jiskblr
jiskblr
or what's a heaven for?
15K posts
“WHAT IS THE CORRECT LEVEL OF INJUSTICE AT WHICH TO DECLARE YOURSELF IN REBELLION AGAINST THE POWER METING OUT JUDGMENT IN THE UNIVERSE?”
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jiskblr · 2 days ago
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What it takes to break me of a decade-old Tumblr habit, apparently: A month-long consuming obsession with Blue Prince. (54 pages in my little white moleskine-like notebook for it.)
I'm done with it (at least as much as anyone in the world is - there's still a missing Red Letter, a bunch of unreliable prophecies unfulfilled, and some mysterious anagrams with no obvious meaning but clear significance, among other things), but having a month-long backlog of Tumblr I didn't catch has removed about 90% of my desire to ever log on.
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jiskblr · 3 days ago
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Ten years of ONLY THROW
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she is still learning
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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Better to have someone make deals about immigration who cares about limiting the damage than to let someone who doesn't care run the show.
Immigration is insane. This is the median voters desire:
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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i bet count von count has killer fuckin music taste
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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Oscar Wilde was fully capable of writing about earnest genuine nonsexual love and also deliberately inserting a cock-sucking joke in the middle with complete plausible deniability. Sticking epigrams like that in places they wouldn't be expected by polite society was practically his specialty.
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“Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling”
—Oscar Wilde
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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It is relevant that the mayor of LA declared an emergency and asked the governor of California to deploy the CA National Guard, at that time, and then he did. Bottom-up declaring exceptions and asking for the boss to help you out.
This time, the President is mobilizing the National Guard against the explicit protests of the governor, who is suing to block it, without anyone in the local government asking for anything. Entirely top-down with no local demand.
The last time that happened was the Little Rock Nine. There is no Supreme Court order mandating the President's actions this time, just Trump being a dick and trying to manufacture an incident.
I think that hundreds of Marines being deployed to LA against protestors may also count as something happening
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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Simply post questions on MathOverflow, and then post incomplete potentially incorrect answers for them within ten seconds projecting utmost confidence they're flawlessly correct.
Proven strategy. You have to do the Q and the A with different accounts, though.
I want some sort of mathematical bounty site where I can post my mathematical desires with attached financial prizes to those who manage to prove/construct the desired thing. Like, I would gladly offer 100 euros for a number of little things that I would like to see proved. Part of me feels I could do it on tumblr, but I don't know how to pay the prize to people without doxxing myself, so I won't.
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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“Belief is more important than truth. Every moment, belief in imaginary things changes the world while truth sits unnoticed and waits.”
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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And will that work? Why will it work? How long will it take? How much damage will be dealt beforehand?
"Belief is more important than truth. Every moment, belief in imaginary things changes the world while truth sits unnoticed and waits."
has been lodged in my brain for nearly twenty years now. It's depressing, on some level, that it's true, but what is true is already so.
If by repeating the truth to an audience uninterested in hearing it you leave someone much worse to exploit their fear and cause immense damage, then just repeating the truth is not helpful. Virtuous, perhaps, but not consequentially helpful. You need a plan, and the first step of that plan is going to be to stem the bleeding and limit the damage.
Don't argue with the people who want less immigration. It didn't work before and it won't work now and even if they were convinced it still wouldn't work.
Make deals that limit immigration, find something moderately honest you can say about it, and say that. Calm them down.
Do something to address the root causes. This is the hard part. They don't necessarily have insight and eliciting guesses will take empathy that I don't have and you definitely don't have. And implementing a real fix will be hard and probably slow.
Only then, when you've dealt with the root problem, will it be productive to loudly insist on the truth.
The truth will rarely set you free. If you're free to move with the wind when the truth blows you, you already were.
Immigration is insane. This is the median voters desire:
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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Announcing Mandrake
You are the last of the Mandrakes, a sorcerous line of gardeners. At long last, you’ve returned to your family’s abandoned home. Make friends, tend your gardens, and put down roots. Fish, gather and delve in the wilds. Make a place for yourself, and uncover the mysteries your family left behind.
The Lost Arts of Horticulture
Horticulture is a cursed and forbidden practice… except to you. You come from a long line of sorcerers who practiced the green and growing arts, and you’re able to grow such marvels as: runner beans! Cherry trees! The humble turnip!
And as your skills grow, you’ll be able to plant stranger seeds, like thunder-calling taran, or rhewyn, which waters your gardens for you. Perhaps you’ll even grow a goose-tree! (Where did you think geese came from? Other geese? Preposterous.)
Place beds, decorations and resting spots. Find, plant, nurture, grow and harvest plants both mundane and magical, and gradually expand your gardens into the tangled grounds of your family’s abandoned castle.
A World to Inhabit
Discover a beguiling new world inspired by British history and folklore. A world of old, wild powers, of uncanny spirits that reside in those places mortals dare not go; of deep histories, and deeper mysteries.
You won’t just work in your gardens. Forage for resources in the nearby woods and along the beach. Go fishing (but take care not to be cursed by the river). Delve into dangerous mines in search of bright minerals and stolen secrets.
Breathe life into the Mandrake lodge with your choice of furnishings and renovations; acquire old books, and spend the evenings reading in the candlelit comfort of your study. Learn to cook. Meet your neighbours, become entangled in their lives, give them gifts and learn their stories.
Fireside Menace
Long ago, the world changed. The Covenant of the Hearth decreed that the day belonged to humanity, but the night… the night belonged to other things. Now, all earthly lights save hearthfires go out when the sun sets, and the Mara ride the night-winds. Don’t go out after dark – the night is not for you. 
For now. (After all, what self-respecting sorcerer follows the rules?)
Human, Humble Magic
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Magic in Mandrake isn’t about flashy fireballs and shimmering shields, but about folkloric ingenuity, whimsy and patience. Grow a cherry tree from seedling to maturity in seven days rather than seven years, then fashion your sorcerer’s staff from its wood. Befriend a river. Eavesdrop on the dead. Spend a haunted night at the Butcher’s Oak. Drink tea with the god who lives in your chimney. 
A Host of Lavishly-Realised Characters
Welcome to the village of Chandley. It’s small, it’s complicated, and everyone’s got their own story. 
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Meet Rosen – bee-keeper, candlemaker, rook-speaker – the even-handed village leader charged with steering this troublesome community of eccentrics. Or Gideon, the sombre hunter who makes pacts with the wild powers of the woods. Befriend Nessa, the village smith, whose kindness conceals the scars of an old tragedy; and Thackery, the effusive Voicer, who keeps technology that no-one – least of all he – fully understands. Visit the lighthouse, where Jory and Ruan Vicory live with young Tamsyn: the girl they saved from the sea, and who still hears voices calling to her from beneath the waves…
Chandley may be small, but it’s old, thick with secrets, and set in its ways. Is it ready for the return of a Mandrake?
Beyond the firelight
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Encounter the spirits, gods and bogles that live alongside the people of Chandley: the smiling revenant imprisoned in a tree, who claims he knows you (even though he’s hundreds of years dead). Lonely, long-armed Granny Jakes in her hidden orchard, who offers you a sip of a drink that the world has forgotten how to make. The Regent of the Woods, bearer of a white crown. The shy thing that whistles an old tune in the depths of a mine no-one has worked in decades. Hroame, who is sometimes stone and sometimes not.
Come along with us
If you’d like to hear from us when we release Mandrake or upload a demo, please consider wishlisting the game here on Steam.
Because Mandrake is complex and has some very unusual features, we’ll be seeking ongoing feedback from players. At first, that will be through playtests here on Steam, and later we’ll be releasing Mandrake in Early Access.
If you’d like to hear about playtests or just learn more about the game, you can follow us here or sign up for our monthly newsletter, which covers music, internet ephemera, art and film recommendations, strange historical anecdotes, pigeons, various mines/caves/catacombs, and sometimes also updates on our games.
About Failbetter Games
Should you see this and not know us! Founded in 2009, we’re an indie game studio known for quality storytelling and highly atmospheric art. You might know us from our other games: Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies and Mask of the Rose, which are set in the world of our long-running browser game Fallen London. In a break from studio tradition, this is a game where you can’t eat people.
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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The only autism therapy most insurance will cover is ABA, so many other therapies that actually work and aren't torture are 'ABA'. At some point the distinction between the original and the fakes may have broken down.
After hearing all the "ABA is abusive autistic conversion therapy" stuff, it was facinating running into two austistic ABA therapists at a party. they claimed it wasn't like that at all
They said it was about giving low-functioning autistic children who were unable to communicate, constantly self-harmed and/or lashed out violently, the tools to actually be able to communicate, and stop self-harming, etc. They encouraged stuff like stimming. Tried to give kids both non-verbal and verbal ways of communicating, like pads that could say phrases. one of the therapists was a trans girl who wears a manta ray onesie all the time, has a house filled with stim toys, and constantly infodumped about her interests, she did not seem particularly converted.
maybe it's a case of different clinics having wildly divergent practice? They said standards have changed a lot over the years, the modern methods really only got popular circa ~2010 and a lot of the people talking about ABA online were talking about the old stuff.
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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Two Guards At a Crossroads: The General LLM Prompting Trick
Two guards stand at a crossroads. One always lies and the other always tells the truth. One way leads to riches, the other to certain death. You may ask one question. -- A classic logic puzzle
Prompting an LLM well is hard, and many tasks require a sophisticated custom task-focused prompt for optimal results, and sometimes even for decent results. Often they'll be sycophantic even if you do, unless you get even more complicated.
But as with the guards, there's a fairly simple trick I was taught this week: Ask them to ask the question for you.
For any complicated question, have your system prompt be something like this:
I am going to give you a question. First tell me the best prompt to give you in order to answer that question, then respond to that prompt.
It removes most sycophancy because it's answering itself more than you and only the suggested prompt gets the sycophancy. It unlocks much more of the default capabilities than asking yourself because it knows better than you how to prompt itself.
(credit for the general idea from @chroniclesofrettek, specifics made up myself and probably worse than what he uses)
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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i’m sorry kink fans but i just can’t see the suffix ‘con’ without thinking it means convention
‘dubcon’ will skrillex be there??
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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I'm pretty sure there is a real BDSM convention named NonCon.
i’m sorry kink fans but i just can’t see the suffix ‘con’ without thinking it means convention
‘dubcon’ will skrillex be there??
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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I mean, it recently changed ownership and that seems to have already caused some degeneration in product quality. So no, not really.
It's nice that I have no idea who the CEO of Discord is, or the names of any management figures in that company whatsoever
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.
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jiskblr · 1 month ago
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"If it's amazing, they'll know."
When talking about "George Lucas' vision" and the original six Star Wars films, there's one thing to bear in mind and that's Lucas' style of filmmaking.
These are movies for kids, designed to emulate the Saturday matinee serial format from the '30s, à la Flash Gordon. You see this most of all in the dialog. But something else you notice is George Lucas' filmmaking style, particularly in how he films and edits.
Take Darth Vader's introduction, for example.
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Look at the composition: Vader stands tall, in contrast to the - as the script puts it - "fascist white armored suits of the Imperial stormtroopers". They're all in white, he's all in black, he's bigger badder, emerging from a cloud of smoke. What an entrance.
But if you think about it, it's just a single full shot. Very basic.
Compare this to Kenobi, wherein Vader is treated like a monster out of a horror movie. First, you glimpse his shadow, people reacting...
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... then ominous bits and pieces like his boots or his lightsaber...
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... and finally Vader himself, in all his terrifying glory.
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That's a modern way of shooting it and it admittedly makes ol' Darth seem that much more imposing and absolutely badass.
But Lucas comes from a background of editing, experimental filmmaking and used to work as a documentary cameraman.
So what he did is just put the camera down and have Vader walk in. It's a faster yet differently-efficient way to introduce the character. It's more about dynamic pacing and visuals.
And that is Lucas' style. In his words:
"The way these films were put together, they're shot very much like a documentary film and the action of stage, and then I shoot around it. I don't stage for the camera. And as a result, there are a lot of things that happen pretty much by accident. It lends an aura of authenticity to everything." - Star Wars - Episode I: Podracing Featurette, 1999
Another example: the introduction of General Grievous.
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A door opens revealing his ugly mug and he walks in. Boom.
But in Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, you find that - as envisioned by the storyboard artists - our introduction to Grievous would've been very different.
"We wanted to have the introduction to Grievous be a series of really close shots that would be a series of details: his creepy foot, his creepy hand...
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... his scary alien eyes...
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... but George brought up an interesting point. He didn't want the film to concentrate on one design detail or one element— but rather let the world be there and let the viewer find those things without necessarily having it shoved in their face." - Derek Thompson, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013
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"George nixed the idea, saying: 'I don't want something to be special because of how it's filmed, but because of what it is. Just put the camera on it and let it play out in front of the audience. If it's amazing, they'll know.'" - Iain McCaig, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013
That's it in a nutshell. "If it's amazing, they'll know."
The above storyboards look awesome and seeing Grievous be introduced that way would be great... but it wouldn't be Lucas' Star Wars. It would be some other director taking a crack at it.
And this way of shooting can be weird, even boring, at times. I mean compare Mace leading his troops into battle...
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... to Aragorn leading his, in Return of the King.
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The latter is so much more emotionally impactful. For a number of reasons (eg: Aragorn is a deuteragonist, Mace is a secondary character with less development), but one of them is that the moment is just shot in a way that's more interesting.
First we have an angle on Aragorn as he smiles and charges. Then the rest of the other characters as they react and follow suit, then the troops do the same.
With Mace it's, uh, *checks notes* he flourishes his saber and charges, the clones follow. Hell, for half a second we're looking at just an empty screen.
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But y'know what the shot does look like?
It looks like something out of a WW1 documentary.
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It's that authenticity he was mentioning further up.
At the end of the day, you can call it campy or bad... it's Lucas' style. It's cinema. There's a logic to it.
"To me, the script is just a sketchbook, just a list of notes, and, sometimes, I prefer the documentary feel of free flow, so I let my instincts tell me where to go. I like to create cinematically; I don't like to have a plan. I like to have a rough idea of what I'm going to do-certain themes, certain issues I'm going to deal with-and then I try to do so." - The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 116, 2005
He doesn't try to make a character look particularly badass with camera angles or make the shot too choreographed, he just goes with the flow, and makes the deliberate choice to shoot it that way, because for better or for worse... it's his movie.
So yeah, just a tidbit I thought would be interesting.
Edit:
@schilkeman added this very interesting point in the replies:
"He doesn’t stage for the camera, but he does compose for the camera. The documentary style, while somewhat detached, requires the filling of the screen with motion and light. The way things move through frame seem very important to him. These are things his films excel at."
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