Obsidian Wings

The sorcerer's apprentice

by liberal japonicus

We've discussed this a bit in the comments and Charles WT has posted some of its output, so I thought I'd toss up a collection of articles about the ChatGPT. I'd recommend that you try it out, it is here
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

More below the fold

A Happy New Year Open Thread

by wj

Also Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, dōng zhì kuài lè (Happy Dongzhi Festival), Merry Pancha Ganapati, etc.

We're over due for a new Open Thread. And I expect most of us will have better things to do for the next week or two than come up with something substantive to tie one to. So here you go.

And here's hoping that all of you and your have a wonderful Solstice and a great new year.

A sportswashing thread

by liberal japonicus
For me, it's with a sigh of relief that not only Japan and the US, but the UK and Korea as well have been eliminated from the World Cup. It's not that I was rooting against them, it is just that this whole World Cup seems like a totally tawdry affair that having to deal with people who might be all rah rah about it would have been painful. A Croatia-Morrocco final, decided by interminable penalties after a 0-0 game where bookings after cynical tackles and brawls would resuld in each team playing 8 a side would be a great outcome for me, hopefully having all the multinational companies that sunk millions into it lose their shirt on the investment. A guy can dream...

We don't do sports much here, even though I'm pretty sure we have some real sports fanatics/connoisseurs. It might be (and I may be wrong) because I think I'm the only front pager to suffer from the condition of sportis fanatiphilia. But I think that there are other reasons and I thought it might be interesting to list them here

1. The World Cup, held in a country with a such long and distinguished history of football/soccer (ha!), is only a cherry on the top of an increasingly fraught relationship I have with sports. I don't really have a specific incident, but Kaepernick's blacklisting, team naming issues, Astros cheating, owner behavior, steroid and PED usage just serve to drive me away from discussion. So too has been the effect of the pandemic on international sports. Put that all in a blender and you end up with a concoction that I have a hard time swallowing. It would have been a laugh if the Women's WC were like the current Paralympics, which follows the Olympics using the same facilities, though if that were the proviso, I can't imagine the Quatari wanting it.

2. I'm also coming to the conclusion that sports talk is really a covert way of expressing male toxicity. Debates about who is the GOAT, who are the 25 greatest in the sport, lends itself to the expression of opinion that is fraught with aggressive, take no prisoners posturing. One way to mitigate this might seem like following women's sports, but that can end up as rooting to see women behave as badly as men.

3. I'd say the blog trends towards the older side of the spectrum and for people of a certain vintage, I wonder if people feel like I do that rules don't seem fixed anymore and when they are, it encourages people to try and take advantage of them. I know that there have always been mind games throughout the history of sports. I also know rules change, and perhaps I'm just getting old, but it seems worse than it was.

Anyway, something to get things started, feel free to talk about anything vaguely sports related here.

Rainy Day Open Thread

by JanieM

Gloom, rain, and wind here in central Maine. Family stuff keeping me busy, so feel free to bring up any topic that has caught your fancy on this December Saturday.

Open thread.

An amuse bouche

by liberal japonicus

Since twitter is apparently pain grillé, I felt like I should serve up this morsel.

Maricopa County, AZ Board of Supervisors were called on to resign, nullify the election, use paper ballots & more

Here’s a quick 2:20 video compilation I did of the 1st public meeting post Election Day

This went on for over an hour, so did a quick montage of public comment ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/T4BvYUtivo

— Nicole Grigg (@NicoleSGrigg) November 16, 2022

I think my favorite is at 0:42. We are doomed.

What it means

by liberal japonicus

A thread for everyone to talk about election aftermaths. I realize that in a lot of places we still don't know, such as Georgia (runoff), Alaska (ranked voting) and counting mail-in ballots (Nevada, California, other places), but certainly a lot to mull over.

The thing that I'm wondering about is how much of this loss is predicated on the Supreme Court dumping Roe. If the conservative judges had know how much it was going to backfire, would they have done it?

It also gives me a lot of pleasure that so many pundits got it wrong. Almost as much as thinking how Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos are going to lost their shirts. Unfortunately, neither the pundits nor the three stooges are going to see it as I do, as a sort of karmic payback.

Also, a shout-out to Russell, who identified Fetterman a long time ago. I've been trying to find his comment just to see if I or others gave him the 'yeah, right' treatment. If anyone can remember about when it was, post a note in the comments and I'll see if I can find where it came up.

Anyway, have at it!

Toward a better discussion about fear of violence

--by Sebastian

There are a bunch of media discussions about various voters being inappropriately afraid of violence in cities that I am deliberately not going to link because focusing on per capita numbers doesn't get to the way our brains work.  We want to get to them eventually, but I don't think you can without talking about a bunch of things about how fear of violence operates.  

1. Fear operates spatially.  I live in a medium density portion of a big city.  No one has been murdered within 10 blocks of my dwelling in the last year.  Everyone in NYC lives within 10 blocks of a murder within the last year.  Even if the per capita rate is higher where I live, the spatial sense is important.  So if you want to talk about fear of crime, you need to acknowledge the spatial sense.
2. How much mind share crime prevention/avoidance takes up is important and it is different in a big city.  You can see it as bars on first floor windows, or the need for a doorman.  You can experience it as more concern about where your purse is right this moment, or whether or not you can leave your phone on the table in public.  There are dozens of little things that take up mind-space in a bustling city that isn't needed in many places.  This can aid to the idea that crime is more prevalent than it 'really' is on a per capita basis.  
3. How much control you think you have is also a concern.  You are most likely to be murdered by your spouse.  But you take your spouse with you, and you believe (even if wrongly) that your selection of spouse and your knowledge of their behaviors is somewhat under your control.  Things that are out of your control are scarier.  So you are more likely to have a fear of being killed by a stranger (more likely in a denser place where you encounter more people) than by your spouse (who is your spouse whether in the big city or in the countryside).  The known risk remains constant.  

 

It is important to eventually get to the per capita statistics, note that they aren't that high compared to recent US history, that some cities are much safer than commonly believed, and that the US is ridiculously unsafe compared to many developed countries.  But trying to have that discussion without dealing with how the fears actually operate is almost impossibly difficult.  

New Open Thread

by wj

We are overdue for a new (and hopefully working for a while) Open Thread. So here it is.

We're back and...

by liberal japonicus

Well, that was instructional.

https://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2005/12/typepad-outage-details.html

We could move to a wordpress blog, though we really don't need the bells and whistles. The thing I would like (though it may not be possible) is to keep all the comments in a way that attaches them to the posts. Feel free to chat about it in the comments, especially if you have done any typepad migration.

Political Advertising

by wj

Yesterday, I saw a TV** ad regarding one of the partisan positions on the California ballot next month. And it occurred to me that this is the first, and only, such ad I've encountered. Apparently all the other races are considered inevitable enough that there's no reason to spend on it.

We have a half dozen statewide propositions on the ballot. I've seen a bunch of ads concerning the two propositions regarding online sports betting. And lots and lots of ads opposing the proposition (the third in three years!) which wants dialysis clinics to have a doctor or registered nurse on site. but that's about it.

So what was the one partisan ad? We have, this time, a moderate Republican running for State Controller. The Controller is basically a fiscal watchdog. Personally, I think there is something to be said for having someone from a different party monitoring how the money is being spent. Especially since he doesn't decide what it should be spent for, just that it is being spend for the legally mandated ends.

So what did the ad say? Nothing about the actual job, and the candidates' qualifications. Instead, it talked about abortion and Trump -- neither of which have anything to do with the office. In short, guilt by association.

All of which leads me to wonder: how is advertising looking elsewhere in the country?

** Note, I have no clue what may be happening on Fox News.