UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Possibly. Or it may be that Harry and Meghan are far more in tune with the times.
People historically became more Conservative because they had houses and children. Whether that is true of social attitudes, as opposed to economics, probably not. I wouldn't expect those youngsters (and it is not far off even below age 49) to suddenly become Meghan-phobic Royalists
There's a big difference between how age affects economics and social attitudes.
Economics changes as people grow up and become more economically dry.
Social attitudes is the opposite. Newer generations evolve and push the envelope on social attitudes but keep those with them when they grow up, only to find younger generations have pushed the envelope further past where they'd imagined.
That is not entirely true, over 65s are far more supportive of the monarchy than slashing tax for the rich or further austerity for example
The question is not how those over 65s compare to today's 18 to 30s, but rather how those over 65s compare to their younger selves when they were 18 to 30.
Today's over 65s will be much more economically right wing than they were when they were young, but not dramatically more socially conservative on the same issues than they were when they were young.
How many of those over 65s were republicans 40 plus years ago?
Very few, indeed 57% of even 18 to 24s still back the monarchy.
Supporting the monarchy and paying nurses more are almost the only issues all ages agree on
That wasn't the question. 2018 was not 40 plus years ago.
Have a look at opinion polls 40, 50 or even 60 years ago and compare the youths of then to the elderly of today.
All ages support the monarchy which remains as strongly supported as ever, bar 1992 or 1997 after Diana's death when it took a dip.
Views on homosexuality and abortion may have changed, not the monarchy.
It is also not an automatic you get more socially conservative as you age, Le Pen's strongest support for instance comes from the middle aged rather than the elderly
I seem to recall John Oliver talking about Bolsonaro being popular among the young, though I don't know if that is still the case.
Seems that, just as the chinless wonders running the Palace today, are making essentially the same bone-headed errors in dealing with Princes Meghan, and their predecessors did a generation ago dealing with Princes Diana.
In both cases the courtiers did their cack-handed best (or rather worst) against the object of their ire, with the result that they BOOSTED the popularity of hate object, endangering the monarch AND the monarchy in the process.
IF the lack-of-brains trust around the throne could just curb their enthusiasm for a wee bit, they MIGHT find that the wretched excesses of the Princess they love to hate would do their job for them over time. BUT based on their track record, they are HIGHLY unlikely to follow such a sensible strategy.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Possibly. Or it may be that Harry and Meghan are far more in tune with the times.
People historically became more Conservative because they had houses and children. Whether that is true of social attitudes, as opposed to economics, probably not. I wouldn't expect those youngsters (and it is not far off even below age 49) to suddenly become Meghan-phobic Royalists
There's a big difference between how age affects economics and social attitudes.
Economics changes as people grow up and become more economically dry.
Social attitudes is the opposite. Newer generations evolve and push the envelope on social attitudes but keep those with them when they grow up, only to find younger generations have pushed the envelope further past where they'd imagined.
That is not entirely true, over 65s are far more supportive of the monarchy than slashing tax for the rich or further austerity for example
The question is not how those over 65s compare to today's 18 to 30s, but rather how those over 65s compare to their younger selves when they were 18 to 30.
Today's over 65s will be much more economically right wing than they were when they were young, but not dramatically more socially conservative on the same issues than they were when they were young.
How many of those over 65s were republicans 40 plus years ago?
Very few, indeed 57% of even 18 to 24s still back the monarchy.
Supporting the monarchy and paying nurses more are almost the only issues all ages agree on
That wasn't the question. 2018 was not 40 plus years ago.
Have a look at opinion polls 40, 50 or even 60 years ago and compare the youths of then to the elderly of today.
All ages support the monarchy which remains as strongly supported as ever, bar 1992 or 1997 after Diana's death when it took a dip.
Views on homosexuality and abortion may have changed, not the monarchy.
It is also not an automatic you get more socially conservative as you age, Le Pen's strongest support for instance comes from the middle aged rather than the elderly
I don't think you're understanding what you're replying to.
I never said that views become more conservative as you age. In fact I was saying the opposite, that people stay culturally rather similar throughout as they age only to see younger generations push the envelope in another direction.
There's no guarantee of course than younger generations will always be more liberal.
Despite still being a republican I think HMQ has survived long enough that its made it far more unlikely that we'll become a republic in my lifetime.
Quite simply HMQ has been a good monarch, Charles does not seem at all suitable to be king, but William does. Under a monarchy though you don't get to choose who the monarch is though.
Had the Queen passed away in the 90s and Charles had become king decades ago I think that we'd have had a much better shot of getting rid of the monarchy. But with the Queen ruling as well and as long as she has by the time she does fade into the history books Charles will already be an old man himself.
Charles already is an old man today. Even if he became king tomorrow, people would already be looking past him now, not thinking there'd be a lifetime of Charles in charge.
He will most likely be Edward VII 2 who was King for 9 years after his mother Queen Victoria had reigned for 63 years.
He was then succeeded by his son George Vth who reigned for 26 years.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of Foxy have left this world, RIP
Er, quite obviously not! There are several on this board over 40 and not monarchists.
I don't think anyone takes a statement like 'Everyone X' literally. There's always outliers. Everyone always talks about older people being much more likely to be Tory, but the existence of Jeremy Corbyn doesn't disprove the general point.
As it is, I think if he'd said 60 it might have been more likely.
Yes, it is the typical ly untrue hyperbole that we expect from @Leon.
I don't think the British monarchy will be abolished (though it is likely to be dropped in a number of Commonwralth countries).
What will change is what people expect from the monarchy, and the obvious smear campaign against H and M, whatever their faults, is not doing the monarchy any favours.
I expect Will "nice but dim" and his Stepford wife will be reigning when I reach my dotage.
Despite still being a republican I think HMQ has survived long enough that its made it far more unlikely that we'll become a republic in my lifetime.
Quite simply HMQ has been a good monarch, Charles does not seem at all suitable to be king, but William does. Under a monarchy though you don't get to choose who the monarch is though.
Had the Queen passed away in the 90s and Charles had become king decades ago I think that we'd have had a much better shot of getting rid of the monarchy. But with the Queen ruling as well and as long as she has by the time she does fade into the history books Charles will already be an old man himself.
Charles already is an old man today. Even if he became king tomorrow, people would already be looking past him now, not thinking there'd be a lifetime of Charles in charge.
Think of the Australian referendum on the monarchy, and actually becoming a republic. What it means in REALITY
The Aussie campaign was doing fine until people asked: so who would be president? Then it faltered, and lost. Because you have to consider the alternative
Who would be president in the republic of Britain? And why would that be better? Once you begin to explore these alternatives, then.... eeesh. Suddenly monarchy, for all its faults, seems quite tempting. Especially a 1400 year old monarchy with all its magnificent traditions, art, music, lineage, Britishness.
Imagine. President Gordon Brown. In his stupid house... where? Where does he go? Stoke on Trent? What an appalling idea. Fuck off.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
The last poll I saw Megan's ratings had collapsed
My girlfriend reminded me today that her ex next door neighbour knew some staff at Buck House who told him they all hated Meghan because she was a bully 2-3 years ago. Now they seem to be telling the press.
I vaguely remember she told me at the time but I am not really that interested in the Royal Family so probably wasn’t listening properly
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
A fair point. The big leap was 10-5 years ago. It has been slowly fine-tuning since, tho it does get measurably better, still, year on year. These days it is sometimes eerily perfect
A divide has formed among Democrats over an issue of high sensitivity in New York and Florida: Puerto Rico statehood.
Democratic Rep. Darren Soto, Florida’s first congressman of Puerto Rican descent, is accusing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of reversing his stance on statehood for the island out of fear of political fallout in New York. This comes as liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.N.Y.) is pressing her own measure that urges “self-determination” for Puerto Rico.
Schumer is “trying to appease politics at home,” said Soto, who last week reintroduced a House proposal, H.R. 1522 (117), for Puerto Rico statehood. “I'm just ready to fight. I'm not frustrated."
Florida and New York are both home to sizable populations of Puerto Ricans — Florida is home to one of the largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans living in the continental United States — and they have played an ever-growing role in the politics, especially in the central Florida region. Statehood is also an issue that could create division between Ocasio-Cortez and Schumer, who is up for reelection in 2022.
In November, 52.5 percent of voters in Puerto Rico backed statehood in a referendum. Afterwards, Schumer, who previously endorsed statehood, said there wasn’t strong enough support to go forward with a statehood bill. He later said during a community meeting in New York City that “I will not support their pro-statehood bill until they straighten things out,” reported the Puerto Rican daily newspaper El Nuevo Dia. He said the referendum also could turn the island into a tax haven for billionaires.
“He had very positive language about it during the election,” Soto said of Schumer in an interview with POLITICO. “It was right after Joe Biden said his personal opinion was that Puerto Rico should be a state when he was in our district. So it’s a flip-flop.”
Schumer’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
While Soto is pressing for a statehood bill, Ocasio-Cortez has instead backed legislation that pushes the Puerto Rico Legislature to create a convention whose delegates “develop a long-term solution for Puerto Rico’s status, be that statehood, independence, free association or any option other than the current territorial arrangement.” . . .
Addendum - Note that Puerto Rican statehood is an issue that very few Americans care about, except of course those of Puertoricano heritage AND for politicos in Florida and New York which are the two states with significant PR communities & voters.
Interesting stuff. I appreciate it is a complex issue, notwithstanding this vote on statehood was more direct than past ones, but Schumer's position seems...weak.
The vote was more "direct" in that it offered just two options - commonwealth (status quo) or statehood.
However, the margin in favor was NOT huge, and the conditions of the election rather shambolic (as is par for the course in Puerto Rico).
Essentially what Schumer is doing, is shadowing AOC on this issue. HER position is almost certainly more acceptable to PR politicos in New York City than is the Florida congressman's. Whether this is true for Puetroricano VOTERS in NY is another matter, likely still in flux.
IF Schumer senses a disconnect between AOC's position and the voters THEN he may well diverge from her. But until then, his posture on this appears quite sensible.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of Foxy have left this world, RIP
Er, quite obviously not! There are several on this board over 40 and not monarchists.
I don't think anyone takes a statement like 'Everyone X' literally. There's always outliers. Everyone always talks about older people being much more likely to be Tory, but the existence of Jeremy Corbyn doesn't disprove the general point.
As it is, I think if he'd said 60 it might have been more likely.
Yes, it is the typical ly untrue hyperbole that we expect from @Leon.
I don't think the British monarchy will be abolished (though it is likely to be dropped in a number of Commonwralth countries).
What will change is what people expect from the monarchy, and the obvious smear campaign against H and M, whatever their faults, is not doing the monarchy any favours.
I expect Will "nice but dim" and his Stepford wife will be reigning when I reach my dotage.
I think you're right about the smear campaign, though there is clearly one in the reverse direction as well. The Palace should not be playing the same game, it is self defeating, but it is clearly a game both are playing whilst pretending to be affronted that the other is doing it.
Surprised the Cambridges did not announce a further pregnancy to counter that of the Sussexes.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of Foxy have left this world, RIP
Er, quite obviously not! There are several on this board over 40 and not monarchists.
I don't think anyone takes a statement like 'Everyone X' literally. There's always outliers. Everyone always talks about older people being much more likely to be Tory, but the existence of Jeremy Corbyn doesn't disprove the general point.
As it is, I think if he'd said 60 it might have been more likely.
Yes, it is the typical ly untrue hyperbole that we expect from @Leon.
I don't think the British monarchy will be abolished (though it is likely to be dropped in a number of Commonwralth countries).
What will change is what people expect from the monarchy, and the obvious smear campaign against H and M, whatever their faults, is not doing the monarchy any favours.
I expect Will "nice but dim" and his Stepford wife will be reigning when I reach my dotage.
There are currently 16 Commonwealth realms, 16 Commonwealth nations became republics under Queen Elizabeth, so Charles will at most do no worse than his mother and probably better.
In Canada for example both Trudeau, the PM and O'Toole, the Leader of the Opposition, are monarchists
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
They don't tho. Thailand is enduring the Worst King in its History. He spent Thailand's painful lockdown with 20 mistresses in a manor in Bavaria. He made his pet dog Fufu an Air Marshall
Yet the Thai monarchy endures, and the people grit their teeth, because they know monarchy is better. Because they can see the fate of the republics around them after WW2 - Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos - which collapsed into communism and war, whereas Thailand remained relatively free, and much much more peaceful and prosperous. The Thais know a better monarch will come along, so they wait, and they tolerate this ridiculous oaf, with some mild protest.
I think it is residual respect for the old King, who was very much revered. It will take a bit longer to make Republicans out of Thais from such a high base, but the new king is arrogant and stupid enough to manage it.
I suspect he will be deposed at some point in the next decade.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
Most leading experts in AI are increasingly "over" the idea of supervised learning i.e. just showing huge amounts of labelled data to the computer and increasingly convinced that Neural Networks as currently designed are miles away from the magic bullet.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Indeed, Xi and Putin also Presidents, constitutional monarchy is the best system around
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
They don't tho. Thailand is enduring the Worst King in its History. He spent Thailand's painful lockdown with 20 mistresses in a manor in Bavaria. He made his pet dog Fufu an Air Marshall
Yet the Thai monarchy endures, and the people grit their teeth, because they know monarchy is better. Because they can see the fate of the republics around them after WW2 - Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos - which collapsed into communism and war, whereas Thailand remained relatively free, and much much more peaceful and prosperous. The Thais know a better monarch will come along, so they wait, and they tolerate this ridiculous oaf, with some mild protest.
I think it is residual respect for the old King, who was very much revered. It will take a bit longer to make Republicans out of Thais from such a high base, but the new king is arrogant and stupid enough to manage it.
I suspect he will be deposed at some point in the next decade.
I know Thailand very well, visit every year for months (when allowed), and have lots of Thai friends, so I know this is utter shit. Sorry. But it is. Total bollocks. Not a chance. He may be deposed but there will not be a Thai Republic
Given this absurd statement, I will ignore any further remarks you make on the theme of monarchy
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
Thought he'd already picked George? Could be wrong. Charles has a mixed record.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Google Translate makes documents in a foreign language, like foreign language newspapers etc, readable now. Very rarely do you come across a segment that it hasn't been able to translate to the point of you being able to understand the points being made. I'd imagine technical or more niche papers might be harder but that's a guess.
EG when the AZN boss's famous interview rebutting the EU's claims came out earlier this year the first version of it I saw was the Italian-language one which I read via Google Translate, without realising the website had an English-language version of the interview up. The whole long read of the article was readable via translation.
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
Cnut II?
I have the vague idea that they are supposed to pick at least one of their actual names for their regnal name, but that could be nonsense. If Scotland does go Indy then a good old fashioned English name like Aethelwulf or Ecgberht should do, or else go full ancient Briton like Prasutagus or (checks wiki) Catamantaloedes (ok, he was from Gaul, but they were all basically the same then).
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Hard to argue with THAT logic!
Though wonder if you (or others) might be making the OPPOSITE argument IF Edward VIII had remained on the throne ?
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Charles 1 says Hi. Or would if his head were still on. James 2, Richard 3...
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Which matters if.... you have an absolute monarch. With a constitutional monarch? It matters barely at all.
They are a figurehead. They just have to BE. And this works
Example. Look at the 20 richest nations on earth per capita
12 of the top 20 are monarchies, but only a quarter of the world's nations are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies WORK
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
That depends. If we get a really bad monarch we certainly won't be stuck with them for life, they'd be forced out or we'd be forced to change to being a republic. Eg if a monarch refused to give assent to a bill, as is technically possible, parliament would act to make sure it never happened again, one way or another.
A merely crappy monarch, sure. we'd be stuck with them for longer, but again, if they really were crappy then support for them would crater and politicians would begin to talk about changing the system.
Republics work just fine, world over and in most places, there's nothing inherently bad about them. Constitutional monarchy works fine in places where the monarchs really are just figureheads. My support for it would end if that changed.
Heck, not even the Parliamentarians of the Civil Wars started out as republicans. Only when pushed too far did some of them go that route. The line today would be far easier to cross.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
But the prorogation was not an Enabling Act and the Supreme Court did its job.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Yeah, I'm in the "why bother" camp - the system is obviously ridiculous and the media flip-flops between fawning and attacking are just tiresome, but as long as the monarchy stays out of controversy I don't really care, and don't want Labour to spend political capital on it. It's not something that even Momentum rate as especially pressing.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Unless of course you can get 'em to scarper like Eddy 8.
BTW, backing EVIII was one of Winston Churchill's gross errors in judgement. AND one (unusually) that he later acknowledged (sort of).
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
The prevailing view in the computational linguistics field (not my main field, but one I've published in) is that academic progress has largely stalled also. Furthermore, the best methods require huge parallel corpora, which simply don't exist for most pairs of languages. Hence Google Translate being laughable on smaller European languages, for example. They are hopeful of some sort of new breakthrough, but I believe that none is currently on the horizon.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Unless of course you can get 'em to scarper like Eddy 8.
BTW, backing EVIII was one of Winston Churchill's gross errors in judgement. AND one (unusually) that he later acknowledged (sort of).
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
Cnut II?
I have the vague idea that they are supposed to pick at least one of their actual names for their regnal name, but that could be nonsense. If Scotland does go Indy then a good old fashioned English name like Aethelwulf or Ecgberht should do, or else go full ancient Briton like Prasutagus or (checks wiki) Catamantaloedes (ok, he was from Gaul, but they were all basically the same then).
Given the relative popularity of English male baby names, a King Oliver is suggested. Would they though?
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Charles 1 says Hi. Or would if his head were still on. James 2, Richard 3...
In fairness the 'for life' criterion did not use to be the burden it is today. People were more creative.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
They don't tho. Thailand is enduring the Worst King in its History. He spent Thailand's painful lockdown with 20 mistresses in a manor in Bavaria. He made his pet dog Fufu an Air Marshall
Yet the Thai monarchy endures, and the people grit their teeth, because they know monarchy is better. Because they can see the fate of the republics around them after WW2 - Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos - which collapsed into communism and war, whereas Thailand remained relatively free, and much much more peaceful and prosperous. The Thais know a better monarch will come along, so they wait, and they tolerate this ridiculous oaf, with some mild protest.
I think it is residual respect for the old King, who was very much revered. It will take a bit longer to make Republicans out of Thais from such a high base, but the new king is arrogant and stupid enough to manage it.
I suspect he will be deposed at some point in the next decade.
I know Thailand very well, visit every year for months (when allowed), and have lots of Thai friends, so I know this is utter shit. Sorry. But it is. Total bollocks. Not a chance. He may be deposed but there will not be a Thai Republic
Given this absurd statement, I will ignore any further remarks you make on the theme of monarchy
Well, Nepal became a republic in 2008. After decades as the only Hindu Kingdom.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Which matters if.... you have an absolute monarch. With a constitutional monarch? It matters barely at all.
They are a figurehead. They just have to BE. And this works
Example. Look at the 20 richest nations on earth per capita
12 of the top 20 are monarchies, but only a quarter of the world's nations are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies WORK
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
Hague had a good quote last week, he said Starmer was Blair without the pizazz and charisma, Brown without the intellect and Corbyn without the passion.
He is basically a duller Ed Miliband. However that does not mean he cannot win if the Tories screw up, Biden was equally dull and inoffensive and still beat Trump, as did the dull Hollande beat Sarkozy.
I hope Charles picks a different regnal name just to mess with us after knowing him as such for 70+ years. I'm still pinning my hopes on King Arthur I.
Cnut II?
I have the vague idea that they are supposed to pick at least one of their actual names for their regnal name, but that could be nonsense. If Scotland does go Indy then a good old fashioned English name like Aethelwulf or Ecgberht should do, or else go full ancient Briton like Prasutagus or (checks wiki) Catamantaloedes (ok, he was from Gaul, but they were all basically the same then).
Given the relative popularity of English male baby names, a King Oliver is suggested. Would they though?
Too obvious. Go for Richard, works for monarchists and republicans, kind of.
That's quite a swing. The next Scottish poll will be very interesting; such a marked decline in support for indy suggests the SNP vote should also be suffering.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
But the prorogation was not an Enabling Act and the Supreme Court did its job.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Google translate & similar are crap IF you want a reasonably accurate translation into everyday whatever. BUT they are great IF you are just trying to get (or give) the gist of what is being said, for example in translating common foreign phases.
Back at the turn of the century, based on US census returns & federal law, King County Elections was required to make Chinese-language ballots and other voting materials (such as voters pamphlets) available to voters upon request.
So the idiot who was running the election department at that time, decided to "save money" by relying on Google translator or something similar. Which result that the "Chinese" materials for the first election they were required, were gibberish.
County decided to pay a wee bit more, and higher actual, qualified translators. No problems ever since.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
But the prorogation was not an Enabling Act and the Supreme Court did its job.
The Supreme Court did her job.
No.
It is not her job to get involved in politics or the courts. Maybe if there was an Enabling Act but the prorogation despite all the heat and fury was not that. So no there would absolutely be no excuse for her to get involved there.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
Which matters if.... you have an absolute monarch. With a constitutional monarch? It matters barely at all.
They are a figurehead. They just have to BE. And this works
Example. Look at the 20 richest nations on earth per capita
12 of the top 20 are monarchies, but only a quarter of the world's nations are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies WORK
Constitutional monarchies WORK... but only a quarter of the world's nations are monarchies. Right...
No contradiction there. It's not a system that works for everyone, issues of history and culture and so on, and starting from scratch it makes little sense. But for the few that remain the genuinely constitutional ones work and are institutionally sound.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
The bold line in the footnote basically says even if the model is just repeating things which it has seen from training(and it has seen a lot of data, almost all of the data on the web), it will be considered as few shot “learning”.
This assumption is ok to make, though it dilutes a lot of the enthusiasm for actual few shot learning. Since GPT-3 has been trained on a lot of data, it is equal to few shot learning for almost all practical cases. But semantically it’s not actually learning but just regurgitating from a huge database of data it has already seen.
It isn't doing real few shot learning. GPT-3 is like that student who has learnt everything by rote. That isn't the true meaning of one shot / few shot learning.
Toddler can see one Ferrari, and name new cars as Ferrari's it has never seen before in its life, ones that weren't even in existence when they first learned from their dad that the funny red car with the wanker driver was a Ferrari, pointing out cars that never existed in their "database".
The toddler will also be able to expand, if dad told them Ferrari's were "sports cars" or "hyper cars", they will also be able to correctly point out other sports cars and know that Dad's Ford Focus isn't one of those sport car things despite never been told that explicitly.
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
It is now possible Labour in England could suffer a collapse as bad as Labour in Scotland, when they are finally abandoned by all their working class voters.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
So The Sunday Times have done a piece on Boris Johnson's finances, he really is a shit negotiator.
Johnson’s biggest likely outlay is the result of what one Old Etonian school friend describes as “his pecker problem”. The friend recalls: “Boris has always had a problem keeping his pecker in his trousers. And that’s what so often has led him into trouble.”
Six children — those are the ones that are known about — by three women, plus two divorces and an imminent third wedding to pay for don’t come cheap.
Johnson is still believed to help support two of his four children with his second wife, Marina Wheeler, who are all now in their twenties after expensive private schools and universities.
Stephanie, aged 11, is Johnson’s fifth child, through his affair with Helen Macintyre, an art consultant, and Wilfred will be one next month.
Johnson’s first divorce, from Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1993, was not costly and they had no children. But his divorce last year from Wheeler, a human rights QC, after 25 years together, was a different matter. Having separated in the summer of 2018 after Johnson met Symonds, it took them until February 2020 to reach a financial settlement.
Word in legal circles is that Johnson was by then desperate to finalise the divorce, because Symonds was pregnant and he was determined not to announce the pregnancy until Wheeler, and their children, had been placated.
That gave his soon-to-be-ex-wife considerable leverage in the protracted negotiations, leading to what one QC who professes familiarity with the details describes as “one of the most devastatingly one-sided divorces in British legal history”.
It even gave Wheeler a considerable percentage of Johnson’s future lucrative earnings after he leaves office. Might it be no wonder then that Boris needs a leg-up with the home decor?
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
The bold line in the footnote basically says even if the model is just repeating things which it has seen from training(and it has seen a lot of data, almost all of the data on the web), it will be considered as few shot “learning”.
This assumption is ok to make, though it dilutes a lot of the enthusiasm for actual few shot learning. Since GPT-3 has been trained on a lot of data, it is equal to few shot learning for almost all practical cases. But semantically it’s not actually learning but just regurgitating from a huge database of data it has already seen.
Toddler can see one Ferrari, and name new cars as Ferrari's it has never seen before in its life, ones that weren't even in existence when they first learned from their dad that the funny red car with the wanker driver was a Ferrari, pointing out cars that never existed in their "database".
I'm not gonna debate with you about this any more. I thought, at least, you knew what you were talking about. You don't.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
Post-lagershed prediction, but the monarchy will get lsughed out of existence if Charles goes for a regnal name other than Charles. Having had Elizabeth Ii (nee Elizabeth) on the throne for so long, most people are simply not aware that monarchs don't always use their own name professionally. Stand up comedians' routines would just write themselves.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
The bold line in the footnote basically says even if the model is just repeating things which it has seen from training(and it has seen a lot of data, almost all of the data on the web), it will be considered as few shot “learning”.
This assumption is ok to make, though it dilutes a lot of the enthusiasm for actual few shot learning. Since GPT-3 has been trained on a lot of data, it is equal to few shot learning for almost all practical cases. But semantically it’s not actually learning but just regurgitating from a huge database of data it has already seen.
Toddler can see one Ferrari, and name new cars as Ferrari's it has never seen before in its life, ones that weren't even in existence when they first learned from their dad that the funny red car with the wanker driver was a Ferrari, pointing out cars that never existed in their "database".
I'm not gonna debate with you about this any more. I thought, at least, you knew what you were talking about. You don't.
Hey ho
I do. You didn't even know about GPT-3 a few days ago. You thought GANs were just so amazing you thought they would take over the world, when those in the know, shrug and say nice, but no.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Yeah, I'm in the "why bother" camp - the system is obviously ridiculous and the media flip-flops between fawning and attacking are just tiresome, but as long as the monarchy stays out of controversy I don't really care, and don't want Labour to spend political capital on it. It's not something that even Momentum rate as especially pressing.
Me too. I’ve become steadily more republican as I have got older. I was once a firm monarchist, not any more. I think the monarchy is ridiculous, a lucrative, ludicrous, luxurious welfare state based on genetic lottery. Pretty much the exact opposite of meritocracy. Forget hard work and education. Just marry a prince!
The Queen seems professional enough, but a lot of them are clearly crackers, undone and wound badly back together by an oppressive life in a goldfish bowl.
Yet I would never campaign for its abolition. First, there is no chance of success. Second, I enjoy taking the piss out of the royals and their cap-doffing followers, they really are easy pickings.
But mostly, I find it all a bit sad. I feel for any human being born into that. They have no chance of a normal life.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
I've previously half-jokingly suggested that a way forward for Britain would be for us to elect a Governor-General who would then have the democratic legitimacy to exercise the constitutional power to tell a Prime Minister when they were taking the piss, and do the Royal assent/consent stuff. But we'd still have a Monarch as a powerless figurehead.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
I've previously half-jokingly suggested that a way forward for Britain would be for us to elect a Governor-General who would then have the democratic legitimacy to exercise the constitutional power to tell a Prime Minister when they were taking the piss, and do the Royal assent/consent stuff. But we'd still have a Monarch as a powerless figurehead.
Nobody knows whether she could do that because she's never faced that scenario.
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
It is now possible Labour in England could suffer a collapse as bad as Labour in Scotland, when they are finally abandoned by all their working class voters.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
A very working-class former mining constituency near where I live had a Labour majority of about 30% in 1997. It now has a Tory one of more than 40%, a swing of about 35% over that period. It's now a safer Tory seat than some of the middle-class constituencies in the same area. Difficult to believe when you look at the figures.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
I have no interest in discussing this further with a non-expert but I'll just state here that I disagree with this assessment and agree with FU's. (And I'm not alone.)
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
It is now possible Labour in England could suffer a collapse as bad as Labour in Scotland, when they are finally abandoned by all their working class voters.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
I remember back in Ed Miliband's day a poster with a turn of phrase very like yours referring to the Labour Party's anti-austerity this and transsexual that and anti-racist the other. (I paraphrase; it would be deranged to be able to remember exact quotes from six years ago.) It was a recognisable stereotype at the time, but it appears to have been co-opted and turned into a mission statement.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
The Americans got rid of what they regarded as a bad monarch in 1776.
It is now possible Labour in England could suffer a collapse as bad as Labour in Scotland, when they are finally abandoned by all their working class voters.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
Thanks for the link to this very sensible suggestion, which I've retweeted.
Ah, you actually didn't agree with it? Never mind.
I've been thinking recently that the Terminator films would be duller (but not necessarily much poorer than recent efforts) if in future films Skynet's plan is, rather than sending machines back to kill the leader of the human resistance, they send them back through time so they can publish research in respected academic journals to make it easier for humans to make big advances in AI and therefore bring about Skynet and Judgement Day faster.
Not 100% sure if the concept is blockbuster-worthy, but it'll definitely save on the special effects budget.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
I have no interest in discussing this further with a non-expert but I'll just state here that I disagree with this assessment and agree with FU's. (And I'm not alone.)
--AS
GPT3's Unique Selling Point is, literally, Few Shot Learning. Arguing otherwise is jejune
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
The Americans got rid of what they regarded as a bad monarch in 1776.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
But do we need the role? There's many systems of democratic government out there, and I'm not sure as many have that 'ultimate guarantor of democratic freedoms' role you think exists. Or if they do, that they are actually an ultimate guarantor.
No system can provide such an ultimate guarantee, even if they have a nicely worded constitution saying otherwise. So I think it approaches the issue from the wrong direction - if you ever need such a role, then counterintuitively the role would not help as demagogues and dictators, if they have the means, would pay it no heed.
I've been thinking recently that the Terminator films would be duller (but not necessarily much poorer than recent efforts) if in future films Skynet's plan is, rather than sending machines back to kill the leader of the human resistance, they send them back through time so they can publish research in respected academic journals to make it easier for humans to make big advances in AI and therefore bring about Skynet and Judgement Day faster.
Not 100% sure if the concept is blockbuster-worthy, but it'll definitely save on the special effects budget.
Never got round to watching the Terminator films, although I've been to a Terminator attraction at a theme park in the 1990s.
On the theme of Abolishing the Monarchy, it is also worth noting that PRESIDENT Donald Trump, the President of the Greatest Republic of ALL, has surely given a bad name to republics for the next seven generations, and counting
Quite the opposite.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
The Americans got rid of what they regarded as a bad monarch in 1776.
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Surely working class giving 52% (and a 25% lead) for the Tories should be a reason to grab for the smelling salts?
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
It really isn't incredible. Labour has despised the working classes, with increasing vigour, for the last 20 years. And it only gets worse. The problem is, this truth is finally sinking in - with the working classes. Even as Labour becomes ever more etiolated and effete and metropolitan.
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
It is now possible Labour in England could suffer a collapse as bad as Labour in Scotland, when they are finally abandoned by all their working class voters.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
In a poll earlier this week, out of all the categories that divided people by earnings & qualifications, of which there were eight I think, the only one where more people liked Starmer than Boris was graduates. Chimes with my experience - I don’t know anyone who didn’t go to university that would vote Labour except my Mum, who is very socially Conservative, and quite unPC, but votes Labour because she always has done.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
But do we need the role? There's many systems of democratic government out there, and I'm not sure as many have that 'ultimate guarantor of democratic freedoms' role you think exists. Or if they do, that they are actually an ultimate guarantor.
No system can provide such an ultimate guarantee, even if they have a nicely worded constitution saying otherwise. So I think it approaches the issue from the wrong direction - if you ever need such a role, then counterintuitively the role would not help as demagogues and dictators, if they have the means, would pay it no heed.
The ultimate guarantor has always been the people.
If the people want a demagogue then all bets are off. In any system.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
Yeah, base values when nobody is seriously pushing republicanism. In a few decades time, who knows?
It's certainly true that who knows in the future, I wouldn't bet on things being as stable for the monarchy forever, and that's a good thing, a system needs to continually prove itself.
But I think 'base values when nobody is seriously pushing republicanism' is an odd turn of phrase. Surely that no one is seriously pushing it is kind of the point? It might not pan out, but if the actual heirs are popular then no one will seriously push it either. So while HYUFD's certainty may not be bourne out, pointing out the popularity is also not irrelevant, since it may forestall people pushing republicanism.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
But do we need the role? There's many systems of democratic government out there, and I'm not sure as many have that 'ultimate guarantor of democratic freedoms' role you think exists. Or if they do, that they are actually an ultimate guarantor.
No system can provide such an ultimate guarantee, even if they have a nicely worded constitution saying otherwise. So I think it approaches the issue from the wrong direction - if you ever need such a role, then counterintuitively the role would not help as demagogues and dictators, if they have the means, would pay it no heed.
The ultimate guarantor has always been the people.
If the people want a demagogue then all bets are off. In any system.
I never said they're easy, I said they will become easy, very soon. Moore's Law
Remember what Google Translate could do 10, even 5 years ago. Exactly
Ummm.
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
Indeed, Google themselves score Google Translate using the BLEU system. 100 is considered a perfect translation.
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
Any native non-English speaker I ask about google translate, they nearly always reply the same way, yeah its ok, but nobody actually speaks or write like that, it produces a weird non-human translation, and it never has any idea about the unwritten contextual norms. Is it wrong, not necessarily, is it how I would phrase it, no.
Indeed, I work in a multilingual, multinational business and can attest that it’s really quite basic. It is no match for a good human translator, nowhere near. Like so much tech gadgetry, it gets 95% there, but a miss is a mile.
Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at.
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
Er, I thought you claimed to be an expert in this?
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
I have no interest in discussing this further with a non-expert but I'll just state here that I disagree with this assessment and agree with FU's. (And I'm not alone.)
--AS
GPT3's Unique Selling Point is, literally, Few Shot Learning. Arguing otherwise is jejune
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Yeah, I'm in the "why bother" camp - the system is obviously ridiculous and the media flip-flops between fawning and attacking are just tiresome, but as long as the monarchy stays out of controversy I don't really care, and don't want Labour to spend political capital on it. It's not something that even Momentum rate as especially pressing.
Me too. I’ve become steadily more republican as I have got older. I was once a firm monarchist, not any more. I think the monarchy is ridiculous, a lucrative, ludicrous, luxurious welfare state based on genetic lottery. Pretty much the exact opposite of meritocracy. Forget hard work and education. Just marry a prince!
The Queen seems professional enough, but a lot of them are clearly crackers, undone and wound badly back together by an oppressive life in a goldfish bowl.
Yet I would never campaign for its abolition. First, there is no chance of success. Second, I enjoy taking the piss out of the royals and their cap-doffing followers, they really are easy pickings.
But mostly, I find it all a bit sad. I feel for any human being born into that. They have no chance of a normal life.
Believe it or not, I agree. I have become somewhat more skeptical after the revelations about Prince Andrew. Yuk. I always knew he was a buffoon, but this??
Nonetheless I cannot be bothered with the faff over Abolition. Who cares. We have an ancient monarchy, let's make the best of it and enjoy it, it's a bit like having a Gothic Cathedral in the back garden of your modest detached house in the burbs. You probably wouldn't build it now, but wow. knocking it down? - that's a bit radical, and also pointless, when all you would do is replace it with a couple of gnomes and some average decking that everyone else already has, and which many would hate. OK the cathedral has some mould issues, but they can be fixed, in time; they will come and go, indeed, it's what happens with such buildings
In the meanwhile, you have a Gothic cathedral in your back garden! Which is kinda fun
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
That's certainly not what I thought the monarch was for. Indeed, I found it a bit cringeworthy how some intelligent people were pretending that they thought the monarch should have gone against the advice of the PM, ie arguing in favour of a monarch exercising actual power.
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
The point is that if she cannot perform that role, because she does not have the legitimacy to do so, then we need to have someone with the legitimacy who can.
But do we need the role? There's many systems of democratic government out there, and I'm not sure as many have that 'ultimate guarantor of democratic freedoms' role you think exists. Or if they do, that they are actually an ultimate guarantor.
No system can provide such an ultimate guarantee, even if they have a nicely worded constitution saying otherwise. So I think it approaches the issue from the wrong direction - if you ever need such a role, then counterintuitively the role would not help as demagogues and dictators, if they have the means, would pay it no heed.
The ultimate guarantor has always been the people.
If the people want a demagogue then all bets are off. In any system.
As has been linked to on here in the past, liberals and conservatives even in democratic states today can see the appeal of a strongman leader. Easy to fall away from liberal democracy, it has to be hard fought for.
UK PBers may be interested to know, that yesterday's USA "Daily Mail" tabloid TV show, featured a Brit journo contrasting the hypocrisy of the Palace, in attacking Meghan freely but saying NOTHING critical re: His Foul Lowness aka Prince Andrew.
Hypocrisy was HIS word, but reckon it is apt.
It's a fair point, as clearly they are leaking against her, though it seems to be what Harry and Meghan want as it seems like they don't get much airtime except on these issues, so feels like if we could get them all to just post allegations against each other on a private message board and pretend everyone else was reading it, everyone would be happy.
If the Palace had any sense they would shut up. They only stir up the story. It would be better for them to ignore it all.
Indeed. Harry and Meghan's popularity has, I believe, gotten worse, and if they had some smoking gun about the palace I feel like they'd have mentioned it before now (else it cannot be very important), so it is surely mostly petty stuff or general pointing out the weirdness of modern royalty and its demands on those within it. That'll get attention, sure, but unless it turns out the Queen slaps servants or something it'll fade, so no need to leak stories to retaliate.
No, H and M are more popular than last year. There is a sharp age divide too with the under 24s favouring H and M over HM, and it being pretty even with the under 40s. It is only the oldies that are anti Meghan.
It is going up, rather than collapsing, and if you click the link, have a look at the age divide.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is hardly a matter of concern to most people
That Yougov doesn't bode well for the Palace in the long term.
Isn't that analagous to the 'Tories won't win in the future because the young are all Labour supporters' argument?
Clearly those younger citizens are much more favourable toward the younger, disaffected royals, but if I had to guess I'd assume younger people had generally been less positive toward the royals as an institution anyway (albeit probably not as much).
Everyone becomes a monarchist by the time they are 40, or when they become a parent. You realise that the Crown is a great source of stability, for all its flaws - and stability, at that stage in life, is vastly more appealing than revolution. You want to know what kind of world your kids will inherit. You want to know they will grow up in a nation you can recognise: peaceful, lawful, abiding, British.
That's what monarchies, done well, can do. The British Crown has done this for centuries. We have not suffered revolution since the 17th century.
It will be with us centuries after the likes of @Foxy have left this world, RIP
Parent and still a republican here.
Will see next year whether turning 40 makes me a monarchist but I'm not holding my breath on that.
Of course there are exceptions.
But I have seen this evolution happen to ALL my firebrand lefty friends. Total republicans at the age of 20, 25 (and commies, some of them), they often became kinda soft left Blairites in their 30s - and many remain on the Left. Not one of them would now campaign to abolish the monarchy. For the apathetic it is just an arse-ache - why bother, what do we gain? For the more thoughtful they see it as a destabilising change, and they are seriously averse
I do not know one active republican - as in someone for whom this is a real issue - and I have many friends with diverse beliefs and backgrounds. It is not going to happen
Wait till Queenie dies. A few years with Charles or his sons in charge and views will evolve.
Charles now has a rating of +24%, higher than Boris and Starmer for instance.
William remains hugely popular at +65%, not far off the Queen's +71%
Comments
In both cases the courtiers did their cack-handed best (or rather worst) against the object of their ire, with the result that they BOOSTED the popularity of hate object, endangering the monarch AND the monarchy in the process.
IF the lack-of-brains trust around the throne could just curb their enthusiasm for a wee bit, they MIGHT find that the wretched excesses of the Princess they love to hate would do their job for them over time. BUT based on their track record, they are HIGHLY unlikely to follow such a sensible strategy.
I never said that views become more conservative as you age. In fact I was saying the opposite, that people stay culturally rather similar throughout as they age only to see younger generations push the envelope in another direction.
There's no guarantee of course than younger generations will always be more liberal.
He was then succeeded by his son George Vth who reigned for 26 years.
I don't think the British monarchy will be abolished (though it is likely to be dropped in a number of Commonwralth countries).
What will change is what people expect from the monarchy, and the obvious smear campaign against H and M, whatever their faults, is not doing the monarchy any favours.
I expect Will "nice but dim" and his Stepford wife will be reigning when I reach my dotage.
The Aussie campaign was doing fine until people asked: so who would be president? Then it faltered, and lost. Because you have to consider the alternative
Who would be president in the republic of Britain? And why would that be better? Once you begin to explore these alternatives, then.... eeesh. Suddenly monarchy, for all its faults, seems quite tempting. Especially a 1400 year old monarchy with all its magnificent traditions, art, music, lineage, Britishness.
Imagine. President Gordon Brown. In his stupid house... where? Where does he go? Stoke on Trent? What an appalling idea. Fuck off.
God Save the Queen!
Google Translate could do pretty much exactly the same five years ago as it does today.
It was five years ago when it introduced its neural network that attempted to decode entire sentences, rather than doing words and word fragments.
But I'm not sure it's come on that much since.
I vaguely remember she told me at the time but I am not really that interested in the Royal Family so probably wasn’t listening properly
Back in 2016, German/Spanish/French could be translated into English with scores in the 45-50 range. Now, it's 48-53.
Progress. But not massive progress.
However, the margin in favor was NOT huge, and the conditions of the election rather shambolic (as is par for the course in Puerto Rico).
Essentially what Schumer is doing, is shadowing AOC on this issue. HER position is almost certainly more acceptable to PR politicos in New York City than is the Florida congressman's. Whether this is true for Puetroricano VOTERS in NY is another matter, likely still in flux.
IF Schumer senses a disconnect between AOC's position and the voters THEN he may well diverge from her. But until then, his posture on this appears quite sensible.
Surprised the Cambridges did not announce a further pregnancy to counter that of the Sussexes.
In Canada for example both Trudeau, the PM and O'Toole, the Leader of the Opposition, are monarchists
I suspect he will be deposed at some point in the next decade.
https://twitter.com/iainjwatson/status/1368330119761301508?s=19
Given this absurd statement, I will ignore any further remarks you make on the theme of monarchy
Could be wrong.
Charles has a mixed record.
I assume claims that soaking the rich will do it,....
EG when the AZN boss's famous interview rebutting the EU's claims came out earlier this year the first version of it I saw was the Italian-language one which I read via Google Translate, without realising the website had an English-language version of the interview up. The whole long read of the article was readable via translation.
The whole point of a republic is if you get a bad President you can oust them. Trump is gone, history, rejected, ejected.
If you get a bad monarch you're stuck with them. For life.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1368233676379729920
Note - it says working class - step away from the smelling salts
Though wonder if you (or others) might be making the OPPOSITE argument IF Edward VIII had remained on the throne ?
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1368334086599741441?s=20
Or would if his head were still on.
James 2, Richard 3...
The Labour party's loss of the working classes is incredible.
What are the criteria you would use to judge that?
One purpose I have previously been told the monarch should serve is as the ultimate guarantor of our democratic freedoms, the bulwark of last resort against an Enabling Act - but the Supreme Court judgment on prorogation suggests that when she was tested in that area she fluffed it.
They are a figurehead. They just have to BE. And this works
Example. Look at the 20 richest nations on earth per capita
12 of the top 20 are monarchies, but only a quarter of the world's nations are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies WORK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
A merely crappy monarch, sure. we'd be stuck with them for longer, but again, if they really were crappy then support for them would crater and politicians would begin to talk about changing the system.
Republics work just fine, world over and in most places, there's nothing inherently bad about them. Constitutional monarchy works fine in places where the monarchs really are just figureheads. My support for it would end if that changed.
Heck, not even the Parliamentarians of the Civil Wars started out as republicans. Only when pushed too far did some of them go that route. The line today would be far easier to cross.
BTW, backing EVIII was one of Winston Churchill's gross errors in judgement. AND one (unusually) that he later acknowledged (sort of).
You show a small child a Ferrari and say that car is a Ferrari....from then, the small child will be able to identify not just that car as a Ferrari, but all models of Ferraris as Ferraris with an incredibly high level of accuracy.
Same with language, you see it all the time with non-native English speakers, move to the UK with rather robotic level of spoken English. Not necessarily bad, but not the way we naturally speak. Give them a year or two, and they are the ones easily cracking the jokes based on word play and fully grasped all the weird slang and unwritten norms that we use in every day life. They pick up every day all these nuances and correct their pronunciation / choice of words based on one or two interactions.
ML / AI solutions require to be shown 1000s of pictures of Ferrari's to correctly identify one, and then when a new model comes out, they often can't pick it out, without retraining with the new pictures.
The toddler can't tell you why they think that funny car is a Ferrari, they just know its kinda of like that other funny car Daddy pointed out a few weeks ago.
--AS
My recollection of the situation was that in our system the monarch had no discretion, and the failing was that of the PM for taking the piss and thus advising the monarch terribly about what he was asking for. Certainly the idea the monarch in this day and age should have been expected to throw it back in the PM's face - and I thought he acted terribly regardless of whether it was legal or not - strikes me as very strange indeed, particularly from a republican position. A republican should have been outraged at the idea she could say no, not pretend outrage that she didn't say no.
Edit:And of course that she technically had to be asked is something republicans probably disliked, and that it was a technicality no less annoying. But the 'Oh, the Queen didn't ignore the PM!' theatrics were just embarrassing.
There's good, strong reasons to be a republican, fake ones aren't needed.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/ilcouuqj2o/TheTimes_VI_Tracker_Results_210304_w.pdf
Boris looks like he genuinely loves Britain, is fond of the Queen, likes a drink, and is proud to be a bit of a twat: ah well, he'll do, at least he's not ashamed of who he is, or what we are, etc.
The issue for Starmer, I feel, is that he has correctly identified the problem, but he is not, personally, the cure
He is basically a duller Ed Miliband. However that does not mean he cannot win if the Tories screw up, Biden was equally dull and inoffensive and still beat Trump, as did the dull Hollande beat Sarkozy.
Hollande was a mediocre President however
"Ultimately the problems with all ML / AI solutions have at the moment is they can't do what is called One Shot / Few Shot learning, which humans are brilliant at"
Few shot learning is EXACTLY what GPT3 DOES. That is why it is so amazing
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/openai-gpt-3-language-models-are-few-shot-learners-82531b3d3122
Eeek. And *Cringe*
Back at the turn of the century, based on US census returns & federal law, King County Elections was required to make Chinese-language ballots and other voting materials (such as voters pamphlets) available to voters upon request.
So the idiot who was running the election department at that time, decided to "save money" by relying on Google translator or something similar. Which result that the "Chinese" materials for the first election they were required, were gibberish.
County decided to pay a wee bit more, and higher actual, qualified translators. No problems ever since.
It is not her job to get involved in politics or the courts. Maybe if there was an Enabling Act but the prorogation despite all the heat and fury was not that. So no there would absolutely be no excuse for her to get involved there.
This assumption is ok to make, though it dilutes a lot of the enthusiasm for actual few shot learning. Since GPT-3 has been trained on a lot of data, it is equal to few shot learning for almost all practical cases. But semantically it’s not actually learning but just regurgitating from a huge database of data it has already seen.
https://gpt3experiments.substack.com/p/is-gpt-3-really-doing-few-shot-learning
It isn't doing real few shot learning. GPT-3 is like that student who has learnt everything by rote. That isn't the true meaning of one shot / few shot learning.
Toddler can see one Ferrari, and name new cars as Ferrari's it has never seen before in its life, ones that weren't even in existence when they first learned from their dad that the funny red car with the wanker driver was a Ferrari, pointing out cars that never existed in their "database".
The toddler will also be able to expand, if dad told them Ferrari's were "sports cars" or "hyper cars", they will also be able to correctly point out other sports cars and know that Dad's Ford Focus isn't one of those sport car things despite never been told that explicitly.
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
Hey ho
George nobody has a clue about. Kids are cute at that age, how many thought Charles was a Cnut when he was a child?
Stand up comedians' routines would just write themselves.
It does not do true few shot learning. Fact.
The Queen seems professional enough, but a lot of them are clearly crackers, undone and wound badly back together by an oppressive life in a goldfish bowl.
Yet I would never campaign for its abolition. First, there is no chance of success. Second, I enjoy taking the piss out of the royals and their cap-doffing followers, they really are easy pickings.
But mostly, I find it all a bit sad. I feel for any human being born into that. They have no chance of a normal life.
I've previously half-jokingly suggested that a way forward for Britain would be for us to elect a Governor-General who would then have the democratic legitimacy to exercise the constitutional power to tell a Prime Minister when they were taking the piss, and do the Royal assent/consent stuff. But we'd still have a Monarch as a powerless figurehead.
The prorogation was not that scenario.
--AS
Why vote Labour, when they clearly hate your country, hate you, hate the Queen, hate white people, hate heterosexuals, and so on? Why vote Labour, when the Tories are offering similar policies, but the Tories, unlike Labour. apparently like you, and want your vote, and the Tories love our country, they like the Queen, they are not ashamed of being white, are not obsessed with trans madness, and so on?
This is now existential stuff for Labour. They could be reduced to 20-25% of metropolitan graduates who Have Never Kissed A Toryyyyyy
Thanks for the link to this very sensible suggestion, which I've retweeted.
Ah, you actually didn't agree with it? Never mind.
Not 100% sure if the concept is blockbuster-worthy, but it'll definitely save on the special effects budget.
https://papers.nips.cc/paper/2020/hash/1457c0d6bfcb4967418bfb8ac142f64a-Abstract.html
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtcfall20-a21653/
http://halley.exp.sis.pitt.edu/comet/presentColloquium.do?col_id=19932
https://pythonrepo.com/repo/tonyzhaozh-few-shot-learning
I feel like I am arguing about the Utility of Masks with Jonathan Van Tam in March 2020
Goodnight.
No system can provide such an ultimate guarantee, even if they have a nicely worded constitution saying otherwise. So I think it approaches the issue from the wrong direction - if you ever need such a role, then counterintuitively the role would not help as demagogues and dictators, if they have the means, would pay it no heed.
If the people want a demagogue then all bets are off. In any system.
But I think 'base values when nobody is seriously pushing republicanism' is an odd turn of phrase. Surely that no one is seriously pushing it is kind of the point? It might not pan out, but if the actual heirs are popular then no one will seriously push it either. So while HYUFD's certainty may not be bourne out, pointing out the popularity is also not irrelevant, since it may forestall people pushing republicanism.
--AS
Nonetheless I cannot be bothered with the faff over Abolition. Who cares. We have an ancient monarchy, let's make the best of it and enjoy it, it's a bit like having a Gothic Cathedral in the back garden of your modest detached house in the burbs. You probably wouldn't build it now, but wow. knocking it down? - that's a bit radical, and also pointless, when all you would do is replace it with a couple of gnomes and some average decking that everyone else already has, and which many would hate. OK the cathedral has some mould issues, but they can be fixed, in time; they will come and go, indeed, it's what happens with such buildings
In the meanwhile, you have a Gothic cathedral in your back garden! Which is kinda fun