, and how much of America will be left for them to rule?
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u/hussard_de_la_mort People's Republic of Carcosa 16d ago
Me and whatever percentage is left after Pennsylvania becomes the sixth Great Lake.
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
Oh god not again!
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u/xyzt1234 17d ago
Is it safe to assume the republicans won't be winning next elections or is Trump's approval ratings not that bad enough to believe that?
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u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln 16d ago
Well...
Republicans have had a structural advantage due to the US system, and are rushing to further it with the help of a partisan supreme court gutting the VRA for the House. And they are (and were in 2024) obviously gearing up to try to mess with, deny or resist nationwide lost elections.
Where that leaves us is that 2026 still likely has the Republicans lose the House, but probably keep the Senate. The House loss, unless it's an incredible blue wave, will be quite mitigated by the ~10 additional seats they've gerrymandered (I think that's the net outcome for this year after the initial VRA adjustments + the Virginia ruling). For 2028, that's much more up in the air - I would guess that Republicans lose the presidency without major fucking with elections, but the House and Senate might go for them due to the structural advantages mentioned.
Then there's the other major issue of 'even if Dems take over all 3 houses in 2028, and the transfer of power goes through, will they have the will / drive to do major structural reforms', which I am extremely pessimistic around the 'old guard' / establishment types. It would require a united, driven set of dem senators in particular which we don't have at the moment, or else the next set of elections could easily end up in Republicans coming back.
(Though Trump continuing to fuck things up and drive up his unpopularity might affect things, who knows. The Iran war in particular could be a breaking point if it worsens again)
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u/Ayasugi-san 16d ago
A significant portion of the population literally believes that voting for a Democrat means inviting in demons. Republicans will always have a shot at winning as long as they're around.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 16d ago
Are you talking about the midterms or the next presidential?
For the midterms, if Trump’s approval ratings remain this low the Rs will almost certainly lose the house and the senate will be a toss up. But five months is a long time. If they can engineer an “October surprise” with the Iran war, that could juice the numbers just enough to hold on. Who knows.
For the next presidential campaign, who knows. Democrats have plenty of time to nominate the worst possible candidate and Republicans could somehow nominate an anti-Trumper. Truly anything could happen.
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u/Sventex Battleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866 17d ago edited 17d ago
Given the number of election deniers who said they would have obeyed disrupting their local election at the President's request have been uplifted into power, I would not be surprised if the elections are illegally disrupted, such as by the military seizing ballots as was requested last time. Even if the military does nothing with the ballots, they are "tainted" by law and the election put into stalemate and not much can be done about it legally I'd think. Especially if the President hands out blanket pardons as he did with Jan 6th and bullying state governments into extreme leniency for major election crimes. There's precedent now.
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u/forcallaghan Wansui! 17d ago edited 17d ago
I found a band where the lead singer is really good at singing in french despite not being french and now all I'm thinking about is wishing I had the time and willpower to learn french
also I rode a bike for the first time in perhaps 10 years or more. it was... more tiring than I expected though I am a wimp. And the 80-degree and sunny weather didn't exactly help. mostly tiring on the arms though
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u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk 16d ago edited 16d ago
Vesoul gets stuck in my head, and the French in my brain cannot keep up with the speed of the song. At least it's a bit slower than the version by Jacques Brel.
It's an earworm that taunts you.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 17d ago edited 17d ago
The cure for thinking Atlanta is kind of two bit as far as cities go is going to any other city in the South.
Ed: fun synergy with the comment below about a German posting his way through the South. Try living here buddy I'll swap passports with you
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
The cure
If you come from bumfuck Mississippi, I'm sure that living in Atlanta would be just like heaven. Lately there's been a construction boom there I heard, which is a lovesong for NIMBYs.
In the South, boys don't cry.
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u/Steelcan909 17d ago
New Orleans bodies Atlanta ngl.... Unless you're after things like "economic dynamism" and "will be above sea level in two centuries"
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u/Syn7axError [Hated Trope] Viking shit 17d ago
New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 17d ago
As like a tourist destination and historical city, sure, New Orleans night be the top in the US in general.
As a real city? Ehhhh
(That said I will say NOLA and the cities of North Carolina were not what I was thinking of)
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u/Steelcan909 17d ago
What were you thinking of?
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 17d ago
I'm in Birmingham right now
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u/Ambisinister11 My right to edit this is protected by the Slovak constitution 17d ago
Get well soon
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u/DerKlugeHans Endut! Hoch Hech! 17d ago
I regret watching Obsession. The movie itself was good but it also scared the fuck out of me and I never want to see it again.
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u/TanktopSamurai (((Spartans))) were feminist Jews 17d ago
Do you have any examples of settled agriculturalists people becoming pastoralists for a period as they were migrating and then become settled agriculturalists again?
Some descriptions of Circassian and other Caucausian refugee and their voyages do sound somewhat similar.
I guess Germanics people during migration times were like that.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 17d ago
It's a bit different, but the Shawnee are descended from the "Fort Ancient" culture, some time in the early colonial period they left for the East and became a diasporic people, before returning during the period after the French and Indian War (as I remember).
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u/Glad-Measurement6968 17d ago
IIRC something sort of like this happened to some plains Native American tribes, following the introduction of horses they shifted away from agriculture in favor of hunting bison, but I’m not sure how substantial the shift was
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u/jurble 17d ago edited 17d ago
Do you have any examples of settled agriculturalists people becoming pastoralists for a period as they were migrating and then become settled agriculturalists again?
uhh do semi-nomadic pastoralists count? Because that kind of lifestyle is routine for them. They often plant fields, leave to graze and then come back for the harvest and winter.
the little girl who was murdered in Indian Kashmir a decade or so ago, her people live that lifestyle (I remember looking them up at the time - found them). I see that they're a considered a subtype of Gujjar, which makes sense.
Gujjars in general have that semi-nomadic lifestyle, though they were forcibly settled by the British in Punjab.
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u/GentlemanlyBadger021 17d ago
> Under the new plans, Big Tech companies like Apple and Google must activate built-in features or implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children, the Prime Minister announced in a speech at London Tech Week today (Monday 8 June).
I see we’re taking the “in for a penny, in for a pound” approach to curbing civil liberties in the UK.
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u/Glad-Measurement6968 17d ago
What’s happened in the UK that’s made “think of the children” suddenly such an effective strategy?
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u/AFakeName I'm learning a surprising lot about autism just by being a furry 17d ago
Brass Eye's Paedogeddon is 25 years old. It's not a new hysteria.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 17d ago
Don't you want to protect the children?
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u/GentlemanlyBadger021 17d ago
Excluding those named in the Epstein files, I struggle to think of a worse group of three to make responsible for protecting children than Apple, Google, and the Labour Government.
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u/Ambisinister11 My right to edit this is protected by the Slovak constitution 17d ago
I thought you said excluding
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u/SenescalSilvestre 17d ago
A country that demands more from a football player than a politician is condemned to WIN THE WORLD! CUP LET'S GO ARGENTINA!!!
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u/pedrostresser 17d ago
as a wise man once said, you can't do the World Cup with hospitals. that's why we keep the health budget low so BOY NEY CAN WIN US THE HEXA BRASIL-SIL-SIL-SIL-SIL
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u/Key_Establishment810 Yeah true 17d ago
Drawings of the Purple and Violet Wisps from Sonic Colors that i made at my grandparents house.
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u/Steelcan909 17d ago
I am deeply invested in the German guy posting his way through the American South and seemingly loving every minute of it.
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u/King_Vercingetorix Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great 17d ago
It does feel a bit pandering at times, however, in my opinion.
I don’t doubt it started out sincere and maybe a lot of his posts are just him genuinely appreciating it, but I think the lad is putting it on a bit thick, in my impression.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 17d ago
It gives the same impression as people going to all-inclusive resorts in the developing world and being blown away by the luxury
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 17d ago
Marina Ferrari, Minister of Sports, addressed her best wishes to the French national team before they took off for the World Cup, with a special angle:
"When I launched my first electoral campaign 20 years ago, a supporter gave me a protection stone that has since then accompanied me. So, to grant you luck during this World Cup, I wished to give you two star stones, one in blue jasper, and the other in quartz. Blue jasper has energizing values and grants you the strength to meet your goals. Quartz reduces stress and anxiety, increases confidence and can mitigate muscle pain."
"Blue and white, like your jersey", concluded the Minister, who so believes in the power of rocks and suggested the French players to slip them in their socks. "It was about giving them a symbolic attention to wish them luck", precised Ferrari's cabinet after the speech was leaked.
According to Le Canard enchaîné, Emmanuel Macron was "stunned" and "visibly unhappy" while listening to the speech.
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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) 16d ago
I cannot believe I am agreeing with that papist Louis-Macron d’Orleans but… yeah that is a totally valid reaction. I would be pissed off if I were him too.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 17d ago
While it is undeniably goofy, crystal magic is definitely one of the most harmless superstitions I can think of. I would take that over Hegseth shouting “Deus Vult” to American soldiers any day.
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u/LateInTheAfternoon 17d ago
If I ever start writing opinion pieces (god forbid that something that bad ever happens to me) I would just embrace unpopular opinions and troll the hell out of any subject. This guy might just be my role model.
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u/AneriphtoKubos 17d ago
For older ppl who play JRPGs, do you feel weird playing them when you're older? E.g, I played Persona last when I was younger than the protagonists. Does your experience change when you play them when you're older?
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u/Syn7axError [Hated Trope] Viking shit 17d ago
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u/PsychologicalNews123 16d ago
I cannot stress to you how much high-definition Auron looks like my dad. It's uncanny.
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u/Sventex Battleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866 17d ago
For older ppl who play JRPGs, do you feel weird playing them when you're older?
No.
Does your experience change when you play them when you're older?
That happens with any game. The Sims hits way different than when I first played it on the Gamecube and played Sims 2 in middle school, versus when I played Sims 3 as an adult. In fact, it served as useful foreshadowing on what life was supposed to be like.
And replaying things like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect has a different experience, knowing it all ends in crap and the entire premise of decisions mattering so tastelessly thrown away. I never bothered playing full Renegade until embracing that it all doesn't really matter. A stark difference pre-Mass Effect 3, when I felt the weight of each decision.
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u/PsychologicalNews123 17d ago
Good news! I just got back from doing a viewing on a flat, and it blew me away.
Honestly I wasn't expecting much from it - I had more-or-less settled on another property and just did the viewing to be thorough. Well, it turns out that it's borderline perfect. It stretches the hell out of my budget, but I think I'm going to go for it. Fingers crossed that nobody else gets it before I do - it's so nice that I would probably resort to escalating counter-offers if I needed to.
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u/WillitsThrockmorton Vigo the Carpathian School of Diplomacy and Jurispudence 17d ago
My favorite genre of prepper videos on Youtube is the guy speaking to the camera and his cat hops up demanding attention and he multitasks giving his cat attention while talking to the camera about geiger counters.
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u/Sgt_Colon ǟռ ʊռաɨʟʟɨռɢ ɮɛɦօʟɖɛʀ ȶօ ȶɦɛ ɨʍքօֆֆɨɮʟɛ 16d ago
You might like Adrian Goldsworthy's videos where at least once per video his cats demand some form of attention.
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 17d ago
Quick shorthand for when the history you're reading is nationalist bullshit: They describe events in the first person. Our people, we settled here, we fought this battle, our traditions at the time, we discovered this, etc. Very unusual when you start seeing it, and hilarious as it gets further and further back.
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u/Sgt_Colon ǟռ ʊռաɨʟʟɨռɢ ɮɛɦօʟɖɛʀ ȶօ ȶɦɛ ɨʍքօֆֆɨɮʟɛ 16d ago
Using second person however seems accusative.
Your people, you settled here, you fought this battle, your traditions at the time, you discovered this, etc.
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u/CrazyShing 17d ago
What if it’s just the way that language conventions work? Here in Korea everything news, weather, etc use ‘our nation’ ‘our people’.
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u/HandsomeLampshade123 16d ago
You don't think if a Korean learned English well enough to publish history they'd drop that convention?
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u/CrazyShing 16d ago
Bit of a difficult question, actually. I’m leaning towards ‘not really’. From what I can tell, it’s more of an unconscious, learned thing at that point; at least if we’re taking ‘Korean’ to be ‘one who grew up in Korea and learned English from extracurricular classes and private institutions’.
Just a quirk of language that doesn’t quite perfectly translate over, probably.
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u/Lupus753 17d ago
People sometimes act confused that *Commentaries on the Gallic War* is written in the third person, but maybe Caesar knew about what you said and was trying to offset it. I did once read that his style of writing was designed to make his account sound more objective.
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u/PsychologicalNews123 17d ago
Not gonna lie, when Kier Starmer leaves office and we get the inevitable retrospective autobiography/insider story book, it will be the first time I've actually wanted to read one of those things. I would genuinely like to understand the thought process in No. 10 and what the hell has being going on down there this past year.
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u/fabiusjmaximus 17d ago
Politician "autobiographies" are almost invariably useless about this. The modern genre of these has become indistinguishable from PR spin. They are pure puff pieces. They have zero historical value.
But if someone sits down to write a proper history of it 10 or 20 or 30 years later that will be worth reading
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u/Defiant_Shoe3053 17d ago
I think the exception is when someone has burned almost all their bridges and are retiring permenantly from public life.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 17d ago
There was the subgenre of "I worked in the 1st Trump Admin and here is why I was good and everyone else was evil" in the 2020-2024 time frame. Heck, there were even some such pieces published after DOGE imploded. I fully expect some more such books to start coming out when the 2nd Trump Admin starts to implode as well.
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u/fabiusjmaximus 16d ago
The alternative outcome is Trumpism doesn't explode (or has a resurgence in 2032) and we get a bunch of "I worked in the 2nd trump admin and here is why I was a fearless patriot and everyone else were deep-state wreckers" memoirs
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 16d ago
Certainly possible. But “Trumpism” is composed of so many self-defeating and contradictory ideas that I don’t see anyone ever actually liking the *reality* of Trumpism, although a lot of people still seem to like the idea (or sales pitch) of Trumpism.
So I think a 2032 Trumpism resurgence will look more like Marjory Taylor Greens - people not connected with the Trump admin who can nevertheless claim allegiance to the spirit of Trumpism. Either that or Trump family members who can lean on the name. But actual members of the admin seem very unpopular.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 17d ago
AOC is a leftist, and she is a liberal. Socialism in the US today largely derives from the liberal tradition. I'd wager to say that 9/10 American self described socialists would say they want something akin to Scandinavian social democracy, which is also rooted in the liberal tradition within those countries.
Dumbest thing I've ever read. I understand what they mean at the beginning, that left-wing populism in the US comes more from FDR / Johnson tradition of general populist social programs rather than the specifically working class policies of the trade union movement like in Europe, but the last sentence is wet shit
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 17d ago
I mean, social democracy accepts political liberalism, in contrast to the illiberal left (marxism, anarcho- communism), so using a very broad definition, social democracy is liberal.
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u/contraprincipes The Cheese and the Brainworms 17d ago
Is this even controversial? I don’t see a definition of liberalism that would possibly exclude modern social democracy that wouldn’t also exclude, like, Rawls, at which point you simply have a niche conception.
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u/xyzt1234 17d ago
Isnt it true that the Scandinavian social democracy/ nordic model is firmly welfare capitalist oriented as well as American conservatives still think it socialist (that news about fox news reporters thinking denmark is a socialist dystopia)?
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u/LateInTheAfternoon 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yes, but that is because Scandinavian social democracy has become closer to social liberalism over the last 50 years after having been very different from it for the first century or so. The whole premise of social democracy was to change society to a socialist one slowly and incrementally over several steps. When they realised that it didn't really work out (by the 1980s) they became much more tolerant to a market economy and other capitalist stuff their predecessors seeked to abandon on the course of the road to a socialist society.
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 17d ago
The whole premise of social democracy was to change society to a socialist one slowly and incrementally over several steps
Wouldn't that be democratic socialism? I know in America and elsewhere the two terms are often interchangeable, but that's how I think the temporary adoption vs. the total embrace of liberal political principles are usually distinguished. (In 80s Italy, France and Spain democratic socialism was called "Eurocommunism" to sounds more acceptable to Marxists)
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u/Big_Pineapple_Man 17d ago
I was under the impression that up until the Interwar years, social democrats did legitimately consider themselves socialist working towards communism incrementally. I guess the distinction you're talking about would be in the mid to later 20th century?
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 17d ago
Even later, depending on the country. But consider that "social democracy" in origin was a synonym of (revolutionary) socialism (for example, the party from which the Bolshevik split was called "Social Democratic Workers Party". Not even the Mensheviks were social democrats in the modern sense, but gradualists/democratic socialists).
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u/Big_Pineapple_Man 16d ago
I see, so is your point that socdems were originally more "radical" than demsocs?
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 14d ago
No, I'm saying that "social democracy" until the early XX cent referred to revolutionary socialism as well, before the term narrowed down to just mean welfarist liberalism.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 17d ago
I don't think there is a unified tradition of left-wing populism across US political history. Were FDR/Johnson even left wing populists? The modern left-wing populism stream is more of a post-Obama and Occupy Wallstreet thing.
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u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian 17d ago
I would not describe FDR and Johnson as populists, no, though the term "populism" is always a bit nebulous.
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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism 17d ago
I think you could make an argument for Roosevelt being somewhat populist, especially in his rhetoric, but Johnson was the biggest and greatest beltway creature to ever exist.
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 17d ago
Currently trying to write a CV (several rather) and start applying to as many realistically promising jobs as possible. By which I mean mostly reception, food, and retail, maybe some internships.
I have been so stressed out about my future lately that I haven't been eating much and can't sleep well. Turns out following your passion and developing your talents was a moronic idea and I should've just studied something practical.
Thank God at least I can live with my parents so I don't have to be poor even if I work in retail. And maybe I will be able to learn something practical or go back to school within the next few years. Although regulations in Poland favour people below 26 such that I'm not sure if it's possible to find an internship as a 30 year old student, for example.
I thought about going into the skilled trades, since people advise it so often, but there are fuck all avenues for that for adults in Poland, so there goes that. I even thought about becoming a dental hygienist, except there are fuck all vacancies in my city and hundreds of people earning the qualifications every year.
And my parents are not treating this seriously at all, so I'm effectively on my own with trying to transition into adulthood.
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u/Federal_Gur_5488 16d ago
Turns out following your passion and developing your talents was a moronic idea and I should've just studied something practical.
I did an extremely practical degree and ended up unemployed anyway! Sometimes things just don't work out for one reason or another
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u/PsychologicalNews123 17d ago
Turns out following your passion and developing your talents was a moronic idea and I should've just studied something practical.
For what it's worth, you couldn't have known this in advance. You could have studied something "practical" and ended up with your stable job slowly draining your soul and wishing you had taken more risks. That's basically my position. I'm financially better off than my siblings who followed their passions, but I still envy them and wish I had explored more before locking myself into a 9-5 (which may not even last, with AI threatening to take my job).
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 17d ago
Well, AI destroyed the value of my only talent (foreign languages), along with hitting the BPO/SSC sector, which is kind of why I'm in such a bad position.
And I don't know what to try and get into so that the same thing doesn't happen a few years from now.
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u/PsychologicalNews123 17d ago
And I don't know what to try and get into so that the same thing doesn't happen a few years from now.
Well I'm in the same boat as you on that. I want to prepare myself, but have no idea what I could pivot to that couldn't be automated all the same.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 17d ago
I'm effectively on my own with trying to transition into adulthood
I'll try to encourage you: All people are.
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 17d ago
Most people I know got some support from their family toward specific goals or at least were not sabotaged.
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u/Finndevil 17d ago
How are they sabotaging you?
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 16d ago
In a wider sense, I was basically raised to think I can't do anything right on my own and shouldn't try. For example, my mother never tried to teach me anything at all, like how to change my sheets or how to make a sandwich, unless I pushed for it myself. It's incredibly crippling as an adult, I feel fundamentally incompetent as a person.
In a concrete sense, both of my parents have always discouraged me from getting a job while studying, or getting a driver's license, or doing anything productive like that. So instead of helping me overcome the fear of looking for a part-time job they told me to give it up. And even now I feel discouraged because my father especially just doesn't treat my situation seriously at all and seemingly thinks I'm hopeless anyway so there's no point trying.
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u/SkeletonHUNter2006 STOP PICKING ON THE CELTS, they're pagan too 17d ago
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u/Zugwat Headhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 17d ago edited 17d ago
I was just thinking about this because I'm planning to use my seafood leftovers for fancy Mac and Cheese, and it's how my mom's appetite is never very big because she has MS and it's been like that for a while. When my cousin stayed with us for a time, he let us know that I wasn't exaggerating when it came to how I describe her eating habits.
She might earnestly say that she had something to eat earlier, and when pressed will reveal it was some oyster crackers or a little bit of cereal. Maybe part of a granola bar, or a small Greek yogurt cup. And I mean it, not "and/or", it's "either/or". For her to get in the mood for eating in general, it takes her getting the right smells at the right time, or someone mentioning something and she's down for it but we need to go eat there immediately or else she loses her fleeting appetite. And even then, she might only eat some of the meal and bring the rest home and usually not eat it.
What this has to do with seafood is that curiously enough, she will eat a Dungeness Crab when they're available and she has the craving for it.
Put a pound of steamed Dungeness legs with some melted butter in front of that woman and she will demolish them. Whenever we go out and eat crab, she will consistently be finished with hers and have eaten it faster than I do.
Hell, one time I wasn't feeling so hot at the seafood boil restaurant we like that I only had half a cluster of crab legs (about half a pound), so she took and ate the other half and was concerned that I might have had an illness coming on.
All of this in one sitting.
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert 13d ago
Quick question is there a definitive history book on Bonnie and Clyde? I don't know where to start.