> They internalised the qualities of their models’ prose as much as possible, and also kept a sort of verbal rainy-day fund in something called a commonplace book, which is to say that, as they read, they transcribed a stockpile of salient words, metaphors, turns of phrase and clichés – usually organised thematically – that they would then draw upon while writing.

I'm reminded of an excellent passage from "Lives of the Great Pianists" by former New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg when speaking on the strength of Beethoven's musical extemporization:

"How much Beethoven prepared his improvisations we do not know. Most pianists did prepare, knowing full well that sooner or later they would be called upon to supply an improvisation on 'Batti, batti' or a similar well-known tune. And all pianists had at their command a thorough supply of passagework by the yard, which they could snip off and use for any possible contingency. But when Beethoven improvised, prepared passagework or no, it was evident to his hearers that after a while he was on his own, idea pouring after idea. Then he would get carried away, pound the piano, and the strings of the delicate Viennese instruments would pop, or hammers would break."

Speaking on a purely personal level, I am mostly unconcerned with the amount of purple prose a writer chooses to embellish their work with - because I'm always internally stripping away the literary wrapping paper to get at the heart of the idea itself.

>Today there is an easy fix: we have large language models (LLMs) to write our letters for us...

I'm not sure that works very well. I've only had people send me LLM letters a couple of times and it normally pisses me off and produces a rude reply.

Similar problem with law. Rules based order is not ONLY about laws, it is about ethics which is represented, imperfectly, thru law. That is why most professions which deal with humans have ethical codes, oaths, so even people who do not have same morals ( or do not care about them, but want the job ) can do job in accordance with ethic frame law is based on.

And if people follow only laws, without understanding of ethics behind those laws, we get very strange and oppressive society. Rules based order is system of rules which helps to make meaningful, better life for everyone while minimizing harm we do to each other.

So fascism, as journalist use it currently, is a lack of effort for minimization of harm we do to each other. Never heard anything scarier than that.

Law is not a goal but a means.

This is why communist / soviet countries were declining. Most people get confused how can anyone label what happened in those countries as decline, they build factories, they catapulted peasants, serfs into city dwellers, they made huge scientific progress. Those people do not realize that soviet countries did it after it was done in west. For example Large Panel System building so pervasively used in communist block was invented and used 50 years before in England. Inventiveness was limited only into areas that the regime deemed necessary. And even those areas were not free to pursue scientific method, having go back and forth between photos, books and letters from relatives, from west + back and forth between "government ideologist" responsible for "right" way of thinking made any effort to move human endeavor into higher levels impossible.

https://www.socialismrealised.eu/normalistion-everyday-life/

I guess the ussr originally were vibrant and full of innovation but especially the 30s purges killed it off.

Social change was global. It had different local outcomes.

1918 was end of 2WW, most of Europe went from monarchy to democracy, except Russia which went from monarchy to autocracy. This change had orders of magnitude less victims in west.

1917 - 1990 soviets killed more of their own fellow citizens than Hitler did kill any citizen. so if soviets / current Russian establishment says Nazis were bad, then logically they have to say that they were bigger monsters themselves.

And if we talking about 6 million people dead in Holocaust, than current Russian establishment killed 1/6 of that amount in current war ON Ukraine. Just think about that perverse disaster currently happening and we live like it does not matter...

A lot of Russian capital from selling natural gas to Europe went to US.... most of NY diamond district is about Russian money. at least 30 % of Israelis are descendants of Russians. These thing mean nothing to anyone.

EDIT: 1918 was end of 1WW of course...

EDIT2:

Also, Germany was prohibited to have army by The Treaty of Versailles 1919.

1922 - Rapallo treaty was treaty between Germany and Russia. where Germany build factories on Russian soil with assistance of bolsheviks. they were building tanks, airplanes, chemical weapons (Shikhany / Tomka ),... so Russia was solely responsible that Germany had weapons with which they started 2ww

and Germany was solely responsible that Russia had copied weapon designs and had manufacturing capability to be in position to sign 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and attack western Europe TOGETHER with Nazi Germany. small pause in realations after NSDAP won is just that PAUSE.

Russians say that 2WW started 1942 because that is year when Germany attacked Germany allied Russia.

For western Europe 2WW started at 1939 when Germany AND Russia attacked Polland.

For Chinese 2WW started 1937 when japan invaded china.

chemical weapons kind of relations with fascist Italy were nonstop.

Don’t confuse “casualties” with “deaths”!

The Ukraine war has had nowhere near one million dead. More like a couple of hundred thousand at most.

If you prison someone in your basement and do not give them food and water, you are killer. Even tho you did not directly stopped their physiological functions.

If YOU act in a way that result of that act is death, then they are victim of YOUR act.

Current Russian establishment are responsible for situation which will not happen without them doing activities to start, sustain this situation. Situation which kills people. Current Russian establishments are therefor killers.

EDIT : this says 500 000 in 2023, 2 years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russi...

this says roughly 200 000 in 2025 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkm7lly61do

EDIT2: people from current Russian establishment acknowledged 22 million dead because of soviets. so even then we are talking about more people dead than Germany, for soviet regime deaths.. so real number are not lower than 22 million (Russian gov) and not higher than 62 million ( R.J.Rummel university of Hawaii.

EDIT3: Victims ≣ dead.

For victims AS casualties (physical, mental, economic,...) we have to add BILLIONS more. So lets stay in tens of millions. It is simpler to calculate.

Above poster is just trying to clarify that "casualties" means "dead or injured". Generally many more are injured than killed in war, so the number of causualties will be higher than the number of deaths.

Precisely.

Conversely, the "loss of working age men" in both Ukraine and Russia is much higher than the death toll from the war for various reasons: poor demographics, emigration, disability, permanently increased standing army size, reduced health care quality, etc...

so these additional numbers are also direct result of acts of Russian establishment.

so they are not MINUS,

they are PLUS just in other column.

So Russian establishment is not only killer, but also on top of that they are terroristic toward their own citizen.

yes i meant only dead.

I feel like some articles tend to downplay LLMs a bit too much. It's not just about form, LLMs do bring some substance as well.

When you ask coding questions it can often generate code which refers to your unique variable names. It can take what you give it and solve a unique problem which it has never seen before. Like I could give it many functions I just wrote with some names it has never seen before doing some processing it has never seen and it knows how to call those functions correctly and can even assemble them correctly, even though this particular flow is unique to this situation. There is some intelligence involved in rearranging logic and filling logical gaps which goes beyond just rephrasing ideas.

I feel like the main issue with LLMs is that they don't have long term memory so it's like talking to an extremely intelligent goldfish. The lack of ability to internalize context is what makes it hard for it to meet goals. You need to keep track of the changing state of reality in order to achieve stuff.