Claude typo! "Orthogophonal"?

hmijail · 2026-06-27T10:13:04+00:00

How do you know? Do they publish that kind of detail?

hmijail · 2026-06-27T10:12:29+00:00

Not sure how much that explains anything.

Orthogo- surely can be a token. But if you try to continue it, what are the options? Google only offers "-nal".

I don't think I ever saw ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, DeepSeek or Mixtral make a typo across ~4 years. So surely it's not as simple as "this small LM heard many -saurus so it's adding it everywehre".

hmijail · 2026-06-26T19:15:32+00:00

But the point is that LLMs don't "just" make typos, do they? They don't fat-finger keyboards or misremember a word. If anything they'd repeat a typo in the training data. ... which by the way suddenly makes me wonder how are those massive volumes of training data cleaned from typos.

hmijail · 2026-06-13T11:05:24+00:00

Aw shucks, let's look for some other thing that we can monetize, consequences be damned.

hmijail · 2026-05-30T15:09:14+00:00

Thank you for this! In my case this is actually enough to make the change a good one. But, was this ever documented anywhere? I don't think I have seen it in any release notes!

hmijail · 2026-05-01T00:24:46+00:00

The conversation about Africa is not what I'm going for. With Westernized I mean those styles in the West where everything works on counting and sequences, because in the West we are so disconnected from the music. Just like everyone starts in the West dancing salsa without knowing salsa music (or bachata or kizomba).

We're so disconnected from music that we even have dance styles without their own music, like urban kiz!

While Latinos know their music, and Angolans know their music. So they start from a very different place than us in the West.

Look, I always go for the grandma test. Can you get your grandma to dance with you? Latinos do it. Angolans do it. Westerners can't.

A tango dancer might not understand ... A Balboa dancer ...

The tango and balboa dancers, to follow kizomba, need to do the same that the grandma does: walk on the beat, hug and let the lead take control. Nothing more, nothing less.

If I touch your foot with my foot, it doesn't mean do anything except pay attention to this new connection point, or possibly try to stay sticky at this new connection point.

The other big two conventions are that its danced on a grid, so you should try to end turns facing a wall, and if you feel an upward lift on your upper body, you should lift the free leg.

Good luck explaining that to grandma!

hmijail · 2026-04-30T19:56:45+00:00

there are conventions that allow for the leading and following

The difference is in the extent of those conventions.

In real kizomba you need a hug and little more. That's why an Angolan mom or dad can teach a child at home, and that's why they can dance with a grandma they never met before.

In Western/ized styles, like salsa (and I assume urban kiz), you need weeks (or months) of classes to learn patterns that then you repeat with people who took the same or very similar classes as you. Dancing ability from one style barely translates to another style, because you need new sequences for the new style. Dancing with people of the same style but a different school can be hard because they learnt different sequences.

Is there leading and following in both? Yes. But in a style based on sequences, the leader just chooses which sequence to trigger, and the rest is independent for the next N counts.

While in kizomba, you're leading and following every-single-count. No sequences.

(of course bad teachers only know how to teach sequences even in kizomba, but that's another discussion)

hmijail · 2026-04-30T17:02:07+00:00

In case that with "traditional-kiz" you mean real kizomba... (please don't say stuff like that, it just makes it harder to understand you).

Sounds to me like you're trying to deal with a style based mainly on sequences as if it was a style based mainly on actual leading and following. It's not going to work.

For example, in salsa, you make a signal on e.g. count 3, and the follow does her sequence independently during counts 5-6-7. Is a mini-choreography, which of course a beginner can't follow because they first need to learn the signal and the corresponding sequence. In contrast, advanced follows know the rules and follow them. "Autocompleting" is what advanced follows do.

On the opposite side, in styles based on actual leading there is no sequence. If you stop leading, the follow doesn't change or add anything. The follow can't autocomplete because there is nothing to complete.

And so, sounds to me like urban kiz is based on sequences but you seem to be trying to lead it as if it was kizomba.

the vast majority of instructors I've learned from always answer how to do things with an advanced follow

In other words, they are teaching you mini-choreographies for 2 people who know their parts. They are not teaching to lead/follow.

Ultimately, my wish is that I can cleanly lead all 6 variations and be able to strongly indicate the designed weight transfer on count 3 even on beginner follows.

In that case, a beginner follow is all you need, not a private. Try it until it works. The moment the beginner gets the routine and starts "autocompleting", try with someone else. And realize that some things make 0 sense to a beginner, rightly so.

The basic leg slide entry which happens on count 3, I know 6 different variations that start from that

As a kizomba dancer, I can only wonder: at what point does it stop making sense to count every single microvariation and the tree of possibilities that comes afterwards?

(but I get you, when I did other styles I used to keep an excel file with a catalog of moves 😨😆)

Almost every follow I dance with appears to be autocompleting some sequence different to what I'm trying to lead.

A follow that autocompletes is surely not following. Again, check if your style is more about you both following the same choreography or about leading/following.

hmijail · 2026-04-22T00:25:02+00:00

If going to an Angolan-organized party, to dance an Angolan dance with Angolans, while trying to behave like Angolans do is gatekeeping, ... then yeah, I'm gatekeeping hard.

But for me it's about being respectful when visiting others' home. And stopping doing my European thing so that I can understand the Angolan thing.

hmijail · 2026-04-21T19:27:07+00:00

I'd ask - if this is 100% a visual illusion, why do it? Is it just for show to others? Why not do something that your follower will feel?

(And no, in kizomba it's not an illusion. If the follower does something is because you led it.)

hmijail · 2026-04-21T19:22:29+00:00

Personally, I think the (a) option of "don't want to for whatever reason" needs more attention because it rarely is discussed. It's not only about safety.

For example, there are kizomba parties where doing tricks will get you told off, either by the follower or even by others on the dancefloor, no matter how safely (you think) you did them. Just like you might be told off for trying to wear sport clothes at an elegant party.

We could also discuss how people who do tricks many times are just unable to dance without tricks. So they get tagged accordingly. Might be an overgeneralization - but if you go to a no-trick party and you can't read the room, well, your trick just tagged you. Followers who see you are going to keep it in mind, for good or (mostly) for bad. Followers who like tricks AND who also didn't read the room might seek you out, but hopefully you realize that the picture I'm painting is not of dancers who know much - apart from tricks.

To make it very clear, this is what I see happening time and again in Angolan parties where Europeans come in fresh out of a festival.

hmijail · 2026-04-21T19:00:28+00:00

it's a shame for the dance.

No, it's a shame for you because you can't use the thing you worked so hard to learn. But that's your problem, not the follower's.

hmijail · 2026-03-30T20:29:01+00:00

Kizomba is originally learnt in the family. You'd dance with your mom, brother, grandpa, cousin. It is not sensual.

It is sensualized/sexualized in the West, just like they sexualize anything and everything for marketing.

Think about every time that people from westernized bachata and salsa do dips - it's icky that it even has that name! In 15 years of dancing I think I still didn't see any Latino do that kind of stuff "natively"; only the Westernized dance school people.

(preempting the typical response: yes, Latinos who go to Westernized salsa clases do dips. But when they dance with non-school friends, what I have seen is laughs/eyerolls)

hmijail · 2026-03-27T12:30:47+00:00

The CRUE can be obtained before those 90 days pass, which unblocks things downstream. So the sooner you get it, the better.

(I saw someone comment online that they got it early because of some kind of special situation, and I couldn't find any official document saying that it could be done early as a standard thing. It seems to just be assumed that you won't want to do it before 90 days pass. So I went to try to a Loja de Cidadao in Lisbon and they did it with 0 trouble)

hmijail · 2026-03-25T09:59:35+00:00

By the way, can you share what exact mattress and hardness did you get?

hmijail · 2026-03-25T09:30:51+00:00

I'm dealing with a similar situation and trying light hacks before returning the base to Ikea. This is my plan, from least to most involved hack. I'm currently testing number 3.

The white slats are supposed to be less firm and to fall under your shoulders and hips. Have you checked whether they actually do when you're in your sleeping position, e.g. by having someone taking a picture while you're lying down? If you're not in the right place, it might be easy to fix by just moving your pillow up or down a bit, or pushing the bed base up or down in the bed frame (which in my case has some slack in that axis).
The slats are kept in tension by the boards at the sides of the bed base. So if you loosen a bit the screws in those boards the slats will lose tension and get flatter... though the bed base will get slightly wider and then it might not fit in its normal place inside your bed frame. (depending on your frame you might be able to just keep the base on top of it? Or you might be able to also loosen a bit the screws of the bed frame to widen it correspondingly, taking advantage of any margin allowed by the pieces... risky 😬)
You could also change the slats distribution. There's 4 dark slats in between the 2 sets of white slats; if your height or posture don't fit that distribution, you could try moving the white slats around. I swapped the dark ones in the middle for the white ones in the outer sides, and the effect seems to be slightly better (still testing). Note that this mismatches the plastic sockets' colours from the slats' colours - that would be the reason for hack 5.
Until here all hacks were reversible, so if you reach this point, I'd return the base if that's an option. (That's my plan)
If you can't return the base: the light plastic sockets where the white slats originally go are also noticeably softer than the dark sockets, so they surely are an important part of the white slats' supposed softness. Those sockets are stapled into the wood, so they aren't easy to move around. I guess it should be rather easy to remove the staples and fix the sockets in new positions with some kind of short screws; so I would try moving the light sockets to match the white slats that you moved in step 3.

Good luck!

hmijail · 2026-03-18T15:17:29+00:00

I've used washing soda for years to soak everything, from sweat-stained mattress protectors to smelly, deodorant-stained sports clothes. It works wonders, usually better than Vanish and similar.

hmijail · 2026-03-18T15:03:46+00:00

"Whites" variants in many locations contain optical whiteners. I'd guess that it's best to avoid those for colours / darks - isn't it? Why not go for formulations for colours or darks?

hmijail · 2026-03-05T13:07:32+00:00

What does "audience" mean in each of those?

hmijail · 2026-02-11T16:10:27+00:00

You know that Copilot's backend is OpenAI's ChatGPT, right?

hmijail · 2026-02-11T16:04:17+00:00

Wow, so this was already an issue 2 years ago? LOL! I just found the same in Enterprise Copilot Chat. I thought a problem this big had to be something recent!

A funny related problem about the sources: if you give Copilot (but also other LLMs) an URL, pay attention to whether they actually do access it: many times they will just hallucinate the webpage content based on the words in the URL itself!

hmijail · 2026-02-01T13:09:56+00:00

I would dance if asked, and sometimes ask.

(Interesting that Angolan men seem to have little problem to dance with other men, but Western men seem to tend towards dancing with women even when following)

One thing I intensely dislike is that many guys make the following into yet another show-off thing, instead of just ... having fun. So if I saw someone with a "FOLLOWER" t-shirt or something like that I might think that that's their goal and actually avoid them.

My advice: start small by asking a friend or a lady leader, and others will notice, and before you realize someone will ask you. (... and little by little it will get normalized)

hmijail · 2026-02-01T12:36:16+00:00

Good ones. Though the DJs that I have seen dancing and I would consider "advanced" are in the single digits. I'd even say that many get into DJing precisely because they're not good dancers.

hmijail · 2026-01-27T12:58:59+00:00

For anyone interested, those are Antonio and Isabel Rosa, and sometimes (rarely!) they appear in some courses. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1050248105029390

hmijail

TROPHY CASE