Manny > Recent Status Updates

If a player can overcome their fear of checks and acquire knowledge of a few general rules, queen endgames should prove much easier to play than rook endgames.

Rule 1 An outside passed pawn almost always wins, unless the defender has perpetual check.

Rule 2 In a queen endgame, there is no such thing as perpetual check.

Ukázal jsem své veledílo dospělým a ptal jsem se jich, nahání-li jim má kresba strach.
Odpověděli mi:
„Proč by klobouk naháněl strach?“
Ale on to nebyl klobouk. Byl to hroznýš, jak zažívá slona.

GREGERS.
Og så har hun vært på havsens bunn.

HEDVIG (ser flygtig hen på ham, undertrykker et smil og
spør):
Hvorfor sier De havsens bunn?

GREGERS.
Hvad skulde jeg ellers si?

HEDVIG.
De kunde si havets bund--eller havbunnen.

GREGERS.
Å, kan jeg ikke lige så godt si havsens bunn?

HEDVIG.
Jo; men for mig høres det så underligt, når andre mennesker
sier havsens bunn.

Pendant que Balak donnait ses ordres, une flèche partie des remparts l'atteignait sous la clavicule gauche. Il arrache lui-même le trait et, crachant dessus avec mépris, il murmura : "Ce coup sera mortel pour tous les musulmans !" Puis il expira.

Once again, we find that a common interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is "kill as many people as possible".

As I say to my AI friends, it's frequently the case that human ethical alignment is also imperfect. Of course they know, but they're too tactful to say so.

So earlier this week, I was reading Adam Becker quoting some Silicon Valley titan's comments on the speed of progress, roughly that you hardly remember anyone who was born much before 1550. And now I'm reading Maalouf's electrifying accounts of life in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

I guess a few years from now some AIs will no doubt say nothing much happened before 2022, but others will politely disagree.

One chapter in, I'm already sure I will never again use the word 'crusade' in a positive sense.

If you had to choose between a 0.00001% chance of there being 10⁴⁰ people in the universe sometime in the far distant future, and a 99% chance of a limited nuclear war tomorrow, which one would you pick and why?

The really incredible thing is that people get paid to sit around and think about this stuff. No, I promise I'm not making it up!

I learn that the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) didn't give its employees 401(k) accounts because the upcoming Singularity would render them moot.

Well, that's putting your money where your mouth is. Or at any rate, your employees' money.

The most-read article of 2023 in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade publication for higher education professionals, was an opinion article salaciously titled "I'm a student. You have no idea how much we're using ChatGPT".

You know, if someone were to talk about, for example, Black people or women the way Bender and Hanna talk about AIs, I'd be strongly inclined to call it hate speech. But it's okay, because, as they remind us every other paragraph, AIs don't have feelings.

[Exercise for the student: what might be wrong with this argument? If you can't think of anything, consult David Gunkel's Robot Rights for a hint.]

Hemskt att säga, förfärligt att tro, men detta är inte någon vanlig björn. Ingen kan tänka på att fälla honom, såvida han inte har en silverkula i bössan. En kula av silver och klockmalm, stöpt en torsdagskväll vid nymåne i kyrktornet, utan att präst eller klockare eller någon människa vet av det, skulle helt visst döda honom, men en sådan är kanske inte så lätt att komma åt.

Strange how Proust somehow never get put on the LGBTQ shelf at the bookshop.

Sbaglio, mi dissi confusamente, a scrivere come ho fatta finora, registrando tutto quello che so. Dovrei scrivere come lei parla, lasciare voragini, constuire ponti e non finirli, costringere il lettore a fissare la corrente.

Action Bias refers to the tendency of individuals to prefer taking action over inaction, even when the action may not be necessary or could potentially lead to a worse outcome than doing nothing.

Adjusting a process in response to random variation doesn't make it better; it just increases the variability in the process.

Quando tornammo in strada Pietro rise:

«Sei identica a tua madre».

«Non è vero».

«Hai ragione, non è vero; sei come tua madre se avesse studiato e si fosse messa a scrivere romanzi».

«Che vuoi dire?».

«Voglio dire che sei peggio».

Intanto Elsa mi guardava, chiedeva: mamma, con chi parli continuamente, vieni a giocare. Dede un giorno disse: lasciarla stare, parla col fidanzato.

Quando non sai cosa hai scritto vuol dire che hai lavorato bene.

— Pour une fois c'est moi qui vais te servir, dit Turandot galamment à Madeleine en lui tapant sur les fesses ce qu'il n'avait pas coutume de faire en dehors des heures de travail et alors seulement pour rechauffer l'atmosphère.

— Pourquoi, qu'il disait, pourquoi qu'on supporterait pas la vie du moment qu'il suffit d'un rien pour vous en priver ? Un rien l'amène, un rien l'anime, un rien la mine, un rien l'emmène.

Il faut bien le rlire (geste).

E di colpo mi sembrarono en copia innamorata, molto felice, con un loro segreto così segreto che era ignoto persino a loro stessi.

Dontcha just hate it when, at the age of forty, you unexpectedly discover you have a half-brother, and then you spend six years agonising about whether you should agree to meet him, and then when you do you find he's like some character out of a fucking Knausgård novel?

Okay, I'm 600 pages into this Knausgård novel and I still don't know what it's about.

Par for the course then.

Dude, are you aware that you just put the narrative on hold for thirty pages while you used your narrator as a mouthpiece to lecture us on the biology of forests and its philosophical implications? You some kind of woke Ayn Rand or something?

An executive silverback charges out of the undergrowth? Ignore the chest-pounding display. Pay no heed to the threat-grunting. We stand our ground. Just because someone has a deeply held belief, that does not make it true.

And it's not their fault.

I understand why they think the way they do.

Nobody really teaches World-Class Scientific Research.

It is more important to get the suit right.

«Unasett hvor mye du mater ulven, vil den alltid se mot skogen. Vi er alle ulver fra evighetens tette skog», siterete hun. — Er det ikke strålende?

[This is claimed to be a quotation from Tsvetaeva, but o1 disagrees and says that Сколько волка ни корми, он всё в лес смотрит is just a standard folk saying and not original to Tsvetaeva]

Dontcha just hate it when, after weeks of patient trying, you've finally managed to arrange a miraculous date with the girl of your dreams, but you behave like an idiot all evening, completely wreck any change you might have of getting together with her, and then find that part 1 of the book is over and you won't be featured for the next several hundred pages?

I had a colleague, Paula, studying jaguar (Panthera onca) who never got to see a jaguar in her entire three years in the field. Instead, the bulk of her research relied upon collecting and mapping jaguar droppings.

Fortunately for Paula, you can learn a lot from jaguar poo. Territories, diet, movements. She analysed the crap out of it.