I'm a Frenchman but I hold no particular dumb grudge against the English, I actually like them, their style, their music, what I perceive as their refinement as much as their capacity to be hilarious, quick with the banter, overall good lads
so a few years ago, I booked a trip to London, then a train to Northampton cause I wanted to see the city where all the good shoe manufacturers are based (I own a pair of Crockett and Jones and enjoy other brands like Cheaney, Trickers, etc).
what a BRUTAL wake up call, what was on paper a thriving manufacturing town with rich history turned out to be a completely derelict place, with boarded windows in the main streets, beggars, dollar shops, litter absolutely everywhere and the signs that the golden age of the town is LONG gone. I don't know what happened there, recession, Brexit, I really don't know but I ended up taking the train back to London earlier than anticipated, completely shocked by what I saw
Good manufacturing jobs were gutted and sent overseas with no thought or care what the impact on communities would be. In some places families are now on the third generation on benefits because there simply aren't any jobs and the ones that are available require skills that people don't have because they aren't taught them in school due to the obsession with the Victorian education model and the shortage of skilled teachers and training opportunities for young people.
At this point nothing except for a total economic rebuild will save the UK high street and there is zero political will to do that because the current broken system makes certain people money.
This’ll cheer you up: Northampton is used as a case study for a successful post-industrial town. Below average unemployment, above average services and citizen satisfaction.
And it’s true. Northampton is doing pretty great compared to a majority of the U.K.
>This’ll cheer you up: Northampton is used as a case study for a successful post-industrial town.
That same bent of evil people came to my town to peddle some "looks good from my ivory tower" type municipal trash policy that incentivize all the wrong things. They cited an adjacent town that adopted their stuff and is renown locally for its filth as a "success story". The public's reaction was literally "hahahaha, oh wait you're serious, hahahahahahahahahah". City councilor literally had to bang the gavel a bunch and tell the crowd to be serious. It was glorious. The city council is not likely to adopt it at this point.
As a frenchman living in London for 10y+, I am always shocked when I go to medium sized cities in the UK. I love the country side though.
Joke is that UK is a third world country bolted onto London, obviously exaggerated but if you look at numbers and you go there yourselves there is some truth in it.
Perhaps it's improved in the last few years, but Brighton is the only place I've personally seen someone sitting on a street shooting heroin in the early afternoon.
Such money as there is is spent at malls on the ring road.
The manufacturing employees, such as there are, drive everywhere, often live far from town, shop online or at out-of-town megastores.
It's an individualist, selfish culture since Thatcher or before, there's little of the pride in local businesses or local culture that France enjoys.
Dumb Brits became pure consumers since 1982, and blame black people and Muslims for why there's "no British culture anymore", instead of recognising their role in making it happen.
London has been basically subsisting off the remains of the empire while everything else just crumbles.
Also for Frenchman to say re les Anglais "what I perceived was their refinement"... there's a joke that the only people who think the English are refined are Americans (as we are a savage people).
it's the drunken brutes, the burping, clanic, air max 95-wearing savages, but it's also a culture where entire musical genres emerge, the country of Richard "Aphex Twin" James and Boards of Canada, the appreciation for gardens, the relentless success of great authors and directors
The great thing about towns like this is the journey leaving them. This isn't an isolated example either. Most towns I've been to have a derelict High Street.
London is beautiful, I really want to go back and spend more time there (I want to visit Kew ASAP for example), but I felt two things very strongly:
- it's extremely diverse, in a way that no other big metropolitan cities I've visited really are (and way more varied and diverse than Paris). You feel that variety crossing a street, where you go from "oh what a nice place with great heritage buildings and all" to "oh I should keep my eyes open, sketchiness has increased dramatically in the past second"
- London during the day and London at night are basically two different ecosystems, love it during the day, not for me at night (too rowdy / wild)
since you work at Anthropic, know that there was (warranted) love for your models from the community as a whole, they performed well and added value
but the verbiage in recent iterations is absolutely insufferable, I will stop using them because of that as soon as I can, I simply cannot stand another round of the model "finding the smoking gun", saying "that's the actual gap, not a fluke" or some idiotic phrasing like this
it's very bizarre for a python developer like me to read comments like this
uv has been absolutely black magic for everyone in the way it just works and works much faster, but here you are telling us that actually no it's somehow not that good
I don't think the robots are really at fault, but it's just that the kind of businesses that would use the robots in the first place would also not spend the time making good fermented dough, not use the best ovens or the best quality ingredients because they want to make a quick buck in shopping malls or train stations
with the good stuff, a good robot would make brilliant pizza
I'm a Frenchman but I hold no particular dumb grudge against the English, I actually like them, their style, their music, what I perceive as their refinement as much as their capacity to be hilarious, quick with the banter, overall good lads
so a few years ago, I booked a trip to London, then a train to Northampton cause I wanted to see the city where all the good shoe manufacturers are based (I own a pair of Crockett and Jones and enjoy other brands like Cheaney, Trickers, etc).
what a BRUTAL wake up call, what was on paper a thriving manufacturing town with rich history turned out to be a completely derelict place, with boarded windows in the main streets, beggars, dollar shops, litter absolutely everywhere and the signs that the golden age of the town is LONG gone. I don't know what happened there, recession, Brexit, I really don't know but I ended up taking the train back to London earlier than anticipated, completely shocked by what I saw
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