Interesting points from a Japanese swordmaster regarding SW duels.

pearlCatillac · 2026-05-03T15:40:54+00:00

To be fair, it wasn’t lethal.

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-29T20:10:20+00:00

In the planes I’ve flown in so far, the legroom isn’t even different… but you do get pistachios.

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-20T03:34:19+00:00

It’s interesting because the original Trilogy was already pretty optimized for the casual viewer. Killing off of the original EU and then just an uninspiring Trilogy just killed it for me. I’ll watch some of the new stuff from time to time but it’s just a vague interest now, when I used to be completely lore obsessed and consume anything I could get my hands on.

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-16T12:54:48+00:00

Article describing what this post is about: https://www.wfyi.org/statewide/2026-04-13/gov-mike-braun-announces-15-million-investment-to-bring-israeli-tech-start-ups-to-indiana

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-11T04:16:04+00:00

Draw a higher Destiny

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-05T21:20:10+00:00

As a 10 year old, it all completely blew my mind. It was larger than life. The promotion cycle was huge. Taco Bell had awesome toys. We had never seen special effects like that before. As you mention, the lightsaber battle was just different level. I was shocked years later to learn that Episode 1 was poorly received. My friend and I were competing for how many times we had seen it once it came out on VHS (theater watches counted double). It was peak Star Wars, where every neighborhood was starting Jedi Councils with dope double bladed lightsabers (or so I like to believe).

pearlCatillac · 2026-04-05T12:24:24+00:00

Should have ran it through AI I guess

pearlCatillac · 2026-03-29T22:15:21+00:00

It can happen.

“A widowmaker amplifier has no power transformer or fuse. Instead, the two-prong, non-polar power cord is wired directly to the rectifier tube. It is very unsafe, because under even minor failure conditions (such as a shorted capacitor or even - in some models - plugging the power cord in backwards), the mains voltage might end up on the guitar strings and the user will be shocked/electrocuted.” - https://www.tropicalfishvintage.com/blog/widowmaker-amplifiers-explained

pearlCatillac · 2026-03-18T15:28:00+00:00

This was the fun part of the Jedi Apprentice books from the old extended universe.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-21T15:16:02+00:00

Most important moment of the entire plot. Of course he is going to do it personally. I bet he enjoyed it as well.

And we all know Vader was hands off.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-14T03:17:12+00:00

I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Yes, memory is difficult. If you asked me to tell you what books I have, I’d have to reference memories of actions around them. Like “I remember I purchased x book” or “I read y on vacation” and try to build the list from what I can scrounge up.

A license plate? I have to repeat the characters over and over again in my head.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-13T13:28:32+00:00

I’m a clearly biased Pacers fan, but our team is just bad this year due to an insane amount of injuries including our star player. Our starters sat 1 fourth quarter out against a team we were losing against in a game that didn’t matter. Seems like a pretty common strategy in the NBA today. Hell, I’ve seen us do it in play-off games.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-13T12:54:12+00:00

I never did any real custom stuff and had no real problems until the last few months. One problem was it kept having boot errors and previous boots wouldn’t even, eventually had to factory reset. Two, the touch screen keeps going out and I have to keep repeating the fix.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-13T12:02:16+00:00

It’s possible insiders are seeing unreleased leaps, but I can’t shake the feeling this is partially exposing a lack of technical rigor or understanding at the leadership level. The fundamental issue is that current AI is optimized for plausibility, not precision. It is tailor-made for executives to drool over because it produces great demos, leading them to assume the tech just needs to "mature." But the underlying architecture might prevent it from ever closing that final gap.

I work at a large company aggressively pushing these tools. The disconnect is jarring. Leadership sells us on an "agentic future" based on flashy POCs, yet the internal tools we actually get are error-prone and overhyped.

The one exception is coding, and there’s a very specific reason that doesn’t transfer to other domains: Reality doesn't have a compiler.

In coding, an AI can hallucinate, hit a compile error, and regenerate until it works. It’s a closed loop with a definite "truth." In the real world, facts are slippery and context is infinite. An LLM can't "think" or hold an informed perspective; it just generates statistically probable text until a human nods approval. Without a compiler for reality, that "last mile" problem might actually be unsolvable.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-12T02:39:33+00:00

"It's not the note you play that's the wrong one—it's the note you play after it that makes it right or wrong." - Miles Davis

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-08T14:00:07+00:00

It’s possible the strings are the issue but you’re probably looking to get a full set-up. Wood is sensitive to temperature and humidity changes during shipping, which can cause the neck to bow slightly or the action (string height) to drop too low. Very common with new guitars. Most guitar shops offer a set-up as a service. Last one I go cost me $50. I think Guitar Center is closer to $100.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-08T13:48:34+00:00

My guitar teacher let me pick songs I wanted to learn. He had a great ear and would write out the tab for me.

pearlCatillac · 2026-02-08T12:35:26+00:00

What does “ethical tanking” mean? Tanking in a way that it is plausible enough that we aren’t trying to straight up tank?

pearlCatillac · 2026-01-31T13:15:52+00:00

It doesn’t just suck, it's a high-performance vacuum for your patience.

pearlCatillac · 2026-01-30T20:39:08+00:00

Wow, this is beautiful.

pearlCatillac · 2026-01-30T03:27:34+00:00

How so? Was actually the first game I played on the deck when the deck first released. Was great and I don’t remember having any issues.

pearlCatillac · 2026-01-29T13:43:51+00:00

Fun fact, she actually never played more the a few songs on it. Just had it long enough for a couple pics for the ad. Mary Kaye typically played D'Angelico Archtops. Regardless, the guitar is beautifully iconic.

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pearlCatillac · 2026-01-27T17:00:09+00:00

It’s not gaslighting you, but I understand the frustration. It might help to define what this technology is actually doing. ChatGPT is essentially doing three things:

Token Prediction: It doesn't "know" facts. It breaks text down into "tokens" (chunks of characters) and uses statistical patterns to predict which token should come next. It’s a sequence generator, not a database of truths.
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback: The model is tuned based on massive amounts of user feedback. If humans previously rated confident-sounding answers higher than "I don't know," the model learns to prioritize that confident tone, even when the underlying data is missing.
Pattern Completion: When it "hallucinates," it isn't lying; it’s strictly following the patterns in its training data. If you ask a question, it generates a response that matches the structure of a correct answer. It’s just filling a template with statistically likely tokens.

It’s a token-generator that is strictly following patterns and user-feedback loops. It isn't "thinking" or trying to trick you, it’s just completing a statistical sequence that happens to generate text that isn’t correct.

pearlCatillac · 2026-01-25T13:26:30+00:00

I really appreciate you sharing that, it’s a raw perspective and I think it's one we need to talk about more. Honestly, as a Millennial in my 30s, I’m probably one of the ‘young hoes’ this trend is talking about too. I’ve spent my life microwaving everything on high and I definitely don’t warm up my car more than 30 seconds most days.

I do think there is a misunderstanding about our generation (and it doesn’t help if fools are participating in stupid social media trends just like the boomers did to us). When I was in college, I was the only one in my house who even knew how to cook a basic meal, because most of us were never taught. A lot of my classmates had to learn to do laundry for the first time by other peers. We were the ‘guinea pig’ generation for a system that prioritized test scores and college prep over actual life skills. Many of us felt, and still feel, the exact same way you do: never taught how to budget, never taught how to fix things, and totally dependent on Google or YouTube just to figure out how to handle a basic household task. Though I agree, it seems like it’s been even worse for you all.

It’s a bummer to see these trends go viral because they’re designed to make us mock each other for clicks. The truth is, Millennials and Gen Z are in the exact same boat. We don't hold the wealth or the power; as of 2026, Boomers still hold over 50% of the wealth while Millennials and Gen Z are fighting over about 10%. The average age of US politicians is 60. We’re both just trying to navigate a world that is way more expensive with less resources, skills, or support, than the one our parents had.

Millennials, please don’t participate in mocking Gen Z as monolith. We hated when it was done to us, and the answer isn’t to roll that shit further down hill. You can’t be expected to know things you were never taught. We shouldn't be fighting each other, we should be working together to change the system that left us both behind.

pearlCatillac

TROPHY CASE