FinishingDutch

Since Americans basically stole every tradition they have from someone else, I’m not gonna worry about their opinion on them :D

The US is a toddler when it comes to history and traditions. I drive by a church that was built in the year 900. That one’s actually called the ‘new church’ since it replaced one from the year 400. That’s history. And we’ve got traditions that go back centuries further.

Just because Americans prefer watered down, tame versions of our European traditions, doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to follow. Krampus, Sunneklaas, Sinterklaas and other traditions are here to stay.

Ohh, handy! Thanks for that link.

You can absolutely mean those things. I’ve said them to others, so they don’t offend me.

I agree that everyone’s a unique individual. But when looking at problems on a global scale, you need to approach things objectively and dispassionately.

From a purely statistics standpoint, I and 1 sibling should be here. Because that’s the replacement rate for when my parents die. A life for a life, so to speak.

Problem is, my parents had three kids. So now we’ve already gone above that replacement rate. And globally, more people have kids above the replacement rate, hence the population growth.

I don’t have or want kids. That’s not for me, and I don’t want them to be born in a world that’s going to get rapidly worse to live in. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing or capable to make such choices.

Well you can also turn that around and ask: why do we need more people? What does another individual add?

One might argue that a baby born today might cure cancer or all known diseases. They might invent free, unlimited energy. They could be the greatest writer to ever live. Humanity’s best poet. He could bring about world peace.

But he could also be our next Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc.

Earth is a finite planet. It’s not getting any bigger. So every human we add to it, takes up yet another square meter that consumes resources for an average of 80 years or so. I’ve seen my country get more crowded and the problems it causes.

We don’t need more people. At all.

I did that test late last year, and repeated it with another town this summer to see if it had improved. Granted, it made less mistakes - but still very annoying ones. Like placing a tourist info at a completely incorrect, non-existent address.

I assume your result also depends a bit on what town you try. I doubt it has really been trained with information pertaining to a city of 160.000 inhabitants in the Netherlands. It should do better with the US I’d imagine.

The problem is it doesn’t tell you it has knowledge gaps like that. Instead, it chooses to be confidently incorrect.

There’s also simply way too many people on earth as it is. My country - one of the smallest on earth- had 15 million people back in 1995. Right now, 30 years later, we’re at 18 million. And in 2037, they’re expecting 19 million.

Small numbers on a global scale, but definitely a lot of growth that’s causing issues. There’s a housing shortage, rising prices, healthcare and pensions are under threat, etc etc.

And there’s places that are much, much worse. For example, even India is encouraging population growth. When the country is still very poor. That’s going to help their economy in the short run, but it’s going to be a much larger problem down the line.

We need a controlled population decline, sooner rather than later.

You know, just for you: I just changed it to the Coca Cola santa :D

It is; they’ve got an awesome collection of steam locomotives and matching rolling stock. They also do a lot of restoration work.

Here’s actually a shot from the railroad crossing at the end of our street. And yes, the locomotive is ‘backwards’ in this configuration, as it can equally pull in both directions. Makes it a lot easier that they don’t need to turn the locomotive itself around at either end.

Our company is across the street from a heritage railway. They operate a steam locomotive railway with a museum at the other end.

We went on a company trip this summer. Which meant we took the railway to the other end. This being something that I was looking forward to doing myself.

But instead of actually, you know, seeing the museum, we went to a terrible restaurant. Where my boss proceeded to drink nine glasses of wine at 2 in the afternoon. While we collectively ate one of the worst meals I’ve had.

Afterwards, he felt so bad about the trip that he offered me another ticket so I could actually visit the museum on my own time :D

Ugh. Don’t get me started.

Most people don’t understand that the only thing it does is ‘put words together that usually go together’. It doesn’t know if something is right or wrong, just if it ‘sounds right’.

Now, if you throw in enough data, it’ll kinda sorta make sense with what it writes. But as soon as you try to verify the things it writes, it falls apart.

I once asked it to write a small article with a bit of history about my city and five interesting things to visit. In the history bit, it confused two people with similar names who lived 200 years apart. In the ‘things to visit’, it listed two museums by name that are hundreds of miles away. It invented another museum that does not exist. It also happily tells you to visit our Olympic stadium. While we do have a stadium, I can assure you we never hosted the Olympics. I’d remember that, as i’m older than said stadium.

The scary bit is: what it wrote was lovely. If you read it, you’d want to visit for sure. You’d have no clue that it was wholly wrong, because it sounds so confident.

AI has its uses. I’ve used it to rewrite a text that I already had and it does fine with tasks like that. Because you give it the correct info to work with.

Use the tool appropriately and it’s handy. Use it inappropriately and it’s a fucking menace to society.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

You have to be wildly insecure to even care about such things.

I’m a guy. I don’t mind playing as a woman at all. I’ve played the Tomb Raider games, I enjoyed Horizon, I played a female V in Cyberpunk, FemShep in Mass Effect etc etc.

Games are a way to experience something that’s not you or your story. And that’s perfectly fine.

Heck, if we took that stuff seriously, I shouldn’t play Mario because I’m not an Italian plumber. Or I couldn’t enjoy Euro Truck Simulator since I don’t drive a truck.