April 25 2023

Quotes

But, OK, at each step it gets a list of words with probabilities. But which one should it actually pick to add to the essay (or whatever) that it’s writing? One might think it should be the “highest-ranked” word (i.e. the one to which the highest “probability” was assigned). But this is where a bit of voodoo begins to creep in. Because for some reason—that maybe one day we’ll have a scientific-style understanding of—if we always pick the highest-ranked word, we’ll typically get a very “flat” essay, that never seems to “show any creativity” (and even sometimes repeats word for word). But if sometimes (at random) we pick lower-ranked words, we get a “more interesting” essay. (View Highlight)

Humans are inherently leery of risk. We are therefore always on the lookout for previous endorsement, some indicator that any promise we offer will have some ready-made company. We award the “awardable.” (Location 1635)

Stephen King conducted a similar experiment more than thirty years earlier, when he used the pen name Richard Bachman to see if the success he’d garnered was due to luck or talent. King chose to publish his Bachman novels with as little marketing effort as possible, making life deliberately tough for his pseudonymous persona. It was a persona that King sketched out in detail. Bachman’s novels included an author photo of a ruggedly handsome man gazing moodily from the book jacket, and an author bio that listed time spent as a merchant marine and as a chicken farmer in rural New Hampshire. According to the bio, Bachman spent his evenings writing, “always with a glass of whiskey beside his Olivetti typewriter.” Like Rowling, King was outed before he could unmask himself—this time by a bookstore clerk who detected striking similarities between the two writers’ styles. But, prior to being outed, King wrote four books as Bachman. His last one, Thinner, was reviewed as “what Stephen King would write if Stephen King could write,” and it sold roughly 40,000 copies. Yet, once the book was attributed to King, it became a best seller, selling ten times as many books. Overshadowed by King, Bachman perished in obscurity. In later interviews, King summed it up this way: in 1985, Bachman died suddenly of “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.” “Cancer of the pseudonym” seems apt in Galbraith’s case, too. Rowling surely hoped The Cuckoo’s Calling would gain a wide readership on its own merits. Without Rowling’s name gracing the cover, however, it failed to find an audience. (Location 1691)

Few scientists and philosophers have developed strong skills of introspection—in fact, most doubt that such abilities even exist. Conversely, many of the greatest contemplatives know nothing about science. But there is a connection between scientific fact and spiritual wisdom, and it is more direct than most people suppose. Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world. (Location 128)

The American-Canadian border today is the least-patrolled and longest undefended border in the world. (Location 477)

Thoughts

Nouveau Design

i just bought the ubud theme here are some elements i really enjoy aesthetically (also shoutout to ghost for how easy it is to switch themes)

drop caps are elegant!

it is what it says it is -- and it converts!

the yellow and the red play so nicely here

easily distinguishable segmentations

teasers! (these are built into ghost though -- i just didn't know that until yesterday…

Super

Working on a boilerplate translator app for text to code, specifically an overlap language that allows for easy tree manipulation and then have tools like copilot interpret. I learned an interesting token trick. Series of periods are better than spaces or tabs!

168 tokens

222 tokens

116 tokens!! almost 2x savings on spaces!!!

Example of Zoom Capabilities

NB: ellipsis in Obsidian get converted to a single character sometimes so "…" == "…"

Bram:

write superML for a 3d shooter game in ue5 where a user plays as a navy seal (but like an actual seal the animal) in iraq

GPT:

3D Shooter Game in UE5
..Title: Navy Seal Animal in Iraq

..Characters
….User Character: Navy Seal (Animal)

..Environment
….Setting: Iraq

..Gameplay Mechanics
….Movement Controls:
……Forward, Backward, Left, Right
……Jumping and Swimming

….Shooting Mechanics:
……Primary Weapon: Assault Rifle with Silencer
……Secondary Weapon: Handgun with Silencer
……Grenades and Smoke Bombs

….Stealth Mechanics:
……Sneaking and Hiding behind objects or underwater to avoid detection by enemies.

…Health System:
…..Player Health Bar that depletes when taking damage.
…..Regenerating health over time when not taking damage.

…Enemy AI:
…..Various types of enemy soldiers with different weapons and tactics.
…..Patrolling guards that can detect the player if they are too close or make noise.

…Objectives/Goals:
…..Complete various missions such as infiltration, sabotage, assassination, etc.
…..Rescue hostages or gather intelligence from enemy bases.

…Level Design/Layouts:
…..Urban environments like cities and towns in Iraq.
…..Desert landscapes with military outposts and hidden bases.
…..Underwater sections for swimming stealthily through waterways.

…UI/HUD Elements:

….Minimap showing nearby objectives/enemies/terrain features.
….Ammo count for primary weapon & secondary weapon displayed on-screen.
….Health bar indicating current player health status.

…Sound Effects/Music:

….Realistic gun sounds for shooting mechanics & explosions from grenades/smoke bombs. 
….Ambient background music fitting the setting of each level.

Bram:

zoom into Primary Weapon and how a seal would use it with their flippers

GPT:

Primary Weapon: Assault Rifle with Silencer
..Usage by Navy Seal (Animal)

…Weapon Attachment System:
….Customized harness designed to fit the seal's body shape.
….The harness allows the weapon to be securely attached and positioned for easy access.

…Firing Mechanism Adaptation:
….Modified trigger mechanism that can be operated using flippers.
….A pressure-sensitive pad is placed on the side of the rifle, allowing the seal to squeeze it with its flipper to fire.

…Aiming System:
….Laser sight or holographic sight mounted on top of the rifle for easier aiming.
….Seal uses its head movement and neck flexibility to aim at targets while holding onto the weapon with one flipper.

…Recoil Management:
….Special shock-absorbing material added around attachment points in harness, reducing impact from recoil on seal’s body.
….Seal braces itself against nearby surfaces or lies flat when firing, distributing recoil force across a larger area of its body.

…Reloading Process:

….Magazine release button adapted for use by flippers – either enlarged or replaced with a lever system.
….Seal carries extra magazines in pouches attached to its custom harness. To reload, it grabs a new magazine using mouth or free flipper and inserts it into rifle’s magazine well.

Bookselling Vs Coachella

I watched the documentary Booksellers about an old, old, old career path (book selling) for an old, old, old medium (books)

The amount of human knowledge packed into these tomes, the stories behind the ephemera, the aesthetic beauty of a living, breathing wall. And in the people who own these items -- the patience of a millennia year old trade, the mental confidence in self borne of deep, root style knowledge, and the peace of mind that comes from working with voices of the dead.

the wall of the library is different and functions differently. The spines of the books, lined up beside one another and over one another, form a secondary wall, positioned in front of the actual wall. Between the spines of the books and the actual wall is a zone of paper, where, in consideration of the reflections just undertaken here, numerous arms are trying to take hold of us. They can only do this if we ourselves stretch out an arm in their direction, pull a spine out from the wall, and turn the book around, to allow ourselves to be taken in by it. (Location 1537)

Immediately after I finished Booksellers, I watched a few Coachella videos and had the opposite feeling. It radiated the feeling I felt in high school (that still persists today in some ways…) the need to feel seen by strangers whose opinions I really don't give a shit about on deeper assessment; the need to feel cool to my peers and attract women. To one up the boys by out drinking or out smoking them. For what? To repeat in the same Coliseum the same activities next week? To spend $30,000 to have my eardrums burst and damage my liver with overpriced alcohol from tents while dressing like I'm on Tatooine around 250,000 other people doing the same thing? While we all cosplay as the main character of Coachella, or worse -- younger, more virile versions of ourselves?

I don't strive to claim I wasn't happy during my party years, or that I didn't learn many social lessons about being an adult. I've made many lifelong friends in the trench warfare of overpriced clubs. I'm pointing out the transactional nature of the entire endeavor, the exchange of youth for euphoria. And when the lights come up, and the bass disappears, and you look at the exhausted faces of your peers and the sticky liquids on the floor -- the pit in the stomach and mind come to take their payment for the forced pleasure of ethanol and pills.

Years later, one is left with an unreachable nostalgia of "better days at 20 years old". Conversely, any person in any era can pick up a work by Herman Hesse or James Baldwin at any moment in time and get more from it than the the first time they read it perhaps.

What really stuck out to me was how forced the design was on the Coachella tents and AirBnBs. They give off illusion of wealth because they can never truly compete with the wealth of knowledge books contain. Opulence is the death throes of a nation that aspires for pleasure over equanimity.

While early in the cycle there is typically more spending of time and money on productive things, later in the cycle time and money go more toward indulgent things (e.g., the finer things, like expensive residences, art, jewelry, and clothes). This begins in Stage 4 when such spending is fashionable, but by Stage 5 it begins to appear grotesque. (Location 2519)

I can only hope that my efforts with bramadams.dev will be as resilient through time as books (though I'm not optimistic that that is possible -- after all who will pay my Ghost.org yearly fees after I die XD?).

I can only hope that the knowledge here sits on the bookshelf of the Internet, inspiring minds even a little bit long after mine has decomposed.

iykyk

Videos

Same Place

These are all in the same canonical universe I can't explain it

Tweets

Music

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