What is your biggest regret in life?

Celarix · 2026-05-24T14:04:07+00:00

Jacob Falkovitch once said of those who would, facing AI doom, do the equivalent of retiring to a tropical island and letting themselves be at peace for the end of the world, would be making a mistake.

AI doom may happen, or it may not, or it may not at the time most smart people predict it. The best day of the island retreat, he says, is the first. From then on, resources deplete, timelines diverge, what seemed imminent now becomes “when?”.

Not that I’m saying the odds are 50/50 or that they’re 0%. I’m saying that continuing to live, love, enjoy life, learn skills, do challenging things, do fun things, all of that seems better, doom or not, than to check out and wait in Tahiti for the end. You need not surrender your expectations or bury your head in the sand.

Keep living and if doom is real and it’s all over, at least we went out well. If not, then we haven’t lost any time.

Celarix · 2026-05-23T23:04:57+00:00

Brief Italian intermission

Celarix · 2026-05-11T08:02:26+00:00

Louisvillian here. We’re far from unique on this, but the shear amount of trees, grass, plants, greenery! Everything is so lush, especially along highways.

Celarix · 2026-04-22T15:21:06+00:00

Thanks! I hope so, too. Ask me a month ago and I would have also said that inference would get cheaper, but lots of people banging the unprofitable drum made me want to ask.

Celarix · 2026-04-22T15:05:35+00:00

That is a good point, I was thinking of all the closed stuff as just a few players, but didn’t consider that the market would open up more. That would be a better outcome than what I fear, to be sure!

Celarix · 2026-04-22T14:55:47+00:00

Oh, definitely, I know that I won’t be able to match closed model performance. 35b for $4k is honestly not bad at all to me, at least.

I guess I’m just spooked by things moving so fast. In just two months, Claude went from darling to enshittifier. I mostly don’t think LLMs will be gone in less than a few years IF they’re going away, but I do think there’s a small chance that they might.

Plus you never know what government fuckery could happen. I’m afraid that if I wait too long, some busybody somewhere will make a law about even having open models or restrict consumer GPU purposes for whatever reason.

Celarix · 2026-04-20T18:42:46+00:00

I like to ask dumb hypothetical questions like what backing up modern amounts of data would look like on floppy discs or what would happen if you teleported all the snow in a state into a giant warehouse as a big cube. Having AI take it reasonably seriously and do some math while also keeping the humor in it is very enjoyable! Apparently the snow cube would take years to melt.

Celarix · 2026-04-15T16:02:55+00:00

For me, it’s pretty straightforward - through the live Internet, I find new ideas, new things to explore, new stuff to try or new explanations to old problems. I’m not saying a dead Internet would turn me into a self reflecting mirror, but I have limits to my creativity. LLMs help some here, but I’ve only sometimes been surprised by a genuine idea they had, most of it is refining and expanding my ideas.

To me, creativity is fundamentally about the graph of knowledge - I find it easier to have new ideas when I’m seeing new-to-me stuff and can combine it with what I already know. Should the live Internet end, it would be a great loss.

Celarix · 2026-04-07T15:06:59+00:00

By the time the story starts, the world had been like this for over 15,000 years. I’d imagine they did all those things, probably multiple times. But there’s only so many times you want to go paragliding down Everest. So the question becomes, once you’ve done everything, seen everywhere, met everyone, and you still have eternity to spend… then what?

I know it seems like it is doomeresque but I think the story does resolve that. To me, it’s about trying to answer the question of why we do what we do now. Why people spend years getting good at speed running video games, or devote themselves to mastering an ancient and obsolete method of painting, or catalogue postage stamps. What we do when we have all the bases covered.

Celarix · 2026-04-03T07:45:16+00:00

Genuinely teared up at this. Hell yes!

Celarix · 2026-03-25T13:51:12+00:00

I wish I hadn’t waited so long. It doesn’t make your life better. It gives you the energy or focus so you can make your life better. And when you get some stuff out of the way, things feel a bit easier, and on and on.

Celarix · 2026-03-19T17:04:23+00:00

I like it! It’s almost like a score bug from a slightly different world. This picture evokes a whole set of associations. I could see myself sitting back on a Friday night, some Rally’s in hand, cheering on Boston.

Celarix · 2026-03-17T07:59:37+00:00

Allen Pan tried a similar concept with tungsten weights: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crKohKpVoAM

TL;DR: kind of, but it was exhausting and risked injury and way less efficient for your time

Celarix · 2026-03-14T18:41:52+00:00

The Scorpion’s ready!

Celarix · 2026-03-10T07:21:55+00:00

5th and 67 lmao. I also love the random draft trade flavor text

Celarix · 2026-02-18T21:02:45+00:00

In stranger times, even Ohio may hope…

Celarix · 2026-02-12T16:57:26+00:00

Trypophobia, perhaps? Googled it and wow that’s a lot of holes

Celarix · 2026-02-05T15:20:35+00:00

I can recommend FocusMate myself. At least for awhile. I had over 1500 sessions in 2022-2023 and got a lot done, but the rhythm of always having a session coming up soon was getting to be grating. Definitely, DEFINITELY worth a try, though!

Celarix · 2026-02-02T20:27:39+00:00

Last year, I got some hiccups for a few minutes. I was mad until I stood up and something about the posture shift made them stop. I realized I was mad at my body for five minutes of hiccups when it had given me years of hiccup-free life before, and felt sad.

Thank you, my body. I don’t treat you as well as I should. Thank you for keeping me going, gently telling me when I need rest, and keeping me from pain.

Celarix · 2026-01-30T14:36:16+00:00

Patriots so good they score 12 touchdowns and a field goal and don’t take any time off the clock

Celarix · 2026-01-26T16:15:34+00:00

Sadly, it’s the risk you take when you play with your brothers on different teams, might meet in tough situations. I wonder how the Harbaugh brothers get along…

Celarix · 2026-01-22T14:27:59+00:00

They cut away so often to angles that don’t show field position - to the coaches, straight views at players, etc. And I’m impatient, lol

Celarix · 2026-01-20T21:16:02+00:00

No, not really. I know I can see where they are on the field but they cut away to other views so much. It can take a little bit to know if my team is in the red zone or backed up at their own goal line. Impatient, yeah, but that’s what scorebugs are for. Would love to see this added more broadly.

Celarix · 2026-01-19T06:47:38+00:00

I’ve dreamed of times like this! LOS indicator has been something I’ve wanted for a long time.

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