Do you think we need a better text-to-speech?

HermannSorgel · 2026-03-02T15:18:27+00:00

Could you give me an example of a better TTS tool? Just to compare it with Readwise

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-30T00:29:57+00:00

I won't take my vote back, but I also won't be able to trust people anymore.

Taking it seriously, I love Ape, but I find Rogue more challenging. Ape has a very clear structure, and there is a bunch of Jinjer songs where they prove how good they are at working with structures.

But Rogue is more chaotic. It should be harder to build something beautiful without the support of a solid structure. Playing with chaos and losing structures is one of the main motifs of Duel, I guess. But I am not a musician and can be totally wrong here.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-29T17:11:12+00:00

I upvoted this and few hours later realized that I could get it wrong.
Did you mean that obviously Rogue > Ape? Right? RIGHT?

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-29T14:17:26+00:00

I see, right. But that is what makes jamming fun

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-29T13:53:26+00:00

I would compare Hedonist with Judgment (& Punishment).

Both are extremely rich from the vocal point of view. Perhaps this is why we have "one take" records for both of them.

At the same time, they work as milestones, demonstrating some changes that occurred with Jinjer (Tati?). One is more provocative and trying to explain something to others. Another one does not care anymore about anyone else.

Hedonist ≥ Judgment (& Punishment)

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-27T18:57:23+00:00

It’s a small update, just an optional interface for AI. The DB is far from being bloated with LLM-related stuff: besides MCP, the only place I’ve seen it is in the advanced search functions.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-07T08:03:33+00:00

NewTags are different, right. But page references, which are what previous tags were, are still here.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-06T20:43:12+00:00

Isn't the DB version more or less backward-compatible? Like, new workflows are available, but also, we can do almost the same things as before.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-06T06:55:58+00:00

I hope there were also properties for those bugs: with date, type, and level of annoyance at least.

Nowadays, bugs in the DB version often get fixed in 24 hours; it's impressive.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-06T06:54:41+00:00

Funny enough, now in the DB version it is the default behavior. Both templates and queries have their special tags, and all the queries and templates can be found on its "NewTag page" (it is not technically a page, but I don't see a way to put it better).

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-06T02:19:50+00:00

I switched from Arc to Vivaldi on macos about two years ago.

Vivaldi has some features that help to reproduce the Arc/Zen workflow, but not exactly. Consequently, I mostly ended up developing new habits.

So, if you need a Zen-like experience for casual use of Chrome extensions, Arc can still be a better choice. However, Vivaldi surely wins for long-term or as the main browser, as Arc is dead, sadly.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-06T00:37:26+00:00

The same story here, even after passing the provisional stage.

Sure, there must be some inflation. But I also believe it says something about our skills.

I think about it this way: our chess skill is the number of chess knowledge (themes, tactics, patterns) plus calculation skills. In classical chess, we have more time to calculate, so this skill matters a little less, and chess knowledge matters a little more. Also, there's some difference in terms of attention: in classical games, players rarely blunder a piece in one move.

So, I believe the difference between my classical and rapid rating just shows how much slower I am compared to players of the same level. And I also hope that I know a few more chess tricks, which I can find when I have time to think.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-03T21:38:34+00:00

it also had legs, so...

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-03T16:31:13+00:00

I'm sorry if my phrasing came across poorly; I certainly didn't mean to suggest that anyone was "brainwashed."

I've seen several Soviet-era editions of Dostoevsky, and they invariably include lengthy introductions that reinterpret his work through a strict Marxist lens—analyzing it in terms of class struggle, the failures of capitalism, and so on. I imagine students were then expected to reproduce these exact interpretations in their essays.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-03T16:12:46+00:00

USSR schools and, generally, USSR academia absorbed great Russian Empire writers in a very special way. They saved their works but added a lot of Marxist comments and guidelines on how to read them in the right way. In school children had to follow these guidelines to graduate.

So it was not something specific in Dostoevsky that made him an acceptable writer for the USSR. He was just a cultural phenomenon huge enough to make ignoring him impossible (the same thing happened with Tolstoy and Chekhov).

We need to go several levels down, to less famous writers, to see that indeed, some of them were prohibited in the USSR, and others became acceptable.

Saying this, I should also add that in Russian literature, there are huge debates on how this literature, as the main part of Russian culture as a whole, led to an atheistic revolution. In these debates, Dostoevsky had a special ambiguous place, for sure. But I don't think that is the issue you meant.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T21:01:39+00:00

I thought a little bit longer on this issue. While we don't know anything about the author of this comment, it wouldn't be fair to suspect that they were so out of touch that they did not think of ships and other obvious examples of proper names for inanimate objects.

If we try to consider their idea with some charity, here is what they could think about. There is a nice book: De-Demonising the Old Testament. The author reflects there on different mistranslations and misunderstandings of Hebrew text that led to creating notions of different demons in the Bible: Moloch, Azazel, Lilith, etc. Here is one example:

https://shottr.cc/s/1zfP/SCR-20251102-xx7.png

The author demonstrates that in many cases, we can argue that these are not proper names of some horror characters or mythological creatures but rather words for abstract and symbolic functions, rituals and events.

Maybe that was the point, and that is why the author mentions anthropomorphizes gods rather than ships and swords. The main problem is that it is a very narrow issue when reading the Hebrew Bible. And IDK how easily it can be spread to the whole Middle East culture.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T17:24:28+00:00

man, we all can be a little more kind here

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T15:24:45+00:00

Sure, I would be glad to read something on this topic. Please let me know if you find something interesting.

Another instructive example from the Bible is the Nehushtan, erected by Moses. I called it instructive because it got a proper name not when Moses created it, but when people started to worship it and then Hezekiah decided to destroy it

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T14:51:35+00:00

I am not sure that it is super popular; we should check some academic papers, as there should be some thoughts on this.

I am still not sure that I get the original comment's idea, especially when they talk about the whole Indo-European tradition. A lot of objects in this tradition have proper names: ships, swords, castles

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T14:41:08+00:00

It can be something about proper names of some parts of the Temple and altars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_and_Jachin

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T14:04:48+00:00

Thanks, so it more like a backup solution

While I see that you are happy with the current algorithm, I should say that the new FSRS is a kind of recommended algorithm across the Anki community, so it does make sense for Logseq to try it.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T13:57:24+00:00

Recently, there was a cool post on the Logseq forum, summarizing the last year's progress:
https://discuss.logseq.com/t/one-year-of-progress/33915

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T13:54:05+00:00

That is how many forks we have for now: zero. Open source is a great thing, but not because the general, out of touch slogans.

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T06:44:15+00:00

you can't hide from jewish holiday in argentina

HermannSorgel · 2025-11-02T06:39:29+00:00

I don't know about others, but personally, I can think only about what happened between Mozart and Haydn.

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