GBR48 comments

quote: Any computer based technology is only as good as those who make it or program it, and guess who makes and programs it........humans.

Usually yes. What is different about this tech is its reliance on human generated content. No matter how well designed it is, no matter how well programmed it is, its reliance on a mish-mash of content, a good deal of which is obsolete, inapplicable, inaccurate or contradictory, torpedoes it below the waterline. There is simply not enough reliable, relevant content out there for what they are trying to do.

Many of the concepts are valid and could be used in specific applications, but the software they are currently offering is inherently flawed.

It should be lower. A persistent cross-party determination to cut the US (and its allies) off from other markets, the theatrical joke that is the annual horse-trading over passing a budget and the extreme polarisation are all typical markers of a banana republic. Looking ahead, the imprisonment of the likely opposition candidate at an election and the potential for civil conflict that might result are huge red flags. The US has an enormous deficit, an issue only softened by the impossibility of Biden's Nationalist Reboot, as the US will lack skilled workers and materials to do it. Every other major building programme in US history has relied on migrant labour. They are way behind on a green transition and EV use, and still have an oil-driven economy. One party will dig its heels in there, and the Democrats can't stay in government forever - nobody does. The icing on the cake would be a brain drain when the Taliban finally get in, ban abortion nationwide, and those best able start to escape. Like the UK, a complete mess.

If you charge more for 'treat' foods, many families will still buy them, but have less cash left for healthy food.

Healthy food is actually cheaper than processed food, but people are a mix of too busy/too lazy to prepare it. Exercise can also be done in your home (and for free if you are inventive).

Some kids react to their parents' weight/childhood diet, but most follow it. So the issues may primarily be the behaviour of the parents.

The easiest, most affordable and practicable solution is a mix of education (teaching kids to cook healthy meals in school) and better parenting.

No government is going to be able to end crime/inequality/poverty simply to reduce obesity.

Inflation has seen local authority funded leisure centres and pools closing all over the UK. A high inflation, high cost economy will see fewer facilities globally, and that decision has already been made with trade barriers, Brexit-style rules, migrant labour blocks and a new cold war. The future will be more expensive, there will be more poverty, fewer services and less food. So don't expect improvements there.

Banning everyone from eating treats just to stop a minority from becoming obese is puritanical fascism.

For the majority of people who don't have a medical issue, it is a matter of eating a bit less (and avoiding fat/sugar/salt), drinking a bit more water (reducing alcohol/caffeine), and doing some daily exercise. Overcomplicating it by looking for causes of causes of causes, isn't always helpful.

quote: “This isn’t fixable,” said Emily Bender.

Agreed.

You need to restrict the frame of reference so strictly to get accuracy, it slips below the point at which the system could be called general purpose.

I will always prioritise a company that uses real people to offer customer service over one that uses chatbots.

Very useful. Essential when buying many items. Persistent issues are often picked up by multiple buyers. It's easy enough to read them critically, to get what you need out of them. Check both the reviews and the submitted questions.

quote: someone threw a bag containing the ashes of her own mother at superstar Pink.

When I read stuff like that, I can see why hikikomori might want to stay at home.

Everything lacking from England's first two games made an appearance v. China. Passing, speed, accurate shooting, good movement. Maybe they just needed to bed in as a team again. England players - male and female - don't easily adapt to tournament football. Wiegman seems to be able to make them click. They are finally playing again. The French have to be favourites. Holland, Japan and Brazil are strong. The US can't be discounted, but Sweden won't fear this American team the way everyone used to. The Aussies are playing well and have home advantage. It's going to be interesting.

News is generally bad. So the more news you read, the more depressed, stressed and anxious you may become. Thus, Meta are doing wonders for the health and well-being of the people of Canada by shielding them from accidentally accessed news. Those who wish to self-harm will just have to turn on the radio or TV, surf to a news site or read a paper.

The overwhelming majority of nature reserves in developing countries depend upon ecotourism. You get to see the animals up close without interfering with them. If you don't go, the reserve cannot pay its way, and the animals get hunted or the land used for farming. For most threatened reserves, the pandemic tourist bans took them to the edge of being wiped out.

If you stay at home and watch TV, you lose the animals and the environment they live in. Humans can be beneficial to animals. The lazy activist assumption that our presence destroys them is not true. Ask the foxes, squirrels, hedgehogs and birds that come to my back garden to eat every night. We can get along.

Being second to Trump isn't so bad if Trump ends up in prison, as he wins by default.

If DeSantis bans the US and its allies from anything Chinese, they will lose access to many of the core resources they needs to function economically (or transition to a greener economy). And forced labour (as workfare) is a really bad idea. Like the Tories in the UK, he is targeting non-STEM degrees to force people to replace migrant workers instead. That's a really bad plan too.

Right wing populists love taking a wrecking ball to things. It fails and they slink off blaming others. Then everyone else has to clear up the mess they made for years to come.

He's not selling a viable alternative, just snake oil - like every other politician out there. None of them know anything about how people function, or about how economies work. They just want us all to follow their idiot ideology down a blind alley whilst they accidentally make a stash of cash.

Social media is not the problem. It is a mirror of society. Conservatives happily live in Conservative bubbles. Liberals happily live in Liberal bubbles. Neither wishes to interact with the other, aside from hurling abuse. The political polarisation of American society is the work of politicians, taking more extreme positions to win votes, weaponising many aspects of life creating a culture war and radicalising their supporters. Blaming social media for all that is like blaming your thermometer for climate change.

Many countries are making this tougher, but if you are young, don't have responsibilities and have good language skills (Thai is a good deal tougher than Japanese), it is an option.

There will always be racism and it can progress into hate crimes and pogroms when the economy gets tough and nationalism increases. So be aware of the risks and have an exit strategy.

Getting out of any dictatorship is a good plan, but you have to pay the bills wherever you go.

The other group doing this are retirees. Despite Brexit making it tougher, many older Brits still retire to Spain, Portugal or Greece. Turkey has been advertising for tourists with considerable success and may be the next major location to open up for retirees.

Progressively winding the nation back to the Middle Ages. Who needs crypto when you have goats for currency. Just escape whilst you can. Nations that handed the Afghan people back to the Taliban should accept as refugees anyone who wishes to leave.

Insurgents are far more effective. Programmed drones cannot be jammed. Learn from the tactics of protestors who spend little but maximise impact. Infrastructure is much less resilient nowadays as it often has a digital component, but sabotage can still be effective. If you want the moral high ground, be very fussy about targets and clinical in hitting them.

There will always be somewhere to go. If a city doesn't want tourists, fair enough. Do the right thing and cross them off your list. They could also ask to be entirely removed from sites like TripAdvisor, and shut hotels down. Just picking on AirBnB is discrimination.

The Japanese government might like to restrict inbound tourism to a rich minority, but that won't offer enough widespread support to keep tourism afloat. A tourist economy requires mass tourism. Rich people are simply too selective about spending their money. That's what the casinos were for, but it didn't go down too well. Ultimately extreme weather and higher costs may ease excess tourism globally. Push enough of the population into poverty and everyday things will become luxuries for the few.

quote: The strategy’s language is vague, obscure and almost noncommittal.

You better hope it is. Force the pace faster than is viable and food will vanish from the shelves whilst prices will rocket. The rich will retain access to anything, but the rest of us will be on increasingly meagre rations.

Costs will rise anyway, so you might not be as middle class as you thought you were in a few years time. Making ends meet? You may not be soon. That's what an inflated, high cost/high interest rates economy means. More poverty. More hunger. More homelessness.

Change takes time. Bulk carriers cannot be knocked up in Lego overnight. As for EVs, the infrastructure needs to be rolled out. It's not point and click.

If the EU push too fast and tax too much, they can be locked out of international trade (as they may be out of some digital services). More food and supplies for the rest of us. Finally, a [potential] Brexit bonus!

Older people are more likely to want or need to stick with cash. This forces them to use digital or starve when bank branches close. Unpleasant. Governments and corporates should stop destroying the quality of our society just to save a few bucks. Retain cash, services, human-based customer services and a society that isn't restricted to doing everything on a smartphone that can be tracked and monitored 24/7. Japan's elderly people hold reserves of cash and electoral power. They need to flex those muscles.

Purely in aesthetic terms, it looks undersized, weedy and a bit crap.

Animals and plants are not that dissimilar in some ways. Plants knock out a wide variety of variance in seed to improve the chance of enough surviving. There is typical and rarer atypical variance. The atypical variance in a scattergun insurance policy for maintaining and evolving a species when the typical variance just won't cut it.

In animals, that variance usually manifests itself in adaptations that might give an evolutionary advantage amongst a wide variety of random differences. The majority are typical, minor differences in height, weight, muscle, vision, sensitivity etc. Some are much rarer. Take syndactyly for example - webbed digits. It happens in humans, whilst all dogs are born with webbed paws. Most lose it very early in life, but some, like Newfoundlands, retain it.

So, could humans produce a virgin birth? Feasibly. All the genetic data and reproductive equipment is actually there to produce a clone. Fertilisation of an embryo would be required for a standard birth, so you would need an atypical clonal embryo that didn't need fertilisation. If the genetic data is present, don't rule it out. Someone, somewhere, may have had some explaining to do.

India are the next China, with all that entails. The BRICS group is on the other side of the fence from NATO. These are red flags. Be wary with your money and your IP.

Most women's colleges/universities were founded to open up new opportunities to women, who were often excluded from existing universities or colleges. Pre-modern, gender segregation was often the norm, so there had to be a women's university or college for many women to get any graduate level education. They were generally not women-repressing wife factories.

Those that remain do so because they believe that their students benefit from the exclusion of men. Some will, some won't.

I was lucky that my comprehensive school offered both genders the opportunity to do needlework and home economics/'domestic science'. Our cookery classes were hugely popular with both boys and girls - a highlight of the week. We got to eat what we produced, which was as good as school got. Cookery is one of the fundamental life skills. A dependency upon processed foods and prepared meals (or even dining out) is the fast lane to a poor diet and obesity. And if I had the time and space, I'd buy a sewing machine.

Governments are targeting non-Science courses (the UK government plans to limit them). They want to push their citizens into science subjects or manual labour to replace migrant labour. It won't work particularly well. And they stand no more chance of a 50/50 gender balance in tech than in trainspotters. But it is good to offer greater access to courses. Female students don't always feel so comfortable when they are in a minority in a class, so having digital courses in a women's university is a good thing. Japan is not renowned for flexibility, modernisation or change, as most commenters note, so support it when it happens.

This sounds good - having a solar farm without losing your crops, and benefiting from shade. It's possible the panels make it hard for pest species to see the crops, whilst some birds will avoid confined areas. Research needs to be done on the effect on animal species. The panels may also offer protection from increased wind and heavier rain.

Kawagoe. Needs pedestrianisation and some rules about advertising and signage. The route from the station also needs to be marked.

Kyoto is choked with traffic because the rail network doesn't convey people to tourist attractions. This results in bus/taxi jams.

I knew Kinkaku-ji would be rammed, so shuffling along in single file wasn't a problem. I think most people are aware that tourist sites in Japan are going to be busy.

In general, the crowds don't bother me. People generally flow like water in Japan. In places like Takeshita Street and Nakamise Street, the crowd adds to the vibe. Just be careful of people walking out of a station and then stopping to get their barings, not realising that fifty people are behind them not expecting to suddenly stop.

There are plenty of places you can go that are not full of tourists. Japan has lots of shrines and temples, many smaller ones being wonderfully atmospheric. Uguisudani is smack in the middle of Tokyo and famous for its love hotels. But I stood in Jomyoin Temple at twilight, surrounded by really old graves and sculptures, the sun setting, shadows lengthening, absolute silence, nobody else there. It was mesmerising. Kaneji Temple was a short walk away, also atmospheric. If you want a solitary experience, scan Google Maps, check areas around stations and do some research.

There are plenty of Japanese gardens too, so do your research and head for the less well known ones that are a bit further out.

There is no justification for banning any book on offer to adults. Adults can make up their own minds on what to read. In the US, I guess librarians could have designated shelves for books that only Republicans would enjoy and shelves for books only Democrats would enjoy, to keep them all happy. Keep them well away from each other to avoid fights. Curating for extremists can be added to the librarianship degree course.

School libraries will be victims of the culture wars. There will inevitably be censorship due to witch hunts by the left and the right. But kids grow up. They discover books that were banned from them. In many cases, banning a book makes it more interesting to them.

They should have been doing this a decade ago, and the government should have been supporting it.

New ICE vehicle sales will be restricted and then ended before EVs are available at the same number and price points as new and used ICE vehicles, especially in the used market. At that point, used ICE cars, parts and maintenance will rocket in profitability.

quote: where are the start-ups that want to participate in a circular economy.

They started up decades ago and are now facing closure, as described above.

Many of these small craft-based/skilled-manual industries are fundamental to a 'circular economy'. They build things that can be fixed and repaired, and can fix and repair them, serving local customers. Lose these specialist skills dotted around in every neighbourhood and you lose any chance of having a 'circular economy'.

So CS was both culpable and the biggest victim. That rather evens things up, but if any cash it to be paid it should be to other victims, not to government quangos that failed to stop this happening. Maybe those so-called banking authorities should be forced to pay out to victims for their regulatory failures, rather than hoovering up UBS's money and sticking it in their swag bags. As things stand: Bank behaves badly and loses money alongside others. Governments pocket cash.

Well I suppose they are at least trying. They should have sent insurgents, week 1, targeting Russian MPs, Putin's cronies, Putin's finance and Putin himself. Abduct and erase those who made the decision to invade. They could have blamed it on Wagner in fake intel exchanges and set the Kremlin and their mercenaries against each other at the start of this. The West have forgotten how to win, if they even want to. Surrendering Afghanistan to medieval misogynists on donkeys and now this, dragging on until Ukraine is trashed. Unimpressive.

Quit worrying about AI. Humanity will wipe itself out in wars or cook its climate past survivability long before any SciFi stuff happens. We may have already passed the event horizon for a climate meltdown, so enjoy whatever is left. There have been mass extinctions before. Roaches and weeds will survive and life will eventually return to the planet.