"IdK, ClAuDe SeEmS ALiGneD to mE!"

(intended in a spirit of fun; my actual take is like, "I think we are missing the concepts we need in order to talk usefully about this")

is it just me or does the current generation of big models produce more typos than the previous generation? Here's one I noticed today from Opus 4.5 (non-drowsy -> non-drowning):

I've noticed at least two from GPT 5 and 5.1 as well, though I didn't think to screenshot them.

Today I am trying out wearing drawstring-based underwear. I really like it! Since I've been fat, elastic bands always fold or roll over themselves, unless I get a size that's so big the elastic doesn't even work to hold them up. With a drawstring I can choose the exactly right fit, which is typically much less pinchy/constricting than even a moderately well-fitting pair of underwear. The big downside is that using the bathroom takes an extra 30s or so for tying/untying the drawstring (though, if using a urinal, you can of course use the fly instead).

I originally bought them because they're ~the only literally 100% cellulose-based underwear you can buy (elastic bands are made of mostly spandex/elastane) and I was curious. I think I will buy at least a few more pairs of these, and maybe start wearing them by default.

(warning: posting this for archival purposes rather than because it's interesting at all)

I asked my mom what she remembers her grandparents eating; here's some of what she remembers, a lot of which they grew themselves:

• Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Tomatoes
• Beans and green beans
• Liver and onions
• Chicken
• Eggs
• Pork / ham as a treat
• Blackberries and raspberries
• Rhubarb
• Lettuce
• Homemade bread
• Corn
• Peas

A year and a half ago, Google Maps changed their location history feature so that it (a) isn't available in the web app, (b) isn't even saved anywhere other than your phone without explicit intervention on your part, and (c) has a very limited UI compared to how it was before.

Yesterday I got a new phone and transferred everything over, incorrectly assuming this would include my location history, or that at least I had been backing it up (since I definitely explicitly opted into the backup system). Having finished with all of that, I factory reset my old phone, packed it up in the trade-in box, and sent it along. Of course, turns out that the history didn't get transferred and the phone hadn't backed anything up for six months, so now I have no record of where I've been for most of the last six months.

They claimed that this was for "increased privacy and control", but I'd bet at 3:1 that they still use my session geolocation history for advertising, and will happily hand it over to law enforcement if asked. So it feels kind of like everybody has access to it except me.

LLMs are a huge boost for learning about [fields that are well understood and have lots written about them already], at least if you're me.

Previous attempts to learn category theory went much slower per hour spent than the current one, since insofar as I had tutoring, it was built out of humans.

It's still really hard to tell when they're hallucinating, or making mistakes in areas I'm unfamiliar with. There's a crucial skill, at least for now, of noticing when you don't have enough corroborating background to tell that they're not bullshitting, and then going to find that background.

Honestly this is probably good practice for learning from humans as well.

Something kind of cool I had somehow not fully noticed: You can split space into multiple intertwined and infinitely repeating regions (each fully connected to itself and not connected to the others). e.g. mathcurve.com/surfaces.gb/schw…

So you could, e.g., have a sippy cup with 2 spouts, one for coffee and one for water, such that the liquids were distributed approximately the same as if each was just a less-dense liquid completely filling the cup.

lol. I bought a 3D printer this weekend and have been using it to prototype keyboard designs. Before I decided to buy the printer, I had been trying to send my designs out to third parties. Here are some things that happened within the span of about 10 minutes this morning:

1. Shapeways told me that they can't print the prototype model I sent them about a week ago
2. A company whose website promised an "insta-quote" last friday got back to me to tell me that my (very similar) prototype part would cost more than $500
3. I pulled the fully-manifested prototype out of my own printer - and it turned out great.

Admittedly, I'm sure part of the disconnect is that I don't need the part to have good surface quality - it's just for evaluating the ergonomics of the key placement. But neither of these services even have an option for "I don't care very much about the details, just the structure". Feeling very glad I bought the printer instead of wasting a ton of effort and time waiting for third party services. Seems likely to pay for itself faster than I expected.

I just finished putting together my display of Religious Artifacts Acquired by Walking Really Far

now in Buddhist and Shinto flavours