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[silverspawn]

Use at your own risk and peril

[silverspawn]

This isn't particularly important, but:



That's a halberd. Now look at how awesome this weapon is. It's long. Most of it is wood so it's not too heavy. And it has three different things attached to the end. There's the sharp thing you can use to strike. There's the small pointy thing that you can use to exert a lot of force on a small area, useful to pierce armor. There's the spear and the end you can use for thrusting. And the first one, the sharp thing, is also shaped such that you can use it as a hook.

Oh, and there's a small metal thing at the other end so if necessary, you can strike with that, too.

so it has DIFFERENT TOOLS FOR DIFFERENT THINGS. Isn't it awesome?

And it's pretty cheap since it's only two metal pieces attached to a stick.

Swords have their uses since you can carry them anywhere, but why would you ever want to use a sword as your primary weapon on a battlefield? If you're fighting someone wielding this, they're just going to have a massive advantage due to range.

[silverspawn]

The primary weapon used on battlefields in the middle ages was the sword.

Ah!! see how deep the misinformation goes??!??

[silverspawn]

Interesting, but can I trust someone who thinks people fought with swords?

[silverspawn]

I'd guess #4 is false, like, you can definitely hurt yourself, but you can also not hurt yourself if you do it right.

[silverspawn]

If only we had a way to make AI not lie to us~

[Awaclus]

Interesting, but can I trust someone who thinks people fought with swords?

At least example #6 is not (completely) true. It's true that getting shot anywhere is serious, quite likely leads to severe injury and could lead to death — but it also definitely happens that people continue fighting with severe injuries. This is one of the things I remember learning about combat first aid in the military, that you always have to check the injured person's condition yourself even if they say they're fine because in the heat of the moment with all the adrenaline flowing and all, it's possible they e.g. don't feel any pain even if the injury is very serious. A shot to the leg would probably stop you from advancing, and it might stop you from shooting too, but it's far from a given that it will.

#2 and #5 are stupid too because #2 basically only ever happens in fiction when it's being used to convey that whatever environment they're in has a higher level of technology than what is supposed to exist today, and I can't remember ever seeing #5.

[Awaclus]

>my face when I'm taking a theoretical cs course

[silverspawn]

what's on the menu? Algorithms, complexity theory, formal languages?

[silverspawn]

[Awaclus]

what's on the menu? Algorithms, complexity theory, formal languages?

Formal languages seem to be a huge part of it, I think complexity theory might be at least touched upon at some point, and algorithms are relevant but not really the main point.

[silverspawn]

I remember my own formal languages class well. Was in my first semester. Actually it was the first lecture I ever took, and I was like "wow this is what profs are like, that's so cool", only to be massively disappointed later that in fact not all profs are like that.

Anyway, it was notorious for being difficult and many didn't like the prof, but I loved it, and he was my favorite professor for years.

[silverspawn]

I've spent so many hours already on that friggin post about illusionism. And I'll probably spend many more.

[Awaclus]

I remember my own formal languages class well. Was in my first semester. Actually it was the first lecture I ever took, and I was like "wow this is what profs are like, that's so cool", only to be massively disappointed later that in fact not all profs are like that.

Anyway, it was notorious for being difficult and many didn't like the prof, but I loved it, and he was my favorite professor for years.

My professor is Matti Nykänen (although he probably isn't very closely related to Matti Nykänen).

[silverspawn]

I'm finally beginning to understand why pinning knights is so popular, even if the pin doesn't seem to do all that much.

The reason is that, if both sides play really well, all the moves have purpose, so that being one tempo ahead becomes a much bigger deal --- and pinning gives you one tempo.

So retroactively, I'd kind of argue I was correct in thinking that early pins are overrated because like they really don't do much if you're not otherwise playing well.

[silverspawn]

To elaborate, having purpose often means it's threatening something that your opponent has to deal with right away, hence why one tempo is a bigger deal

[silverspawn]

What's the distance between two points in a square, chosen according to a uniform distribution?

My guess would have been something simple, perhaps sqrt(0.5).

It's (2+sqrt(2))/15 + ln(1+sqrt(2))/3.

I'd have expected something more like

[silverspawn]

an editing failure in a more complicated comment.

what's the distance between two points ok I'm kidding

[silverspawn]

*average distance

these last three comments were just so well structured

[silverspawn]

Sometimes I'm really baffled at how emotionally insensitive other people are

[silverspawn]

Man I like twitter, but I'm so rarely motivated to go there. When I do, the relevant posts are often already a day and and I'm too late to the party. They should put some work into making it more addictive.

[silverspawn]

I was making a tier list of album covers recently, that is, how nice does the cover look, how well does it hit the aesthetic of the album, etc. With disregard for how good the music is, though they do correlate. This was my top 10:

10 mewithoutYou / Untitled (Christian metal/rock)



9 Kashiwa Daisuke / 5 Dec (??????)



8 Ne Obliviscaris / Portal of I (metallllllllyo)



7 Brand New / The Devil and God are Raging Inside me (basic rock)



6 Scale the Summit / In a World of Fear (instrumental metal, greatest outlier, the album sucks)



5 piana / Muse (dream pop?)



4 Kayo Dot / Plastic House on Base of Sky (uncategorizable bc it's Kayo Dot)



3 Kashiwa Daisuke / Re:RED (techno-ish remix-ish album)



2 TatshMusicCircle / エインヘリャルの蝶と異世界幻術姫 (anime techno)



piana / raula (dream pop? #2)



I once looked up where #4 was from and there's an artist who makes stuff that all looks kind of like this, so it's kind of a coincidence, but I still feel like it works.

[silverspawn]

sometimes I feel like, man you just say things, others can read them, it's extremely simple, why are people talking past each other so much.

and then other times I feel like, man people have these extremely complex world models that are all totally different, like shockingly different, carved up completely different ontologies, including many that aren't even formalizable because they're straight up incoherent. Then to communicate, we have to translate this alien language into text and the other person has to translate the text back into their equally alien (but wholly dissimilar) language. And then both people could also be angry, frustrated, annoyed, unfocused, careless, sleepy, whatever. How on earth does any communication ever work ever?

[silverspawn]

Like people usually go around assuming discussion is something like an exchange of information and opinions about this information. And this model may be fine in cases where things go well. But in the cases where two people clash and get incredibly angry at each other, a much better analogy is someone trying to squeeze a cyllinder into a square-shaped hole with all of their strength and then getting angry at the other person if it doesn't work

[silverspawn]

This is why being a therapist, or even a teacher, is a an activity with no achievable skill ceiling. To be maximally effective, you need a maximally accurate model of the other person, and also have that model maximally quickly, and then also apply it perfectly.

Of course most teachers don't have no model whatsoever; they just explain things how they make sense for them and it's up to luck whether that works out