hooser
1yr ago
Higher-protein flour absorbs more water, and that protein is what makes the dough elastic. All-purpose flour is 9-11% protein, bread flour 11-13% (depending on brand), semolina 12-13%, whole-wheat 13-14%. Recipes with the higher-protein flour will need more water.
I have learned, through trial and much error, never to make bread either from all-purpose flour, or from 100% whole-wheat.
Also, it seems that bakers really do rely on ratio-by-weight, rather than ratio-by-volume. When I asked Claude to convert the recipe from 1000 grams of "Typo 00" flour to have a quarter of it be semolina, it gave me:
- 750 g Tipo 00 flour (W300) [6 cups]
- 250 g semolina flour [1½ cups]
Noticing that the cups did not add up to a quarter of semolina, I asked it to re-check its calculations or explain its results, and it did, explaining that semolina is denser.
hooser
1yr ago
If anyone has an example of "this is how I use it for work/at home and it really saves me time and mental energy", I'd be glad to hear.
I wanted to make slow-rising pizza dough from scratch. The online slow-rising whole-wheat bread recipe I liked gave all proportion in weights. I don't have a cooking scale. So I uploaded it to Claude and asked it to convert the recipe to cup measurements. I noticed the water-to-flour ratio has changed, so I had it explain why, and learned quite a bit about the role protein plays in dough. Then I had it re-do the recipe, substituting semolina for a quarter of the flour. Finally, I had it scale the recipe for two particularly sized pizzas I planned to make. Time: about 10 minutes, because I side-tracked into the protein thing and had to check it out elsewhere.
Two days later, I get two delicious pizzas.
hooser
1yr ago
Claude has web-search option, and it's reasonably good. I have a paid subscription plan ($20 per month), so I am not sure whether that option is available for free.
hooser
1yr ago
Part of the problem is confusing politeness and etiquette. Politeness is about showing genuine respect to, and consideration of, others. Etiquette is about the approved norms within a particular society / situation that guide interpersonal behavior. One can be polite without following--or knowing--the proper etiquette for conveying that politeness. One can follow all the norms of etiquette without any actual politeness being involved. In particular, etiquette can--and frequently is--exclusionary: having elaborate or ever-changing norms of etiquette is how a selective society can tell a wanna-be from the real deal.
So take something like announcing your third-person pronouns when introducing yourself in a new class. That's a norm of etiquette that the social justice trans rights supporters have been pressing for. It has a fig-leaf of politeness: you do it because there may be someone in that class whose self-perceived gender doesn't match how that person appears to others, and this person may want to communicate that to the rest of the class, and you saying your pronouns helps normalize how to do that efficiently. That's quite a stretch, though. What it does instead is establish the etiquette that disconnects perceived gender from a person's chosen gender, and states up front that the chosen gender is the way to go. The issue of politeness to everyone who then needs to carry a massive cognitive load of remembering everyone's chosen pronouns and pause to pick one's words to make sure no "misgendering" occurs--that never enters into the equation.
hooser
1yr ago
Since the government's letter demands a "critical mass" in every academic department and teaching unit, it's subject to interpretation whether that calls for one witch or a coven of witches.
It also implies that one can't change one's mind. "Wait," the Statistics department chair says, "we hired you to represent the Frequentists, what are you doing using Bayesean statistics in your research?!"
hooser
1yr ago
Harvard decides to decline Trump's administration's "agreement in principle" for continuing to provide Federal grants and contracts. The Trump administration freezes their $2.2 billion funds.
Unlike Columbia, Harvard is willing to send a costly signal that it is, indeed, an elite private university, and it plans to stay that way.
The Fed's letter included contradictory demands. One can't require merit-based admissions and hiring while also requiring viewpoint-diversity admissions and hiring:
Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. [...] Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity. [...]
I would have loved to see that viewpoint diversity report on an Abstract Algebra class. It should at least require the elimination of radical ideals.
The way I see it, what makes Harvard University elite is that it both draws and correctly chooses the elite. The elite want to go there because other elite will be there, and admission of the non-elites is carefully curated for their usefulness. It's like an exclusive party that's awesome because a whole bunch of awesome people are there, and boring people aren't, with a few useful wingmen. If the party's host was required to invite a bunch of boring people, the party will break up as awesome people take off. There might be a brief party hiatus for the awesome people as they coordinate where to have the next awesome exclusive party, but awesome people seem to coordinate pretty quickly, so that party will resume. Just not at the current host's place.
So Harvard looked at the $2.2 billion, looked at their party, and decided to party on.
hooser
1yr ago
The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter.
Her abilities get represented as highly unusual in that world, and the reason for her deviation is important to the plot. Unfortunately, the author provides no such reason for the protagonist of "Best served cold" set in the same world and time. So skip that one, if martial females mess with your enjoyment of the story.
hooser
1yr ago
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Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. The books are fun to read. They do explore issues of racism and serfdom, but in a way that doesn't correspond to the modern world, and the main character retains a grounded, no-nonsense attitude.
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Both the Dresden Files series and Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. The latter is a six-book completed series, with a cool fantasy-meets-Roman-Empire theme.
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Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy has some of the most vividly developed characters I have ever read in a fantasy novel.
hooser
1yr ago
The issue at stake is whether the US House of Representatives will have proxy voting, which was not allowed except, temporarily, during Covid. Once any exceptions are allowed, those exceptions will get expanded until proxy voting is fully normalized. Except for the few that plan to make statements, a Representative always has something better to do than attend the House vote (make calls to raise money, meet lobbyists). So once proxy voting gets established, there will be strong pressure against attendance.
I understand why Johnson is dragging his feet on the matter.
On the other hand, I wonder how much of the "deliberative nature" of the in-person House vote has already been destroyed by C-Span. If all statements are prepared in advance, and anything you say can and will be used against you in an edited video clip during the next election cycle, does anyone present at the current House floor deliberation change their minds on anything?
hooser
1yr ago
Great post! I want to focus on a minor point you made:
Global poverty has plummeted, lifespans have doubled, and literacy is nearing universality, largely thanks to the diffusion of technologies and modes of thinking traceable back to the Enlightenment's core tenets.
Unlike the other two, literacy is not an undisputed good. It is a difficult mode of communication that takes years to learn, and about 1/5th of adults in the developed world never learn to read for comprehension. We prize literacy because, for now, it's required to navigate our society. Will that still be the case ten years from now, when your phone can text-to-speech anything you point it to, and will not only read it to you but also answer your follow-up questions voice-to-voice? (I already do this with languages I don't know, except I prefer to read the translations myself.)
It's still significant that literacy is so widespread in the world, because it implies that most people have the resources and the leisure to have their kids spend several years pursuing challenging training. Is this the best use of those children's time? I honestly don't know. I have greatly benefited from my ability to read and write, and I continue to prefer to do so even when I have alternatives: I would rather read a blog than listen to a podcast, and I would much rather read a book myself than listen to an audio-book. But I also know many people who prefer it the other way.
So, is literacy (that is, ability to read for comprehension) truly superior to other forms of recorded communication (audio-visual), and does this superiority justify the years of training one needs to master the skill?
hooser
1yr ago
I would expect the modern-day equivalent to have more pop-psych, like "What doesn't kill you still gives you PTSD". Or maybe eco-friendly, like "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints".
hooser
1yr ago
"True Names" by Vernor Vinge (1981), which develops the concept of cyberspace. Vinge was a computer scientist, and it comes through in his writing.
hooser
1yr ago
Huh, my Mozilla address bar still displays 'https://' in the beginning, and I updated Mozilla a few days ago. Maybe I have specified some setting long ago.
hooser
1yr ago
Industrial policy must either put cash up front, or create stable incentives that everyone knows will last for years, to see any results.
Suppose the US government wants to have a complete domestic supply-chain manufacture of computer chips--good idea for military defense purposes--and we are in a situation where US has no semi-conductor fabrication facilities (fabs) and no expertise in building or operating such. As was the case two years ago. US government's options are:
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(a) Take on the task of building and operating a fab and subsidize the entire expense directly like one does for military projects.
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(b) Put up massive up-front cash incentives for already-existing foreign companies to invest in building and running US-based fabs, and hope both companies and bureaucracy move fast enough to get started before political winds shift.
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(c) Massively raise tariffs on imports of foreign-made chips, or any products containing foreign-made chips, using some mechanism that ensures those tariffs stay high for many years to come.
The tariffs option only works if there's a strong guarantee of the high tariffs sticking around for a long time. This way, the demand in the domestic market may be sufficient to entice US-based firms to put the costly investments of building a fab, developing or importing operational expertise, and training staff from scratch, which takes at least a few years to even begin to produce chips. One would also expect the first five years of production will be purely playing catch-up, even if one is optimistic in American manufacturing ingenuity in the long run, so the US-made chips will be more expensive to make than, say, the ones made in Taiwan's mature fabs.
So one could indeed use tariffs to promote the country's industrial policy, but it has to be through a stable policy that can't be easily reversed: at the least, it needs be a law passed by congress.
hooser
1yr ago
Yes, and here's a machine that does the plucking / beheading / de-footing, and claims to also do eviscerating though that's not in the video. All done without AI. There are still humans in the loop hanging up the carcasses onto the machine, so possibly the question is at what point would it become profitable to replace those with automation.
hooser
1yr ago
hooser
1yr ago
I highly recommend Math Circles, if there is one in your area. Typically, a Math Circle is a group of kids of about similar age who meet once a week for like a semester to explore an interesting math idea. Such circles get organized and led by mathematicians (professional or amateur), and they can start quite young. For example, "Math from Three to Seven" (or great review of the book) is basically a diary of a guy running a Math Circle for his young kids and their friends.
At their best, the kind of activity the kids do in a Math Circle actually models an authentic mathematical exploration. Even when not at their best, it gets your daughter together with other kids who are interested in math, and connects you with at least one math adult who is interested in math outreach for kids and will therefore probably know of other local opportunities for STEM extracurriculars.
People mean different things when they say "math". For many not in the field it means doing drills or word problems, which at best are skill challenges posed by others for educational purpose, and do not--cannot--reflect authentic problems that require a mathematical approach. The authentic problems are messy; they are vague; you have to choose what to measure and how, and what to define and how, and sometimes all your options are but poor approximations, and sometimes you can't even begin to tackle the problem as is until you have considered many much simpler similar problems that may (you hope) give you ideas on how to approach the big messy one. That's what "math" is to a mathematician, and those are great problem-solving skills to practice no matter where your life takes you.
hooser
1yr ago
I hear you and sympathize. Do feel free to rant, no matter what you decide to do. Sometimes a rant is just what's needed to realize that you're not happy with the way things are and are on your way to constructively consider your options.
hooser
1yr ago
Good point: at least, if I were to go back in time and steelman my own question, I would use 'universalizability' to convey my notion, despite the ugliness of the term. I mean, it has both the -alize suffix that turns a noun into a verb, and then the -ability suffix to turn it back to a noun.
hooser
1yr ago
But how would that even work, with a single stone in one throw? Does the stone ricochet off of the first-hit bird to the second-hit bird? Or does the stone go bullet-like through the first bird and hit the bird behind it?
hooser
1yr ago
trying to skin two cats with one sharp stone
Wait, why would you want to have more than one sharp stone, if you're skinning cats one at a time?
You have conflated two separate proverbs: "Kill two birds with one stone" and "There are more than one way to skin a cat".
If you're hunting birds with a sling, it's hard enough to hit one bird, let alone two, let alone actually manage to kill them. So "kill two birds with one stone" implies something highly improbable.
If you are skinning an animal, you may have your preferred method, and someone else may have a different approach. And if your method isn't getting the job done, maybe another method will. So "there are more than one way to skin a cat" is a reminder to focus on the goal and not get hung up on a method.
hooser
1yr ago
I'm a mathematician, so I get antsy when someone doesn't clarify their definitions of key terms. I would have accepted something like "By universal human rights I mean whatever was declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948". But no, this candidate was presenting a framework that (and I won't do it justice here) kind of assumes some platonic version of "universal human rights" that international bodies like UN can discover, even if imperfectly, and this framework was intended to model the process of such a discovery. So understanding what this Platonic stuff is was kind of important, I thought.
hooser
1yr ago
That's how the candidate first took it, too: if someone reaches a decision to convert to Catholicism, don't interfere.
But from a perspective of, say, a devout 16-century Catholic, the "if" part is not there: If you come to the conclusion that you don't need to convert to Catholicism, you are deeply mistaken (and probably being lied to by the devil), and your immortal soul is still in danger. That perspective is what drove so many missionaries to risk their lives in the Americas and Africa. That perspective stroke the fires of Inquisition: what matter a few minutes of physical agony if it helps you see the light?
But all I was trying to determine is whether this perspective fits the candidate's definition of "universal human right" as "a right that's applicable to any person". I think it does.
Forgive me for deviating from the central point of your post, but I find this a more pressing question: what do people on-call do to not wake up by spam?
Google phones seem to be pretty good at filtering the spam from international phone numbers, but not as well from the domestic ones. Are apple phones better? Do, say, DAs on call use the AI screening?
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