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Seems like there's a good chance we get a 7-2 supreme court in a couple years. As someone who is pretty sympathetic to conservative jurisprudence, this still seems worryingly lopsided. Not sure there's much to be done in practice tho (except think about ways this should affect asset prices?).
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
•
Hmmm, Kalshi only gives this outcome a 23% chance. Can't tell if they're mistaken or I am.

Chapters of Familia Romana that are hard, according to me

For background, most chapters are only trying to do one or two 'things'.

Chapter 8:
- all the declensions of quis/quī, hic, is, and ille dropped on you in a single chapter
- in some sense only one 'thing', but that's around 144 forms you've got to remember (4 pronouns x 3 genders x 2 numbers x 6 cases).
- tbh I just went past this and hoped I'd get used to them rather than having to memorize them

Chapter 12:
- the fourth declension
- datives for possession (e.g. "Marcō ūna soror est")
- comparatives
- third declension adjectives
- datives of commanding and obeying

Anyway I'm up to chapter 13 which is less bad, hopefully the density of hard chapters does not increase.

in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
•

I'm currently on chapter 27 and I have some aversion to re-reading it to do the exercises, because:
- it's just kind of boring (talk about how agriculture works, Julius demanding a tenant farmer pay some money he owes but relenting, Julius nearly punishing a shepherd for letting a sheep get away but then relenting)
- it's also quite long, longer than previous chapters
- it covers the present tense subjunctive which idk is not that hard I think

I'm currently procrastinating by reading the Cambridge Latin Course. But IDK maybe I should just skip the exercises and move on? Or do what I can without re-reading? The next chapter seems pretty cool...

Test of tusky
If I comment on this, will the comment also have the content warning? (which is apparently how these headings are implemented / what they're converted to)

Latin practice day 6

I. Num hominēs quī Berkeleiam incolunt barbarī sunt?
II. Mīlitēs armīs pugnant. Puerī pugnīs pugnant. Quō pugnat mercātor? Quibus pugnant pāstōrēs?
III. Num hominēs quī audiunt AXRP fortiōrēs quam illa quī audiunt The Inside View?
IV. Manūs sunt manūs bracchiī. Digitī sunt manūs manuum. Quae sunt manūs digitōrum?
V. Cūr medicus meus mē crassum esse dīcit?
VI. Potest homō avunculō avunculus esse?

#latinpractice

#latinpractice

Susan Noble
‘Autumn Ferns’
From: https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1855887688668524839

Panavise, Panavise
Every clamp holds so sweetly
Squared up right, fastened tight
You hold projects so neatly

Helpful jaw may you roll and yaw
roll and yaw forever
Panavise, Panavise
Bless my workbench forever

Ngl, I still get a little rush when I go to the store and see trading card packs, even for games I've never played.

Something I'm surprised I've never seen before: sacrificial anode toolbox liner. When I went to burning man last year, I brought my toolbox with me. It rained a good chunk of the week, and I needed to use my tools for various things. So of course, when I got back to civilization, some of my tools had rusted slightly. So today I took some copper fabric and wrapped up a couple magnesium rods, and lined the inside of the toolbox with them. Hopefully this will prevent much further rusting!

Apparently workout music also works for getting out of bed and beginning to go to the gym! At least it did for me just then.

Sometimes I'm confused by pro photographers

William H. Hays: Mountain Melody, 2022
linocut
From: https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1854986382957330908/photo/1

I feel like commissioning episode art for AXRP is really causing me to run into the limitations of my imagination. Every episode I want to be like "hey can you draw a robot but it's evil" or "hey can you draw a scientist inspecting a robot".

From: https://x.com/0zmnds/status/1854995056660562070/photo/1

From: https://x.com/0zmnds/status/1854948751812837573/photo/1

From: https://x.com/opancaro/status/1854969896871870644/photo/1

Esa Riippa (Finnish, b. 1947)
Nocturno
From: https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1854960702504812953/photo/1

People keep telling me I should use descript, but it doesn't run on linux :(

Paul Binnie Scottish, b. 1967
Moon at Shinobazu
From: https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1854938647117640135/photo/1

Maybe this is paranoid, but should I try to buy a new laptop now rather than waiting until next year to save on potentially increased tariffs? I imagine those will probably take some time to pass?
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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Does anyone know the framework release cycle? Not sure if waiting trades off against much.

I think that, a little over four years after leaving the country, I finally have no bank accounts or any other ties in Hong Kong.

(They just abruptly cut off my ability to log in, but it was following a conversation about closing my account, so I assume that's what they've done. A more explicit confirmation would have been preferred, but oh well.)

I take this as a vindication of "no matter how late, still better than never" :)

in reply to Ben Millwood

Ben Millwood
Ben Millwood
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I still have a phone number there actually, which is a little more difficult to let go of because I don't know who still has it and obviously if I cancel it I can't get that specific number back, but I guess once the dust has settled on this I'll be ready to let go

Misophonia has become a serious problem in my life. There's a person, who is totally great, and who is friends with all my friends and gets invited to everything I'm invited to, that I cannot be around for long periods because when they laugh my brain instantly jumps to an emotion not too far from blind rage.

I don't know what to do about this; it's very intense and basically preventing me from doing most social activities, even things in my own house.

in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

kip
kip
•

Sorry to hear it, this sounds very inconvenient and also socially very difficult to approach

My misophonia feelings have varied over the years FWIW. Certain mouth sounds bothered me a few years ago, then they didn't stand out again til a few weeks ago. But my thing has always been much milder than the thing you're describing.

Have you tried loop earplugs? I think they say they can help with misophonia, and my friend with more widespread misophonia said they help a bit. Idk if they'd help with someone's laugh though.

Does anyone have a phone client they recommend? I'm using Tusky which is fine but could be improved on (looks more twitter-like than FB-like)
in reply to Daniel Filan

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
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I just use Chrome; seems to work well enough, though I can imagine why you might prefer a client app.

This last week of obsessively focusing on antenna design has been really fun, but it turns out that there's a whole world that's been continuing to exist, depositing things into my email inbox and slack channels.

If "tweeting" is the act of posting to Twitter, is the act of posting here "superstimulating"? 🤔
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

David Mears
David Mears
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it would be fun if we can configure this instance of Friendica to use those terms in notifications etc!
in reply to David Mears

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
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This is technically possible since Friendica is open source, but I don't think the current version supports it :/

in reply to Satvik

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
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This seems cool; my current favorite workflow involves storing a snapshot with an LLM-generated commit message every time I save a file, and when I'm ready to submit, doing a git reset and manually doing a few rounds of "git add -p" on a new branch.
in reply to Satvik

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
•
Ideally: Keep working in the "wip" branch, and then go back and modify the PR branch commits. In practice: haven't been doing enough team coding recently to have much actual experience with that aspect
in reply to Satvik

Soccum Speleodontidae
Soccum Speleodontidae
•

Latin practice day 5: Questions about ch 9 of LLPSI

I. Cūr lupī edunt ovēs, sed non edunt pāstōrēs?
II. Quantum est vestīgium lupī?
III. Est sōl in caelō, aut sunt mōntēs et collēs et campi etc in caelō?
IV. Homō est pāstor ovium. Quis est pāstor hominum? Quōrum pāstor est ovis?
V. Pāstor quaerit ovis quae errat. Ovis quaerit herba, quae ēstur. Quid quaerit herba?
VI. In campō sunt ūna ovis nigra et ūndēcentum ovēs albae. Pāstor habet unum canem nigrum. Cūr nōn habet ūndecentum canēs albōs?
VII. Campus dat silvae ovem. Quid dat silva campō?
VIII. Habet arbor umbram, aut habet umbra arbōrem?

#latinpractice

#latinpractice

Tanaka Ryōhei
Persimmons . Mountains

From: https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1853326310933770502/photo/1

I spent the whole weekend building this... Err... "Portable" directional 2m #hamradio antenna with @Jen Blight, and it was pretty great.

(It's portable in the sense that it only weighs about 2lbs, and can be taken apart to fit in a backpack. I hope to make substantially more portable ones in the future).

The elements are made from 0.5" PEX irrigation tubing (think hula hoop material), wrapped in copper-coated fabric and copper tape, with a layer of clear "repair" tape to prevent tarnishing, while preserving the mad wizard staff vibes.

Each tube is connected to itself using Anderson powerpole connectors, so they can be easily unplugged, and twisted into a smaller footprint for travel.

The boom is a fiberglass driveway marker, and the mast is a telescoping fiberglass pole.

I don't yet know how well the antenna performs, and as you might be able to see from the VNA, it needs a little tuning. But my radio didn't emit any smoke when I transmitted using it! And the signal made it clearly to its intended target (who was about 30ft away).

#hamradio @Jen Blight
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
•

Update: I definitely see a fair chunk of gain! Not enough to communicate with Jen all the way in SF from my back yard, but my field strength meter shows ~40 units when my standard whip antenna only gets ~10. I'm not sure how to interpret this, but if it's roughly proportional to power, I think this implies roughly 6dBd / 8dBi? Also as far as I can tell the front/back ratio is excellent; saw barely any movement in the meter when placed behind the antenna.

I'm pleased with this as a first attempt!

Shiro Shirahata- Moon over Fuji, 1972.

From: https://x.com/MenschOhneMusil/status/1853201333983023451/photo/1

Toni Demuro, Solo per Gatti, 2023.

From: https://x.com/MenschOhneMusil/status/1853183759639839203/photo/1

Last Train/Look

Night Train. 2020 Ink on paper

Christoph Niemann.
American, born in 1970.

From: https://x.com/fraveris/status/1853184339753992541/photo/1

I think I would make a great 60 year old.

Latin practice day 4

Emō līberōs Latīnōs: "Latin via Ovid" and "Cambridge Latin Course, books 1 and 2".
Ōrnāmenta mē nōn ōrnant.
Cubīle in quō dormiō calet (?).

#latinpractice

#latinpractice

I wonder if we're in the twilight of Monty Python being a common comedic reference. Humour does change over time, and I feel like I see way fewer Python references than I did when I was a teenager.
in reply to Daniel Filan

David Mears
David Mears
•
They will live forever, since AI is made using Python (disclaimer - I don't know if that is true), and Python is named after Monty Python.

A Beautiful Moment, Dee Nickerson.
From: https://x.com/MenschOhneMusil/status/1852592656905335109

A failure of an argument against sola scriptura
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
•
Another way of maintaining Sola Scriptura and Perspicuity in the face of Protestant disagreement about essential doctrines is the possibility that all of this is cleared up in the deuterocanonical books that Catholics believe are scripture but Protestants do not. That said, this will still rule out Protestantism, and it's not clear that the deuterocanon in fact clears everything up.

I'm currently using my 64-core Linux desktop to run a genetic algorithm to optimize my design for an emergency #hamradio antenna. About an hour ago I submitted a patch to the (Haskell) codebase of the optimizer to allow it to support curved wires, which I needed because my design is made of four circular hoops. Despite being a fairly low activity project, the PR was merged within about 10 minutes, which felt awesome.

Am I cool yet? How many more layers of nerd do I have to add before I'm cool?

#hamradio
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

ve3hls
ve3hls
• •
From here, it looks like you have re-invented the loop yagi. Build it and confirm that it performs as well as your model...then we can talk about coolness.
in reply to ve3hls

Ben Weinstein-Raun
Ben Weinstein-Raun
•

While researching, I've seen a few similar designs with several different names; "circular quad beam", "cylindrical quad", "E-Z-O" etc.

I'm very new at this so I don't have as much equipment as I'd like for testing this stuff. Just ordered a cheap field strength meter, so hopefully will be able to do better than the "can you hear me now?" test.

in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Giovanni - ZL2GX
Giovanni - ZL2GX
• •

Seriously interesting project. I've used the optimiser in 4NEC2 but it only has preset things you can choose to optimise. Being able to use a Python script as an objective function would be so much nicer 🙂

Anyway looking forward to hearing about what you end up with ...

The word "antenna" has only been used for radio equipment since 1902. Brits call them "aerials". Imo this is a huge missed opportunity and they should obviously be called caducei.

Notes on Claude 3.5 Sonnet (new)'s ability to find errors in Latin text
I took an excerpt from a short story written for beginners, and asked Claude to evaluate it, noting that such short stories often contain errors. In a separate chat, I asked the same question, but replaced "Rōmae" with "Rōmā", which I believe is an error (and Claude in the first chat also thinks is an error). In that chat, Claude also thought the text was correct (but had some unrelated complaints). In a third example, I changed the case of a direct object to the ablative/dative instead of the accusative, and it noticed that. So it looks like Claude is not currently consistent at finding errors in Latin grammar.
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
•
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
•
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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As for why I care about this capability, see this post

Daniel Filan

2024-10-27 00:16:38


Apparently there is a de facto conspiracy among Latin teachers to not criticize the quality of Latin learning resources they create? Seems not great. foundinantiquity.com/2024/04/1…

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