self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I used to have cats in the house a long time ago, and it definitely helped with rodents. The dogs that replaced them were a... mixed bag. My first German Shepherd could rat with the best of them, and so could her son. The lab and golden that came after? They'd either try and make friends or run away in terror.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Deepfried sticks of butter are a form of indignity I wouldn't put past the Scottish. I believe I heard of someone actually make one, though I can't recall how they stopped it becoming oil in the process.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
peasant-maxx
My ancestors, including my dad, were born peasants. They tried very hard to ensure that I wouldn't grow up as one haha.
People ate better during the Irish famine! Well, minus the potatoes.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Uh.. I've been fond of a single meal a day of biryani, which is about £14 and is about 2k calories. That's around 142 kcal/£. It is also nutritionally complete, in the sense that I have had periods of months where that's all I've really eaten, without obviously falling sick.
It's also worth noting that biryani is a lot tastier than Huel. If I was optimizing purely for calories, I'd be eating sticks of butter.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Hmm.. My recollection is becoming hazy, but I recall that Meta would almost certainly have released OS models simply to get one in at Google/OAI. If they hadn't, then the Chinese would have, I don't believe that DeepSeek or the others all started as Llama forks (though I recall some did).
That reminds me that there's no word on new Meta models. I'm curious to see if Zuck's spending spree shows any dividends.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that Gemini 2.5 Pro (free on AI Studio) allows for a full million tokens of CW. That can fit a CWR thread, maybe every single one this year. The limiting resource is usually my phone refusing to copy and paste the entire text of a very long thread, which I could avoid by either linking or downloading a page as PDF.
I've had no issues with ChatGPT either, which I pay for, or Claude and Kimi which I mooch off.
I'd recommend Gemini on AI Studio. It's literally free, and unless you have excellent opsec, Google probably knows your precise bowel movement timings already. It also saves chat history to private G Drive storage, which means the verbatim conversations are deleted (unless they were trained on already, which is a much lossier process).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Any particular reason you want local? I just copy and paste whole threads into Gemini, ChatGPT 5T, Claude or Kimi. I'd imagine they'd do far better at maintaining nuance than the tier of local models you're using.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Europe is not a serious country (or collective of countries):
Meet EuroLLM: Large language model made in Europe built to support all official 24 EU languages
The largest model is a paltry 9B parameters. I could run something of comparable size on my phone (maybe larger depending on quantization). Small isn't necessarily bad, but the performance is abysmal to boot.
As someone on HN points out, it:
scores just above random chance for benchmarks like MMLU-Pro (17.6%, random chance is 10%).
Bruh. It's not like Mistral is doing so hot either. I suppose it's back to waiting for Gemini 3 and whatever else is cooking in Sino-American data centers. It's like the rest of the world is too poor or retarded to even try. I'd respect a Llama fine-tune more than this thing. Any decent model can handle all the EU "official" languages without breaking a sweat.
(In all fairness, it's a November 2024 model. They haven't done better, and it was trash even back then)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
In a way, my time in London derailed things. I was too torn up by the visa rejection to study the 3-4 days I was there, and I lost a great deal of time traveling back. The bus tickets were an absurd £120, if I'd been a better planner, I'd have booked a flight to Edinburgh instead and saved half the money.
(No knock against you! I had a great time hanging out with you, I wouldn't have studied anyway haha)
Now, I get home, and realize that I have to redouble my efforts if I expect to get decent coverage before my exam date. There's just so much to read, much of it is the same kind of rote memorization I've been kvetching about, and some of it must have pronounced antimemetic effect given how the facts slough off my brain like water/milk off a duck. Eating well is a luxury.
I guess I'll look for chocolate milk or plain gallon bottles and tons of powder. I've eaten worse! Thanks!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Anyone here with experience when it comes to meal-replacements?
I have, on a few occasions, tried various flavors of Huel:
- It tastes like
asschalk. - A single bottle 500ml bottle is only 400 kcal, which is a fucking salad, not a meal as far as I'm concerned.
- I can get a 12 pack for £42 on Amazon, which comes to a stupidly low 114 kcal/£. And that's just a nominal two days of consumption.
A diet of takeout, even something fancy, will almost certainly beat it on calories per unit of currency. I don't really see the point unless I'm traveling and don't want to deal with a "normal" snack. It's very much not a full meal either way.
Why do I even ask? I'm consumed with exam anxiety, my meds suppress my appetite, and I can't be arsed to cook right now (even if, in all honesty, it won't cut down into study time). Plus a moderate caloric deficit is something I don't mind, from a weight loss perspective, I just don't like getting stiffed on the calories I get. I would be happy getting 1800-2000 a day, which is about what I can reasonably continue for days/weeks without feeling like I'm starving.
In other words, can you think of something superior on metrics such as taste, price per calorie, which I can stock up on?
(Please don't suggest sticks of butter, pemmican or drinking cooking oil. I'm only human. If all else fails, it's McDonald's and their shakes that have calorie densities comparable to nuclear fission)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
God knows. The thing is, I'm not a permanent resident in the UK. I have a skilled workers visa, which is great, but beyond that, I have no permanent ties here. I presume that plays into their calculation of flight risk, though I don't know if they properly consider the fact that I'm a doctor on the middle of training who doesn't stand to gain much from cutting and running.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
Spoilsport, he's the one who's convinced me to carry a discreet plastic bottle full ot South African wine. In all fairness, it was his idea.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
It well might be, but I don't look rich/distinguished enough to know for a fact. I will keep an eye open for Latin chanting or naked women with knives.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
I'm a simple man, and this doesn't change my usual strategy, which is to copy-all and paste directly into an LLM when I need them to opine on something. It's not pretty but it works.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
You're in luck, I'd probably do that anyway. I'm not sure I'll get to see the cages or nuns, I'm afraid, since that is very much invitation-only. Even my uncle has only been down there the once.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
In all fairness, neither do I. I would have expected a pig and/or a Prime Minister too.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
I think a reasonable reader will interpret my statement as a claim that I'm making it in good faith.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
Neural Viz makes some great stuff: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL14oiCokyIUWhPgCJej67myAN1n8umIap
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
Scott is affiliated with Inkhaven, but he's one of the Big Name attendees/mentors, I don't believe he's responsible for the day to day management or organization, which is run by Lighthaven staff (most of them are LessWrong mods or in that circle). I left a message in the Slack too, so if Scott sees it and feels like offering help, I'd be touched, I just don't feel right in bothering him about it.
A drink tomorrow afternoon sounds great! Same place as before, or different?
Can't go wrong with a Spoons, I'll send you a text, let's say we meet anywhere between 2-5? I will likely be attending a speed dating event later for the hell of it, and you could come along if you have £22 to burn!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
As someone who hasn't watched SpongeBob, that just looks like what I'd imagine a normal episode would be!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
I believe I have mentioned, at some point, an uncle of mine who is far more accomplished as a psychiatrist. For more context, I didn't even know I had a psychiatrist relative in the UK (there's nothing new under the sun) and he suspects it's because my parents didn't want me to be influenced and turn away from the noble profession of gynecological surgery. Jokes on them, it happened anyway.
Very nice guy, but he's getting on in years and is still single. He was a ladykiller in his 20s and 30s, but after a messy divorce from a BPD ex (he's just like me fr fr), he never settled down due to enjoying the bachelor life.
This won't do. I, a humble guest in his palatial house, have already had both of his parents attempt to enlist me in their crusade to have him marry and produce bouncable babies before they depart this mortal coil. I'd say that's none of my business, but he seems to genuinely regret not settling down earlier and is attempting to make amends.
Well, and here's the pickle. He's roped me into attending a single's event at some exclusive London club. He told me they put stickers on phone cameras and keep naked women in cages downstairs plus bona fide BDSM nuns of uncertain denomination(this is not a joke). The whole place isn't quite Eyes Wide Shut, I believe there is a perfectly normal dance floor, albeit with expensive drinks. We have both agreed that the judicious thing to do is to pre-game with copious amounts of liquor before making our presence felt, as we need liquid courage to talk to strange women in loud places. Also, we're cheapskates.
And our presence will be felt. He's not a fan of understated fashion, some of his suits are so loud that they attract noise complaints. He's kindly lent me one that is reasonable tasteful, on the grounds that my perfectly nice bomber jacket won't stand out.
So uh.. Advice? Suggestions? I've ticked off the "drink till I'm uninhibited enough to dance" option. I am mostly dedicating myself to being a good wingman, because I could do with attending a wedding at some point and because it will much easier to lean on him for job recommendations if I'm responsible for his newfound happy matrimony.
It is worth noting that he is also rather successfully convincing me to attend a speed dating event the next day. It's a heartening sign that all the ladies' tickets are sold out, even if the demographics are slightly older than me. But I have never been one to turn down a lady in distress due to something as paltry as an age gap. Any advice for that occasion? I'm mostly going out of sheer curiosity, I don't live in London, and I'm not likely to anytime soon. But it might be fun!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
You had me sold at no rain. The winter here is bad enough without the constant drizzle that can't quite be arsed to turn into snow.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
I'd feel bad asking Scott for something like that, while I idolize him, I can't really expect him to be more than dimly aware of my existence at best. Just as importantly, I doubt that he would be able to arrange something like that, unless maybe Vance is following him on Twitter. I've yet to hear back from Lighthaven given the awkward hours, but if they suggest some kind of solution themselves, I have little to lose by trying.
I did tell them that next time, it might be worth sending a formal looking letter of invitation as opposed to an email. That's all I really had to hand the visa officials :(
(Thank you, I'm still in town, so let me know if you'd like a drink Saturday afternoon or later on Sunday)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
She's the world's most renowned/infamous sex researcher! I had to see how she did the data collection on important metrics like "came in fluffer", ideally via a practical demonstration.
Joking aside, I'm sorry dude, that's a nuisance.
Thank you. I'm trying to look at the bright side, which is fucking off for a vacation somewhere nice and warm. I knew the visa approval wasn't guaranteed, but I still thought it was more likely to go through than not. I'm as squeaky clean as it gets, but alas, not clean enough.
God I hate i-frames. Stupid, 'gamey' mechanic that should be replaced with actually reactive animations. If you dodge a hit, you dodge it by not letting it hit you.
The distaste extends to wonky hitboxes, I've seen some of the abominations in Dark Souls, where the hitbox of the weapon/projectile only has the vaguest resemblance to the model. It's 2025, we should be over this.
Since I'm complaining already, I hate games that replace visible damage to enemies with health bars. Stop being lazy, display damage that isn't more than a coat of red paint till the enemy suddenly goes from 100% combat capable to keeling over.
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