Underfoot

At least 50 million.

Oh nooooo everything about this sounds awful!

I've never seen cats but maybe the best time to watch it would be while hooked up to the K-machine

I've been deep in a severe depression pit for over 6 months after waves of mild to moderate for 1.5 years prior, and I'm finally going to a consult for ketamine as I definitely have treatment resistant depression. I'm as hopeful about it as in capable of being right now, but then I remember its association with Musk and I start feeling like shit. Why did that man have to go and ruin a perfectly good treatment option for the rest of us?

Watched Becky and the Wrath of Becky in the last couple of days. Campy fun. Such gruesome kills (especially the first) but damn did they deserve it. I really hope there's a third, I wanna know what that key means!

I watched this when I was in high school. Iirc season 2 was the best and season 3 kinda sucked, but also I was like 17 so I probably liked things I wouldn't now

Wow!

@Lord Varys honestly nailed / articulated my feelings about how Leia was character assassinated in the ST. Horrible.

Wait wasn't the last census completed in... 2020? Not that I expect anything trump says to make sense

Welcome to the board! Your books have been recommended here for as long as I've been on the board. I've had them in my TBR pile and when news came you finished Endlords I finally dove in and I'm so glad I did! I joined your patreon and it's been fun seeing your updates! I do have a question - with so much of your writing (and now editing) process shared with fans AND so much more direct engagement with fans, do you feel like that has changed anything about how you approach writing and editing, or even your plans for the series and characters?

What post? Would love an update on kithamar 3

That's not what I'm responding to. You posed the question of whether AI will stop humans from being creative and therefore lose our consciousness. I was responding to that. I stated very clearly I have concerns about AI and how it will impact artists. I think there are real problems there which that story seems to highlight.

This is a very hyperbolic concern, and I say that with two caveats 1) my job has forced me to work with and understand LLMs to about as large degree as a non-Engineer/Data Scientist/Researcher would need to and 2) someone who is very worried about the implications of generative AI on society, including around art ("stealing" work, removing job opportunities, using individuals' voices and likenesses without consent...). Humans have always felt the urge to create, it's almost existential for us. There are tons of people working creatively with things they make or manipulate with their hands, and artists who have always been inspired to create likely won't be stopped or usurped by genAI. In fact, I can see genAI as a way to inspire creativity in people who might otherwise not pursue any creative hobbies - it can kickstart ideas (eg to @Rippounet's point about it drawing connections humans haven't before), it can help someone visualize something that could then make it easier to write about, could make research easier for how to pursue a technical aspect of a hobby, could provide templates that allow someone to learn to draw something they have difficulty visualizing... I personally don't use genAI much at all, and am if anything biased against it (despite my work), but the idea that it will kill all human creativity is unnecessarily alarmist and pessimistic.

You said: And then you went on to say that gay or lesbians wouldn't fall under the umbrella of not having "obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics" that make it clear they are gay / lesbian, by stating that it is obvious if someone is gay based on who they date. Many of us pointed out that this is a flawed argument for a variety of reasons. There is no cogent reason trans people could not be recognized as a class (based on how you/ACB defined it), and it was fairly insulting and tunnel-visioned when you contrasted trans vs gay/lesbian on this front -- particularly when we're all part of the same community. I'm not claiming you're transphobic or anything - I don't know you. But the position you took here needed to be challenged

As a lesbian who has never been in a long-term or meaningful relationship with a woman, I find this argument to be absurd and insulting. Any bisexual person in an opposite-gender relationship would as well. I genuinely don't understand how you can be arguing this, that trans people should be treated differently under the law than other LGBT+ people or other minority groups that might not be "obvious" at first glance or consistent with other individuals in their minority.

Thanks @Werthead for the thorough reply! Great summary and insights, appreciate it

This is a dumb question but why haven't Israel or other countries who don't like Iran's leadership and who don't want them to have nuclear weapons been taking actions to support internal opposition to Iran's leadership, or to their nuclear program. Hell, even Israel's first bombing run that took out military leaders could have been paired with some sort of activation of local elements that could take to the streets in support of a nuclear deal and an end to the bombings. As with Gaza, these attacks with no clear understanding of when or how the goals will be achieved seem like they will only go against Israel's interests in the medium to long-term, creating both regional and global backlash.

Is it bad that the only mass effect game I've ever finished was Andromeda, despite playing ME1 and ME2? I think when I was a kid I got mostly done with ME1 but couldn't finish the last battle, it was too hard or something (something similar happened my first play through of KOTOR, bad character build I guess. I was like 11 though) I tried replaying ME1 a few years ago (after Andromeda) and I just didn't like the combat mechanics or find the world / plot compelling I really quite liked Andromeda. Big but not overwhelming, beautiful, fine mechanics if you like a shooter. I don't remember any of my companions though which is kind of telling I guess.

Honestly the last two. But the last was definitely worse. -- I read Anji Kills a King which I think someone posted about a few months back. Kinda bad honestly. The quippiness of the mains was grating and super repetitive and the worldbuilding was incredibly thin. A shame because on paper it should be right up my alley. I got a copy at a speaking event with the author, Evan Leikam, and Joe Abercrombie for The Devils. I still haven't picked the Devil's up yet, but I really gotta get to it.

I went to the protest late this afternoon in Ann Arbor. Really strong crowd, definitely in the thousands which is pretty good. Curious about Detroits turnout as I debated going to that one instead. There was a rally-type event with speakers etc to start off and then a march through downtown. The march ended up feeling more like a parade since the sidewalks were lined with people cheering it on or carrying their own signs. Police presence was only there to block the street entrances and very low-key. Great signs, fun and loud chanting, good mix of older and younger people including kids (though the demographics skewed to the above 60 age range). Favorite signs were variations of "No Kings, yaasss (drag) queens" and one that said "unless your ancestors look like this (drawing of a native American), you're an immigrant)

LLMs now have a ton of "grounding" / fact checking infrastructure on top of the base model. Most commonly that's Retrieval Augmented Generation but could also be accessing APIs that might contain the latest info (eg a weather service API, or a shopping site API). The grounding infrastructure will usually have some hierarchy or ranking approach that lets it know to prioritize specific resources before spitting out an answer. This is on top of any base model fine tuning or anything that happened in the training process that might weight certain training data higher (not as sure how all that works) Grounding approaches are getting much better, think of the difference between ChatGPT in 2023 vs now in terms of quality / accuracy. I think that we have much better sources for RAG and other grounding approaches now than we would have 20 years ago, for sure.

That is good news! Dying for the third book, I really loved the first two.

What's a other ICE oopsie in this day and age? Gotta meet those deportation numbers, after all.

Absolutely bonkers

I'm really glad!