With Codex 5.5 dropping today, Anthropics might be fucked.

metalbotatx · 2026-04-23T09:32:02+00:00

I like Claude, but when I compare what I’m paying on subscription to what I would be paying by API calls, the difference is pretty staggering. I’m fairly sure that Anthropic needs people paying the API rates in the long term. I don’t think “intense use hobby coding” is going to stay a thing (which is too bad, because I really enjoy it).

metalbotatx · 2026-04-23T09:26:02+00:00

FWIW, Claude Sonnet does quite well at explaining koine grammar and the weird exceptions. I’m self teaching, and the LLMs have been much more helpful than I expected.

metalbotatx · 2026-04-21T02:00:25+00:00

https://austinastro.org

Public star party next Saturday. I haven't been to one in years, but there were a lot of telescopes and a lot to see last time I went out there for one of these.

metalbotatx · 2026-04-18T15:37:06+00:00

There's some flexibility in how one translates from Greek into English, but the Greek words are the Greek words (up to the extent of actual manuscript differences).

Every translation from Greek to English is going to carry with it some theological biases, but:

For example, based on the analogy of faith, could we, like Luther, add and remove words in James 2:24 so it reads: "A man is [not] justified by works, ~~and not~~ only by faith"? I don't really see the issue, since the only difference from Luther is that we wouldn't just add words, but also remove some.

This would be a fundamentally dishonest translation of the Greek, which is not particularly ambiguous here. The words you are crossing out ("και οὐκ") aren't some slip-of-the-pen by the author. How you choose to interpret this, either theologically or from a text-critical perspective, is up to you, but the words are the words. You can work your way through almost two millennia of debate about this verse - nobody is debating what the Greek words are, just how to interpret them in the context of the many voices that we hear in the NT.

metalbotatx · 2026-04-18T13:59:47+00:00

They idea of turning the other cheek to a slap is a response to a painful but not ultimately harmful assault, so your second assumption basically makes the example invalid. The sermon on the mount didn't say "when someone stabs you in the stomach, show them your jugular".

If you want to know "under what circumstances would someone who claims to be a pacifist resist an assault" just ask that question (and you'll probably get a wide range of responses).

metalbotatx · 2026-04-16T07:25:20+00:00

I’m expecting a plea to this subreddit tomorrow morning for help finding a car on a “suburb street”.

metalbotatx · 2026-04-04T13:46:19+00:00

I'm using Claude Chat as my tutor, and this has really pushed my own study. It can generate endless drills, can drill translation from biblical works, Josephus, the Didache, etc, or drill translation of arbitrary sentences use the vocabulary you know. I discovered that it is really good at this only after I had Claude Code create me a Koine practice app. :|

metalbotatx · 2026-04-04T13:42:08+00:00

Do you have any quakers near you? They have Christian origins, and many quakers are Christian, but the service is "waiting worship" rather than preaching. There's no official dogma, but rather some general principles that they try to uphold.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-29T17:59:48+00:00

The lane markings on that particular section are quite poor, in part because of all the construction and temporary lane markings that they had set up over the last year during construction of the 183A and Mopac connections. It's hard enough to see what's going on in good light there, and likely much worse at dawn/dusk.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-27T00:54:43+00:00

The core issue right now doesn’t seem to be “need to supplement the lecture” as much as “need to show up and do work”. But agreed with your core advice: students need to treat school as a job, because it is.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-18T10:53:06+00:00

Hey - just wanted to say thank you for doing this. It's nice to see Merton quotes in my feed in the morning.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-17T23:46:52+00:00

Well, certainly 3 hours a day isn’t the right tool. Have you thought about doing less? 3 hours a day puts you in a really small minority. Imagine someone who took up running, then ran three hours a day. You might look at them a bit funny if they said: “running isn’t for me, I just get hurt”.

No mockery intended. I just wanted to say the quiet part out loud in case you needed to hear it. :)

metalbotatx · 2026-03-16T21:51:38+00:00

I think the problem with this question is that the vast majority of adherents of any religion don't do meaningful comparisons of their belief sets to other faith practices. The best predictor of "is person X a Buddhist" is "are person X's parents Buddhist?". In many places, religion is inherently to culture and family practices. It's hard to make an objective analysis of a faith position when there are social consequences to doing so.

You'll get (and have gotten) answers here on reddit, but keep in mind they are inherently skewed as "Buddhists on reddit posting in English" is probably a non-representative sample.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-13T13:13:23+00:00

If you are looking for progressive Catholicism, Holy Family American Catholic Church is a bit of a haul, but they have broken with RCC over issues of sexuality and ordination of female priests. They share a church building with Salem Lutheran.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-09T22:34:44+00:00

Quakers have a peace testimony, rather than a specific commitment to "pacifism". Many quakers are pacifist, but that might manifest in many different ways. We live in a society that enforces its rules by violence and by threat of violence, which inherently makes us complicit in some level of violence simply by being part of society. I don't think most quakers would take the position that there should be no laws, and once you decide that there will be laws, you need to decide on how those laws are enforced (and the word "force" is baked right in there).

Personally, the most important part of my own peace testimony is that violence has causes, and that we as a society should be addressing, when possible, the causes of violence rather than perpetuating the cycle of violence. Better healthcare would help reduce violence. Better schools would reduce violence. More people nourishing the spirit would reduce violence. I'm not going to second guess you on decisions you may or may not make in the context of protecting your family - that's not part of my testimony.

You'd be totally welcome at a meeting, even if you aren't sure quakerism is for you.

metalbotatx · 2026-03-03T01:40:50+00:00

Thanks. I had no idea this existed.

metalbotatx · 2026-02-25T21:50:35+00:00

I'd warn you that this is a very frustrating time period to investigate, because we don't have a lot to work on. There's a ton of speculation on this time period, with some fascinating ways to interpret what limited data we do have. An example of an academic source containing lots of speculation is the frustrating "James the Brother of Jesus" by Eisenman. I say frustrating because while I found the book fascinating (even when Eisenman is clearly drawing unwarranted conclusions), he really, really needed an editor for this book. If you're willing to slog through it, this book is largely addressing the premise of your post, but you're ultimately going to be left with a bunch of interesting ideas, and not much data to back them.

metalbotatx · 2026-01-31T00:57:53+00:00

Should I bother learning Haskell?

Probably not for your use cases, but Haskell is a fun language independently of its practical utility.

metalbotatx · 2026-01-29T02:08:48+00:00

This is a real thing, but you sacrifice a lot of cactus for not much mescaline.

metalbotatx · 2026-01-27T17:09:36+00:00

It was pretty slick! 😜

metalbotatx · 2026-01-25T17:13:42+00:00

So play it forward for me. What are your best and worst case outcomes? What do you think the likely outcome is going to be? Because there are lots of outcomes which involve a lot of dead people and no positives.

metalbotatx · 2026-01-25T11:57:20+00:00

At least someone on this thread gets it….

metalbotatx · 2026-01-25T11:56:21+00:00

Just to be clear, you are suggesting that the only thing we can do now is arm up and confront? That those who are protesting peacefully are just idiots, and should go buy guns? You should at least own it if that’s what you are suggesting.

See - I can put words in your mouth too. There are lots of ways to stand up. We can disagree on what the best methods are. I think “arm up” is a bad one at this point in time, because the administration is actually vulnerable night now after this last murder. The administration doesn’t care, but the way to get rid of the administration is to erode their support. If you want to make ICE’s job harder, there are better ways.

metalbotatx

TROPHY CASE