Sweden has one of the largest wealth inequalities in the world. This might be unexpected given how how the aggressive taxation keeps the income equality high.
> Sweden has one of the largest wealth inequalities in the world.
Sweden has a low income inequality.
Around 20% of the population are immigrants that have yet to accumulate wealth, myself included. If you own an apartment in Stockholm you are already many times richer than any newly arrived. And, at the current prices, it is going to take them 50 years to pay for such an apartment.
So, the system needs time to let everybody accumulate wealth. That is to be expected.
That does not mean that the situation is perfect. In Sweden, like in the rest of the Western world, big corporation does not pay taxes in the country but in tax havens. So, much more can be done to increase the change of everybody getting a good life.
tldr; Sweden is a rich country, newly arrived people from poor countries have no wealth and it is going to take them decades to catch up even if they get a fair salary.
In some ways the low income inequality is driving the high wealth inequality. The income 'equality' means that the top end wages are quite low by global standards, meaning it is basically impossible to build wealth by just working hard and getting a salary.
In the US it is absolutely possible to become a millionaire simply by working your way up the ladder at a large corporation. In Sweden that is basically impossible since there are hardly any jobs offering those sort of salaries.
Sweden is unusual in that way. You often hear about that it's one of the countries with the most equal income distribution but at the same time it has one of the highest wealth inequalities. Basically it's hard to make any money by working you have to own things.
You don't fear it because it's an abstract thing to you. If you'll have an moment of facing impeding doom your primal instincts will rear it's head no doubt.
It's quite obvious actually.
What people want from Unix is the terminal. The GUI experience on Linux is subpar. Random strange bugs and driver issue are still rife in 2021.
Windows has the opposite issue.
WSL promises to solve this by giving you the best of both worlds.
I thought that was the biggest weaknes. The challenges all feel small and made up. The depiction of substance abuse is just strange. It's like a teenagers dream of how it is to become a chess pro with some small speed bumps to not make it too blatant. As for the sport, her career was more similar to that of boxer than a chess player.
It's not very realistic when it comes to the chess, except the actual games. I also found it frustrating that they obviously were inspired by Bobby Fischer whose real life would have made a great story, but decided he wasn't hollywood friendly.
The show is actually based on a book by the same name published in 1983 [0], never read it myself. The chess moves in it are apparently taken from Fischer and others, but it doesn't credit Fischer in any other way.
Which is kind of weird considering the show did even the comparing the protagonist to Paul Morphy thing that also applied to Fischer.
The book also tackles themes like drug addiction and feminism, but I found the show's take on these mostly pointless and superficial. Her drug addiction is never depicted as a struggle, she performs well drugged as well as sober, more of a comedic air to it than serious affliction.
It's also slightly historically revisionist when claiming there were no female chess clubs in the US back then, when there actually were whole female national championships since the late 1930s. The show also claimed how in the USSR women would never play against men, completely ignoring the history of Nina Alexandrovna Bluket [1], who's life would probably have made for a way more interesting and authentic story than a gender-swapped Bobby Fischer.
There are parallels to Fischer but if you want that movie "Pawn Sacrifice" is a decent movie.
As for realism when it comes to chess, as a (former - covid bleh) competitive league player they absolutely nailed the "feel" of the Chess world for me, better than anything else I've seen - yes they compressed the games and showed players moving far too quickly but that was a necessary compromise - hard to show a 7 hour game in real time as a TV show.
The camaraderie and eccentricities of the Chess world where displayed really well.
To be fair, Bobby Fischer life, while not totally uneventful wouldn't really be dramatic enough for a serie. At least, not without focusing on the geopolitical aspect of when he played spassky, which the serie apparently didn't go with.
Also, using a woman character was a good idea in my opinion, since chess is such a man world.
Not very realistic? I thought the depiction of tournament play was spot on, with the obvious exception of a few 'dramatic moments'. Have you played OTB tournaments?
Have you seen the top 100 chessplayer list? Now, 10 years ago?, 50 years ago? Have you see the women top 100 list? The few American women there are Asian-Americans or FSU. Only in Hollywood a cute WASPY girl is the GOAT of chess, and yes I know this is based on a 1980s novel.That does not make it realistic.
It's like making a movie where the best 100m sprinter in the world is a Guatemalan woman. Nice story, 0 credibility.
I understand your point, I guess I'm not one to feel that 'realistic' in the sense you described is a very important metric when critiquing media. For example, would anyone say that the musical Hamilton is 'realistic'? Probably not, but that hasn't decreased its massive popularity.
As a tournament player myself (of course, a rather shoddy amateur) I felt the series got the details of tournament play right. The fact that the prodigy was a teenage girl was besides the point.
I've always found the Polgar story a bit weird, despite the way their father obviously characterised it. Was their chess education really that different from any other resulting chess pro?
Well,his method is not that different of what I have seen other parents have done with their talented kids. Tiger Woods, Ichiro Suzuki, Son Heung-min, Andre Agassi, the Williams sisters, among others, were coached relentlessly since they were almost babies. You can discuss how healthy it is, but the results are there. Judit is by a ridiculous margin the strongest female player in the history.
I suppose my point is, it just feels slightly patronising that the story is presented as this weird brain experiment when I don't think we bat an eyelid at the same upbringing for male players. This is (for better or worse) what it takes to reach 2700.
Also, do you categorise the gulf between Polgar and Hou Yifan as a ridiculous margin (about 50 Elo)? Obviously Polgar was better at her peak, stayed there longer, and clearly had a dedication to the game than Hou never seemed interested in, but I think on the level of natural talent they'd actually be close.
ELO inflation is a real thing in chess.Caruana ELO is 60+ points over Fischer. Polgar reached top 10, Yifan will never be a top 50 player. A top 10 player is in the rounds for the candidates tournament, a top 60 player is lucky if she or he is invited to a 19+ category tournament.
And a bunch of oil drillers wouldn't be the best people to send to an astroid headed for earth. Since when does Hollywood have to be realistic to be entertaining or good? In fact, making it unrealistic often makes it more entertaining.
You are adding nothing to the conversation, I already said that. It's curious though that most of the unrealistic scenarios are the ones who portray the Americans are great and never the other way around. Ideology masquerading as entertainment.
> It's curious though that most of the unrealistic scenarios are the ones who portray the Americans are great and never the other way around. Ideology masquerading as entertainment.
Sorry I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Are you saying that Americans should lose more in film directed at Americans? It's not that it doesn't happen. It's just that it's hard to do. An example that immediately came to mind is the ironically named (for this conversation) show, "The Americans", where the Russians definitely win more than they lose. From Wikipedia:
"The series's final season earned Rhys the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, while Weisberg and co-lead writer Joel Fields won Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; it was also awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama. Additionally, Margo Martindale won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series twice for her performance in the third and fourth seasons. It also became one of the rare drama shows to receive two Peabody Awards during its run."
It's easily my favorite show.
Looping back to Queens Gambit, I think the basic idea is that it's juuuust unrealistic enough without being too unreasonable to take you out of it. It's not unrealistic that Americans can be the best at chess. Hell, an American faced Magnus last world championship for the title and is still world #2. It's also not unrealistic that a Woman could get there as well. Hou Yifan is 84th right now.
But the combination is just unrealistic enough without taking you out of it, which makes it very entertaining.
A documentary about an orphan Russian or Chinese guy who ascends to the top? Might be more realistic, but not a good enough story for a Netflix #1 level of entertainment to a US audience.
Big polluter because it's a giant country. Per capita it's quite low, and there is no reason a big country should be punished why a smaller country that does significantly worse shouldn't. According to that logic if they would split into lots of smaller countries it suddenly isn't an issue anymore.
