Interestingly, Ireland just launched a Basic Income for the Arts scheme. Many caveats (I think it's only like 300 euros a month, for a small group of people, etc.) but an interesting development nonetheless.
This is really interesting to me, because it never occurred to me to feel this way. Why would I care whether my comments are ending up in some dataset somewhere that's being used to train some model? My comments are boring and mostly uninformed. Have at it.
I'm curious: would you say the feeling of being watched online is making you afraid of some repercussion, or is it something else?
I get a feeling from overall anti-AI sentiment online that a lot of people feel they're entitled to 100% of value created by anything even tangentially related to their person, whether that's some intentional contribution or a random brain fart that happened in the vicinity of someone else doing something useful - and then become resentful they're not "getting their share".
There's hardly any other way to read all the proclamations of quitting to do anything because "cognitive dark forest" (itself a butchering of the original idea of "dark forest" across so many orthogonal dimensions in parallel, that it starts to look like a latent space of a transformer model).
Conversely, some people feel entitled to 100% of the value created by others. Oh, you wrote a book? Too bad, it's a part of my training data set now.
Downloading public stuff off the internet with no regard for the creator's wishes or license is bad enough, but we have many people here who defended AI companies seeding models with pirated content.
The internet is a social contract. AI is not the first thing to try and erode it for profit, but it's by far the most aggressive one.
Putting a book into a training data set does not take 100% of the value created by the author. You could make a convincing argument that since the LLM was never going to purchase the book, and the number of people who would have purchased the book but now won't because it's included in the training data is effectively zero, that no value was lost at all.
Licenses are legal documents and are usually treated as such, but "the creator's wishes" are irrelevant without case law, legislation, or licensing to back it up. And jurisdiction - show me a license that doesn't stand up in court in my home jurisdiction and I'll show you a license I won't care if I break or not.
Let's not forget the basis here: To promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
Everything else is window dressing. The fact that licenses even exist to conditionalize use goes against this grain and creates far too much overreach that spoils the spirit of the basis of copyright law.
> I get a feeling from overall anti-AI sentiment online that a lot of people feel they're entitled to 100% of value created by anything even tangentially related to their person
Rather, I don't like that the terms I released my work under aren't being respected. I believe LLMs are derivative works of the pieces they are trained on. I spent more than ten years working on open source code, and now the models that were trained on my GPL'd code are being used to make proprietary code against the terms of the license. I find this reprehensible.
While it wasn't an explicit term of release, generally I did not expect anyone to get any kind of financial value from the blog posts I wrote. I just wrote them for fun & maybe others would find them interesting. Now, LLMs have been trained on my blog posts and are generating financial value for some of the worst human beings on the planet who are using their money to murder, demean, and maim other humans.
I now know that blog posts I wrote for fun are putting money in some sociopath's bank account, and the GPL'd code I wrote is being used to create software to exploit me & other users. If I continue to create things publicly, it will be used against me and other people, and there's nothing I can do to stop it except to stop creating things. It's all very disrespectful & demoralizing.
> I believe LLMs are derivative works of the pieces they are trained on
That's your opinion with 0 legal backing. IMO, calling them derivative is untenable logically for anyone with some understanding of LLM/transformer architecture.
You desire a sharing community, but the takers/defectors are destroying that community.
Copyleft attempts to create a pool of code that forces sharing. But it broadly fails because you simply can't force antisocial people to be good sharers (plus source code usually isn't as valuable as we hope).
With any gifting/sharing, you have to accept that some of it will be abused. It is hard to filter for only community minded people who don't greedily abuse, and ideally who give freely.
I don't believe my circle of friends are becoming more selfish. I'm unsure what I would say about the rest of the world.
I am in exactly the same boat, down to the ~10 years. Only difference is I ended up picking AGPL for my later works. Like it made a difference...
The whole situation disgusts me.
- They expect me to pay for access to my own stolen code.
- Arguing stealing should be legal because China does it and if US companies don't, they'll be left behind.
- People like the poster you're replying to who argue you're not entitled to 100% of the value you create - completely ignoring that the value will go to some-one and that some-one is already much richer than any of us and getting richer faster while providing less value, if any. Honestly, this makes me wanna track these people down just to find out if they're also in the owner class and are just secretly laughing at us while pretending "we're all equal" or if they're workers who genuinely don't understand how much they're being exploited and how much worse it's gonna get.
- People don't give a fuck. Colleagues happily using "AI" because it "saves time", not realizing if this continues, we'll all be without jobs and the only way this was possible was by stealing from each other and most of us being OK with it.
Honestly, I am hoping for a revolution. A proper one, with guns if need be, but most importantly, where people get what they deserve in full.
Last time this happened was during the second industrial revolution, so many people got fucked so hard, entire countries turned to communism. That was a bad idea but we can do better. It's not (just) about how owns the means of production but who owns the product. Even if "AI" turns into actual AI, as long as it's built on top of our work, we should own it - that means both controlling it and getting paid proportionally to our contribution.
The currently rich people can negotiate what fraction they get paid if they show us they're providing value. Of course, only after we get back what they stole and unless they end up executed. The value of a human life is apparently $7.5M so anybody who steals more than that should logically get a death sentence.
But none of this will happen, people are too stupid and will get manipulated by a charismatic liar like every single time before.
Whoever can materialize it. That's how societies grow and thrive, how a civilization is built - people building things, and instead of capturing 100% of the value, creating a surplus for others to build on top.
It's not like any of us ever did anything completely new, isolated and unaffected by influences and contributions of those around us, and those who came before us. Trying to capture 100% of the value and getting up in arms about "freeloaders" is a deeply antisocial form of greed, and usually the thing people accuse companies of doing, claiming it's a hallmark of "late stage capitalism".
So you're saying that the most advantaged people (who control the most money to use for advertising and who can buy companies and their network effects at will) should get the most benefit?
> how a civilization is built
No, civilization is built by people who do actual work. Some of that work is services/research and building/maintaining stuff, some of that work is connecting supply and demand. The reward should go to the people doing the work according to how much work they do and their skill level.
> late stage capitalism
Nah, that's the idea that money should be able to create more money without any input of work. And before you say they made that money through work, no they didn't, they either inherited it or got into a position of power from which they can take a disproportionate cut.
There’s definitely a fear of repercussions (I’ve been commenting on this site for over a decade now! Who knows what’s in my history...) but importantly I actually take some pride in many of the comments I write. What drew me to this site originally was how high quality everyone’s perspectives and articulation was, and I suppose I view the writing voice I’ve nurtured here as unique and special to me. It’s not about compensation, I’d just hate to see some future chatbot sound 1/1,000,000th like me I guess? Hard feeling to describe, but I’d rather just not be globbed in and instead express myself in ways that aren’t profitable or feasible to copy.
I see this take a lot and I think it's harmful in ways you might not realize.
Even if it's true and you genuinely have nothing to hide, have nothing to lose from being profiled, there are people who absolutely do.
Look at the radicalization happening in countries around the world, including the USA. It might be OK to be part of a minority or to have an uncommon opinion. A few years pass and suddenly the same person is considered an undesirable, a foreign agent, a terrorist or a deviant.
I've posted a lot of shit online which can be connected to my person and which could label me as any of the groups above. But that's a decision I make for myself. I would never dare make it for others or claim that they should not care about surveillance and take the same risks I do.
I know a guy from russia who lost his job because he expressed an antiwar opinion. The same thing can happen in the US or and other country you consider civilized. The US proto-dictator is already sending death-threats to people who only expressed the opinion that soldiers can refuse illegal orders. Neither you or me can know what will happen next.
As a European, I never realized that this is allowed under US labor law. That is absolutely insane.
EDIT: some commentors have pointed out that the workers collect severance and unemployment --- I was not aware this is law in California, and that changes matters. I would, though, still find being suddenly out of a job fairly traumatic.
In the US there is no notice period. In every state (with the exception of Montana), employees are "At Will" only. There is no notice period, or severance pay required by law. Health insurance goes with your job, too, as do any other benefits (something called COBRA lets you pay to continue your health insurance coverage for a few months with the expectation you'll have found a new job and/or coverage)
In the US, one day you can have a job, the next none and you'd better hope you've got enough money saved up to cover rent/mortgage, food etc.
That was by far the biggest culture shock when I moved to the states, and really acted as the big "Oh shit, it really is a government by the businesses, for the businesses".
The U.S. has a 60-day notice requirement for mass layoffs, per the federal WARN Act. However, the required notice period can be waived by paying (at least) 60 days salary/wages.
Many states copied the statute.
There are some exceptions, like a company going out of business or natural disasters, but those don't apply here.
I have to be honest that I'm confused by the comment, too. Including the edit about how being out of work would be traumatic, as if losing a job was unique to the United States.
My point was that going from (let's say) 'employed, productive member of the workforce, with social relationships at work' to 'sitting at home collecting unemployment' with no transition, no coaching, in the scope of 5 minutes seems like a traumatic rupture.
(I'm not saying I _know_ better, just how I think I would _experience_ such a thing.)
Losing a job happens everywhere, but there are different ways to handle it, I guess.
I've been laid off. It's not fun and there a lot of emotions to process at first.
Let me tell you, though. All of the gestures that come from the company doing the layoff like coaching services or transition resources felt pretty useless. They were actually trying, but everything in it seemed more like it was to soothe their conscience than to help me out.
When other people get laid off I recommend they try not to put a lot of expectations into any transition services provided by their ex-employer because your time is better invested in your own job search.
The best "layoff" support I've received has been early notice (e.g., you're laid off at the end of next month, but we give fuck-all cares if you even bother coming in anymore, feel free to) and personal support from managers/those remaining behind.
Anything an employer can do at scale can be reduced to cash, and cash is king.
Generally losing your well paying tech job in the US is terrible and it is definitely traumatic for people. I've fortunately never been part of one, but at my first real career job at a well known tech company I watched co-workers eliminated like this. Not only was it traumatic for them, it was traumatic for our team as well. They received very nice severance packages, but they still had to find another job within 6 months so they could keep the lights on in their homes. It was a great learning lesson for me. All my career moves after that have been preemptive and from the standpoint that I'm on offense at all times. Never feeling stagnant in a position, keeping options open, etc...
Where I live, your employer basically has to give you notice (weeks to months, depending where you live). It's common for that notice period to turn into "garden leave" though, i.e. get paid but don't show up.
Mass layoffs, or RIFs, operate under slightly different rules, but I still saw a stark difference between US and EU employees when I went through one at a different corp.
US accounts were deactivated same day. EU employees were given until end of week to look over the proposed terms etc.
> After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change.
That is being laid off, not being fired - big difference. Being fired means being let go for poor performance / bad behaviour. No severance or grace period is necessary there (will be written in the contract). Being made redundant, particularly a redundancy of this size is quite well protected in EU. Typically negotiations between HR and representatives of the laid off group are required, you will continue to work (officially at least) until negotiations are over, as you are not officially out yet. This usually takes a few weeks.
Severence is not required by law but its usually a protective measure by the company to avoid being sued for misdeeds they put people through before and during the layoffs.
Unemployment is not enough for people to live on. In some cases, it barely covers health insurance which can be 800$/month for a single person. (You can get cheaper plans but they start you back on your deducible)
> collect severance and unemployment --- I was not aware this is law in California,
Unemployment benefits in California are capped at $450/week, and you only get 26 weeks of it. It's helpful, but doesn't even cover housing costs for many individuals, let alone for families.
I don't think there's a state law requiring severance. It's often offered by the employer if the terminated employee agrees to sign an NDA.
Both California and federal law require 60 days notice for mass layoffs. The CA WARN Act has more protections for workers than the federal WARN Act, i.e., it also applies to part-time workers.
In California, it is illegal to require a terminated employee to sign an NDA to receive severance paid to waive the required WARN notice. A company attempting to enforce such an NDA would key face judicial sanction in court (including paying the former employee's legal fees) and likely pay fines to the CA Labor Dept as well.
The California WARN act effectively requires 2 months severance for large layoffs at large companies (or 2 months notice, but companies almost always prefer severance).
The at-will firing is just how it is in the US, but I do find it odd how accepting we've become with these corporations massively overhiring.
If they have to fire twenty percent of the company, shouldn't that be a signal to investors that the people in charge are morons for overhiring thirty thousand people in the first place? Software engineers aren't cheap; assuming an average compensation of $250,000/year (which I think is pretty conservative if you count total comp like insurance and stock) then that's 7.5 billion dollars of investor money they're wasting per year.
Yeah, the "just how it is" part was the part I wasn't aware of. Sibling comment has pointed out that apparently the US is the only country in the world where this is the case. And totally agree on the latter point.
> apparently the US is the only country in the world where this is the case.
The US law isn't translated directly to other countries, but every country allows companies to do layoffs. They just have different requirements for including someone in a layoff.
In some countries the requirements are as minimal as saying that there's not enough work for the person to do. It's basically the same thing with extra steps.
The real difference is requirements for notice periods or severance. Note that in tech companies like Oracle they're giving severance as well.
The other side of this debate is that companies in the United States are much less resistant to hiring people when they know it's easy to scale back later. In our European offices we had to be much more cautious about hiring because the managers in our various European offices were afraid of getting stuck with a bad hire for a long or costly notice period. They also had a lot of games with "trial period" work that I don't fully remember, but I can think of several trial period employees who were dismissed because they were borderline and their managers didn't want to take the risk of having them past the period where letting them go was easy.
I'm not an economist, but I have heard that there's an argument to be made the easy firing also makes it so that it's easier to hire too, so it creates more jobs.
That's one of those things that sounds like bullshit, so I don't know that I believe it, but that's what I've heard anyway.
The other part is that at-will goes both ways: you can just walk out of a bad job with no legal repercussions. Not always the best idea due for social/professional ones, though.
What do you think happens in the most restrictive labor market in Europe? We're not slaves. There is a short notice period, usually 1 month or even shorter (notice periods for companies are longer, usually double or longer).
And if it's a bad job people just phone it in, take medical leave, etc during their notice period.
Not employees are hired though, a fair amount are added through acquisitions. Reducing staff could be just streamlining redundancies .
Not the case here [1], but it not always bad planning.
Even without acquisitions, business conditions can change rapidly things like tariffs, interest rates , war or competition due to newer tools etc , as an investor you can would want leadership to move fast and course correct, rather than be held by the sunk cost fallacy.
All else being equal, the way investors would see a change like this - is now the company is no longer wasting 7.5B/yr in the future and their current cost was already priced in.
However all else is rarely the same, there could be other factors, like slowing sales growth projections which can bring down the multiples .
Oracle is still trading at 28x P/E historically they typically traded at 15x, given the growth and risk profile a more realistic number .
Since 2022 (ignoring 2020 spikes) the number has been going up are basis the expectation that their cloud business will really benefit from AI significantly.
If the market no longer has the confidence —- it has already cooled a bit since October then stock will keep dropping, layoffs will only slow it down a bit .
The timing is critical, because leverage/sale of Oracle stock is how the Warner Bros Discover acquisition is being funded .
The increasing doubts about that financial viability is why that stock risk premium is increasing on Warner .- Currently trading at 27 although acquisition price is 31 and it was trading at 29 a month back . Also senior executives like Zaslav are selling now at 27 which they less likely to if they believed deal will close at 31 soon.
TLDR; this 30k layoff is an attempt to strengthen/save the other acquisition Oracle is indirectly financing.
[1] although the Cerner acquisition added 30k employees to Oracle 3 years back. This doesn’t seem related to that. Oracle did not have a strong overlapping BU, there were/are some redundancies as in any acquisition but certainly not 30k
Why? They get a severance which is going to be multiple months salary, as well as approximately $2000/mo unemployment from the state (assuming in California).
Personally, I'd rather just get the money and not have to work, rather than be forced to come into the office knowing I was getting canned in 3 months or whatever
I did not know they got severance. In any case, I'm still not sure I'd prefer that scenario --- coming into your work to suddenly find you've been terminated and subsequently sitting on your ass for a couple months while looking for another job seems pretty emotionally damaging to me, but to each their own.
I got laid off at a previous job and they asked me to stay on six months to train my replacement(s) and finish my project(s). In return I'd get my normal severance and a significant bonus for staying the whole time. I did so and worked hard for the entire time. A few months later I got lunch with my former manager and they informed me they would have absolutely coasted the entire time. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I put the effort in. Live and learn, I guess.
They are done working but will collect severance pay, typically scaled by years of service.
Oracle software engineering compensation for mid-level software engineers is in the $200-300K range. The top of their scale extends into the $400K to $1 million range.
From what I've seen, laid off employees will receive a minimum of 1 month of their compensation with 1 week of pay for every year worked, plus any remaining unused vacation time. So a mid-level employee who has worked their a few years and hasn't drawn their vacation balance to 0.0 could receive $30-50K or more beyond this date.
Such termination happens very much in Europe also. I have lived in Europe my whole life, half of my working life inside the EU, half of it outside. And I have seen this happening bot in- and outside:
on the head-roll day HR sends a friendly message asking you to pay a visit in their office. While you do that, security folks clear your desk, and a few minutes later you are outside the building with the signed paperwork in your hands. And suddenly another guy gets a friendly message from HR...
Of course the severance is paid according to the law - but such sudden (mass)termination does happen here too.
In general, the reason why US companies often are abrupt / surprise is because they fear retaliation.
I once was given about 6 weeks notice in the US, with a promise that if I completed a project I would be given severance. Given the situation I was in, where the product would be "done", it was a good situation to be in.
It's insane to force businesses to take on the government's responsibilities (providing food/shelter/income/energy security).
A buyer and seller should be free to start and stop buying and selling whenever they want, absent contracts stating otherwise.
The government should be there to directly support all of the people, not to police and cajole businesses to support some of the people that happened to be hired by a business.
I completely agree, and apparently in California this is already the case --- I had no idea. In most contexts, though, I'd argue governments fall down on this task completely and people are, unfortunately, still very dependent on their employer. Same-day termination seems very socially risky in those cases.
Serious answer: I don't use it that much, it's what I happened to download like 1.5 years ago, and it works fine. Happy to see what may be a speed boost, and have little interest in switching to something else (unless my situation changes, of course).
> For many businesses it will still make sense to have more powerful models and to run them centralized in a datacenter.
Agree, and I think of it this way: for a lot of businesses, it already makes sense to have a bunch of more powerful computers and run them centralized in a datacenter. Nevertheless, most people at most companies do most of their work on their Macbook Air or Dell whatever. I think LLMs will follow a similar pattern: local for 90% of use cases, powerful models (either on-site in a datacenter or via a service) for everything else.
The thing I feel like is really important to remember whenever thinking about the world and demographics is that most people are Asian. As in more people live in Asia then outside of it. Conversely when a headline or something mentions Asia, it is rare they actually mean the majority of the continent or people living there.
My favorite is when people say they like "asian cuisine" or "asian food". China alone has several distinct cuisines. Why do we act like this is a monolithic concept?
Because there was a lot of cultural cross-contamination between these countries, there is a huge overlap in ingredients due to climate similarities and trade between neighboring countries.
I group European & American food into their respective groups as well.
> Asia rolls out 4-day weeks, WFH to solve fuel cris...
Makes no sense, same with "I'm in a mood for asian food"
> Makes no sense, same with "I'm in a mood for asian food"
Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian food / cuisine even thought different is more probably closer to each other same like e.g. Polish and Spanish is closer to each other than to most other asian cuisine.
Asian countries developed with more overlap in basic ingredients, cooking techniques, and historical influence networks than Europe did. Historically there were 3 influence zones in Asia. There is a lot of pickling, fermenting, salting, drying. In Asia of these techniques were more or less unified. Fish sauces from different countries are Pepsi vs Coca-Cola level of difference.
> Polish and Spanish is closer to each other than to most other asian cuisine.
I'd say Polish has a lot of similarities with Asian cuisine. Sure, both have stews and sausages, but flavor profiles are very different: acidic vs sour.
I won't be able to tell difference between gyoza & wonton if they shaped the same, but surely I can tell difference between ravioli & uszka. Uszka is IMO closer to any dumpling from Asia than to anything European.
Those were brought to them most likely by China in one way or another.
> Yes, a filled pasta is a very different thing from dumpling,
You saying it like a filled pasta and a dumpling isn't the same twist on "filling encased in thin dough".
> There is nothing in South Asian cuisine similar to sashimi or to soy heavy stir fries.
Dish is ingredients and method. Stir-frying is a Chinese technique (technically multiples, but all originated in China). Ingredients get replaces all the time for various reasons. You're telling me Poriyal is not close relative to the OG stir-fry?
I'm not sure how you arrive at that opinion. Take the example of Punjabi food. It's heavily based around ghee and dairy. Does anything in Thai cuisine use butter except European style pastries?
The only major similarities I see uniting the national cuisines you listed (not regional ones) are things like curries and rice. The former arrived in Japan with European influence (where it's also common in colonial countries) and the latter isn't a feature common to all Asian cuisines (e.g. Mongolian).
American food = contains corn (maize), in all its glorious (ex. nixtamalized, unprocessed, flour, etc.) and unholy (ex. high fructose corn syrup) forms.
Oddly enough, many Canadians use the word "American" to refer to Unitedstatesians, so presumably they'd use it to describe cuisine that same way (as in, poutine is Canadian but disco fries are American). This is extremely analogous to the Asia conversation, in that of course people know the term comes from the continental scale, but using that scale is less common, so it must be specifically invoked.
And then you've got Puerto Ricans, who are definitely US'ian but eat more like the non-US'ian Americans, so who knows what they would think of if you ask about American food, but it wouldn't surprise me if Contiguousunitedstatesian is the default (i.e., the same cuisine the Canadians would be referring to).
There's plenty of European food without potatoes and tomatoes. And even then, incorporating ingredients originally native to the Americas doesn't really mean "importing American food".
"American" is as broad as Asian and even more annoying. I ate some great food in Surinamese restaurants, but I'm guessing that's not what you meant by using that word.
The same goes for "European", Nordic cousine is very different than the Balkan cousine, which is very different than the Iberian cousine and so on.
When someone outside of America thinks of American food, do you think they will think of Cajun gumbo, TexMex, Clam Chowder, or something you'd find on the menu at McDonalds?
>When someone outside of America thinks of American food, do you think they will think of Cajun gumbo, TexMex, Clam Chowder, or something you'd find on the menu at McDonalds?
Statistically this random non-american is some sort of Asian. Therefore the answer is finger lickin good.
In vulgar American English, "Asia" mostly just refers to the wider Confuciosphere + some parts of Central Asia (though rarely thought about.) Most Americans will look at you funny if you call Pakistan or Jordan Asian, because that's not how we use the word.
> China alone has several distinct cuisines. Why do we act like this is a monolithic concept?
When someone is talking about "Chinese food", they almost certainly are talking about the cuisine established by Chinese immigrants in their country, not food as it exists within China. This isn't unique to China.
More American vulgarism fun facts, "Chinese" wasn't pan-Chinese until somewhat recently. It pretty much exclusively meant Cantonese outside of very specific contexts, like geopolitics. This changed slowly starting in the 1970s, but emphasis on slowly and it still persists in interesting ways today.
Asian can also have different meanings in different places. If you say someone is Asian in Britain it means South Asian, whereas in the US it seems to mean East Asian.
And I doubt the contents of any of those menus are particularly close to what you'd find in the countries they claim to be from. It's really more like "Asian-inspired."
We hosted an exchange student for a few weeks, and he was from Nanjing. Before he left the country, we took him to a Chinese restaurant and warned him that it was likely going to be more like American-Chinese.
He went through the menu and pointed out the dishes which were authentic and those which were not. I was surprised at how many were actually authentic -- it was about half of the menu. Maybe we were at a more authentic Chinese restaurant, as the menu was in both English and Chinese.
He was a great kid, and I really enjoyed the experience. He loved peanut butter and jelly, had to spit out ranch dressing, and did not care at all for pumpkin pie.
There's also the question of authentic/traditional to which part of china, in particular in cases where dishes with the same name aren't made the same. But beyond that, just because there's a dish on the menu one recognizes from their homeland doesn't mean it's prepared the same.
Authentic places certainly exist. That's not generally the sort of place that has menus covering multiple countries, though.
There are also places where they can make stuff like home, but usually won't. They might have made "proper" stuff owing to the presence of your exchange student.
Authentic places often also want to server groups of people with varying tastes and expectations so IME even there you of then have parts of the menu dedicated to other vaguely related cuisines.
When Asians use the term, we usually use it to loosely mean "my home cuisine and other cuisines that share similar characteristics"
When my wife or I say "I feel like eating something Asian today" it usually means spicy-Chinese adjacent, i.e. served hot, vegetables fully cooked, heavy on flavor, paired with either rice or freshly made noodles.
Korean qualifies, Sichuan food qualifies, Thai food qualifies, Indian food maybe sort of borderline qualifies on some days but only if we haven't eaten it recently.
We don't usually mean Japanese food when we say that. That's just our mutual understanding of what we call "Asian food". Yeah, I guess we unapologetically kicked Japan out of culinary Asia :) It doesn't matter. The system works for us. We don't dislike Japanese food, but we'll say "Japanese food" when we feel like having Japanese food.
Another Asian family from a different part of Asia probably uses the term to refer to a different subset of Asian cuisines.
Like just about everything else in Asia, it's a fluid term that means different things to different people. I've only ever seen people in the west be pendantic about terms like this. I also think of it as a very western ideology to want to have a term have a singular global definition.
It's similar to how people say "Europe does this or that". Basically the part of their thoughts dedicated to that part of the world is so small that all they can afford is a tiny box, and everything has to go in there, reality be damned.
Not really, it's not sovereign. The EU can pass laws that each European country chooses to implement. If they don't implement enough EU laws, they can get kicked out, which means more pieces of paper are written and some European countries might choose to afford them less privileges.
No. EU laws are of two kinds: directives and regulations. Directives work roughly as you describe, while regulations have direct effect like regular laws.
Those countries may also ratify EU laws if they wish. I think the UK has something similar to GDPR and Switzerland also picks and chooses which laws it thinks make sense.
I was watching some travel show on PBS, which I can't recall the name of. They were going through Egypt and met up with a guy from the area who walked them through getting the local food.
So much of what they had looked the same as the food that you could find in Greece, but they were fiercely adamant that it was both different and better.
Because much of the Asian food the average American will come across isn’t necessarily identifiable to a specific region or country in Asia, or is a blend of various Asian cuisines.
Or they are broadly referring to the various cuisines of Asia as a singular group, because unless you’re very familiar with those cuisines, they may see broadly similar.
Because some places didn’t get immigration or even access to imported products. Being small town in Lithuania I didn’t even tried pizza until late 90s, chinese 2000s and indian probaly 2010s. There’s still like less than 5 Indian restaurants in country and probably none korean, etc.
Also things like asian fusion can evolve independently.
That's always been a weird one for me. If I might quote Gemini's summary since it seems accurate enough:
> Geographical/Historical: The Bosporus Strait in Turkey is historically considered the dividing line between Europe (West) and Asia (East).
> Prime Meridian: The 0° longitude line running through Greenwich, England, is used to technically separate the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
> Cultural/Political: Cultural definitions are often more relevant, placing countries like Australia, New Zealand, and North America in the "West" due to historical ties, despite their geographic location.
I suppose you're leaning into the "Bosporus Strait" option more than the "Prime Meridian" option, given that the former would put most of Europe in the West while the latter would put most of it in the East.
Because that is how it's presented to "us". If the cuisine that we could access where we live was more diverse, we would think differently about the entire set (which is not happening for another set of entirely good reasons, but alas.)
>" Why do we act like this is a monolithic concept?"
Under "we" you mean white / the westerners? Because the majority of us do not give a flying fuck about other parts of the world. Not important enough. One can easily see how our media reacts to tragedies on one one side comparatively to the other.
As for food. I live in Toronto and can clearly distinguish between quite a few different "Asian" cuisines.
>I now believe China’s actual population may be as low as 300–400 million
that we now live in a world where people are confident enough to make claims this stupid in front of a camera should frighten anyone.
Some basic logic, if China had the population of the United States it would have magically acquired the per capita economic output of the US in ~30 years, consume several times the energy and food it imports and somehow have produced several cities the size of Tokyo. The fact that China produces ~50% of the world's ships and has the manufacturing output of of the G7 combined is impressive with over a billion people, but hey they must have some space age technology to do it with 3% of the world's population!
In philosophy there's a concept called the coherence theory of truth, if you want to know if something is true check if it doesn't defy basic logic or other facts you know, great tool instead of believing what youtubers say
because that would mean virtually every place in the country would look like Singapore, it would be significantly richer ,per capita, than Taiwan, millions of economic migrants would have left the country for no reason, and I suppose also be conjured out of thin air given that the Chinese diaspora is about 40 million people large. Which is shockingly enough comparable to Indians abroad, not Americans
Youtube videos are always a poor quality source - the UN doesn’t accept China’s numbers exactly but they believe the total number is broadly correct due to cross referenced data, and expert independent demographers largely agree. The figure of 1.4 billion is likely within the ballpark and the idea that this is off by hundreds of millions is considered a fairly fringe theory, almost a conspiracy theory.
Especially because it sounds like the Philippines is pushing for a 4 day workweek, but the rest of SEA is asking people to work from home, use less AC, take the stairs…
It's also Vietnam, Thailand, and unofficially Pakistan.
The reality is the bigger Asian nations like China, India, SK, and Japan that worked on building resilient alternatives after the 2022-23 ONG shock due to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine aren't as dramatically impacted. The others didn't or were hit by other crises at the same time.
For example, in Pakistan's case, their government raised fuel taxes by around 33% because they didn't meet their IMF loan terms [0] but somehow found $11M to buy a private jet [1] for the CM of Punjab who is also the niece of the PM and the daughter of the former PM and Pakistan is in the middle of a war with Afghanistan [2].
Edit: can't reply
> gas cylinder booking...
The gas cylinder/LPG issue is due to consumer habits - induction and electric stovetops have been available in India for decades, but there has been a cultural aversion to adopting electric.
Even Indian Americans in the US prefer using Gas Stovetops over Electric for cultural reasons (eg. I've had my parents say the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops despite living here since Clinton was president).
And dhabas and restaurants used to use coal briquettes or kerosene until those were banned in the 2000s-2010s for pollution reasons (much help that did /s) and to promote LNG and CNG, and will most likely revert back to those.
Additionally, India has shifted from Qatari to Omani LNG [3], which was what India was already using before the India-Qatar FTA led to a diplomatic thaw between the two.
It's the same situation in Vietnam as well.
> freight is pretty much fucked
Indian diesel prices are being subsidized and kept constant [4]. That said, this is a good forcing function to begin India's shift to electric trucks.
And freight and passenger rail is already around 98-99% electrified in India [5] which reduces the need for diesel.
> eg. I've had my parents say the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops
If you are using the cooking technique of "bhunai" [1], which is quite common in South Asian cooking, there is a large difference in food quality you can make with an electric and with a gas stove. Gas stoves are able to provide higher heat at consistent levels, and you can tilt the pot to concentrate heat in one corner to intensify the cooking. So I don't disagree with your parents.
[1] bhunai is when you cook meat with spices at very high heat while rapidly stirring it. I think the willingness to burn the spices during this process is what sets this apart from similar techniques in other cuisines, but I am no expert.
My mom doesn't cook bhunai - she's pushed for a low oil household since I was a kid and is extremely health conscious verging on "crunchy".
I've also done bhunai with electric stovetops and ceramic cookware like Dutch ovens and green pans and gotten close enough to an authentic taste - the marginal differences that exist are due to differences in ingredients in the US (eg. lower milkfat percentages, onions instead of shallots, different cultivars of vegetables, etc) and some inexperience of non-Westerners with Western cookware.
It's a very solvable problem. For example, the Indian restaurants my parents like and feel taste "authentic" use electric stovetops as well in the back, but discriminate on ingredients and masalas.
Yeah, my induction range will get a carbon steel wok really fucking hot really fucking quick.
Like, I can't really stir-fry on max because my range hood can't keep up and I set the smoke detector off. Outside of crappy rentals, I'm pretty sure electric ranges here are up to whatever, high-heat cooking wise.
Yep! My SO's Vietnamese and we've both been able to cook pretty decent Viet and Korean (Hallyu wave is a thing) food with electric stoves despite her being used to LNG and charcoal in VN.
The marginal difference in taste is literally just due to certain cultivars not being available here. Ofc, a half decent Vietnamese sourced nuoc mam solves everything but those are available at our Costco.
>"the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops"
it highly depends on what and how is being cooked. Foods that rely on particular dynamics of cooking temperature profile often can not be made the same quality / taste. Regular electric range is absolutely not capable of driving Wok properly for example.
There's currently a gas crisis in India. A country that had a $10 billion investment in an Iranian port to trade oil and gas directly with them, except they decided to become America's bitch and halted the project after American sanctions.
Anyways, everyone's affected - gas cylinder booking requests which usually take a couple of days to fulfill currently have a 30 day period to fulfill in some major cities. Roadside vendors are shutting down temporarily, as are many restaurants.
At least EVs have had a good success rate in adoption, so commuting isn't as much affected. But freight is pretty much fucked.
Again, this is a country that could have gotten a sweetheart deal from Iran, just like China, but apparently decided to become a little bitch.
The benefits of living in an authoritarian state. The CCP says "we will provide for cheap electric trucks" and it happens, no matter if that displaces tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in ICE car manufacturers.
Poverty doesn’t have the luxury to choose or take moral stands. When a dollar worth oil price fluctuation can lead to thousands going hungry for a day, you as a leader will do everything to avoid catastrophic sanctions.
India agreed to capitulate on the Iranian port investments before the US-Israeli invasion, when Trump was playing the tariff games. If a growing economy can be subverted and forced to act against its interests, is it really a superpower at that point?
Guess the US Deputy Secretary was right when he stated that they'll never make the same mistakes with India that they made with China.
> Again, this is a country that could have gotten a sweetheart deal from Iran
India has a deal with Iran as well and the first ship to sail via Hormuz after the conflict started (the Shenlong Suezmax) ended up in India [0]
India giving sanctuary to an Iranian naval ship and offering sanctuary to a second one - which their captain rejected and is now at the bottom of the Indian Ocean (IRIS Dena) [1] - bought India the goodwill needed to implement the deal mentioned above.
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> We could have an entire Indian-owned port, outside the straits in question, with an attached O&G pipeline that we paid for, connected directly to the oil and gas fields in Iran
Duqm Port in Oman, Sohar Port in Oman, Fujairah Port in the UAE, and Shahid Beheshti Port in Chabahar, Iran are all either Indian operated or include an Indian financial stake with first right of refusal for Oil and LNG exports and outside the Straits of Hormuz.
> Yay, we got one ship to cross the straits
Did you even read the Bloomberg article? There were only 20 Indian LNG ships within the strait of Hormuz at this time, and they are being given passage. These aren't overnight tankers (that isn't even a thing at this size). The war only started a week ago and it's a Suez Supermax at that - they won't go beyond 15 mph/19 knots.
> the rare earth minerals in Afghanistan that we had received sanction to mine prior to the war, that would also have been shipped through this port
India still has access to Shahid Beheshti Port, and it's not like India has even completely taken advantage of the existing critical minerals within India, let alone hypothetical and high risk critical minerals projects in Afghanistan - a country literally in the middle of a war with Pakistan.
We could have an entire Indian-owned port, outside the straits in question, with an attached O&G pipeline that we paid for, connected directly to the oil and gas fields in Iran. Not to mention all the rare earth minerals in Afghanistan that we had received sanction to mine prior to the war, that would also have been shipped through this port.
The cognitive dissonance in nationalist Indians is honestly tiresome and unsurprising at this moment.
Same for exports as well depending on the country.
For example, India worked with Oman, the UAE, and Iran to build export hubs like Duqm, Fujairah, Sohar, and Chabahar (the US has ignored Indian operated Shahid Beheshti port and is hitting Konarak on the other side of the Chabahar Bay) that aren't blocked by Hormuz.
By making sure Indian SOEs were equity partners in those projects, this meant India got first right of refusal on exports.
China, Japan, and South Korea all implemented similar projects as well.
Other Asian countries could have implemented similar redundancies as well, but they didn't despite this exact situation happening 3-4 years ago during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
I’m living in one of these countries. Abject failure from powers that be to even consider 4-day workweek as an alleviation. Not the first time it happens yet they learn nothing.
Tbf, from what I've heard within my professional network and extended family, most bureaucrats who are not associated with BCA are functionally paralyzed right now because of the political changes going on - no one wants to put their name on some initiative that falls under the anti-corruption radar.
This paralysis has been going on for 2-3 years now and I know of an EV battery FDI project that shifted to Indonesia as a result of this paralysis. Even VinGroup and VinGroup tier companies aren't immune.
It's a common pattern in HN headlines to assign agency to non-US continents and countries. We hear Europe and China doing stuff all the time as well. It's strange.
Isn't that a good deal more reasonable though? China, as a polity, does indeed have agency. It's strange to suggest they don't, as if only America can do things on the world stage.
Sure, the usages aren't all flawed. But it's far more likely to see "Europe" doing something than "US" doing something in the headlines in similar cases, I feel.
Same goes for China, if a couple of companies do something, often in the headline it's just the general "China" doing it. For example we'll see China doing something with EVs whereas for the US we'd see Tesla doing something with EVs.
If someone attributed something to Europe but the only a handful of nations, which didn’t even include the largest ones, were engaging in the behavior, it would also be incorrect.
“Parts of Europe” or “Europe increasingly” etc would be ok (the latter if there was an expected progression of these policies to other European nations).
Europe usually is (inaccurately) used to mean the EU. Even if not, it never seems to include the biggest European country by land area and population (even if you count just the European part of it).
There's no reason for Italy and Iran/Iraq to be pronounced similarly. (Cf Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Idaho?)
But FWIW, the EYE-rack thing is because GWB (most prominently, but others before and after) intentionally mispronounced the name of the country, in a "real american" kind of way, and also to annoy SAD-dumb Hussein as a kind of "we're stupid but we're going to kill you anyway" kind of psyop. Or maybe just "we disrespect you in advance of killing you"?
Americans of other political persuasions usually pronounce the names correctly.
I've lived in over a dozen states and I've never heard either called anything other than EYE-(ran/raq) in conversation.
The extremely, I mean extremely rare occasion when someone pronounces it differently on TV, it's almost like they get side-eyed by other people as trying to "talk fancy".
Well, I've lived in four states in the last 20 years.
Anecdotally, the pronunciation popularity has split neatly along statewide-prominent political lines. For my four example states, three were correct/respectful, and one wrong/disrespectful.
Correct pronunciation has also had an inverse correlation with the rates of active/former military employment, which might be more directly indicative. And a positive correlation with education levels. So the answer is in there somewhere, I suspect.
National TV "news" programming might have a style guide which dictates pandering to the audience by speaking in real american, no matter how well-educated the hosts might be.
I've been thinking about this a bit more and I think we're actually talking about two (or more) different pronunciations.
There is a VERY hard "I" that Lindsey Graham does. I think that's the specific version you're talking about, and that one is intentionally offputting. It's like "EYEEE RACK", but that does sound different from "AYERAK" or "EYEROQ".
Yes, I think you're right. The middle ground, which I'll phoneticize as "uh-RON" or even "uh-RAN" is what I hear in most places.
The effete "ih-RAHN" is the voice that you mentioned might get side-eyes. This is the closest to how Iranians that I know pronounce it, except that we don't have a phoneme quite like their R, which to my ears sounds like a D, L, and R all smashed together.
But these side-eyes are mostly fair, I think. It's like Americans prounouncing France as "Frawhce", or Paris as "Pahdee". Ostentatious and pretentious, for an English-speaker.
And Lindsey's provocative "EYE-ran" is very present in some locations, I think because GHWB and GWB's affected pronunciations were pounded into the American consciousness during Gulf Wars 1 and 2. Although Reagan did it too, IIRC, and I'm not sure about Clinton.
I didn't think of it in time to update my previous comment, so I'll add another!
Decades ago, I knew people who pronounced "Italian" as eye-TAL-yun. They were usually older, sometimes WW2 veterans. This was in an area of the US that has a large Italian immigrant population, FWIW.
I don't know if it was due to historical disrespect of Mussolini-era Italy, some contemporary xenophobia, or just simple ignorance.
They all pronounced "Italy" in the normal way though.
I agree that ignorance is the most likely explanation.
But it's not like these folks didn't grow up with "Italy" and "Italian" being on the radio/TV all the time, spoken correctly by newscasters.
So there's a disconnect there, and it's also undeniable that there was an anti-Italian sentiment in the then-previous waves of naturalized immigrants. So I can't say for sure.
And Korea. And Japan. And Bangladesh. At least according to the article. Sure it would be more precise if they said "some countries in South, South East, and East Asia".
Yes though Europe is a lot more culturally similar and has a shared government for the most part.
Asia has very distinct countries and in some cases is even at war even if it's a cold one. Like India vs Pakistan, India vs China, North vs South Korea, China vs Taiwan. And customs, languages and (where applicable) religions are more radically different than within Europe too.
It makes less sense calling it "Asia" than it is calling Europe "Europe" :)
At least in the case of "europe" it could refer to the EU (which obviously is not correct because it doesn't encompass all of europe). But when they are talking about "Asia"—what governing body would they even be referring to? It's obviously non-sensical.
> in the case of "europe" it could refer to the EU (which obviously is not correct because it doesn't encompass all of europe)
Not just that. If we get really pedantic, the EU is not only in Europe but includes territories in Africa (parts of Spain) and Asia (the entirety of Cyprus). And that's not even getting into the intercontinental shenanigans of France!
Calling Eurasia a continent would make more sense. "Asia" doesn't have a really sensical physical boundary. May as well say Mexico is a different continent from the US just because there's a big cultural and ethnic difference across the border.
The term "North America" almost always means US or US and Canada, hardly ever the technically correct "US, Canada, Mexico" except in things like NAFTA.
And "Central America" often means "Mexico and countries south that speak Spanish" even though LATAM might be a bit closer.
Other nonsensical terminology also existing would imply nothing about the usage of "Asia". That said, I'm not sure I see the same incorrect usage of North America as you do, either.
Sensible boundaries for dividing continents? Do the Rocky Mountains count as dividing North America into east and west subcontinents? Does the Baltic Sea partition the Nordic countries into their own continent? Are you really expecting that logic to work even a little bit?
> Do the Rocky Mountains count as dividing North America into east and west subcontinents?
The east part would be a bit small, but after a bit more seismic activity that may be sensible.
> Does the Baltic Sea partition the Nordic countries into their own continent?
Could be a subcontinent border yeah, it is a common division in Europe.
> Are you really expecting that logic to work even a little bit?
Yeah, there are multiple aspects of continents and topology is one part. Others are cultural and political and I think there the division is even more clear.
It's a somewhat vaguely defined region. It often excludes India and the Middle East. It always excludes Europe, despite there being no sensible reason to consider them to be two separate continents.
Consider this sentence from the article: "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East." That's a bizarre statement if you take "Asia" literally. The Middle East is in Asia. Is Saudi Arabia dependent on oil exports from the Middle East? Is Iran?
It's all Asia. Europe is in Asia. Europeans are West Asian. The traditional boundary of the Ural Mountains is a fabricated one. There is no reason to separate Europe out of Asia except for that "people that look like that go over there."
The traditional boundaries of Asia were Bosporus and Nile. Europe, Asia, and Africa were names given to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Because sea enabled travel, while land was difficult to cross, the extension of those names to lands beyond the Mediterranean world was of little consequence.
Not really. there is no entirely accepted definition of a continent. If you want to refer to them as one continent the term is Eurasia.
> There is no reason to separate Europe out of Asia except for that "people that look like that go over there."
People that look like what? A lot of west and central Asians look far more like Europeans than like South Indian or Chinese people, and the latter resemble two do not resemble each other at all.
You cannot put it down to racism dividing white vs non-white because that is very recent. It predates the invention/introduction of racism to Europe. Even better, until well into the 20th century (literally millennia after people separated Europe from Asia) South Asians and some North Africans were regarded as belonging to the same race as Europeans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
i'm kinda jaded because it seems the type of people that get into politics do it to gain money and power.. so voting always feels like picking the lesser of two evils
Start by just attending a some meetings of your local school board, city council, etc. Sit, watch, and maybe take notes. Compare the reality with local press coverage (if any) of it. Try analyzing the social dynamics. Talk to other ordinary citizens about it.
If the only people paying real attention to gov't leaders are the greedy and power-hungry, then few decent people will run for office. And very few of those win.
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