Untitled. Wait... Curse you, Russell!

Some YouTubers create vidéos longues.

You can be a YouTuber even if you have no subscribers and your videos are destined to sit on a Google hard drive without ever being watched.

I’d hope they could at least capture the proper meaning of the word.

You have to love how both

people asking stupid questions about computers, and

computer scientists responding by being total dickwads 

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Yesterday’s prediction:

The randomness beacon, at noon on Thursday, the 16th of July, 2026, will show its longest streak of ones as strictly less than ten​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​󠀣󠀮󠀹󠀞󠀬󠀶󠀟󠀎󠀁󠀕󠀆󠀟󠀙󠀷󠀄󠀸󠀢󠀮󠀇󠀸󠀋󠀕󠀬󠀉󠀯󠀎󠀨󠀔󠀮󠀶󠀻󠀕󠀱󠀅󠀉󠀆󠀴󠀩󠀚 󠀤󠀦󠀑󠀴󠀉󠀸󠀢󠀈󠀚󠀷󠀧󠀒󠀞󠀤󠀩‍󠀷󠀷‌󠀨󠀏󠀮󠀢󠀟󠀅󠀟󠀙󠀮󠀳󠀛󠀹󠀧‍󠀤󠀶󠀸󠀍󠀆󠀟󠀏󠀡󠀫󠀻󠀵󠀱󠀉󠀘󠀍󠀶󠀠󠀻󠀵󠀈󠀠󠀑󠀊󠀠󠀀󠀚󠀺󠀝󠀍󠀶󠀮 󠀏󠀪󠀇󠀌󠀫󠀈󠀸󠀓󠀤󠀫󠀍󠀥󠀲󠀪󠀆󠀱󠀪󠀀󠀡‍󠀡󠀰󠀛.

Well in this case they claim to have predicted a reason sequence would not have a long run of ones, and it didn’t. Which isn’t that impressive; it usually is less than ten.

The impressive claims are when the prediction is an exact value, such as this one. But I don’t know how to match that statement with the number 067647454421671114517000677701646041457630021751475474 from the previous post; to me this is indistinguishable from a pure retrodiction attached to a random number.

I was thinking about this because I was playing Minecraft with my son, and while Minecraft has "mountains" I kept thinking about how tiny everything is when compared to the real world, and whether there might be something to a game that had actual mountains, where you used carts on tracks and automation because to not do so would waste literal hours of your life.

But prediction markets have a weird relationship with whether they want to consider insider trading bad. In theory, it just means the markets are priced closer to the correct value; (ideally) the point of prediction markets is that you want to know the chances of something, and an insider is closer to knowing the chances than anyone else, so them trading makes the price better. The problem comes if an informed but not-insider trader doesnʼt bet as much; every market has some adversarial selection problems but insider trading can make it worse.

you are a clone. you have all the memories of the original, and think the same way as they do. you are, essentially, a perfect copy of them. now then, if you were to murder the original…

now, lets say you were to chop off your arm. completely severed. if you were to make a perfect copy of that arm, and then eat said perfect copy…

Maybe I want to change my answer, and both options have “still” and seem to expect my answer doesn’t change.

Box B is opaque, and MIGHT have a million dollars in it.

😗 “Okay…”

👨‍🏫 “You have two options: You can take both Box A and Box B, or you can JUST take Box B.

BUT! There is a super computer. This super computer can predict with almost perfect accuracy whether you will take one or both boxes.

If it predicted you’d take BOTH boxes A and B, Box B will be empty.

If it predicted you’d ONLY take box B, Box B will have a million dollars.

This is only explained AFTER you enter the room, and you have no advanced knowledge before entering the room.”

😗 “So whether Box B has a million dollars in it is decided before I enter the room. What’s in it will not change.”

👨‍🏫 “Correct!”

😗 “And I have no advance knowledge of this challenge, and therefore no opportunity to try and trick the super computer. I cannot consciously influence its prediction.”

👨‍🏫 “Correct!”

😗 “By the time I’m in the room, it is literally impossible for me to change whether there is a million dollars in Box B.

The question may as well be simplified to ‘do you want to chance walking away without any prize money for no reason?’”

👨‍🏫 “Well, philosophically, there’s more nuance than—”

😗 “Even if I genuinely believed it made sense to only take Box B, nothing I do once in the room will change whether there’s a million dollars in Box B. That decision has already been made.

There is no objective benefit to not taking both boxes regardless of what I thought prior to entering the room.

The idea that I can manipulate the outcome by only taking Box B is an illusion of power. The only power I have in this situation is whether I’m out that thousand dollars.

I might not care about that thousand dollars if I get the million, but nothing changes if I only take Box B beyond not getting that thousand dollars.”

👨‍🏫 “What if the super computer is infallible and can’t be wrong?”

😗 “Then I fry it with my laser eyes.”

👨‍🏫 “What?”

My nephew is very allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame. Last year my sister discovered all hot dogs and hamburger buns now contain sesame. Not "may contain", but listed in the ingredients. This year basically every brand of sliced bread also now contains sesame, making it very difficult to find bread items he can eat.

They're just adding it to their products, so they can just list it as an ingredient and not bother with worrying about cross contamination. And they aren't even bothering with telling anyone. Capitalism is going to kill us all.

"Which brings us back to Kellogg’s. Back in 2016, the company found a way around the added burden and expense of complying with the FSMA: they simply began adding trace amounts of peanut flour to their cracker products. Doing so allowed them to list peanuts as an ingredient of the product, freeing them from having to prevent cross-contact.

If there were a small minority of people who might get sick if they saw a hexagon, I would probably want to list my art as "may contain hexagons" and let other people sort out which pieces did or did not contain them, because consistently warning for hexagons would be extra work for me.

If the government suddenly decided artists can't do that anymore, and that I would be liable if hexagons weren't on the official image description and then someone got sick from an incidental hexagon, I would want to add hexagons to all my image descriptions instead of sorting. If there was also a law that image descriptions couldn't list shapes not present in the image, I would probably start adding hexagons to things so that I could list 'hexagons' in every image description.

Always Three, There Are…

Yeah so basically since I’m so nearsighted, the film that holds my retina to my eye stretched instead of grew. So it created small little stretched thin tears in my left eye and a bigger (but still kinda small) tear in my right eye. If tears happen and get worse it can cause retinal detachment which is uh. Not Good

Luckily my tears were in my periphery and small enough to where I was asymptomatic (symptoms are usually vision floaters and flashes of light). But it was still important enough to get the procedure done so things wouldn’t get worse

And you know what the procedure was? They literally took a laser to my naked (but dilated) pupil and just. Soldered the hole back up. Kinda like reattaching that film. And it was NOT FUN!!! My ophthalmologist was nice and did like 4-7 flashes per round so I would have room to breathe but the best way I could explain it was. Imagine someone poking a bruise with a warm (not hot) spoon. But it’s in the back of your eye almost in your brain. Like a dull thud. Bad!!!!! Uncomfortable!!! I would say the pain scale was equivalent to my tattoo just above my ankle except this was worse because you kinda see it. And it just feels wrong

And then for the following four hours I had a migraine and the four hours after that it was an off and on headache. I’ve just felt off the whole rest of the day. And I have to go back next Friday! yaaay /s