Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The lights are all blinking red.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Whew!

Whew!

by | 127 Comments

This post is in: 

I am on the final episode of The Diplomat, and after hearing that so many of you hated the ending, I was debating whether I should stop watching until I could know for sure that there wold (hopefully) be a Season 2.

Well, Netflix just announced that there will indeed be a Season 2 of The Diplomat.  Such a *great show.  Yay!

*I say that no having seen the ending of the final episode of Season 1.

Favorite characters?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    My favorite (aside from the divine Rufus, of course) is the CIA lady.

  4. 4.

    MattF

    Started watching last week— I’m now in the middle of episode 5. So far, the acting is excellent, the story line is somewhat ridiculous, IMO. Good enough to keep watching.

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    @wenchacha: I had missed that.

    Why are writers in Hollywood striking?

    The Writer’s Guild of America represents more than 20,000 TV and film writers. The group was formed in 1921 and its members work on TV shows, movies, podcasts, documentaries, animation, news outlets, and more.

    There are two key issues surrounding WGA’s contract demands and what they prompted a walkout: streaming services and artificial intelligence.

    The WGA says that even though streaming services initially created more jobs, studios have kept costs down and wages low, despite increasing inflation. Streaming shows also typically have shorter seasons with longer breaks than their network counterparts, meaning less pay for a job.

    On the movie side of things, according to Vox, the median screenwriter pay is the same today as it was in 2018. After factoring for inflation, that’s equivalent to a 14% wage decrease. The WGA also said that screenwriters who are making less money are more likely to be asked to do additional uncompensated gruntwork, like script rewrites and “mini rooms,” the practice of a small group workshopping a script for low pay before it’s picked up for production.

    As far as how AI factors in, the WGA wants contractual safeguards that protect against the use of AI to take work — and, in turn, payment — from writers.

    Union leaders say that AI could wipe out writer jobs en masse without proper contractual protections. The WGA’s goal is to get these protections folded into the new contract. Deadline has published a full list of WGA’s demands.

    — Emily Bloch

  10. 10.

    Maxim

    I would have been very surprised if they hadn’t renewed it, but sometimes corporations behave stupidly. (No, really?) Glad it’ll be back.

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @MattF: Yesterday they were predicting maybe 15 months, based on some other big show with an early renewal where season 2 came out 15 months after season 1.

  14. 14.

    Redshift

    @WaterGirl: One of the messages (maybe from the WGA itself, I don’t remember) detailed how the studios’ offer was to give the writers, over three years, an amount roughly equal to the one-year salary of one of the studio execs.

    That amount, over three years, split between all of the writers.

  16. 16.

    Bad_Wolf

    Im so tired of Kate’s befuddled, i need to do everything myself, attitude. She used to run embassies and was going to be an ambassador but runs around like a neophyte all the time.

    I hope they stop writing her as if shes stupid.

  17. 17.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Michael McKean – there’s nothing he doesn’t do well. Plus he’s married to Annette O’Toole (One on One, 48hrs, Cross My Heart, Smallville, Nash Bridges)

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    Meanwhile, hang it up lady, you’re hurting us all with your hubris.

    Could Dianne Feinstein return to the Senate next week— and end a prolonged absence that’s making it tough for Democrats to win approval of a big clean air policy and confirmation of judges?

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s notes at a Tuesday news conference showed that he is “hopeful” that the California Democrat will return, the senator’s office said. The notes were available to Schumer at the press briefing but he did not discuss them. Feinstein’s office said it has no timetable for coming back; it’s up to her medical team. The five-term incumbent, 89, has been staying at her San Francisco home as she recovers from shingles. She’s been away from the Senate since mid-February and has not voted since then, as the drumbeat for her to return or step aside slowly grows.

    Her vote would have given Democrats a win last week on a big clean air initiative. When Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, joined the Senate’s 49 Republicans to oppose limits on truck emissions, the Democratic plan lost 50 to 49. Had Feinstein been present and voting yes, as expected, the resulting 50-50 tie would have been broken in the Democrats’ favor by Vice President Kamala Harris.

    sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article274987296.html#storylink=cpy

  22. 22.

    cain

    @WaterGirl: They don’t have much to worry about in terms of AI. It takes a lot of prompt engineering to get to a fully cohesive script – and the damn thing just belts things out like a bullshit artist.

    Finally, if you destroy screenwriters you will eventually not be able to get any fresh material. It’s not a great idea.

  23. 23.

    cain

    @trollhattan: It’s just amazes me how we get into these situations of razor thin margins and then have bullshit like this. We always seem to be fighting with one hand behind our backs. I just don’t get why we have terrible luck.

  26. 26.

    Jager

    @trollhattan:

    Our 90-year-old neighbor’s shingles outbreak lasted less than two weeks. She goes to the pool, plays cards with her friends, and goes shopping with my wife. I’d bet there is more than shingles on the Senator’s chart.

  27. 27.

    Renie

    I read an article by a real diplomat who said the show is extremely far-fetched from reality but he thoroughly enjoyed.

    My favorite character is Hal Wyler (the husband) played by Rufus Sewell.

  28. 28.

    cain

    @Jager: I don’t know about that – I’ve heard that about 2% the shingles stuff could be permanent. So it’s a possibility and those people are in pain all the time.

  30. 30.

    sab

    @cain: My husband’s best friend’s dad got shingles in his nineties and never recovered. Died a few years later still with shingles.

  32. 32.

    Jager

    We finished The Diplomat and thought it was pretty good. We’re wrapping up Better Call Saul. Since my wife goes to bed earlier than I do, I watched the Israeli TV series Fauda over the last month, I finished it this afternoon. I thought it was good, it would go flat for a bit and then they’d toss in a gun battle or some sex and get it rolling again. Did anybody else watch it? It was interesting how they handled the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic by using Hebrew and Arabic in the scenes, The show was a hit on both sides.

  36. 36.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ryan: No, the woman who is advising her. Ali Ahn.

    Keri Russell is actually my least favorite character. :) Sorry!

  37. 37.

    sab

    My little city just had its mayoral election today. Supposedly the primary but the Republicans didn’t manage to get anyone on the ballot.

    The young progressive Harvard Law grad Pakistani-American who came home instead of making a lot of money elsewhere beat out the older FOP endorsed black guy.  Older guy ran a nasty campaign and lost a lot of his own supporters in the process. ” He said that? He did that? I liked him but whoa!”

    ETA Cops didn’t win this one. We do have a lot of gun violence, but killing young men like Jayland Walker won’t help. Other voters agreed with me. Cops are part of not the solution to our gun violence problem.

  38. 38.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @gwangung:

    Yeah.  That it doesn’t work won’t stop studio execs from trying to use it to screw over writers in every way they can think of.  Professional respect for writers is nonexistent.  It’s the job everyone thinks they can do as well as the most experienced expert.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    Since it’s an open thread….. I can use some suggestions. I have a few cans of pumpkin purée to use up in the next few months. If I wasn’t trying to avoid sugar and refined carbs, I would absolutely use them to make pumpkin cakes. I am one of those weird people who does not love chocolate, and I prefer fruit and nut treats. BUT TRYING TO NOT BE TREAT-Y! Any suggestions for something not terrible that uses canned pumpkin? I found a recipe for pumpkin overnight oats, which I might try…..

  43. 43.

    sab

    @Suzanne: Please keep us posted. Chocolate is spouse’s favorite food but it gives me headaches so I try to avoid it. I have too many cans of pumpkin. My cooking has seriously plumped both of us up in our twenty years of marriage.

  45. 45.

    sab

    @CarolPW: My husband is a dinosaur who still believes real men don’t eat it, but if that is the only thing on the menu he has no choice. I think it seems delicious, and I don’t even much like squash.

  47. 47.

    Queen of Lurkers

    The Diplomat has a totally preposterous storyline — but that’s no reason to not watch it/enjoy it. Reality is over-rated. Fav character? The British Foreign Minister — David Gyasi is very, very sexy.

  48. 48.

    Lapassionara

    @Suzanne: I don’t like chocolate either. I think you could experiment with pumpkin and onions, and maybe some bits of jalapeño. Add some cream or vegetable broth and make soup.

  49. 49.

    Queen of Lurkers

    I also liked Transatlantic, which is historical fiction. Limited series — so no cliff-hanger.

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    Thanks or the suggestions, y’all. I know it is weird to be looking for pumpkin recipes at this time of year. But I have the cans and I’m trying not to waste. Also it’s 39 degrees outside and I worked out to stay warm today!

  53. 53.

    Delk

    Ugh… just saw the DeSantis for president ad on TV. Followed by a Peyronie’s disease ad.
    Back to back broken dick commercials.

  54. 54.

    Urza

    @WaterGirl: Anyone in any job that hasn’t had basically a 20% pay increase since 2020 has lost pay.  And those increases need to keep coming to make up for the inflation.  Letting the Fed halt the economy so pay stops rising before it catches up is just saying some portion (rather large) of the population who wasn’t lucky enough to work at a company raising wages to cover inflation are just plain screwed forevermore.

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    @trollhattan:

    I had shingles when I was in late 40s/early 50s (I’ve tried really hard to forget. I’ve been hit head on by a truck and that didn’t hurt as bad. Longer but not as bad.) I mean chickenpox is bad enough but shingles is just a tad worse. Sort of like the difference between sinking your toy boat in the bathtub and the Lusitania.

  58. 58.

    Urza

    @cain: The writers come up with things based on existing stories and life experiences.  The more data AI has the better it will get at writing.  And its improving rapidly.  I was just testing it today between gpt 3.5 and 4 and the difference is amazing.  Version 5 and 6 may not be the Singularity, but its on the horizon in our lifetimes.
    We need societal plans on how to handle massive numbers of people out of work, continuity of society like we can see the meteor coming.  If it doesn’t hit this year it’ll keep circling till it does.  If a person is not retiring this year, there’s an ever increasing chance AI becomes part of their work, whether or not it eliminates that position.

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    They didn’t go away easily, even with the proper meds and I was a lot younger than the 89 yrs old Feinstein is. As others have said, at her age she may never be rid of them.

  62. 62.

    Ruckus

    @Jager:

    I think, as a shingles customer, that her age and general health likely with play a big part. How soon one gets the medicine and how soon it takes effect makes a big difference. My case showed up on a Saturday afternoon and I was waiting at my docs office first thing Monday morning and mine didn’t go away fully for just over a week. I should have gone to hospital 2 minutes after first noticing.

  63. 63.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Urza:

    We need societal plans on how to handle massive numbers of people out of work

    I remember hearing this about self-driving cars, too.  It’s not going to happen.  Even in the best cases, which won’t be ‘writing fiction’, a human will have to check everything the AI does.

  65. 65.

    TS

    @Jager:

    Our 90-year-old neighbor’s shingles outbreak lasted less than two weeks.

    Mine was also minor, but my neighbor (80s) was still getting debilitating nerve pain 12 months later. Shingles effect people very differently. I picked it up quickly & got a dose of antivirals which may have helped but you have to start them within 3 days of the start of the outbreak.

  67. 67.

    Chetan Murthy

    @TS: It is  not for nothing, that shingles is described as being one of the most painful illnesses you can suffer.  Bar none.  I have read that sometimes people have had their sensory ganglia surgiically removed in order to remove the pain.  I’m sure some people get lucky and have mild cases; but the expectation is that it’s going to be life-changingly bad.

    I know that when I got the Shingrix shot(s), I felt great relief.  Medical science FTW!

  69. 69.

    Urza

    @Frankensteinbeck: ted.com/…/sal_khan_the_amazing_ai_super…/c The AI can already fact check itself.  Its not part of the main program, but probably will be in the next version.  This isn’t like self driving cars where any mistake might kill people.  That gap plus the range of places where cars are from NYC to Hyderabaad with different traffic patterns makes self driving a pipe dream unless every car is connected, which no ones really exploring right now cause that requires government.
    The AIs everyones talking about are ready to replace customer service over phone everywhere.  Frankly I welcome it, its more likely to go off script than the poor humans.  It can code which is why IBM is already talking about several thousand positions eliminated in the near future.  And, even if you are right and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter to the economy until that is fully proven.  Businesses are going to pause hiring anything that might get replaced by an AI and overwork any human still in those positions for the foreseeable future.  Many businesses already plan to cut those jobs because they think the AI is ready, maybe they fail, but those people will be out of work either way.

  73. 73.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Urza:

    The AI can already fact check itself.  Its not part of the main program, but probably will be in the next version.

    I’m skeptical of this.  Maybe it can do so for simple things — really, really simple things.  But every time I’ve tried with anything requiring modest levels of expertise, I got completely wrong answers from ChatGPT. [Specifically, “the difference between Paxos and Fast Paxos” and “code to convert from quaternions to ZXZ Euler angles”]  But more generally, a computer that can figure out when something is false, and when something is true ….. that’s pretty much a definition of General AI right?

    I’m not holding my breath.

    As for IBM replacing programmers …… heh, there’s a saying that only 10% of programmer labor (hours) is devoted to writing new code; the rest of the time is maintenance of existing code.  I look forward to an LLM that can be used to figure out how to *modify* complex existing code to add new function, or to debug bad behaviour in existing code/systems.  That’d be *something*, boy howdy.

  74. 74.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Suzanne: If you don’t wanna cook you also could donate it to someone with an elderly dog with tummy issues.  Pumpkin was our go-to for helping to manage Juniper’s issues in her last years.  So much so, that every time I see cans of it at the supermarket it makes me sad :(

  76. 76.

    Mike in NC

    Rufus Sewell is so cool in this show, I’m almost tempted to go back and watch the “Man in the High Castle” miniseries, which we bailed on. Any thoughts?

  78. 78.

    sab

    @sab: Edit button was seriously broken. Soup seems delicious. Obtaining ingredients in Ohio not optimal but is possible. Weird stuff DanB suggested for his salad last winter I could get off the shelf at my local grocery in Ohio. We don’t do hot stuff much but the rest we are open to trying.

  80. 80.

    cain

    @Urza: The thing is, as a software engineer – I know how flawed this stuff is. Yes, it’s amazing – it’s a great assistance, but it will belt out things as if it is truth but you have to verify everything because it can’t be trusted.

  81. 81.

    sab

    @cain: We tried using software scanning for tax prep a few years back. The results were hilariously and scarily wrong. Operative word was wrong.

  82. 82.

    cain

    @sab: Just ask chatGPT! :-) I’ve asked it to make some neat cocktails before – but AI doesn’t have the kind of “eureka!” idea so for instance, I’d like to add sake as a filler instead of say water. Makes it extra boozy :D

  83. 83.

    cain

    @sab:

    @cain: We tried using software scanning for tax prep a few years back. The results were hilariously and scarily wrong. Operative word was wrong.

    Yeah, it’s quite entertaining.

    I was reading that the head of IBM is thinking of laying off a bunch of folks and replacing them with AI. He’s a fool. (and his first name is the same as my brothers) he would need people to verify all that automation driven by AI. He probably thinks he’s some kind of trailblazing tech version of Lewis and Clark.

  85. 85.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    @cain:

    Still though, as Urza points out, even if it fails businesses will still pause hiring and potentially eliminate many jobs in the meantime until it’s proven AI isn’t all that

  86. 86.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @cain:

    he would need people to verify all that automation driven by AI. He probably thinks he’s some kind of trailblazing tech version of Lewis and Clark.

    Probably not as many people would be needed to check the AI’s work as opposed to it all being done by humans, though

  89. 89.

    Burrowing Owl

    @Chetan Murthy: Yeah, fritters are fried, and I haven’t tried making them otherwise. Around here they’re an occasional meal that goes over well with kids.

  90. 90.

    sab

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Been there. Done that. Takes a lot of humans to correct the AI bad imputs.

    ETA The humans have to read and evaluate the bad imputs, then back them out (delete them) then type the correct stuff in. That takes a lot longer than just typing it in right the first time.

  91. 91.

    Anotherlurker

    @Jager: I delt with severe Shingles for a year and a half.  It would cycle in one month of getting sicker, one month of being the sickest I ever felt, one month getting better and then starting over and getting sicker.  I truly felt that I was going to die.  It was on the left side of my face, in my left eye, my left nostril and the left side of my mouth.  With me it was brought on by stress.

    Truly a horrific disease.

  92. 92.

    John Cole

    I’m pleasantly surprised you all are watching this, too. I am enjoying it- especially the cia agent. She cracks me up.

  93. 93.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Do you remember “shift to video” ?  Facebook claimed that users were taking their news in video form, and urged all sorts of new publishers (e.g. newspapers) to put their news out in video form.  A or so later, it turned out that Facebook’s numbers for this were all wrong, and that there was no shift to video among users.  Those news publishers that had invested in this got burned badly and some of them went under.  Others who had never believed the BS came out fine.

    Separately though, addressing IBM specifically: their business model for at least the last 10+ years has been “do whatever is the new hotness”.  Watson …. blockchain ….. quantum …. now AI.  Each time, they claim to be early-adopters with cutting-edge tech, and they sell it to their existing customers.  Then when it fails, they move on to the next hotness.

    Do you know what Maker Spaces are?  They’re a place you can go to learn how to do a particular thing.  So there’ll be a Maker Space for carpentry.  And you can sign up for courses in cabinetry.  They’ll teach you how to make some sort of cabinet.  They have all the parts and tools, too, and teachers.  And at the end of the course, you get to show your wife the fancy cabinet you made.

    That’s what IBM does — that’s what they *did* with Watson, and then blockchain, and now quantum.  And of course customers pay a seven-figure sum for having some of their guys go off and work with IBM on whatever-it-is.  Thing is, the only people who sign up for this stuff, are already IBM customers — typically mainframe customers.  And the way that IBM convinces them to sign up, is by offering them a discount on their mainframe “rent”.

    And guess what?  The discount is always greater than the price on the “PoC (proof-of-concept) project for the new hotness X”.  It’s a well-established pattern at this point.

    So sure, Arvind will talk about how IBM is hip to this new stuff.  But that’s just to keep convincing Wall Street that IBM isn’t some dying dinosaur.

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): When it comes to programming,  that’s not at all certain to be the case.  In programming, writing buggy code is much, much easier than *finding* bugs in somebody else’s code.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @Chetan Murthy: DeLong has been playing around for a while with trying to get a chatbot to understand his work and books and assist in his teaching.  It’s not going well.

    A reader comment:

    Yes, the developers monitor articles, blogs and social media and insert ad hoc kludges to fix things. It usually takes about a week or two. That’s how long it took for ChatGPT to get the sex of the first female president right after Rodney Brooks reported that it had problems doing so. I’m guessing that the developers simply tweak the “superego”, the component that filters requests to and responses by the actual LLM rather than tweaking the training set or the LLM itself.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Another comment finds that Bard is much better at accurate answers, but still gets some things wrong.

    Sure, have it write fake sonnets, but don’t believe anything it says without verification at this point…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    sab

    @sab: And the bad inputs go everywhere. When you input one item it flows all through. So when you go to correct it, you don’t just look at the initial input. You have to look for everywhere it might have flowed to. You cannot count on correcting the initial input as fixing everywhere it flowed to. And chasing all that down takes time and effort. Doing it right the first time is so much easier and better.

  97. 97.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Another Scott:

    Sure, have it write fake sonnets

    I don’t bother to read any of the reporting on ChatGPT anymore, b/c unless I see actual evidence of real expertise in some complex area, it’s just not worth my time.  But I did see a headline about how ChatGPT was terrible at writing poetry.  I gotta figure though, that it’s a passable poetaster.

  99. 99.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Found this article when looking up Watson:

    Back from the Dead, IBM’s Watson AI is Alive and Re-Emerging

    The public viewed the widely publicized Jeopardy match as a cheesy entertainment stunt and not a pioneering moment demonstrating AI-powered Watson’s machine learning capabilities, natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval abilities. The buzz eventually fizzled out. The commercials featuring Watson Ai introducing itself with a dorky computer-generated voice flew right over people’s heads. Little was publicized about Watson AI use cases like optimized robotic process automation (RPA) being applied to medical claims processing to improve efficiency and productivity. Eventually, it faded from the public eye.

    […]

    IBM’s Watson has evolved and is deployed for many business use cases. It’s being applied for customer service, supply chain, financial planning, risk and compliance, advertising, IT, video and security at scale. IBM was ranked #1 by IDC for AI lifecycle software market share in February 2022. IBM proclaims that 70% of global banks and 13 of the top 14 systems integrators use Watson. IBM implies over 100 million users of its AI. General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) Financial uses Watson Assistant to automate chatbot responses. EY uses Watson Discovery EY to provide better transaction advice to clients. Pharmaceutical giant GSK plc (NYSE: GSK) launched 16 virtual assistants to improve customer satisfaction and employee production with Watson Assistant.

    The article makes it sound like Watson is having a second wind. Also like an IBM sales pitch lol.

    That aside, it really does seem like AI in general is improving drastically over time. The AI capable of imitating human voices is vastly better than it was a few years ago

  100. 100.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chetan Murthy:

    But I did see a headline about how ChatGPT was terrible at writing poetry. I gotta figure though, that it’s a passable poetaster. 

    I don’t even want to know how one goes about “tasting” Poe.

  101. 101.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s the *brand* Watson, not the *system* Watson.  The brand simply includes all AI work at IBM.  Back in the early noughties, you might remember that IBM’s Software Group was supposed to be a real contender, fighting it out with MSFT and Oracle and others.  Then, sometime in the early teens, that all *collapsed*.  Overnight, it went from consistent year-on-year revenue increases, to consistent decreases.  What was that about?

    It was about what I described above (which has been well-documented and even the subject of lawsuits against IBM,  btw): “revenue recognition”.  IBM customers with sizable mainframe “rents” will see their mainframe rent decrease, at the same time that they sign up for new IBM products.  The decreased mainframe rent will be applied to the new product (“revenue recognition”) so that the new product looks like it’s doing great, seeing “year-on-year revenue growth”.  When in reality, it’s all fake.

    Let me put it to you this way: when have you ever seen — really *seen* any IBM AI actually in-use?  You see Google’s AI every day, every bloody day — translate, speech recognition, etc.  But IBM’s?  Never.  Nowhere.  If IBM had world-beating AI, then you’d see it in some system, some product, that you could *use*, even if it were from a customer.  You’d see that customer and IBM touting that world-beating AI tech.  And you don’t, do you?

    Don’t believe marketing hype.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You might want to look up the business-school jargon “cash cow”, “loss-leader” and “loss-maker”.  These are technical terms in business, and for instance there was a nice Economist article at least 20yr ago about this stuff.   IBM’s legacy mainframe business is their “cash cow”.  These new businesses (even Websphere and their Software Group in the early noughties) like cloud, blockchain, quantum, etc, are all loss-leaders.  And eventually when they realize that they can’t turn them into actual profit-makers, when they realize they’re loss-makers, they cut their losses and exit.

    That’s what’s happening with IBM Blockchain right now.

  106. 106.

    eversor

    While I loved The Diplomat I’m not so sure it will be back.  Plenty of stuff is stated it will be back, and then is not back.

    The writers strike comes into this.  Streaming services are bassically money lost.  They’ve all been flushing billions down the drain and were able to due to cheap cash and low interest rates along with investors that they will, eventually, work out.  While the writers strike is entirely justifiable and the attack on streaming is as well the reality is the two don’t work.  If you are going to have streaming at reasonable prices all the workers need to get screwed, and even then it still might not work.  Alternatively we can pay the creators, and then all pay 50 bucks or more per streaming service with device lockdowns.  Then there is the nuclear option which is just to allow an Amazon monopoly on streaming and we all pay a-la-carte per movie or series to rent it.

    The product is flawed in that it bleeds money and does not make it.  Also most of it runs off Amazon AWS anyways so it’s all them regardless of the vendor.  It’s simply not sustainable.  It’s just propped up by investors who are starting to want their money back.  It’s going to go back to the cable TV model of you get your vendor, hosted by Amazon, and the stuff you want is pay per view style.  It’s the only way it works out and we can pay the workers.   I get most people don’t want this, and I do not, but streaming is a fucking shit show for those trying it.  Maybe Disney eats it?

  108. 108.

    Mallard Filmore

    Here is an MSNBC YouTube video about some stealth work for speeding up a discharge petition in the House.

    link: youtu.be/kBh97HUiPvY
    title: “Democrats have a ‘legislative secret agent’ to fight GOP on debt ceiling crisis”

    MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell speaks to Congressman Mark DeSaulnier about the bill he quietly introduced months ago that could allow House Democrats to bypass Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the debt ceiling crisis, and why he hopes Republicans will come to their senses.

  109. 109.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, there’s that, too.  But I’m specifically talking about IBM, and IBM’s remaining workable business model.  That model is fundamentally based on pushing hype to their existing customer base as a way of convincing Wall Street that IBM has a viable future as a product company, and hence deserve the stock valuation it’s getting.  And that entire model is fundamentally flawed, b/c IBM hasn’t produced any viable products since …. the early nineties.

    I worked there 1995-2013, and I can assure you that the products I worked on (the entire Java-based panoply of products) were exactly that: non-viable, even though IBM convinced the world that they were viable and even world-beating.  And so, the day came when IBM realized that the were doomed, and they finally “cut bait”.  They’re in the process of selling-off all these products, b/c they can’t even maintain them.

  110. 110.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: That’s all a way of saying: even if you believe what MSFT, OpenAI, and GOOG tell you, *don’t* make the mistake of believing what IBM tells you: MSFT & GOOG have viable businesses;  they’ve created new and successful products in recent memory.  IBM has not.

  111. 111.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mallard Filmore: I read an amazing article about this bill DeSaulnier’s put together.  They specifically put in provisions that are in the purview of, like, TWENTY different committees, so that the bill could be sent to those committees and languish for a month (there’s some rules-based time they gotta languish before they can be eligible for a discharge petition).  It all sounded incredibly labyrinthine, but hey, “parliamentary rules, wot”.

  122. 122.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Major Major Major Major:

    driving is extremely complicated compared to a lot of the stuff that might be automated in the near future.

    Everything involving human communication is even more complicated.  Metaphorically, we don’t even know the traffic laws.  We’re at the ‘drive around an empty parking lot’ stage.

  123. 123.

    ColoradoGuy

    Pumpkin soup is really, really good, prepared in savory style. Don’t have a recipe but they’re out there.

    My dad was a US diplomat (in Asia), so some parts of the show are realistic, but a fair amount is completely absurd. Many violations of protocol, or just plain common sense, which briefly throw me out of the show. The husband would have been deported, then demoted to Department of Fisheries in Alaska, and then quietly gotten his ass canned. No way he could retain a security clearance. His wife would lose hers, too.

    But parts are accurate, like working through foreign cutouts. And most diplomacy is back-channel, so that’s not unusual at all.

    Still entertaining. The CIA lady gets all the best lines.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    All shall say is I watched the trailer and came away wholly underwhelmed.

    Diff’rent strokes, and all that.

  125. 125.

    TriassicSands

    @Mike in NC:

    I think this is the best I’ve ever seen from Sewell. I, too, bailed on The Man in the High Castle and today wondered if I should give it another look (because of Sewell).

    I don’t have a favorite character. I think Keri Russell is really good as is Ali Ahn. I’ve never thought much of Ato Essandoh, but in this I think he’s quite good. In general, the whole cast is excellent.

    People here have said they think the story line is [insert pejorative], but look at the goings on in the real Washington, DC and then tell me the story line in The Diplomat is [insert pejorative].

    @NotMax: Different strokes…

    Nothing is a bigger waste of time (except trying to deal rationally with a 2023 Republican) than arguing about actors, singers, films, TV series, etc. People simply have different tastes.

  126. 126.

    Manyakitty

    @Suzanne: might be a dead thread and I’ll try finding you elsewhere today, but pumpkin gnocchi or as a filling for ravioli or tortellini?

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