istjohn

I've found Opus 5.5 is quite good at surfacing and clarifying these issues using Grilling[0]. Often I find that I want to expand the scope of work much larger than Claude would consider based on my original request.

0. https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/produc...

Cost per intelligence-adjusted token has been in free-fall since GPT-3 landed five years ago [0]. I see no compelling reason to think we'll see that trend suddenly stop, much less reverse.

0. "The cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter since 2023, or 13× per year." https://epoch.ai/publications/the-plunging-price-of-thought

You meant Astra, not Sol, I think. But Opus 5.5 is slightly better than Fable and Astra now.

But the US supplies most of Israel's weapons imports, and 99% are supplied by just the US and Germany.

> The USA was the largest supplier to Israel in 2021–25 (accounting for 68 per cent of Israeli arms imports), followed by Germany (31 per cent). [0]

0. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/fs_2603_at...

If your country's defense department is conducting itself ethically, and the contracts are for equipment or technology that is not inherently ethically fraught (like autonymous weapon systems), then one might consider that acceptable if you aren't a pacifist. An enormous amount of US military technology and weapons have been recently used to perpetuate a genocide, so the US is certainly an outlier in the global landscape.

Reality encompasses more than the physical universe. Abstract mathematics describe an aspect of reality, too.

If I recall correctly solar panels are already so cheap that to halve the installed cost again will require most of the efficiencies to be found in other costs like manufacture of associated hardware and equipment and installation. I don't know if those costs will be so easy to reduce.

It is if the nuclear industry pays for it to be. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the article.

I believe there's a controversy filter that down ranks items if the ratio of comments to item upvotes is too high.

One of his YouTube videos[1] has a couple freeze frames showing him carving a three-dimensional shape to form a shoe upper.

1: https://youtu.be/M8YMUMmFbFs?t=9

I would imagine wheat or rice paste.

Edit: He has a lot of footage of him cutting out and placing letters and wires on his YouTube channel, but it doesn't show him applying any adhesive. Now I really want to know how he does it.

I recently perused Marketplace, and it appears to be so thoroughly infested with barely disguised scams, bogus prices and other garbage as to be usable by only the most intrepid and determined shoppers.

According to physicist Sean Carroll, "hypothesis" and "theory" are interchangeable as the words are used by practicing scientists.

First, the inability to coordinate with the candidate on marketing doesn't strike me as much of an obstacle to SuperPAC effectiveness. Second, the Supreme Court ruled this summer that political parties cannot be prevented from coordinating campaign spending with candidates in NRSC vs FEC.

Perhaps a way to avoid this would be to have the duress pin trigger not a device wipe, but a device encryption with a long, pre-set key that you would store in a safe place when setting up the duress pin. Then you haven't destroyed the evidence, but the data is irretrievable without your cooperation. Also, if you don't actually have the key saved, it would in fact be destroyed, but the prosecutor would have to prove that you don't have the key saved somewhere.

Bowline isn't great for safety-critical applications, especially when not under constant load.

"The car is designed for urban settings and has a top speed of 50 kilometers (31 miles) per hour."

I found the writing engaging and enjoyable to read.

It's the saying, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than get permission."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/

Fringy parts like the POTUS?

Edit: The prominently displayed title of the blog is "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry." It's precisely what it says on the tin.

He's a military historian writing for a popular audience who naturally get much of their intuitions from pop culture. Of course he's going to find unrealistic elements in creative works. I've never seen him dismiss the overall value of a work due to these unrealistic elements. I enjoy having my misapprehensions acquired from pop culture corrected by an expert. I imagine many of his loyal readers first discovered him through one of his critiques of military depictions in The Lord of the Rings like I did. If you don't enjoy that, he's just not for you. No need to yuck my yum.

They did better drinking a placebo than swishing and spitting a beverage with real sugar, so no.

I'm absent minded enough to accidentally do this on a bad day. I haven't yet, to my knowledge.

From another comment: https://pepakura.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura_designer/

...in the air

I notice you are using the phrase "constitutional law" now, where as the original question was whether the UK can be said to have "a constitution."

The oddities of this "duck" go far beyond its lack of entrenchment. It also lacks form and definition in the way that a puff of smoke lacks form and definition. It includes such nebulous elements as common law, unwritten convention, and even legal commentary of various law scholars. It's also said to be in constant flux as it evolves over time.

It may be a useful abstraction within the context of UK law to refer to this amorphous blob as the "constitution," but for anyone unfamiliar with the UK's system of government, to say the UK has a constitution is grossly misleading in as much as all of the conclusions the listener will draw from that assertion will be false. It's like characterizing a chicken eating grain out of your hand as being "attacked by a dinosaur." The chicken may belong to the clade "Dinosauria" and may have inadvertently pecked your palm in its feeding frenzy, but in as much as it communicates information contrary to fact, it is a confabulation. At best, it's a lawyer's lie, to coin a phrase.

From your link: "This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched."

It doesn't look like a duck, it doesn't quack like a duck, yet you insist that this goose-shaped creature is a duck.

What exactly will improve if men are more blunt and non-apologetic?

It would be journalistic malpractice to avoid reporting on anything that the government does that the government isn't willing to admit publically to doing. It's possible to ascertain facts, even of the actions of the US government, to a level of certainty sufficient to report them as facts, even when the government disputes the facts.

The Dem leadership is almost as pro-Israel as the Republicans. Schumer will go through the motions of condemning the war, but inside, he's tickled pink. Remember, it was a Dem president who supplied bombs for the Israel genocide in Gaza for two full years.