COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market animals after all, suggests latest study The finding comes from a reanalysis of genomic data.

LLMs don’t ’remember the entire contents of each book they read’. The data are used to train the LLMs predictive capabilities for sequences of words (or more accurately, tokens). In a sense, it develops of lossy model of its training data not a literal database. LLMs use a stochastic process which means you’ll get different results each time you ask any given question, not deterministic regurgitation of ‘read texts’. This is why it’s a transformative process and also why LLMs can hallucinate nonsense.

This stuff is counter-intuitive. Below is a very good, in-depth explanation that really helped me get a sense of how these things work. Highly recommended if you can spare the 3 hours (!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI&list=PLMtPKpcZqZMzfmi6lOtY6dgKXrapOYLlN

A cage match would be good. Hopefully neither will survive.

Every single thing Trump does is about the grift.

It’s a brilliant book, though I have yet to read the sequel. Can’t recommend it enough.

I don’t think there’s any coherent end game for global oligarchs, just the habit of acquisition and growth without limit. It’s a kind of mental illness, in my opinion. As they say, the world has enough for everyone but not enough for the rich.

In terms of population and the ruling class it’s interesting to consider feudal Europe. Lords had complete control over those who worked their land. Serfs even needed permission from their lord to leave their village for any reason, they had no freedom to look for a better life elsewhere. (Incidentally this is why there are so many accents in the places like the UK—isolation lead to language differentiation.)

The Black Death destroyed the feudal system due to population collapse (on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend) and the nobility suddenly had to compete for workers, offering better pay and conditions to lure them to work their land. This lead to increased social mobility and the rise of the middle class.

We may be heading towards a new feudalism but it’s difficult to predict what it might be like, especially if there’s a population crash. Capitalism needs consumers no matter how much automation is employed to produce goods.

I was driving from Brisbane → Tasmania last week and a helpful truckie definitely used the right indicator to tell me it was safe to pass. Thanks, mate!

Of course you treat it as a suggestion, nose out and judge for yourself before trying to overtake.

To each his own, of course, but coy swearing is still swearing.

Actually I do sympathise. I swear too much (but not more than the average Aussie) and wish I could train myself to use some other intensifiers in my language but most of them lack intensity. By Jove! My word! Sweet zombie Jesus! Drokk!

As soon as they’re on the wrong side of the free market they demand government intervention.

I think it’s pretty good for what it’s trying to do, which is relay scientific data to non-technical readers.

Riddick’s first name is ‘Richard’? Dick Riddick?

It my experience. I don’t normally catch the train but had cause to use the AirTrain and Redcliffe lines on Friday and Monday. Once the button lights up you can press it and the doors open automatically once the train stops.

I thought it was the Turkish they mostly celebrate for killing?

This phrase illustrates how profoundly you misinterpret these war memorials. These are not celebrations of killing, they are memorials to those who died, markers of grief not celebrations of conquest.

I live in a small village in Tasmania and I’m not aware of any war memorial however there is a grove of trees commemorating WW1 at the nearby Port Arthur Historic Site. I think this is interesting because Port Arthur is itself a memorial to a brutal, horrific past, a past that isn’t celebrated but remembered. The same site also contains a memorial garden that marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history, remembrance of a tragedy not a celebration of it.

What do you think? How should a community treat the memories of those who die in tragic events? Should they be forgotten or remembered? For that matter, do you think that wars should be forgotten or remembered?

“Those who ignore the lesson of the past, will be doomed to repeat it.”
George Santayana

The one on the right is an “Emotional support vehicle”.

This is known as optical alignment. It’s very common in font design.

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Indeed and it’s quite clear that the Falcon has two gravity planes perpendicular to each other: 1. the plane that supports everyone on the main deck (cockpit, crew lounge, etc.) and 2. the gun battery gravity plane at 90 degrees. This is easiest to see in A New Hope during the TIE Fighter battle in the escape from the Death Star. Han and Luke are sitting back-to-back, separated by a short corridor that sits perpendicular to the main deck. I don’t think most people notice this because it’s not obvious.

This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.)

For the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9myHhpS9s

A Donkey Vote isn’t the same thing as an Informal Vote. A Donkey Vote means simply numbering the candidates in the order they appear on the ballot. In other words, a thoughtless vote that any donkey could do.

This is why there’s a benefit to appearing in the first spot and why the impartial and independent Australian Electoral Commission (another invaluable aspect of Australian democracy) randomly determines candidate order.

Weird that Americans want to go with Aluminum when there’s also Americium, Berkelium, and Californium. Not to mention Deuterium, Helium, Iridium, Lithium, etc..