@jmoiron.bsky.social In my article on LLM environmental impact, I mentioned "erosion of human skill" as a potential downside to AI.
I've always assumed this was real based on personal experience, but there was a paper released recently from Anthropic backing this up, so I don't have to rely on vibes...
jmoiron plays the blues
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: Flying is something that has not really tracked inflation. The result is the experience of flying is garbage now unless you pay "extra" to get what used to be the standard experience.
Games are going the same way and it's probably bad.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: A bunch of stuff has happened to offset costs since the 90s.. the market is much bigger, you don't need to produce costly media. But you also need a much larger team to produce an AAA title.
There's no reason to assume this balance will last in perpetuity.
@jmoiron.bsky.social I don't understand why people think the economics of the games market will continue to support games getting cheaper every year.
Chrono Trigger cost $80 new in 1995, $170 in 2026 dollars.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: This isn't a defence of the American system, I'm just describing what I see. A lot of Americans want European style systems (myself included) but we also need to reckon with what that means for the global health system.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: The conversation we actually have, over and over, is Europeans saying "oh we get that medicine for 5€, American health care is really terrible" and they refuse to believe "our healthcare is subsidized by American suffering" over "Americans are stupid."
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: How can you say "you've got it backwards" and then start after the drug has been developed? That's where all of the costs are. That's what the quote claims doesn't happen without the US market.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: Tolstoy and Hemingway agreed that all war is a crime. Mass death is not the exclusive domain of "cruel bombs."
But it's a harrowing and timely reminder that whatever nuclear weapons controls we can muster, however inadequate, are better than nothing.
Letting them lapse is inexc...
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: Sadly, it is most famous for being the target of the 2nd Atomic Bomb dropped in WWII.
If you look at it "by the numbers", the decision to do so can seem complicated. But bombs do not kill numbers, they kill people.
Today I stood where it fell.
@jmoiron.bsky.social Tonight's the last of 3 nights I'm spending in Nagasaki.
A beautiful city with rolling hillsides and terraced dwellings, it was an early point of contact with Europeans. Its regional specialties have an international flair with Chinese and Portuguese influence.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: Booing of Trump was filtered out of the US Open tennis final last year.
@jmoiron.bsky.social I am on the Nozomi Shinkansen and the wifi they provide seems to be the same one they used on the TGV in Mission Impossible (1996).
I keep looking around expecting to see Ving Rhames.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: dunno what he's done now but I'm still struggling to understand how you can parlay an online bingo card app into being trusted and respected in the upper echelons of the tech world
@jmoiron.bsky.social One of the best things about Chinese portable consumer electronics is that they all have charge indicators and USB-C.
I need to bring two custom chargers for my toiletries bag alone (toothbrush & trimmer), but Xiaomi sells these with USB-C. Barely any western brands seem to do t...
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: An Avalon explosion of drivel?
(Sorry, I love the Avalon explosion, it is such an underrated explosion)
@jmoiron.bsky.social Several recent experiences lead me to revisit some old ideas about software and hardware and consider whether or not our trajectory has changed.
jmoiron.net/blog/wirths-...
@jmoiron.bsky.social Been waiting to see this take articulated somewhere.
It's not even subtext, they are just straightforwardly saying that black women can't be beautiful enough to portray Helen, and appealing to their own flawed retvrn fantasies of antiquity as a figleaf.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: Sorry maybe it is clumsily made.
In the US there are minimum parking mandates that result in us building very sparse commercial sprawl with far too much parking. It's definitely a land use decision to do this but it's so ubiquitous that the decision is invisible.
@jmoiron.bsky.social replied: I agree with you, and I know that we already have lots of parking lots ready to be retrofit, but the enormous empty parking lot in your example photo is definitely a choice that affects land use.
@jmoiron.bsky.social Went to Guangzhou a couple days ago and turns out the hotel was uhh pretty tall.
@jmoiron.bsky.social This is why one of the required courses for my Computer Science degree was an ethics class.