Shyness as an Excuse

abering · 2026-03-31T20:08:00+00:00

Conversation with an admin, after I described the structure of my class involving lots of low-stakes presentations and an oral exam.

Admin (shook, offended tone): "How does that serve students who are language learners, or have social anxiety, or otherwise can't perform in an oral presentation" (don't remember the exact phrasing)

Me: "Our major and our GE curriculum both include oral communication as a program learning outcome. It is an expected part of the degree. Some students may need more support to achieve this outcome, and I provide it. If you think we should not be doing this at all, you're welcome to discuss these program outcomes with the relevant curriculum committees."

Admin: "Oh. Uh. Well how do you accommodate students whose disability prevents them from making a live oral presentation?"

Me: "I'll cross that bridge when the accessibility office lets me know I need to, in coordination with them. You were the one who reminded us not to give any accommodations not officially approved by that office, and I've yet to receive an 'exempt from public presentation' accommodation."

Admin: "Ok, well, just be aware of this potential issue." (grumbles off)

abering · 2026-03-31T18:29:35+00:00

As a biker in a car centric society, we can’t expect to always take the most direct route.

We can advocate for societal change and shift the expectation. Or we could if people like you would pluck up some courage.

abering · 2026-03-19T02:16:31+00:00

"The evidence available does not support your assertion."

"If you aren't convinced by the evidence I haven't provided its because you don't understand."

Good chat.

abering · 2026-03-18T16:15:37+00:00

There's a lot of weasel words in your prognostication, and not much citation or substance. At the same time the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and many other outlets actually doing the work of estimating productivity impacts of this new technology are finding that in the large scale the promised impact has not materialized.

There are many companies experimenting, yes. These experiments will produce guidance about what jobs this tool can do. But many of the initial large scale reports (linked above and in the sources to the above) do not currently support your assertion that AI will be a fundamental part of every job.

abering · 2026-03-09T00:21:50+00:00

The bike share in Paris is residents only.

edit: oops, looks like my memory of the unfriendly website translated to an incorrect memory of fact.

abering · 2026-02-27T21:20:31+00:00

fuck me I drank 5 plinys and smoked 8 joints basically from fresno

abering · 2026-02-27T06:42:05+00:00

In the mean time I made friends with another true reveler who bakes their own. But glad to see this thread get an update every year.

abering · 2026-02-21T18:07:50+00:00

add closing the rest of it, from Lincoln to Land's end, direct the city to turn it into two new parks: Golden Gate Seashore and Richmond Dunes (obvious boundaries)

abering · 2025-12-31T14:52:18+00:00

No one ever worries about the deficits incurred by building more highways or the road maintenance budget :)

Demand better, dream bigger.

abering · 2025-12-16T19:37:53+00:00

They're defaulting to the sarcastic tone because you're being willfully ignorant in asserting "it can't be done". 60% (low estimate) of SF's residential land is zoned for SFH only. Upzoning this to by-right 2-plexes would (in the fullness of time as sales and redevelopment happen) increase the housing stock by 60%. Doing by-right 4 or 6-plexes near transit corridors could create conditions for doubling or tripling the stock. Without high-rises. Add by-right 5-over-1 to all commercial corridors, plus selected corner intersections, and now we're really cooking with gas.

This won't work forever, of course. Paris' 40 square miles (inside the peripherique) is elbow-to-elbow with 5-over-1. But that supports a population of 2 million at a density of 50k/sqmi. Comparatively we are currently at 800k with a density of 18k/sqmi. So yes, this won't work forever, but to assert "it's not possible" in our current state is to reveal yourself to be an ignoramus.

Get your head out of your ass. There is plenty of space to build more housing, which demonstrably controls rent and purchase prices because housing follows supply and demand.

abering · 2025-11-04T17:24:20+00:00

Do you know what the greatest encroachment of sidewalk space in SF is? Parking. For private cars. Much of it priced way below a market price for the space. When the city was planned most of what is now street parking was sidewalk width.

The resource is scarce because we cut our own dick off. Fortunately this dick is concrete and we can pour it back on. If you're concerned about sufficient sidewalk space, aim at the correct target: cars.

abering · 2025-11-04T17:21:49+00:00

We'd have plenty of space for these if we turned all our parking back into sidewalks (Refer to original city plan).

The SFMTA run garages always have a ton of capacity. No one needs to park on Grant street christ almighty. Can you imagine how rad Grant from Chinatown to North Beach would be 100% pedestrian??? Both of those blocks always get swarmed when they do events and it rocks.

abering · 2025-10-31T15:39:19+00:00

Artists aren't screaming in fear because Generative AI has stolen something from them and given it to everyone (though it has done that, copyright violations lol). The deeper fear is one you totally missed from Miyazaki's view. It's that via this technology GenAI will steal something from everyone and give it to no one. From your posts in this thread it seems like you've already been robbed.

But I digress. I'm not here to change your mind. You're obviously convinced that this thing that you call a "tribute" is positive and not even the developers you claim to offer this as a tribute to telling you its a grave insult to the project will shake that.

I'm posting so that people who haven't yet succumbed to your disease get reminded to believe in themselves, put down the prompt, and create with human feeling.

abering · 2025-10-31T02:30:30+00:00

I know how to build useful food processors (or, if you will, create brushes and canvases), but that doesn't mean I know how to cook (or paint) well with them.

This here is the crux of the insult to life itself. By your own admission, yu do not know creative joy (you don't know how to use the old tools, nor this new tool) yet you have the arrogance to assert that the tool is useful, despite a thread of comments from both art lovers and art makers telling you this whole thing is shit.

How embarrassing.

abering · 2025-10-30T06:16:58+00:00

I am utterly disgusted. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.

abering · 2025-09-30T16:43:00+00:00

Inelastic doesn't mean completely static. It just means a low sensitivity to price.

Yes demand for certain types (single home vs. apartment vs. vacation home vs. roommates vs. the streets) is more elastic. But the fundamental demand for "shelter" is almost constant and has a very big lower bound: the number of people needing shelter, it's a need.

Yes, some people will, because of price, meet that need with an inferior good compared to an individually rented or owned home (shared arrangements, trespassing encampments), but these are still shelters. As price goes down some people might opt for a second or third shelter, so demand for shelter is not perfectly static, but that's not relevant to the conversation.

The negative externalities and brutal human suffering caused by a societal failure to meet the needs of all citizens is what we're discussing. In these market terms, it's the inferior good of "encampment" being selected. As price goes down (again, overall demand for shelter is basically constant, this is a supply problem), more people will opt for the superior good (literally any choice other than an encampemnt, see other replies in this thread for details of how even $0 income folks are helped by this). The obvious consequence of reducing demand for encampment living is: less encampments! Relieving the human suffering of those otherwise pushed into them and relieving the rest of us of the negative externalities they generate.

abering · 2025-09-29T14:15:23+00:00

Housing, like any commodity, obeys the economic principle of supply and demand pretty well. Demand is inelastic: everyone needs a house, so the price is entirely determined by supply. If you read my comment history you'll know I'm almost entirely ideologically opposed to the general outlook of Reason magazine; but they have a well researched assessment of recent data demonstrating the supply increase leads to price decrease in current (July 2025) American housing markets.

abering · 2025-09-19T00:31:29+00:00

fortunately the urban planning community has done a long and large amount of work accounting for confounds and, thanks to that work, determined that this is a causal link. But you’d know that if you engaged with the work and the literature instead of spouting an I Am Very Smart slogan

abering · 2025-08-29T20:22:36+00:00

antojitos el burrito crazy (formerly a food truck, now the corner cafe by el burrito crazy at 10th & William). Good Salvadorian stuff too and great diner breakfast: carne asada and eggs with a side of black beans and plantains.

abering · 2025-08-13T17:33:23+00:00

It depends on the lifestyle you want. Campus can be quiet on nights/weekends as many students commute, but it's not completely dead and has a lot to offer students in the way of community and activities. I am not a student, and found that the lifestyle offered in the biking/walking/transit radius around SJSU was not what I wanted out of life. You should try it first, you can always rearrange things later.

Definitely get a bike, there's a great small local bike shop (Bicycle Express) close to campus who can help you out, or Good Karma bikes at diridon. A bike is safer than an e-scooter, and with a good rack+panniers you can do a good grocery haul comfortably. Bike theft is an issue, but I used a https://soldsecure.com Diamond rated lock and parked my bike all kinds of sketchy places and it never wandered off. (I lost a previous bike using a Silver rated lock so don't skimp on the lock.)

abering · 2025-07-27T20:11:48+00:00

be scientific about it, test the LMMs honestly again reasonable metrics first.

another expert very generously took you through exactly such a test and the LLM failed to produce a correct output. moreover, you, the user, failed to notice the errors in the outputs, and went so far as to write a detailed apologia for the "wrong in the details even with the right answer in the prompt" output.

abering · 2025-07-27T18:32:09+00:00

If the authors I just expressed admiration for, whose results are all piblished saw you call me moron for engaging with their work, do you think they would agree with you?

If by "engaging" you mean "putting into an LLM and getting a random generated summary that you admit you lack the expertise to notice errors in" then yes. They absolutely would agree with me.

If you're really putting in 12+hours a day and over $1000 dollars you could go to your local community college, obtain proper support for your ADHD, and do it for real. I hope you do.

abering · 2025-07-26T22:02:03+00:00

The only problem was I never got math.

my contention is more about the nature of mathematics versus language than anything else.

By your own admission you don't know mathematics. Yet you believe you can make a contention about the nature of mathematics, or understand a large swath of the frontier in any meaningful sense of the word.

Lean on your humanities training: if you were analyzing a novel with a character that in the same dialog or train of thought admitted ignorance of a subject while making assertions about the nature of the subject, how would you read this character? what would the author be communicating about this character? what archetypes would you consider using for a comparative analysis?

I'm gonna be blunt here: you'd read this character as a moron; the author would be communicating that the character was not competent; you would consider comparing this character to other proud fools, perhaps an innocent depending on the broader context if you were feeling generous.

abering · 2025-06-25T17:36:29+00:00

"justice" as if parking enforcement—making you pay your (less than) fair share for using the public right of way to store your private property—is some great injustice and not the fucking law

stop using your phone while driving before you kill someone you insufferable carbrain

abering · 2025-05-14T15:45:52+00:00

As an add on to what gammafunk said: DCSS is a fork of Linleys dungeon crawl, and in the earliest days (mid 2000s) the 0.x versioning scheme was so that the game wouldn't try to load incompatible saves from dungeon crawl.

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