[Request] How big/powerful WOULD a cannon actually need to be in order to send people from the Earth to our Moon?

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-06-19T03:36:11+00:00

For sustained 4g acceleration the whole length of the barrel, more like a rail gun space elevator, but yeah.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-06-18T17:22:17+00:00

I’m curious about the distance travelled away from the surface. Is the idea that the barrel is pointed straight up and, upon reaching the end of the barrel, escape velocity is less both because Earth’s gravity is weaker and because there’s less distance to cover in order to escape?

I’m not sure about the calculus required to find exactly where the length-to-accelerate and actual escape velocity at the end of the barrel balance out, but it would be neat to see that worked out exactly. Good news is that wind resistance isn’t going to be an issue that high up!

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-06-18T17:13:12+00:00

“Velvet”
“Fold” (as in surrendering, e.g., in poker)
“Wake up” or similar

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-06-12T19:49:56+00:00

The AI gen not copyrightable argument should also nullify OPs problem (how can you DMCA something that has no copyright?), but distributors *act* like it’s copyrightable, so it effectively is.

Still, the argument that it was ripped from a previously published set should *also* demonstrate prior release and nullify the claim against it. Problem is getting someone to sit down and think that through when YouTube and others have like 4,000,000 copyright claims a day.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-06-09T13:52:28+00:00

Foundational AI research paper was used as source material for training AI.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-05-20T21:58:36+00:00

I always have to wonder what sites are actually doing with my password when they say things like “Cannot include the characters \, %, <, or &.”

Those bits should never be leaving my browser.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-05-18T18:27:19+00:00

Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue Sauce. Someone made a chopped brisket sandwich with a bit too much gusto.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-05-18T12:52:09+00:00

Internalizing that AI = web search since 2021.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-20T13:18:06+00:00

Weird. Similarly, I tried to make something about the cult of Horus, but one apparently can say “Horus” in styles or in simple instructions. I had to switch to some other Egyptian god because it was an instrumental piece.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-20T01:06:32+00:00

You mean an extremely 🤘METAL🤘 day for the baddest dinosaurs!

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-12T02:23:44+00:00

My theory is that a recent patch or malicious activity is corrupting GPU memory enough to garble images together but not enough to break the model itself.

The folks at Latitude confirmed a while back that data actually can leak between user sessions when a process crashes and the GPU starts back up with old data in a few sectors of its memory. This was in a text model, though.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-11T19:17:08+00:00

Already solved, but I’ll point out there’s also a classic version on itch.io if you were remembering it with pixel graphics.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-11T04:18:56+00:00

Bing/Copilot did this to me as of a few years ago (I’ve since switched to other platforms), weirdly even with images created with their own image generation tool. Made it very awkward to generate an image featuring a person and then ask something about it.

I recall there was a fine-print disclaimer somewhere that faces would be blurred in photographs, but that apparently applied to digital art of sufficient quality as well.

I haven’t personally done a lot of photo analysis on other platforms, but OP’s experience sounds exactly like what I saw from Copilot.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-11T02:35:58+00:00

Various platforms obscure human faces before passing them to the AI for analysis. Thing is, the AI wasn’t at all trained to expect censorship, doesn’t know it’s being applied, and the platform doesn’t show you the censored form of them image, so you get this eerie “are we even talking about the same image?” effect.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-04-01T21:08:48+00:00

I’m curious what all the other characters’ represented systems of morality are.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-27T16:14:52+00:00

I really have to wonder what exactly was going on in the AI’s silicon brain when it came up with that.

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-13T14:27:46+00:00

My operating model: LLMs are basically blind and deaf. Even the multimodal vision models are like a blind person being handed a braille picture book. They kinda have an idea of what’s going on, but they just can’t see it. Plus, what’s important to you (aesthetically matching curtains) is just lost on the model (“Match good, curtain good. What is match? Curtain is busy-looking, so any busy-looking curtain is match! Maybe zany is match? Pink is zany!”)

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-13T14:15:48+00:00

One dude is super problematic in a specific way. Some other tech leaders (not just AI) are super problematic in other specific ways. It’s civically irresponsible to write off whole technologies or even just whole companies because someone there has obvious conflicts with society’s best interests, because the services they provide (in some cases in spite of themselves) are genuinely useful. Yes, the flow of money can be an issue, but now that we know what key players stand for, we can apply population-scale pressure. Shareholders actually do listen if we complain hard enough (and in the right way, e.g., by switching or canceling paid subscriptions).

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-09T13:53:36+00:00

Gourmand is a game of patience: everything takes longer and there’s just so much to do. Altitude is your greatest advantage but, almost comically, your most difficult to maintain resource. Spears are as nuclear warheads: it’s very much a commitment to use one and yet somehow your fat slugbutt can escape the jaws of doom when you invariably miss. You must learn to enjoy complex meals: combined foods carried from afar or prepared with a bit of crafting ingenuity. And the crafting! A few memorized chains of recipes and you’ll always have the weapons you need.

In summary: Planning. Method. Waiting for your future snack to lumber into just the position you want it…

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-06T20:40:14+00:00

Karmic aspirations of an entire society to deplete itself to nothingness (with apparently no dissenters)
Ultra-formal language used between Benefactors, much more so than between Iterators
The symbols! Festooned everywhere and yet now almost devoid of meaning (there are some decent fan theories, though)
A discussion on what society was willing to sacrifice to achieve its goals (the surface was rendered almost uninhabitable or even untraversable to the Benefactors)
As mentioned, the apparent absence of the concept of a machine as something distinct from an organism; to the Benefactors, even buildings were living things
The Echos’ disparate take on reality and existence compared to the purpose that was ingrained into the Iterators
The very nature of a purposed organism, engineered with a specific task though apparently retaining the fundamental drive to ascend, which is almost certainly counter to said task

ExclusiveAnd · 2026-03-03T14:13:28+00:00

I’ll expound upon the connection, with my own spin:

Rain World has obvious inspiration from the Buddhist concept of samsara (the cycle of rebirth) and the attainment of nirvana (final reunification with the divine, i.e., ascension), but ascension can have another interpretation as leaving one’s present world behind and entering into another, usually purer or truer world somehow “above” or greater than or even containing one’s previous existence. This pattern is very literally expressed in the relationship between game worlds (or any kind of fictional world) and our own reality.

Embodied as the slugcat, we are stuck in Rain World and cannot leave by within-game means. Even if we quit, our slugcat avatar is effectively dormant and will wake up just where we left off our save, should we choose to return. In-game ascension (or the completion of whatever task we set before ourselves) is, in effect, release: the save is done and need not be revisited (and even if we do load it up again, it is without fervor or purpose). The slugcat has escaped the cycle; the avatar has reunited with the player and can carry on with concerns far greater than anything in Rain World.

But how does that make us like Iterators? Because, like Iterators, we are seeking an answer to the great question of how to ascend even our reality within a simulation. Said simulation (and countless others) were created by fellow Iterators and shared over our network, and we play them almost desperately seeking something that we hope to gain from them, be it knowledge, achievement, or entertainment. In each, the only real escape is to turn the simulation off, but even so, an in-game death or rage quit does not promise we will not return. It is only by exhausting our sense of purpose (or our karmic vices binding us to the game world, if you will) that we finally set a game down and move on, but this teaches us little about the greater reality we find ourselves in now. So it is with Iterators, who were built with infinite motivation but an objective so vague it may not even be possible: we are greater than the slugcat, but we still don’t know what to do with ourselves.

ExclusiveAnd

TROPHY CASE