strappingfrequent
No bio...
User ID: 1155
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
Poetry isn't my forte; but GPT4 doubled-down and insisted this was proper.
In tavern's heart, a figure stands with grace, The Bartender Venator, known by name. His eyes, a mirror of the human race, Reflect the joy, the sorrow, and the game. Each glass he fills, a story to embrace, In liquid form, no two tales are the same. Yet, in his hands, each patron finds their place, And in his presence, life's not quite so tame. So raise a toast, to him who knows your face.
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
It's hard to imagine a plausible cessation of hostilities that isn't preceded by RUS regime change. Likewise, why would UKR or NATO agree? Russia already has imperiled demographics; the longer this war goes on the more they write themselves out of the future.
To answer your question -- if the war ended today; both Russia/Ukraine lose, NATO wins.
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
Well said.
The idea that Russia is winning or win an attritional war against a united NATO (more so than since the Berlin Airlift); I'm completely astounded that people can look at the last year and think Russia is a near-peer. They chose a blitz to Kiev because a long attritional war against a united NATO is precisely what they wanted to avoid.
NATO Goals:
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avoid a large-scale nuclear exchange
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prevent Russia occupation of territory that shares a border with NATO; related to point 1.
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damage Russia enough so as to impact their ability to aggress in the future
What we see now is, literally, perfect. Ukraine would prefer a quicker resolution; they're paying in blood. But, unfortunately, there is no easy resolution here. For reasons I'll get to, I think NATO could amp it up a bit and absolutely defang Russia's capability to wage any sort of conventional war -- but that is a less-than-desirable outcome. A slow bleed is preferable than a Russia shocked into even more humiliation (and credible reasons to fear for it's own safety). If Ukraine is willing to fight -- and polling indicates that they are -- then NATO has no reason to disrupt this status quo.
Feel free to disagree with me; I'd like to hear opposing viewpoints:
Even if the US is limited to contributions of material, intelligence, and resources: I rate their current involvement a two out of ten. There are many, many options available -- the difficulty is finding the appropriate balance point between preventing a UKR collapse and accidentally going to far and causing the collapse of the entire Russian war effort.
Observations:
Intelligence/Precision Fires
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They're slinging missiles at cities; this makes no sense at all unless they lack the capability to engage worthwhile military targets. When has strategic bombing ever actually worked? Strategic bombing of civilian centers is a (cold-blooded) gift to Ukraine; Zelensky's task of maintaining NATO support is easier when Kremlin TV runs segments of civilians shrieking in terror, bombs, and syncopated cheering. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1580196518765551616
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Despite Russia's claims, no visual evidence that they've destroyed a single HIMARS; I think the 80km precision fire capability is a genuine problem for Russia; note the quantity of destroyed C2 vehicles (visually-confirmed; https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html). This is weird; so is the quantity of KIA RUS field/general officers.
Kharkiv Offensive
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This was a rout; the sheer quantity of abandoned material is absurd. 100+ tanks, 100+ IFVs, 80+ APCs, 60+ arty... and many of these were left in working order; i.e., Russian forces didn't even take the time to disable them.
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Some of Russia's elite broke: T80s were recovered; only the elite get those. Specifically, 4th Guards Tank Army; stationed in Moscow... these are Russia's best.
NATO "shortage"
- This has got to be sheer cope; nothing contributed thus far (or ever) will actually weaken any NATO countries security posture. All this old stuff was kept around specifically for this purpose; e.g., fucking around in regional conflicts. And to say that NATO -- as a collective -- is incapable of diverting the resources necessary to produce more... how does that make any sense at all? GDP is a component of military effectiveness, and NATO enjoys a 15:1 advantage. Given the long-term attritional nature of the conflict thus far, even if Russia were to miraculously transform itself, pick up momentum, and even if they shifted to a full-scale war economy with no internal friction... this really changes nothing at all. To think that the US would just say "aww shucks; we're a bit low on arty shells, guess we lost" is ridiculous.
I have no doubt that if the US actually sent over the good shit, then in conjunction with the battle planning and intel... Russia's conventional force would be lambs for a slaughter. How could they maintain logistics for 300k+ combatants when every single GLOC is actively observed and within reach of precision munitions.
We'll know more over the next few months; mud season ends by May. Should Russia start gaining momentum, I'd expect to see more zany attacks designed to disrupt logistics/C2. Note: Russia withdrew from Kherson shortly after the Kerch Bridge was disabled. Critical GLOC.
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
Can't rhyme? A poet friend of mine was lamenting that it rhymes too much!
A whisper on air,
A silent thought
That lingers there.
Though none can hear
It still exists,
A hushed connection
Of souls that share.
Glorpth yoozled down the blizbevy tree, His muttazels aflutter with glee. Beside him stood the zibbablock, Gloating and ready with a shock. But the brave Glorpth didn't falter, He battled the beast with a clatter. He thrashed and he slashed 'til the night was done, And the Jabberwock was won.
I specifically asked for three nonsense words for this one...
Through the dark woods I heard a howl,
Flittering through like a silken owl.
The slonky creatures stirred below,
As they rose and began to flow.
Crossing through the gnelpy grove
I saw what I could not move.
It was covered in gloopy scales
And had a thousand hissy tails.
It was the jabberwocky, fierce and wild
Ready to attack with a baleful smile.
I ran and ran and never looked back
The terror of its presence slack.
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
Haha -- an absolutely fantastic mom & pop's breakfast diner near me has 4.7 (out of 5.0) on Google. They'd obviously rather get no review at all from you than receive a 4/5.
My guess is it's an emergent property with a self-sustaining feedback loop. If enough people are mapping a perfect score to "I was pleased" and the opposite to "I wasn't pleased" and most people are pleased, then you'd expect to see some sort of pareto distribution with a slight bump at the lowest.
Why do people do this? Not sure; maybe shared empathy from working customer-facing jobs. A server could knock it out of the park on a grueling horrendous shift for every customer but one; and that one customer leaving a scathing review online would seriously jeopardize the server's job. So, if I leave a review it's with perfect scores and if I mention names I'll speak of them with exuberant glowing language (even if they were just decent) because it may brighten someone's day a bit.
strappingfrequent
1yr ago
tldr: ridesharing apps offer rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff. Local restaurant owners and other similar industries; a "bad string" of "bad" 4/5 reviews and The Algorithm rears its ugly head.
The USA tends to treat less-than-perfect scores as egregious failures. Two issues: enough people are somewhat conscious of the reality that, despite agreeing with your sentiment (it wasn't perfect; there's room for improvement; giving a 100 percent makes no sense), the choices available are "perfect" or "bad enough that I want to damage their bottom line." So we maintain the "perfect is the normal answer" -- but there's still enough people who aren't in the loop (or don't care) that they'll write a glowing 4/5 review for a local business not understanding how frustrating that must be for the proprietor: clearly the customer enjoyed their experience and plans to return... but a 4/5 just lowered the restaurant by seven positions on assorted metric consolidation sites... because the top 10 restaurants are all between 4.7 and 4.9 (for example).
strappingfrequent
2yr ago
Software Engineering
In my experience, DoD contractors pay SWEs pretty terribly in comparison to the private sector. They're constrained by how the DoD itself ascribes value (e.g., credentials and YoE). That being said, a month ago, a buddy of mine with a 3-month bootcamp "degree" got an offer from Booz Allen Hamilton for 80k hybrid (3 days in the office). Granted, that's not 100k, but as I told him... just get 1 YoE and job hop for a monstrous raise.
My company is much more selective; but ~100k (fully-remote!) would reasonable for an impressive junior.
I too considered OpenAI to be the gold-standard, but I was astounded to find that the recently-released Assistant API maintains state, but with minimal/zero synthesis. Thanks to testers (@self_made_human) -- I learned quite quickly that some sort of synthesis is necessary -- to do anything more sophisticated than "search" requires a cognitive architecture that remembers and forgets.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17u4X8O_2TxZXZRv_P7x-177aMzigrJmJ/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/185oaULl_29F9-mXQ420KQIKq_rU_crpv/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/184szy3fS4PmFF_D1Ock_NNrxCeg-sFV4/view?usp=drive_link
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