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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2478 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 25, 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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There’s an interesting study which found that “postponing a desire” reduces temptation more than swearing it off altogether. The postponing must be unspecific to be most effective: “I will enjoy this later”, without specifying a date. There are other studies that claim this result. The mechanism is in dispute but I think it has to do with the perception of scarcity and the belief that the enjoyment is easily obtained in abundance (just, later. Not right now.). If so this has lots of fun implications for culture. When Muslims say that the afterlife is filled with sensual enjoyment, are they raising up the sensual to heavenly heights, as is argued? Maybe not. If they believe that at some unspecified future time, they will get to enjoy as much wine and food and women as they want, then this may paradoxically reduce their desire for these things in the world: it isn’t scarce or urgent, it will be enjoyed in abundance, so no need to desire it so much. There may be implications for the reduction of casual sex too, where the emphasis should be less on “don’t do this pleasurable thing ever”, and more on “you get to enjoy as much sex as you want at an unspecified future date, so don’t worry about it now”.

I think there’s something to this. I mean, when companies want to induce desire they increase the perception of scarcity and rarity and urgency, so to reduce desire you decrease these as well.

want, then this may paradoxically reduce their desire for these things in the world:

Is it working for them, though? They don't have a reputation for sexlessness, more the opposite.

Captain of Industry: a short review

Synopsis: a 3d factory automation / colony management game, from a very small indie team. Grapics are neat but not great. No enemies to struggle against, but resource management is a lot tighter and the fully modifiable 3d terrain is a constraint on official maps. If you aren't good like I'm on my 1st playthrough, it'll take forever to get anything done.

Instead of one death spirals, there's several. None are that nasty or irrecoverable. There's a world map which you can't colonize, but where you can do some rudimentary combat, solely based on the tech installed on your sole combat ship, and not that rudimentary trade.

I feel this is underdeveloped, as a factory builder game where you can build a fleet and use it to explore the map, steal resources, and if you're cheeky enough cause someone's angry battleships to come and flatten your island seems like a natural development. The warfare in this game so far is just a very simple mechanic tied to how much tech and resources you've invested into your starting ship.

The game is in alpha. Devs are going to add trains in december, and it does seem good gaming rigs can handle fairly extensive factories, about 20x-30x the size of what you can see in the (Five) screenshot down here.

For screenshots, see links down under the line. For gameplay vids, this guy isn't too annoying and not bad, if overly wordy.

A somewhat more detailed description:

You start with a broken down cargo ship and 20 pickup trucks and couple hundred people on an island with a particularly fortuitously geology: there is coal, iron ore, copper, usually also gold and sometimes uranium. Time runs really fast: 1 game seconds is one day, so, there's no night-cycle. Fastest speedrun I've seen was 200 years. You can, luckily, pause the game.

So, at the start, you have potatoes. Unless you start farming them pretty fast, game is over in about a year. Food is an important resource in this game. Sustains the population, but if it's monotonous, people won't be as motivated. Motivation aka 'unity' is a resource in the game, used to sustain the non-critical trade contracts and allow instant construction. Something like 4 years unity production allows you to instantly teleport resources to build say, a 10th of the end-game factory needed. If you don't need unity, the materials are delivered by vehicles, which takes time. Some buildings like oil derricks or pumps can't be built this way, so you need to grade a road to them. No bridges so far apart from landfilling enough. Relatively easy in shallow bays, takes enormous mountains of material in deeper water. Material that has to come from somewhere.

The population, which runs the factory has to have a roof to sleep under. There has to be access to drinking water, to prevent disease. Waste has to be collected and disposed of ecologically. Later, as it gets bigger, disease becomes a problem. Now you have to get drugs, and of course more food, so fertilizers and more water. Maybe you'll have to desalinate water, as aquifers have a limited capacity, and collecting it requires vast amounts of space.

In short, there's a pretty simple colony game involved. If you fail it - run out of food, catastrophically mess up with disease and enter a doom loop, it's over ,as even with computing, server farms and automation, there's still some need for a workforce. It's pretty forgiving. You can prioritize buildings and even fucking up and losing 25% population to a combination of infectious disease, pollution-related issues etc isn't a game over. If you don't provide consumer goods, you don't have enough unity. Ditto for varied food. Funnily enough, one of the hardest items in the game to make is cake, requiring 5 component types. CPUs are harder though.

The automation part is similar to Factorio, but belts are only one sided. You can, however, stack them 4 high, with a 5th level able to cross over such a stack. There are no inserters, buildings have input ports.

Seems simple, but there are no underground belts yet, and crossing belts isn't that convenient, so you can easily end up with an unholy mess. Pipes are a lot more forgiving, but only for some chemicals. There's auto-design where game finds a path between two endpoints, which can lead to absolutely abysmal pipe spaghetti. Vehicles are indispensable, as they're, apart from world-map contracts the only way of extracting resources other than water and oil. You can use them for logistics, but there is a vehicle limit that is not so generous, and they use diesel fuel. You're probably going to find out what I found out, which is, never use them for logistics unless it's really early game or you're in a crisis.

Sadly, there is no circuit logic yet, but there are filters and customizable belt splitters and assembly modules can have several recipes. I'm not confident it's going to be added into the base game. If there'll be good mod support, not a problem. Multi-item belts are possible, however, one must carefully meter the inputs and outputs so they don't get clogged. And there's no way to meter item insertion onto a belt other than using a slower belt.

The recipes are a bit more shallow, somewhat reminiscent of Angel's & Bobs, but not in extense, but the game has a much broader scope, so there's a lot more of them. E.g. the tier I building construction material takes brick/concrete, iron and wood. Tier 2 construction material needs tier 1 and electronic parts. Tier 3 requires tier 2 and glass and steel. Tier 4 requires tier 3 and microelectronics. There's no tier 4 but end-game, you need to build servers to run automated factories which double to quadruples production while reducing manpower needs. Overall I'd say it's pretty much like Factorio in complexity, except it's a little differently spread out.

The big difference to Factorio is, you can dig. Indeed, you have to dig. Every resource but oil and wood requires physically removing ore from the ground and creating a hole. Sometimes, because devs weren't original enough to make the factory only a means to an end, people dig just for the hell of it, there's a youtube vid with someone making an open-pit mine going half a mile down if we go by car scale. In a normal game, people usually use waste and slag and rock to make the island more conveniently shaped. See e.g. evolution of the landscape and factory in screenshots. One. Two. Three. Five.

The geological part isn't too great, water table is sadly only placeholder, there's a several of types of terrain, which if dug up and put back in behaves just as new. So bedrock and mined out rocks chucked out of a truck, same thing. Also same volume. The dirt, rock and ore only differs in the angle of repose, which is the angle at which a pile can be piled without it slumping. Rock is best - if you want to construct ramps, which you'll need, best make them out of rock if the space is tight. No landslides, sadly.

The official maps are constrained. They're up to what seems like several square kilometers in size. You have to build on a flat area, and most maps are anything but flat and roomy. Unless you have a trade contracts, lots of space is needed for growing trees which are used for construction. There's no money, sadly, and no trade system apart from contracts, but if you play well, it's possible to import all resources and pay for them with laptops, CPUs, car parts or washing machines..

The kinda bad part: In what can only be described as a techie's lack of imagination, the game goal is once again, build an orbital capable rocket.

Overall, I like the game quite a lot. If Factorio had this kind of presentation and terrain modification, I'd like Factorio more, but as it doesn't, and I've played a lot of Factorio, this was a nice change. Modding is possible, at least changing recipes and adding new buildings is fairly straightforward as I recall.

I'll probably add something more to this later as it's late.

Good description of the game. I've played it and would recommend it as well for anyone that likes the factory genre of games.

It is a bit all over the place in terms of focus. The city sim and exploration parts almost felt like separate games entirely. Or they just act as resource sinks for the main factory part of the game.

I think the best part of the game is the landscaping. I loved designing the mines into the ground with retaining walls to get a steeper slope. Flattening mountains to fill in the ocean was oddly satisfying, I usually would reserve some dirt for a later of top soil to make it all look nice and not so inconsistent.

I tended to play the game on the easiest settings, and also found a mod that increased the truck limit. So I removed most of the "challenge" of the game, but I found it more enjoyable that way.

TIL: According to IIHS (the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), the stock headlights on many cars are inadequate. For example, the popular Honda Fit hatchback has headlights that are only "marginal" (2 stars out of 4) or "poor" (1 star), depending on trim. (Several different measurements go into the overall rating. Speaking very roughly, though, IIHS wants to see illumination of 5 lux out to a distance of 100 meters, while the Fit's headlights achieved that illumination only out to 72.4 meters.)

Headlight bulbs that are much brighter than stock while still remaining in compliance with laws regarding off-center glare (unlike some LEDs) are available for a few dollars from various sources—e. g., RockAuto. Note that illumination distance increases with the square root of brightness: 1 lux of illumination is 1 lumen of brightness per meter squared. For example, multiplying brightness by 2.3 will multiply illumination distance by only 1.5—but that's enough to bring the Fit up to IIHS's standards (from 72.4 meters to 110 meters).

5 lux out to a distance of 100 meters, while the Fit's headlights achieved that illumination only out to 72.4 meters

How much does it really matter? I personally rarely drive in places where I have 70+ meters of unlighted space in front of me, and I'm not sure how much going from 72 to 100 (or the reverse) going to change things.

I personally rarely drive in places where I have 70+ meters of unlighted space in front of me

I personally drive in such conditions regularly. Two weeks ago, I only narrowly avoided hitting a deer that was calmly standing in the middle of a three-lane, nominally-50-mi/h (actually-60-mi/h) highway, which is what prompted me to investigate this topic in the first place.

5 lux isn't much, and it's mostly relevant in the sense of highlighting retroreflectors (either tape, or animal eyes). If you're really darkness-adapted and under 40 or so, you'll be able to see fuzzy outlines, but not much more: it's not unreasonable as a metric for 'minimum to see an object', but a little optimistic.

At 65 MPH, 100 meters is just over three seconds to react; 70 meters is just over two seconds. How much that matters depends heavily on what you're doing with that time. Two seconds to swerve is pretty generous. Three seconds to brake is not, especially in larger cars: modeling these things is tough and depends on a lot of specifics to the situation, but at best it's the difference between stopping just before impact versus barrelling through at 20+ MPH, and more likely the difference between 10 MPH and 35 MPH at time of impact.

it's mostly relevant in the sense of highlighting retroreflectors

IIHS's rationale document (page 4) states that the intended target of illumination is low-contrast objects, not retroreflective objects.

Huh. I don't like how little citation there is for that being sufficient brightness -- all the cites are just to people using 3 lux as a baseline measurement, and that for instrument sensitivity reasons -- but I guess I don't really have the numbers to say that they're wrong, either.

If you're really darkness-adapted and under 40 or so, you'll be able to see fuzzy outlines, but not much more

This is what annoys me about the push for full self-driving: instead of spending most of the time on AI, I want that [same underlying] sensor technology to start highlighting things (4-legged animals, 2-legged animals) that I can't see yet using the inside of the windshield as a screen. I want to be able to see cars through other cars- it doesn't matter if Truckzilla pulls out too far beside me when I'm trying to make a turn because I can just see if there's something coming directly.

I want technology to help me make better decisions on how I should drive; not to replace me. But I'm one of those weird people who actually likes driving- most people don't, so why would anyone ever develop a system like this?

That would be awesome. We’ve already seen the first wave of augmented senses with proximity radars and, arguably, the backup camera. Stuff like the blind spot indicators. Use those for a bit and it’s unpleasant to go back.

I suspect that display technology is part of this holdup. We’ve certainly tried, and then sort of gave up in the early 2000s. Maybe we’re due for a comeback.

Yeah, that's fair. There's been some work done for automotive HUDs, but there's (not-unreasonable!) concern about anything more serious than simple fixed-location infographics being distracting or vision-obscuring -- bizarrely, meaning that the display tech once existed and now doesn't -- and as a result things like blind spot detection or collision avoidance systems tend to rely on other inputs that tend to fall into the meaningless alert problem or at best just push sensor data directly to the instrument cluster.

anything more serious than simple fixed-location infographics being distracting or vision-obscuring

I think "put screens everywhere" is a clear signal that we don't give a shit any more about what's distracting you behind the wheel. (They obscure your vision due to glare and, if the company is/was obsessed with the color blue at the time, kill your night vision just as surely as the new LED headlights do).

My favorite is the one where you have to click through a full page disclaimer of tiny text about how looking at the screen is dangerous in order to actually get to the necessary functions that the screen provides.

The thing that drives me up the wall these days is headlights that shine directly into opposing traffic. I don't know what the fuck is going on recently but probably about every tenth car is blinding me at night.

I don't know what the fuck is going on recently

Well, 3 things:

  • Ride heights are much higher than they were 10-15 years ago. "Hatchback with a lift kit", which is what all CUVs fundamentally are, weren't quite as dominant in 2010 as they are now (where you can't buy a non-lifted hatchback). They make sense if you can only own one vehicle though. As a result, the headlights are going to be physically higher up on the vehicle than they otherwise would be. [Aside: people also like these things because being higher up is the only way to regain the visibility that those increasingly-absurd impact ratings costs you; I feel that if you drive sufficiently incompetently as to roll your car at high speed you probably deserve to die relative to the number of pedestrians that lack of visibility kills, and have already put my money where my mouth is on that point.]

  • If you're sitting higher up relative to the road, your headlights will be adjusted up (relative to a lower vehicle) so that you can see further out. Thus, if you're in an CUV, your lights are going to be aimed from the factory such that you'll blind anyone in lower vehicles.

  • Average color temperature of the lights has gone from 2700K to 6500K. This might even be a net negative on how far you can actually see, but it's far brighter up close and fucks up your night vision, which is what actually matters.

At this point I'm a lot more aggressive about not turning my brights off when I see an oncoming car (unless I see the telltale flicker of them turning theirs off, naturally), because if they don't turn them off I'm blind when they pass.

now (where you can't buy a non-lifted hatchback).

Sure you can, it's called a Prius. Or a civic hatchback.

If you're sitting higher up relative to the road, your headlights will be adjusted up (relative to a lower vehicle) so that you can see further out. Thus, if you're in an CUV, your lights are going to be aimed from the factory such that you'll blind anyone in lower vehicles.

This i don't find totally convincing. Why do they need to be adjusted so you can see further out? Obviously you can always aim the headlights higher to see further (and that's what high beams do, partially), but that can't be legal.

At this point I'm a lot more aggressive about not turning my brights off when I see an oncoming car (unless I see the telltale flicker of them turning theirs off, naturally), because if they don't turn them off I'm blind when they pass.

Why are you driving with your brights on?

Why are you driving with your brights on?

Because that is what they are for? You use them at night, when there aren't any other cars traveling the same way, and when there isn't any oncoming traffic. [I don't live in NYC, where there are so many streetlights that night driving would be possible without any headlights at all.]

Why do they need to be adjusted

It's not so much that they're "adjusted" as it is that the lights are higher up to begin with. Thus, unless they're angled much further down than they would be on a normal car (which is impossible if you want to illuminate the same distance simply due to how high off the ground they are), they're going to project a brighter light into any car lower than those headlights.

it's called a Prius. Or a civic hatchback.

So you have a grand total of... six to choose from (the other two being the Mazda3, VW Golf, Corolla hatch and the Mirage, at least, until they get cancelled for the Corolla Cross and nothing, respectively). I'm ignoring the meme cars like Minis and Fiats because... come on.

It's not so much that they're "adjusted" as it is that the lights are higher up to begin with. Thus, unless they're angled much further down than they would be on a normal car (which is impossible if you want to illuminate the same distance simply due to how high off the ground they are), they're going to project a brighter light into any car lower than those headlights.

This is still not adding up.

If the light is higher off the ground and you want it to illuminate as far down the road as a light lower to the ground, it must be angled lower. If you raise the light and keep the angle constant, you will illuminate further down the road.

If the light is adjusted to keep the distance illuminated constant, I suspect that it would only be shining into vehicles at very short distances, and since you are not usually approaching vehicles head on and the lights have limited side spread, this shouldn't even be an issue. There's something else going on here.

So you have a grand total of... six to choose from

How many hatchbacks does a man need?

Why are you driving with your brights on?

It is mentioned in the IIHS article linked above that high beams are supposed to be used on roads with hardly any traffic.

Researchers from IIHS and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that drivers in and around Ann Arbor, Mich., didn’t use their high beams enough. Only 18% of drivers who were isolated enough to make use of their high beams did so.

Yes, that's true. I'm assuming that he doesn't live out in the sticks, but perhaps I'm wrong.

you can't buy a non-lifted hatchback

*laughs in Mitsubishi Mirage*

But, seriously, there are tons of non-lifted hatchbacks on the market.

Anyone know anything about LA? My family and I are passing through around NYE, going to a Laker's game Dec 28th, but I haven't been through there in probably 20 years. Looking for an area that is relatively calm, safeish within reason, and at least not terribly far from LAX and the cryptoarena as we'll need to get from one to the hotel to the other within a few hours. Will have a rental car.

Be prepared to deal with a lot of traffic. If you need to get somewhere, expect the trip to take at least 90 minutes.

LA suffers the same plight as other urban Western cities.

Natural beauty is amazing, the diversity of biomes and the weather are underrated if anything.

Nothing near crypto arena is calm or safe*. Unless you stay in La live (like at the JW), you will be forced to deal with DTLA. DTLA never recovered from the Floyd riots - incredible number of boarded up and abandoned storefronts are still present.

*by 1st world standards. It’s still incredibly unlikely you will be victimized unless you are walking alone late at night with zero awareness. Every street is littered with homeless people on drugs, passed out with pipe and torch in hand. Expect mild harassment if you walk around.

I’d recommend spending as little time in downtown or Hollywood as possible.

As far as actual places to stay, I think it largely depends on what your family wants to do or see. Beverly Hills is still nice and fairly centrally located, but boring. Generally speaking, the closer to the coast the nicer the area. Without knowing more about your itinerary, you will probably want to stay somewhere within 30 min of the 10 freeway.

Everywhere in LA is accessible “within a few hours.” Traffic is bad, but less bad than its reputation.

Although a lot has changed in twenty years, I don’t much will surprise you. It’s basically just general urban decay; everything is just a bit more dirty and rundown.

One idea may be to stay in Santa Monica and plan on taking the new metro line to crypto arena. It’s definitely not the nicest public transit system but it works.

This is pretty similar to my sentiments as well. The version of LA you may think of from the movies no longer exists and the city has been coasting on its reputation for a while. That being said, LA is an agglomeration of cities of varying sizes, some doing better than others, and many of them are still fantastic places to visit.

If you're looking for a place to stay with family, I'd suggest the area around Marina Del Rey - Playa Vista - Culver City. It's just a short drive from all the interesting bits of Westside LA but also relatively quiet. There are also a lot of small boutique hotels up West Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Sunset Strip which are quite nice and walking distance to a lot of restaurants and nightlife if that's on the agenda. I wouldn't stay in DTLA unless it's a high-end hotel. Pasadena is also just a short drive from DTLA, and may be a destination on its own. It has very "classic California" vibes. There isn't a lot for tourists immediately South or East of DTLA.

LA during the holiday season is very pleasant, you will find that many people in the city have "gone home" for the holidays. Traffic will be a lot lighter than usual around the time you're visiting. Hopefully you don't encounter gloomy weather during your travels here.

All very helpful, thanks.

Since this post came out a little more negative than I intended, here are some positives:

  • Food and drink scene is great. Especially for the price (compared to most major US cities. It probably will feel expensive to you)
  • Lots of great hiking opportunities. If your family has any interest in that direction, I’d strongly urge you to do a few
  • Weather
  • For whatever reason, people in LA don’t go to the beach. There are nice beaches that are almost never crowded
  • Good museums and art
  • Lots of iconic places that your family will probably will recognize from movies. A walk around Rodeo is recommended
  • Those Star Tour buses are surprisingly fun and a decent way to see some gorgeous residential areas you otherwise probably wouldn’t

Again, thanks. Just watched the first WS game, that was amazing. I bet LA nightspots will have a good night.

Let's say you wake up tomorrow and you're 400 IQ. For purposes of this question, suppose this means in slightly more concrete terms that you have a near instantaneous ability to process or recall information, as well as a near infinite capacity for information storage and drawing connections across that information.

What do you do with your newfound ability, if anything at all?

I would honestly probably not do much different, because my current lack of productivity is due to lack of discipline or whatever, not lack of intelligence.

I demonstrate, with mathematical proofs, how to make women happy.

Learn Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. Travel to those countries. Enjoy life.

It would be interesting to do a deep dive on what two-sigma or better IQ people do with their lives. My suspicion is that most of them become normies - very successful but not deviating much from life’s usual scripts.

Two-sigma is 2%+ of the population. That's "be successful following the script" level. Unless the IQ is paired with two-sigma risk-taking or extroversion or some other relevant independent property, it's not going to be "write your own better script from scratch" level. The most interesting deviances are probably going to be where the paired trait is "two-sigma good luck" (what did they do with an uncommon opportunity they stumbled into) or "two-sigma bad luck" (what did they do to recover when the usual script failed them).

Fair point, I didn’t really mean it literally. I was just thinking of people like Einstein and Terence Tao and von Neumann and they mostly seemed to be just ordinary guys who were very successful in academia. Edison is a better case for doing his own thing.

The most interesting deviances are probably going to be where the paired trait is "two-sigma good luck" (what did they do with an uncommon opportunity they stumbled into) or "two-sigma bad luck" (what did they do to recover when the usual script failed them).

I think you’re right about this, the most interesting lives often occur when the standard script fails. See, eg. George Washington not getting his royal commission, or Dr. James Barry, a woman in the 1800s who escaped poverty when her family collapsed by pretending to be a man and becoming a very highly regarded physician. (Not trans, as far as anyone can tell, but she hid her gender until death. Rather sad but very impressive).

What do you do with your newfound ability, if anything at all?

Steal money through any means from people I don't like. (Steve Jobs's ex-wife, that Norwegian vegan cretin, Soros etc) Use said resources to develop useful and aligned 200 AI agents, probably based on my own personality so it'd feel less wrong.

Using said agents, automate online and irl bullying of people engaging in scams, self-dealing, corruption and so on. So, a planet-wide campaign against corruption that's not constructive (e.g. bypassing bad legislation etc). With enough AI agents, it'd be easy to know this.

Destroy rap music in its entirety. Worms on every digital device that brick it if someone tries playing rap music. Super powerful memes making it look really cringe. End to renewables subsidies. End to demand subsidization.

Wage warfare against people developing superhuman AIs. Promote bio-singularity or try to find out whether you can run human consciousness on a machine substrate and it's the same thing as doing it on a biological, if that, push that. I'm assuming the 400 IQ is biological in nature, so, should be pretty easy to reverse-engineer somewhat.

Unless there's a more convenient way of seeing something novel like say, paratime- build a bunch of von-neumann starships and go see the universe, either in person using uploads or by cloning in case biological agelessness is unattainable.

Probably clone myself and also set up a Venus terraforming program using atmosphere re-engineering and comet-redirection.

Yes, I've read a lot of pointless SF, how can you tell?

Wouldn't it make more sense to decide that after becoming extremely smart rather than now when I'm still relatively dumb?

Generational financial security first. Secondly, technological advancement for the benefit of humanity.

I'd probably figure out batteries or energy storage in general. Then energy generation. Energy is basically a huge choke point for all sorts of things. Luxury gay space communism social technologies after.

Wish I was more creative, but this is pretty much it.

Batteries may be plausible. Energy is iffy - what if it turns it's actually has to be nuclear? You may be IQ400, but other people still aren't and they are afraid of bad nukular juju, and your IQ400 arguments do not convince them because they can't understand most of it and hate you for that too. A lot of people would hate you - from traditional energy producers all around the world to the woke ecologists that wouldn't be happy with the idea that the solution for everything they thought as a problem is not worshipping Mother Gaia but more technology. I'm not even sure about social things - so far success in doing anything social is correlated negatively if anything with the IQ...

Nuclear is going to come back because it must.

Bad nuclear juju is a matter of propaganda. It's not unsolvable, it's mere perception management. Undoing degrowth scaremongering won't be that hard.

Surely you're aware there has been a big vibe shift on nuclear recently?

A tiny vibe shift I'd say. It'd be a big vibe shift when Congress candidates would dare to speak the name again, this is not happening yet. And given how overregulated everything is, building anything will be prohibitively expensive unless regulators are told to stop their shit. And only lawmakers can do that, and to make them to do that they shouldn't be afraid that they will be blamed for giving us all cancer through bad juju. That part didn't happen yet. So some guys like Microsoft can afford to have private nuclear plants, because they play by different rules anyway, but the rules for normal people so far are the same.

...you should be on twitter.

The vibes for pro-nuclear are very powerful. It's really cringe - nothing has substantially changed, but.. I guess it's the AI energy requirements.

The worst thing I figured out recently is that many, many SF writers -even the ones who aren't environmentalist kooks, even people who do a little math & physics in their books to keep it plausible - those people really swallowed all the hogwash about nuclear reactor accidents / bombs making some place uninhabitable etc.

What hope do we really have when even curious well-read people with 130-140 IQs do not see through the bullshit.

I'd go for the social technology first. At least, I'd learn enough to make sure I don't become the target of some "evil rich billionaire" campaign preventing the technological progress I'd do later, or that I don't become part of a conspiracy theory claiming I'm an alien, lizard or something else wacky for inventing a bunch of stuff and getting rich super fast.

I've been a fan of Scott Sumner's movie reviews, and he recently created a website compiling all of the movies he has covered: https://www.sumnerscores.com/

I don't recall seeing any Coen brothers movies, but I feel like I should. I plan to watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs this weekend.

I recently saw Apollo 11, which was perhaps one of the best documentary films I've ever seen. Be sure to watch it in 4k, they cleaned up historical footage and it feels like you're watching it live. Everyone knows about the moon landings in general, but this documentary drives home the incredible difficulties they faced while trying to execute the mission.

I wouldn't recommend Buster Scruggs as your first film from the Coen brothers, it's a collection of short stories that I suspect was made largely to satisfy Netflix's insatiable lust for content. Not that it's a bad collection, just not what I would recommend if you wanted to get introduced to the directors. I would heavily recommend starting with Fargo

I don't recall seeing any Coen brothers movies

Lucky you.

They're about the best American film makers of the last 30 years.

Regarding Coen brothers, I thoroughly enjoyed Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Burn After Reading. The Hudsucker Proxy was decent, but not as successful a comedy as either Burn After Reading or The Big Lebowski. A Serious Man is weird, and I still have no idea what to make of it, ~15 years later. I only got around to seeing No Country for Old Men this year, and in all honesty I was decidedly underwhelmed, excellent villain performance from Javier Bardem notwithstanding. It's not at all representative of their oeuvre.

Buster Scruggs is a bit weird, if you end up not liking it don’t let it put you off the rest of their output. I would suggest trying Fargo and the Big Lebowski. Those are kind of their two most iconic movies and it gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of movies they make. No Country for Old Men is very good, but it’s pretty different from anything else they ever made. It’s more of a Cormac McCarthy movie than a Coen Brothers movie.

The Coen brothers are among my favorite directors. No Country for Old Men is a must see. Fargo and The Big Lebowski as well.

I enjoyed BoBS but didn't really care for the final vignette. There's a semi famous meme that you might recognize and point your finger at.

Factorio 2.0 and Space Age dropped on Monday. A new batch of puzzles & logistics to solve & optimize are here. Since I discovered the game back in 2016ish, it's good to see new challenges outside the mod scene.

So far, I've put in enough time to launch a rocket (formerly endgame research, now mid-game) and research bot logistics.

I'll need to make notes of an actual bare-bones build for the new space station mechanics. Other people who can put in more time than I have are already handling exploring other planets. I'll get to that in due time.

Please no strategy spoilers. I haven't had a chance to get it wrong in a while - going from "suboptimal" to "good enough" to "pretty sharp" is going to be the most fulfilling piece of the game.

How is it for bugs (not the biters)? The early access guys were finding big ones the week before release.

I don't have nearly enough time to play right now, maybe this winter. Am listening to Nefrums try to speed run it right now: 5.5hrs in and he's finally on a new planet with everything exploding and his Nauvis(?) base being overrun by biters.
(Checked back: 13 hours and he's flailing around getting ready for the end)

I'm actually almost more interested in how they added all these new features without a massive performance hit. How do you optimize thousands of items on belts all decaying at different rates?

I LOOOOVE Vulcanus, it's an awesome planet with a lovely aesthetic and the most interesting 'threat' I've ever seen in this type of game. The first time I visited it, I remember wondering "Can I build a base here? Is it missing any critical resources?" In hindsight, it really is an awesome place for a main hub. I guess I shouldn't be any more specific than that because of spoilers.

I'm on Fulgora right now and this one is not quite as fun. It's essentially an empty graveyard wracked by almost constant storms. I'm embarrassed to admit it took me 5 actual real-life hours to figure out why I couldn't use a pumpjack on the oceans of oil the planet is covered in. The logistics are an especially horrid nightmare here, I suggest not messing around with the quality modules, even though the planet seems to be built for them. The whole thing turns into a spaghetti mess in no time at all and the islands make it impossible to build a true mega-base where everything can be carted off to a specific spot.

The space stations probably deserve a word too. I'm positively enamored with them. They are fun to design, fun to pilot, challenging, rewarding and interesting all at the same time. I'm really glad the developers pressed hard on the 'difficulty' slider, it would have been very easy and lazy to just throw 1-2 asteroids per minute at the player. But no, you do need an actual serious defensive strategy, the space rocks are no joke.

Would anyone like to join a group play through?

Right now its me @xablor and @Southkraut

Add me on Steam cjet799

I'm so excited to get into this, but I already blew my wad on Mechwarrior 5: Clans this month. I know some people can play these automation games over and over and over again. But I tend to play to the endgame once, "win" in so far as a win condition exist, and then kind of lose interest in doing that grind again or faffing about in a post game grind. I want to believe this expansion is enough of a remix on that puzzle to make the journey interesting again for me, but it's no sure thing.

The cool part is it seems like there's a high end goal to beat the game now. It's not "win in 4 hours then fuck around with the post-game content for no reason" now. Although I can see massive opportunity for that with the new quality system.

From everything they said about the expansion in the dev diaries, it should mix things up enough to make things interesting for you. They added multiple new mechanics that straight up didn't exist before, and each of the planets has a design where they try to put a twist on the way you are used to building a factory.

I hear you about blowing your wad though. I have Factorio: Space Age, MW5: Clans, Metaphor: ReFantazio and the new Zelda all clamoring for my ducats. Only so much money to go around though.

have you been keeping up with the friday factorio facts stuff they've been posting? Space age is adding an absolutely absurd amount of new mechanics, shifting mechanics around, rebalancing existing stuff, adding new enemies... it's nuts. There's a planet where you generate power by tapping lightning strikes from a never-ending storm, and run the manufacturing gameplay backwards by digging up alien ruins and sifting the wreckage for random refined products that can be further broken down for raw materials. There's a planet with giant lava worms that steamroll your defenses if you tresspass on their territory. There's a jungle/swamp planet where you need to grow and harvest produce, and get what you need from it before it rots on the belt. You can build space platforms and fly them between planets. You can build fusion reactors. Plus a million improvements to existing mechanics: reworked recipes, reworked research, elevated train tracks, beacons and modules redesigned, and on, and on, and on... I've got near two thousand hours in factorio, and the amount they've changed with this patch is staggering. It's pretty close to a whole new game.

I read a few when Space Age was first announced, which is why I'm hopeful it will be different enough to appeal to me. But I haven't kept up. I kind of want most of it to be a surprise. I've never been the sort to have a wiki in one window and the game in the other, you know?

then take it from me: they have increased the amount of gameplay/content/complexity by ~300% at least. it's pretty close to a full sequel at this point.

You son of a bitch, I'm in.

Well, I beat Mechwarrior 5: Clans in about a week. I fucking loved it.

It brings back the more linear style of missions from the non-Mercs Mechwarrior 2-4. It does it in grand fashion as well, with lots of cutscenes for story telling. Just the right amount IMHO. The story kept me engaged too, and I generally enjoyed the characters.

If you are a Battletech lore nerd, I think they brought the Clans to life in a way not seen since Robert Thurston wrote his novels centered around Clan Jade Falcon. I've seen people upset with CGL's management of Battletech taking it out on PGI's hard work here, and generally I think that is undeserved. I didn't catch a single whiff of "current year" in this production, and I find the lore complaints about how Smoke Jaguar culture is depicted unconvincing.

All in all, I think it's a must play if you are a Battletech fan. Probably doesn't have the longevity that MW5: Mercs has, with it's open world and career mode. But it's a fantastic game, and I can't wait for the DLC. Too bad for me that it's probably at least a year off, given the DLC schedule MW5: Mercs had.

Drinking adventures

Last night was my final night of drinking, I started concerta today so wanted to drink my heart away one last night. I initally wanted to meet my buddy from budapest but he did not feel comfortable drinking and driving which fair play to him is right, drunk driving kills. In India there is taboo with liquor, so drinking in front of parents is a big no no. Rajput, my caste, have a drinking culture so it is not a taboo in my family, I just dont drink much plus I am not making money so I dont wanna develop an addiction, waste my life away plus I cannot pay for liquor as my pocket money is like 100 dollars a month. I did meet the guy from budapest three days on tuesday and dranka beer in his car, not safe.

I ended up at another friend's place with another friend of mine. We finished 2/3 of a bottle of Black Dog with a bunch of sugary mixers. I consumed about 70 percent of it, I guess, maybe 60. I woke up drunk, stayed the night at his house, and ended up texting some girls.

I really do think drinking is fun. I used to look down upon it when I was in my super religious arc but it is really fun. Some of my favourite days were when I drank instead of abstaining (20 times or less I would say). Pai, the place in Thailand I was in was the best because I drank and did drugs. I really enjoy being youthful, most people reading this cannot do a bunch of what I can. Getting hammered with strangers or friends without much worries is amazing. Sadly, I will not be able to do it again for a long long time. Like being buzzed, singing in a bar with live music, dancing like a dumbass to trashy pop, befreinding strangers, being around your friends and playing right wing reactionary shit on the tv whilst buzzed, all of this is really fun.

Ofc talking to girls I dont know, cold approaching them and having encounters where I can dance like a silly little child and get them to hit on me. I grew up bereft of any female contact and India is not the west where you have a ton of pretty girls and a culture where people party as much since its neither as prosperous or as safe. But regardless, i genuinely liked doing all that. Partying is super fun, if you have your life together and are a grounded person, this stuff in moderation makes life so much better.

I missed out on a lot in my childhood, I dont wanna overcompensate but I like going out. I never drink there, I mostly only drink with friends that too rarely. There is something about blaring music and being carefree. In pai, I met this guy who was in his mid 30s and he told me that he really envied my youth and how much enthusiasm I have when I talk to people true irl. That stayed with me, I am still young, life has a lot to offer, and I will not be able to do this stuff after a while. I was always in a hurry to grow up as a child because of my family's condition and needed to make money so that I could pay off for the court cases and stuff. Life cant be lived always waiting, now I know that if I work properly, meditate and do the rest of it fine, I will do well so I should enjoy these little things.

One of my fondest memories is 10th march, 2016. I want to write more about this stuff on the next wedensday thread.

I really enjoy being youthful, most people reading this cannot do a bunch of what I can. Getting hammered with strangers or friends without much worries is amazing.

You are quite hilarious but should really stop with the manosphere readings while you are at it with quitting the booze -- I can confirm that although I am perhaps twice your age I am indeed still able to get hammered, lol. My dad can pretty much do it to, so your worries are over for a long time I guess!

Concerta is Methylphenidate exteded release, do not fuck with any other form of methylphenidate, you will need to take upwards of at least 36 mgs, take it daily in the morning, cant smoke, drink or do drugs on it.

Ha, so now who can't get hammered, Mr. Enjoys Being Youthful?

(BTW I can also confirm that's it's possible to smoke and get hammered while taking way more speed than that, but I wouldn't necessarily want to recommend it for somebody in your apparent state)

I dont read the manoshphere lol, it is mostly bitter people who never actually approach girls but just sit on the sidleines and pontificate about how high vlaue they are.

Ha, so now who can't get hammered, Mr. Enjoys Being Youthful?

got me there

I am indeed still able to get hammered, lol. My dad can pretty much do it to, so your worries are over for a long time I guess!

I meant more in a carefree sense where people around me are able to do this stuff. Growing older brings more responsibilities. So I appreciate being in these environments around people. I dont get hammered routinely, i drink far far less freuqnently than almost everyone I know, my appreciation comes primiarly due to the environment.

(BTW I can also confirm that's it's possible to smoke and get hammered while taking way more speed than that, but I wouldn't necessarily want to recommend it for somebody in your apparent state)

Yeah, I need to fix a bunch of issues beforehand

I meant more in a carefree sense where people around me are able to do this stuff. Growing older brings more responsibilities. So I appreciate being in these environments around people.

Those environments are usually called 'bars' -- i recognize they are less common in India, but around here they are not hard to find.

If not the manosphere, where are you getting this 'life ends at 30' stuff from? It's not real man.

Life does not end at 30 but in that age, around 30-35, I would want to have kids. There is obviously something about being young, I appreciate things that come at different chapters of life, like how I do think that teenage love is a wonderful experience or how kicking it with friends when your in high school is.

Life 10 years ago was simpler than now, if this is true then 10 years later I might be a father with kids and that is added responsibility. Still, if I can still occasionally do this stuff then why no :)

Most of my life I just wanted to grow up, grow older and leave my house, sure my life has issues now, still I can and should enjoy the good in a way that helps me do better. It felt nice kicking it with drunk folks, I may not drink but look forward to more of this lol

I finally got Concerta (36 mg) but will write about it in next week's Wednesday thread.

Was listening to a bit of music recently, I used to listen to electronic music mostly, so slightly off mainstream but still sorta girly type stuff instead of techno, so electro house, liquid drum and bass, melodic hardstyle, glitch hop. I listen to a bunch of pop and pop punk now. As a teenager, I did not wanna conform so would badmouth other forms of music, that was naive.

No polo this week but I did go out drinking twice. The first was with a friend this tuesday who was in my high school and went to Budpest for uni. He was in Australia for a year and then went to Budapest, we both had a beer each in his car whilst listening to trashy Indian music lol.

Will watch once upon a time in hollywood and fight club to study Brad Pitts body language. My posture is terrible and my mannerisms are erractic, anxious, very much not what I want to be like. This and working out will do more for my attractiveness than anything else.

Also fights this weekend. I think Topuria may win, not sure. I am sure that Ankalaev will win, somewhat sure that Khamazat will win too, though robert is the best defensive wrestler since aldo and max imo. I listen to Heavy hands and mma vivisection. I also saw bivol and beterbiev, I think bivol edged it but boxing is super corrupt. I need to stop watching and caring so much about combat sports. Topuria is the ideal wrestle boxer, more boxer than anything else. He has great pocket work, is defensively sound, most importantly he is a top tier athlete. Topuria has the makings of an all time great, he has great defence whilst striking and grappling, is really good in the pocket and can flatline you with one shot. You have biological cielings in sports. There is only one giorgio petrosyan but if you are that smart you probably would not fight professionally. Ilia has great fundamentals, he gameplans well. He is defensively sound even when he is throwing, he is a good pressure fighter and max is ageing so yeah, good fight.

I ran into Rob Whittakers ex wrestling coach in chiang mai btw, he runs mat masters in Melbourne or something, mma gym. Dude is afghan and immediately asked me where in India I was from, when I told him north, Rajasthan, he immediately started speaking hindi without an accent. Afghans speak like 5 languages or something so they are really good at picking up languages. My uni is a really good public engineering one, so we would have some afghans over to study, they all picked up langauges super fast. I like afghans but the mass migration shit in europe by them is fucked up.

Regardless, he was a super nice dude. I bumped into him twice, he followed me on Instagram, introduced me to his family and told me about mma stories. So how he started in both greco and freestyle, how rob did not train at all for his ddp fight and how even though bo nickal is legitimatley a better wrestler than khamzat, he is not as well-rounded.

Let's say I have a folder with many pictures of clothed humans drawn by the same artist, a good GPU and literally zero experience with artificial neural networks.

What is the correct sequence of steps to train a model that:

  • draws pictures of clothed humans in the same style?
  • draws pictures of unclothed humans in the same style?
  • draws pictures of unclothed humans engaged in various forms of intercourse in the same style?

I don't know how to do this locally, but I definitely know how to do this online.

What you want is a LoRA. And since you want it for non-photorealistic porn, you specifically want a Pony LoRA. Here's how it is done:

Get a Civitai account, then acquire buzz (the site currency). Either farm buzz daily for a couple of weeks (follow 3 randos everyday for 10 buzz each and claim a free 25 buzz each day from the image generator for a total of 55 daily buzz in less than a minute's work) or drop $5 to get 5000 buzz. You'll need 500 buzz to train a LoRA.

Go to the "Create" button and expand the drop-down menu, then select "Train a LoRA". Pick "Style" and give it a name (usually the name of the artist). Agree to the terms and upload a zipped folder with all your images. They need to be tagged, but Civitai can automatically tag them for you. Click the "Auto-Label" button and use the default settings. But before you hit "Submit", you need to add a trigger word to the "Prepend Tags" field. These are the Words of Power you use to summon your LoRA. I recommend "[ARTIST NAME]_STYLE", for example "PICASSO_STYLE" or "MICHELANGO_STYLE". In the "Base Model" page, select "Pony" under "SDXL", then hit "Submit" and wait.

In a few hours, your LoRA will be ready. You can publish it to Civitai and use it with their online generator or you can download it to your computer and generate locally with a program like Fooocus.

Before doing this, you may want to clean up your dataset. Get rid of low quality, small, or redundant images. If any of the pictures contains an artist signature, crop it, or else your LoRA will learn to generate faux signatures.

I don't know the sequence of steps, but it seems like you'd want to train a LORA, which I believe can be done using the popular Automatic1111 UI. As best as I can tell, Stable Diffusion 1.5 is still the most popular base model on which to build LORAs, but I think the tech exists for the more recent versions too. There are a decent amount of resources in the Stable Diffusion subreddit about this sort of stuff.

4chan is probably a better place to ask this, given their prodigious amount of, um, art of this kind.

Pieter Levels mentioned how much porn helped in training models kek

Hasn't image processing been using a crop from Playboy in Academic papers from the very beginning?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

lol i had no clue

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