KineticLensman

6 ms·

1.
by KineticLensman 4d ago
Yes. My in-laws in East Anglia lived near Ramsey Heights, which (just checked my OS map) is almost entirely below the 10m contour. The nearby Ramsey Forty Foot mostly exceeds the 10m contour. They are great places for lazy cyclists but the
2.
by KineticLensman 6d ago
Lots of armchair experts incorrecting each other
3.
by KineticLensman 12d ago
Can confirm. Per the (paywalled) Oxford English Dictionary [0]: 'barm' is The froth that forms on the top of fermenting malt liquors, which is used to leaven bread, and to cause fermentation in other liquors; yeast, leaven. OR
4.
by KineticLensman 14d ago
I enjoyed The Diamond Age but the 'AI' is nothing like today's. The stories in Nell's primer are actually mediated by a human actor (not an AI), who becomes a mother figure for her.
5.
by KineticLensman 14d ago
I’ve been at a locals’ restaurant in Italy where the chef had sourced some truffles from a nearby wood. They were better than anything he could have got from a store
6.
by KineticLensman 16d ago
"The reason LLMs use the same cadence and cliches is that their RLHF does not emphasize writing well, the way it emphasizes, say, coding. And the reason for that should be pretty obvious: coding is where the big money is at." Soft
7.
by KineticLensman 16d ago
"How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" - awesome title for an Astronomy book
8.
by KineticLensman 19d ago
I looked 'squeeze' up in the (paywalled) Oxford English Dictionary [0]. The are numerous variant forms including 'squoze' and 'squozen': "Also 1600s squeez, squeaze, squease, squese, 1600s–1700s squeese.
9.
by KineticLensman 21d ago
> It has gone from being a major producer of oil and gas Given that North sea oil is a finite resource that has already peaked, it cannot form the basis of a long term energy strategy.
10.
by KineticLensman 23d ago
Fair enough. In my defence, I was coming at it etymologically, where (according to the OED), a perambulator is 'A person who walks or travels through or about a place' (hence 'walker') OR 'A carriage for a baby or y
11.
by KineticLensman 24d ago
I think the cherry-picked examples at the beginning completely ignore the massive number of examples throughout history where groups of people pushed back against mainstream society. A lot of them were hurt or died in the process but societ
12.
by KineticLensman 24d ago
Yes, as slang for ‘perambulator’, which is basically ‘stroller’
13.
by KineticLensman 24d ago
My 'quick scan' involved reading the essay "On thinking for yourself" which was quoted from above. I specifically disagree with his general point here, essentially that you should avoid reading until your own ideas are f
14.
by KineticLensman 25d ago
I can see his point that it is worth learning to think for yourself, but if you then try to publish your thoughts without understanding what else is out there (e.g. by reading about it), the results could be very embarrassing. This would se
15.
by KineticLensman 26d ago
Sydney Padua's awesome, mostly true, steampunk graphic novel "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" jokes about the error messages that might have produced by the difference engine. One example occurs when a chara
16.
by KineticLensman 2mo ago
You'd also have things like bus doors now being on the wrong side (traffic-side), road curvature being wrong (e.g. motorway junctions and entry/exit ramps), let alone car mirrors and driver positioning.
17.
by KineticLensman 2mo ago
Thiss is a very good example. Consider the difference between "he's hard working" and "he's hard work". My wife ran into this when some German co-workers were describing a colleague.
18.
by KineticLensman 2mo ago
It's on the same site but there is some institutional nonsense that means getting onto the Bletchley site doesn't guarantee access to the NMoC, which is only open on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Don't ask me how I
19.
by KineticLensman 3mo ago
Used in WW2 to refer to radar engineers, bouncing bomb designers etc
20.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
Yes. Especially for owls like the Great Grey, it shows how small the bird is inside all of those feathers.
21.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
What isn't mentioned is that owl feathers are generally less oily than many other birds. This makes them softer and thus quieter, but the penalty is that that they get water-logged faster. As a result, owls find it harder to hunt in we
22.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
No, that was "Foot heads arms body", when Michael Foot became the chair of CND.
23.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
Birds have all sorts of optimizations that improve efficiency, some of which make them very different from mammals. Their lungs are different from ours in two respects. Firstly, they are relatively rigid and the pumping is done primarily by
24.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
> If someone calls you a "bird brain", perhaps that could be taken as a complement! Trying to do more with less! (source - worked at a raptor conservancy). It depends on which bird. Some are really smart and can learn tricks (e
25.
by KineticLensman 4mo ago
> Vision fails first, not memory, or thinking I've had two complete blackouts due to Ventricular Fibrillation, and one near blackout where the VF stopped after nine seconds (as reported by my ICD). In my experience, vision and think
26.
by KineticLensman 5mo ago
> That is one hell of a confession for someone who's trying to write fiction. Indeed. A significant part of gaining skills in creative writing is learning to 'read as a writer'. How to examine classic texts to understand h
27.
by KineticLensman 5mo ago
> the play are written in iambic pentameter and the spoken text is far from natural (yet incredibly precise) (Iambic pentameters are 10-syllable lines with alternate syllables unstressed and stressed, like "if MUSic BE the FOOD of L
28.
by KineticLensman 6mo ago
I followed the links and got www.thejispot.com’s server IP address could not be found.
29.
by KineticLensman 6mo ago
Here's a link with contact details: https://www.durhamvintage.co.uk/ Most of their advertising / info is probably on Facebook. Their physical store is in Bishop Auckland, a small town a few miles south of Durham.
30.
by KineticLensman 6mo ago
At Uni we had a stable of Vaxen.

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