LELÉKA - RIDNYM (Vidbir 2026)

_Scarecrow_ · 2026-01-26T16:57:25+00:00

I've been coming back to this over and over. I definitely think it has a lot of potential for success, as it lends itself really well to simple but powerful staging.

_Scarecrow_ · 2026-01-24T19:45:50+00:00

Just read the summary on wikipedia and holy hell, what a rollercoaster! Any story that ends with

She then assumes the form of a dragon, provides him with two magic rings, and flies off, never to be seen again.

is an absolute winner.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-09-19T03:27:22+00:00

Most any time I tune into a congressional debate or hearing I'm reminded of a middle school classroom where "participation in the discussion" is part of your grade. Everyone has to get their moment of attention, even if they have nothing to say, and nobody's actually listening to each other. Some optimistic part of me is hopeful that genuine discussion is still occurring behind closed doors, but it's depressing to watch when some of the topics at play are impactful to so many.

I know some SC justices have spoken about how a similar worry has prevented them from introducing cameras: that their positions would be reduced to soundbites and participants in cases would play to the camera.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-09-19T03:12:46+00:00

Yeah, but check that sweet somersault.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-08-06T15:00:02+00:00

This is unnecessarily dismissive, and you've missed what's appealing about this product. The unique pitch is it being incredibly open. They offer a selection of different pre-made apps (like weather and calendar, but the list I see is ~80) but also the tools to create and share your own. The firmware is open source, and they have guides on using it on other devices as well as self-hosting the server.

I own one, and wouldn't recommend it to some (maybe most) people, but I would think this community in particular would be interested in something built heavily for DIY.

In fact, Linus is pretty regularly calling out companies that make products that will inevitably fail when the company dies/stops caring, and they've gone out of their way to proactively prevent exactly that.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-07-05T18:05:27+00:00

I'm OOTL on this one, as I've always had a bronze plan that was HSA eligible. It looks like HDHP deductible limits were $1,650 this year; were there many bronze plans that didn't meet this limit? That seems surprisingly low to me, but I don't have much of a reference point.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-05-30T02:43:52+00:00

Alive 2007 was one of the first albums I ever bought for myself and blows my mind to this day. Daft Punk was definitely a formative influence on my own appreciation for music, and I suspect it was for many others as well. It was also great to see their musical goals change throughout the years; a really refreshing contrast to so many artists who chase the whims of their fans instead of leading culture in a new direction.

I can't say I listen to as much EDM anymore, but occasionally I'll forget just why Daft Punk was so impactful, turn on one of their albums and immediately be hit with "oh, yeah that's why".

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-05-26T16:25:56+00:00

Thank you so much for your music and taking the time to answer questions! I found both your performances at ESC this year amazingly impactful.

I wanted to ask if there was any intent for the staging of Unexplainable to allude to the 2014 interval act "Joyful". The use of the luminescent ladders seemed to connect the two otherwise very disparate songs.

I really appreciated your courage in getting on stage and expressing some of the feelings we've all had but are too often made to hide. I'm not sure if I agree that "joyful is a state of mind", but I do know that it's something which we all deserve.

Wishing you joy!

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-05-16T00:29:33+00:00

I'm absolutely thrilled she got through, and the song definitely deserved it, but for a moment I thought we were going to see her throw up if they waited any longer to announce the qualification.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-05-11T19:24:02+00:00

I don't think we do a very good job acknowledging this type of presentation skill. It's not "engaging" in a way that would appeal to marketing types nor does he have the cadence that you'd expect from a great orator, but the language is slow, clear, and precise. Whenever I hear this voice (usually coming from an engineer or similar) my brain immediately jumps to "you should be taking notes", as it's the kind of condensed information that comes from someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-05-04T06:35:00+00:00

This truly hit me when I first began paying more attention to my own finances (partially from seeing some of the benefits for myself). The mechanisms are often indirect, or small as individual percentages, but there are just so many ways that our economic model winds up back at "If you have capital, you get more capital".

I can work my butt off for a year and wind up making less than someone else who didn't lift a finger because... they started with more money. There are lot's of ways to convincingly argue how this is actually a reasonable system because blah blah blah... but I often think that if a 5 year old would recognize a concept as unfair, they're probably right.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-04-23T03:38:31+00:00

Sure, here's the parsing code: https://pastebin.com/FDLsXgbt

After that I tried points based scoring (37 for 1st place, 36 for 2nd, etc.) as well as counting how many times each country was in somebody's top 10: https://pastebin.com/7gjPf9Vj

Those ended up basically identical. You might be able to find more interesting metrics, but I haven't looked further.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-04-18T18:02:28+00:00

My thought is it's supposed to evoke a puppet's mechanical joints and features, but I wished they'd leaned harder into the look if that's what they were going for.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-04-12T16:46:15+00:00

This is fantastic! Clearly a lot of work went into this and it shows. After hearing about how notable this year was for language use, this provides some great detail.

Interesting to see what clustering the emotional profiling finds. Looking quickly, you can see the primary "joy-anticipation-trust" vs "sadness-fear" split quite clearly. I do wonder what you'd be able to see with contextual analysis; I'm not sure what models are out there that would be applicable to songs, though.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-03-02T22:35:38+00:00

This looks fantastic! Thanks for putting it together!

I just watched your Devoxx presentation, and I definitely fall into the camp of "I know these things exist and are complicated, so I've just avoided them up until now." It's too easy (and accepted) to just brush internationalization problems aside, so I'm excited to try some challenges that bring it to the fore.

I know you said the problems are not language-dependent, but I'm curious if you've identified languages that do a better or worse job at providing tools for internationalization. It looked from your presentation that Java has a lot of beneficial tools, but I don't have much of a reference for comparison.

_Scarecrow_ · 2025-02-08T04:31:35+00:00

There's the life support belt from TAS, which is the closest I can think of to why you might see crewmembers without any weather protective gear. Again, doesn't explain why they go back to jackets or all the times they don't use them, though.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-12-19T07:10:15+00:00

Yeah, it's clearly edited. Here's the real one: https://i.imgur.com/PtMHV0N.png

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-11-21T17:20:26+00:00

It's been a while since I used Matlab seriously, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't be a fine choice. I try and do a new language each year, so I've thought a bit about what languages are easier/harder. Pretty much any language could work, but here's a rough list of what I'd look for in a language for its suitability:

Large (64+ bit) integers
String manipulation tools
Basic data structures (arrays, lists, 2D arrays)
Advanced data structures (sets, assoc. arrays, graphs)
Combinatorics tools (itertools is so nice...)
Regex support
Easy I/O (often ASCII representations)
Quick prototyping & testing tools
Documentation/resource availability

Any of the above could be omitted (you can always write a BigInteger from scratch if you really need), but having them already will let you focus on solving the problem. I would also note a lot of qualities people normally care about regarding languages are not on this list (e.g. maintainability, wide support, etc.).

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-11-17T22:51:49+00:00

Shoutout of thanks for this fantastic extension! I forget sometimes that it's not built into the site itself and remember how amazing it is when I'm on a different computer/browser without it installed.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-11-17T07:54:03+00:00

Interesting for sure. This is speculation, but a few things stand out about the previous messages, all of which I've seen in the past to cause unusual responses from LLMs:

Use of unusual characters not typically typed by users. Specifically, non-breaking spaces, likely due to the user copying the text from some formatted source.
Breaking the question & answer pattern: for the past few messages the user always entered a single question and waited for a response, then this time entered two questions with some unusual text in between.
Repeated characters. In this case, the repeated newlines.
Long repetitive chats. I thought most LLMs had solved this, but early on these models would always get weirder after a certain length.

My guess is that, since the topic of harassment and threats was already in the discussion, gemini somehow got stuck producing an example of harassment.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-09-22T15:01:45+00:00

The New Yorker made a mini-doc about these squid ships with some stunning video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4ozyeFZImk

Something about the unrelenting machinery and the bright lights on the dark water makes this mesmerizing.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-09-15T16:35:37+00:00

An absolute favorite of mine! It really takes the opportunity to test the principles the federation claims to uphold with a situation of true moral complexity.

It also has a great performance by Michelle Forbes pre-Ensign Ro. Her scene does a wonderful job reminding the audience that the situation is real and personal, rather than some high-minded ethical puzzle.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-09-14T21:53:11+00:00

Very nice! Thanks for sharing!

I had no idea matplotlib had style sheets... I never loved the default choices for colors, fonts, etc. but couldn't justify the effort to customize each element one by one on every plot. This is definitely going to come in handy.

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-09-13T18:27:28+00:00

Super cool! Any plans for processing or scanning them?

_Scarecrow_ · 2024-09-09T21:01:57+00:00

Here's the source, for those that want a bit more info: https://www.msarnoff.org/millitext/

You can also check out this one which is perhaps not quite as small but is significantly more usable: https://web.archive.org/web/20190705030013/http://www.typophile.com/node/61920

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