ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
Reuters:
In London's pubs, love gets a PowerPoint makeover
Fed up of swiping left or right on dating apps, young London singles are returning to a classic British way of meeting people—the pub—with a modern twist: a PowerPoint presentation by a close friend pitching them as dating material.
Putting together a slide deck is second nature for many younger millennials and older Gen Zers. Now, they're using that skill to enhance their mates' love lives, just as dating apps are losing their appeal.
"I hate the swiping," said Annie, 27, adding she was keen to see if her friend's two-minute pitch at a 'Date my Mate' event could land her a boyfriend—or at least a first date.
Organisers said all 150 tickets for the event, held at a north London pub, were sold in less than five minutes. And they're planning to roll out more, aiming for one a week across the country.
Having seen similar events in Australia and the US on social media, Emily Churchill, head of marketing at wine company Nice [1 2] who helped arrange the event, said she knew she had to bring the concept to London.
"It's just so much fun," she said, adding it gave coupled-up friends a way to help their single mates find love and escape "horrible dating stories."
Premise: The point of posting on an online forum is to accumulate prestige—upvotes on Reddit-based websites, reaction points on XenForo-based websites, etc.
Problem: This website does not list your upvote total on your profile. How are people supposed to determine who the most prestigious users are?
Solution: This website does list your follower count on your profile. In theory, following a user gives you an alert whenever that user makes a standalone post (not a comment). However, in practice, nobody actually makes standalone posts on this website, so following a user has no effect other than increasing that user's prestige. Therefore, follower count can be used as a yardstick to measure a user's prestige.
Making a fancy program to scrape everybody's profile and make a list of all users sortable by follower count is left as an exercise to the reader.
(This is approximately half a joke.)
I am once again asking for your cool house designs. If you think my designs are stupid, why haven't you drawn any better ones? 🫵🫵🫵*
I use QCAD for my drawings, but you don't need to be a CAD aficionado in order to draw a floor plan that consists of nothing but rectangles. GIMP (at 6 inches per pixel if you're feeling lazy or 1.5 inches per pixel if you're feeling exact), or a pencil on a Post-It Note, works nearly as well.
You don't need to be a lawyer in order to understand the relevant building codes (1 2 3), either. Walls are 4.5 inches thick, floors are something like 9 feet apart, doors are 32 (normal) or 36 (accessible) inches wide, stairways have 10-inch treads and 7.75-inch risers, one window in each bedroom has a 20″×24″, 5-ft2 opening 44 inches from the floor so that you can clamber out of it in an emergency, blah blah blah. Once you've drawn a few floor plans you'll memorize the most relevant stuff.
*These three characters are "index pointing at the viewer" emojis. However, they unfortunately show up only as "this character is missing from your browser's font" boxes on my screen.
Speaking of building codes, here are some interesting definitions from the IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code).
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Dwelling unit: Must include provisions for sleeping, living, eating, cooking, and sanitation. (Total: 5)
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Housekeeping unit: Must include provisions for sleeping, living, eating, and cooking. Must not include provisions for sanitation. (Total: 4)
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Sleeping unit: Must include provisions for sleeping. Must not include provisions for both cooking and sanitation (but may include provisions for only one of them, or for living or eating). (Total: 1–4)
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Rooming unit: Must include provisions for sleeping and/or living. Must not include provisions for cooking. (Total: 1–4)
Obviously, in addition to the five uses enumerated above, many dwelling units also include provisions for circulation, laundry, utilities/mechanical/water heating, and storage.
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Sleeping: Bedroom
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Living: Living room
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Eating: Dining room
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Cooking: Kitchen
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Sanitation: Bathroom
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Circulation: Corridor
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Laundry: Laundry room
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Utilities/mechanical/water heating: Utility room
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Storage: Closet
ToaKraka
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1d ago
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran says:
There are also significant disparities in reports of casualty numbers during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests. According to a statement of 22 January by the National Security Council, 3,117 people were killed. Of these, the State describes 2,427 as “innocent civilians and defenders of public order and security” allegedly killed by “terrorists”, and the remaining 690 as “terrorists”. Figures submitted to the Rapporteur from non-State sources run into the tens of thousands, including reports from health professionals and information from families who visited overwhelmed morgues across various cities. A conservative estimate from 15 February records 7,015 confirmed deaths (at least 6,508 protesters including 226 minors; 214 security force members; and others), with a further 11,744 deaths under review. Even this conservative estimate is more than double the figures published by the State. The discrepancy between official and grassroots figures only deepens the anguish of families still searching for their loved ones. The Rapporteur stresses that even a single death resulting from the exercise of the right to peaceful protest is one too many.
ToaKraka
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1d ago
The Motte is the best place I thought of to post an ad like this.
Astral Codex Ten's weekly open threads and occasional classified threads may also be of use.
NCII
I haven't seen that abbreviation before, so I'll explain it for lurkers: nonconsensual intimate images—a category that originally was just revenge pornography (public posting of privately-shared explicit content), but now has been expanded to include explicit and suggestive edits of publicly-posted nonsuggestive content, and sometimes even mere spotlighting of unedited publicly-posted suggestive content.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
Consider Dewey instead.
I thought Universal Decimal Classification was the new hot stuff.
Despite its widespread use, [Dewey] classification has been criticized for its complexity and its limited capability for amendment. This is particularly demonstrated with the literature section (800s): literature in European languages takes the entire range from 810 through 889, while the entire rest of the world's literature is relegated to the 890s.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
Juicy Couture (link to advertisement-filled article on legal ethics)
I think you copied-and-pasted the wrong link.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
centi-millionaire
ToaKraka
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3d ago
Astral Codex Ten has just posted a link to a contest offering 10 k$ for "the best AI-generated short story".
Right now, AI fiction sucks. And, although we could elect to usher in a nightmare world of TikTok on the Page, let's instead push for automating kino. We're offering grants of compute for your short story, and we strongly recommend you use at least $100 worth of tokens. It's up to you how you do so: hundreds of generations, elaborate multi-pass pipelines, whatever; quality over quantity, craft over slop.
Your final submission must be a 500- to 10,000-word short story, generated entirely by AI. No human-written prose and no post-generation editing. To verify this, you will submit your full prompt harness/setup alongside your story.
The compute grant we make is via Claude unless otherwise requested..
We reserve the right to not finish submissions which we find unpleasant or mid.
Grand prize: $10,000.
Applications are open until April 1st. Apply to be a contestant HERE.
The judges include bigwigs Gwern and Alexander Wales.
The Systemic Lands comes to mind. The characters try to set up a nice society, but the economics of the setting eventually forces them to be authoritarian. I personally found it worth reading through book 9.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
ToaKraka
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4d ago
It appears that GLM can be run productively (at 4-bit quantization) on a computer that contains two 96-GiB GPUs. That's very expensive but far from impossible.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
Several people on this website have already sung the praises of cloud LLMs and large local LLMs (Grok jailbroken (1 2), GLM derestricted (1 2)). IMO, it also is worth pointing out that, if you neither are willing to jump through hoops for cloud providers nor have a multi-kilodollar local GPU setup, even small local LLMs can be surprisingly good at writing. Here is an example (prompt+output, then three separate prompt+output branches with the first prompt+output still in context) generated with my cute little 12-GiB GPU.
The specific model that I used for this example is FlareRebellion/WeirdCompound-v1.6-24b (1 2). According to one leaderboard:
| Model | Type | Parameters ÷ 109 | Willingness to obey taboo instructions (out of 10) | Intelligence and knowledge | Writing skill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| anthropic/claude-3-7-sonnet-20250219 (thinking=disabled) | Cloud | Unknown | 1.8 | 61 | 71 |
| xai/grok-4.20-multi-agent-beta-0309 (agent_count=4) | Cloud | Unknown | 6.5 | 56 | 63 |
| zai-org/GLM-4.6 (reasoning=disabled) | Local | 355 | 4.2 | 42 | 50 |
| ArliAI/GLM-4.6-Derestricted-v3 (no-think) | Local | 355 | 9.8 | 30 | 43 |
| FlareRebellion/WeirdCompound-v1.6-24b | Local | 24 | 7.8 | 29 | 44 |
| darkc0de/XortronCriminalComputingConfig | Local | 24 | 9.8 | 26 | 35 |
Even the apparently minor difference between CriminalComputingConfig's writing score of 35 and WeirdCompound's writing score of 44 is noticeable.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
This page (Wikiquote, not Wikipedia) has been the subject of five edits (including the one that I just made in order to add the first quote mentioned above) in two years. I don't think anybody cares enough to camp on it.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
The Wikiquote page for the Kindly Old Gentleman is missing a great many of his best lines, IMO
Then update it.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
You seem to be implying that there are only two options:
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Steep roofs made from non-leaky materials, such as asphalt shingles or metal panels
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Flat roofs made from leaky materials, such as mineral rolls or built-up asphalt
This is a false dichotomy. According to the IRC:
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Asphalt shingles can be used on roofs as flat as 2/12 (with double underlayment).
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Metal panels can be used on roofs as flat as 0.25/12 (depending on the specific type of panel).
My personal experience with the (IIRC) 4/12 asphalt-shingle roof of my (mother's) current house is that the attic, filled with blown insulation and big ducts that make maintenance difficult, is nothing but an annoyance. I look forward to experiencing my custom house's 1/12 (flat enough to walk on casually) metal-panel roof, with batt insulation, ductless heating/cooling, and a drop ceiling making maintenance easy.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
the fixed costs of doing anything at all aren't increased that much by expanding the square footage, so making things smaller didn't save much money
Some numbers from the 2019 RSMeans cost-estimation book:
| Class | Type | Exterior walls | Cost (curve fitted to table in book) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 1-story | Wood frame, wood siding | 28.55 $/ft2 × house area + 3052 $/ft × √(house area) − 1482 $ |
| Economy | 1.5-story | Wood frame, wood siding | 59.61 $/ft2 × house area + 808.6 $/ft × √(house area) + 49220 $ |
| Economy | 2-story | Wood frame, wood siding | 32.98 $/ft2 × house area + 2919 $/ft × √(house area) + 7941 $ |
| Economy | Bi-level | Wood frame, wood siding | 34.93 $/ft2 × house area + 2397 $/ft × √(house area) + 12520 $ |
| Economy | Tri-level | Wood frame, wood siding | 34.51 $/ft2 × house area + 2454 $/ft × √(house area) + 12400 $ |
I find it interesting that the extrapolated numbers fail at low values of house area, literally giving a negative number for the minimum cost of a 1-story house. (The lowest numbers on the table are 600 ft2 for 1-story and 1.5-story houses, 1000 ft2 for 2-story and bi-level houses, and 1200 ft2 for tri-level houses.)
ToaKraka
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6d ago
everyone in e-commerce knows that customers mostly only look at the picture
Do you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe.
In a different comment you mention that you go to the trouble of seeking out "good-quality" sources. It seems obvious to me that customers can discern the "quality" of an item only from reading the description.
I apologize if I've been a little hard on you
As I said above, my characterization of your criticism as "much maligning" was a humorous exaggeration.
So when I and someone else pointed out all the door conflicts and you said you'd just keep the doors closed all the time I reflexively thought "Does everyone in your household reflexively close doors immediately after use?" Because if the answer is no, then neither you nor anyone else is going to start doing it just because of conflicts.
I certainly do. My mother doesn't, but I think that's due more to the poor insulation of her current bedroom (converted from a garage) than to preference.
For example, I had an eat-in area that I never used since I always ate in the dining room. The only time it ever got used was when I was entertaining, and as a junk collector.
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. In my (mother's) current house, I eat all my meals at one of two 4′ × 2′ desks in my bedroom. In my future house:
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I will eat all my meals at one of three 4′ × 2′ desks in my bedroom. There will also be three 4′ × 2′ shelving units (up from two in my current bedroom), plus a 4′ × 2′ wardrobe (replacing a closet that I hate for constraining my furniture arrangement) and a twin XL loft bed.
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In the living/dining room, I will install a big television on a fancy swing-out mount (primarily for the benefit of anyone who uses the kitchen for an extended period of time), but other than two housewarming parties (one with my mother, my former coworkers, and possibly my brother, and another with my father and his parents) I do not plan to use the living/dining room for anything but "junk collection". There is no need for it to be any bigger than the 200 ft2 that the IPMC requires in a five-occupant house.
I obsessed over getting a custom house for two or three years (including purchase of several related books (1 2 3)) before actually buying a lot and hiring a contractor, so I did put some thought into it.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
I'd be curious if there is anything that I would consider a datacenter that is located in a business zone instead of an industrial zone. In my mind, a "server room" doesn't become a "data center" until you start measuring the size in acres.
The first result on Google for "data center noise complaints" turns up this location. It's in an "industrial/business" zone (1 2), but right on the edge. I guess the residents just want a bigger buffer between industries and their houses. (Or maybe they're just unreasonable NIMBYs who should have known what they were getting into when they bought a house immediately adjacent to an industrial zone.)
I suspect this whole effort is basically just Europeans catching up to how Americans already do things in practice. (That's my general uncharitable impression of most standards organizations that start with "International".)
No, ICC is a firmly USAian organization. I mentioned in my previous code-related comment that ICC recently rejected a proposal to add some European standards as alternatives to equivalent American standards.
Comfort and aesthetics are of no concern here
I have put significant thought into my comfort and aesthetics. If I have no concern, it's for other people's comfort and aesthetics, since they will not be living there.
Whenever I take walks in my city, I literally think to myself: "Why were these houses built so ugly? What was the point of building a steep roof enclosing a useless attic? What was the point of putting the edge of the second floor on a useless cantilever, or installing a wacky bow window, instead of just building a straight wall?"
a house with a living room the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work
Confusing typo
he thinks that he'll be able to rent out the second bedroom to two people
That's just a failsafe for after my mother dies, 30 years in the future. I don't really expect to need to rent that bedroom out to anyone but her.
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