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On fiction: there's this series, "Sword of Truth". The main feature I really, really like about it is the main hero does actually make the good decisions, like not falling for prophesies in a stupid way. Unfortunately, there are many books that could use a lot of editing; I read the first, and then the last 2 or 3 (my husband read the rest for me, haha), and the good parts I really liked, but wish that the books received some heavy editing.

Still, at least the first one is worth a read.

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Also, on children's advertising, and how reducing ad revenue can backfire: lots of people don't like Cocomelon; I'd say I like some of their videos and not all, and they do meet a baseline level of quality. (The Cocomelon ripoffs are worse!) They have a few pretty enjoyable videos. But they made a ton of money off advertising until the changes required by legislation; and this precipitated the sale of merchandise (which initially the creator didn't want to do, according to an interview I read once) and, eventually, a sale to a conglomerate that bought up many of these youtube children's cartoon properties. On the rare occasions I let my kids watch cocomelon these days, I seek out the old ones, even though the animation isn't as sleek, because something about the new ones after the acquisition is "off" for me.

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Re: Disney - I've been looking into this and I *think* the impairment charge in question is actually solely an accounting write off that reflects a reduced enterprise value (and would affect stock price) but isn't a taxable event as such -- it's just marking-to-market an asset whose intangible goodwill value has depreciated. Happy to be corrected by any real accountants but AFAICT it's slightly less bullshit than it at first appears.

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Re lab-grown meat: I'm not a consumer of it, but my impression is more people are interested in the "reduction of animal suffering" than reduction in greenhouse gases. (Which I assume lab-grown meat is still 100% a reduction on)

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Ed: "If I Didn’t Make This Its Own Section Less People Would Have Understood It"

Less -> Fewer

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Re: Uber for Babysitters - I appreciate taking the time to remove a dependency on Twitter by copying the text but please, please *please* for the sake of readability do it so that the conversation goes chronologically from top to bottom instead of reverse-chronologically. Twitter's way of doing things is already garbage but in text it somehow manages to be 10x worse.

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re TikTok: I commented on Twitter that this looks like a truncation effect at least in part. Obviously, it takes time to rack up views, and takes more time to rack up many more views; so any chart of 'X releases on date Y which have achieved >=Z views' will necessarily look 'tilted', simply because old releases have had more time to reach the threshold, and the higher the threshold, the more tilted it will be. (To make this more intuitive, consider the extreme cases: what would you expect the chart to look like for 100 million views, or 1 billion views, or 100 views, or 1 view, or 0 views?)

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What are the other 5 series with The Americans?

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Wow, Danielle Steele's work ethic is impressive. Reminds me of a scene from Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men: “If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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I wonder if the 'cannot handle conditionals' thing isn't (at least somewhat) another instance of 'decoupling vs contextualizing'.

In fairness to the 'conditional collapsers', starting a statement or question with "If X ..." usually _is some evidence_ of "X".

ChatGPT's 'simulation' of the example conditional you quoted didn't fail quite in the quoted way, _while also_ assuming/collapsing it; my prompt:

> Please generate the next half a dozen or so of parts in the dialog between person A and person B that starts as follows:

>

> A: "If I were going to Paris, where would be the best place to get a baguette?"

Its response:

> B: "Ah, Paris, the city of baguettes! You're in for a treat. I'd highly recommend heading to Maison Kayser on Rue Monge. They bake some of the finest baguettes in the city."

>

> A: "Maison Kayser on Rue Monge, got it. Is there a particular time of day when they are freshest?"

>

> ...

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“Oh my, paying online for restaurant bills would be so amazing. It’s so frustrating to have to flag someone down to be allowed to pay. If you implement this, I will go to your restaurant more often.”

Already exists here in the UK. QR code, directs you to a site called sumup, or similar; Apple Pay, done. It totally is amazing. I’m surprised you don’t have it over there. Must be some pesky IRB blocked it...

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My guess on the 6 series are The Americans, The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Twin Peaks?

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FYI Looks like the Ben Hoffman tweets got deleted (or mislinked, but I think deleted) which is a bit sad because they looked like they would have some an interesting strategy for sifting through “woo”.

I found the ACX piece one of the most ill defined / incomplete pieces I’ve seen from Scott Alexander, so I’m hoping he comes back to try and give it a proper treatment and argument that can actually be interacted with in a meaningful way and bring about more interesting conversations on the topic (and hopefully lead to more cool people being discovered).

Fantastic and thoughtful roundup Zvi, I appreciate it as always.

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Re trends in fantasy: this is a meme for good reason, but try reading non-western fantasy and you'll see a completely different dynamic. I'm a big fan of Chinese Xianxia novels and they exist in a completely different philosophical and ethical tradition compared to western works. For example, the concept of immortality has no negative Christian baggage and characters are generally motivated by simple desire for power. Much of it is poorly translated and/or poorly written but the same is true of western fantasy. The only one I'd really recommend is "Reverend Insanity", which is quite good, probably the best in the genre and imo as trenchant an insight into modern China as you're likely to get in a story about people flying around and flinging magic spells at each other.

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"Uber for Babysitters" reminds me of the idea that I and I'm sure hundreds or thousands of others have had, which is an app that connects working parents with stay at home parents willing to take on an extra kid or two in exchange for payment.

Unfortunately, this is illegal. At least in Washington State, there are no regulatory hurdles to accepting payment to take care of someone's kids in the kids' home.

However, if you want to accept payment to take care of those same kids in your own home, you'll need to comply with 112 pages of regulations: https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=110-300&full=true.

You'll have to obtain a license for both yourself and the facility.

For yourself you'll need training on how to not shake babies, how to give medicine to kids, how to recognize child abuse, "serving children experiencing homelessness training," and so forth.

The facility will almost certainly need retrofits. Windows have to be made so that they can open a maximum of three inches. You'll need multi-compartment sinks for dish washing and sanitizing. Everything needs to be ADA compliant with ramps, rails, and such. Outdoor spaces will need self closing gates, swingsets will need nine inches of pea gravel, or six of rubber chunks.

You also have to develop curriculum, as well as "curriculum philosophy." You also have to promote acceptance of diversity.

You'll have to observe if there's an earthquake and take appropriate action.

Informally, lots of folks pay friends and neighbors to watch their kids, and it tends to be a lot more affordable than licensed childcare centers. However, since it's not technically legal, matchmaking is very difficult. A parent with a shallow social network is unlikely to find someone offering those services.

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I remember Scott was previously adamant you can't distinguish Pepsi/Coke blind but I've done that test and was totally able to distinguish them, still unsure what's up with that. (I'm in the EU, might the formulations sold in different regions taste slightly different?)

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