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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2075 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 31, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anecdota on Von Neumann I find interesting, pulled from different sites

Equally, von Neumann had no interest in sport and, barring long walks (always in a business suit), he would avoid any form of vigorous physical exercise for the rest of his life. When his second wife, Klari, tried to persuade him to ski, he offered her a divorce. ‘If being married to a woman, no matter who she was, would mean he had to slide around on two pieces of wood on some slick mountainside,’ she explained, ‘he would definitely prefer to live alone and take his daily exercise, as he put it, “by getting in and out of a pleasantly warm bathtub.”

It is interesting that the smartest man who ever lived did not engage in any physical exercise short of walking.

he claimed he had low sales resistance, and so would have his wife come clothes shopping with him

He was not a skilled poker player

Did his genius come at the expense of social awareness? Maybe. I find the idea of zero sum cognition utterly fascinating.

He famously always wore a grey oxford 3 piece suit, including when playing tennis with Stanislaw Ulam, or when riding a donkey down the Grand Canyon

I felt that he was sometimes somewhat peculiar that he would be impressed by government officials or generals and so on. If a big uniform appeared that made more of an impression than it should have. It was odd.

Parties and nightlife held a special appeal for von Neumann. While teaching in Germany, von Neumann had been a denizen of the Cabaret-era Berlin nightlife circuit.”

Playing tennis in a 3-piece suit is just about the most insane thing I've ever heard.

Do keep in mind that while it's still bizarre it was probably less bizarre at the time - back in the day wearing a suit was much closer to default behavior, and therefore this may have been an eccentricity, but not as far off from appropriate.

I don't think his cognition was literally zero-sum. It's more of a marginal utility question. If spending X additional mental effort on social graces provides you with M utilons and spending it on thinking about math provides you with N utilons with M << N because people are willing to put up with your eccentricity, then even if you have virtually boundless mental effort it makes sense to spend it all on thinking about math.

He basically spent enough of his cognition on social graces to graduate from "insane" to "eccentric" and then considered the problem solved.

Developing on video watching speed discussion: What Youtube channels you watching? Preferably relatively less popular and of the "hidden gems" variety.

To start:

Stupid Ones Games, - there is little to watch here, but the guy is developing Paradox-like grand strategy similar to Victoria II in Unreal Engine. Right now there are no dev blog style videos, only snippets of some features no longer than 3 minutes, but I expect this to change in the future.

Min Maxer Gaming, Quite niche content and only two videos, but if like you old RTS and specifically solo missions there is something for you. Currently he tries to complete Age of Mythology campaign without losing a single unit.

Engel, Dead channel, but author already made quite a number of video essay style game reviews which were sadly never popular.

DiploStrats, Main and only focus is analysis of Diplomacy matches, which because of their interwoven strategic and social nature are interesting even for people who never played it.

The Distributist, I think many people here already heard of him, but still I wanted to mention this channel for its interesting far rightist perspective, that maybe is common here, but expressed in much better form, than you can expect from mottizens with similar views.

This video is probably the funniest I've watched this year or last year.

Gundam Battle Operation 2 gameplay: Spider-Chieftain, Flailthroughs, Sneed Plays, Ninjaguy _12, Salty Walty, xLord Anubis

Miscellaneous gameplay: Raocow (longtime let's-player with 13,000 videos)

War Thunder gameplay: Orangefan

Splatoon 3 gameplay: DH1125

Magic: The Gathering: Arena limited-format gameplay: Gomlet X

interesting far rightist perspective, that maybe is common here, but expressed in much better form, than you can expect from mottizens with similar views.

I feel personally attacked.

And can also offer no protest to your assertion.

My YT Submission: Horses

Very stylistic documentary shorts on ... nothing in particular? But they're very well done. The one on Icelandic Witches is a must watch.

Mental Outlaw - Based and FOSS-pilled IT news (may contain farming).

Whose Body Is It - A hippie, new-age, conspiracy-theorist feminist podcast. It might be the very anti-thesis of our forum, now that I think about it, so perhaps some of you will run away screaming. Still, lot's of interesting interviews, and I feel it's the kind of anti-thesis that, unlike the more mainstream / elite forms of feminism, could lead to a synthesis.

Transparency Podcast - Trans dudes discussing the trans-mania. I especially recommend the National Transgender Health Summit series.

EveryBodyShook - A documentary series about the totally schizo, not at all actually happening as we speak, depopulation conspiracy theory.

Fights this week.

Porier vs Islam Makhachev

Porier is an everyday man's fighter but sightly better. Better than average everywhere, really good in some places but elite in zero spots besides one, beating up pressuring brawlers.

Makhachev is an interesting fighter. Whilst Khabib was the physical freak, makhachev wwas always the technical guy. Khabib relied on chain wrestling whilst makhachev has a better shot, much better striking, lefty and also chain wrestling. Though Khabib had a much more damaging top game, Luke Rockhold esque. Islam wants to ground and pound you too but his grappling is more positional.

Unless Islam fucks up, he should win easy. Porier is the feel good story but life is cold and calculated. Michael Bispings a one and done thing. Fighting is brutal, your chin only gets worse with time, roids can't fix it, you get paid like shit.

Recently saw some movies

  • Glengarry Glen Ross

Simply brilliant, very relatable and great dialogue's. Must watch.

  • Thief

Proto Drive. Incredible. Must Watch, amazing soundtrack. Mann is incredible

  • The Insider

Meh

  • Fargo

Boring, terrible. Don't watch, how can the same people make the big lebowski. It feels like they were mocking the Midwestern amerikaner with this one.

  • La Noire.

Meh

Nearly finished Gta Vice City. I can't enjoy video games anymore. I feel like I have to work lol. Have a fun week folks.

Like many of the Coen Brothers movies, Fargo gets better with additional viewings. Fargo isn’t so much about plot, as it is about characters, and the more familiar (the more times you’ve seen it) the characters, the more enjoyable the movie.

With that said, it’s not my favorite Coen Brothers movie. The Big Lebowski is better and No Country For Old Men is substantially better.

All the sparring I did with Makachev's disciples has made me not want to do real MMA ever again. How do you even win fights when the other guy puts you in reverse lockdown and punches you. It's a suffocating style that removes all the fun BJj ground game stuff I'm used to. I have to play the "JUST STAND THE FUCK UP" game against them to even feel like I stand a chance >.>

You're super lucky to have such sparring partners. Their style of mma is highly effective.

I personally wish to learn that if I'm lucky someday with enough defensive wrestling and bjj to be able to defend myself. But yeah, being at the bottom agaisnt such people is a nightmare. Very suffocating!

Michael Bispings a one and done thing.

Honestly, that comparison is still flattering to Poirier. Rockhold had a deadly top game but he was never one to shoot much. He trained with DC and Khabib but he never really a wrestler of that sort. IIRC him bashing Weidman's face in happened after many striking exchanges and driving Weidman into a desperation move he took advantage of. In other cases, it's reversals and sprawling.

So Bisping's "puncher's chance" was much higher because it was at least going to be standup fight for a bit.

One of my favorite things about LW: it's so stacked that I don't really mind who wins. It will probably suck for Poirier but so be it.

EDIT: That went far longer and a better defensive performance from Poirier than I expected tbh.

I don't fully agree with you. Porier wins if he can keep it standing (likely losing tonight). He can't but if islam ends up panicking or picking a freak injury, he'll have a huge advantage in that domain, also makhachev got knocked out agaisnt a lefty despite himself being a lefty. Porier is another lefty who actually does very well in that match up. Plus rockhold was a stud athlete, bipsing isn't. Makhachev isn't Khabib, his level of athleticism isn't super high and Porier himself isn't as bad as bipsing.

Luke Rockhold was just better than bisping and would have won had he learnt how to defend left hooks. Michael had no paths to victory in that fight which is what explains the betting odds.

Spot on about rockhold. His entire game was built to demolish the orthodox wrestle boxer from a distance and make them pay with his anti wrestling. He will fight the hands if you grab him, scramble, look for submissions or get on top but in a very educated way. On top, he was as devastating as someone like Khabib or Fedor. Would have been a world class grappler had he gone the pure adcc route. Haven't seen what he did since from anyone good.

Even his stand up was southpaw, mostly jabs, body and head kicks, check right hook. Rockhold is a guy I really really liked, here's a great analysis of his fighting style, aptly titled Luke Rockhold - The ultimate power bottom

My favorite divisions to watch are 125-155. The drop in quality after that is staggering. 170 was far more stacked when gsp was around.

It feels like they were mocking the Midwestern amerikaner with this one.

That was the point.

How were they being mocked?

I don't think it's supposed to be a mockery.

I feel like I have to watch it again.

It sucked. Small towns are boring. I don't need to spend hours to know that

I'm getting overwhelmed planning my trip to Japan.

There is just too much to see and do and optimize. Also the quality floor for most things seems to be pretty high, which should make things easier but is making things much harder because there are just that many more axis/options along which to optimize.

And this seems to be a common enough experience, given there seems to be a bunch of forums and subreddits dedicated just to planning a Japan trip. This doesn't seem to be the case for any other destination, not to this extent.

I'm seriously considering hiring someone to help me plan the trip..

The sage advice seems to be to not overthink it, because you probably won't make one trip anyways. Just to go there and have a loose plan and everything will plan into place naturally given the aforementioned high quality floor and number of things to do.

But I just can't help not plan this thing out. Planning for the trip is almost half the fun!

I (American) just returned from my own "first time Japan trip" yesterday - two weeks, mostly in Tokyo, and the good news I can share from my experience is that you're going to have an amazing time regardless of how much or how little planning you put in, there's just no way to lose.

Everybody has already hit the big talking points, so I'll just add that in our experience, the limit on how much fun we were having was how much our feet fucking hurt on any given day. I was wearing serious-business hiking boots (my standard never-fail travel option) and my wife was wearing Hoka sneakers (supposed to be optimized for comfort), but by day 3-4 we were already revising daily plans, buying extra-padded insoles, and aggressively adding more "off-foot" time to the itinerary because we were simply standing and walking too much and our aching feet were making it hard to enjoy exploring. I'm no slouch, either - I hike often, run, and travel internationally ~3-4 times a year and I've never before had to take measures like this. My advice is to take some of your planning time and think carefully about your shoe/insole situation and the "on-foot" stretches of your itinerary so that you aren't caught off guard like us, having to take unplanned hotel room rest breaks to rest your brutalized feet.

Also, while I'm typing, here are the best two restaurants we ate at. Both were very popular (presumably instagram awareness), so you may have to really prioritize/go early if you want to get a table without waiting in line for an hour:

Shin Udon (Shibuya) - The perfect noodle dish??

PST Higashi Abuzu (near Roppongi) - I was baffled at how good this pizza was. Maybe the best I've ever had.

Is it your first trip? If so you'll probably end up doing Tokyo and Kyoto which is cool. Some general tips from a resident:

  • In Tokyo, try to hit a single area per day. Tokyo is massive and if you have to traverse it each day you'll end up wasting a ton of time on public transport. If you only have 2 days there you could do east/west, or if you have >3 you could do east/central/west, etc.

  • Stay at hotels with public baths, like Dormy Inn or the APA Resorts. These are really comfortable and affordable, and the baths are very clean and pleasant.

  • Kyoto is small but it is absolutely packed with beautiful architecture, restaurants, temples, shrines, fascinating little boutique stores, and more. Plan to spend twice as many days there as you thought you needed.

  • Check out the shrines and hot springs on the north edge of Kyoto. Mt Hiei is nearby and also quite beautiful.

  • Always get a plastic bag from the convenience store when you buy stuff so you'll be able to keep your trash in your bag since there are no trash cans (sometimes convenience stores have trash cans though)

  • Always have cash, preferable at least 10,000 yen, in your wallet. Lots of places are cash only.

  • Hostels and capsule hotels have gotten so expensive lately that you can usually get a mid-range hotel room for only slightly more.

  • Check what events are happening during the time you're coming. Tokyo (and many other places) are always holding festivals (traditional and modern) and other local events.

  • Go to some museums. The average quality level of museums is really high here. Even small local city museums are usually pretty impressive IME.

I'm curious: do you have any recommendations for things near-ish to Chitose? There's a chance I might be going for work sometime in the future, and if that happens I might as well do some kind of sightseeing while I'm in the country.

Chitose, Tokyo? Go see the Asakusa area, maybe see sumo at Ryogoku if you time it right.

Chitose, Hokkaido? No idea, never been up there.

Hokkaido, I believe. It was a long shot though, thanks anyway!

What advice could you offer to a traveler inexperienced with Japanese cuisine?

Etiquette-wise? Do what other people are doing. Also, don't worry about looking retarded when eating, as a foreigner Japanese people will automatically assume you're retarded and there's often nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.

Recommendation-wise? This is all personal taste, but:

  • Go for Korean BBQ over Japanese yakiniku. Japanese yakiniku is more expensive and less flavorful
  • Small local chain kaitenzushi restaurants are often really good and pretty affordable. Avoid national chain kaitenzushi unless you just want something decent and dirt cheap.
  • Go for hipster "gourmet" ramen places over greasy cheapo places. The latter are cheap but are often pretty meh unless you have a local friend who knows where the cheap AND good places are hidden.
  • When you're outside of Tokyo, try whatever the local specialty or delicacy is, it's almost always delicious.
  • Eat all the seafood. Eat at least once any sea creatures you've never eaten before. Kaisen-don are a decent way to get a lot of good sashimi at an affordable price.
  • Try okonomiyaki, it's great
  • Avoid most Chinese food here, most of it has been neutered to cater to the bland Japanese palate
  • Drink nihonshu/sake, and especially local sake (jizake) outside of Tokyo
  • Try the different kinds of shochu, they're interesting and unique.
  • You can skip beer here, the macro brews are unremarkable and the craft beers are decent but terrible value for money compared to any western country
  • Go to a really good soba place once

I think that's all I got for now.

Thanks for the helpful tips.

My first trip.

Rough details are as follows.

  • Visiting with a friend. Both of us are 25M. Both of us first time.
  • We want more modernity than traditional.
  • Budget is around 3k-4k USD.

Here's a rough outline that I came up with, obviously its really sparse and needs a lot of refinement.

https://imgur.com/a/gS3ihdm

Looks like a decent itinerary. Keep in mind that Dec 29-Jan 3 is around Shogatsu so a lot of stuff will be closed/limited during those days. Double check that the stuff you want to do is accessible/open.

Also, don't do the Shibuya go carts, you'll just look like a tool and piss off everyone around you. If you want to do something quirky there are a million more interesting things to do even just right there in Shibuya. There are a billion cool an unique bars, live music venues, edgy boutique stores, and more. TBH you could probably just wander around Dogenzaka for an hour or two and have a great time.

Harajuku is a shell of its former self. It's choked with Chinese and American tourists, random Nigerian touts, and various (non-Japanese) Asian tourists badly LARPing what Harajuku fashion was 20 years ago. If you want to see young people wearing freaky and interesting fashion, go hang around Shibuya station or the rooftop of the nearby Miyashita park. Spend the second half of your Harajuku day in Shibuya or Shinjuku instead.

Mt Fuji is impressive and worth seeing. Good choice. Instead of driving, you might consider taking a fancy train with a beautiful view so you can chill and eat snacks and enjoy the ride. Driving in Japan is IME pretty dreary, slow, and tedious. Around Tokyo, lots of of highways routed through ugly/inconvenient areas with no view and often with large sound barriers so you can't see much. Don't know about the route to Narusawa specifically.

Never been to Sapporo but I've heard great things about it and Hokkaido in general.

Looks like a decent itinerary. Keep in mind that Dec 29-Jan 3 is around Shogatsu so a lot of stuff will be closed/limited during those days. Double check that the stuff you want to do is accessible/open.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to call up a bunch of places and see if they are going to be open. Im assuming restaurants and bars are at least open, in the worst case?

Also, don't do the Shibuya go carts, you'll just look like a tool and piss off everyone around you. If you want to do something quirky there are a million more interesting things to do even just right there in Shibuya. There are a billion cool an unique bars, live music venues, edgy boutique stores, and more. TBH you could probably just wander around Dogenzaka for an hour or two and have a great time.

Nope, go karting through the city sounds like a grand fucking idea and I will do it. We like the act of driving and want various driving-based activities.

Nevertheless, what other quirky things would you recommend? A bit more specific.

Mt Fuji is impressive and worth seeing. Good choice. Instead of driving, you might consider taking a fancy train with a beautiful view so you can chill and eat snacks and enjoy the ride. Driving in Japan is IME pretty dreary, slow, and tedious. Around Tokyo, lots of of highways routed through ugly/inconvenient areas with no view and often with large sound barriers so you can't see much. Don't know about the route to Narusawa specifically.

I plant to redo this drive: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TUgfiNg06GQ

And rent a car from here: https://fun2drive-japan.com/

Never been to Sapporo but I've heard great things about it and Hokkaido in general.

I hope so. I want to sneak in some winter activities and Sapporo should be the place to be.

Is your timeline (14 days) set in stone?

For the most part. Why ?

If there's room to add a couple of extra days in Japan, that could help with the crunch:

I'm getting overwhelmed

There is just too much to see and do and optimize.

I've read three weeks -- 18 to 19 days in the country; one to two days buffer for traveling on both sides -- is ideal, especially if this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. I understand that may not be possible.

It's not once in a lifetime.

AI music is getting really, really good. https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1d5dxvg/suno_35_is_out_of_early_access_you_can_now_get/

I've wanted to talk about AI music for a while. It's decent for the certain types of music, specifically pop songs with simple voice leading and harmony. When asking for specific instrumentation or a specific musical style it seems to fail pretty bad. For example, if I wanted specific instrumentation for a chamber piece, it's currently impossible for it to create a string quartet in the style of Brahms. Al 'classical' generations are psudo-orchestral works similar to the most generic Marval movie anthems, not like the incredibly nuanced creations of Stravinsky, Messiaen, or Bach where each musical line matters. It adheres strictly to conventional tonality no matter how much you try to prompt your way into serialism, asymmetrical rhythm, jazz, etc. Much like previous AI music it really avoids key changes and any more complex musical ideas.

Does AI Djent? A decent bit, to be honest. But does it Stravinsky? We're a long ways off.

They’re OK but so far they seem to lack the real killer feature of being able to make actually catchy hooks, at least from my prompting. They can make real sounding very mid music, like this or ‘lost records’ YouTube compilations generated by the AI.

I feel like LLMs are in a similar spot. They can write OK. They can’t write anything truly impressive. They can’t write fiction like Joyce or non-fiction like the best New Yorker journalism. The question is whether that’s just a minor revision away, whether it requires some tinkering with the training set, or whether it’s actually possible that there are limitations that prevent generation of 99.9th percentile art without architectural changes at the least.

The nice part about it is now I can make placeholder music for my games without feeling bad. Maybe even some mediocre music for a youtube video background or whatever.

I don't need actually good music, just mid enough that it won't be super awful.

They can make real sounding very mid music

TBF, that barely differs from the top 40 these days.

Scott has published Unsong on Amazon. It's currently #2 humorous science-fiction book on Amazon, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. #6 book in the same category, according to Amazon, is Slaughterhouse-Five. I guess you really can't spell "slaughter" without "laughter".

I see nothing controversial about this classification. Slaughterhouse-Five is an absurdist comedy-drama, which uses ridiculous situations, conceits and sci-fi concepts to throw the insanity of war into sharp relief.

If war is insane, so are we. It's who we are.

You cannot look at the absolute derangement out there in normie comments and think otherwise.

Slaughterhouse-five is supposed to be in the category of dark humor/satire, but I honestly don't remember much about that book from when I read it in high school. Catch-22 is often mentioned as a similar absurdist fiction anti-war satiric book and it is the far superior of the two.

I've read both and found Catch-22 uproariously funny other than the places where it was darkly serious, but Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't funny at all, the effect was more of "I need to take a break from all the gruesome WWII shit I remember, here's some aliens as a palate cleanser".

I don't recall ever laughing to anything in Slaughterhouse-Five either, but Wikipedia indicates dark humor as one of its genres.

Is there anyone here who read Slaughterhouse-Five and found it funny?

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but I think it nails a certain "if I don't crack a smile about this, I'll burst into tears" tone that Jewish humour is known for.

Definitely. The elaborate parody of the tough guy Roland Weary right off the bat is deeply funny, with the two recon soldiers disdaining his loser affect and abandoning the losers then immediately getting got for irony.

Haven't read Slaughterhouse-Five but much of Catch 22 is just funny. I don't know if it would count as dark humor.

"You should see her naked," General Dreedle chortled with croupy relish, while his nurse stood smiling proudly right at his shoulder. "Back at Wing she's got a uniform in my room made of purple silk so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. Milo got me the fabric. There isn't even room enough for panties or a brassiere underneath. I make her wear it some night when Moodus is around just to drive him crazy." General Dreedle laughed hoarsely. "You should see what goes on inside that blouse of hers everytime she shifts her weight. She drives him out of his mind. The first time I catch him putting a hand on her or any other woman I'll bust that horny bastard right down to private and put him on K.P. for a year.

"He keeps her around just to drive me crazy," Colonel Moodus accused aggrievedly at the other end of the bar. "Back at Wing she's got a uniform made of purple silk that's so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. There isn't even room for panties or a brassiere underneath. You should hear that silk rustle everytime she shifts her weight. The first time I make a pass at her or any other girl he'll bust me right down to private and put me on K.P. for a year. She drives me out of my mind.

"He hasn't gotten laid since we shipped overseas," confided General Dreedle, and his square grizzled head bobbed with sadistic laughter at the fiendish idea. "That's one of the reasons I never let him out of my sight, just so he can't get to a woman. Can you imagine what that poor son of a bitch is going through?"

"I haven't been to bed with a woman since we shipped overseas," Colonel Moodus whimpered tearfully. "Can you imagine what I'm going through?"

I think the point of Catch-22 is that as hilarious as it is underlying the humor is a tragedy revealing the horrors of war. At first, it's just funny but in the second half, we start to really see the tragic consequences of the absurdity. There are just outright dark scenes like Snowden's death where Yossarian desperately tries to save a dying man's life but is unable to do anything and has to watch Snowden's organs drip out after he is hit by flak.

Then there are the humorous parts that come hand-in-hand with the tragedy.

For example, there is a scene where Yossarian is making love to Nurse Duckett at the beach and it's quite a dreamy and beautiful moment, people are out and about enjoying themselves in this moment of tranquility during the war, only for it to cut short by the death Kid Sampson.

Even people who were not there remembered vividly exactly what happened next. There was the briefest, softest tsst! filtering audibly through the shattering, overwhelming howl of the plane’s engines, and then there were just Kid Sampson’s two pale, skinny legs, still joined by strings somehow at the bloody truncated hips, standing stock-still on the raft for what seemed a full minute or two before they toppled over backward into the water finally with a faint, echoing splash and turned completely upside down so that only the grotesque toes and the plaster-white soles of Kid Sampson’s feet remained in view.

What killed him? McWatt had been "buzzing" the beach as a joke for a while earlier in the chapter trying to scare people by flying his plane dangerously close to the ground. Except this time, he fucks up and actually does kill someone. And in response, he chooses to crash his plane into the mountain killing him. The people watching can't make sense of it, they watched a comrade die and can't do anything but watch the other choose to kill himself as well. The two newbie pilots on the plane with McWatt jump out via parachute, indicating they too failed to convince him otherwise.

This scene is immediately ended with this gem of a line:

Colonel Cathcart was so upset by the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt that he raised the missions to sixty-five

And then this line in the immediate chapter afterward:

When Colonel Cathcart learned that Doc Daneeka too had been killed in McWatt’s plane, he increased the number of missions to seventy.

I think that would count as dark humor.

After typing this all out, I just realized where your flair comes from. Somehow I haven't made the connection despite seeing it several times.

When Colonel Cathcart learned that Doc Daneeka too had been killed in McWatt’s plane

And the whole tragedy of Doc Daneeka trying to explain that he isn't actually dead definitely counts as dark humor. Especially when his own wife would rather keep the money paid to war widows than prove his existence.

Yes, it's a good point. I thought of the grim sections as an alternating contrast to the humorous ones, but you're right of course that they do overlap as well.

Ironically, the author didn't seem to mind his wartime experience too much, rather thinking of the Korean war while writing the book.

"How did I feel about the war when I was in it?" Heller wrote in the letter to an academic preparing a collection of essays about the book. "Much differently than Yossarian felt and much differently than I felt when I wrote the novel … In truth I enjoyed it and so did just about everyone else I served with, in training and even in combat.

"I was young, it was adventurous, there was much hoopla and glamour; in addition, and this too is hard to get across to college students today, for me and for most others, going into the army resulted immediately in a vast improvement in my standard of living."

What

The joke is that a book called "slaughterhouse" is in the "humorous science fiction" category, because on the face of it nothing is funny about a slaughterhouse.

Nothing is particularly funny about Slaughterhouse-Five, which I think was OP's point.

I didn't know that, but that further reinforces what I'm saying: that it's amusing that the book is listed as a "humorous science fiction" book.

Guess who's back? Back again. Eminem just released his new single "Houdini" today. It's billed as a kind of return to form to his old Slim Shady character. The music video is filled with references to his classics like "Without Me" and "My Name Is." Even his voice sounds like a younger version of himself in parts of the song. Is this just memberberries getting to me? Maybe. I did enjoy it in that early 2000s way though.

I haven't listened to Eminem or the rap genre since around 2010. I've tangentially heard about him in the years (I'm glad he felted MGK so hard that MGK had to change genres). Is the song as good as his late 90s to early 00s era? Maybe this is nostalgia talking, but I don't think so. Something about the song just feels like it's not as raw or groundbreaking as his early work. The lyrics are not as unleashed as they were in the early days. The music video, while good, paused too much in the middle of the song. Now all that being said, it's good. I enjoyed it. The lyrics, while not as hard hitting, are what you'd expect from Eminem. His rhyming is still crisp. He still raps like Eminem, or Slim Shady in this case.

While I'm just someone who used to listen to Eminem in high school or whatever, I think the song is good enough to stand on its own even without the callbacks to his classics. Is this his best work? No. Is it as completely rancid as Relapse? Definitely not. It's good. And that's more than I can say for a lot of the shit that gets released these days.

If any more serious Eminem or even rap fans would like to weigh in, I'd love to hear other opinions.

I had a whole post written here but the gist of it is: this is bad, I dislike listening to it, but for a rap song it's pretty good because I merely dislike it. Generally rap especially of the thug type, especially if originated in Europe makes me feel downright genocidal.

Wondering if rap music fans feel that way about any genre.

He's just too old at this point. I liked his old music because it was funny and relatable since he was in his early 20s. Hasn't been the same since for me at least.

It's amazing what a 180 I've done on rap. True, there's a lot of artists and genres I listed to in my teens and early 20s that I've nearly dropped in the time since. I'm not without angst, but I can't really vibe along with Trent Reznor screaming about killing himself the way I used to, y'know. But I could still throw on an old NIN or Korn album for a long road trip and 'get into it' for a nostalgic romp with a friend or my brother.

I can't do Rap any more. I want it turned off immediately. I used to give Country a lot of shit for being unlistenable. And while I still think it's mostly shit, I have more tolerance for it now. It's like the polarities reversed.

I'm with you that my favorite Eminem was when he was young and funny. I think I liked the Slim Shady LP because it was so bizarre compared to The Chronic 2000 or whatever old Coolio album I had previously begged for because of 'Gangsta's Paradise'. Everything after that just felt too self-serious to me, like he had to prove something. TBF, I guess he had to. I can't argue with the man's career and success that followed with his maturation.

Weird I find country increasingly feels self referential and unlistenable. My dad was listening to country radio, and Cowboys and Plowboys came on, and it just made me want to gag. A whole song built on a fake distinction between fake identities of people who don't exist. It just felt so manufactured.

I think part of it is exposure. Obviously I had genre preferences I actively sought out when I was younger, but the general media landscape would give you a more balanced diet of different types of music. There were popular Rock songs, Rap songs, Country songs as well as obvious Pop hits. I'm sure Country has also gone downhill, but it was kinda easier for me to turn my nose up at it as a selective kid/teen.

Now that it seems everything is so heavily Rap dominated, I've kinda made a peace with other genres (like Metal, even). Like, please play anything that doesn't have that monotone rhythmic cadence and that fucking repetitive stuttering hi-hat trick! I know that's supposed to be a 'trap' thing, but Lord it seems to show up everywhere in influence. Please stop putting it in so many soundtracks and trailers where literally any other choice of music would be more appropriate.

I asked Google Home to play some 'easy listening' music and it defaulted to some midtempo mumbling rhyming about pussy sweat among other things. I am not a prude, and my own audio catalogue has its share of depravity. But come on. I want George Michael (sexual t-rex that he was), not this.

I listen to very little new music overall, so you're probably right: if I listened to more unfiltered Top-40 I would probably hate most of that much more than I hate a lot of modern country. Music essentially gets added to my library from the local college radio station, from my gym friends, from my wife. The only time I'm listening to unfiltered new music is when my father is listening to country radio while we drive somewhere.

Some food things:

Microwave potatoes. Take a potato, rinse it off, nuke it for 5 minutes.

Cut it apart, add a ton of butter and cheese and jalapeños. It’s really good.

Take the traeger pill. Brisky: salt and pepper (more pepper than you think, but also more salt than you think). In the smoker at 225 until it hits like 170F internal. Wrap in pink butcher paper, keep going until 203F internal. DO NOT take it out before this. Keep it in the butcher paper and either put it in the oven on warm, or into a cooler for 4 hours AT LEAST. The second part, referred to as a "rest", is required. People skip this step, and their brisket sucks as a result. You HAVE to rest it just like you have to actually cook it. Also: trim it if you are a commercial smokehouse and making sausage, or trim it if you really want to dial in the texture profile of every bite or make sure that customers are getting a consistent bark/fat/meat ratio. If you are a backyard BBQist, then it doesn't really matter if you mess up the trim. Trimming is fine, but do not sweat the trim.

Delight your friends and horrify your cardiologist.

Picanha: sous vide it at 129F overnight. Cut off steaks and fry them and eat them with cut up fresh jalapeños (the hotter the better) and more salt than you think. Don’t tell anybody because Picanha used to be cheap and it’s going up in price as it gets more popular.

Raw Milk: I hate to admit this but it tastes better. A LOT better. I hate admitting this because as a backyard chicken keeper, I also have to admit that store bought eggs are better than backyard eggs, and taste absolutely no different and I would challenge anybody to prove me wrong on this.

That potato recipe sounds like some fat fuck shit, but eh, I can get behind the rest.

On the topic of food. Getting an air fryer and a rice cooker has been a game-changer for me.

I cooked up a whole seabream, and some jasmine rice in a grand total of 15 minutes end to end. I drizzled some "Prik Nam Pla (I added a small amount of sugar in addition to what the recipe says)" over the rice and fish, and it was excellent. I could easily see people paying a bunch of money at a Thai restaurant for a similar-tasting meal. The fish was perfectly cooked with potato chip esque crispy skin and moist flesh.

That potato recipe sounds like some fat fuck shit

That's a good thing. Fat people don't get fat by eating food that tastes bad.

Consuming raw milk as I am sure you know is a roll of the dice. Pasteurization is a good thing.

Eh. I grew up drinking raw milk (as did the rest of my family) and not one of us ever had an issue. I think the need for pasteurization to stay safe is vastly overstated.

I've had backyard eggs that tasted better than store bought eggs, but not so much that I would go out of my way to raise my own hens or pay a lot more for them. As others have mentioned, it depends a lot on what the chickens are eating.

Wait you’re saying store bought eggs taste better than backyard chicken eggs? I completely disagree. I grew up with chickens my whole life and their eggs taste way way better than store bought eggs. Especially if you are eating the eggs straight (ie over easy/over medium without any garnishes). Granted, there are gradations of egg quality purchased at a grocery store. There’s a big difference between the $10 Costco 60 pack vs a $10 organic dozen.

I'm saying they taste the same, but they're easier to crack, and I don't have to wash them.

Yes the costco 60 pack.

My chickens free range on my entire property, and their feed is just normal feed from the fleet store. Most of my family have flocks, though, so we might have to set up a taste test at our next family reunion!

Yeah I agree up with our chickens getting only normal feed as well. But they did always get leftovers that had gotten a little too old. I couldn’t buy Costco eggs in college because they were just inedible to me. Interesting the differences in palette.

I agree that they taste the same. My dad has chickens on the farm, and swears that the eggs taste way better. They don't, though. They do look nicer (the yolks are a very vivid color), but the taste is the same.

I'm glad you mentioned the eggs. My neighbor had me watch his chickens and I thought "ugh, these taste like the feed bag I was using for them instead of mellow butter, and they're harder to crack and wash shit off of"

The trick is to feed them dinner scraps. My eggs taste like spiced meat. Onion and garlic really comes through especially.

Leftover/old pasta is great for egg quality too.

they're harder to crack and wash shit off of

EXACTLY this. This is the exact reason why.

What's your preferred video watching speed?

I watch most Russian-speaking youtubers at 2x, with just a few fast talkers getting a 1.75x setting. Most English-speaking youtubers are watchable at 1.5x, the most articulate (or non-native Euro speakers) at 1.75x. This guy, however, takes the cake (pun intended). Somehow I can understand him at 1x, struggle to understand him at 1.25x and at 1.5x I might as well be listening to Prisencolinensinainciusol.

Didn't know you were Russian. I prefer 2x or 1.5x for podcast.

Depends highly on the content, my familiarity with the subject or the language it's in, whether I'm watching it with my wife and various factors relevant to her, and what the purpose of the video is. For example, if it's English and a subject that I'm familiar enough with that I can process most of the information extremely quickly and am only looking to see if there are some nuggets of new ideas, definitely 2x. Though I am always ready to rewind and slow it down if necessary. An example scenario would be that I'm watching a recording of an academic talk in an area that I know pretty well, but BLAM, he starts banging out some chunk of stuff that I haven't really seen before, I'll go back and go through that section slowly.

Wife is a native French speaker, and I'm kinda learning. We watch a few French language channels together, but a nice compromise is that they are subjects that I otherwise know a lot more about than she does. We literally watch some of those on 0.75x. I can't actually tell if they're "fast" talkers relative to some typical rate, because I'm just not good enough at French to know, but slowing it down doesn't mess with the sound of it too badly, helps give me time to comprehend the words, and she's okay with it, because she's pretty new to the content.

Some videos we watch purely to relax before bedtime. Channels are picked appropriately, and they're a smooth, buttery 1x.

2x speed when possible (and I'd probably experiment with a little, but not too much, higher if offered). If they speak too quickly for me to keep up, I'll drop a little to 1.75 or 1.5, or more if needed. I'll drop temporarily and rewatch a portion if something was hard to catch.

But video content feels inefficient, so I try to prefer text, or watching quickly.

People watching videos (at least, ones primarily meant to inform) at 1x speed is kind of crazy to me. How do you sit through that? Why not watch twice as much in that time? At least, for me, 1x speed is, unless there's a very quick speaker, quite a bit slower than what's needed for me to understand—it's at the pace of them speaking, and usually it's faster to understand a sentence than to come up with one. Perhaps that would change if I watched videos on harder to understand topics, like advanced math or something.

I should probably make more use of youtubetranscript.com.

In my case because I'm almost always watch videos in the background and more often than not I already don't have enough to last through the day without repetition.

1x. I tried higher and I didn't like it.

I love speedreading fiction, but when reading I can adjust my pace. If a scene is dense I can take my time, if it's boring, I'll go faster. But that's not possible with videos. So I don't see the point. It's also why I don't like videos except for entertainment.

I hate video info-dumps, but it depends on the video. I could swear that some videos are designed for play at higher speeds, because the people on them talk so slowly and enunciate so well. Others, I can't understand if it's faster than 1.25x or 1.5x. And then there's also the matter of content: if my mind has to engage with what's being presented, that's the limiting factor.

I watch/listen to most videos and podcasts in English at 2x speed, Spanish or Chinese media at 1.5x speed, and any other languages or things I need to pay particular attention to at 1x.

It is downright inhuman to listen at anything other than 1x. Audio is an inherently time-sensitive medium. We evolved to interpret and understand the subtle audio cues in human speech. This includes timing.

I am honestly learning for the first time that people watch videos of people talking at more than 1x speed.

That's nothing. I know a guy who watches movies and TV shows on 2x or more.

2x, because that's the fastest it goes without other extensions (I go to 2.5-3x when a platform supports it). A lot of what I watch could honestly just be blog post + picture, and a lot of people talk very slowly (I'm not convinced that's intentional, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was).

I can't really do that for music channels for obvious reasons, but for anything else, the information density of video is far too low normally.

(I also read extremely quickly by most standards, too, so that might explain some of it. Now if only I could use that power when reading technical documentation...)

If it's not watchable at 1x it's not worth watching.

How do you find so much time to watch videos? Are you just much more patient than I am?

I can't stand watching videos at less than 2x speed and often speed them up to 3x or even 4x.

The problem is that most YouTube videos are poorly scripted, edited, and paced. Watching them at their original speed feels like torture.

I don't feel like I miss anything important. There's no loss in comprehension. And I think that everyone should at the very least try increasing the playback speed. It's really just a matter of getting accustomed to a faster pace. Once you do, you'll never go back.

I would have assumed that a question like this would select for the outliers, people boasting about their content consumption speed. But it seems like I'm the only one here. Anyone else?

How do you find so much time to watch videos you're not enjoying?

Just filling time with slop

This sounds a lot like speed reading. You can increase your reading speed without losing comprehension based on information density. This means a lot of nonfiction books you can speed read because they typically spend 200 pages to convey 1-5 key ideas. But if you were going through a physics textbook, you can speed read all you want but you're not going to retain any information. I guess it depends on what kinds of videos are being watched.

Unlike speed reading, it's not easy to adjust your consumption rate on the fly. I find it very annoying having to rewind the video when watching at faster speeds if I miss something and want to rewatch it. If I feel I need to speed through the video I actually just use the right arrow key to skip a few seconds and read the subtitled text than increase the video speed. I think it really depends on the video. I usually read for knowledge and watch for entertainment, so I don't really increase the video speed because I'm trying to enjoy my time watching the video, not optimize for speed. I read fiction slower, too.

YouTube doesn't have a speed option faster than 2x, so you'd have to go a bit out of your way to get the videos to play faster.

I remember this when looking at my reading speed for various things

Fiction I typically read at 600 words per minute it's really easy to read and you don't need to remember every single sentence.

Textbooks though I'm reading at 100-200 words per minute. Typically every word matters and the information density is often high enough that reading 1 page creates a lot of noteworthy information.

I watch youtube video's with my hands on the J K and L keys and mash J/L to rewatch/skip various bits, and I almost always do 2x speed

While I generally agree with your comment, I think in my own case, 2x speed is usually closer to reading than speedreading, in that I'm still able to follow pretty closely, not merely get it because it's low in information density. It doesn't feel like I'm forcing my brain to comprehend faster, it just feels like I'm causing them to get through what they're saying at a less ponderous speed. Of course, they vary in how information-dense they are, so I will slow down depending on the video.

Generally and with many exceptions: 2x speed for non-fiction that I'm giving my entire attention, 1x if my attention is split (background listening for gaming or chores).

I will unhealthily attempt to maintain that 2x even in situations where constantly pausing and rewinding brings my effective watch speed below 1x.

2x almost all the time, except when it's music, the audio isn't clear (as is the problem with your linked video), or there's onscreen text I can't read fast enough. I also tend to watch movies at 1.5 speed when the platform supports it.

1x. If it's a video I'm actually watching, I want to watch it as intended. If it's a "video" where the point is that people are talking, I have it on in the background while doing something else. With my attention split between the words and the something else, I'll lose track of what's going on if it goes too fast, and I won't get bored at 1x because my attention is already split.

If it's a video that needs to be actually watched and it's too boring at 1x, I'll just stop watching and find something better.

I have watched a few foreigners who speak noticeably slower than usual (Marbozir and Great Scott) at 125-percent speed. But I generally stick to normal speed.

1.25x is fine. Anything more and it begins to sound weird to me. If I’m watching YouTube rather than reading about an issue it’s probably because something about the video or audio presentation is interesting to me, and increasing the speed to 1.5x and beyond kind of defeats the purpose of enjoying that.

In the case of something purely informational like some kind of coding tutorial or software installation troubleshooting I’ll usually skip/scrub through it until I find the part I want, then watch closely and intently at normal speed.

1x. I honestly can't understand people who watch at anything faster, it just seems bizarre to me.

Unless the topic is difficult to parse or the speaker is talking very fast, I get bored very quickly watching a scripted video at x1. It’s actually detrimental for understanding the topic because my mind starts wandering away

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is this how other people have been watching videos all this time?

It depends on the video. Most of the time I'm watching at 1x speed, with a few exceptions, such as a weekly talk show sped up to 1.3x speed, which cuts a 2- to 2.5-hour show to just over an hour.

From podcasts and audiobooks my preferred speed is 1.35x, which makes the speaker sound more energetic and intelligent without becoming artificial or chipmunky. Given Youtube does not allow 0.05x gradations I settle for 1.25x.

The Complete LOADING SCREEN TIPS Ranking in Eu4

I see the Paradox youtuber community is badly in need of that sequel.

I see the Paradox youtuber community is badly in need of that sequel.

EU5 is shaping up to be a very different game from EU4. People love to shit on mana and other gamist mechanics, but I don't know well the simulationist approach of EU5 will work as a game.

Typically 1.75-2x speed, with 1.25-1.5x for very fast speakers with reasonably condensed videos.

Greater than 2x enabled by various browser extentions when "fast-forwarding" or when I failed to resist clickbait but still want to know the proposed answer. I find that at less than 4x I am still able to catch things I would have missed if I just tried to scrub through the video to find what I want.

I watch at 1x but I skip around a lot.

As for the guy you linked, I don't have any issues understanding him at 1.75x but at 2x it gets exhausting. I wouldn't know how that compares to other videos though since I usually only watch in 1x.

Effectively less than 1x speed, because I often pause and take it in, scroll on my phone, look up some obscure detail, or go back in the video/rewind by so many seconds to replay, etc. it’s a slog for me to get through any series.

For those of you of a certain age, I hope that you were blessed enough to have the necessary computer hardware to enjoy the videogame Homeworld when it was released in 1999.

The premise is as follows: your species (the Kushan) inhabit a dying desert world. An expedition to the incredibly harsh desert uncovers the wreckage of a starship… You know what, just watch the opening cinematic - again if it's been a few years.

The original game included not just a beefy manual but essentially an entire lore preamble novella that was excellent. A labor of love from those who love SciFi. The single-player campaign had an unbelievably compelling story, atmospheric music and other sound design, and a cool wrinkle where your fleet persists from mission to mission, making choices and mistakes have consequences. It was also difficult. I'm ashamed to admit that 10-year-old me was unable to make it to the final mission before my cousin took his disc back home, though this wasn't helped by some challenges around pacing and the inadequate hardware of my parent's PC.

While I revere the single-player campaign, the multiplayer component had an extremely devout following. The game's engine rendered and calculated each mass driver's shots, from the tiny stream of rounds from a fighter to the massive 4-pixel slugs being slung from lumbering heavy cruisers. Ship AI was bizarrely strong, with fleet formations and tactic parameters leading to wildly different results, and a lot of emergent gameplay from weak rear armor, the use of the Z-Axis for positioning, and, of course, streaming a dozen fighters into kamikaze attacks on motherships as their fuel and armor deteriorated.

The sequel, Homeworld 2, was visually stunning but probably only OK. My main concern was around the story being stupid-i-fied. The hyperspace cores of the first game were made into lightly mythical machines produced by an ancient race. The dilution of what was at first fairly hard sci-fi was unpleasant, but the addition of a much better UX and advances in the depth of combat were salves on the wound.

The game went through IP hell before being purchased and re-issued by Gearbox. If you haven't purchased and experienced the Remaster, they are totally worth it. Anyway, I've tarried long enough (without even mentioning the reportedly excellent Cataclysm, which I haven't played!).

Homeworld 3 was released a few weeks ago. It's not a stretch to day I've been waiting almost 21 years for the game. I committed the cardinal sin of purchasing the collector's edition during a pre-order campaign through some now-defunct crowdfunding site.

And holy fuck, what a disappointment.

There are a lot of complaints about regressions in gameplay and AI. Frankly I'm unconcerned with those - I think the Dev team is going to improve them, and the community is weirdly diverse in its opinions on what makes good gameplay. A famous mod that easily quintupled the complexity of the game was still considered not complex enough, and meanwhile the rest of us are struggling to micro some of the basic unit types in a fast-paced game. I personally think it will end up being excellent after a few patches which is the nature of modern videogame development.

The story, however, is unforgivably bad. Without spoilers, what I can say is that the writers took a galactic-spanning setting, with trillions of people across light-years, and somehow shoe-horned in some idiotic human interest story. They then double down on the mysticism of Homeworld 2 and the hyperspace cores. The cutscenes are no longer beautifully painted vignettes and top-tier voice acting. Instead, they're crappy Unreal Engine renders where the audio and video aren't even synced properly. There are only 3 real characters, who act like children, and the whole premise is just profoundly weak.

It's not a stretch to say that I could have written something superior, especially in the age of the LLM, in just a couple of hours. It's a violation of the series' ethos and appeal, made even more baffling since many of the original staff for the first two games are at the new developer. And before you ask - it's not even particularly woke, though the big bad justifies their behavior with some level of "I was abused", and opinions differ as to what happened. It's just Stupid.

Perhaps a group of fans will create something better with the release of mod tools. I wouldn't mind hammering at it with a mix of AI tools to give myself some catharsis. I'm still enjoying playing the game, actually, and I'm looking forward to playing MP with some friends.

In any case - rant over. For those who were previous fans, you know a little about what you're getting into.

That sucks, there's nothing worse than hacks getting a hold of a treasured IP and making scholck sold mostly on presales. I learned my lesson on Diablo 3, and now everything (except Nintendo) gets at least 3 months of release before I'll consider buying it.

Thanks for the warning. Homeworld 2 had turned me off enough, I guess I'll put this along with the X series as having jumped the shark.

Anyway, I've tarried long enough (without even mentioning the reportedly excellent Cataclysm, which I haven't played!).

It's an excellent (though probably no-longer canon) piece, mixing a bit of cosmic horror with some fun new mechanics and giving the Bentusi a lot better a characterization and sendoff than Cataclysm 2 did, imo, avoiding a lot of the weird chosen-oneisms in favor of Alien-style truckers in deep shit. The Beast is a shocking and chilling monster, and the fight against it never feels either unfair or canned.

The shield mechanics in particular were a blast: Sentinel fighters could link into powerful geometric shields that, when fully upgraded, can block everything but fightercraft... at the cost of the Sentinel itself becoming a sitting duck, and individual panels of the shield being vulnerable to sustained fire even from attacks it can block. They were seldom things that turned the tide of battle, especially in multiplayer, but the possibility an opponent might have picked up enough of them made a lot of other mechanics work very well, without mandating annoying micromanagement.

(The last boss of the campaign missions do end up being a bit of a gimmick, as a downside, though it was still pretty fun the first time, imo.)

Oh man I remember playing that game over the summer between semesters in 2004. What a great game, I just don't recall if it was 1 or 2. The 3D gameplay was wild at the time, I think it still is compared to a lot of current 4x space fighting which is very flat.

atmospheric music

Literally Yes, if I remember correctly.

Choral arrangement of "Adagio for Strings" was some baller shit.

The office where I work has installed new a new Bluetooth access system, and it's sufficiently annoying to make me reevaluate The Industrial Society and Its Future.

Before, you had a little NFC tag you'd beep at the door, and it opened pretty much instantly. Now I have to:

  • Get my phone out
  • Unlock the phone
  • Go into settings, enable Bluetooth
  • Start the door app, wait for it to load
  • Wait for it to slowly scan for nearby doors
  • Scroll through the list of doors until I find the one I'm standing in front of (there are no signs, you need to memorize all the door names. This is especially annoying for the lab doors that people felt it was funny to label as emojis)
  • Press it
  • Wait for the app to tell the door to unlock (this takes a while)
  • Exit the app
  • Go into settings, disable Bluetooth
  • Enter (though by this point somebody on the other side will generally have noticed and taken pity on you by opening the door manually)

Thanks for this, as its related to my work. Using bluetooth apps for Electronic Access Control raises some interesting usability challenges. Like why would you want to have bluetooth open on your phone all the time. Also the app can probably track your location through the facility, which while it can have some great functionality in theory like aiding fire evacuation (even though in practice no fire warden will bother opening the app in a real scenario), its more likely to be used to monitor your work in the same way keyloggers do for company laptops.

Can you request a separate access control swipe card?

I wouldn't be surprised if the "door app" collects behavioural data that the operator can sell as a side gig, enabling them to undercut the previous NFC-based system when offering the system to your office. (They might also figure this makes it easier to issue and revoke access than if they had to issue/collect physical tokens.)

The behavioural data can be used in some ways in intelligent buildings for legitimate purposes (like telling app users that the company gym is at capacity so you don't bother grabbing your gym bag), but the data will absolutely be used to make profit for the provider at some point.

They might also figure this makes it easier to issue and revoke access than if they had to issue/collect physical tokens.

Wouldn't token-based authentication give each token a unique code whose access can be revoked in the event that the token is lost or stolen?

I managed my small company's NFC door system and yes: we had a database with every employee next to their NFC tag ID and we could revoke them without confiscating the key. Pretty sure that's standard on every system you'd buy. Probably if you're homebrewing a solution, too.

Every book and every long article should start with a bullet point preface of significant conclusions and noteworthy evidence / argumentation that led to the conclusions. That way we can quickly parse whether it is worth it to invest our time on it (or whether: we have gone through the information before; there is nothing noteworthy to glean from it). Even scientific articles should do this immediately on the first page, not just somewhere in their discussion / conclusion.

I do this on my weekly Wednesday posts too so that people can skip stuff that they find boring to begin with.

I read a book once where the start of each chapter listed the contents of every paragraph. It was fantastic.

Is this not the purpose of an abstract?

Most publications outside of research don't include an abstract.

EDIT: The Washington Post is using AI to summarize articles. No doubt The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other media organizations will implement. Bloomberg uses AI to write boilerplate financial stories, but the organization hasn't said, from what I've seen, about using AI to summarize an article and place the findings at the top.

Scientific papers already do this; the abstract is almost always first and it does exactly what you want.

Yes, some ideas do need to be slow-rolled (or the audience has to be primed), but that’s also so exceptional a case that it might as well not exist and even that doesn’t need to blow the twist if you do it correctly.

Most scientific and academic papers I read don’t do this though. The abstract only says their conclusion for a few criteria, sometimes only in general terms. The discussion or results section you’ll often find more complete conclusions and a lot of sentences that contain words like “surprisingly”, “unexpectedly”, “interestingly”, “one noteworthy finding”. That’s a lot of information that should be front and center rather than buried in the discussion section.

Sometimes you need to slow roll people into your shocking conclusion not to turn them away immeadiately. Often books need to really stretch out the distance to their conclusion to get people to actually read them. But in general I agree. I find it especially annoying when books and long articles don't actually even clearly state their conclusions anywhere, let alone in the preface!

Can’t you just do this with an LLM?

It's possible, but you have to be cautious of the LLMs accuracy.

True! Probably can now.

Would a sufficiently detailed table of contents satisfy you? Assuming reasonably descriptive chapter and section headings of course.

Especially if there is also a table of figures and list of tables, it seems pretty straight forward to flip through and see how familiar/tractable the content will be.

I do think there is a place for bullets sometimes, but bullets can also be symptomatic of a sort of powerpoint syndrome.

Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the innerconnectedness of ideas.

If you could get the full argument a book makes from reading a bulleted list is there really a point in the book?

Or along the same lines there is the classic:

... bullet outlines can make us stupid

Ultimately arguing that poor use of bulleted lists contributed to the loss of shuttle Columbia.

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