Yea I got the general or vague impression that this was reminiscent of their initial maps roll out.

Are any heads gonna roll for this?

You’re not alone. It happens! I’m around the 10 mark I think.

Didn’t know if the adaptation until now, but of all the streaming services at the moment I would have probably bet this were on Apple and that it’ll likely be a good thing for the adaptation.

Yea wow. The article quotes the wife as ages 64 or so. Kinda weird if you ask me.

On Hackman, I recall Morgan freeman saying that he was the only actor that scared him, that when Hackman’s character was angry and aggressive at Freeman’s, he was convinced that the aggression was real and instinctively scared accordingly. IIRC, he said Hackman was the only one he’d seen who had that acting power.

I agree. Multi communities are great. But managing a community’s connectivity with such features makes a lot of sense too!

Yep. And it’s a point well made.

To me it all comes down to the consequences of 1) wanting the work to not just be easier but literally not involve thinking, and 2) how little attention people are paying to where these tools come from: just training on the whole Internet, not some intelligent analytical task specific tooling.

Big and obvious consequences fall out of these I think, and I’m a little frightened how little people think and talk about this.

Ah yes! Thanks! The enhanced image does day “close up” after all! A bit lazy of me!

Very cool though! A zoomed inset in the main image would have helped I think.

I’m confused about what exactly the ring is in the image or the main image at least. There seems to be an enhanced image in the article that highlights the ring more clearly as an outer edge, which makes sense (I suppose).

But I don’t understand what I’m to make of the top image. It’s the diffuse light part of the ring?

Came to say the same. It’s probably a step in the right direction, but for me at the moment, as much as it might be a slap in the face to all the creators who’ve infested their time into it, I’m inclined to say “not good enough” and learn to organise better if you want proper independence.

AFAICT, just providing some actual share ownership and decision making mechanisms would have made the difference.

Tech monopolies must be held to account, the outsized influence of some tech billionaires must be held in check, and competition must be allowed to thrive. We may also need to consider the protection of both consumers themselves and human-created works (including our history) as part of a conservation effort before extractive models permanently pollute our shared cultural resources.

Honestly feels like the main and perhaps only thing to do. Sure we can all do our own individualistic things, such as what we’re doing here on the Fedi.

But the whole AI thing reveals I think just how big of a problem this all is … big tech would rather consume and replace the whole internet with some fuzzy hype tech than empower its users in any way.

Awesome to see TBH. Friendica is kinda the platform that the Fedi forgot and it might be a better place if it got more love.

Ha. Thanks … I guess! It was right there and I just happened to notice. It was definitely weird to see people using a word you made up though.

And yea, I stand by the idea of giving us forum like platforms a name against the weird Twitter obsession decentralised platforms have

Appreciated my friend!

I’d say it’s a pretty general phenomenon. Expertise and entitled consumption of it as a service. Even in a professional setting, with a service/support dynamic, it can be abused through entitlement pretty often.

No worries at all!

Also, I didn’t know at all about the Barbary Wars (and was quite surprised to hear of such a far flung US military engagement so early)

Yes they seem like reasonable metrics to me. But like you I don’t really know how to answer the question. But relative economic strength and influence are likely factors. So the post civil war gilded age would also been a likely point, which was the origin of my 150 yrs estimate. For 100 years, I figured post WWI was a pretty clear moment of relative strength.

In recent times, boomers have had a notable hold on the presidency. Not just boomers, but those born in the summer of 1946. Clinton, Bush Jr and Trump were all born between June and August 1946, a window of 3 months, but spanning over 3 decades of the White House. And the same more or less holds for the losing candidates too, with Harris and Obama being the major exceptions IIRC. Indicates to me some real oligarchical forces beyond what’s normal in the rest of the west.

Ha yes, thanks … though, without knowing, I’d wonder how early you can push the global power part (thus the question mark). Post-war (your 70 years) is clearly a “the global power” status. But how early could you say the US was at least one of the major powers?

You’re the “Old World” now.

It’s basically been 350 250 (edit: correction) years now since US independence, and a decent while now at being a global power (~100-150 years?). These are timelines akin to that from the European Renaissance to the US Revolution (~1400-1800) and the UK emerging from the 1500s to being the “super power” in the war of independence.

Now, with the world’s oldest constitution, and probably, depending on who you talk to, an increasingly critical mass of antiquated ideals and systems, the Presidency is more like the Monarchs of past revolutions than what remains of those monarchies, and the US’s ideals and cultural influence something which most would rather move on and upgrade from.

Generally, I’d say it’s one of the weirder and subtler historical events happening right now: the dissolving of the old lines between the “old” and “new” worlds. For me personally, this was once made clear when visiting Hannover, Germany, and its tourist attraction, the “New Town Hall”, where someone who lives in British Columbia, Canada pointed out the similarities with their Parliament Building. The thing is though that the Canadian building is about 15 years older (both being just over 100 years old). Colonialism is long enough ago and Europe (and likely any other “old” culture, such as China) rebuilt enough and recently enough, that like X-genners and Millennials, the whole “young, hip, cool rebel” thing just doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Something else for general zep fans, if you haven’t given this album this track is off a listen, it may be worth your time.

Presence.

From 1976, basically the twilight of the band, and the last album Page had any real influence on (their last one was a weird Plant and Jones project in part I think cuz page was drugged up).

Whereas on Presence I think it was the opposite. It’s almost a pure Page album. Guitar driven and rocking.

Out of all of their albums, I think it might be their most cohesive and consistent.