ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
I think just about everyone who read the OP could spot the AI signature.
I will register disagreement with this broad assertion.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
I ran into a very interesting article, wrote a rough draft of an essay, asked multiple models for feedback and edit passes, then did the tedious work of checking for hallucinations. This was over multiple days, and several good points noted by the AI, such as the applicability of various economic models, was probably accepted by me into the final version.
You haven't even seen the raw essay! How would you know if it's better? I don't, or I'd have posted it.
I eagerly await the day when a user posts alongside a comment the Git repository containing all of his iterations and the LLM responses thereto.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
Discovered through Project Gutenberg's RSS feed of newly uploaded books: What Is an Index? A Few Notes on Indexes and Indexers, by Henry Wheatley, Secretary of the Index Society and Treasurer of the Early English Text Society
Indexes need not necessarily be dry, and in some cases they form the most interesting portion of a book. The Index to Prynne’s Histrio-mastix (1633), unlike the text, is very readable, and from it may be obtained a sufficient idea of the author’s argument. Prynne deserves especial mention here, as he may be considered as a martyr to his conscientiousness in producing this useful key to the contents of his ponderous volume. No one could read through the book, with its notes overflowing into the margin, so the licenser got confused and passed it in despair. Carlyle refers to the Histrio-mastix as “a book still extant but never more to be read by mortal.” The vituperation however was easily understood when boiled down in an alphabetical form, and Attorney-General Noy found that the author himself had forged the weapons that the prosecutor could use in the attack. This is proved by a passage in Noy’s speech at Prynne’s trial, where he points out that the accused “says Christ was a Puritan in his Index.”
The Indexer has a considerable power in his hand if he chooses to use it, for he can state in a few words what the author may have hidden in verbiage, and he can so arrange his materials as to force the reader to draw an inference. [Whig historian Thomas] Macaulay knew how an author’s own words might be turned against himself, and therefore he wrote to his publishers, “Let no d—— Tory make the Index to my History.” In the Index to the eighth volume of the Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, 1820, is the following entry:
Watts (Mr.), illiberal remarks of, on Captain Kater’s experiments.
Mr. Watts was displeased at the use of the uncomplimentary adjective and complained to the Editor. In the Notices to Correspondents at the beginning of the tenth volume we read:
The Editor begs to apologize to Mr. Watts for the term ‘illiberal’ used in the index of vol. 8 of this Journal. It escaped his observation till Mr. Watts pointed it out.
Lord Campbell proposed that any author who published a book without an Index should be deprived of the benefits of the Copyright Act, and the Hon. Horace Binney, LL.D., a distinguished American lawyer, held the same views, and would have condemned the culprit to the same punishment. Those, however, who hold the justest theories sometimes fail in practice; thus Lord Campbell had to acknowledge that he had himself sinned before the year 1857; and the deficiencies of the forty Indexes to Allibone’s Dictionary are pointed out in a paper read before the Conference of Librarians in October, 1877. These are the words written by Lord Campbell in the preface to the first volume of his Lives of the Chief Justices (1857)—
I have only further to express my satisfaction in thinking that a heavy weight is now to be removed from my conscience. So essential did I consider an Index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a Bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an Index of the privilege of copyright; and moreover to subject him for his offence to a pecuniary penalty. Yet from difficulties started by my printers, my own books have hitherto been without an Index. But I am happy to announce that a learned friend at the bar, on whose accuracy I can place entire reliance, has kindly prepared a copious Index which will be appended to this work, and another for the new stereotyped edition of the Lives of the Chancellors.
Books of facts are much easier indexed than books of opinion; but it is most important that the contents of the latter should be properly registered. Some indexers seem to be of opinion that proper names are the most important items in an index, and while carefully including all these, they omit facts and opinions of much greater importance. As a rule it is objectionable when the consulter finds no additional information in the book to what is already given in the index; for instance, should the observation be made respecting a certain state of mind that “the Duke of Wellington probably felt the same at the Battle of Waterloo,” it will be well for the indexer to pass the remark by unnoticed, as should he make the following entries, the consulter is not likely to be in a very genial mood when he looks up the references:
Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington’s supposed feelings at the battle of.
Wellington (Duke of), his supposed feelings at Waterloo.
The Indexer needs knowledge so as to be able to correct his author when necessary, for the most careful author will make slips occasionally, and it is highly satisfactory when the Indexer can set him right. He needs to be specially upon his guard in the case of misprints. Probably the most fruitful source of blundering is the confusion of the letters u and n. These are identical in old MSS., and consequently the copyist sometimes finds it difficult to decide which he shall use. In Capgrave’s Chronicle of England is a reference to the “londe of Iude” [Judæa], but this is mis-spelt Inde in the edition published in the Master of the Rolls’ series in 1858. Here we have a simple misprint which can easily be set right, but the Indexer has enlarged it into a wonderful blunder. Under the letter I is the following curious piece of information:
“India ... conquered by Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, 56.”!!
ToaKraka
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2d ago
people you """know""" via internet communities
Didn't we just have a discussion regarding how, on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
The jury found that it was legal for the bullet he shot to hit the guy that he shot, but it was not legal for him to shoot the bullet in the first place.
Presumably, this means that the law expects you to teleport the bullet from your gun into your target without firing it or otherwise having it occupy the intervening space.
I think a better inference is that (1) the jury found the wounding justified but the method of wounding unjustified, so (2) in a situation where a self-defense justification is dubious, the law expects you to use a knife or your fists rather than endangering others by firing a gun (or maybe to just reveal the gun, but not actually fire it until the self-defense justification becomes less dubious).
Relevant laws:
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
I think somebody here said a while ago that the paid LLMs are leagues more competent than the free ones, so if you're using a free one you may not be getting the full picture.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Unfortunately, "for legal and security reasons" judicial documents other than appellate decisions are not open for electronic perusal in Pennsylvania, so I can't do much further investigation.
Is this simply that the criteria for "assault" are strict and he didn't quite meet all the criteria?
Pennsylvania's definition of "assault" does not seem particularly strict.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
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<del>Adam and Steve</del><ins>Richard and Michael</ins>become romantically involved in year 1991, and exchange rings in year 1992. However, they live in Nevada, which neither permits in-state same-sex marriages nor recognizes out-of-state same-sex marriages. In year 2008, California legalizes same-sex marriage, and the two men get married there. But Nevada does not recognize the marriage until the federal supreme court forces it to do so in year 2015. -
In year 2020, Michael files for divorce. However, there is a snag. For purposes of determining what property is community property gained during the marriage and subject to division in the divorce, when did the marriage begin—1992 (when the men would have married if Nevada had permitted it), 2008 (when the parties entered into a marriage that was recognized in California but not in Nevada), or 2015 (when Nevada started recognizing their marriage)?
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The state supreme court finds that (1) the federal supreme court's decision does require Nevada to retroactively recognize the 2008 California marriage, but (2) Nevada's courts are not authorized to create out of thin air a 1992 common-law marriage for these same-sex romantic partners when Nevada's legislature has explicitly refused to recognize common-law marriages even for opposite-sex romantic partners since 1943.
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A person is pulled over for driving an unregistered car. He immediately starts shouting (among other things) "I'll fuck you up" at the two police officers, repeatedly tries to get out of the car while the officers tell him to stay in the car and physically hold his car door shut, and eventually successfully exits the car, fights with the officers, and has to be restrained. He is acquitted of assault, but is convicted of making terroristic threats.
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The defendant argues that the conviction is not supported by the evidence. He points to a case where a person arrested for public drunkenness told police officers he was going to kill them, but his conviction for making terroristic threats was vacated because, in his "obviously inebriated" status and "agitated and angry state of mind", he merely "expressed transitory anger rather than a settled purpose to carry out the threat or to terrorize the other person".
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The trial judge rejects the defendant's argument. In this case, defendant actively engaged in a fistfight with the officers, showing that he indeed was willing to carry out his threats to harm them. The trial judge imposes a total sentence of four years (with the possibility of parole after two years) for the two threats. The appeals panel affirms.
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ISO 1496-1:2013 (Series 1 Freight Containers—Specification and Testing): 200 dollars (160 Swiss francs)
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Master Grade Ex-S Gundam/S Gundam plastic model kit: 160 dollars
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Three weeks of food at home: 170 dollars
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60 minutes with a jade-like beauty: 160 dollars (240 Australian dollars)
The market (ﷺ) has determined that these vastly different items have roughly equivalent values. Isn't money wonderful?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5d ago
See the recent controversy over Chinese billionaires who allegedly are buying literally hundreds of surrogate children in the US.
Some Chinese parents, inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children, pay millions in surrogacy fees to hire women in the U.S. to help them build families of jaw-dropping size. Xu calls himself “China’s first father” and is known in China as a vocal critic of feminism. On social media, his company said he has more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the U.S.
Another wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Huiwu, hired U.S. models and others as egg donors to have 10 girls, with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men, according to people close to the executive’s education company.
The market has grown so sophisticated, experts say, that at times Chinese parents have had U.S.-born children without stepping foot in the country. A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services—even to pick up the newborns from hospitals—has risen to accommodate the demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back, at a cost of up to $200,000 per child.
One wealthy businessman in China, who like Wang is also in the education business, wanted more than 200 children at once using surrogates, envisioning a family enterprise, [Nathan] Zhang[, founder and CEO of IVF USA,] said. “I asked him directly, ‘How do you plan to raise all these children?’ He was speechless,” said Zhang, who said he refused him as a client.
Other surrogacy professionals described similarly head-spinning numbers. The owner of one agency in California said he had helped fill an order for a Chinese parent seeking 100 children in the past few years, a request spread over several agencies.
A Los Angeles surrogacy attorney said he had helped his client, a Chinese billionaire, have 20 children through surrogacy in recent years.
Amanda Troxler, a Los Angeles-based surrogacy lawyer, said her firm consulted with a hopeful Chinese parent who said she wanted eight or 10 surrogacies and asked for a discount. “I was like, ‘No, we’re not Costco,’” said Troxler, who didn’t take the client because she rejects those looking for more than two surrogacies at once.
Last month, Xu’s ex-girlfriend, Tang Jing, alleged in a post on Weibo that he had 300 children, living across numerous properties in multiple countries. Xu has previously accused Tang of theft and the two have ongoing lawsuits. Tang didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In a statement on Weibo at the time, [Xu's company] Duoyi Network said the 300 figure was wrong but confirmed a stunning fact: “After many years of effort” through surrogacy in the U.S., Xu has “only a little over 100” children.
Later in November, the [pseudonymous Weibo] user linked to Xu posted a video of more than a dozen toddler or early grade-school-age children playing on an outdoor patio in an unknown location. “What the truth is, everyone can see for themselves,” the user posted.
As the camera panned around the patio, the children—who appeared to be mostly boys—began running toward it. “Daddy!” they yelled. “Daddy!”
The appellant says the sentencing judge made legal errors by: failing to apply Gladue principles in a meaningful way; placing minimal weight on the recommendations of the Sentencing Circle [a special pre-sentence report from members of the defendant's tribe, in addition to the usual pre-sentence reports from the defendant and the prosecutor]; overemphasizing denunciation and deterrence, and underestimating the restraint provisions of the Criminal Code that specifically apply to Indigenous offenders; and failing to place adequate weight on the mental illness he was experiencing when he committed the offences. He seeks a new sentence of time served and “a period of residual probation with conditions that encourage rehabilitation”.
As these reasons explain, I agree the sentencing judge erred by not sufficiently accounting for the appellant’s serious mental health and addictions issues at the time of the offences. I find these factors, viewed in the context of the appellant’s Gladue factors, were underemphasized, which constituted an error in principle. The principle of restraint should have had more resonance in this case.
Anecdote: Some years ago, I was playing a semi-active role in my state's branch of the Libertarian Party. At the time, the party used Slack as its primary center of communication, and there was a minor crisis because Slack was discontinuing several free features on which the party relied. (Most prominently, Slack would now delete messages after a few weeks, rather than storing them indefinitely.) Unbelievably, the first instinct of these (state) Libertarian Party bigwigs was to switch to Discord! IIRC, they said to me something like: "We think that having the imperfect solution of Discord immediately is better than having the better solution of Element several months from now." I (merely a dabbler in this area) actually had to go to the effort of setting up an example Matrix/Synapse/Element installation in a Digital Ocean virtual machine (in the space of a few days, not a few months) before one of the bigwigs got around to duplicating the setup on his own personal hardware (not even owned by the party, I think).
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