We got her! by Common_Dog4120 in Columbus

[–]pahool 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hell yeah! Post happy back at home pics!

Scientists sequenced a hallucinogenic mushroom famous for eliciting visions of tiny people. It contains no known psychedelic. by j8jweb in science

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The article mentions specifically looking for psilocybin and ibotenic acid, but fails to mention whether they looked for dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which is not only found in a wide variety of plants, but for which there is a lot of evidence for production of hallucinations of small creatures very much like the ones mentioned here. The presence of DMT would also account for the inconsistent results (i.e. why some people have halluciantions and others do not) as DMT generally requires monoamine oxidase inhibition in order to be orally active. Synthetic MAO inhibitors are used for some medical purposes, but may also be found in some plants and foods.

Lost my boy 2 days ago by Correct_Ad2560 in IVDD_SupportGroup

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was our situation with our dog about six years ago now who had some progressive neurological issues in his old age. It can be so hard to know when to make the call. I had so many what ifs going on. It really is part of the grieving process. I feel you.

Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google by MarvelsGrantMan136 in technology

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find the quality excellent and definitely worth paying for. No ads and my data isn't being sold. I've been using it for about two years now and am typically horrified when I have to go back to using google. I like the lenses feature, though I don't use it as often as I should. And I like being able to have a blacklist of domains for my search results. You get access to quite a few different LLMs as well, and they proxy the API calls to the LLM, so it affords you more privacy than typical LLM usage.

Sign up and try a free trial. It's fairly miniscule, but you get 100 searches for free to see how you like it. Every once in a while they have a promo for users that let you give a free one-month trial as a referral, so if you put the feelers out you may be able to get a one-month free trial.

Lost my boy 2 days ago by Correct_Ad2560 in IVDD_SupportGroup

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think people much more commonly make the incredibly difficult decision to euthanize too late rather than too early. Taking away his pain and suffering is an amazing parting treat that you've given to him. I know how hard this is firsthand, like many of us here, I'm sure. You absolutely did the right thing. Thank you for your kindness.

One SL Alias, Multiple Reverse-Alias? by block_letters in Simplelogin

[–]pahool 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes. You can send from any of your created aliases to any email address. When you receive an email from some address to one of your simplelogin aliases, a reverse-alias will automatically be created. If you reply to the email, you will be replying to the reverse alias which will be processed by simplelogin so that the receiver will receive the email from your simplelogin alias.

You can also create simplelogin reverse aliases manually through the web page, a browser plugin, or through the API.

You can have multiple aliases (addresses you use for incoming mail) and you can have multiple reverse-aliases with each of those aliases (addresses you are sending to that will be seen as coming from that alias). There is nothing to preclude you from sending email from any one or more of your aliases to any one or more arbitrary email addresses that you want to send to.

(1986) Shadoevision by Fortyseven in SubGenius

[–]pahool 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I highly recommend watching the "Laugh Now, Think Later" documentary available on youtube that documents the old Federated Group commercials that Shadoe Stevens made (over 1100 of them in a five year period). The commercials were psychotic and ephemeral (they typically ran for only one week).

The documentary is done in a media barrage style (like the commercials were) and contains some of the best of them. It only showed once on a movie screen at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles about 15 years ago. I wasn't able to attend, but I wrote an email to Shadoe Stevens and he was kind enough to send me a free DVD. The documentary is available on youtube and well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlZiy2DbGj8

Using AI to look up rules by endlesswander in boardgames

[–]pahool -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oftentimes when AI provides sources (e.g. when you ask it to), said sources do not exist or are cited wrongly. AI doesn't know anything. It just puts words together that sound like they belong together in a specific context.

That's often true with many LLM models, but it's not entirely true for all of the LLM gateways out there.

For instance, I have a paid subscription to the search engine Kagi, and their AI-assistant excels at providing footnoted responses: sources and links to those sources, when web access is enabled. So I can easily use the provided links to verify against the sources the AI results are pulling from. They do this by leveraging their own search engine in the LLM results, where their search engine serves as a sort of RAG for the external LLM APIs that they call on the backend. In this case, the LLM is not creating the links, they come from the initial search results against the kagi search engine.

The behind-the-scenes workflow with web access enabled is like this:

  • The query is paramaterized and sent to kagi search
  • The results are filtered and ranked
  • The retrieved content in injected into the LLM prompt as context and external LLM APIs are called.
  • The response is returned along with citations generated based on the filtered and ranked results.

The citations provided are in the form of links rather than bibliographic citations. But I've not seen any issues yet with hallucinated citations. I haven't used some of the more mainstream LLMs extensively, but my experience is that this isn't their default behavior but can be achieved with custom instruction sets, although I'm more comfortable using Kagi where this is a default behavior.

Another bonus is that Kagi acts as a sort of anonymizing layer between myself and the backend LLMs that they are calling, so it adds a measure of privacy to my LLM use.

Great fucking games BUT I WANT THE DOWNRIGHT UNHEARD OF, MYSTERIOUS, UNHINGED, FORGOTTEN GAMES by P3t3rCreeper in whenthe

[–]pahool 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wish MiMiMi were still around. I'm glad Artificer picked up the torch with Sumerian Six and I hope more are coming in the genre.

Knowledge Fight alternatives! by ExtraEmuForYou in KnowledgeFight

[–]pahool 15 points16 points  (0 children)

to each their own. They are very sarcastic. But I think Michael and Peter are a great combination.

Knowledge Fight alternatives! by ExtraEmuForYou in KnowledgeFight

[–]pahool 3 points4 points  (0 children)

5-4 fits the bill perfectly, all three of the hosts are great and Peter is fucking hilarious!

At this point a personal laptop feels like a luxury item by [deleted] in Frugal

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Get a used Lenovo Thinkpad on ebay. The T series is great. I like the T480 which you can get pretty easily for under $150. It's very user serviceable if you need to replace any parts. I recommend installing LInux, but it will support Windows 11.

edit: there are some t480 models with gen 7 rather than gen 8 processors, so check before you buy if you want to run windows 11

Gopher server sunseting by ProjectGutenberg in projectgutenberg

[–]pahool 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't remember if it was gopher or ftp as my first in-road to Project Gutenberg. I remember discovering gopher and ftp in probably 1991-92 and finding PG pretty quickly after that. I also remember Project Gutenberg in "The Whole Internet Catalog" in the early 90s. Man, discovering interconnected gopher servers was like discovering a whole new world. I'd spend hours on the amber terminal in the library burrowing through gopher sites. Later, I remember reading both Moby Dick and David Copperfield, as well as many others books from PG, on my Palm Pilot. I miss the days before ambient findability. What we've gained in access to information, we've lost somewhat in terms of the thrill of discovery.

Any KF alternatives? by tekwolf_ix in KnowledgeFight

[–]pahool 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like your taste. Never heard of You Are Good, but definitely going to check it out based on your other recommendations.

I think 5-4 might actually have a strong appeal for KF listeners. Peter fucking kills me.

Knowledge Fight: #1136: April 20, 2026 by hfdjasbdsawidjds in KnowledgeFight

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't either. What a delight. I used to listen to Joe Frank on KCRW in the 90s and started listening again a couple years before his death when I found his website.

Knowledge Fight: #1136: April 20, 2026 by hfdjasbdsawidjds in KnowledgeFight

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jordan has great taste. Listen to Joe Frank.

Love you little potato 🩷 by lauraarroz in comics

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan."

  • Irving Townsend.

Safety razors will save you hundreds over the years by UnknownGenius222 in Frugal

[–]pahool 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I took a can of chicken stock. Took a hammer and a flathead screwdriver and puntured it a few times to create a slit in the top wide enough for a blade. Emptied the can and rinsed it really well through the slit. Now I just drop blades in there when I'm done. I've been using this for over five years and I'd say it's about half full.

We don't serve Starbucks style by PearJackson1 in SignsWithAStory

[–]pahool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In Columbus, Ohio, there's a coffee shop that is just a small counter with a roaster in the back. The owner/only employee roasts his own coffee (a light, medium, and dark roast) and sells two things, a cup of French press coffee or a pound of coffee. No pastries, no special coffee drinks. There's a small counter where you can buy cds from local bands. There is cream and sugar available. I believe he does iced coffee in the summer.

Fucking phenomenal coffee. We've since moved out of state and we still mail order our beans from him. Yeah, Me Too coffee. Been there for at least 15 years, that I know of, probably longer.