How would the EU fine American engineers who live and are paid in America?
Can't America fine them? Surely this is illegal there too?
Readit Newsacatnamedjoe commented on "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B zeropartydata.es/p/localh... · Posted by u/donohoe
acatnamedjoe commented on I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time samj.substack.com/p/that-... · Posted by u/url
The Gini coefficient of the UK is about the same now as it was then:
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed/
What has actually changed? A whole bunch of other economic malaise, but also perceptions, amplified to your personal taste by social media.
I think the argument is less that inequality has increased overall, and more that the country is increasingly stratified by geography - with greater concentrations of wealth in the South East relative to the rest of the country.
This is especially true in formerly undesirable areas of London (e.g. Hackney, #10 on the 2003 list) and towns within commuting distance of London (e.g. Hythe, #3).
Presumably this is due to the gradual shift to a London-centric services economy as well as the increasingly ludicrous price of houses in Central London.
acatnamedjoe commented on I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time samj.substack.com/p/that-... · Posted by u/url
Crap Towns called Hythe "...quite possibly the most spirit-crushingly tedious town in Kent." and "...the place that makes nearby Folkestone look like Las Vegas."
As someone who grew up in Hythe in the 80s and 90s I'd point out that the Rotunda was a far cry from Vegas.
https://www.warrenpress.net/FolkestoneThenNow/The_Demolition...
> quite possibly the most spirit-crushingly tedious town in Kent.
This is an extremely high bar to hit in a county that also contains Ashford.
acatnamedjoe commented on I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time samj.substack.com/p/that-... · Posted by u/url
> "I mean: incredibly, governments and local councils didn’t read my work and decide to mend their ways. The UK did not get better. Instead we got more than a decade of Tory austerity, Brexit, and all the accompanying neglect and bad feeling."
This bit made me laugh.
I read the original book when it came out and it was funny and - in some ways - true. I was born and bought up in the town ranked #4 in the original list (Hythe), but when I read it I was living in Hackney (#10 on the list). So I could shove the book in the faces of my friends and colleagues and say: look at me! I've moved up in the world!
The reason I laughed is because around the time of publication (2003?) I was working in the Government's Social Exclusion Unit. Prior to that I had spent time in the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit; later on I'd go on to work for the Lyons Inquiry. Part of my work included meeting people, and one thing I took away from those meetings would be how incredibly proud people could be about their neighbourhoods and towns: however deeply sunk into poverty the area was, they still cherished the place. The other thing I learned was, more often than not, those people often had good ideas about how to fix some of the issues - local solutions for local problems. All they needed was a little help and support from authorities to get those solutions off the ground.
So when the author claims that "governments" didn't read the book - some of us did. We enjoyed it, and we tried to do things to help people make their towns just a little bit less crap. Sadly it wasn't enough, but if people don't try then nothing will ever get fixed.
I was curious - what was the angle on Hythe in the book?
These days Hythe seems like a posh seaside town with a Waitrose, a nice canalside park, a cute steam railway, lots of boutiquey shops and cafes, etc.
I know a lot of places in the area (e.g. Folkestone, Margate, Whitstable) have all been heavily "gentrified" in the last few years, but I sort of assumed Hythe was always this way? Is that not the case?
And even allowing for a bit of gentrification, it seems wild in 2025 to select it for a "crap towns" award ahead of somewhere like Dover or New Romney.
acatnamedjoe commented on Gradual Disempowerment by AI gradual-disempowerment.ai... · Posted by u/r_a_d
I don’t buy your history but we seem to agree on the conclusion.
The “thus” is misplaced. Nothing was given from the elites. In two senses of the word: labor created that standard of living, elites took a lot of it, and then labor forced them to give a bit more of if back. And labor has always created that value.
And the future when labor is displaced? Does the fully automatically manufactured “largesse” of the elites dry up because the elites made it and they don’t have to give it to anyone else? No to the first part, yes to the second. Labor first created the value. Then the automation. Then they let the elite steal it wholesale.
So discussing the elites as having inherently something to give away is misplaced.
They have something to give away because they have power, which is the only thing that matters in the final analysis.
It doesn't matter who created the value - it's who controls it.
acatnamedjoe commented on What we get wrong about athleticism nytimes.com/athletic/6096... · Posted by u/Hooke
Personally I can’t see how Brady is not a top athlete. It’s like judging a jazz musician on the skills needed in pop music or vice versa. You have to look at success within the genre or sport.
It seems like this is more about the semantics of what we mean by athleticism then?
It sounds like for you, being a top athlete simply means being very good at a sport.
I've always generally understood athleticism to be about raw physical traits, like speed, strength and agility (and is therefore only part of the range of attributes that makes up the overall profile of a sportsperson).
Out of interest would you consider people performing at an elite level in high-skill, relatively low-physicality sports like golf to be top athletes?
acatnamedjoe commented on Gradual Disempowerment by AI gradual-disempowerment.ai... · Posted by u/r_a_d
If all labour is displaced, where will our capitalist overloads find more income? Can’t be government because we’re being taxed now, but won’t be once unemployed.
We need jobs so we can continue to be fleeced.
That's only because a capitalist economy uses the circulation of currency and goods as a way to multiply wealth, while motivating the people who generate the wealth.
Sufficiently advanced AI offers the potential for exponential wealth generation for our (former) capitalist overlords, without you or I needing to produce or consume anything.
acatnamedjoe commented on Gradual Disempowerment by AI gradual-disempowerment.ai... · Posted by u/r_a_d
> Once AI has begun to displace humans, existing feedback mechanisms that encourage human influence and flourishing will begin to break down. For example, states funded mainly by taxes on AI profits instead of their citizens' labor will have little incentive to ensure citizens' representation. This could occur at the same time as AI provides states with unprecedented influence over human culture and behavior, which might make coordination amongst humans more difficult, thereby further reducing humans' ability to resist such pressures. We describe these and other mechanisms and feedback loops in more detail in this work.
States like the USA already have little incentive to represent their citizens. This has been studied. Despite most of them being workers. They represent the rich instead, who just have their asses sat on assets.
This has been an issue for over a hundred years. So there is plenty of content (like what the AI likes) to pull from.
AI that is not embodied in the world can simply be unplugged. Straightforward if we all own technology collectively. But massively complicated when you have capitalists who have every incentive to replace all human labor. (And replacing all human labor is only a problem because a tiny minority would end up dominating everyone else.)
The authors seem more concerned with that hypothetical AI that would consume the universe on a directive to produce stamps (or whatever it was). Instead they could focus on the same issue that they are ostensibly concerned about but face it much more directly.
Focusing on the state misses the point. The state is a relatively modern abstraction for society. Society, state-based or not, has always been dominated by class of elites and governed primarily in their interests.
However, for all of human history those elites have needed workers, and in complex societies, they need LOADS of them. The elites have always needed to ensure that the working people are sufficiently fit, healthy, motivated and skilled to do the work required.
For the last 500 years or so the elites have also found it convenient to maintain a mass of relatively affluent people with a reasonable amount of leisure time, who will purchase the products that make them rich.
Thus the typical person in the world today finds themself able to exchange their labour for basic necessities and increasingly, consumer goods. Most people receive some form of protection from bodily violence and for their property - whether from the state or from some other arrangement with the elite class. Most people also have access to some form of education and healthcare (although of course the level of provision varies massively). Most people have some amount of leisure time, some level of autonomy over what they do with that time, and an increasing range of options for leisure activities.
All of this happens because it is convenient for elites - it gets them what they want.
AI presents us with a possible future where a small group of elites could generate infinite wealth, and would have absolutely no need of the working and middle classes. The benefits we currently enjoy (however meagre) would dry up.
At best, we'd be ignored and left to scratch a subsistence living out of whatever is left of our natural environment by that point.
At worst, one could imagine a scenario where AI-wielding elites compete against each other, and need access to as many natural resources as possible to stay competitive. Then you'd suspect we wouldn't just be ignored, our very existence would be an opportunity cost for the elite class.
e.g. It's 2056 and Musk needs every square meter of solar panels he can get to ensure his AI army triumphs over Zuckerberg's. The plot of land where you've been quietly growing your potatoes and trying to stop your children dying of cholera doesn't get much sun, but it gets a bit - and that's more than enough for him to have you murdered (or, if he's feeling merciful, evicted to die of starvation).
acatnamedjoe commented on What we get wrong about athleticism nytimes.com/athletic/6096... · Posted by u/Hooke
He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth.
American football requires a different skill tree than world football. So of course if you only judge by the standards of world football he is not great. But why would you do that?
And athleticism as different from health. In fact, beyond a threshold I believe it is detrimental to it.
> He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth
Isn't it exactly the point of the article though that this doesn't necessarily mean elite across-the-board athleticism?
Your statement would also have described Tom Brady for most of his career, and I don't think anyone would seriously claim he was a 99%ile athlete (certainly not for sprinting, agility, etc.)
(Or at least they used to; when I visited back recently many supermarkets had free trolleys! Can you imagine my shock?)
Is this not a thing in other countries? How do they get people to return their trolleys to the bays?