Wealth inequality is not an important thing to worry about by itself. The Gini coefficient undergoes a U-shape growth curve in economies as they move from under-developed, to developing, to developed. A better thing to worry about is wage growth and wealth growth among the bottom 50% of the population. Correlating that metric to the Gini coefficient seems like an exercise for an ideologue not a rigorous thinker.
Speaking to your point about VCs. They represent a minuscule amount of capital investment in the US economy. Of course, on this website, they predominate thought and discussion. However, the simple fact is that VC money is a rounding error in overall capital investment.
Iraq made some sense if you see it as a war to make sure no major energy-capital flows went through the Euro (Iraq started selling their oil in Euros in the late 90s). The US war machine wants to go to war with everyone, from time to time American economic interests lets them.
Germany screwed itself by ending natural gas exploration and shutting down its nuclear plants. They’re about to burn more coal and wood this year than they have in years.
I'm not saying that there aren't dystopian problems in our future, but my bias is that we're actually probably not doing enough, not that we're doing too much. Measuring technology progress is actually very difficult to do, most of the actors have massive incentives to lie and exaggerate.
> a VR metaverse dominated by super sophisticated ad tech
No one is joining Meta (in fact they're losing people now), it's going to fail. Actually VR in general has been unable to gain market traction for years. More and more signs point to people exiting social media (TikTok is still a concern though).
> all controlled by super intelligent AGI
Don't believe the AI hype. We've actually made very little progress on theoretical AI, the breakthroughs have all been in engineering (mostly just adding stacks to NNs that hyperscalar cloud architectures have made easy). We don't actually know what General Intelligence is yet or how to implement it. The engineering progress is making people think there is crazy progress in AI when there isn't.
> think DALL E and where that's headed.
DALL E is just cobbling together two AI innovations, semantic association and image creation. AI has been able to "combine" two types of image styles together for a while. Now there's a semantic addon that does the heavy lifting of looking up the styles for you based on the words you said/wrote.
The graduating president of the Caltech student body just joined Meta. They may be losing people, but they are hiring, and although their work may not be benign, it does qualify as interesting, challenging, and a potential "growth" opportunity.
This has always been my understanding of Bombadil as well. The most popular/accepted view of who he is among Tolkien-dom that I've heard is that he represents the lands of the West themselves (or perhaps all of Middle-Earth?). In the Tolkien legendarium power comes from knowing the right names for things and the right words to say to them. Tom Bombadil is the most powerful being in Middle-Earth because he is so old that he knows the proper name for everything and how to address them (he chastises Old Man Willow to release the Hobbits like he is a child).
I do want to credit the author of this post with the observation that the rulers of lands in Tolkien's legendarium have influence over how those lands express themselves, but I think this letter is the answer to that. Tom is the exception; he eschews power. One of Gandalf's reasons for saying that they wouldn't want to give the ring to Tom is that he would probably lose the ring, not thinking it very important. Tom only cares of eating and drinking and making merry. In that regard he is a Dionysian figure. If you read the Adventures of Tom Bombadil (which this author surprisingly doesn't reference) he is clearly modeled on the Dionysus cycle of myths.
Tom Bombadil is quite clearly what Tolkein referred to as a "subcreation echo" of biblical Adam. Oldest, fatherless, unaffected by original sin and thus not tempted or influenced in the least by the ring, literally living his life as uncontested master of a lush garden. He is Adam, if Adam had contented himself with a Gold Berry instead of that apple...
I get that Tolkien was a staunch Catholic, but he was also a preeminent philologist trained in a way that few people today are. He was deeply familiar with all forms of human myth. To blindly assume that all characters in LotR must have a Biblical corollary is lazy. Tom Bombadil "rapes" Goldberry (in the ancient sense of the word[1]) in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil that comports nicely with other myth cycles and not very well with the idea of the "first Man" or "Adam" (it's not even clear that Bombadil is Eru's direct creation). I think if you actually read the secondary Tolkien texts you might see it differently. They are almost all worth it.
But one day Tom, he went and caught the River-daughter,
in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes,
singing old water-songs to birds upon the bushes.
He caught her, held her fast! Water rats went scuttering
reeds hissed, herons cried, and her heart was fluttering.
Said Tom Bombadil: "Here's my pretty maiden!
You shall come home with me! The table is laden...
That being said, I thought that his appearance in the book was just a contrivance to introduce the sense that this was all middle earth, successor to an older earth older than the "old" things of Middle Earth, perhaps a purer and less subtle place.
We have such a brief time with him in the books but he's one of my favorite characters because of his hints of depth in the narrative and in himself. I think his carelessness is partially an act: sure he's old, and sure he just lives for the moment, but perhaps he knows some deeper sins he's trying to drown out with drink? Or maybe it's simply that his perspective is so long -- so much longer than, say, the elves -- that anything he encounters seems transient.
I thought that his appearance in the book was just
a contrivance to introduce the sense that this
was all middle earth, successor to an older earth
older than the "old" things of Middle Earth
Yes. On a nuts and bolts level, he has a single purpose: so that the reader knows there are things older than elves; things that elves (and maybe even wizards) don't know about.
I see why many people hate Tom, particularly many engineer-types who want their fantasy worlds to be meticulously detailed and explained.
And from a traditional storytelling standpoint, he's a total dead-end with zero effect on anything else in the story.
Yet, I love him. It added to the sense of wonder and mystery in the world. Even Elrond doesn't know about this guy? Bonkers.
Gandalf, being older than Arda itself, has certain advantages even Galadriel does not in terms of "knowing about things" - his vows might limit him in terms of what he can do or say, but sometimes the rules can be bent.
"He appeared already to know much about them and all their families, and indeed to know much of all the history and doings of the Shire down from days hardly remembered among the hobbits themselves. It no longer surprised them; but he made no secret that he owed his recent knowledge largely to Farmer Maggot, whom he seemed to regard as a person of more importance than they had imagined. ‘There’s earth under his old feet, and clay on his fingers; wisdom in his bones, and both his eyes are open,’ said Tom. It was also clear that Tom had dealings with the Elves, and it seemed that in some fashion, news had reached him from Gildor concerning the flight of Frodo."
> there's wisdom in his bones, and both his eyes are open
No proof whatsoever, of course, but just the existence of Tom Bombadil reminds us that there are people in the world (perhaps even the majority) who actually care very little about this whole "Ring" business and just go about living their lives.
What a strange way to look at it, when most of the inhabitants of Middle Earth had no choice in the matter of whether they were involved in the business of the Ring, as catastrophe came to them regardless as to their interest, as evidenced by the return to the Shire at the end of the trilogy, the ending left out of the movies. Frodo even laments his own role at one point, and says he wishes that he did not live in a time with these events, and Gandalf assures him that is how all who live through historic events feel.
It was only because of the selfless sacrifice of Frodo and Sam that any may have been able to live a life untouched by the turmoil of the reawakening of Sauron. If they had failed, nobody would have had a choice whether or not to "care" about the Ring -- they'd simply be oppressed by it.
I think there is some "fortuitous things just keep happening to these people" in much fiction, and certainly the LOTR series, right? If you or I was given a knife that glowed when trolls were around, that would probably be the most amazing thing that ever happened to us. To Frodo it's a footnote, right along with "met and was rended minor aid by the oldest corporeal creature in the universe".
Ultimately, I can only offer conjecture, but given what we know of Tolkein's deeply religious personal perspective, it's not difficult to imagine that his fantastic universe is pervaded by an overwhelming force of goodness that seeks to bring events to their right conclusion through divine providence.
> his fantastic universe is pervaded by an overwhelming force of goodness that seeks to bring events to their right conclusion through divine providence.
That is, in fact, explicitly stated in The Silmarillion.
"Then Ilúvatar (the God/Yahweh creator spirit) spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur (the angels), and mightiest among them is Melkor (Satan / the fallen angel); but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined."
with much study over time, I have come to see one of the resiliant aspects of Christianity is an eagerness to consume all myth and lore and recast it as some story from the desert lands. There is no Adam and no Old Testament g*d in Tolkien, despite thousands of hours of Sunday school and preachers and AA meetings encouraging us to look more superficially at old stories and just resign ourselves to "yes, actually this is told in the Bible"
Tom Bombadil does not need your story of the Garden of Eden and you are invited to take it elsewhere, today.
> The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
Tolkien may have said that, but it is difficult to find much convincing similarity between his world and Christianity - even less so between the LotR trilogy specifically and Christianity. Most of the the Wikipedia article is a real reach. Some of it would even be contradictory: for instance if Varda corresponds to the Virgin Mary, she would co-exist with Mary in the present age as a separate entity. Surely Elbereth is exactly what she is presented as: a female Vala, wedded to Manwë since before the creation of Arda.
And what are the Valar? In the mythos, they are sub-creators. In Christianity God alone is the creator: angels have no part in creation.
The article draws similarity between the resurrection of Jesus and of Gandalf: but in Christianity, Jesus is literally one of the three persons of God, while Gandalf is a Maia, one of the lesser Ainur.
There are a lot of parallels drawn in that article, and I will not go through every one, but as far as I can see they are all contrived. The closest parallel is that of the rebellion of Morgoth - but there is no real equivalent of Sauron in Christianity.
It is also worth thinking about one thing that is missing. The fall of Adam would have taken place long before most of the sections of the Silmarillion, and yet there is no hint of this foundational event.
Tolkien's statement there, I take as a nod towards universal spirit.. basically accepting some validity in the Christian mythos, kindly, into his own unique realms.. but as said "only later" ..well after the invention and initial drawing.
This confirms, not contradicts, my own statement about Christianity "absorbing" all other mythos As If It Were Actually Christian. The acknowledgement from Tolkien is kind and generous, while the Christian theologians are somewhere in the middle, and the daily practice of socialized education is simply the opposite " no one is saved but through Christ"
pedantic, nagging insistence on "accepting primary sources" is exactly the closed-minded approach that is inevitable in lowest-common-denominator reading of the texts. unimpressive and unenlightening.. Is there really no other source of Truth than the Bible ? ask yourself
Not sure about Adam (he'd probably be an Elf as they were the first created) but Eru Iluvatar seems very akin to the God of the Abrahamic religions to me tbh. They're both all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful yet simultaneously mostly passive deities of their respective universes. Malkor is a very thinly disguised devil-character too, being one of the angels who has turned to evil.
There is a more-or-less comprehensive archive[1] up to 2019 (which should probably be scraped and hoarded). The article in question is there, comments included[2].
Side note: Michael Kaplan’s blog, which Microsoft took down in a remarkably shameful manner, has also been archived[3], while Eric Lippert reposted (most of?) his old articles on his personal WordPress instance[4].
It’s still there[1], although a number of the posts seem to be missing. Inexplicably, (most of) the comments are in place. (There are other Microsoft blogs that have disappeared without a trace, but not this one.)
I don't understand the reasoning behind this. Why do you need 5 bytes of unexecuted patch space before the program _and_ 2 bytes of patch space at the beginning of the program?
Wouldn't it be the same to have a single 5-byte effectless operation to patch a single long jump instead of needing space for two jumps?
Because you can’t atomically replace the NOPs. So there’s nothing to prevent you from inserting your patch while a thread partway through consuming the NOPs, resulting in a portion of your patch being decoded out of order.
Modern x86 processors decode multiple instructions per clock. By “slots”, I’m assuming he means entries in the dispatcher or reservation stations. But NOPs don’t even make it to there. As I said, the decoder that encounters it will probably swallow it and emit nothing.
Besides, it sounds like premature optimization. This isn’t the 1980s; An extra clock cycle per function call is not going to make or break your program.
There is a very good chance this dates back to 16-bit Windows. Even Windows 98 supported the 486 which was not capable of independent execution (that’s P5) or separate decode from execution (P5Pro there).
That is not the only thing that has backed the value of money in the history of humanity. It (violence) is arguably the most inferior social mechanism for enforcing value that has been tried.
Speaking to your point about VCs. They represent a minuscule amount of capital investment in the US economy. Of course, on this website, they predominate thought and discussion. However, the simple fact is that VC money is a rounding error in overall capital investment.