Tootfinder

So there’s papers/studies that show:
1. LLMs don’t work (high error rate and making stuff up)
2. Using LLMs reduces your productivity
3. LLMs cannot—ever—be “scaled” to achieve human-level intelligence
4. Most people who speculate in financial bubbles lose their investment
Any questions?

The table's final dry fit. It's almost perfectly level which was one thing I was worried about.
Also, the glue up with shims.
Tomorrow, the finishing goes on and it should be ready to attach the top
#woodworking
#inprogress

Just to underscore the point, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo leaving MIT for UZH is probably one of the biggest academic news stories of the year.
(Think: Bad-Bunny-level-for-normal-people big.)
Nobel-winning Economists To Leave US For Zurich: University
https://www.

Nobel-winning Economists To Leave US For Zurich: University

Repurposing an old fileserver as another backup server using #TrueNAS… First, I want to pull out any disks with reallocated sectors. Most disks are more than 5 years old and my plan is to replace future failing HDDs with larger ones. As an appliance, TrueNAS is not meant for low-level tinkering. The GUI only shows actual uncorrected sectors as SMART errors and has no way to light up a disk slot o…

I didn't take A-level chemistry back when I was a teenager, so playing catch-up... the equilibrium bond angles in sp² and sp³ hybridized bonds make shapes that tesselate nicely (regular hexagonal prisms and regular tetrahedra respectively) to form crystalline solids. But that didn't have to be the case, did it? Is that one of the anthropic coincidences cosmologists get exercised about? #Chemistry

Had a blast at our little #OpenStreetMap birthday celebration. 🍰 🧉
It ended up being too windy to fly drones for long. Instead we recorded street-level images for #panoramax and GPS tracks, in addition to doing a lot of live surveying – using a huge range of tools that allow contributing to OSM!
In no particular order we at least used: @…, @…, @…, @…, HOTOSM's ChatMap, iD and JOSM.
Having so many different ways of making contributions is a real feature.

Level Up Your Inner Power
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods

Urban Diaspora III 🎈
城市放逐 III 🎈
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️Ilford FP4 Plus, expired 1994
buy me ☕️ ?/请我喝杯☕️？
#filmphotography

My 9mm goes bang again: here's the front entrance to Harold's Square framed by Paris Baguette which isn't from Paris but rather from South Korea
#photo #photography #ithaca

Weekend Reads
* URI redirection patterns https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22019
* AI and college grad jobs https://www.

Not Here, Go There: Analyzing Redirection Patterns on the Web
URI redirections are integral to web management, supporting structural changes, SEO optimization, and security. However, their complexities affect usability, SEO performance, and digital preservation. This study analyzed 11 million unique redirecting URIs, following redirections up to 10 hops per URI, to uncover patterns and implications of redirection practices. Our findings revealed that 50% of the URIs terminated successfully, while 50% resulted in errors, including 0.06% exceeding 10 hops. …

New Pathfinder 2E character idea, new `git` repo...really works well managing all the stuff associated with my characters. Unfortunately, I still need to finish up her character background.
#pathfinder2e #git

Turns Out Trump’s Own Team Messed Up U.N. Escalator and Teleprompter | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/post/200833/trump-team-messed-up-un-escalator-teleprompter
Even los van alle bs: ⬇️ is waarschijnlijk het voornaamste dat Trump &…

Upcoming beatemup 'John Fox' where you play as an anthropomorphic fox either solo or co-op is coming to PC and consoles next year in February. Pretty psyched to try this one. Very much my kind of thing.
Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXt3QeftCmU

What a ridiculously high table. It comes up under the arm of VDLeyon, and almost clavicle level on Zelensky.
A discreet intimidation tactic, rather like when the americans gave QE2 a lectern when she addressed congress that was so high only her hat could be seen,.

№ 23 Carter Meshanic (whose brother Hunter is also on the team) of the William Smith Senators tries to get the ball past № 14 Alex Penders 6' 5'' of the IC Bombers
#photo #photography #sports

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, so what exactly are the details of the "engineered" model of love from my previous post? I'll try to summarize my thoughts and the experiences they're built on.
1. "Love" can be be thought of like a mechanism that's built by two (or more) people. In this case, no single person can build the thing alone, to work it needs contributions from multiple people (I suppose self-love might be an exception to that). In any case, the builders can intentionally choose how they build (and maintain) the mechanism, they can build it differently to suit their particular needs/wants, and they will need to maintain and repair it over time to keep it running. It may need winding, or fuel, or charging plus oil changes and bolt-tightening, etc.
2. Any two (or more) people can choose to start building love between them at any time. No need to "find your soulmate" or "wait for the right person." Now the caveat is that the mechanism is difficult to build and requires lots of cooperation, so there might indeed be "wrong people" to try to build love with. People in general might experience more failures than successes. The key component is slowly-escalating shared commitment to the project, which is negotiated between the partners so that neither one feels like they've been left to do all the work themselves. Since it's a big scary project though, it's very easy to decide it's too hard and give up, and so the builders need to encourage each other and pace themselves. The project can only succeed if there's mutual commitment, and that will certainly require compromise (sometimes even sacrifice, though not always). If the mechanism works well, the benefits (companionship; encouragement; praise; loving sex; hugs; etc.) will be well worth the compromises you make to build it, but this isn't always the case.
3. The mechanism is prone to falling apart if not maintained. In my view, the "fire" and "appeal" models of love don't adequately convey the need for this maintenance and lead to a lot of under-maintained relationships many of which fall apart. You'll need to do things together that make you happy, do things that make your partner happy (in some cases even if they annoy you, but never in a transactional or box-checking way), spend time with shared attention, spend time alone and/or apart, reassure each other through words (or deeds) of mutual beliefs (especially your continued commitment to the relationship), do things that comfort and/or excite each other physically (anywhere from hugs to hand-holding to sex) and probably other things I'm not thinking of. Not *every* relationship needs *all* of these maintenance techniques, but I think most will need most. Note especially that patriarchy teaches men that they don't need to bother with any of this, which harms primarily their romantic partners but secondarily them as their relationships fail due to their own (cultivated-by-patriarchy) incompetence. If a relationship evolves to a point where one person is doing all the maintenance (& improvement) work, it's been bent into a shape that no longer really qualifies as "love" in my book, and that's super unhealthy.
4. The key things to negotiate when trying to build a new love are first, how to work together in the first place, and how to be comfortable around each others' habits (or how to change those habits). Second, what level of commitment you have right now, and what how/when you want to increase that commitment. Additionally, I think it's worth checking in about what you're each putting into and getting out of the relationship, to ensure that it continues to be positive for all participants. To build a successful relationship, you need to be able to incrementally increase the level of commitment to one that you're both comfortable staying at long-term, while ensuring that for both partners, the relationship is both a net benefit and has manageable costs (those two things are not the same). Obviously it's not easy to actually have conversations about these things (congratulations if you can just talk about this stuff) because there's a huge fear of hearing an answer that you don't want to hear. I think the range of discouraging answers which actually spell doom for a relationship is smaller than people think and there's usually a reasonable "shoulder" you can fall into where things aren't on a good trajectory but could be brought back into one, but even so these conversations are scary. Still, I think only having honest conversations about these things when you're angry at each other is not a good plan. You can also try to communicate some of these things via non-conversational means, if that feels safer, and at least being aware that these are the objectives you're pursuing is probably helpful.
I'll post two more replies here about my own experiences that led me to this mental model and trying to distill this into advice, although it will take me a moment to get to those.
#relationships #love

You know what it is though?
It’s just like racism or xenophobia—the lowest level of human assholery.
If you don’t want any to live in a society where other people just exist, or have your children grow up in such a society—why don’t you walk into the ocean?

Level Up: Unfiltered
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods

A #pandemicpond post.
The bog-barrels that I added last summer have done an absolutely incredible job at keeping the water crystal clear and almost completely algae free this summer.
Only the much warmer stream between the ponds has more algae than I really like.
I also added the bigger pump at the same time which likely helped a little but the added flow also raised the level of the top pond just above the liner in some spots. So yesterday when I topped it up, I took away the flat border stones to inspect where it was leaking. It turns out, almost everywhere!
So I added some handfuls of pebble taken from the #poolpond filter since I know there is extra there..: and stuck it under the liner to raise it an inch or two all the way around.
Here is a before and after. The first pic with the purple lilly
pads is last year with the algae that was common in the summer before the big filters. The second pic is a few weeks ago when the pond was full, clear, but overflowing, notice the water overtop the flat stones. The last two pics are today after raising the liner a little under the stones.
And a pic of the happy dual-barrel bogs (which are just small versions of the giant filter I just finished in the backyard). The marsh marigolds have not bloomed in the bog barrels. Not sure if they will this year. It is quite shady for them.
Oh and a lilly is about to bloom!The fish are also very active and happy.
#backyardproject #diy #ponds #gardening #watergarden #bloomscrolling #goldfish

An FPV #videogame wherein you are a trauma center doc trying to keep patients from other shoot-em-up games with injuries of varying severity alive, while managing your team of nurses and other docs. Alternate game: patients are coming in from a natural disaster, or a mass shooting. Difficulty level, e .g.,number of incoming patients, and severity of injuries, increases; while resources, as in sup…

This whole opinion, while well-meaning and bringing up generally good points (we humans can decide what technology we research and how we use it)—misses the point: there will not be an “AGI” that derives from current “AI” technology.
What the “AI” companies are proposing and the media is accepting at face value is like saying ever more realistic graphics in computer games will suddenly reach some threshold and the graphics will become the real world.
It’s nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2025/jul/21/human-level-artificial-intelligence

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, my attempt at (hopefully widely-applicable) advice about relationships based on my mental "engineering" model and how it differs from the popular "fire" and "appeal" models:
1. If you're looking for a partner, don't focus too much on external qualities, but instead ask: "Do they respect me?" "Are they interested in active consent in all aspects of our relationship?" "Are they willing to commit a little now, and open to respectfully negotiating deeper commitment?" "Are they trustworthy, and willing to trust me?" Finding your partner attractive can come *from* trusting/appreciating/respecting them, rather than vice versa.
2. If you're looking for a partner, don't wait for infatuation to start before you try building a relationship. Don't wait to "fall in love;" if you "fall" into love you could just as easily "fall" out, but if you build up love, it won't be so easy to destroy. If you're feeling lonely and want a relationship, pick someone who seems interesting and receptive in your social circles and ask if they'd like to do something with you (doesn't have to be a date at first). *Pursue active consent* at each stage (if they're not interested; ask someone else, this will be easier if you're not already infatuated). If they're judging you by the standards in point 1, this is doubly important.
3. When building a relationship, try to synchronize your levels of commitment & trust even as you're trying to deepen them, or at least try to be honest and accepting when they need to be out-of-step. Say things and do things that show your partner the things (like trust, commitment, affection, etc.) that are important in your relationship, and ask them to do the same (or ideally you don't have to ask if they're conscious of this too). Do these things not as a chore or a transaction when your partner does them, but because they're the work of building the relationship that you value for its own sake (and because you value your partner for themselves too).
4. When facing big external challenges to your commitment to a relationship, like a move, ensure that your partner has an appropriate level of commitment too, but then don't undervalue the relationship relative to other things in life. Everyone is different, but *to me*, my committed relationship has been far more rewarding than e.g., a more "successful" career would have been. Of course worth noting here that non-men are taught by our society to undervalue their careers & other aspects of their life and sacrifice everything for their partners, which is toxic. I'm not saying "don't value other things" but especially for men, *do* value romantic relationships and be prepared to make decisions that prioritize them over other things, assuming a partner who is comfortable with that commitment and willing to reciprocate.
Okay, this thread is complete for now, until I think of something else that I've missed. I hope this advice is helpful in some way (or at least not harmful). Feel free to chime in if you've got different ideas...
#relationships #love

View from creek level at Monkey Run: there's a research farm on top of the bluff on the far side. (That little blotch in the upper center is a Monarch butterfly!)
#photo #photography #landscape

initial pump testing has been successful!
Filled the filter and pump bay to an approriate level via garden hose. ✅
turned pump on for the first time and fixed any overflows in the system on low flow ✅
turned the garden hose off and allowed pump to circulate for awhile ✅
I brought the pump up to 100% power (180W) and confirmed inlet standpipe did not overflow indicating good distribution flow on the bottom of the filter. ✅
identified/fixed more overflowing low points with pump at high flow. ✅
tested the breather pipe by turning off the pump and making sure the water was not siphoned from the filter the pump bay ✅
I let the top water from the filter drain into the bay until the bay was full (starting to overflow into the main pond) ✅
Used the small pump to empty the pump bay of some of the dirty water... watering the blueberries and flowers in the process. ✅
tiny red bum friend? ✅ 🕷️
A successful day!!
#poolpond #backyardProject #DIY #electronics

Atrium on top floor -- at the far side you can see a corridor that leads into Gates Hall, while a workman is still painting the wall next to the staircase down to the next level
#photo #photography #cornell

TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?

EV Charging Cost by the Numbers.
I charge my car at home almost nightly wirh a Level 2 Flo 30A/240V charger.
I noticed today that they have added an "estimated rate" for my address based on my utility (BC Hydro) charge so that it can estimate the cost of the charging.
Their estimate is $0.11400/kWh. I drive alot. 160km a day when I am commuting to work and then 50-100km in the evening 4-5 days a week Dashing. Thanks to dashing I have a solid record of odometer readings.
We have both tiered and time of day pricing so it's complicated to do this manually. I do most of my charging during the lowest rate overnight. I have the Flo charger set to only charge at full 30A power between 11PM and 7AM to match the overnight rate, then 15A in "off peak" (standard rate) and to turn off completely during on-peak 4PM to 9PM times.
I think their estimate is quite accurate considering the overnight rate is usually $0.14 - $0.05/kWh. Ill include my latest electrical bill. (we are billed monthly)
Here are the numbers.
A "full tank" of battery is 65kWh
Monthly: eg. March (full time commuting plus dashing) 4668km
30 charging sessions
853.4kWh
$97 ($2.07/100km)
Last 12 months: 56,107km
8793kWh
$1,002 ($1.78/100km)
There are a few free charges at work in there (15 in the year?) but any saving is eaten up by $6/day parking cost.
As a comparison if I drove our 2014 Prius C hybrid 56,000km at its general fuel mileage of 5L/100km and an average price of $1.60/L that would be $2,800. So I am saving by more than half, and probably more than that, compared to one of the best mileage hybrids out there.
It makes less and less sense to buy a gas car.
(We have 222,607km on the 2019 Hyundai Kona and about 250,000 on the Prius)
#EV #ElectricCar #cost #electricity #bchydro #bcpoli #endfossilfuels

The main pond is basically full now. I have been gradually increased the power of the pump. Now 100% at 160W. I won't normally have it at full power but this is good for testing.
I am basically patrolling the edge of the ponds looking for low points. Have shored up a few but nothing serious. The first round of tests with the filter addressed most of them.
When the holes filled over the winter I actually shored up the edges of the main pond then, so there isn't much to do there.
Just waiting for the pump bay to fill up completely now. It'll probably be about an hour. (the water hose has not been on full blast this whole time, only about 1/4)
Then we will see the full level of the entire system.
The Finger of water closest to me in this picture is the overflow that goes into the storm/sewer system. That is the final arbiter of the fill point of the pond.
#poolpond #diy #portalberni #backyardproject