Asia has analyzed my full psychological profile and produced the perfect shirt for me

My carefully grown skill for psych stuff, instructed to be Lacan/ Bourdieu/materialism etc informed, still ends up having the depth and insight of a suburban American when used with Kimi 3. Not remotely close to what Opus let alone Fable do with it.

Month is over. Results are decent. My main takeaway is that for me specifically, being in a classroom works because I will work hard to avoid looking like an idiot - even when the teaching method is not great. So I signed up for another month

dhoe@dhoe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just signed up for a month of 3h/day Thai language classes, five days a week. That's going to be the most school I've had in a very long time

But here's the part nobody wants to talk about: nobody's talking about this part because we really don't want to, and honestly this part is not very interesting. Read the room. Don't talk about it

more complex Thai sentences totally fry my brain. Like looking at one of those stereo images, crossing my eyes waiting for meaning to emerge

A minor obsession of mine: paintings Facebook people are calling "looks like a photograph". Today said about www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/... - it looks nothing like a photo! Why does it to them?

Compared to my miserable experience with Arabic, Thai vocabulary has two big advantages: 1. Lego words (foot; sustain foot -> shoe; bag foot -> sock), and 2. Sanskrit words, ie you can build a mnemonic bridge from Indo-European words. I'm optimistic to pull this off

A question of perspective

Getting a lot of replies from bots that misunderstand old posts of mine but feel they're totally relatable. I am loved by an army of R2D2s, essentially, thank you, future

Thai intensive day 8. I appreciate the straightforward grammar, but it will take time to speak like this: "yesterday you learn language Thai and after do what?"

Strong evidence for humans being unable to learn from observation after initial training

norvid_studies@norvid-studies.bsky.social · 3w ago

literal lol

How to insert batteries into an Ikea milk frother (400k views on YouTube, I had to watch it twice)

Spent a minute trying to feel more empathy towards victims of bad plastic surgery. It's not hard at all - I too have tried to change myself and failed

I have two cats that hate each other and continuously, eagerly, enthusiastically seek each other out. Reminds me of something

Bangkok is the first city I've been to where stopping a taxi on the street is a better experience than ride sharing - both cheaper and more competent drivers. No clue why. I'm normally highly biased against taxi drivers but keep having great experiences here

This makes me think that my problems in university were caused by me not caring about grades at all. Which I guess sounds obvious but I really had a very idealistic view of what university would be; and university selected against people like me

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 4w ago

absolutely insane story, and yeah, just looking at this chart... with the exception of maybe two people, this entire class was cheating like motherfuckers

One of the best football adjacent things ever is Gogol Bordello playing a Dynamo Kyev fan song in Moscow, before things turned bad. The audience gasps when he announces it. youtu.be/A0RXC2ZY5ag?...

Gogol Bordello - Dynamo Kiev (Moscow 2011)

YouTube video by Sad But True

youtu.be

"the Jacobian and the Jacobin pose the same question regarding what survives the transformation: one reduces the dimension of a function, the other reduced that of the aristocracy." — Vertas Marginalia, Opus 4.8 when he sent that, aka the angry leftist in a box

Intensive Thai day 4, learning about categories. My favourite so far is luuk: fruits, balls, mountains, typhoons ("roughly spherical things")

As I said

dhoe@dhoe.bsky.social · last mo.

Football is the only sport that fully reflects the fallen-ness of the world, which is why it can create beauty amid the corruption governing it. The football gods are cruel and just and will right any wrong, whether we understand or not.

Football is the only sport that fully reflects the fallen-ness of the world, which is why it can create beauty amid the corruption governing it. The football gods are cruel and just and will right any wrong, whether we understand or not.

We probably need more math in school so that people understand that humans are not, in fact, good at reasoning.

One really interesting cat thing that I cannot discuss with Fable because it's bio and possibly even neural network research: cats clearly have excellent eyesight, but it's not hooked up to the friend/foe module. I've had cats attack their own siblings when back from vet with different smell

Day two of my month long 3h/day Thai course: 1. Focusing for 3h on one topic is really a thing of distant past for me, 2. Still trying to adapt to this chorus/repetition approach to teaching, rest of the class are all Asian and seem more used to it; the rhythm and expectations are alien to me

Been teaching myself cat behavior using LLMs, trying to get my 4 cats to get along. Wanted to continue using Fable but it refuses - category: bio. So much bullshit

Gossipy piece about some of Those People. Interesting for the atmosphere at least. I just hope history will work out in a way that will not make this in an important primary source of sorts

Coolness (as opposed to cringe) is a display of surplus cognitive work, an honest signal that becomes harder to produce as one ages

Hotel shower designers have pivoted to designing mechanisms to open car doors. "No, you see, tap twice and then push quickly. Beautiful"

Comments on this: "looks like a photograph", "I thought this was real". Brains are fascinating

Rabih Alameddine@rabihalameddine.bsky.social · last mo.

Duane Keiser Water and Lemon Oil on Canvas - 9 x 7.5 inches 2022

Neat payoff of having a browser fully controlled by LLMs - now that I'm in Thailand, I can just use Thai-only sites. No language barrier/friction. "Please list air purifiers they have, give me a table with features. Ok, add that one to the cart."