Not just imprinted with the engrams of any one person (however brilliant they might be) — it’s more than that! Like all great writing, it’s more like it’s been imbued with patterns, patterns that are peppered with a potpourri of popular ways of writing in an enthusiastic style while regularly restating things and recapitulating them. Would you like me to explain more?
I love that description. It matches very well what I feel about LLM output. This overly sweet scented smell meant to cover up something nasty, with a strong artificial tint to it.
Which doesn't say that much about the LLM itself but about the people that make the training material.
It sounds like you’ve just been around toxic and superficial people in your international travels and then extrapolated from them to their whole countries.
Unfortunately, they have people like that everywhere.
South Korea is one example that I have intimate knowledge of where one's consumer habits (the clothes one wears, the car one drives, the logo on one's handbag) is the ultimate signal of status.
You're automatically pre-judged by complete strangers without having to say a single word.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but it is in fact an unspoken rule over there.
The same is true in India. I live in the US, and when I visit relatives in India, they are nonplussed that I can afford a fancier car but choose to drive a Toyota. Clothes, watches, my phone brand - everything is under constant analysis and people feel free to comment on everything. I am used to it now but it gets tiring.
Nope, the US (especially the West Coast and Mountain States) is extremely non superficial in certain very odd ways:
* Almost nobody cares what kind of car you drive. The richest people I know literally don't care and drive Subarus and Toyotas and Ford pickups.
* Nobody cares about watches or jewelry.
* Clothing? It's literally Costco or Walmart for people I know who have tons of money. Unless their wives/gfs/bfs/husbands buy them something fancy for their birthday.
* Fancy wines and liquor? Wines yes, scotch yes. But it's not outrageous.
The things where you notice the money are private planes and nice houses/apartments (and multiples thereof) and art. And perhaps caring even less what people think of them.
In mountain states everything exposed to nature is just beaten into an average. The environment is so harsh it makes sense things affected aren’t much of a status symbol or at least don’t remain one for long hah.
Not just mountain states. I lived in one of the windy US deserts, and everything outside is minimally cared about because it's getting practically sand blasted several times a year.
Many businesses added specific surcharges to final sales to offset the tariffs they paid. While they have no legal obligation to refund those surcharges they imposed, it would be straightforward to do so and it would be the right thing to do.
> While they have no legal obligation to refund those surcharges they imposed, it would be straightforward to do so and it would be the right thing to do.
I'm actually interested to see how this goes legally. I haven't seen an actual attorney who understands the subject chime in on it yet. But I could see a case being made that a line item like that could have a basis of being refunded if the company charging them itself received a refund. Certainly a long shot, but I'm guessing someone will bring a case at some point to see what happens.
Ironically companies that broke out tariffs charges as line items were lauded for "doing the right thing" and are the only companies who could possibly be remotely on the hook here - any other company simply adding it to general margins is quite obviously in the clear.
Or keep it as a rainy day fund against the next time one of their major markets goes insane with attempted extortion, possibly successfully next time? Their customers paid a price they were comfortable with —- if a company returns part of that to the customer, they disadvantage themselves compared to their competitors who do not do so in the next round of tariffs, since their competitors can use the rainy day fund to delay price rises, capturing customer spend (which is to say, competitor-voluntary-donation-to-customer spend).
So the value-add would be the consumer would get to find out the name of the show or movie that’s playing, the same info that also pops up if they hit the pause button?
Nor is it nonsense to acknowledge how cool it is to recognize your own building or that he was able to accomplish the project without expensive materials. Spew is also quite the verb to use. What an all-around unpleasant comment.
Birds adapt their song to ambient noise conditions. This paper [1] studies the Pearl River Delta (where Shenzhen is) as a natural experiment. It shows spectral changes in the target species correlating to background noise levels. I haven't looked hard enough to make sure there isn't a study that does find complexity changes but it's certainly clear that noise can affect bird song behavior generally.
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