Notices by École des Bro-Arts (aphyr@woof.group)

On the other hand, I'm motivated to share what I do because I really want to help people. If it's just LLMs... it feels hollow. I think about this every time I've tried to work on open-source in the last few months.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48210740

I never imagined that the Turing test would fall within my lifetime. Nor did I imagine that I would feel so disheartened by it.

https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess

Anthropic’s paper argues reality distortion is rare in software domains, but I’m not so sure.

https://aphyr.com/posts/405-trudging-through-nonsense

Anyway long story short part of what makes older masonry buildings work is that they are *not* well insulated. They're designed to leak heat constantly through the walls, and in healthy structures, this more-or-less maintains the appropriate thermal gradients to prevent condensation and mold, and to dry out the brick to prevent spalling during freeze-thaw cycles.

Adding insulation to these structures can fuck up that balance. It can be done, but it's tricky!

It's a "wearing two coats at my desk and still shivering" kind of winter because I'm stubborn about trying to rely on the heat pumps as much as possible. So mad that I asked for cold-climate systems and they gave me this nonsense.

When I get out from under this house repair nightmare and finances recover a bit I want to hire, like... someone with a FLIR drone to fly around the home, figure out all the places where it's leaking heat, and help insulate/seal them.

Incidentally, one of the cool/frustrating things I've learned after a decade of living in various older masonry buildings is that you actually *can't* insulate them very much without fucking up the moisture balance.

Every masonry wall takes on water through leaks and the natural porosity of the brick/stone. That moisture has to leave the wall cavity through open joints or weeps. If you've ever seen those little pieces of rope hanging off a brick building, they're to let water wick out!

Cavity walls (2000+ years old!) allow air circulation within the wall, and damp-proof courses cut off capillary action from the soil.

https://npshistory.com/publications/preservation/masonry-walls-moisture.pdf

But the problem of moisture balance is way, WAY more complex than that. There's vapor pressure and thermal effects for each layer of the wall, and those forces change throughout the year with internal and external heating and moisture.

https://www.wbdg.org/resources/moisture-management-concepts is hands-down the best overview I've come across for this problem.

As someone who runs my own blog, email, social media, backup system, home automation, business site, etc...

I feel like self-hosting digital services is a lot like backyard chickens. Rewarding, lots of control, independence from Big Egg, and a great reminder of why distribution of labor and efficiencies of scale are so important.

Also if you, like me, become hopelessly stuck toward the end of the early-game, wondering how the hell you're going to make "refined metals" without a metal refinery, eventually dying because your crops overheat...

"Refined metals" is a *class* of materials (iron, copper, etc), not a single material. You're supposed to get by with the rock smasher until you can build refineries. 😭

I picked up Oxygen Not Included this weekend thinking "oh this might be a cute Rimworld-like base builder". It... is cute, but really, Oxygen Not Included is for people (myself included) who saw cutaway diagrams of nuclear reactors as kids and thought "I want that to be a playground".

This weight presses upon me every day. I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado which tears through our city. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help.

https://aphyr.com/posts/397-i-want-you-to-understand-chicago

Joining the Indivisible Spotify boycott today, to try and convince them to drop ads for ICE. This one is painful--I use Spotify constantly, and have been a subscriber for a decade. I've got a huge investment in playlists there, and they're one of the few services with decent Linux support. But with ICE and CBP deploying tear gas blocks away, I can't keep giving them money.

https://woof.group/@indivisiblechicago.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy/115458155256369218

tell me your bank's marketing dept is run by cishets without telling me etc etc

LKML stands for Lesbians Kissing Mailing List

Please. "Toxic masculinity" is only harmful to those who absorb it. You're thinking of *venomous* masculinity, which hurts others.

Thunderstorms developing over the northern shore of Chicago. Our flight path took us right through the gap between two cloud layers. Some of the most incredible views I've ever seen from the air.

The most incredible thrift store find

Free drag name: Queen Amyldala

"I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community."

https://aphyr.com/posts/389-the-future-of-forums-is-lies-i-guess

this is such a petty thing but I almost relish calling companies that pay for linkspam on Mastodon.

"Hi there! So I run a server for queer BDSM enthusiasts, and I wanted to ask about your recent posting on our site..."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Well, we had this account join, claiming to be into gay BDSM, and it's posting links to your content--oh, of course you wouldn't do that directly, but your SEO subcontractors..."
"Ah, er, yes, we'll get to the bottom of this"