A Canadian friend brought me back 2 bottles of local maple syrup as a gift. Ok, I'm a pretentious Frenchman when it comes to food and I do think most North Americans have no idea how real food tastes.
But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing.
Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.
I think it's worse than that. It promotes race to the bottom.
I love strawberries, blueberries (bilberry variety) and tomatoes, but apart of the few times in the year when I can collect my own or visit a PYO farm I'm not eating them at all.
Every shop (small and huge alike) only sells the fake, hyper-accelerated garbage (sorry Spain and Morocco, but that stuff is just gross), or - in season - locally grown similarly tasteless but raised on BPA, PFAS, dioxins, flame retardants, etc[1]
I can't even buy the quality stuff. It's just not being sold, because people only buy and eat trash :(
Living in London, I notice the same. Getting access to true quality produce is not even a question of money now, it's basically just impossible to get full stop. There are a few local shops in the more upmarket areas that survive on the fact that people are willing to pay the 2-3x premium over the prices at Waitrose.
Gone are the days when you could ask the grocer or farmer to give you a peach to taste. People got used to having 24/7/365 access to everything, and supermarkets optimized purely for looks instead of taste and nutrition, because you aren't allowed to taste anything there. The only thing you can go by is the looks. This means looks sell.
I'd hazard a guess the vast majority of brits don't even know what a proper strawberry tastes like, because the only thing they can buy are beautifully polished turds. Everything tastes watery and crap, or conversely just generic "sweet".
I wouldn't even blame farmers. Their life is hard enough. They are operating on razor thin margins in a very uncertain environment. The consumer (against their own interests) demands that they produce beautifully and cheap turds, so that's what they'll produce. And if you try to do the right thing, you simply run out of money because you can't compete with the turds at the supermarket.
I only have empirical evidence for this, but it got much worse since Brexit as well. The variety has gone down a lot, I see shelves routinely empty at supermarkets and they all seem to be focusing on the same ultraprocessed crap.
I agree, farmers are not responsible for everything, but definitely for pouring the toxic sludge. That's their choice. Conscious, willful. I doubt they'd make a tea on the water leeching from the landfill so why do they think it's okay to use it on the fields? Nasty.
But I agree, most of the blame lies on the corrupt government (can't think of a better reason explaining why they sanction the above practice or why they gleefully ignore supermarkets role in the "cost of living crisis" - part of it being squeezing the farmers in the same way they squeeze the customers).
And i agree it's been much worse since Brexit - the customer has been conditioned to tolerate worse quality and choice for ever higher prices. Continuous approval to neonicotinoids use in our fields is telling as well.
Gross and saddening. I'm telling my kids to get their education and leave the UK. Being EU country citizens they might even study in some cleaner and saner place.
You should try Natoora in Notting Hill or Daylesford. I live in Belgravia and am admittedly spoiled for choice .. the Harrods Food Hall has excellent seasonal and harder to find fruits, and Daylesford consistently has some of the best British produce I've come across... the one in Sloane street even has the best organic Alphanso Mangos from India.
As for Brexit, I actually think it's been a net positive.
You have to be joking, right? So you are saying that it's all fine, because we can just go to Harrods to get quality food?
Nevermind that I hate Harrods and that entire area with a passion. It's a tasteless, glitzy tourist trap.
My post was all about the fact that barring a tiny percentile of people who a) live in an affluent area and b) are willing to pay 2-3x the regular supermarket prices, you cannot get good quality food. And you say "ah it's simples, just go to the most egregiously flashy beacon of division between the rich and poor and you can get good fruit"
Thank you, I can still get good fruit at my local grocer in Wimbledon, because it charges 2-3x over the regular high street prices and there are people around who can pay this. Doesn't help someone living in Croydon and having to go to Tesco, does it now.
I'm confused. What exactly is it about these immigrants that make them incapable of appreciating fresh food? I agree that you can enjoy your privilege or money just fine, but do you believe that the poor are incapable or unworthy of appreciating wealth or privilege? They're surely more likely to appreciate the cost-to-calorie ratio.
To be clear: my objection is not at all about enjoying the finer side of life, there's nothing wrong with that. Harrods and a lot of the surrounding areas are not about that. By and large, the crowd who likes that area (and I'm not placing you among them) are there because they want to appear among the rich and flash their shitty LV or Gucci bag which they probably picked up somewhere at a discount.
There are two kinds of drivers of expensive cars:
1. Those who drive their Bentley Continental GT because they appreciate the craftsmanship and the smooth ride
2. Those who are inching along in traffic in Kensington because they want the world to see they have a Bentley.
One of these groups is genuinely wealthy and have class will be driving their grand tourer somewhere in France or Italy on nice roads to their villa, or if they don't like driving, they'll be driven by staff. If they aren't nepo babies, they'll be just as dismayed about the difficulties that 99% of the population lives under, because ultimately we are all in the same boat. If 99% of the crew are unhappy, eventually the captain and the officers will be thrown overboard to the sharks. If the captain wants to have a good time, they have to make sure the crew aren't unhappy at least.
I visit Maui fairly regularly, and its the same thing with local "Maui Gold" pineapple. It is a completely different fruit from the Dole crap you buy in supermarkets on the mainland. Whenever I'm there I'll eat pineapples until my tongue burns, and when I'm home I don't eat it at all.
But what happens here, let me point that out for completeness, is not a dark conspiracy. At least not on this level.
People go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest thing that does the trick, probably because they can't afford something else. Bills want to be payed.
Partially agree, in case of Aldi/Asda/Lidl but mostly not.
They don't have a choice, they cannot encounter a good vegetables and fruits in the normal stores. They CANNOT, at least in the UK. It's that simple. Maybe during some events, as a curiosity.
Good quality vegetables are not available on the shelves in general. Maybe in some cases, yeah. Some. But generally not. Similarly with meat, although it's much easier here to find something decent.
The difference in taste and quality between the cheapest and most expensive fresh fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets is virtually none. If you don't believe me, you don't have to, I simply grew plenty of that as a kid and a teenager, I keep growing some, and the difference between the average garden-sourced (or PYO/small farm sourced) and the Aldi/M&S/Waitrose/Tesco is simply too big to describe, you'd have to try it.
So there's an illusion of choice between awful and bad - in that case I'm simply choosing imported (thanks to the landfill and manufacturing waste in our great British food chain). People who don't know, or don't care pick whatever looks the best.
Some buy the cheapest. Not everyone buys the cheapest - you can't seriously claim that in case of the expensive stores (Sainsbury's, M&S, Waitrose).
And then there's palate problem. If someone was raised on these garbage produce, they may even favour it over healthy, proper ones. Proper radish will have a bite to it. Proper tomato has a complex profile (and there's hundreds of varieties of that too), instead of how garden stores describe it being "tasty"....
Consumers have been dumbed down and trained into accepting inferior livestock feed as food, and thanks for that they can for example say with a straight face that they actually like or prefer Tesco white toast bread.
Social credit score affects all your actions as a citizen, and can restrict your liberty as a citizen. E.G: a cop don't like you because you sleep with his sister, they charge you on false pretense, and now your internet is more restricted or you can't take some trains.
Banking credit score only affect your ability to get a loan. You sleep with a banker sister, and... they can't do shit because there is no money trail and you can apply for a loan elsewhere. You will only be rejected for a loan if fail to pay some of your existing loans. Reasonable.
I see, thanks for the correction. Aren't people put in ICE detention centers and offshore prisons indefinitely with no charges and no judge involved, though? Or is that OK because they aren't citizens?
Nothing can restrict your basic freedom in the US though, right? lmao
American believing in the most base propaganda regurgitated by their government for the last 50 years is the funniest shit ever. You're implementing the same thing at home right now, not even secretly, and there is not a single protest, nothing...
If americans were 25% as critical with themselves as they are with China... Flock cameras, Palantir, 48 hours ago, one of trump's best friend:
> Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"
I'm not American, and my answer solely focuses on the fact the social credit score is the most dystopian thing ever created by modern dictatorship.
Which is an answer to guy saying people idealize china these days, thanks to effective propaganda from the regime.
Want to criticize the US? Go for it. That's just not the topic.
And until you can wear a Tiananmen Square t-shirt in a public street in Beijin, any good thing China is doing is moot for its population. It's still in a dictatorship.
Feels like its the same poeple saying locked down OS stores are great because security and chrome engine in all browser is fantastic because then everything is standardized.
But worse because here we are talking deep human topics.
Such long period of peace made people forget about how the world work. And clearly studing history in school ks not working. I guess in the US they are getting a new shot right now to remember.
First, let's acknowledge that when the actions of some people lead to endangering a human life, it's natural to be angry about it.
Personally, when anger is justified, I feel more comfortable with people who clearly and openly express it.
I find them more reliable, more honest, and usually better people to be around.
By my standards, I'd even consider the style very mild, considering a life is on the line.
I would also consider it normal to be on the receiving end of such language if my own work resulted in such a situation. That would cause me to pause and reflect.
The intensity of feedback is information. If everything is bland, it's harder to know how important something is or not. Logic has a limit because you don't have all the parameters from the other side.
It works the other way around. The overuse of superlatives and day-to-day outrage is equally unproductive.
> First, let's acknowledge that when the actions of some people lead to endangering a human life, it's natural to be angry about it.
The thing that's really bugging me is that this is not what happened at all!
"I'm not at home, please send the new pump to my hotel."
That's it! That solves the entire problem in 5 seconds plus the time to tell the customer service rep the hotel's address and verify it's correct. Yeah, there were some other structural problems that led to other dumb things, but none of that would have even come up if she'd done the blindingly obvious thing and had the life-saving, 24/7-required device shipped to her actual location. If anyone endangered her life, it was her, through her own actions.
She really crossed the line for me by wishing harm on the people who designed and built her insulin pump. What the hell? They've done nothing wrong. Yes, her pump was beginning to fail, but 1) it was still limping along with a workaround and she wasn't in immediate danger (and if it did fully fail, she said she was within an hour's drive of an ER at all times, which she felt was fine), and 2) she had never had a pump problem in twenty-five years, which is an amazing testament to the reliability of these devices. The people who work on these things deserve a freakin' medal, not bullshit like "the people who design, sell, and service these machines are both keeping me alive and also my mortal enemies".
It's more than alright to be outraged, that's very different than it being alright to wish harm. That shouldn't negate anything else said in the conversation, but it's also just as much of the conversation to call it out.
They already have. Claude and OpenAI are not trying to write captcha-defying AI agents. These tests wouldn't hold up as well against proper bot operators who mimic user behaviour. However, the signals are still valid as part of a larger toolset.
Well no, the idea is a tradeoff between interfaces and telemetry.
OK, the agents don't click in the same way as humans. You learn that, what about mouse hovering telemetry, time spent, etc. And one of the most extreme is to force biometrics - a lot of telemetry, breaks the interface a lot - but hey, you have assurance.
And none of these tradeoffs require understanding the deep processes of the human mind. Just, map is not the territory, how you do game the map harder and harder and how do the mapmakers respond to that?
LLMs can solve original math problems at the IMO level and beyond, and you might be talking to one now. I don't think they are going to have problems with any CAPTCHA short of separate device attestation.
Whatever mechanism the paper proposes, rest assured it can be trained on.
I mean, their CAPTCHAs presumably have tons of data collected over the years, and they can't detect a pretty clear AI agent here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeTpCdUc4Ls
I agree "people need a purpose to be happy" is much more digestible than "people need a job to be happy". However, it has to be qualified with "some people need a purpose to be happy". Defining, or worse dictating, happiness for everyone is a fool's errand and, ironically, usually leads to large scale mass murder or starvation.
You may not need to have a job to be happy, it varies person to person. However, the idea that the billionaires will save us and our leverage is not needed is ridiculous. It is much more likely we would see poverty like is seen in much of the rest of the world.
I still haven't seen anybody demonstrating we have to do such thing.
We do have to spent a bit of each for any new tech advancement, but the alarmist, disproportionate claim you make is really not helping.
ArcelorMittal Dunkirk rolling & steel complex alone is ~450–550 hectares (more than colussus) and consume 2.23 TWh/year (colussus is ~2.6 TWh/year at 300 MW continuous load) and of course, water consumption for metal working is gigantic.
That's just ONE single facility in France.
I don't think anybody who understands the basics of civilization would want to go back before the Industrial Revolution.
Tech has a cost, and you usually pay a lot more at the begining of creating it.
Does it cause problems? Sure. Should we take it very seriously? Definitely.
But just repeating internet outrage is not a way to make good decisions.
The question is not about the cost the question is who pays that cost.
Tech companies clearly want to coast on the infrastructure built out by the government. Microsoft doesn't really want to pay 10 billion euro to upgrade the Dutch power supply.
What happens is that they will go to countries that let them pollute- a tale as old as the industrial revolution.
But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing.
Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.