FriendOfDeSoto

... French is at least consistent in what is pronounced and what is not. ...

I would say you're moving your own goalposts here.

Ils mangent - intelligent

Same four letters at the end, not the same pronunciation.

Really? I don't think he'll let anybody die just because there wasn't a convenient phone booth around to get rapid changed in.

Danish has entered the chat. They don't pronounce anything the way it's written either. And French consists of 80 percent silent letters or thereabouts. It's not just English in Europe.

Consider the needlessly complicated to be applied on top of a general baseline of needlessly complicated that applies to any language.

While they don't have gendered nouns, they have something equally unnerving for the beginner learner. Their noun classes evolve mostly around the nature of shapes and sizes, which becomes an issue the moment you need to count anything. For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms. And don't get me started on the calendar. English is relatively unsophisticated by comparison.

It's not an easy language to master even if you lived full-time in Japan. Everything about the language is needlessly complicated. The grammar, the writing system, the social conventions that influence word choices. Anime Japanese is its own kettle of fish. Overly colloquial or stylized samurai talk - neither of which you'll get taught in most language courses.

Now, you could be a savant who picks it up in no time. More likely you'll be in it for a couple of weeks and give up - or life. It's not a bad hobby. Even beyond Duolingo you'll find plenty of resources online and lots of it free.

Back pay is not helping that much when your mortgage is on the line today/next month after you have exhausted all your savings. Of which I'm gonna guess post covid there aren't that much. Your soldiers are going to suffer bad. Your go fund me idea is honorable; I don't see it making enough of a dent. That would presuppose a level of knowledge among the general public, an awareness of these issues, and I don't see that either. In a way, it's that lack of awareness that gave the world Orange 2.0.

The Republicans have the stronger arm in this arm wrestle. I don't like it either. Their people don't care if you chop off their fingers if at the end they can say they owned the Dems. If education works here, go for it. I don't think the time frame is long enough for this to work. They've already swallowed veterans getting less health care and that their favorite valet José has been sent to El Salvador. Are grocery price increases not outpacing inflation? They aren't issue-based, they are vibe-based and the vibe is own the Dems.

In theory I agree with you. I'm not parroting anyone, I'm trying to look at this realistically. This is not the first shutdown rodeo. And it sucks if your team feels a certain level of responsibility to the country and all its people, which is more than I can see coming from the clown car load of people currently in charge. At some point the leadership of the Democrats will feel the damage to continue is going to hurt them more at the ballot box than to package a turd of a compromise in shiny wrapping paper. I want your vision of the Democrats but I think we'll get mine unfortunately.

I don't doubt that. My crystal ball tells me they will compromise at some point for the good of the workers, for the good of the country - whichever line works best at that moment. I wouldn't want them to do that but I'm pretty sure it will pan out that way eventually.

There is a process called reconciliation that gets triggered in the senate in a budget impasse situation. I would say it typically involves a whole lot of horse trading but at the end is a bill that can pass with a simple majority. So I don't think either party will be able to drag this out indefinitely or just to the midterms.

Dragging this out generally is a bad idea for Democrats. The cult following of stable genius is going to accept the negative consequences longer as long as they get fed a narrative along the lines of "we prevent immigrants from getting health care and drain the swamp of lizard people." Or whatever. The Democrats will feel their feeble support dwindle when unpaid government workers are done with their savings, which will happen before the cult runs out of patience. The whole battle is mainly fought on the backs of people whose only fault was choosing a career in government. The Democrats will take pity on them and eventually agree to the least dehumanizing compromise you can negotiate at the "12th" hour.

In summary: you have the cooperation of the parents, you cannot exclude the existence of a mental issues, and you are allowed to spray the item then. These are conditions I put ahead of any other suggestion.

I've been thinking about strategies to get Google to back down on this. And I think the most viable strategy is to let them know that we will all move to iOS if they go through with it. If they lock down their OS, then we might as well use the OG locked down OS and turn to Apple. We only have to make this convincing enough.

I don't want to go to the dark side either. But as the light is going out on this side: I'm gonna need a new phone within the next 12-18 months. For the first time since ditching my blackberry I'm thinking about switching again. And for the first time ever I'm seriously thinking about an iPhone. All my purchases and what not be dammed. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, GOOGLE!

I hear you. I'd still be hesitant to let school age kids learn with an LLM companion. If the grownups think they're talking with a sentient gigabyte, I think the danger is too great to expose kids to this. Which brings me to my big picture opinion: the general public doesn't need to have access to most of these models. We don't need to cook polar bears alive to make 5 second video memes, slop, or disinformation. You can just read your emails. No one needs ChatGPT plan their next trip. No one should consider an LLM a substitute for a trained therapist. There are good applications in the field of accessibility, probably medical as well. The rest can stay in a digital lab until they've worked out how not to tell teenagers to kill themselves, not to eat rocks to help your digestion, or insert any other bullshit so-called AI headline you have read recently here. It's not good for people, the environment, and it's forming a dangerous bubble that will have shades of subprime mortgages 2007/8 when it bursts. The negatives outweigh the positives.