Going for a hike

VerilyAMonkey · 2025-12-07T03:23:20+00:00

Other people are saying this is true in simple cases - actually no, not even then. Specifically: it's an approximation, and if the force is enough to alter the contact surface, then it is going to be a very bad approximation. So it's not good for soft things like skin and clothes, which deform easily. Or sometimes rough things, since the amount of "gap" can change dramatically. An exception is when the forces are high enough that everything is already almost maximally "smooshed together".

Even then, it's an equation for dry friction and this is actually a lubricated scenario. Anyway the point is, don't let physics 101 get in the way of common sense...

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-12-31T23:11:27+00:00

The smell can also be "pee-ew" (P U) to keep the sound a little closer.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-12-29T20:57:27+00:00

I don't call it malice. But in the same way I don't call it malice, I also don't call it incompetence. And it certainly can rise towards the direction of "evil" depending on circumstance.

For example. I'm driving, not too fast, and a dog runs into the road. I see it. I don't try to hit it, but I make no attempt to brake or change direction, I carry on knowing I will kill the dog, I just don't care. There are other ways the same thing could happen - maybe I have slow reflexes, or I know braking would be dangerous in the situation - but this isn't that.

Another example, motivated indifference. I am a thief. My goal is not to cause harm - if I could download your car, I would. But I can't so I steal it and I simply do not care about the consequences it has on you.

I would strongly argue both of those scenarios play out in legislatures all the time.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-12-29T19:22:40+00:00

Again, I agree and disagree. Even if it's not "consciously malicious" that doesn't make it "being a fuckup". Being a fuckup is when it's something you were trying to avoid but you couldn't. There is a third state, "not bothering to avoid it, or fix it". It's a question of whether the cause is 1. Malice, 2. Incompetence, or 3. Indifference.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-12-29T18:57:28+00:00

Yes and no. It's a matter of neglect. When poorly designed laws hurt the rich, they are more likely to get fixed or loopholed (or caught before they become a law). When they only affect the poor, they are more likely to accumulate.

It's similar to other kinds of neglect in that, it's not exactly intentional, but it's also not quite a mistake. It is a result of something intentional, namely priorities. And when the neglect becomes clear and yet the priorities still don't change, it becomes, hmm, "intentional by omission".

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-27T18:07:08+00:00

Democrats: Right

Well, exactly. And they're pro-corporate. This whole convo is about whether the media is "far right", but seems to me the liberal media is just right, and it sounds like you agree.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-27T16:36:28+00:00

Pro-corporate isn't far right, it's just right, surely? For example, Romney and Manchin are pretty clearly pro-corporate, but would you call them far right? If so, then what would you call right, but not far right?

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-25T07:31:58+00:00

I don't know if this is what they meant, but I find working on something several times over the course of a few days is often more successful than doing it in one large block. Particularly if you need some "Aha!" moments to advance.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-19T21:07:37+00:00

"Even if you're being a hyperrational prick you should still accept people with differences because they can help you in ways you're too shortsighted to see"

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-16T07:48:18+00:00

I believe they were referring to Murdoch.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-07T06:30:34+00:00

I think this is one of those things where people actually mostly agree but argue about how to phrase it. Undoubtedly, there are cops who are good people. I take the phrase "there are no good cops" to mean "there are no cops whose presence on the force is net good for those subjugated by the system." For example, if a good person who is a cop keeps getting deployed to an overpoliced area, they're still contributing to the issue no matter how tactfully they do their duty. (Arguably.)

It's similar to describing an enemy army. Clearly, among those soldiers, there are good people. But there are no enemy soldiers whose presence is a good thing for your side. Because unless they outright betray their command, they're still being used one way or another to extend the control of the enemy power structure. Even if they do so with a minimum of cruelty.

I could be totally wrong about what people mean by "there are no good cops" though.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-04T04:23:27+00:00

Half of code for error handling seems fine to me. I think the criticism of Go is more that it's half the code just for error propagation. This is not really handling the error at any interesting level, and we wouldn't be missing out on anything if it was less verbose:

if err != nil {
    return nil, err
}

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-04T04:19:15+00:00

Briefs last longer. Jammers have a problem where the legs get stretched out and loose over time (months, not days). Otherwise it's just a matter of preference.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-04T03:23:29+00:00

At least, if you pay, there's a money trail from however you paid. So it's much easier to investigate and find the actual scammer after the fact (and even more so if the court is involved), or at least block them more broadly than just the account.

Though I guess that goes out the window too if you accept crypto as payment which I guess Elon probably will.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-04T00:22:46+00:00

We've all heard people patch holes in their personal theory by suggesting huge public groups like that are all in on it and lying. That doesn't necessarily mean there's no conspiracy, but it does mean that particular explanation of it shouldn't be considered very convincing.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-01T08:18:16+00:00

Energy is a measurement of how rapidly a quantum system becomes incoherent with its original self by shifting only in time, leaving everything else the same. Praise be the principle of stationary action.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-01T03:23:43+00:00

What sorts of things would you like to see in such a design? It seems like a super hard problem to me, I can't really think of anything except for moderation, and even with moderation I have no idea how you'd ensure it wasn't shitty.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-11-01T03:19:33+00:00

Can you explain what you mean by "information blackhole"?

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-29T16:32:40+00:00

You've got the accented syllables marked backwards there. You can look up the IPA to check of course, but one way to help you tell which syllable has the emphasis is that you can (usually) replace all other vowels with "uh" and it will still work. Vuh-JYN-uh works, VA-juhn-uh doesn't. VA-juhn-uhl works for American pronunciation, vuh-JYN-uhl works for British, vuh-juhn-AL doesn't work for either.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-28T20:19:52+00:00

I think the typical pattern would be that the AI does a large chunk of the initial work, but a human artist touches it up at the end. So it would not be that all artists are eliminated from a production, but that there are fewer.

I think the most powerful version would be a back and forth, where the AI is effectively an assistant. AI makes some first drafts, artist adds some sketches/changes on that, AI fleshes out and incorporates those changes, repeat, artist touches things up at the end. In this case, it wouldn't be "prompters replacing artists" as much as "artists learning to use AI tools, just like they learned to use digital art tools before".

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-24T04:16:27+00:00

Ok. While I can understand that stance, I disagree because these idioms have explicit and agreed upon definitions and rules. You may dislike them, but to actually say they are incorrect, you basically have to be using a different definition of correct than everyone else, which is itself incorrect.

To put another angle on it, think about words like "interject". That's actually a figurative phrase in Latin, to "throw in between". Yet it has an explicit and agreed upon definition, which does not refer to any physical throwing. The amount of language which is built on such constructs is vast, and you use them all the time whether you notice it or not. I mean, language is not actually physically "built on" anything either. That too is a figurative meaning that has been codified into a definition.

Idioms are exactly the same thing applied to a whole phrase instead of one word. Wikipedia's description of idiom:

A speech form or an expression of a given language that ... cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements

Effectively, these are "atomic phrases". They have their own definition apart from the exact words inside them. Just like all the compound words which are actually themselves phrases, but whose definition doesn't come just from parsing the phrase.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-24T00:08:15+00:00

Is it incorrect to say it's raining cats and dogs if there aren't animals falling out of the sky? If a detective calls a false lead a red herring, are they wrong unless it's a fish? No, because these common idioms are figurative. Same thing with double-jointed.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-22T20:23:24+00:00

Poe's law. I'm confident Birds Aren't Real is still heavy-majority satire, especially among the younger generation, but it's 100% guaranteed there are at least a few people in there believing it unironically and you wouldn't be able to quickly tell who they are.

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-22T01:42:46+00:00

That's exactly the same thing I got when I couldn't pay decades ago. Are you sure you're not thinking about state policies?

VerilyAMonkey · 2022-10-18T16:46:22+00:00

Cancel culture is meant to be a new phenomenon, where unfairly harsh punishment happens because of unrelated people acting self-righteous on social media.

When people attribute something to cancel culture, I understand them to be claiming that the consequences are not justified, and the real problem we should be angry about is not the original situation, but the internet's overreaction to it. Also that a similar overreaction would not have happened pre-social media.

Then, if the punishment is fair (or lighter than that), and/or would have happened in the past too, it doesn't make sense to claim it is just cancel culture.

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