I agree, the show has really declined without being able to stand on GRRM's shoulders. Battles are still good but the dialogue has been terrible and they miss a lot a nuance that's in the books.
It's probably demotivating as a writer to see a lot of the twists you've been preparing for years exposed in the show before, stuff like hold the door, resurrection, etc.
I definitely feel the same way: the books were brilliant and as long as the TV series was showcasing the previously written material the plot and dialogue were very solid. Since they ran out of books to show I've perceived a very sharp decline in quality, and they've fallen back on cliffhangers, twists, sex and violence to keep the audience riveted. Unfortunately, for this particular viewer at least, it really isn't working very well.
The books were junk, honestly. They were the same kind of doorstop novels as Wizard's Last Rule and the Wheel of Time, just with more nastiness, and they are showing the same flaws as those books. Do a standard epic fantasy, bloat it into at least seven novels, and add some transgressiveness to make it spicier.
I think the SF/f genre has really struggled lately...stuff like Brandon Sanderson writes feels so lightweight compared to even the second tier authors of the past, and there's very little flavor in books now; it's formulaic and narrowed to such a tight audience.
Sturgeons law applies, survivor bias applies. There is lots of great SF/fantasy out these days it's just swamped by the not great stuff. Just like in the past.
> Since they ran out of books to show I've perceived a very sharp decline in quality, and they've fallen back on cliffhangers, twists, sex and violence to keep the audience riveted.
It's a subjective thing, but I feel that in the past GoT was a cake where the base was characters, dialogue, and world, topped with an icing of cliffhangers, sex, and subverting audience expectation. Now it feels like a lot of icing with too little cake.
Put differently, yes, those things were always there, but now they are ALL that is there.
Agreed. The writing can be downright terrible at times, and it's usually when they deviate from the source material.
I've noticed something similar with Westworld. I love the premise, and I'm a huge fan of Anthony Hopkins in particular. But the writing just feels so bad most of the time. I don't think it's a coincidence that the best scenes involve Hopkins, and what makes them good is not primarily the dialogue.
It's really... jarring to be watching something that clearly cost a lot of money to produce, involved a lot of very skilled people, and yet manages to be absolutely atrocious when it comes to dialogue or plot. It always makes me wonder how the showrunners managed to get the gig.
Both Westworld and GoT are HBO shows, so maybe that has something to do with it. While I do enjoy both shows, it's more for the cultural buy-in and the budgets involved. The writing pales in comparison to that of many other shows on other channels (FX being my favorite, followed by perhaps AMC)
(Incidentally, this is something I've been confused about for a while. How was Moffat allowed to ruin Doctor Who so utterly over multiple seasons? How did Braga/Berman get to be showrunners for Enterprise when at least one of them (don't remember which) was generally disliked for his contributions to earlier seasons?)
I'm curious to see what will come of Westworld now that Hopkins' character is (apparently?) out.
As for quality of material, I don't know whether to list Mr Robot as an example of good writing or not. It's got good dialogue (and accurate hacking scenes!) but overall the plot seems to be borderline-ludicrous and the Anonymous/Occupy Wall Street ”stick-it-to-the-man” objective seems so... puerile?
Yeah, S1-2 gave deep insight into the characters and their motivations and the way their world worked. E.g. watching Tywin navigate power structures. Like the first three books. S6 is a soap opera.
Yeah, the first seasons felt like they were book-based, with the detail, development, and pacing, etc.
But, this season (7) particularly feels like an episodic TV show. Much faster paced, with less subtle-dialogue, and kind-of hit-you over-the-head plotlines and dialogue. For instance, in the first episode, Jaime painstakingly described to Cersei their predicament as if he was talking directly to the audience. It felt a bit dumbed-down and beneath previous seasons, wherein Tywin might've talked strategy more cleverly.
They are also using somewhat gimmicky cinematic devices, like Tyrion narrating alternative attacks on Casterly Rock; and Sam emptying toilets, cut with him serving food.
Altogether, I am still enjoying it though. Some of the book's plotlines weren't conducive to the screen (e.g. Bran's). So, reducing time spent in the tedium there was good IMO.
OTOH, it feels a little rushed and more "obvious". Don't know if it's because they are so far from the books now or they are just trying to wrap it up.
There are some things they dropped from the books that have really disappointed me. Mostly the whole Lady Greyheart story arc, which I fear will be quickly dropped from any hypothetical new books in the series from GRRM.
I was never a fan of the goody-goody two-shoes Storks. The real heroes are the non-house-affiliated characters like Persistys and Smalltoe. Perhaps Aria too.
The funny thing is the far left will switch between comparing Trump to Hitler then the next day make fun of him for not getting legislation passed. Is he an authoritarian dictator or a weak leader who can't get things done?
You must be confused. There is no left in this country. The Dems are a center right party shifting rightward over the last few decades in line with the general rightward shift in most national officeholders.
For all this deriding of "the left" I hear from my righty friends I cannot name very many authentically leftist officeholders or party leadership. Instead, that party just offers what used to be considered Republican plans (like Gingrich or Romney's views on health care, or the Reagan/Bush tax policy)
> The Dems are a center right party shifting rightward over the last few decades in line with the general rightward shift in most national officeholders.
That's not entirely true; the Democratic rightward shift pretty much stopped around 2008, plus or minus a little bit. It's dominated by a center-right faction, but it has a substantial (and resurgent over the past ~decade, after having been in retreat since the late 1980s) faction that is somewhere between center-left and left (but not hard left.)
I think worldwide the rightward shift really accelerated in the timeframe you're talking about and the years that followed, when seemingly every elected person of seemingly all persuasions started to love austerity.
And in the US, the Obama years were tempered from day 1 by the crowd that wanted to moderate a perceived left counter-push which never materialized in legislation. Witness Obamacare is not and never was seriously proposed to be single payer, it has always been a 1990s GOP alternative to single payer.
I don't see how anyone can be against this. Should we really take an unskilled immigrant who can't speak english over an AI researcher? This is a similar merit system as used by Canada and Australia.
Reminder that people who couldn't work or speak english were sent back at Ellis Island. People who came here knew they were going to have to work and wouldn't be getting handouts. The idea that we just took in whoever wanted to come here is revisionary history used to push agendas.
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological arguments. That's not a legit use of the site, so we ban accounts that do it, so would you please stop?
HN is intended for gratifying intellectual curiosity, and the two things are pretty much incompatible, because political and ideological flamewar burns up everything else.
I've given obviously contrarian opinions on subjects posted to HN, but none of it was off-topic to the posted subject. If you don't want these topics being discussed just delete the thread, what's the point if contrarian opinion is going to be banned?
I'm pretty sure it's very easy to be against this. An immigration policy should ideally be either uneducated immigrants that take jobs Americans don't want and entrepreneurs to support more jobs. Preferring highly skilled immigrants that take the jobs Americans do want is the worst case.
Assuming an "American first" policy, this is ironically in a way very much the opposite since only refugees are being cut. People coming for work is going to be the same under this.
In fact this bill would probably not hit the senate floor at all [1]. It has too much opposition from Republicans whose states would collapse under the bill and Republicans that want an actual decrease in immigration. Democrat opposition is a given as well.
the "jobs americans don't want" meme needs to die. The whole reason there has been no wage growth for the middle class is because we bring in uneducated workers who drive wages down, basic supply and demand. Eliminate that and those jobs would pay more and americans would do them. The reason republicans don't want it is because their donors don't want to pay higher wages.
The reason america is #1 is because in the past we brain drained other countries, the Manhattan project was run by Hungarian jews hitler ran out, NASA rockets were built by Nazi scientists. Now for some reason we want to do the opposite, might explain why we are on the decline.
Regardless of what you think about the meme, it is an accurate description of the situation. If you feel uneducated workers are taking jobs Americans DO want, then by definition its not a job Americans don't want.
Its why I specifically mentioned the bill not actually decreasing immigration. Under this logic the last thing you'd want is to shift the immigrants to take the even better jobs. Most people that believe there isn't a shortage of uneducated workers don't believe educated workers are in short-supply either.
I was wrong on english but people were still required to be able to work and not be reliant on government. This included pregnant women and children if they didn't have a husband or father
I'm fine taking both. The AI researcher is going to need a housekeeper, taxi driver, dry cleaner, lunch from restaurants, and dozens of other services and products performed by unskilled labor. Unskilled immigrants' children will be the next generation of AI researchers and businesspeople. People don't come to America for the handouts. They come because it's a place where hard work leads to prosperity.
I say this as the software engineer son of an immigrant housekeeper.
> I don't see how anyone can be against this. Should we really take an unskilled immigrant who can't speak english over an AI researcher?
Probably; the nonskill categories in US immigration are mostly family-unification categories. The people it brings over have stronger US roots than economic migrants without close family tied here, plus bringing them in reduced outbound remittances and increases domestic velocity of money, spurring demand and creating jobs.
Bringing in additional competition for US workers in high paying jobs keeps wages down and increases returns on capital, which certainly benefits capitalists and the immigrant in question, but less so the country.
If Trump wanted to “make Mexico pay” for the wall (or, better, actual useful US government services), he'd increase the quotas for legal, family-based immigration from Mexico, keeping money that would otherwise flows out into Mexico in remittances in the US domestic economy through more (taxed) exchanges.
Those non-skill jobs are going to disappear soon, then we just have millions on government benefits, to go along with the 47 million currently on food stamps. We don't need more unskilled labor, get those 47 million to work instead
Cutting the overall amount of immigration but raising the quality is a win, especially compared to importing H1-B slaves which actually does lower wages for high skill jobs.
> Those non-skill jobs are going to disappear soon
Doesn't really matter to the point; non-skilled (or even skilled, but not elite)) immigrants qualified for family-based immigration are quite often supported by their US-based (citizen or permanent resident) family via remittances now; bringing them to the US keeps more money in the domestic economy even if they aren't working, driving domestic demand and creating domestic jobs.
> Cutting the overall amount of immigration but raising the quality is a win
Sure, it's just a question of whether “utility to capitalists” or “ties to the US and contribution to retaining economic activity in the domestic economy” is your benchmark for quality. Clearly, you favor the former, though I can't see why.
> importing H1-B slaves which actually does lower wages for high skill jobs.
H-1B workers aren't slaves, and increasing supply of high-skilled labor decreases market clearing cost independent of whether the visa used to import the labor is an immigrant visa or a non-immigrant visa like the H-1B. I'd abolish the H-1B outright, without any additional skill-based visa quota in other categories, but also allow supernumerary (unrestricted by categorical caps) entrance with work permission and a path to permanent residency of individuals not otherwise excluded from immigration, subject to both annual fees and supplemental income taxes.
It might seem like that now, but in hindsight the opportunities will be obvious. There were multiple search engines when Google came out and many social networking sites when Facebook came out. There are always opportunities, things just get harder. A lot of businesses seemed indestructible have collapsed, every major car manufacturer and wall st bank would have failed if they hadn't been bailed out in 2008. The same thing can happen to tech companies.
In the SEO world you used to be able to put a keyword on a page 1000 times and then make the text white with CSS and rank #1 and make bank, now that gets you penalized. Spamming backlinks used to work, now it gets your site de-indexed.
You have to have an edge that separates you from the competition if you want to succeed
Now you need 100 WordPress blogs on individual ipv4 addrs on SWIP'd blocks hosting AI-generated content about a keyword (which search engines can't distinguish from legit content) and have those rank well enough to get real SERP CTR so you can sell your eBook about how to get rich from the Internet (which is itself just generated from a Markov chain PHP script running against Wikipedia articles).
In summary:
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In unrelated news Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor with 350k subscribers was banned today. He's about as centrist as you can get but occasionally speaks against marxism and postmoderism. Apparently not being communist is now terrorism according to youtube.
Reinstated mysteriously after he explicitly appealed, and got a reply he did not qualify for reactivation because of unspecified policy violations.
Let's not pretend this system is doing what it says on the tin. He was reinstated because they realized how it looked and because he has the clout to make a fuss. The next potential Jordan Peterson will be snuffed out before that can happen.
Which is exactly how these Trust and Safety councils like it. Soft power with plausible deniability, like the two faced authoritarians they are. It's always set up as a one way ratchet, they can never allow this stuff to be rolled back in any form. Disagreement is harassment, after all, and harassers are guilty until proven super guilty.
I admit I've not been following his work closely but has he brought up these issues on any other topic than gender pronouns and "SJWs"?
A quick search also suggests he does have actual transphobic issues -
> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”
And misogyny issues -
> “I think disciplines like women’s studies should be defunded,”
Dividing the West and the United States in particular has been planned for a long time. Race, gender, income, politics all of it is being used to keep the plebes at each others throats.
Something needs to be done about China, they could end the situation in North Korea instantly by stopping trading with them. The fact they don't, combined with their aggression in the South China Sea is telling. Sanctions or tariffs should be placed, there are plenty of 3rd world countries with cheap labor.
"It doesn't want a true humanitarian disaster on scales rarely seen before in history."
The entire population of North Korea is about 25 million people. Famine during the "Great Leap Forward" killed somewhere between 15 and 55 million people, while 3-5 million died by violence. You can't make an omelette in China without killing a million people.
China does not want Korean refugees. And North Korea is a dandy client state to have around. But pulling the plug on North Korea wouldn't be a disaster on scales seen in the last century.
Seems short-sighted, as in the winding down of the Kim Juche dynasty through a planned-for and managed process seems more attractive to China than those million+ refugees fleeing North Korea en masse because we went back to a shooting war.
In fact there is absolutely no real reason for China not to begin this effort immediately with or without the assistance of partners, given how their leniency has allowed NK to develop ICBMs and the fact they'll face the tidal wave if they fail to act to remove the NK regime. What happens if the fail to prepare and a war between NK/US happens? They're still going to be dealing with the refugees.
The US is not going to suffer a NK that and and does threaten nuclear attack as a foreign policy.
Maybe I'm pointing the obvious, but the reason that the idiot in charge in NK want nuclear weapons is in order to avoid the fate of the idiot that was in charge in Iraq.
Probably that war was like an epiphany for the people in charge in NK. And maybe Iran think something in the same lines.
So, maybe he is wrong, or, maybe, that it's the only way that the US will suffer his regime.
"...given how their leniency has allowed NK to develop ICBMs..."
The issue is that North Korea's atomic and missile programs were helped along by Russia. That's where the technical assistance all came from, at least initially. So China, and even the US for that matter, really had no way of stopping that. The Russian involvement is a fact that is generally glossed over by policy makers because there is little you can do to stop Russia.
What's surprising about the Trump belief that China could have stopped Russia, is what it says about Trump's foreign policy acumen. It betrays either Trump's lack of knowledge about the history of the North Korean program, or his naiveté with respect to the extent of China's power.
“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.” Trump.
This situation happened back in the mid-1950's as well, only difference was that it was Russia that wanted North Korea reigned in. China gave essentially the same response at that time.
It's not about being humanitarian, it's about the fact that a large scale humanitarian disaster such as the one that would follow the total collapse of NK would be detrimental to Chinese interests.
On some level China doesn't want NK to collapse for the same reason that the US wouldn't want too see quite a few south and central american countries completely collapse they don't want to deal with the fall out.
If China had a way out with NK that didn't involve 20 odd million starving refugees crossing the Yalu river into China or a huge and likely lengthy presence or a large mass of US troops on it's borders it might have taken it rather than having to babysit the cousin that has to wear a helmet to dinner well past it's novelty.
South Korea also has this problem, it fears unification just as much as it fears a total collapse in both cases they'll get a wave of millions of starving, often poorly educated and for all intents and purposes brainwashed refugees lacking many of the skills needed to survive in the modern South Korean society (look at how long it takes SK to re-educate defectors, with some defectors actually returning to NK because they cannot adapt to life in SK).
What I'm saying is that China's priority is the prospect of a large mass of US, (or Russian), troops on its southern border.
Sure, refugees might be a problem...
but I don't believe you'd be able to find a single government on this planet that would not categorize the presence of large formations of enemy troops, artillery and armor to be a higher priority problem. Especially if those enemy formations are on its border.
So China is worried FAR more about Russian or American troops on its border, than they are about refugees. And those concerns are just military sense.
China would lose in either outcome, a more or less "civil" collapse of the NK government and existing infrastructure would result in millions of refugees spilling into China which will cost them billions if not trillions.
It would also tie Chinese forces in the region and force them to deal with the problem nearly exclusively since China is not likely to accept a any international troops on it's border, since it would likely be composed of majority NATO or Indian troops or a healthy mix of both.
"...since it would likely be composed of majority NATO or Indian troops..."
Well NATO troops are not gonna happen right... because the EU is doing its own thing with China.
So we're really only talking US troops, Russian troops or, in your view, Indian troops.
But in the Chinese view, Indian troops and Russian troops are the same thing. Because India and Russia are strong military partners, and have been for a long, long time. So when you consider that the Chinese are close to being surrounded by Russia, I'm pretty sure Indian troops won't happen. (Russian troops are obviously to the north, and the Russians are the chief allies of most of the nations to the West. Including India. So Indian or Russian troops in NK would seal up the Eastern border. This is also a reason that the US would never want large masses of Indian or Russian troops in NK. It essentially gives Russia enormous influence over China, because Russia would surround them militarily. For US policy makers, the idea is for the US to surround China, the worst possible outcome would be for Russia to surround China.)
For all these reasons, and more that I haven't mentioned, both China and the US would be vehemently opposed to any outcome that increased Russia's influence. You characterize such an outcome as "likely", but I'd characterize it as "extremely unlikely".
Try to look at it from a Chinese point of view, or try to imagine what the US reaction would be to a few squadrons of Chinese warships patrolling just outside the territorial line in the Mexican gulf on the pretense of protecting Cuba's maritime interests? and try and come up with a scenario where the US is as passive as the Chinese have been.
Then try and remember that the US Navy did spend about a century acting as corporate thugs for a bunch of mostly Japanese cartels doing the unequal treaty period until China re-emerged as a independent state under the communist in the 50ies followed by about 30years of the US pretending that the puppet regime in Taiwan was the rightful rulers of china and today backs the a Japanese government that don't feel japan have anything to be ashamed of in regard to their occupation of Chinese territory.
It's way to easy for someone with a basic western education using only mainstream western news sources to forget that the world looks quite a bit different to everybody else that the west behavior have historically never been consistent with anything the west considered to be core western values and that those behaviors havent been forgotten in the east.
Even more modern examples have demonstrated to the 3rd world that you cannot necessarily trust to US to implement a democratic system even if they gain 110% control over a region either due to incompetence or other motives. I.E. i doubt there is any genuine 3rd world pro-democracy movement that want the kind of help the West have provided in the middle east or Caucasus.
The North Korean conflict have to be seen in the light of the very genuine distrust the Chinese have for not just the US government but also Japan's claim that they actually represent anything related to western values. And you begin to understand why the Chinese cannot really tolerate a reunification under the current week and in the Chinese's government view non-independent South Korean government.
Just abut nothing, tbh. Sure they would put a carrier nearby on notice and maybe step up patrols out of San Diego, but the US is more then capable if winning and doesn't want to give any hothead an excuse to start something.
China has a fifth of the world's population, they would not be affected by sanctions and tariffs. The power balance is shifting in their favor, and they know they can't be replaced by any other 3rd world country with cheap labor, there is tremendous value from the network effects Chinese production facilities have. The USA effectively has a competitor now, and US politicians can talk all they want, but the fact that they have done nothing so far shows that they can do nothing at all.
Yup, and the USA is sitting on its hands rather than actually competing, China is eating it's lunch. Believing in your own superiority doesn't make it so, you actually have to get off your arse.
It would probably help if the US had kept it's once excellent education system, instead the anti-tax know nothings have refused to invest in their future.
Really it's time to tax the rich the way they did in the 50s and make all that infrastructure stuff work again.
Want to make America great again? get Trump and his rentier class to pay their taxes, in the US and fund a smarter next generation
I seriously doubt the claim that increasing funding for the US government would lead to making the US economy more competitive with China. Government spending on education has been increasing continually in the US with very little to show for it in the way of results http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...
I'm suggesting that the only real way to "make America Great Again" is to make "American Schools Great Again" - sadly politicians love slogans, but wont spend money on things that wont deliver results a decade or two down the track.
Much like most American companies not looking past the next quarter's results, Americas politicians (an d voters) wont look past the next election
Is the suggested funding increase for the American government or for Americans? There are plenty of things that could be done for Americans that would help the economy.
Here's a couple good articles by Scott Adams on things that would convince him on climate change. He mainly focuses on his experience with being able to manipulate models to show whatever you want them to show and what proportion is man-made vs natural.
Wow, so here is my otherwise -3 rated first post, it was posted to answer just what you & Scott wrote:
Just in case a preemptive post for all shills and otherwise identity-impaired deniers. Please watch this presentation from Sheffield University: https ://youtu.be/7IbyiOoVgnQ Thank you
I'll watch the video, but whilst I do I'll put a question to you... Do you think the natural habitat of other animals on our planet should be protected?
That's the bigger question for me. I don't care if the planet is getting hotter or colder if biodiversity is being protected. Perhaps we should agree to stop driving species to extinction and let any decisions on climate be driven by that goal. Would you say that's a reasonable approach?
EDIT: Have watched the video. I can see you don't need convincing. Thanks for sharing it.
Here's the fixed video link, I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it:
pretty much every technological advancement and the quality of life improvement that came with it is through capitalism. There's a reason that Cuba and Soviet Russia were basically trapped in time
nearly all technological improvements are built, at their core, on work that was done by publicly-funded research or volunteer/non-profit work. the internet is a good example
people aren't equal so you're going to have inequality unless you regulate things so everything is equal outcome, in which case you will end up with a failed civilization due to there being no reason for talented people to work hard because they get no benefit for doing so.
theres a difference between inequality in the sense of "a junior developer makes 60k, a senior developer makes 100k" (what you're talking about, and which is totally fine) and the inequality that actually exists, whereby a small number of extraordinarily wealthy people control a massive proportion of wealth while those in poverty lack access to food security, healthcare, childcare, the basic necessities of life.
>whereby a small number of extraordinarily wealthy people control a massive proportion of wealth while those in poverty lack access to food security, healthcare, childcare, the basic necessities of life
May be a more important question is why those people lack those things you mentioned. If for instance Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos never existed, would it make those poor people richer? You are not addressing the problem when you simply vilify the rich as the cause of the poor's woes. Your argument is intellectually dishonest and I think it stems from unnecessary envy.
It's probably demotivating as a writer to see a lot of the twists you've been preparing for years exposed in the show before, stuff like hold the door, resurrection, etc.