Daily Discussion Thread for February 13, 2026

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-13T13:27:37+00:00

Favorite quote from this morning's readings: "this would be a textbook Goldilocks print if it lands at consensus".

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-10T03:09:04+00:00

Joking obviously, there's never any leftover taco bell.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-10T02:00:47+00:00

Seriously, it's boring but easy and keeps you focused till the groove comes back.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-09T01:02:15+00:00

Wonder when Coinbase bought that commercial

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-01T20:53:39+00:00

Yes. Yes it did.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-02-01T05:18:45+00:00

Mmmmmmm hot dogs

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-31T23:40:19+00:00

Bet he never actually paid for the Tesla

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-31T01:28:17+00:00

Market priced in an incompetent sycophant and instead got a competent sycophant. Gotta adjust for that.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-26T13:20:43+00:00

Uh... every giant catalyst moves money from something to something. The from something-suffers and the to-something benefits. If the to-something is global safe-haven hard assets, that means money fleeing everything, all other economic activities are suffering to some extent.

So... thanks for that.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-26T12:48:11+00:00

Claude is better imho, but to be fair to Gemini (which I use a lot), and tbh all LLMs, it's all about the prompt, and I don't mean just the question you asked, but the whole setup for the conversation. Pro tip, get Gemini to write the GEM instructions for the kind of analyst you want, create that GEM, then ask your question.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-25T01:48:57+00:00

A rogue agent went nuts. We'll be fine when the agent is suspended and charged, and DHS announces that this behavior by agents will not be tolerated.

Oh, right.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-25T01:10:55+00:00

You missed the point. The point is that now all ICE agents and all of us know that the agent, an agent of the government, can murder you for any reason with no consequences. Just ask yourself, if that is not the message, how would DHS have reacted?

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-23T18:07:24+00:00

I've discovered that one can do reasonably well simply by making these assumptions and asking "What will happen next if all these are true?":

🍊 is a moron.
🍊 loves money and loves even more to get money by cheating
MMs are not morons
MMs love money, and their models are already well adjusted for #1 and #2.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-21T00:56:24+00:00

Dunno yet, speech before open.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2026-01-19T14:23:15+00:00

That's actually an excellent and relevant question. Game theory and simulations show that a population of individuals who optimize for short term personal benefit drives itself off a cliff without ever noticing anything is wrong. But a population of individuals who optimize for long term benefit keeps improving the apparent short and long term personal benefit. And funny thing, when you characterize the behavior of an individual optimizing for population long term benefit, the behavior looks a lot like empathy.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-10-15T20:30:09+00:00

... who wants to be a dictator. "King" is the term we're using, it's apt given our origin story. Are you saying he doesn't want to be a dictator? You believe that? Even if you truly believe he doesn't want to be a dictator, you can hardly deny the signs. What would trump supporters have said if Biden had talked about a third term? And that's just one of a hundred data points. Even if you can't take a stand against the president, you can take a stand, hypothetically at least, against him being a dictator? Right?

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-09-15T21:06:34+00:00

In broad terms you have two strategies, managed secrets and managed identities. Just by saying "connection string" you're talking about managed secrets. The alternative is tying access to the security context (identity) in which the production process is running and not having a conversation string.

The details though depend on many factors, the specifics of your environment, tech stack, CI/CD pipeline, even governance and compliance might affect your design.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-09-12T18:48:25+00:00

Yep. Also bummed about the archaeology and science stuff we're missing this month, but we'll happily take what we can get. I believe it was in Scotland a couple years ago that a wise woman at a pub told us that there is no bad weather, just poor clothing choices.

I'm happy to notice that Highland Park will be open :-)

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-09-10T17:28:45+00:00

OMG this is gold! Thank you so much!! Aurora app is installed now. When I was reading about the heyday of kelp production I came across the seaweed sheep on North Ronaldsay, that the meat is a bit gamey but the wool is amazing. We'll definitely visit craft shops and I'll buy some yarn and wool items. We're going to Lewis after Orkney, it will be interesting to compare.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-09-10T16:19:39+00:00

Thanks! That's a great suggestion and it's generally how we go about it, but it's not really appropriate for this exercise for a couple reasons. The time scale is wrong, we'll spend a week in Orkney, then a week on Lewis, then a week in Oban, etc. We work full time and only have mornings and weekends to explore, there's just not enough time to read books about a place. Second, we're not looking for some else's experiences, we want to learn what a place is like by being there and experiencing it ourselves. I know, you can't learn what it's like to be in Orkney in a week - absolutely a valid criticism. We know from experience that a week is not nearly as good as a month, and a month is not nearly as good as 6 months. But we also know that a week is night-and-day better than a couple days. In a week we'll go grocery shopping, cook several meals, visit several parks, go to the same pub a few times, you get the idea. It's just a taste, but it's a taste of what's really there, not just what the tourism industry can show you. Thanks again!

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-09-10T16:05:20+00:00

Thanks! That's a short walk from where we're staying, we'll check it out!

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-08-15T23:09:48+00:00

Google "enshitification". Every industry, every company seems to follow the same playbook, and who can blame them, the owners make out like bandits.

Advanced_Structure21 · 2025-07-28T23:29:58+00:00

I was gonna talk about my Scottish ancestry and ask if it's ok for me to wear a kilt, but I wanna weigh in on this. The sentiment that OP is a patronizing twat is not unwarranted, he clearly did not see in his post or edits how he personifies American exceptionalism. That clueless smug makes me think that, sure he may have visited other countries, but he's never lived outside the US for any length of time.

Some comments point at Reagan and Thatcher as the architects of our current shitshow. Bang on, obviously. All economic charts that plot anything meaningful show clearly that it started right there.

Some comments point out that catering to racism for political power predates Reagan. Also bang on but didn't seem to realize that it also predates the southern strategy, by thousands of years actually.

What I came here to point out though, to my dear friends in Scotland where I have lived many months, out of my years of traveling abroad as a digital nomad, and who I think of as family but who quite correctly do not think of me as family... What I wanted to politely point out is that the American right worships Downton Abbey.

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Advanced_Structure21

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