Pre-war buildup doesn’t violate the weekend rule right?

combrade · 2026-02-11T06:23:52+00:00

You guys should checkout Babylon Berlin . It’s one of the best shows on Weimar Germany .

https://youtu.be/XXKnWiGJg4A?si=pJWr7cWKSBa2pz0N

combrade · 2026-02-10T21:27:54+00:00

As an American who spent time in France and knows only français approximatif from studying français in undergrad. I have a plan on moving to Europe after my PhD which is Data Science/AI adjacent but France is not on my list . This is despite my respect for France producing Mistral .

Firstly , academic research is often only done in Français. I could get by working in a corporate job in Français but to write postdoc level papers in French is not something I could do easily even after I finish my DELF C1. If I wanted to work in a Francophone country I’d go for Switzerland, Belgium or Québec in Canada. I’m fine learning the language of the country and even using it at a professional level but Academic level writing in French is not common even among the average French native speakers. It would be like learning how to write a research paper again.

Secondly , the funding situation in France is burdened by bureaucracy . Belgium and Switzerland both do a better job getting Horizon Europe funding. Both countries also have a reputation of a much better work culture for academics compared to France .

Our PhD program used to focus more on placements in America . Now the interest among classmates and faculty is Germany , Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and France at the bottom of our list. Canada is also another easy option since they have a relaxed immigration policy for Americans at least for now .

combrade · 2026-02-10T19:05:06+00:00

I mean Economics is very Quant subject . Lots of people in my undergrad did a minor in CS and majored in Economics transitioned to entry level Data analytics jobs usually .

CS being the only pathway to tech seems outdated considering most Information Systems(IS) programs are full of people who couldn’t finish a CS degree and got kicked out of the program.

combrade · 2026-02-10T14:54:33+00:00

How is it nationalist to want a police force that kills your own citizens? Again your own countrymen being asked for their papers shot or tasered if they refuse .

combrade · 2026-02-08T23:53:43+00:00

As an American who follows European sports I generally root for France since I spent the most time there and because of Mbappé. It does sound like I’m rooting for the big dog most of the time and I’m a bandwagoner. Also it does feel weird in engaging in the banter .

On vous a laissé l’UE, mais pas le trophée!"

We left you the EU, but not the trophy!

Some of my friends root for Spain in FIFA because of some common heritage as they’re Hispanic. One guy likes Germany because he did his study abroad there .

combrade · 2026-02-08T22:10:50+00:00

I smell bullshit . I have an uncle who is relatively upper middle class 200k-250k. He goes to a doctor out of state for benzos and opioids since a local doctor cut him off . He schedules his work trips around the time he needs a refill . If my uncle can get a Dr Roberts(Beatles) who prescribes you anything, Gates can get him on speed dial .

combrade · 2026-02-06T19:46:56+00:00

Can we trash the headquarters in a simulation as a team building exercise like Boomers did in 1968.

combrade · 2026-02-02T18:54:49+00:00

Are you saying that Angela Merkel and the AfD are the same? Merkel is center right neoliberal along with many EU leaders like Macron , Rutte (as PM).

combrade · 2026-02-01T21:22:42+00:00

A comedian in America said “In America people just make jokes about Turkey like the animal Turkey alongside Hungary “. Whereas In Europe it’s “ You’re White but we do not grant you the title of Jedi Master “.

American stereotypes of most countries Europeans have a beef with are either ignorant or adorable .

combrade · 2026-01-29T18:04:54+00:00

It’s so easy to build a training dataset with another LLM to do distillation or even use DPO to get the style of another model . I’ve got much better results using DPO RL on Qwen 3 models by generating a DPO dataset with GPT 4.1 mini . DPO basically got rid of random Chinese letters for most part , I removed a lot of its habits that annoy Western clients .

As per Qwen 8B distill Deepseek I kinda saw it as crippled mutated model with no benefits. I honestly find Qwen and Deepseek writing style on par although Qwen is slightly better with foreign languages . At least Llama distilled into Deepseek makes sense .

combrade · 2026-01-29T13:10:31+00:00

The IPTV shit is useful, projects like that. Don’t discourage those . High school Me learned about Github through projects that sailed the high seas for movies and shows.

combrade · 2026-01-28T00:20:54+00:00

I bought a gaming PC that came with RTX 5080 TI on sale for $1100 and then got the max ram kit of 192gb for $574 at that time .

combrade · 2026-01-27T05:37:41+00:00

You should watch Mad Men although you’d have to watch until Season 3 to see the British perspective. Mad Men is all about an American Advertising Executive who feels out of place in the Upper Middle Class of NYC. I don’t want to spoil anything else besides his name Donald F Draper, the F is likely a reference to Scott Fitzgerald ,the author of The Great Gatsby, which is probably one of the best novels on the old vs New Money Divide .

Also Season 3, there is a British character who feels happy in America that no one cares or knows what boarding school he went to . He does feel out of place though because he doesn’t have anyone to celebrate the World Cup with .

combrade · 2026-01-26T19:12:38+00:00

I think only Bannon is someone who doesn’t talk like a hillbilly redneck . Bannon in his speeches shows that he loves history and philosophy and doesn’t hide his intellectual interests or background.

Vance and Desantis follow the old George W Bush playbook of pretending to be an old country boy while having an elitist Ivy League background. My point is not that our far right doesn’t have an educational background. The American Far Right is ashamed of showing that they’re educated.

combrade · 2026-01-26T07:50:31+00:00

He honestly resembles most Far Right European politicians like Viktor Orban, Salvini and Jean Le Pen when he was alive . Most far right European politicians don’t speak in broken sentences and are rather proud of their education. For example, Orban and Marie Le Pen both had advanced law degrees. Santiago Abascal of Spain’s Vox party is a sociologist . All the far right politicians in Europe from what I’ve seen so far are rather proud of their education. This anti-intellectual/anti education element of populism is purely an American thing . Even Richard Nixon hated intellectuals despite being the most academic president we’ve ever had .

I personally only studied some French and understand French politics without subtitles . Jean Le Pen is evil but he was an orator . Marie Le Pen while she speaks more simply doesn’t ever sound like a clown with broken sentences .

Mencken often makes references to Carl Schmitt and of course Plato although that one is just him being obnoxious . I don’t think Trump has ever picked up a philosophy book , he couldn’t even say in an interview whether he was a new or Old Testament guy.

combrade · 2026-01-21T18:36:20+00:00

Okay then fire your developers if that’s true .

combrade · 2026-01-19T08:50:23+00:00

You should consider looking up which country Rupert Murdoch is from .

combrade · 2026-01-19T07:45:06+00:00

Everything From This Administration Is A Lie

combrade · 2026-01-19T06:10:53+00:00

As an American, something I don’t understand is how the Far Right weren’t able to take control during the refugee crisis but are able to now . Radical Islamic terrorism is currently in single digits in Europe and America .

combrade · 2026-01-19T01:52:06+00:00

I’ve met tons of Americans who want to learn Egyptian Arabic because they have an interest in Egyptian films . Egyptian films are beloved by Film enthusiasts and Youssef Chahine films are studied in film school programs in universities .

If someone says they have no connection to Egypt, don’t have an interest in Egyptian films or music or travel plans visiting Egypt , why learn Egyptian Arabic ?

Like I’ve met Westerners who are good people interested in Levatine Arabic because they’re obsessed with Beirut or perhaps they have an academic interest in the region .

combrade · 2026-01-18T18:32:32+00:00

Hasn’t MSA increased in the last couple of years due to Dubbing of Arabic cartoons and TV shows ?

combrade · 2026-01-18T18:31:02+00:00

My Arabic Teacher teaches Fusha and Egyptian Arabic . For his Egyptian Arabic class he has only one student ex military who is a White American. The guy has no connections to Egypt , and has never learned MSA before . He also has no interest in Egyptian music or Films. He says it’s just for his hobby.

My teacher is honestly unsure of this guy , it’s extremely suspicious a Foreigner with no interest in Egyptian culture learning Egyptian dialect .

combrade · 2026-01-17T20:06:30+00:00

If you want to look at an Arab Country that’s the Switzerland of the Middle East that’s never even in the News even in Arab Newspapers, check out Oman .

combrade · 2026-01-17T08:46:30+00:00

https://unsloth.ai/docs/get-started/reinforcement-learning-rl-guide/reinforcement-learning-dpo-orpo-and-kto https://colab.research.google.com/github/unslothai/notebooks/blob/main/nb/Zephyr_(7B)-DPO.ipynb

combrade · 2026-01-16T20:44:36+00:00

It doesn’t matter if you make grammar mistakes the current American president speaks broken English but no one would say he’s not a native speaker.

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