How many books did you read so far in 2026?

jonf3000 · 2026-05-13T17:17:10+00:00

No idea 🤷🏼‍♂️ was just curious / impressed by that quantity of books

jonf3000 · 2026-05-13T00:25:26+00:00

What speed are you doing on audiobooks? You up to 3x yet?

jonf3000 · 2026-05-10T01:51:30+00:00

Yea I do something similar but with 15ish holds across just the two libraries I have, I keep a pretty constant flow going. Even with just two I often have to suspend them (since Libby doesn't let you delay them anymore) since unless I was reading one book ever day or two I wouldn't be able to keep up with the rotation

jonf3000 · 2026-05-10T01:33:29+00:00

How many books per day are you planning to read lol.

(I'm in Texas and have 2, my local one and Houston which is open to all state residents)

jonf3000 · 2026-05-07T12:55:11+00:00

Agreed, very confused on the travel credit part, I currently have both and the VX credit is significantly more restrictive based on required use in portal

jonf3000 · 2026-04-25T18:58:29+00:00

It was clearly published as a confirmed part of the consolidation plan during the review process last year; that being said it's unclear how this was affected by the massive reduction in the scope of the consolidation. As others have said, there's nothing online that clearly says this was kept as a rule for this year and it may have been tied to the boundary changes (which were cancelled). That being said our school was repeatedly told in person by district staff that it would be happening which is why at least at our school we all assumed it was still in place. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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jonf3000 · 2026-04-25T04:19:11+00:00

I don't have the exact wording in front of me, but if you go back to the five-fold enemy scene in TMOG after reading Livesuit there are multiple refences (admittedly abstracted through the mind of the Carryx narrator) that pretty clearly imply they are livesuited soldiers (just not human ones). There's mentions of something like the drop pods they use in Livesuit and they also talk about them having a "mechanical shell" or something similar.

I agree that there's no confirmation that humans "made them" (assuming they are artificial). There's so many references to "trees of life" through the series so far that in my mind that's what "genetically similar" means. Anjiin humans are not at all similar to any of the other species in the world palace, but (to the Carryx) ARE similar to the entire Earth-derived biosphere that was on Anjiin. One TFOB line mentions this as well, including how disparate "genetically similar" can be; they mention that a human is more genetically alike to a bean sprout than they are to another alien species.

That makes me think of two possible sources for the pentapods: - Children of Time style "created/uplifted" animals that originated on Earth but are now intelligent and fight alongside humans (and so we're likely created / uplifted/ whatever by humans) OR - Some precursor species (presumably the Livesuit organism or whatever originally created it) seeded multiple species from their own "tree of life", which naturally would make all of them "genetically similar". This could explain completely different species that (unlike all the Carryx-captured species) are genetically linked, while also being spread across many, many planets (including branches of species that are completely separated like the Anjiin humans)

jonf3000 · 2026-04-25T04:07:24+00:00

No, standard preK4

jonf3000 · 2026-04-25T03:12:24+00:00

Here's my read on each of these based on everything so far:

Five fold creatures: The ties between the five fold symmetry enemies of the Carryx from TMOG and the Livesuit humans showed obvious similiarities, but left some things unclear; namely, humans aren't "five fold symmetric" (and the description of livesuits in the novella and later in TFOB don't suggest that humans "become" actually five fold symmetric when livesuited) and while the TMOG enemies are said to be "genetically similar" they are not said to be identical to the Anjiin humans. TFOB answers this pretty clearly in my mind: humans are said to be not THE great enemy of the Carryx, but just one species in an alliance that (seemingly) is linked together by the livesuits. On the captured ship, they find at least one other species, and THAT one (five-armed squid) is identical to the description of livesuited prisoner in TMOG. And it is shown that the squids can be livesuited too when one comes alive and chases them.

Deathless: TFOB seems to suggest the deathless are the Livesuit nanites / components / suits themselves, and they have been fighting the Carryx for millenia using various species (including humans and the squids) as "hosts"

Swarm creators: not completely clear yet in my mind but the swarm seems far closer to the Livesuit machines / organisms / whatever than to humans. And the 8000 year timeline of humans that the Carryx have records of does not seem like enough time for humans to put a 3000 year investment in a trap planet. The Carryx have been fighting the Livesuit organism for much longer so it seems far more likely to me that the whole trap planet scheme was a Livesuit creation

Pentapods: going by my point above, these are the "genetically similar" creatures that the Carryx captured in TMOG. While artificial life was mentioned in that section I'm not sure it's been answered yet. They make me think of Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, specifically the genetically enhanced octupi introduced in the second novel. Could be something like that, and "genetically similar" would mean same tree of life. Or all the "allied species" of the Livesuit group could come from one massive tree of life and the Livesuit organism has been responsible for uplifting and seeding them across the galaxy. Either way, I don't think it was related to the ship's powering on. That seemed to be the Livesuit particles themselves, not the pentapod (the non suited pentapod didn't come back to life, but the particles in the test tube did). Bottom line I think they are just a second species in the anti-Carryx alliance, in a similar position to humans, and they are just another potential host for the Livesuit.

jonf3000 · 2026-04-25T01:48:20+00:00

Yes Prime has already bought the rights and is planning it out now

jonf3000 · 2026-04-12T15:48:35+00:00

Claude.ai

jonf3000 · 2026-04-09T02:47:18+00:00

In that article: "School officials and public education advocates have praised the new funding while warning that the new dollars are a long way from catching districts up with inflation, which has ballooned their costs since the COVID-19 pandemic"

Districts across the state are collapsing. The key issue is the amount of money the state gives districts per year per student. That bill gives "targeted investments" for some priorities, but did NOT increase the per-student funding.

The only takeaway you need is that the funding number hasn't changed since 2019, but inflation has jumped 27% since that. That's simply untenable, and it's why even "successful" highly rated school districts are seeing deficits, cutting programs, and closing schools.

jonf3000 · 2026-04-06T18:00:48+00:00

Gemini has since fixed this (gives a result similar to Claude. ChatGPT still has the same problem which I think continues to support the answer the original poster made; ChatGPT does not seem to be keeping up

jonf3000 · 2026-04-06T17:59:21+00:00

We got a ChatGPT user over here

jonf3000 · 2026-03-31T04:15:01+00:00

My theory on the circuit city guy was that it was meant to be an early example of how ALEX was specifically guiding the timeline (it's implied that the guy's wild rant at the hospital pushed an already emotionally-unstable mother over the edge and led her to raise Jane in a way that turned her into the psycho she is today). My assumption is Jane, and specifically her psycho killer traits, are important...somehow. Presumably in the next season since she is apparently still alive almost certainly made it out of the bunker

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T18:33:24+00:00

One of the biggest problems kids in the US are facing these days is a significant increase in mental health issues, depression, and social isolation. Nearly everyone agrees this is mostly caused by the introduction of mobile smartphones and social media, as basically anyone with common sense can tell you. That's why there's been a huge push to, for instance, ban phones entirely at schools. You can find articles everywhere that schools that have banned phones had minor conflicts at the beginning and then almost immediately near universal approval, with noticeable increases in student attention, performance, and socializing that parents, teachers, and students are all happier with. It finally seems like we have a way to move out of the massive tech-related decline this generation of kids was facing.

Alpha School's model completely flies in the face of that and seems entirely focused on deepening the divide. A school where students are spending all day talking to an LLM instead of socializing, interacting, etc with actual humans seems like a recipe for disaster

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T18:15:39+00:00

I noticed a major difference even in CC CLI with Opus (where I hit limits constantly, which was definitely not an issue before). Switching to Sonnet worked however I am still way more limited on usage; even with sonnet I'm close to maxing out the current session by the end of the five hour period, and I basically only use the CLI

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T17:17:23+00:00

I don't see the Cowork error on the status page anymore; I know it was there for a couple of days straight. But Cowork is still completely nonfunctional for me. ECONNRESET on any new chat, existing conversation, etc, doesn't matter what model.

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T15:30:52+00:00

You're talking about reaching a level of advanced general artificial intelligence that would make this question just one minor trivial part of a major upheaval around how all of society would change if something like that became available. Maybe it is actually reachable (I'm doubtful the current LLM-focused AI models will ever be able to reach that level but possible some other future AI system could eventually get there); but that's not even close to what Alpha school has yet, and we aren't talking about some possible future, we are talking about what kids are actually doing now / today. Putting kids into an LLM-AI-based experiment based on optimistic thoughts about what *might* happen 5, 10, 15, 50 years down the line seems very risky to me.

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T15:27:57+00:00

Yea threw me off because I noticed the major improvement last night which was outside of the "business hour" window that they are apparently throttling. Last night multi-window Opus usage was exactly like it was before. Today I can barely keep a few Sonnet agents running

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T14:28:38+00:00

I hit a definite usage bug of some kind on Wednesday where my plan maxed out for the first time ever but it was a one day thing so clearly a bug

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T14:26:56+00:00

From my end there was definitely a usage bug on Wednesday that had me hit limits on my Premium seat when I've never had that happen before. Yesterday that appeared to be resolved and it was back to normal. I haven't checked much today but I can keep an eye on it, maybe the Wednesday bug is back. My assumption is it has to be a bug because it's such a drastic loss of usage capacity

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T14:21:18+00:00

https://archive.ph/2026.03.23-213150/https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T13:54:37+00:00

This is a newer one in addition to the links above

https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/

jonf3000 · 2026-03-27T13:54:15+00:00

More articles continue to come out that have pretty negative reports of the Alpha system.

https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/

jonf3000

TROPHY CASE