complex_exp

And to some quite extreme people any kind of government that is not solely based on religious wisdom expressed via the clergy is an affront to God (to Allah) - an extremely serious crime worthy of uprisings and martyrdom. Doesn't matter if it's a monarchy, a democracy, or a Soviet/Chinese style one-party system. Unless that party was exclusively filled with religious scholars.

(there's an alternative line of thought that says "you gotta follow the leader because a leaderless state is even worse", and that line of thought is generally prevailing in muslim countries; that's how one would justify having some out of the blue family running Saudi Arabia, with its two out of three most important Muslim holy places)

It would be very strange if they didn't try things like these. It's actually a pretty competent government that knows how to look for itself, the very fact that Salafism hasn't yet destroyed them (the Saudi Family) is a massive achievement of its own, not to mention the quite effective OPEC+ cartel.

That being said this will be decided by whichever technology is cheaper (including things like the risk premia of being potentially cut off from supplies), regardless of agitation either way. Unless somehow, magically, we can force everyone to pay up for their share of damage caused by temperature change - which is extremely far away from being realizable. UN Security Council cannot agree on much more obvious things, like deciding in specific cases that bombing civilians is actually illegal.

Not sure if everyone knows just how easy making something like this is. This kind of an app takes less than one week to develop, using the OpenAI function calling API.

How do solar flares burn satellites? I thought they just mess up the ionosphere and inhibit communication.

You can just patch the call then, right? I.e. turn it into NOPs

You're right, but I don't see how we could not have those things with the copyright laws as they stand and people being what they are. Maybe it could be a little bit better, but not substantially better.

YouTube wasn't killed and thrived as a platform throughout the process. Meanwhile YT ads funded the lawsuits and negotiations, with a surplus. It is pretty much a solved problem now. This is as peaceful as it gets when you genuinely infringe on someone's very valuable rights.

Your comment is very valid. I'd just add that AI tools are clearly taking the "YouTube approach": they provide a large value added, ignore copyright for the moment, and hope to resolve it peacefully at some later point in time. This worked very well for YouTube.

Much less impressive, though still useful: ChatGPT is an awesome movie subtitle translator. Only very unusual phrases need to be corrected, often there are no such cases. There are projects on GitHub that automate the translation. Short SRT files can be just pasted into the chat with appropriate instructions.

I've always had a problem with admission rates, since they obviously depend on self-selection (and supply of schools).

Germany is a good example here, they have a wide spectrum of schools starting already past primary education (around 10 years old). Many of those schools, those of the "mid" and especially "lower" rank do not bash into children's heads that they absolutely must go to a good university or they will be a failure. As a result those kids do not apply there, instead they go into internships and get a job. Overall there is a continuum that a) reduces pressure on people that probably shouldn't study medicine or law, b) gives better education to talented children by putting them together in more aligned groups.

Crucially, the admission to those schools past age of 10 is not zip-code based. Admitting children by zip-code past the very first school where you learn how to sit, read, write and multiply numbers is nonsense.

A process like this will result in a higher university admission rate, all else being equal, including the "true difficulty" of getting into a specific university.

That may be it, under-supply of schools. What's required there besides perfect, or near perfect SAT scores?

Also, I've always wondered why so few Americans decide to study in Europe. I understand some might not be able to afford the remote study, but this doesn't explain everything. Language is not a problem, every top university offers all, or almost all master's level courses also in English.

> Ivy league students don't get there by themselves. A life-time of adults help you.

See, this is what I do not get. I got without excessive effort into a top university in Europe. I never had to be taken care nearly this much. Learned calculus at 14-15 by buying an old book in a used book store. Learned programming at around the same age by reading C++ tutorials and doing programming competitions (ACM style, but easier). Ran in various science competitions, here indeed teachers helped me by giving me books, exercises and guidance, with greater or smaller success. Most of my university peers had similar histories. I believe I would be admitted to an Ivy school if I were American, based on my professional experience with people that studied there.

What gives? Is it the last >=2 decades that changed the picture too much? Is it somehow an exclusively American problem? Where are the self-motivated kids, why aren't they taking most spots in those schools? Did something systematically kill the motivation?

The slight (or perhaps not so slight) neurosis and coping mechanisms like "I wasn't even trying, so I didn't fail" imply that those kids are way, way past their comfort zone. Being this far out is very unhealthy, can even be lethal.

It's hardly in ruin, has more cash on the balance sheet than, for example, all the help sent to Ukraine, military and humanitarian. It's just that making a shit ton of money ain't actually that fun because your job is basically to constantly patch holes in this gargantuan ship that never stops.

The first point is more important. The second point mostly helps with getting the first point done. When other things get stable you can adjust things at your job, or just quit and do something else entirely.

Someone in their 20s often believes bullshit stories about productivity, and understands very little about the social practice of allocation of resources and rewards (aka politics). This can be easily observed by hearing statements like "you know, there is politics at place X!". Gosh, well I hope so, otherwise it would mean there is nothing valuable at place X (i.e. nothing to allocate), or there is exactly one person there.