Not really.

The international border quarantine was quite extreme, but the rest of the country was (mostly) business as normal.

Yeah, we had a very strict initial lockdown, and closed the border, once the number of cases went to 0 we opened up again, we then had regional lockdowns after cases broke the border quarantine.

I’m guessing you weren’t in Auckland?

I agreed with the lockdown and still do. I was pointing out that for a lot of us it was far from business-as-usual for a significant chunk of time.

Our level 4 lockdown was scored at 95/100 ("extreme") by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker. Our border lockdowns and MIQ system were extreme and very prolonged stretching into 2022 and even impacted returning citizens.

Our level 4 lockdown didn't last very long.

The strictness index (which is what I'm assuming you're referring to) varied over time as the response changed.

The claim I was initially responding to was, "New Zealand locked down less than a lot of countries". Not specifically length. NZ lockdown was especially strict in some regards (level 4, border lockdown) and especially prolonged in others (Auckland lockdown, border and MIQ).

The claim meant less time. The lockdown periods in NZ were very short. That's because they actually worked.

Yes, also because I imagine people generally followed the dog damned rules there.

It's also because the rules were strict enough to achieve their stated purpose.

we just locked down quick and strict, we then were one of the only places you could go about life relatively normally without too much worry while the rest of the world went through comparatively ineffective lock downs and rrestrictions.

>Anything subsidized is destructive in the long run.

The only reason sprawling suburbs can exist is because they are subsidized by inner cities.

Building and maintaining miles of roads and utilities is not cheap and the number of people in these areas makes it impossible for them to cover these costs unless they're astronomically wealthy.

>Which to me, just means the manually done cutscenes was a waste of time? In fact in most situations pre-AI you'd foist this task on "that one friend" who's good with Movie Maker or hire a hobby videographer. Now I offload to AI, why is that bad?

Because there's no value in something that you offload to AI without effort.

If it's something that anyone could do, without skill, why would anyone be impressed by that?

> If it's something that anyone could do, without skill, why would anyone be impressed by that?

Gifts aren't supposed to be impressive. Nor is their value measured by effort or cost.

Nor does this reply answer their question of "is hiring a professional to to it any better?" It seems you would have to argue no, though.

I shall call it artist slop.

Why would anybody hate a harmless human skill, like art, or carpentry? Why act like this ever, in any situation? This attitude has nothing to do with pro-AI or anti-AI. It's just pointless, horrible bitterness.

How did hate come in - did you assume it?

Is this satire?

The infinitely scrolling marquee makes me feel like it is.

Those graphs are about income, not wealth.

So was "the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich"

No, that tax rate was on income, not wealth.

Are you trying to conflate the two?

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."

I like it.

What if its just self selection?

Conservatives spread propaganda about woke universities -> conservative kids are less likely to go. Do this for decades and you end up in the situation we're in.

Either that or conservatives are just stupider and less likely to be academics; which is, in my opinion, more likely than your hypothesis about grand conspiracy.

And it's more than the self selection force of conseratives being too frightened that college will change their worldview. Take a liberal and a conservative with equivalent postgraduate degrees. Now offer them their choice of a faculty position or a C-suite career track. Based on the values that define their respective ideologies, is it a coin toss for which path either chooses?

Or even that the categories are shifting. People who hold perfectly reasonable classical Conservative viewpoints are now excluded from the Republican party. An institution failing to shift more right doesn't make it biased.

What if they just like writing code?