Lol, that is a funny coincidence. Hope you enjoy it!
amemorablename
joined 1 year ago
Oh yeah, on some apps, there definitely seems to be profiles that are liking everybody. I've heard it speculated (not sure if confirmed) that they tend to give you a visibility boost when you are a new profile, which is why you can end up with a few likes in the beginning then nothing. Though with Hinge, I found I wouldn't necessarily get any even when new, possibly because Likes are more limited per day than some apps and it allows you to send a message with a like, so it's a bit more conscious.
Np, hope it helps (and feel free to let me know how it goes, I'm curious to know if it works for anyone else). And yeah, I remember trying CharacterAI briefly in the past for language learning myself; main difference I find with this type of setup, is 1) The corrections are "on the side", not organically part of the conversation itself, so you have the main conversation which the AI is focused on and then you have suggestions/corrections you get if you say something its evaluation thinks has incorrectness for that language. 2) Both apps have forms of conversation where they can be more unguided in terms of what you talk about and have "roleplay" type of scenarios that are a little more structured for practicing specific kinds of things. For example, I was just doing a little talking with a "roleplay" on Tutor Lily called "explaining symptoms to a doctor."
So if I compare it to trying to learn through just any LLM, point 1 seems to be the most significant difference. Since technically you could already get an LLM to roleplay most things, albeit with more effort than with these apps' scenarios. But getting corrections on the side while talking to an LLM seems to be a more specific engineering/design thing that goes beyond LLMs alone. I might try to ask the creators and see if I can get an answer, but I'm unclear still on whether these apps are powering the corrections purely through an LLM itself or some other kind of AI evaluation with it.
There's one I've been on for... I'm not sure, could be more than a year, though I was inactive for a while during periods of that. I have a grand total of 4 likes and 3 of them were recently when I was inactive, which seemed like the app was giving me a bit more visibility to draw me back in. (And none of them are people I want to match with.)
Based on the things I've heard, the game seems to be that these apps tend to "rank" you early on and then from there, you're mostly stuck where you are unless you pay to get more visibility. And because rejections are not something you "see" unless you match and then the other person unmatches, you have no way of knowing for sure if your interactions (likes, or on Hinge, messages without being matched) are being seen by anyone or if they are buried in the stack.
I know on Hinge, from the end of receiving attention, there's a limited number of likes you can see at a time without paying. So presumably that means that if, for example, somebody gets flooded with likes/comments and gets 100 of them, they'd have to go through and match or reject with each one to see all of them if they are a free user. And because some women get flooded with more attention than they have the time to engage with, that effectively means you might never get seen at all.
I know that's not exactly an encouraging way of looking at it, but considering the mechanisms of it helps remind me that it's likely not something to do with me and is far more likely I got in a bad spot early with the "ranking" and can't get out of it without paying. So sometimes I go through it for the hell of it to remove people in my stack, or send out the occasional like/message, but I try not to spend too much time on it when it's designed to work against me.
So, I don't know about Spanish specifically (I've been focused on Mandarin myself), but I do have an idea you can try, that I've been experimenting with. There's an app called Tutor Lily and one called Univerbal, and both make use of a combination of AI text generation / languages models (for one side of a conversation) and some kind of "corrections" to point out mistakes in grammar or that kind of thing. Both have a form of trial or free use before you have to pay for anything (though with Univerbal, you might have to sign up for the full trial and then cancel in your store subscriptions if you don't want to get charged after it ends).
I haven't tried these for long yet, but I'm liking Tutor Lily more so far for just basic chatting and writing a message in the language every now and then during a day. And the main benefit I find is in getting me to use the language more flexibly vs. the set examples that course-based apps tend to have. In this way, one thing I do sometimes is I'll go find a grammar rule I learned in the past, then try to make use of it in the chatting app, within the context of the conversation. I reach for Google Translate a fair bit during this, as my understanding of Mandarin is still limited, but I know enough that it's not too painful.
The one main caveat here is, LLMs (large language models) can "hallucinate", as in confidently BS on things. Presumably, these apps are designed to try to confine the output to some degree and are (hopefully?) specially trained on grammatical corrections and the like to make them more accurate. But I still take it and its corrections with a grain of salt when conversing with it. So it's not something I'd recommend for someone new to a language who is very dependent on correct info, but at the level you're at, it might be a helpful supplementary thing.
Edit: Just noticed you said you have ADHD. I recommend trying this approach all the more in that case. I'm pretty confident I have ADHD too and the interactivity of this approach helps me stay engaged with it.
It's interesting to hear your experience on it. I've long felt that the visceral hatred some places have for self-promotion is odd, but I have no evidence to back up how it goes in practice. Personally, what bothers me most about self-promotion or large scale corporate stuff is when it's sneaky and manipulative as such. I would much prefer to encounter someone who is open about it than come across a thing that has "hello fellow kids" energy and it's some marketing employee for a corporation. The problem with the sneaky way being that it blurs the lines between casual social interaction and formal business transaction; which I don't think is necessarily bad intrinsically? But when it's done expressly for the purpose of manipulating and has no sincere relationship building behind it, it's creepy as hell. The nature of business under capitalism means you kinda need to draw some lines between "casual social interaction and formal business transaction" or you're going to get taken advantage of.
Anyway, all of this is to say, I think you make a good point and I don't think self-promotion is intrinsically bad either. And in fact, being hard on it probably pushes more of it "underground" so to speak, to the creepy subtle stuff.
Yes and no. It's not a solved problem, but a worked around problem. Diffusion models struggle with parts that are especially small and would normally have to be done with precision to look right. Some tech does better on this, by increasing the resolution (so that otherwise smaller parts come out bigger) and/or by tuning the model such that it's stiffer in what it can do but some of the worst renders are less likely.
In other words, fine detail is still a problem in diffusion models. Hands are related to it some of the time, but are not the entirety of it. Hands were kind of like a symptom of the fine detail problem, but now that they've made hands better, they haven't fixed that problem (at least not in entirety and fixing it in entirety might not be possible within the diffusion architecture). So it's sorta like they've treated the symptoms more so.
They have the basic groundwork laid years ahead of time, just ready to begin implementation at which point it’s probably a matter of months and the important thing is neither we nor these countries generally see the ramp-up happening until it’s too late and the machine is running.
So yes it’s easy and it’s hard to counter without something like the great firewall and extensive laws controlling foreign NGOs, and even an extensive, well-funded, ideologically loyal intelligence apparatus to root out traitors and foreign agents.
Again, this does not make sense as phrasing though. Laying groundwork for years ahead of time is not, by any meaning of the word, "easy".
This is frankly a short-sighted way of looking at things that I think shows you’re probably on the younger side as many of us are. The 1930s were awful and they pulled through. without a revolution There were real winds of change after WW2 that the US successfully defeated.
The 1930s are not the same conditions as right now. Post WW2 is not the same conditions as right now. But if you want to compare, that period had FDR and the closest thing to that today as a reformer is Bernie Sanders, who the established party elites resoundingly rejected. In place of having a real reformer, they are saying Biden is doing meaningful work when he's doing tweaks. Meanwhile, we have climate change and its consequences increasingly bearing down on the world, which the US is woefully unprepared for and continues to drag its feet on addressing.
Eh. It’s not practical to war with the entire world and too unpopular domestically. They keep their hegemony and power using economic coercion and various historical and material inertia around those (colonialism and taking over from Europe after rescuing them from communist take-over at the end of WW2 being a primary one).
Not what I meant. Economic might is unenforceable without military might behind it. Look at what the Houthis have done, for example.
Failing infrastructure doesn’t matter.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1242327964/the-economic-impact-of-the-baltimore-bridge-collapse
the U.S. secretary of transportation, said last week that, normally, between $100 million and $200 million in cargo moves in and out of the port in Baltimore each day. And that affects $200 million in wages, he said. He said there's 8,000 jobs directly affected by the port's activities. But I want to note there's still some business happening at the port. There's one part of it that's called Tradepoint Atlantic. That's beyond the Key Bridge. But of course, the biggest business is from the really big ships, and those still can't get in or out via the main shipping channel.
This was from April 2, 2024, mind you. The situation may have changed by now, but the point is, it can impact a lot.
I see hope on the horizon but nothing like certainty.
Well then you've been arguing against someone who isn't here. I'm arguing about trends here, not something set in stone. Primarily, I'm arguing against this tone I see that comes across to me as something like: "have some hope if you want, but the empire is mega mega mega powerful and it's going to get you in your sleep if you don't stay constantly anxious about it 24/7." Maybe that's an uncharitable way to put it, but you are putting so much focus on the empire in isolation with little on what anyone else is doing and downplaying the empire's failings (such as in infrastructure). Don't eat the onion on believing it to be more powerful than it actually is. Furthermore, you want to push back on the details that's perfectly valid, but bringing age into it is silly. It is not out of reach to examine the conditions back in the 1930s and living through them doesn't guarantee anyone being more politically literate about the empire's power.
They come out of the woodwork to say this kind of stuff when there's an election, but don't actually stand up for anything remotely revolutionary, during or outside of an election.
What is supposed to be strategic about voting for evil is never quite clear. And let's be clear, when people talk about voting for the lesser of two evils, that is effectively what they're saying: "you should vote for evil." Maybe these liberals would understand it better if their options were Emperor Palpatine and Lord Voldemort. Maybe then they'd get how ridiculous it sounds to say, "Strategically vote for the lesser evil of the two."
I think what it suggests is that they don't truly believe the candidate they're voting for is evil. And they go with that rhetoric because they think it's more appealing to someone who does view the candidate as evil.
As we see with Bangladesh it’s not hard at all in many places even without a squad of expert killers supported by the US global surveillance network and medium and heavy armor to overthrow a country. It’s depressingly easy which is why I say there’s still a difficult and possibly long, multi-decade fight ahead of us against the empire as it clings to life and claws back gains here and there, creating enough of a buffer that it can hang on for many years to come.
(Bold emphasis mine)
I'd argue this is overstating it a bit. We don't know how much went into Bangladesh leading up to it, how long may have been spent working to create the conditions that would lead to instability. We do know that the western empire uses sanctions as one means of putting the screws on a country to create unbearable conditions for its people, so that they'll be more open to turning against their government. But an approach like this is not "easy" to do - it primarily exists on the back of the empire's economic power and the military enforcement behind that power. And the tiding is turning on that with the strengthening of BRICS, even if not instantaneously. As well as the dependency-positioning that can result in sanctioning of some countries and manufacturing to backfire.
Military might and the forces of production behind them are what keeps the empire in power above all else, aye? And if we look at the maintenance issues and screwiness of accounting that goes on with the US military budget, for example - as well as its performance in actual combat - it seems to me that a lot of the remaining force of the empire is inertia. That's not to say it isn't a threat, but that - to put it one way - it's more focused on cashing in than sustaining itself? Like it has a certain degree of organization and functioning still, clearly, but how much of it is actually going toward anything that can last, as opposed to power brokers wanting to take what they can and run, or try to consolidate it on a smaller scale like warlords.
When I look at what the US, for example, is actually building, what stands out to me is stuff like Cop City. In contrast with failing infrastructure, like that bridge collapse. I don't see the mindset of people in power who believe there's a long haul to be in it for, in the same model as it has been. I see the mindset of people who see the cracks showing, don't see a way to repair them without losing money, and are preparing to turn to pure violence if the facade of decorum can't hold together.
The US when it's time to send more bombs to be dropped on other countries: Bipartisan support, instant pass, delivery ASAP.
The US when it's time to fund public infrastructure or resources for the public for much of anything: Money is haaard, omg, how do we pay for things??? I don't understand how anyone of this works. It's gonna take like 40 years to build this, right? And we'll never be able to afford any of it. Ahhhh. 😢 Plz vote for the person who is going to gut public funding more and increase the zero accountability military budget, we can't afford this stuff.
"As soon as I stepped outside, it started to rain. The droplets gathered on the ground and I had a profound realization. Gravity pulls things down. I wondered: Have the Chinese ever figured this out? No, surely not. The Russians? Not in a million years. But I, a white man living in New York writing for an imperialist publication, am the first to have ever had this realization. I quickly jotted my thought down on a used napkin, ignoring the properties of water that made it wet in the rain, and hurried to the patent office to get my scientific discovery recorded in the annals of capitalism."