I mean, tools are tools. Their value, good or bad, is in how they’re used. If you do something like hit your own hand with a hammer, it’s really not the hammer’s fault. LLMs are 95% gizmos, with a few actually useful cases accounting for the other 5%, at least while they’re still priced way under cost anyway.

Dear God, I keep expecting this to run out of gas and it just won’t quit!

Oh, absolutely. But that doesn’t stop civil engineers from making residential roads that are wide enough to function as interstates, post a 25 mph speed limit, and be SHOCKED when people do 50. It’s not safe to do 50 mph on that road in any sense, but it feels like it is, so that’s what people do.

Reminds me of that 4chan post where anon gets stopped by a stranger who tries to explain that Aluminum is the best metal. Anon tries to stay calm and explain the iron is the best metal, but the guy just kept going off about Aluminum and started talking about rust and ruined Anon’s whole day.

okay, report:

• good lord, Antares and Vega are offensively bright once you adjust to the dark.

• M4!! HOLY GUACAMOLE WOW! M4 by itself made being out tonight worth it!

• M80: cool, felt cool to find it, but it looks like any of the other tighter globs and I didn’t want to mess with switching to one of my narrow AFOV higher power eyepieces on my manual dob. May revisit once I invest in a higher power eyepiece with a decent AFOV.

• Epsilon Lyrae: hmm, am I maybe just not using enough mag? looks like a regular double star to me.

• Took the telescope for a slew through Sagittarius, for a laugh, was not disappointed. Breathtaking amount of stars there.

• Was all aboard the strugglebus making sense of Hercules’s constellation. Didn’t help that he was at the zenith, which made using the dob weird when looking for M13 and made looking at the constellation annoying after staring straight up like a turkey for minutes.

• Took some time to re-acquaint myself with Draco, Cygnus, and Aquila.

• Didn’t pick out any more DSOs, in part because I got annoyed with blowing out my night vision, even with the red light, on my charts.

• I’ve been fairly serious about the hobby for about 9 months now, and it seems like I saw way more satellites out tonight than I did when I stopped back in May. Bruh, the little bastards were everywhere.

What you’re describing is what I meant. If you’re driving at a speed that feels uncomfortable, it’s likely because it feels unsafe. I’m glad you’re a human cruise control, because I’m not, I often do vibes based speed control and I’d be very vulnerable to speed traps. I know I’m a bad driver, and I’d much rather take the bus, train, or bike lane if it was realistic to do so; I honestly hate driving.

re: first study

Results. The relative risk (RR) of a road collision occurring on the beltway after (vs before) installation of speed cameras was 0.73 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.63, 0.85). This protective effect was greater during weekend periods. No differences were observed for arterial roads (RR=0.99; 95% CI=0.90, 1.10). Attributable fraction estimates for the 2 years of the study intervention showed 364 collisions prevented, 507 fewer people injured, and 789 fewer vehicles involved in collisions.

I looked it up, it looks like the Beltway is functionally equivalent to a US interstate. This makes some sense, as speeds on interstates are going to be higher than on arterials (and the arterials in Spain probably aren’t as bad as our stroads in the US).

I’m actually sympathetic to these folks, because there’s a bunch of studies that show that people drive the speed that feels safe. You can’t engineer a road to be safe for 15 mph over the posted speed limit and be shook when folks do the speed that feels safe (the US does this ALL THE TIME). That kind of engineering is all but guaranteeing that an enforcement control is going to be a money printer.

maga: “Everyone needs to stop being such fucking snowflakes”

also maga: “Filming the police is VIOLENCE”

I love this!

I really like this! I’m a fan of the style, and you’ve done it well!

Honestly, this is my favorite kind of stranger to encounter; the kind that’s very generous with their opinion, but every time you think you’ve got them figured out, they pull a hard left on you. 10/10

commenting for visibility.

It’s much more clear, especially if you read the book, that JP is about accountability. All throughout the book, as shit’s going sideways and people are dying, everyone’s playing hot potato with accountability. At the end, Grant forces Genero into investigating a wild raptor nest with him, in spite of Genero’s protests that he’s “just the lawyer” because somebody has to take some accountability.

You might just be on to something there.

this is You Kiddin geometry

Can’t emphasize this enough. After our first, we ended up basically living almost entirely in the bedroom for six months.

I think everyone has their own age group that they bond with the most. For me, I LOVE little puddle babies, so I had kind of an easy go of it. Changing the diaper and bottle feeding? Sick. Naps and tummy time? Fuckin sold. C’mere, kid, we’re going to chill and play vidya. I think the best advice I can offer is that you’ll generally find more of what you seek-- go fishing with magnets, don’t be surprised to get metal instead of fish, etc. Try to make the best of it whenever you can, try to find the joy in it wherever possible, and try to play. Kids, even babies, will surprise you with the ways they can find to play, if you give them the chance.

As for the state of the world, my kids have motivated me to get into local politics to try and leave them a better world than what I inherited. And if all else fails, well, one can always re-evaluate their political strategy once their dependents are less dependent.

yeah, catfish can be pretty unpleasant.

yeah, not a fan; I thought it tasted remarkably of how piss smells.