underline960

joined 2 weeks ago
[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago

Does that mean that people who lose their ability to reliably form new memories (like anterograde amnesia or Alzheimer's) experience reality like a dream?

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 14 points 13 hours ago

Clickbait. They basically say replacing contractors with AI is business as usual for Duolingo and that the real crisis is DOGE.

Here's the article:

Duolingo announced plans this week to replace contractors with AI and become an “AI-first” company — a move that journalist Brian Merchant pointed to as a sign that the AI jobs crisis “is here, now.”

In fact, Merchant spoke to a former Duolingo contractor who said this isn’t even a new policy. The company cut around 10% of its contractor workforce at the end of 2023, and Merchant said there was another round of cuts in October 2024. In both cases, contractors (first translators, then writers) were replaced with AI.

Merchant also noted reporting in The Atlantic around the unusually high unemployment rate for recent college graduates. One explanation? Companies might be replacing entry-level white collar jobs with AI, or their spending on AI might simply be “crowding out” the spending for new hires.

This crisis, Merchant wrote, is really “a series of management decisions being made by executives seeking to cut labor costs and consolidate control in their organizations,” and it’s manifesting as “attrition in creative industries, the declining income of freelance artists, writers, and illustrators, and in corporations’ inclination to simply hire fewer human workers.”

“The AI jobs crisis is not any sort of SkyNet-esque robot jobs apocalypse — it’s DOGE firing tens of thousands of federal employees while waving the banner of ‘an AI-first strategy,’” he added.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 20 points 13 hours ago

Thank you for putting this behind a content warning.

I mean, I still opened it, so that's on me.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 1 points 19 hours ago

There's a DreamWorks logo in the bottom left.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 4 points 20 hours ago

Easy to use, multi-threaded, light... weight? (I'm on mobile, using a VPN, so I'm guessing that's why it failed me. Unless...)

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 13 points 23 hours ago

I would agree if we stopped making marriage the end goal of relationships.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I remember a Freakonomics episode that described an experimental alternative to traffic cops: a "good driver" lottery.

If you're "caught" driving the speed limit, you get entered into a lottery. Less adversarial relationship with traffic cops and more drivers would be incentivized to drive safe more often.

Edit: It was apparently an article, not a podcast.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I see a lot of well-meaning support for this. I can't help but think there has to be a way to implement these kinds of controls without taking power away from the user.

Like the Fediverse implementing better mod tools rather than expecting Twitter to effectively moderate the internet.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What movie is this from?

In our world.

I would consider Wheel of Time as an example of fantasy with reskinned real world cultures.

Andor is essentially a landlocked version of England, having a "Lion Throne" and ruled by a queen. Cairhien and Mayene bear similarities to France (Cairhien has the Sun Throne; Mayener names are reminiscent of French). Arad Doman resembles Arabic countries and Iran. (source: TV Tropes)

It's well-written, but by nature of being fantasy, it sidesteps the challenge of writing meaningful interactions between real world communities.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If I were to check him out, what book should I start with?

19
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by underline960@sh.itjust.works to c/books@lemmy.world
 

The authors who manage to clear the low bar of incorporating characters/communities from diverse cultures into their fiction without cultural appropriation/stereotyping/racism... who are they and how do they do it?

I know many writers sidestep the difficulty altogether, either by creating a fictional universe with cultural proxies (fantasy stories/video games with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian analogues, I'm looking at you) or by writing in the distant future where the cultures have blended into new ones with flavors of the past (sci-fi does this a lot).

I've seen so very few authors do it well, but I do believe it's both possible and worth doing.

13
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by underline960@sh.itjust.works to c/books@lemmy.ml
 

The authors who manage to clear the low bar of incorporating characters/communities from diverse cultures into their fiction without cultural appropriation/stereotyping/racism... who are they and how do they do it?

I know many writers sidestep the difficulty altogether, either by creating a fictional universe with cultural proxies (fantasy stories/video games with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian analogues, I'm looking at you) or by writing in the distant future where the cultures have blended into new ones with flavors of the past (sci-fi does this a lot).

I've seen so very few authors do it well, but I do believe it's both possible and worth doing.

view more: next ›