Also, all my side-projects.
(No, I will NOT use LLM for side-projects. That defeats the purpose of side-projects for me!)
Slow
201–210 of 238 posts
Re: Slow
#202I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…
There's a youtube channel shadiversity that I haven't watched in awhile. It is mostly about fantasy media and swords but also spends a lot of time on medieval building techniques and clothing. One of the more interesting videos I watched talked about how before and even after saw mills could process and produce different sized boards people would 'grow' them instead by trimming trees to produce long straight narrow branches. There was even a still living example in some English village that some trimmed 100 years ago before the process was completely stopped.
This also reminds me of those Japanese temples where in order to preserve the institutional knowledge of how to rebuild the temple in case of disaster the monks tear it down and rebuild it from scratch every 30-40 years assuring the next generation has experience.
Re: Slow
#203I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…
This is an urban legend. The college archivist covered it: http://web.archive.org/web/20020816065622/http://www.new.ox.... > In 1859, the JCR told the SCR that the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true. > In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on `progress', i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Ho…
> the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true.
> Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire (forests which the College had owned since 1441), he had the largest oaks cut down and used to make new beams for the ceiling.
So seems like the "legend" is true after all, the trees were 150+ old and let to grow, and the "takedown" is just not wanting to acknowledge that they did it purposefully, which is beside the point pedantic hair splitting...
Re: Slow
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, "exacting young man debunks charming tale with touching moral, to the benefit of nobody". A tale as old as time.
It is good to be able to recognize charming tales and other biases and influences in a narrative. Having them pointed out counteracts the readiness of people to take things at face value. Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it. I don't know what irked you about the other comment, but I think there's a positive side to it.
>Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it.
Oh, but it does.
Here's "a thing that happened" vs "here's a tall tale" means whatever message is approached very differently.
Re: Slow
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just compare the billionaires actions now - they are building tunnels in hawaii to prepare for survival just as they are knowingly destroying the future instead of spending their obscene wealth to protect it.
Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars in the low chance Earth becomes uninhabitable, and he'll never live to see the Mars dream become a reality even if everything goes as planned. But I guess that doesn't fit the common narratives about a man that isn't a cartoon but a flawed human with strengths and weaknesses. This is why we don't hear of great men anymore: We only hear about them when they're long…
>Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars
Sure
Re: Slow
#206Re: Slow
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which defines why American society seems to be F'ed of late. Decades of short term rewards combined with a baby boomer population looking at their last hoorah and declining relevance. Most of the old people I interact seem to be in a state of denial about soon not being here.
Why? It's very easy to get people to plant trees for you. Just give a gardener, even a very old one, some money and they'll do it for you.
Because "caring for the future" is not a problem that's solved with money. Especially when short-term profit trumps it, and the people that should be caring wont be alive in that future and don't give a fuck.
Thinking "we'll just pay someone to do it" is exactly the mindset that fucked up everything.
(And, for starters, you need to care for X to pay someone to do X, to begin with).
Re: Slow
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which defines why American society seems to be F'ed of late. Decades of short term rewards combined with a baby boomer population looking at their last hoorah and declining relevance. Most of the old people I interact seem to be in a state of denial about soon not being here.
What is the bad part? Still number 1 GDP. When was the glory days? Pre 1900s with slavery? The war and interwar years? The cold war? Pessimistic.
> Still number 1 GDP.
China will overtake them in 10, 15 years; possibly sooner depending on the economic damage of the Trump admin's trade policies, possibly later if another US company does well abroad.
Re: Slow
#209I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…
This is an urban legend. The college archivist covered it: http://web.archive.org/web/20020816065622/http://www.new.ox.... > In 1859, the JCR told the SCR that the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true. > In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on `progress', i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Ho…
I would only "complain" about this urban legend if there was no way someone would be so future-thinker as to plant trees that are going to be used one or two centuries later.
But since I'm sure we have done things like that in the past, for me, the urban legend is "valid" and I don't feel like that specific case being true or false is that important, just the pattern...
Re: Slow
#210A friend of mine once wrote a dictionary[1]. It has all the (normal) one syllable words in English, defined using only other one syllable words. He decided to work on it by focusing on one letter per year, so A was in 1991, B was 1992, and the book was finished in 2017, 26 years later. It's not even a very long book - only a few hundred pages - but I'm sure if I tried to do the same thing all at once, I'd probably ha…
I question how well many of the words that come to mind could be defined using only other one syllable words, but it sounds like a fun project.
Most of them aren't defined as rigorously as a dictionary would do, it's more like trying to come up with a plausible description for each word.
"day" might be "time in which the sun goes round the earth" even though that's not technically correct.
"sit" could be "to take a chair" and "sat" might be "to have took a chair"
"moth" is "a bug that flies and likes to eat cloth", and so on.