acatnamedjoe

The author doesn't seem to have considered that this might just be a matter of taste.

I personally find this kind of overly verbose blog post enjoyable to read (even when, as in the case of Scott Alexander and the internet rationalists, I disagree with a lot of the substance).

Same reason I like A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, Admiral Cloudberg, Perun (Youtube), and various other long form content blogs and channels. These could all get to the point much faster, but that's not what they're trying to do.

For me - the nerdy deep dive + relatively low information density + analytical style makes for a pleasurable reading / watching experience.

I have a personal current account, a shared current account with my wife, and several savings accounts. It is frequently necessary to move money between these accounts.

Also, here in the UK we don't really use Venmo or anything like that, so normally transferring cash to and from friends and family happens by bank transfer as well.

In Britain we have quite strong employment laws and a bit less of a ruthless corporate culture, so in many sectors it's fairly uncommon for people to be terminated for poor performance, so I suspect "misconduct" is a higher percentage of overall firings here.

"Firing" is becoming a bit more common in Britain, but still sounds like an Americanism to my British ears.

I would use "sacking" for performance related termination, and "losing ones job" in all other cases. I suspect BBC would use the same.

Unlocking trolleys with a coin is normal in Britain too. I'd never considered that this might be unusual.

Is this not a thing in other countries? How do they get people to return their trolleys to the bays?

Can't America fine them? Surely this is illegal there too?

I think the argument is less that inequality has increased overall, and more that the country is increasingly stratified by geography - with greater concentrations of wealth in the South East relative to the rest of the country.

This is especially true in formerly undesirable areas of London (e.g. Hackney, #10 on the 2003 list) and towns within commuting distance of London (e.g. Hythe, #3).

Presumably this is due to the gradual shift to a London-centric services economy as well as the increasingly ludicrous price of houses in Central London.

> quite possibly the most spirit-crushingly tedious town in Kent.

This is an extremely high bar to hit in a county that also contains Ashford.

I was curious - what was the angle on Hythe in the book?

These days Hythe seems like a posh seaside town with a Waitrose, a nice canalside park, a cute steam railway, lots of boutiquey shops and cafes, etc.

I know a lot of places in the area (e.g. Folkestone, Margate, Whitstable) have all been heavily "gentrified" in the last few years, but I sort of assumed Hythe was always this way? Is that not the case?

And even allowing for a bit of gentrification, it seems wild in 2025 to select it for a "crap towns" award ahead of somewhere like Dover or New Romney.

They have something to give away because they have power, which is the only thing that matters in the final analysis.

It doesn't matter who created the value - it's who controls it.

It seems like this is more about the semantics of what we mean by athleticism then?

It sounds like for you, being a top athlete simply means being very good at a sport.

I've always generally understood athleticism to be about raw physical traits, like speed, strength and agility (and is therefore only part of the range of attributes that makes up the overall profile of a sportsperson).

Out of interest would you consider people performing at an elite level in high-skill, relatively low-physicality sports like golf to be top athletes?

That's only because a capitalist economy uses the circulation of currency and goods as a way to multiply wealth, while motivating the people who generate the wealth.

Sufficiently advanced AI offers the potential for exponential wealth generation for our (former) capitalist overlords, without you or I needing to produce or consume anything.

Focusing on the state misses the point. The state is a relatively modern abstraction for society. Society, state-based or not, has always been dominated by class of elites and governed primarily in their interests.

However, for all of human history those elites have needed workers, and in complex societies, they need LOADS of them. The elites have always needed to ensure that the working people are sufficiently fit, healthy, motivated and skilled to do the work required.

For the last 500 years or so the elites have also found it convenient to maintain a mass of relatively affluent people with a reasonable amount of leisure time, who will purchase the products that make them rich.

Thus the typical person in the world today finds themself able to exchange their labour for basic necessities and increasingly, consumer goods. Most people receive some form of protection from bodily violence and for their property - whether from the state or from some other arrangement with the elite class. Most people also have access to some form of education and healthcare (although of course the level of provision varies massively). Most people have some amount of leisure time, some level of autonomy over what they do with that time, and an increasing range of options for leisure activities.

All of this happens because it is convenient for elites - it gets them what they want.

AI presents us with a possible future where a small group of elites could generate infinite wealth, and would have absolutely no need of the working and middle classes. The benefits we currently enjoy (however meagre) would dry up.

At best, we'd be ignored and left to scratch a subsistence living out of whatever is left of our natural environment by that point.

At worst, one could imagine a scenario where AI-wielding elites compete against each other, and need access to as many natural resources as possible to stay competitive. Then you'd suspect we wouldn't just be ignored, our very existence would be an opportunity cost for the elite class.

e.g. It's 2056 and Musk needs every square meter of solar panels he can get to ensure his AI army triumphs over Zuckerberg's. The plot of land where you've been quietly growing your potatoes and trying to stop your children dying of cholera doesn't get much sun, but it gets a bit - and that's more than enough for him to have you murdered (or, if he's feeling merciful, evicted to die of starvation).

> He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth

Isn't it exactly the point of the article though that this doesn't necessarily mean elite across-the-board athleticism?

Your statement would also have described Tom Brady for most of his career, and I don't think anyone would seriously claim he was a 99%ile athlete (certainly not for sprinting, agility, etc.)

>The main character isn't complex at all. There's no depth at all to Winston.

Of course everyone has their own response to any piece of art but I find this criticism very surprising. Even the "takedown" article you posted pretty clearly shows Winston to be a complex character (especially in relation to the role he is cast in):

"From the very beginning of his supposed revolt against the Party, Winston simply assumes that he will not be victorious"

"Winston’s revolt against the situation is based in large part on his sense of physical disgust with icky surroundings, far more (I would argue) than it’s based on any coherent ideological or humanitarian critique... Winston is repelled more by the crappy cigarettes, and the fact that people use ugly English, and the malodorous sweatiness of Parsons, and the nastiness of the food, and the forgetting of nursery rhymes, than he is by the way the system he lives in is forcing people to live as slaves in terror of death and torture."

"Winston’s sexuality is really weird, mixed up as it is with his general uninterest in other people, his contempt for the Party and a general dislike of women"

"The closest Winston comes to thinking that there is any hope of positive social change is when he thinks about the proles; but he doesn’t know any proles, he doesn’t like being around them, he thinks they smell (of course), he doesn’t believe that they are capable of independent thought or action, and what ‘faith’ he has in them is shown to be completely groundless and abstract"

"As would-be rebels go, Winston is strikingly inactive and incurious. When Winston and Julia form their little two-person cell, do they talk to each other about the world they live in, and try to figure out its true nature, and what, if anything, they can do to shake the system? No. They have sex and drink black market coffee."

Seems like a pretty complex guy to me, and much more interesting as a character than the ideologically motivated revolutionary that Johnston seems to want him to be.