I’m not a master diplomat but this is negotiation 101: don’t look too keen to negotiate, start from a position of strength.

Trump’s opening offer was to allow Putin to keep whatever he’s managed to invade and, by most accounts, Russia is now gaining territory again. Plus, Trump is clearly not so keen to continue supporting Ukraine militarily and economically (not to speak of his stance on NATO) and in Europe we are weak, divided and also increasingly voting for our own small versions of Trump (Trumpets?). Put these things together and why would Putin get all chummy and sit down to negotiate now? He’s signaling strength and taking a position of “YOU want to end this war, not me, so if you want me to stop, you better come begging and bringing gifts”.

I keep seeing news that the Russian economy is perfectly fine… no, wait it’s in shambles… no it’s actually even better than before… no, people can’t even find bread… no, sanctions are killing it… and so on. And this is not even from different sources; different articles on the same (I hope reputable) sources.

I know that it’s hard to get a read of these things even when not in the middle of a war with lots of disinformation happening on both sides. And I also know that indicators of the economy are tricky to read and often in contradiction. But these swings are so extreme that I don’t know what to make of these articles any longer.

Wait, is that a valid argument? “You, sir are infringing on my claim that this in your pocket is MY wallet and this picture on your driver’s license is in fact MY picture.”

Russia and Ukraine are two countries that have thrown everything they had at each other: from good soldiers, to inmates, to good people who’d probably never held a weapon before.

At this point I imagine that having troops who are alive and actual trained soldiers, not emotionally and physically drained (if not outright mutilated) by years of fighting is a big advantage

If I was taken from my home and suddenly sent to fight for my country, no matter how full of patriotic love I might be, one North Korean child with a knife would be enough to take me out.

I assume that guy on the poster is dead, then?

yes, that was all completely wrong. If Trump had been the one on top of the building and had fallen down (maybe accidentally hitting a stray bullet on his way down)… now THAT would have been closer

“illegal” is overrated, anyway. Trump did a ton of illegal stuff and yet, here we are.

ah I get what you’re saying., thanks! “Good” means that what the machine outputs should be statistically similar (based on comparing billions of parameters) to the provided training data, so if the training data gradually gains more examples of e.g. noses being attached to the wrong side of the head, the model also grows more likely to generate similar output.

I only have a limited and basic understanding of Machine Learning, but doesn’t training models basically work like: “you, machine, spit out several versions of stuff and I, programmer, give you a way of evaluating how ‘good’ they are, so over time you ‘learn’ to generate better stuff”? Theoretically giving a newer model the output of a previous one should improve on the result, if the new model has a way of evaluating “improved”.

If I feed a ML model with pictures of eldritch beings and tell them that “this is what a human face looks like” I don’t think it’s surprising that quality deteriorates. What am I missing?

see? It says it right here: “that thing you just did”

Good luck with that, Indian Priests. God personally stepped in to save Trump from being shot (not the hero firefighter, who didn’t meet the minimum income requirement of the Truly Blessed). He just took the tip of his ear, which is practically circumcision.

• Manipulating political elections worldwide to favour far-right pro-Russia candidates was an escalation

• Weaponizing immigration to Europe to give an anti-immigrant platform to the above far-right was an escalation

• The irony of trying to purportedly “de-nazify” Ukraine while literally nazifying the rest of the world is just the icing on the shit escalation cake

Nah, micro is the superior option! 😜

Is it still “disputed” if absolutely nobody else thinks it’s Chinese? if I claim the Grand Canyon is mine, does it make it the Disputed Canyon?

There were some often-quoted tests in which even professional sommeliers could not tell the difference between super-expensive wines and much cheaper ones. See this article on The Guardian for instance

To be fair it was the NSFW tag that gave me the idea. I went “why would this have an NSFW tag? … Ooooh!”

Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others

This does seem to be the correct reason, at least statistically speaking!

serious answer: it depends on your definition of “worse”. There’s some study linking smelling farts (and specifically the component that makes them rank) to health benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jul/14/silent-not-deadly-how-farts-cure-diseases

there’s an old joke about this:

man goes to doctor saying “I keep farting, doc; my farts aren’t smelly and luckily they are also silent but I am worried because I fart all day long. Even now, as I was talking to you, I kept farting the whole time”.

“I see”, says the doctor. “I will prescribe you this pill, to be taken twice a day for a week”.

“And will that help with the farting?”

“No, but it should help you with your sense of smell. Then come to see me after one week and we’ll try to fix your hearing”