Related: episode 653 of 99% Invisible mentions Peace Arch Park, which is along the US-Canada border in Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia. Anyone from either country can enter the park and mingle with people from the other country. There's supposedly strong incentive, because of a treaty from the War of 1812, for both countries to keep their side of the park open:
If Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the U.S. could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So, basically, North American geography as we know it is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.
The podcast was from December -- an eternity ago in these interesting times -- and I don't know whether anything has changed since then.
This is a good story, but you can read both the Treaty of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812 while keeping the US-Canada border the same) and Rush-Bagot (which restricted naval fleets on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain). Neither document states anything about the border needing to remain open or without barriers.
The podcast's transcript suggests that their source for this is https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/peace-arch-u.... The person confidently claiming that any closure of the park would result in catastrophe is an immigration lawyer, not a historian:
"Saunders said the treaty stipulates there could not be any boundaries or physical barriers erected on the northern border of the U.S. — and if either side violated that treaty — the boundaries revert back to pre-treaty."
Since the Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-War of 1812 borders of both the United States and Canada, this doesn't make any sense. Canadian historian C. P. Stacey states that the period after the War of 1812 actually saw more border fortification than the years before (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840618).
I mentioned that the idea that a 19th century treaty keeps the US-Canada border demilitarized was a good story, but I think the truth is an even better one: that the border is demilitarized because both countries know that they can trust their neighbor. Let's hope it stays that way.
We went to Peace Arch Park several times during COVID to visit relatives in Canada. And then I noticed the tents on the eastern edge of the park. What's that all about? I called it the End Zone. Couples separated by the border would meet there. One park ranger said he saw things he couldn't unsee...
I have a hard time believing that Canada would ever get parts of the US if America broke this. Even if the signed document included unambiguous promises written in the verified DNA of a famous American president or other extravagances
The person you're replying to erroneously interpreted "stay even" as "avoid going into debt," instead of your income's purchasing power remaining constant.
Whatever you're doing, try doing 500 or 1,000 of it in a batch. You'll exhaust any subscription quota you have, or if you're paying per token, you will probably find it too expensive. That's when you'll start to ask "how smart a model do I really need for this job?", and you'll investigate running a small but sufficiently capable model on your own PC, churning overnight through your 1,000 tasks.
Concrete: Last year I was DIYing a solar-power system for my home. I spent about an hour spitting out a Python tool that took (as inputs) drone photos and JSON and generated several proposed roof layouts for the panels and conduit. The tool helped me identify the exact railing attachment points and route around existing roof obstructions. Professionals already have these tools, and maybe they're available to DIYers, but you know what? It was faster to build my own than to do the product research on the web.
Abstract: This "oh shit" was more of a slow burn than a sudden realization. I see a lot of angst from developers who complain about their LLM agents. Agents write terrible code that barely works. They say things are done when they aren't. They misinterpret feature requests and ignore clear-cut project rules. They make assumptions that would have taken three seconds to research and invalidate. They suddenly quit because we're not paying them enough. And so on.
But you know what? All those complaints apply to humans, too! The industry has been dealing with these problems forever. Many of the same management techniques and software-development processes apply. This is why I discount a certain class of criticism about AI-generated code. If a fault of an LLM applies equally well to human engineers, and the person voicing the criticism hasn't managed a team, then I'd invite that person to wear a management hat for a while. Read some books/blogs, talk to an EM. Maybe this is a skill issue, which matters because we're all managers now.
The "oh shit" for me is that I have yet to hear a criticism that I can't map to one or more actual engineers I've worked with -- eventually successfully -- in my career. Which means that I'm still waiting for a new criticism, and eventually absence of evidence might be evidence of absence. LLMs fit too well into the giant machine of commercial software development for them to be a parlor trick.
Everyone but me might be a philosophical zombie. But I still treat them with respect. I do this because I like living in a world that gives us the benefit of that doubt.
It can't hurt to say "please" and "thank you" to an LLM.
Doesn't 91.3(a) already give the PIC absolute authority to act regardless of whether there's a threat? Why invoke the FBI?
> Turning the plane around and landing is certainly in the realm of "reasonable".
Agreed. But doing it without the FBI threat would also be in the realm of reasonable. Which, it could be argued, means that making the FBI threat was unreasonable, or at least very close to it.
Retired manager, been in my share of tense meetings.
I appreciate it when someone recognizes that they're struggling with conflict and emotion, and lets me know that they know this. It's better to acknowledge the emotion and put it on the table as its own valid topic of discussion, than to tiptoe around it or try the "I'm sensing that you're dealing with some internal conflict" approach that risks embarrassing them or worsening it.
The choice is whether to acknowledge the emotion, not whether to have it.
If Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the U.S. could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So, basically, North American geography as we know it is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.
The podcast was from December -- an eternity ago in these interesting times -- and I don't know whether anything has changed since then.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/653-beyond-the-99-inv...
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