> It sometimes feels like a psy-op to read through all these gushingly positive comments, when you know how the average person feels about it.
Yes, exactly!
A common theme among these weird ideological group-thinks is political undertones.
> "Today, criticism on brutalism and modernism is mostly voiced by those on the far-right side of the political spectrum, precisely because of the association between modernism and the post-war welfare state"
I used to work next door to the Barbican and occasionally visit the site on my lunch breaks.
The old decaying concrete, monolithic construction, dark alleys, stagnant algae-filled lakes, dirty windows around a tropical plant space, pretentious art installations - it was all quite interesting to my morbid curiosity. But I always left the Barbican feeling lonely and bleak.
I cannot imagine the misery of living in that environment and having it seep into your soul.
I moved out of London, and live in the countryside now. There is something transcendent about being surrounded by natural beauty, and being far, far away from urban over-development.
The word you're looking for is dystopia (Star Trek being mostly utopia, at least in the original timeline and as far as Earth/the Federation is concerned).
The majority opinion (“it’s ugly, monolithic, oppressive, decaying” etc) is such an obvious take that people don’t bother expressing it, especially on forums like HN where people are trying to be insightful as opposed to negative.
So all we get to hear are the opinions of architectural contrarians and certain left wingers who align with the political side of brutalism (i.e. a reactionary movement against Britain’s beautiful Victorian architecture, which is associated with monied elites and colonialism).
The thing about most art, architecture, etc is that it’s incredibly subjective, so contrasting your own views with “certain left wingers” is pretty much pointless.
I personally think the entire south bank is pretty ugly, but my views on this, my political views or my views on other styles of architecture don’t matter one jot.
If there’s a building a bunch of people care very much about, then let them protect it.
My take-away is - SpaceX is still an extremely good stock to hold. However, the stupid money will buy the stock at IPO on the promise of space datacentres.
When SpaceX inevitably u-turns on this plan and the stock plummets temporarily, THAT will be a good time to buy in.
* "implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8gz8g2qnlo
* locked image generation down to paid accounts only (i.e. those individuals that can be identified via their payment details).
Have the other AI companies followed suit? They were also allowing users to undress real people, but it seems the media is ignoring that and focussing their ire only on Musk's companies...
> Have the other AI companies followed suit? They were also allowing users to undress real people
No they weren’t? There were numerous examples of people feeding the same prompts to different AIs and having their requests refused. Not to mention, X was also publicly distributing that material, something other AI companies were not doing. Which is an entirely different legal liability.
Making/distributing a photo of a non-consenting bikini-wearer is no more illegal when originated by computer in bedroom than done by camera on public beach.
The part of X’s reaction to their own publishing I’m most looking forward to seeing in slow-motion in the courts and press was their attempt at agency laundering by having their LLM generate an apology in first-person.
Who is going to generate kiddie porn on it in the first place? It's not as if a a lack of a credit card is preventing the authorities from figuring anything out. This is beyond ridiculous.
Nah, Musk put out a public challenge in January asking anyone able to generate illegal / porno images to reply and tell him how they were able to bypass the safegaurds. Thousands of people tried and failed. I think the most people were able to get is stuff you'd see in an R-rated movie, and even then only for fictional requests as the latest versions of Grok refuse to undress or redress any real person into anything inappropriate.
> SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…
> [Kenyan Economist] Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.
> SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
> Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
It’s somewhat ironic that the way it has been framed here is as lacking in nuanced understanding as the style of aid which Shikwati argued against in the full interview. Unsurprising we should get a snippet cropped by a right wing libertarian think-tank in such a way that it boils down to simply “hurr aid bad”.
The stagnation in Europe (compared to the US) is due to EU over-regulation and industrial suicide caused by net zero policy.
> [chemicals sector] investments fell from 1.9 megatonnes of capacity in 2024 to 0.3 megatonnes last year, as the sector struggled with high energy prices, suffocating bureaucracy and an expansion of Chinese imports
From 2019 to 2023, the EU recorded over 853,000 manufacturing job losses, with the largest losses in automotive sectors in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Germany.
The European Green Deal was forecast to put up to 11 million jobs “at risk” in various sectors if adjustments weren’t made:
We seem to think that if we destroy our own industry, ship emissions abroad, and marginally reduce global CO2 emissions, we will inspire the rest of the world (i.e. China and India) to follow suit. That's self-evidently ridiculous.
EU national leaders need to stop peacocking in Davos and Brussels, and start listening to their own people, and their own businesses, who are crying out for sensible energy costs, and for red tape and bureaucracy to get out the way of business.
Yes, exactly!
A common theme among these weird ideological group-thinks is political undertones.
> "Today, criticism on brutalism and modernism is mostly voiced by those on the far-right side of the political spectrum, precisely because of the association between modernism and the post-war welfare state"
https://www.dezeen.com/2021/10/21/brutalist-buildings-right-...
Yup - if you don't like Soviet-style dense urban monoliths, you're "far right" apparently.
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