Two of the three examples listed in the article appear to involve real children:
> A selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl was undressed by Grok, turning a “before school selfie” into an image of her in a bikini. As of January 15th this post was still live on X. ... Four images depicting child actors.
Calling nearly naked, non consensual imagery of real children “not CSAM” is a dangerous avenue to follow. For a child, this can easily lead to bullying, substantiate rumors that are otherwise false, or normalize their unwilling participation in sexual activity.
I think you may be coming to this view from the approach that this is just the AI using imagination/hallucination so it’s “art”, but a better approach would be to treat it like a real photo taken secretly because absent overt labeling of its AI origins that is exactly how the world will treat it.
> It has ceased making its iconic beverage and now only sells a variant that tastes crap.
It looks like they reintroduced the original recipe in 2021 (and previously as a limited release in 2019), under the name Irn Bru 1901. Or does that version still differ from the version of Irn Bru the low-sugar Irn Bru replaced?
The 1901 recipe has 11g sugar per 100ml. Also it lacks caffeine.
The 2017 recipe had 35g sugar per 100ml.
The 2018 recipe has 4.5g sugar per 100ml.
The sugar tax is £0.18 per litre for 5-8g sugar per litre, and £0.24 per litre for >8g sugar per litre.
Irn-Bru has many price points depending on form factor and location, but a 2 litre bottle today typically costs £2.10. The sugar-free variant costs the same. If the full sugar tax applied, it'd cost £2.68 (22.8% higher price).
Coca-Cola is so expensive with the tax, they don't even sell it in 2 litre bottles anymore, just 1.75 litre bottles. Coca-Cola "Original Taste" is £2.55 for 1.75l (£1.46/l) while Coca-Cola Zero is £2.15 for 2l (£1.08/l), a difference of £0.38 per litre, of which £0.24 is sugar tax.
My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.
Do you want GC? Great! Do not want GC? Well, you can turn it off, and lose access to most things. Do you want a borrow-checker? Great, D does that as well, though less wholeheartedly than Rust. Do you want a safer C/memory safety? There's the SafeD mode. And probably more that I forget.
I wonder if all these different (often incompatible) ways of using D ends up fragmenting the D ecosystem, and in turn make it that much harder for it to gain critical mass
> My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless
The more positive phrasing would be that it is a very pragmatic language. And I really like this.
Currently opinionated langues are really in vogue. Yes they are easier to market but I have personally very soured on this approach now that I am a bit older.
There is not one right way to program. It is fun to use on opinionated language until you hit a problem that it doesn't cover very well and suddenly you are in a world of pain. I like languages that give me escape hatches. That allow me to program they way I want to.
>My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.
My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.
This can very clearly be said about C++ as well, which may have started out as C With Classes but became very kitchen sinky. Most things that get used accrete a lot of features over time, though.
FWIW, I think "standing out" due to paradigm commitment is mostly downstream of "xyz-purity => fewer ways to do things => have to think/work more within the constraints given". This then begs various other important questions, of course.. E.g., do said constraints actually buy users things of value overcoming their costs, and if so for what user subpopulations? Most adoption is just hype-driven, though. Not claiming you said otherwise, but I also don't think the kind of standing out you're talking about correlates so well to marketing. E.g., browsers marketed Javascript (which few praised for its PLang properties in early versions).
Of course the kid is at fault. But everyone knows that kids do stupid and reckless things, which is why drivers are generally expected to take more care around schools and similar institutions. If robotaxis are not able to do that, then the results will be easy to predict
What is being rejected is not evolution by natural selection. What is being rejected is untestable, just-so stories invented to explain why certain biological traits evolved. Or, as is the case here, to explain traits that are assumed to have evolved in certain populations
The premise was more that we can say with near-certainty that there are non-visible genetic differences between the races without even knowing specifically what these traits are or the extent to which they have diverged. We know this based on our understanding of genetics, natural selection, migration patterns, randomness, and the passage of time.
It would actually be quite the story if the races were somehow identical in all of these traits.
Both of these positions are untestable. One, however, is extremely likely while the other would be a miracle even in the wildest fantasies of the wokest progressive.
Your "extremely likely" scenario is the "cold winter theory", which is problematic for many reasons including the myriad of historical instances where hot-climate civilizations outpaced cold-climate civilizations.
How would you explain how geographically distant groups in radically different conditions could, over millennia, converge on all of the exact same non-visible traits without even minor variations? I truly can't imagine a way that this would be possible aside from the infinitesimally unlikely product of completely random chance.
You're not even telling a coherent story at this point. The "cold winter theory" isn't merely that the populations are different (though: again: when you look at the molecular evidence and the way genes propagate, it's nowhere nearly as clear as you'd think), it's that the cold winter populations are smarter. But you have to literally ignore most of human history to reach that conclusion. Somehow, in this view of the world, evolution only kicked in a couple hundred years ago. Seems unlikely!
I have no idea what you're talking about or who you're arguing with. You brought up the "cold winter theory". "Cold winter" is very funny. It's just a very funny theory put forth by a huckster white supremacist. Where do you hope to go from there?
Whatever the rest of these arguments are, I'm not invested enough in this thread to drag this out.
Cold winters. Tell it to the Abbasids! I guess some of them had kind of cold winters sometimes? Maybe that explains it.
My illiterate ancestors were beating the shit out of each other in cold northern Europe while hot-clime civilizations were inventing algebra. Can't say enough how funny the cold winter theory is.
You're so caught up on "the cold winter theory". I'm telling you that you can completely let it go. It's one (pretty good) theory to explain one selection pressure that may have contributed to some of the aggregate divergence we see across races.
Even if you started with two seperate genetically-identical groups in identical environments, over enough generations you would expect at least some variation to emerge due to random chance (accidental deaths, mate selection, DNA recombination, cultural practices, etc). That is the point I would like you to take away from this exchange.
> I'm not sure how they count 6000 citations, but I guess they are counting everything, including quotes by the vicepresident. Probably 6001 after my comment.
The number appears to be from Google Scholar, which currently reports 6269 citations for the paper
> If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.
This is where it gets stupid... well, stupider.
The US already has a base on Greenland, namely the Pituffik Space Base / Thule Air Base [1].
The US used to have a larger military presence in Greenland, including other bases, but choose to downscale their presence following the end of the cold war [2].
This presence was predicated on the 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement between Denmark (and later the autonomous government of Greenland) and the US, which allowed the US great freedom in establishing their military presence in Greenland [3].
If Trump had just wanted a stronger military presence in Greenland, then all he would have had to do was ask, and Denmark and Greenland would most likely have agreed. Denmark, in particular, has done its best to align itself with the US, and Greenland, prior to Trump, was also interested in a closer relationship with the US as part of their move towards greater independence from Denmark.
That requires Denmark and the EU to be reliable defense partners. They had decades to invest in Greenland and its defense and what we end up with is a 12 member dogsled patrol armed with bolt action rifles, so they can defend themselves against polar bears.
The EU response to the rhetoric from Trump is to send 30 men and put out a press release telling everyone how harmless they are. The action “Poses no threat to anyone”. Their military show of force, poses no threat to anyone.
Greenland already has the right to independence from Denmark, via chapter 8 of the law for the self-governing of Greenland, that was enacted in 2009 [1]:
> The decision on Greenland's independence is made by the Greenlandic people.
Technically, the Danish government has to OK the decision, but this is largely viewed as a formality by Danish politicians, should Greenland choose to move forward with independence.
If it truly is a pure formality, why is the condition written into law? The legislative branch (the branch that writes and changes laws) can simply remove the condition of Danish acceptance, instead of proudly proclaiming that the condition of Danish acceptance is a pure formality.
>The best we can do for the dead is remember them as they were, good and bad, not demonize them nor write hagiographies for them
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your premise.
We can't "do" anything for the dead. They're dead. What's more, since they're dead they don't care what we do or say because they're, you know, dead.
Anything we might do or say in reference to dead folks is for the benefit of the living and has nothing to do with the dead.
That said, you're absolutely right. We should remember folks for who they were -- warts and all -- to give the living perspective both on the dead and the dead past.
> A selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl was undressed by Grok, turning a “before school selfie” into an image of her in a bikini. As of January 15th this post was still live on X. ... Four images depicting child actors.
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