SI/AI/UI

Jul. 6th, 2025 07:44 pm
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[personal profile] l33tminion
Sandy Island Camp was nice this year, though Melissa and Simon unfortunately had to punt mid-week after kid got an ear infection and had some spectacularly rough nights. Erica was very independent-minded about getting to activities by herself. I really enjoyed dancing with her at the camp dances. The weather was pretty good. Saw some interesting wildlife, including a pileated woodpecker and some extremely successful spiders.

I didn't get as much reading done as usual. Too much distraction. I did read two books:

Polostan by Neal Stephenson - It was all right, but felt much less substantial than a lot of Stephenson's other books, in part but not just because it's much shorter. It's meant to be the start of a series, so maybe the publishers persuaded him to split up what would've been a much longer book. If so, I think it probably suffers for it.

Connectome by Sebastian Seung - Pretty good popular science introduction to the study of neural connectivity. Though the book might be a bit out of date, as it is from 2012. I wonder if there's a good more recent take on the subject, and I wonder whether any light will be shed on that by analogy from some of the more recent AI neural net stuff (especially the work on AI interpretability).

On a related note to that second book, I also finished the animated TV series Pantheon. Really good, probably one of the best sci-fi shows in recent years (and it's in really good company, even among animated shows specifically). If you have a hard time with time-skips in stories, you'll have to hold onto your butts at the end of this one. But I think it justifies it, it's a story about the singularity and it's fitting that the epilogue feels like taking a gravitational assist past a black hole. The ending is poignant and hopeful and tragic, and the choice that the protagonist, Maddie, considers at the end is fascinating. (Also David is best dad.)

On another related subject, this essay, The Void, contemplating what's really at the center, conceptually, of these new AI chatbot models has been sticking with me. (Also worth reading the follow-up here.)

SGDQ is this week, so that's fun! Erica is heading out for grandparent time with Julie's parents for the next two weeks, starting tomorrow. A lot is going on.

vital functions

Jul. 6th, 2025 10:20 pm
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[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster, Wells, Davies + Jones, Hwang Carrant, Keynes + Aidley )

... all of which adds up to more pain-related reading than I felt like I'd managed this week, huh, I thought I had tripped and fallen entirely into Murderbot and EatYourBooks indexing but apparently not!

Writing. A response to the EHRC consultation, which was... several thousand words. A very, very brief response to the Pathways to Work green paper consultation ("I am too disabled to manage doing this properly. These charities are speaking for me. Please fucking listen to them.")

Watching. The first half of Fantasia, with the toddler, with my hand held through all the scary bits to reassure me, apart from the bit that was SO scary that we had to get up and distract ourselves until it was over. Which had absolutely not been flagged as one of the scary bits, and which was the deep-sea-origins-of-life section.

(I had not watched the film since primary school, I don't think? And between then and now I have played a bunch of orchestral music, for most of that time on the violin but latterly as a French horn. It turns out that when I'm not distracted by playing a completely different part, I have incredibly intense sense-memories of several of the pizzicato sections early on...)

Another Murderbot episode. (I continue Indignant.)

Another Farscape episode, this one Taking the Stone (S02E03), which I think was firmly back to early season one levels of incoherence.

Tragically we have not managed The Old Guard 2, because I have had too much migraine and there have been SO many things Happening, but... maybe this week???

Cooking. Several new things! Four from East, leaving me at 41/120 recipes still to make (two of which are "probably won't happen" for reasons of "grapefruit" and "matcha"); of those this week's meal plan includes two (aubergine larb with sticky rice; Vietnamese coconut pancakes). I appreciated the reminder that fried new potatoes are tasty, and A is notably into the chargrilled summer vegetable salad, though I was not a fan of the faff and think I prefer smitten kitchen's charred corn succotash.

Approximately zero faff was salt lassi, and A is now aware that this Special Treat is available; low faff was a cherry clafoutis with fruit from the plot, which I overcooked a bit but, hey, I do in fact like caramelised crunchy bits.

Eating. FIRST BATCH OF DESSERT GOOSEBERRIES ARE RIPE. A tiny handful of Sugar Magnolia sugarsnap peas. Misc jostaberries. RASPBERRIES. And also supermarket strawberries, because we have hit the stage of the summer where they're down to £5 per kilo :)

Growing. I have been doing small bits of harvest and failing to get support structures in for the beans and tomatoes. The outdoor tomatoes have tomatoes on. The squash are coming along; I put more squash seeds in, on the grounds that they're super late but might still do anything; I have not managed to kill all of the chillis; the pepper has flowers.

Harvested lots of dried peas for sowing next year. Am attempting to develop Plans that might actually let me have a full bed of broad beans and a full bed of peas in the interests of getting Reasonable Quantities of them. If the council doesn't tell me I'm not allowed the abandoned plot next door--

I could get so much done if I could coax myself out there for even an hour a day but the agoraphobia is saying No, annoyingly. Gonna try to get A to chase me out more this week.

[pain, food] victory!

Jul. 5th, 2025 11:30 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

I have finally successfully got my head around when the local supermarket reduces the prices on its pastries, which means that we are now well-supplied for doing a batch of pistachio croissant strata to get us most of the way through the coming week. It is not going to be a tomorrow (Sunday) morning breakfast, though, because we have half a cherry clafoutis from this morning, made using allotment cherries.

Read more... )

ten good things

Jul. 4th, 2025 11:49 pm
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[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Freegle has both provided (a 4'x8' piece of 6mm plywood, which I am intending to press into service as A SHED FLOOR) and taken away (a bag of used Jiffy Green padded envelopes).
  2. I have discovered to my delight that I do not have to wait for a submitted indexed recipe book to actually be approved before I can ask for (and be assigned) the next one. My submitted queue is currently two deep; I'm working on another of the very short books now, and will be entertained if I manage to get it three deep. I am finding this data entry very soothing. (Though I am also having an entire moment over the vegan cookie recipe entitled "Rrraw", developed in collaboration with the Rrraw Cacao Factory, featuring raw chocolate and raw cocoa powder and raw cacao nibs, that is then baked at 160°C.)
  3. ........... the internet just Provided someone's photo of a pet rabbit with googly eyes along its side. This is so perfectly engineered to A's interests that I'm kind of surprised it showed up in my feed because someone I actually know, who is not A, shared it.
  4. I think I had somehow not previously ever spent a significant amount of time removing dried peas from their pods? But one of this evening's distractions jobs (while A was removing the ratchets from the plywood in service of removing the plywood from the roof bars) was removing the pods from all the extremely dried-out peas for the purposes of being able to sow more of them next year, and... they go ping and twirl themselves up into neat little curls for broadcasting purposes? if you just look at them a bit funny? I somehow had NO IDEA about this and it's GREAT. (Somehow: all my attempts at growing significant quantities of drying peas have thus far failed dramatically.)
  5. While double-checking the series-internal order for Murderbot because I needed to remind myself which novella came next, I discovered the existence of another short story I had inexplicably been entirely unaware of... because apparently it's being published on the 11th (and possibly in Reactor Magazine on the 10th? According to at least one misc website...).
  6. A, eating tonight's curry, suddenly went "... oh :( I meant to stop off at the supermarket opposite the pharmacy and get some lassi :(" (the last several places they have expected to be able to get salt lassi from having Not Provided). I, who had been aware of the Why Will Nobody Sell Me This problem, had been vaguely intending to get around to just making some and, up until this sad oh-ing, had been singularly failing to actually, you know, do so. But five minutes later A had acceptable salt lassi, and it was really nice to be able to Just Produce a Treet.
  7. First couple of really good blackberries, and lots more raspberries, while at the plot. (There have been blackberries for a week or so now provided you didn't mind that despite the fact they were black they weren't actually quite done ripening... but apparently Just Enough more time has now elapsed!)
  8. Facebook showing me the Mayor of London emphatically posting, as a caption to a photo containing at least 44 Progress Pride flags, "In our city you are free to be whoever you want to be, and love whoever you want to love. We must take a stand against those seeking to roll back hard-won rights."
  9. Tomorrow morning's elaborate breakfast plans are cherry clafoutis, with allotment cherries. (And then while the oven's on I'll bake the bread.)
  10. We are doing a pretty good job this week of remembering that mutual social grooming is good for us, and therefore actually managing brushing each other's hair first thing in the morning. Which for bonus points I am attempting to actively engage with as somatosensory rehabilitation, because I am having Thoughts about my constant background headache, and doing science on myself is my idea of a good time.

Bonuses (oh hey this practice is working): pink gooseberries -- plus yoghurt and hazelnuts, but also by themselves. tomatoes setting fruit. Murderbot novellas. fiddling with pens as fidget. The Fan made this afternoon's 28°C (or at least the bits of it I was awake for) much less unpleasant. A has just set the bat detector up and it's Detected A Bat!

The ITTAGE indirect branch predictor

Jul. 4th, 2025 02:30 pm
[syndicated profile] nelhage_feed
While investigating the performance of the new Python 3.14 tail-calling interpreter, I learned (via this very informative comment from Sam Gross) new (to me) piece of performance trivia: Modern CPUs mostly no longer struggle to predict the bytecode-dispatch indirect jump inside a “conventional” bytecode interpreter loop. In steady-state, assuming the bytecode itself is reasonable stable, modern CPUs achieve very high accuracy predicting the dispatch, even for “vanilla” while / switch-style interpreter loops1!

ten. good. things.

Jul. 2nd, 2025 11:22 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

(Yeah I'm struggling with the ukpol news at the moment, and feeling especially bleak about this FOI response in particular. Maybe I will manage to pull together a post of useful "please write to your MP about the UC/PIP bill" tomorrow, given I've got them all open in tabs to do so anyway.)

Read more... )

Paprika, before

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:04 pm
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[personal profile] kihou
Finished reading the original novel of Paprika. I love the movie (see: Dreampunk) so it was really fun to read the book it's based on. Definitely glad I did!

In some ways it was a bit of a let-down: I was wondering if it'd explain stuff that the movie glosses over, and it did, sorta, in that it had a lot of exposition but also not really stuff I was interested in. It explained the logistical origins of the Paprika identity, e.g., but not the emotional circumstances/how Chiba felt about creating this alter ego and the emotional dynamic. (It did also explain that "DC Mini" stands for "Daedalus Collector Mini", though, so it's got that going for it.)

Paprika the movie is intensely visual and also makes great use of the soundtrack, so I was wondering how the dream world would feel in the book, and I do think it's not as compelling in prose text putting words to everything. And the central dream motif of the parade was invented for the movie.

That said, I do think the book gets to dive deeper into corporate sexism and fatphobia/disability stuff, and in general exploring most of the same stuff with a lot of direct reference points but from a different perspective made it a very interesting read. (E.g., in the book you see the antagonist perspective much earlier, making more stuff dramatic irony rather than a big reveal.)

I do think the book makes Paprika's competence a bit more of an informed trait, since a lot of the time she's getting saved by men, despite supposedly being the best at dreams. That and some other things do make the author come across a bit sexist despite also commenting on sexism.

The ending is weaker than the movie, being more of an "outlast the bad guy and embarrass him once" than anything symbolically satisfying.

What's most interesting to me is the two bartenders, Jinnai and Kuga. They're side characters, and seemingly completely mundane (unlike in the movie), but seem to be author favorites: they're unreasonably competent and helpful, and also they close the book for reasons that aren't well-explained. It sorta feels like I'm missing a reference: why is Kuga such a natural at dream stuff that he invents time travel all by himself? Am I supposed to take them as literally Buddhist figures contrasting with the antagonist's Christian cult status? Why do they play the song P.S. I Love You constantly? I sorta like them, and I'm amused that I was being all "these guys feel like author inserts" before I realized they were literally voiced by the original author and by the director respectively in the movie. But I do feel like they contribute to "men overshadowing Paprika", and while it doesn't really seem they're trying to imply a secret dark ending in the last scene I'm not sure what they are trying to imply.

But regardless, glad I read the book and it gave me a lot to think about.

(P.S., apparently the same guy wrote the novel of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I also like, so clearly I need to read that sometime too.)

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
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[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
[syndicated profile] dresden_codak_comic_feed

Posted by Senna Diaz

"Our Joy is a Sword" Trans Pride stickers

Unfortunately no comic this week because I took a “vacation” for the first time in several years. But Dark Science #170 will be up next Monday, thank you for being patient with me!

Until then, I’ve got some hip new pride stickers over in my Topatoco Store, and $1 of each purchase goes to the Trans Lifeline!

See you next week!

The post New in the Store: Trans Pride stickers! appeared first on Dresden Codak.

vital functions

Jun. 29th, 2025 08:16 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Scalzi, Wells, Gordon + Ziv, Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster )

I have also done a bunch of variably directed online reading about models and theories of pain, and will happily recommend the British Psychological Society's Story of pain should this be relevant to your interests!

Writing. I am several thousand words and 18 (of 52) questions into the consultation on the EHRC Code of Practice consultation. The deadline is in a little under 24 hours. Approximately two thirds of the questions appear to be very simple and straightforward tickboxes. I am not super enjoying the free-text responses, and especially did not enjoy that despite the total lack of any indicator of a word limit there is in fact a word limit and it's 1000 words. I discovered this having written 2511 of the damn things.

More cheerfully I am also, as mentioned, enjoying playing with my pens for the purposes of notes about pain. I am increasingly convinced (cannot remember if I mentioned?) that I have Solved the Problem of one of my fancy pens having an unwelcome tendency to dry up when looked at funny, via the method of "giving the cap a bonus little wiggle once it's on". (It's the Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age which, second hand, was a PhD completion present from A, because -- for those of you who aren't massive fountain pen nerds -- it's made out of a resin that's got crushed Etna basalt mixed in with it; I spent a while going "is it just because red-family inks are typically quite dry???" but nope, the effectiveness of the extra little wiggle suggests quite strongly that the spring for the inner cap isn't quiiite activating when I'd ideally like it to. This isn't necessarily a huge surprise given how sticky it was when I first got the pen, but it still took me... a while... to catch on.

Watching. Up to date with Murderbot. Remain grumbly about Decisions including "how little time the poor thing spends with its helmet up" and "how bad people are at poly" and also, fundamentally, the word "throuple" (I AM TOO OLD AND CRANKY FOR THIS NONSENSE, APPARENTLY), but am also mildly peeved that we've run out of episodes.

Listening. An Indelicates gig, which I almost could not make myself leave the house for but was very very glad I did. Not having yet managed to scrape together the brain to listen to Avenue QAnon significantly increased the proportion of new-to-me songs!

Cooking. Bread? Bread.

Eating. The branch of Tonkotsu a short way from the Indeligig venue turned out to have outside seating! And an updated menu since last time we made it to them, so we both delightedly consumed the chilli tofu ramen and also shared the cauliflower 'wings' and some edamame and the very pleasant yuzu lemonade and also also I tried A's Smoked Hibiscus Margarita and it was great. (I mildly regretted not being in fit state to actually want an entire cocktail of my own.)

Growing. I... harvested and processed 1.7 kg of redcurrants! And ate several handfuls of raspberries! Depending on how badly my neglect since Wednesday has damaged everything given The Heat there's at least as much again to come off the redcurrant bush, and the jostaberry and gooseberry were also both looking extremely promising. AND the second sowing of kohlrabi has started to come up.

much yelling

Jun. 28th, 2025 11:32 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

There has been A Great Squawking audible through the open windows for much of the last week. Yesterday A got to witness the source and then this morning so did I.

You see. There is a slightly scruffy, slightly scrawny magpie, which we wouldn't even necessarily have clocked as a juvenile if we'd seen it by itself? But we didn't. What we saw was it being attended by two actually filled-out adult magpies... up to and including it sitting back on its haunches and raising its mouth to the sky and continuing to yell until food was placed in it.

We have also got to watch it hop around in important little circles, intermittently pecking disconsolately at the ground, because apparently this is how the grown-ups make food appear!!! and it has not yet quite managed to work out why It's Not Working for baby, who is a Good Brave Baby who is doing All The Right Things and yet??? no food?????

And now that we have matched the yelling up with the culprit, I am grinning every time I can hear it, not just when it's visible. :)

some good things!

Jun. 27th, 2025 10:34 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Went on an Adventure to post a lost item back to someone (hopefully in time for the next thing they want it for...), and was rewarded with DUCKLINGS.
  2. Not too warm to achieve fallback dinner of I Don't Know, Bake A Potato, with the result that we finished the lurking salad leaves and also stuck some of the cook-from-frozen pasteis de nata into the oven once potatoes were done.
  3. Ridiculous organic greengrocer had an option on sending us rainbow chard this week, which means I might actually manage to cook one whole new recipe this month (!), which was otherwise... not looking likely. (I have been comprehensively failing to sow any, but there we go.)
  4. Went fossicking in sofa to try to at least rationalise my horrid piles. Found one (1) of the two (2) fancy watch chargers I own, and not the one I was expecting to turn up (because I thought I'd probably mislaid it in a field), which hopefully means that given a leeeetle bit more fossicking I might even find the second.
  5. Really enjoying playing with pens for the purposes of making notes on the pain reading. (Today has been Mindfulness for Health, with detours to read up more on the gate control and [neuromatrix] theories of pain; I was surprised that Model First Proposed In The 1960s is still apparently more-or-less the best we've got for "how the fuck does psychology and emotional affect and other sensory input actually affect how pain is experienced?")
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

If you have had long-term pain, of any kind, for any reason, a component of your pain is neuroplastic. Neurons that fire together wire together: you've had lots of practice at being in pain. This comes down, fundamentally, to how we learn.

Which means that while neuroplastic pain management approaches may very well not solve all of your problems, they'll treat a component of them, and that's worth having -- in exactly the same way that we don't want to e.g. give up painkillers that "take the edge off" but don't solve the whole problem.

(None of this is actually novel except insofar as most education about chronic pain blithely asserts that "most" healing has completed within 3-6 months, so pain persisting beyond that timescale Is Neuroplastic unless you've got cancer we suppose. So in the context of My Project, the framing of "this is an approximately unavoidable complication of your underlying condition that requires active management in its own right" strikes me as important.)

(no subject)

Jun. 25th, 2025 11:26 pm
kihou: (Default)
[personal profile] kihou
Took kiddo to see fireflies and hear bullfrogs at the marsh in Concord. Excellent opportunity to practice pointing at things and saying his favorite word, "star". Who cares about bedtime, anyways?

(Real downside is that fireflies o'clock is also mosquito o'clock.)

[bats] today's brilliant idea

Jun. 25th, 2025 10:35 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

It is warm. We have the bedroom window open at night. Dusk is currently around when we are heading to bed.

... I realised I could prop the bat detector up in the open window while we went about our Bed Things and it worked. (Alas A missed most of the activity on account of being in the bathroom, but Proof Of Concept still valuable.)

Other achievements of the day include "1.7 kg of redcurrants picked, processed, and in the freezer" and "finished All Systems Red: the reread" and also "almost finished The Way Out reread".

(I am so so pleased about the redcurrants; turns out that mulching and pruning heavily and watering... works?! Who knew.)

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

I was trivially able to dig out an example of a documented 5:1 female:male ratio.

Why yes I am rereading The Way Out (previous commentary) for the purposes of making notes on content and structure.

Soaring

Jun. 23rd, 2025 07:01 pm
l33tminion: (Default)
[personal profile] l33tminion
Erica is a rising fourth grader now.

For the long weekend, we took a trip to NYC for Emmett and Sonia Mae's wedding. Was such a happy occasion and an incredible celebration, plus we got to meet baby Roger, who is wide-eyed and adorable.

We took the train both ways. On Thursday afternoon, I got to stop by Clio's bakery with Erica (Clio is Emmett's sister, she's an extremely talented chef, she made an amazing wedding cake for Emmett as well). The bakery is so cool, it has a beautiful little cafe space.

On Friday, we went to Luna Park on Coney Island. The weather was hot, but we had a ton of fun. Erica went on her first full-sized roller-coasters with me. We went on Tickler, a spinny wild mouse, and Soarin' Eagle, a lying-down flying coaster. I was new to those ones, too, it was really fun to try it together.

On Saturday, we caught up with my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Mark, they had us over for a very nice brunch at their place.

The trip home Sunday evening went very smoothly, though it was certainly a late night for Erica, after another late night on Saturday. But she seemed to be rested well enough for the start of climbing camp this week. Then we head to Sandy on Saturday.

I finished reading Starter Villain on the train. And I've started watching Pantheon.

It's hot hot hot today and hotter tomorrow. Summer's here!

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