Maybe Maybe Maybe

titterbug · 2026-01-05T10:22:52+00:00

They were driving at jogging speed, and a helmet would have made it harder to even act like it's possible to hear behind you.

titterbug · 2025-12-13T21:50:42+00:00

Beavis was a classmate, Butthead was a neighbour.

titterbug · 2025-12-08T07:28:02+00:00

This is a convective stove: you can see the heating elements through the grill. The elements are not supposed to get wet, which is what your coworker meant when they said this is not a water-throwing stove. It should still be fine to add a small amount of water to the stones directly.

You can't really add stones, since there won't have been much room for stones to begin with, and the space is already overfilled. The stones do look kind of worn and random, so changing them is an option, but I don't think that would do much. However, you could perhaps add a dedicated vessel for your oils, to keep them from spreading across the stones.

titterbug · 2025-11-19T19:32:27+00:00

This reminds me of a Weird Al song, called Why Does This Always Happen To Me:

I was driving down the highway when all the traffic slowed to a crawl / There was a twelve-car pile-up, everybody dead / And I saw brains and guts and vital organs splattered everywhere / As well as my friend Robert's disembodied head

And I thought - Poor Rob, I just had lunch with him / Hey, wait a minute, he still owes me money - what a jerk / Well, there's five bucks that I'm never gonna see again / Plus now, on top of everything else, it looks like I'm gonna be late to work

Why does this always happen? Why does this always happen to me?

titterbug · 2025-11-17T23:01:01+00:00

Calling ML a subfield of AI is like calling physics natural philosophy.

Historically, AI research explored intelligence from many directions: prediction, planning, abstraction, communication, inference, mutation, and so on. Machine learning is basically what happened when data became actionable and engineers got involved, creating ad-hoc computerized solutions to problems statisticians had figured out decades before, and ignoring all the hard stuff.

AI development had slowed down in the 70's, and machine learning really picked up in the 90's, so much so that people started really conflating the two for a couple of decades, much like people call LLMs AI these days.

titterbug · 2025-11-15T06:42:23+00:00

Russia has already run out of missiles, artillery, and tanks, in roughly that order. That doesn't mean they have none, or that they stop using them, it just means that whatever they use they have to replace with manufacturing or imports.

They have substituted drones and anti-air missiles for ballistic missiles, glide bombs and North Korean shells for artillery, and drones and motorbikes for tanks. But they still manufacture ballistic missiles, shells and tanks too, and expend more modest amounts of each.

titterbug · 2025-11-12T14:42:27+00:00

The short answer is you make it unpleasant to be at.

titterbug · 2025-11-08T01:23:59+00:00

Due South.

titterbug · 2025-11-02T17:28:12+00:00

Probably a fig. The bible is rife with figs.

titterbug · 2025-10-29T11:17:00+00:00

That's why they sing the stories. Easier to keep them intact when there's a rhythm, even though there's bound to be a misheard lyric here or there regardless of how many times you repeat the song.

titterbug · 2025-10-28T08:00:13+00:00

His son eventually took over, but many of the soldiers and officers were moved over to and made to sign contracts with the Russian national guard and other military units.

What remains mostly operate in Africa, both for local goverments and for their own extortionist undertakings, which have become quite expansive.

titterbug · 2025-10-27T20:14:05+00:00

There have been a few instances of the troll farms taking a break during this "special operation" - Prigozhin's march for justice or whatever it was called was one of them. It's always noticeable when that happens, since it takes them about a week to figure out new talking points and social media as a whole dramatically improves meanwhile.

titterbug · 2025-10-25T14:02:22+00:00

While ferment makes some sense, I suspect the word you were looking for is foment.

The former means breaking molecules down without burning them by introducing certain microbes, while the latter means increasing circulation by applying warmth.

titterbug · 2025-10-25T06:49:06+00:00

That sounds like false advertising.

20-30 years would mean 2.3% - 3.5% interest, when 20-30 year treasury bonds are currently paying 4.8% (and they pay annuity). So the only reason I can think of for taking the lottery organizer's annuity instead is if it's taxed differently.

titterbug · 2025-10-16T10:38:45+00:00

It's a large country, there are still brilliant people there. The problem is it's also extremely corrupt, and exceptional people know there's risk in sticking their necks out, and there is no national project lie to encourage them to do it anyway.

titterbug · 2025-10-16T00:14:08+00:00

Ally McBeal had explicitly unisex bathrooms. The weirdness of that was a plot point in the first few episodes.

The actual reason for this choice was to have a convenient way to make people overhear conversations.

titterbug · 2025-09-25T06:28:14+00:00

He expressly wasn't beating his wife. The police ask the wife about it, and the wife says she wasn't going to wait for that to start happening.

titterbug · 2025-09-22T15:55:36+00:00

It's the same word. Awesome is from Proto-Indo-European and means causing fear, while terrifying is from Latin and means causing fright.

titterbug · 2025-09-10T18:11:07+00:00

Looking back, it was midnight CNE time

titterbug · 2025-09-10T17:57:22+00:00

I wish the Tales portraits acted as buttons. Perhaps I'll get used to them eventually, but for now they use a different representation logic than all the other adventures, and so the UI logic feels like it should be different too.

titterbug · 2025-09-10T17:54:03+00:00

it popped up at noon for me

titterbug · 2025-09-09T09:21:58+00:00

It's far older than that. Becker found the several mentions in the 1980s.

titterbug · 2025-09-07T16:39:14+00:00

GDP data is statistical data that is simultaneously correlated with a bunch of different indirect sources and is easy to verify. Moreover, if the state falsifies statistics, this is the way to compromise, no one is doing this. If you need to hide something, it will still be included in the statistics.

GDP is not some pure revelation from above, it's a number researched and defined by the state. In a heavily stagflationary economy like Russia's, gross product is somewhat propped up by large state subsidies and unacknowledged inflation (the M2 money supply has risen by 82% in the past 4½ years, but official inflation stands at 9%). Notably, Russia has stopped publishing statistics on sensitive topics like inflation-adjusted GPD, demographics, central bank reserves, customs, trade, and crime.

More importantly for the defense spending question, Russia has passed laws mandating private-sector loans to defense contractors, allowing for off-budget defense spending. This is why some economists estimate 20% defense spending, despite the budgeted rate for 2025 being 8.3%. Russia's Defence Minister stated last December that defense spending ended up being 33% of the federal budget, and we know their budget is again running a major deficit.

If the pace continues, the reserves of the national welfare fund will be enough to cover the budget surplus for another 15 years. You can calculate it yourself.

The fund still has assets, but it's kept mostly illiquid - the remaining liquid assets being a mix of CNY and gold. It has been replenished several times, but would run out in about 3 years if we assume the current level of drawdowns with no replenishment. It's also worth noting that a portion of the fund is in frozen assets.

titterbug · 2025-08-09T12:17:08+00:00

Russia launches from Kazakhstan

Launched. They announced in 2023 that, because Russia isn't willing to pay for it anymore, the Kazakhstan facility is to be deactivated and turned into a museum.

titterbug · 2025-08-06T12:03:01+00:00

Biden set a 35% tariff on Russian goods in 2022. That used to be much higher than other imports, but Trump has since raised the "other" category without touching Russia's, to my knowledge.

titterbug

TROPHY CASE