@tchrist Looks pretty clear to me. Some rain moving in tonight, maybe. When the mountains in the distance are blue from the atmosphere, the air is pristine. It's when Sandía Peak 10 miles away is all hazy and I can taste the smoke in my mouth that I know something like the Tonto National Forest is burning somewhere.

@Robusto This is true, and I would make the statement even broader.

In order to be a good translator, a computer needs to be able to think like a human, and know things humans would.

In addition, in order to fool a human into thinking an artificial intelligence is human, the intelligence needs to be able to think like a human, too, and know things humans would.

Can artificial intelligence analyze geometry?

Love takes empathy and sympathy

how do you impel ants away?

Not to stress you out or anything, but that's a ten point shift away from Biden compared to last month.

Which medical operation consumes the most time?

@CaptainBohemian I dunno the record holder but the surgeries that separate conjoined twins took around 22 hours at least, or used to, IIRC.

@Færd TBH Harris was a smart choice but it doesn't seem that Biden is up to the aggressive defamation techniques republicans use.

When the selling argument is still "Not Trump", any random positive shift in a graph works to his favor

It's like Trumpsters exactly know what to say but all dems have done is look sympathetic to COVID victims and put on masks.

That's the impression I get thousands of miles away, at least.

At least people seem to commit more to voting now, and I think since 2016 more swing people would go to the dems side than dems to reps.

I feel so hot.

Are you cool?

I am full.

What to do if you are uncomfortable?

Death Valley temperature rises to 54.4C – possibly the hottest ever reliably recorded.

@Færd Every minute Trump is in office stresses me out, so that's nothing new. But polls like these have been all over the map for so long I do not give them much credence anymore. It's worth noting that CNN is at the same time claiming in their "poll of polls" that Biden has a 9-point lead over Trump.

@Færd Haha nice.

The host has an array of host defences provided by both the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system, the primary function of which is to protect tissues against microbial colonization and invasion.

@Robusto Right, the August poll may be an outlier. I just thought people were generally too confident that this couldn't be another 2016. But it could.

@Færd Of course it could. Which is why we cannot afford to get complacent about it. We need to win, and win big.

Yeah

(I think the Dems are making light of the situation, but whatchagonnado)

What does hyper‐responsive mean?

Excessively responsive

probably

@Færd I don't think so. Everybody you hear talking about it says it's all about winning big, so if you have a pulse you have to get out and vote.

@Robusto There's a rising wave of young liberals/leftists that the Dem establishment is too afraid of to recognize and weaponize against Trump. What the Biden/Harris ticket suggests to me is that they'd rather lose to Trump than acknowledge this wave and make use of it. Not smart.

And also there are lots of poor people who have given up and are not going to vote either way, no matter how hard they are belittled.

'Cause they don't care for either party based on what they know from experience. A smarter VP pick could have interested them more.

But that's water under the bridge at this point

@Færd I disagree. Trump is the existential crisis. When your house is on fire and your kids are upstairs, there are no strategies for losing that can be considered.

"Failure is not an option."

You may be right, but I think you're kind of out of touch with what goes on in that sphere.

Which is my point

@Færd What, that I don't have any contact with poor/young people? You may be surprised.

I'm just saying that lots of them are not going to be convinced by this kind of argument.

Nobody thinks Biden is the ideal candidate, but almost everyone but the MAGA crowd think he's our one chance to save the country.

That's were I disagree. There was this poll that showed around half of people who wanted to vote Sanders wouldn't vote at all if he was not nominated.

That's not rational, I agree. But people are not rational machines.

That group may be smaller than you think.

Maybe, but they're still extremely important.

No pun intended?

Heh no that was a typo

In any case, you may be surprised. I think I'm more in touch with what is going on in this country than you are, and I don't know about or hear from anybody who would stand by and let the country burn because they didn't get their ideal candidate.

News organizations try to play individual cases out of proportion to get viewership.

Oh man I can find thousands of those in a second.

Just as long as you can't find millions.

That'd take a thousand seconds.

And you'd find the same ones over and over.

And many of them would be right-wing trolls.

You're not very online by today's measures, I reckon.

No personal judgement.

Just clarifying the "out of touch" bit.

@Færd Funny you should say that while we're here talking online.

If anything, I'm online too much.

@Færd What would a smarter VP pick have been?

@Mitch Warren

Better yet, Sanders

Even as just a gesture to the left

Or the economically fraught sector of the public

@Færd The economy is Trump's problem, not Biden's.

I wonder who was it that bailed out banks and put them before the people after the 2008 crash.

@Færd Obama saved us from a depression and left the economy on an upswing. Trump took a winning game and blew it. People know that.

In any case, I agree there are assholes who would rather see the country burn than take steps to save it. There are people who are that selfish. I just don't think there are as many as you do.

And we can argue it from here to November, but November we'll find out the answer, so that's all I'm going to opine on that.

I'll get back to Obama's mixed response to the crisis later.

But the fact that you underestimate the size of that crowd and dismiss them as selfish assholes is indicative of a systemic problem.

@Færd No, if it's a problem at all it's a personal problem—I'm one person, remember? Nevertheless, the polls still show what they show, and if they're accurate at all they are including the spoilsports you think are so very mighty.

> It’s hard to know how big a group of voters #BernieOrBust truly is. It’s obvious that some on social media are merely bots and Trump trolls, hoping to disrupt the elections.

That you will not admit much of what you see online are bots or trolls says something about your opinion. Whatever. I just hope you're surprised (disappointed?) in November.

Lol I know there are bots.

All I'm saying is that there's a substantial share of the potential votes that are being taken for granted. And that's not smart. I'm not talking about a personality cult.

They may join these nonvoters (who are unhappy with both parties) out of frustration. You go ahead and call them whatever you want. It won't change anything.

The smart plan would strive to win over non-voters, not to repel voters.

@Færd IIRC Warren has said and done some things that are too easy to weaponize against her, things dems care about.

It's not a coincidence that the only attack they can come up with against Harris is a birther conspiracy.

@Robusto haha this is exactly why I tread lightly on these matters. No matter how much I read you'd always have a more accurate insight about how things really are there.

Though I think there's a good chance Trump is ahead. As I said, everyone is bent on kicking him out, so any manipulated or non-manipulated charts seem to win him back some votes.

@Færd Or perhaps one has to choose between winning over non-voters on the one hand, and centre voters on the other?

@Cerberus We're not talking about anything too radical here. Policies like universal healthcare, the minimum wage etc are often overwhelmingly popular among Republicans, let alone the 'center' of the Dem voters.

@M.A.R. So you think smug condescension is treading lightly? I congratulate you on your imagination.

@Færd Do you think universal healthcare is also popular among swing voters?

@Robusto He's sincere in his compliment. I think you misunderstood him.

@Cerberus I'm not sure how much of a determinant it is to them.

Ah, I thought that was another of yours, @Faerd. My apologies to @M.A.R.

Neither am I.

@Robusto I didn't attempt any smug condescension either.

@Færd And yet how effortlessly you achieved it.

My intentions are misunderstood too, then.

And you intimated before that I may be rooting for Trump. That tells me all I need to know for the purposes of this conversation.

Again with the condescension.

Say what you will about Hitler, but

@Færd oh she's definitely the smartest candidate, that is the candidate that is the smartest and most competent. but the VP is not chosen for that. Warren is too much like Biden (older, northeastern) in character, and probably too far left politically -for electability-. Harris is the smarter choice (a strategic choice) for electability because it'll get more non-voters out (who are more likely to vote Dem) and she's not as far left.

She's just as competent as Warren (but maybe not as well planned out as Warren, though that's probably impossible).

Flameware alert: As much as Sander's ideas seem pretty good for this day and age, he doesn't strike me as competent (good at getting things done) as any of the other's just mentioned.

Warren would have been great from the white liberal intellectual point of view, but that's not the majority of voters.

@Mitch I think he ruined the mustache. It was probably stylish in its own way in the 1930s

There's some aura of . . . humility around it. Or maybe it's just ugly but neat. I dunno. It's ever tainted with being the Adolf mustache though

@Færd not trying to butt in anything but I think he's referring to devices like "you go ahead and call them whatever you want. It won't change anything." or "I wonder who was it that" which are snarky but not impolite. I mean, there are different ways of being right. What made the whole thing go south was "you're not very online", I guess.

People feel more strongly about these things the more they affect them, so I guess sometimes the conversation just has to stop.

I'm sure Trump will be worse for me than him.

And has been.

I mean that's not to say we won't be affected by it much. If Trump is elected again one of his populist hat tricks to appease his nazis might indeed be firing something at Iran.

Which is why the conversation is important enough for everyone

Alright.

And of course I'm in no position to advise about anything especially when I'm sometimes worse, but when the conversation reaches a point, a breather is inevitable

before snark kicks in

@M.A.R. He totally copied it from Chaplin. (I think it is a documented statement by Hitler)

@Mitch Neither Harris nor Warren did very well in the run-up. But that's partly because Warren and Sanders split the left's vote. Except for Sanders, Warren would have attracted a heavy chunk of the cake.

And that segues into the next point: racial/regional divides are not the only ones that should be considered in picking the VP. Political divides matter too.

And I don't agree with the idea of left-leaning = non-electable.

@Færd I don't think I hinted at that.

And she's not that far left anyhow.

@Mitch Ah so what makes her unelectable?

@Færd Which 'her'?

And she's even to the right of Obama when it comes to foreign policy. She's a regular Dem in that regard.

@Mitch Warren

@Færd Oh. On the whole, the only one we've talked about that is further left than Warren is Sanders. Maybe about the same.

@Færd Which her for this one? Warren again?

Yeap

> Warren is too much like Biden (older, northeastern) in character, and probably too far left politically -for electability-. Harris is the smarter choice (a strategic choice) for electability because it'll get more non-voters out (who are more likely to vote Dem) and she's not as far left.

I'm responding to this part.

@Mitch Sanders is more populist.

And much more responsible in foreign policy. No comparison here.

I didn't say she was unelectable. I was saying she was not -as- an electable VP addition as Harris.

Ah. Okay, then my point about considering the political divide in this strategic choice still applies.

@Færd I don't know how to understand anybody's use of 'populist' anymore. There are so many directions it can be interpreted in, some of them not so good.

@Færd I couldn't say. At the moment I can't think of any statements or policies by either.

@Mitch Right. I meant he wanted to harness the public's dismay to gain their votes.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in title (98): Can I use the word "impotency" and not refer to erectile dysfunction by Alexandros Kourtis on english.SE

Whether it's good or bad depends on how much of that dismay is reasonable.

@Færd Don't all politician's running against an incumbent do that?

@Mitch He was trying to appeal to the downtrodden with tangible ideas like nobody else's, I think. He described himself as the organizer in chief.

@Færd Biden and Harris seem a little too much alike politically. Now if you asked me exactly how, I wouldn't be able to give any details at all.

"I've participated in more picket lines than all my opponents combined" was his idea of politics

@Færd Sanders?

Yeah

@Mitch Right. And that's what's unwise in her running as VP.

Because the political divide is becoming increasingly important.

@Færd I don't know if that is -unwise-, but rather a different strategy for winning. You can't get your ideas done if you're not elected.

I'm saying today you can leverage your ideas to get elected, maybe more effectively than the color of your skin.

amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/14/… -- The best recent SciFi, fantasy and horror books

@Færd I'm sure there's a bit more to her than her background. She -is- a kickass senator.

@Mitch Warren?

Oh you mean Harris.

But so is Warren.

And it's less of a show in the latter case.

@Færd Harris has been a prosecutor for a long time and Republicans could no longer pull the "Biden is soft on crime" card.

Harris has an unattractive record as California's top cop.

@M.A.R. Those are a lot of possible possible worlds

@Mitch is it just me or are you also frigging tired or the PC pandering? Everyone is either LGBTQ+ or a person of color (most preferably a woman) these days.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm reading, and enjoying Broken Earth, which features a black lady as the main character. And it's certainly not PC pandering.

@Færd I can't disagree because I don't know enough substantial about it, but however unattractive it is, it is in no way as unattractive as the current administration's record on law enforcement.

But I've been conditioned to wince whenever they do it. Obviously, not all of them pull it off as well as The Fifth Season.

@M.A.R. I have a Mac Book Pro so no PC pandering here.

@Mitch angry maniacal laugh

@M.A.R. haha

wait

what are we laughing at?

Fingers twitching to serial upvote Mith so it gets reversed the next day

@M.A.R. "Tough on crime" is taking on offensive connotations in the eyes of the young ones.

It's definitely horrible to many people of color.

I'm not sure about this idea of trying to appeal to the Republicans.

@M.A.R. It's the current trend.

There are more urgent directions to look to.

Also note that most sci-fi has been very -un- PC for ages.

@Færd sure, seen some people reverse the race card: that she imprisoned lots of black people with disproportionate jail times

@Færd I think it'd be appealing to swing voters, especially older ones. Reps can no longer mischaracterize Biden/Harris as thieves would be roaming the street and taking your things.

I should be gone. Goodbye to all.

@Mitch to me positive discrimination has hurt more than it helped those minorities, and was just as bad anyway.

@Færd TTYL

@M.A.R. LeGuin had most of here main characters be men.

So we ignored five percent of the population and they were even shunned by the 95. Now the 5 percent is the focus, and you have the 95 percent being trash talked. How the heck is this better?

@Mitch as far as feminists go, she's adamant but more reasonable.

Or might be that they used to be mostly reasonable, but that's not what this GenZ's impression has been of the more recent waves.

And the tit-for-tat mindset could have worked if the same people were being compensated in some way, but it's not

@Færd I don't know that Harris's toughoncrime stance was the driving or even minor criterion for choosing her. It's one feature I suppose. But in a (fair, in good faith) argument with someone leaning republican, would that be used as a convincing argument? A VP is not the Attorney General.

Let's also not forget that she was doing it before it was cool. Now it's cool to be PC so it tingles your skepticism a bit.

@M.A.R. 'positive' discrimination?

Oh.. the 5 percent...I get it.

But I think I can explain.

@Mitch apparently the umbrella term is affirmative action, but that was about combating discrimination, not changing the sides.

It's just a public service announcement. Before, the 5% weren't even mentioned. Now you know about it. Nothing has changed...the 5% are still being oppressed, the 95% are still doing just fine, but now we're aware of the problem.

You hear stories of some companies employing based on gender or sex, except they say 'we need to have five women in this dept. for a progressive PR image', so it's now discriminating against men.

@M.A.R. 'Affirmative Action' is the name of a very particular set of policies in job allotment (like article 15 in India). It has come to mean any kind of reverse discrimination. ('reverse discrimination' is the term I think you are looking for).

@M.A.R. Yeah. That's just a bunch of incompetent men complaining really loudly.

@Mitch I'm pretty sure "positive discrimination" is being used, dunno about the "reverse" version

@Mitch no, not like that. You hear it from self-identified females. Of course, everyone could be a dog on the internet, but it's odd to say no company would do it.

@M.A.R. I'm not sure about what American media you're exposed to but I've known the term 'reverse discrimination' since the 70's, and this is my first exposure to 'positive discrimination' (which sounds like an oxymoron)

Especially not when I've seen one I've been following more closely: Stack Exchange.

@Mitch American media: SE chat, maybe. I forgot. I think someone mentioned it and I googled it and it existed shrug

Sure, I'm not denying that there are assholes like Comicsgate

@M.A.R. I wouldn't be surprised that somewhere sometime, some well qualified 95%-er did not get the job/project/promotion that a not as competent 5%-er got -because they were labeled as a 5%-er, but that is rare. the 95%-ers are still getting 95% of the stuff.

But it's also undeniable that it's being used as a sales tactic, when I'm browsing good fantasy to read after 2017, or other examples.

Don't let fiction confuse you. Those are just stories.

made up.

Trying my best

now if you're complaining about presence in fiction, sure, I'm an old dude, it always sounds weird when the entire starship leadership is female because...I'm just not used to it.

I mostly don't have any skin in the game, I just think these things shift progressivism from being a simple act of kindness to a political stance or a soon-to-fade zeitgeist, both of which can easily be argued against, unlike being nice. So it ultimately hurts those minorities

That's new.

"I" is a vowel sound and a vowel letter. And people are still confused if it's maybe a consonant somehow.

@M.A.R. There's a TV show (Murdoch Mysteries) which is set in 1890's Toronto, a detective solving murders with a female physician/pathologist, very much solving science with old tools, and it just always strikes a false note that 1) there is a dedicated forensic pathologist in the police department, and 2) it's a woman. Nowadays, no question. But back then it just stretches the bounds of credulity, or at least that it wasn't a huge issue -as part of the show-

@Mitch Starships are understandable, but one thing I can't get in, for example, The Fifth Season is how like 80 percent of the past emperors who did notable things were female. I'm imagining this mostly medieval yet post-apocalyptic setting and it just doesn't fit.

@RegDwigнt "orange" and "elephant" and "hour" were already taken

@M.A.R. Yeah, it's a bit much.

@Mitch Yeah, rewriting history, which is what it feels like to me sometimes, is just as bad when you're the good guys.

When it is well done, I'm fine with it. Positive attention for people in less favourable positions is nice in general. But, when it's hyped or too obvious, it gets annoying.

Most especially when accompanied by PC talk.

@Mitch !!

@Cerberus don't worry, in a hundred years they'll start erasing all references to LGBT from literature, like they are now erasing all references to blacks from Mark Twain.

@Mitch also painfully true

@M.A.R. Yes, (if I understand yo) that was in issue in the US (and ever since) with Affirmative Action, that it would put into question the competence of the 5% who got the job instead of the 95%-er. That fear has not gone away. (again, mostly by the incompetent ones from the 95% who shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place).

And God forbid your git repository has the letters L, G, B, or T in it somewhere. They'll get rid of all of those, too.

@M.A.R. I haven't read the fifth season so I don't know (for the record I haven't read anything ever so there's that)

@Mitch it's terrific. It's exactly how these things should be written.

@M.A.R. That is indeed exactly the wrong way to approach the issue. Non-minorities should not be scolded just for what they are.

@RegDwigнt Exactly.

Once minorities no longer exist in art, this American hype can rest.

But I think it will pass eventually.

@M.A.R. Not to change the subject (I'm not changing the subject) but is this how it works in Iran?

People are mostly brown or black. There's some Antarctic people that are white and everyone laughs at their whiteness. The main character and her mentor are black, none of them are morally white or holy or anything.

@Mitch I have only ever heard positive discrimination.

@Cerberus alas, American hypes don't really pass, but rather pile up. One hype does not replace another, but builds upon it.

Cf communism.

@Mitch Mitch, a good approximation of what Iran sounds like ATM is, AFAICT, the 80's in the US. Sprinkle some Islam as a topping.

The teenagers are coming up with witty counterculture things to say and do.

@M.A.R. Jemisen is african -american so it's pretty understandable that she writes from the point of view of someone african american and that her protagonist is black.

@M.A.R. Agree. This is exactly the problem: it is self-destructive.

again...haven't read it.

@Mitch what the heck do you think I'm doing. Persuading you to read it.

The other day on MuseScore (of all places) someone posted the pamphlet of the American Communist Party from like 1938. And added "some of the things have come true already. Scary!"

@Mitch Yeah, I really don't like that, falsifying history.

Romanticising it, even.

People should realise how far we've come, and rejoice in it.

@Mitch maybe she's checking the donuts for pathogens.

@Cerberus haha yeah good luck with that.

When you paint the past as a idyll, people get nostalgic, then reactionary.

And afraid: they think things can only get worse.

While in fact emancipation has been a very long road of progress in most places.

It's in your genes to rebel against the establishment during a certain period of your life. No matter what the establishment is. Even if it's the fucking Utopia.

@M.A.R. The last scifi I read was... Stephenson... Quicksilver... about 1000 pages in ... maybe a 1/4 of the book... I learned a lot about Renaissance era German mining and metallurgy engineering... but that's when my brain overflowed and I've been bailing out since.

Wasn't in mine TBH

Unless it kicked in early enough and hasn't let go

@M.A.R. It's on the list

wait

that's -another- trilogy

holy fuck.

Inheritance?

can't the editors tell them to hold back a bit.

She has a couple of trilogies yeah

keep only every other sentence

Broken Earth has won three consecutive Hugos.

@Mitch oh but that's what they did. You already are reading the heavily abridged version.

@Mitch I think anyone should be able to write from any perspective.

It's actually a pretty easy read

In fact, writing from a different perspective can be refreshing.

@Cerberus That is problematic

Some geological terms and some coinages for the sake of the fantastical setting

But nothing else.

@Mitch Very much so. It is what is happening.

Lots of kids dying tho'. I've noticed mothers keep doing that, killing kids in their stories.

Or at least old enough ladies