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PokerPirate


				

				

				

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joined 2022 October 06 22:32:38 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
						
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PokerPirate


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 October 06 22:32:38 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Tinker Tuesday for May 12th, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing this.  The project is fascinating to me from a technical perspective.


I'm currently working on a make-like build system for automating LLM workflows like yours.  I've only been using it for internal projects so far, but I might try putting together an example that outputs material compatible with your system.  So I looked into some of the technical details, and I have a few questions for you.


Q1


It looks like each novel is stored in its own git repo.  I dug through your https://github.com/JohnQPulp/CupOfGold repo and I think I understand how all the info is stored.  My first question is: is the annotation format you use in pulp.txt standard for visual novels or something you invented?  Specifically, in the lines


All afternoon the wind sifted out of the black Welsh glens, crying notice that Winter was come sliding down over the world from the Pole; and riverward there was the faint moaning of new ice. It was a sad day, a day of gray unrest, of discontent.<e>"Winter... of discontent" opens Steinbeck's first novel. That's some neat, Shakespearean <book>The Winter of Our Discontent|career bookending</book>.</e>
b=wales

The gently moving air seemed to be celebrating the loss of some gay thing with a soft, tender elegy.
n:r=Robert Morgan; n:m=Mother Morgan; n:g=Gwenliana; n:h=Henry Morgan



I'm wondering if the html-like tags and the b=wales metadata stuff is formally documented anywhere?


Q2


These two repos look like how your generating the actual HTML from a book repo:



But what are you using to automate the actual git repos of the books?  Could you walk me through that workflow a bit?  (This is the part that I might try automating with my own tool.)


For example, I don't see anything in the book repos that look like they are designed to enforce consistency (like a character sheet) anywhere.  All the material in the repo looks more like a final product than intermediate developer/artist "documentation".  Do you generate any intermediate files like this?


Q3


What's the approximate cost for the full conversion?  How much time does it take?  (both manual and API/compute)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Baby Don't Fear the Reaper
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll second that I also appreciate these posts :)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always thought mission was equally required for both men and women, and only adult converts "get out" of mission.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my reply to @clo above I mention having just read an easy-greek reader of The Illiad... but since you mention Sherlock Holmes... I feel obligated now to mention that I just received an attic greek translation of Sherlock Holmes from amazon this week.  I've been really enjoying reading these "modern ancient greek" stories recently.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just read Ho epi Troian Polemos.  It's an easy-greek reader that tells the story of the Illiad using only ~400 greek words.  It's designed for someone who has had about 1 semester of greek studies.


If you're actually interested enough in the books to re-read a translation, then I recommend starting to just go to the original language!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I teach computer science and so I look at a lot of people's hands as I watch them type on the keyboard.  I'd guess that about 1/3 of female students have nails long enough that they cannot type comfortably on a keyboard, and this meaningfully impacts their performance in my classes.  (Foreign-born women do not have this problem; only American-born women.)  I don't see any painted nails though, just grotesquely large nails.


The median parental income at this school is $500k/year, so these are pretty upper class women.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's time for the daily Two Minutes Hate against translators/localizers/paraphrasers who take unjustified liberties with the source material. "Said" rather than "had said"? "Old gentleman" rather than "gentleman"? Commas rather than em dashes? No repetition of "my son"?




This week I was reading my bible in greek and noticed that in Matt 15:17 uses the word ἀφεδρῶνα (toilet).  Sadly, none of the popular translations like NIV/ESV actually include this word in their translation :(


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Dell-Mann Amnesia is related.  But the effect I'm thinking about / worried about is different.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is the sort of high-quality motte post about random topics I've never thought about that I love to see.  Thank you.


I have a meta-comment, however, about themotte: I wonder how dangerous high quality posts like this are that are outside my area of expertise?


What I mean by that is that I don't have enough background knowledge to fully judge the accuracy of this post.  I will probably make future decisions based on this information though.  And I suspect that there are enough well written posts like this that contain enough not-quite-perfectly-accurate statements that I will make suboptimal decisions in the future based on motte comments that I thought were correct but turned out not to be.  And I wonder what the cumulative negative effects of this will be on my life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Physical strength required for jobs in different occupations."




According to this link, carrying 1lbs of weight at all times qualifies for "medium work"... my clothing weighs more than that...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Foreign governments have long been trying to monetize this, as well, paying handsomely for information provided by insiders.




Actually, American spies are famously recruited for very cheap prices.  For example Ronald Pelton sold the secrets of the multi-billion dollar Operation Ivy Bells to the Soviet KGB for only $35k.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My vomit-inducing custom house is approximately three-fourths complete.




This is the first I've noticed your roof is so shallow and you have no eves.  I live in perfect-weather-california, and even here I know of lots of homeowners who complain about weather-induced problems from this type of roof.


I am jealous that you actually know where all your pipes/wires are and what they do...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My impression is that morale is sky-high.  Military folk love to play with their toys and they're getting to play with essentially zero risk right now.  The US Navy is doing all sorts of things it hasn't had the change to do since WWII, like sinking ships with submarines and launching broadside attacks with cannons.  As much as I disapprove morally, these are legitimately fun things to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe in San Francisco.  But here in my bubble in LA nursing is higher status.  The only status conveyed by SWE is the status of money.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


right to giant congress




Wow.  I never knew there were originally 12 amendments in the bill of rights.  I feel ashamed of my civics education.


Also, I'm fully convinced. Let's complete the Bill of Rights.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You would have needed a decent full rack of machines in a data center to do a moderately large scale search task back then.  No GPUs though.  These days, that same task can be done on a single machine that cost <<$5k.  Hardware efficiency gains have been massive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I understand.  Modern LLMs have not meaningfully impacted search at all.  Our ability to semantically search documents in a particular technical domain has not advanced tremendously in the last decade.  word2vec (2012) and BERT (2017) were both meaningful step changes (but only a small step).  Nothing in the generative/LLM era has meaningfully impacted search.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I said this in a comment last week, but the utility would be more like "search all the depositions we have on file and pull all the ones where a witness testified about X". Well, we have tens of thousands of depositions on file, most in PDF but some in a special format used for court transcriptions. Conservatively assuming 100 pages per depo and 140 words per page, that comes out to something like half a billion tokens of context required, before we even consider that PDFs take more tokens than plain text, and a lot more if they haven't been OCR'd (which most of these haven't).




This is well-within the technological capability of 2010 AI systems (using techniques that look nothing like chatgpt and where concepts like "context windows" don't apply).  So the lack of a tool that does this for you has nothing to do with technical limits on AI, but only on someone's desire to build it/market it to you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, every moderately educated person knows all of this.  I want a grand unified theory of mind change that simultaneously explains all of these historical effects and simultaneously makes predictions about the future.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Like I said in my post:




I have a decent sense of what happened for each of these topics individually




I'm not looking for individualized explanations of these events.  I'm looking for a grand overarching theory of society mind changes that can simultaneously explain all of them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would be very interested in reading some effort posts that explore how people actually change their core moral principles.  Off the top of my head, some of the historical examples that I don't fully understand are:


    

  1. how exactly did gay marriage and pro-choice become the default?
    2. 

  2. how do religious groups reliably attract converts (or prevent deconversion)?
    3. 

  3. how did America become anti-alcohol and then pro-alcohol so quickly in the Prohibition era?  (These required Constitutional Amendments! I can't fathom 2/3rds of the population agreeing on something like this.)
    4. 

  4. how did America change it's mind on eugenics / slavery / the Indian question / so many other political topics so abruptly?
    5. 

  5. why did American fail to win the "hearts and minds" in Iraq / Afghanistan / Vietnam?
    6. 



I have a decent sense of what happened for each of these topics individually, but I feel like there's a lot of commonalities / general principles that good be extracted here.  I feel like this could provide a good sense of "epistemic hygiene" to help me from changing my mind when I don't intend to, help me better predict what future society will look like, and help me better convince people of my own moral intuitions.  Maybe something like this already exists buried in the lesswrong archives?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Faith & Doubt During Holy Week
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm just a puny protestant, but I see my own spiritual journey reflected in everything you wrote :)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had no idea the bio job market payed so poorly.  I would highly caution my undergrad CS students about taking such a position.  I'd be telling the CS phds to run screaming for the hills.  I'd think you'd get a much better deal at a shitty postdoc at some tier3 university.  I'd be shocked if your advisor would tell you differently (but please correct me if I'm wrong... it's always eye-opening to see what non-CS folk put up with).


About the equity: I can't imagine this company is on track to a >100 million exit that would be required for any non-founder equity to be worth more than toilet paper.  The standard advice in the CS world is to treat non-founder equity as a possibly nice bonus that you'll get in 5 years.  I've basically never heard of someone's equity being worth more than their annual salary at exit except in the unicorn google-esq cases.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The downside of your image is that I no longer think of you as a fan of Hyperion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This just does not match my understanding of recent history at all... so I guess it's useful for me to understand that there are people in the world who view things the way you do :)