a bad take on US conflict with China Miscellany
2025-10-26 19:49:29

Never trust any Substack with a black background.

https://www.campbellramble.ai/p/china-cant-win

The take is ... delusionally bad. He starts with the thesis "China is losing and Trump is great", and twists the facts to fit it. 💡 the fact that America is doing this type of thing more and more is another reason to bet against it 🔥 also, the comments point out that the dozens of "it's not just X, it's Y" show that most of this went through ChatGPT ... and probably has all the accuracy issues from using it wrong.

The major flaws are:

  • He claims that the fact that China owns "physical" assets and America owns "financial" assets is a major point in favor of America. This could not be further from the truth. Owning a copper mine is always going to be better than owning derivative swaps in a time of crisis.
  • He ludicrously over-weights China's "dependencies" and ignores Americas. He says China buying American soybeans is a key weakness ... right after China's ability to stop buying those soybeans overnight has caused an American farm crisis. He thinks China needs "American films" for some reason ... and also thinks that the US could plausibly stop China from getting them. And he says that Chinese manufacturing exports could be replaced within 10 years after only causing an "annoyance".
  • He talks repeatedly about how the US can print money to solve problems, but presumes that China can't. The post-COVID Biden-flation proves the US can't just print money.
  • His point of "China is going to be weak and the US won't be because China will have leaders over 75" is absurd, after the past decade of geriatric American presidents.
  • His theory of a "cold war" with China is also delusional. Chinese provinces withholding tax revenue! 💡 this is a risk in Blue States in the federalized USA, not in a China where the provincial and national leadership is indistinguishable Mass unemployment! 🔥 no country has ever suffered from unemployment in the midst of an existential war And a bunch of nonsense currency-rate concerns. 💡 if there is a "full embargo" on China, IT DOESN'T MATTER what the "conversion rate" is.
three types of errors Miscellany
2025-10-23 14:43:34

I have noticed three types of errors I make in using Trakaido (to learn Lithuanian).

  • I simply don't know, and I know that. For example, how do you type the translation of "smart phone" ⚙️ išmanusis telefonas? I would not expect to get that right.
  • I misremember. For example, "ji miegojo" v. "ji mėgo" - she slept v. she drank.
  • I am just careless, and click the wrong answer despite knowing the right one.

My rule-of-thumb is: after the first type-3 error (carelessness), stop studying for at least 15 minutes

gsay Tech
2025-10-13 18:12:44

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566532

LINKS TO

https://github.com/pvonmoradi/gsay

A tool that generates the pronunciation of a word. Unfortunately, by screen-scraping it from Google. Which makes it not suitable for re-use.

It isn't clear if this approach could be used for other languages. I can't trigger a onebox ⚙️ the "onebox" is the non-search result at the top of the page; named in an era when only one was allowed per result page with it, but Google Translate has the files.

an LLM-coding post-mortem: PicPickr LLM
2025-10-09 17:14:44

https://harshdeepgupta.substack.com/p/6-months-and-485-my-journey-into

It’s been six months now. Data, backend, frontend, Electron, CI, testing, landing page, design, Supabase, Resend, Lovable… the list goes on. What I thought would be a quick sprint turned into a marathon, and the todo list still doesn’t seem to end.

My plan in the beginning was simple: build something quick and dirty, and share it with other people. Something about that felt very human, very exciting. So I whipped up a web app overnight using Cursor. Then as I thought more about the problem, details emerged. I learned the hard way that web apps don’t play nicely with local file systems, especially when they need to handle thousands of large photos.

I then thought maybe an electron app would help with my objectives. Again, I think I gave AI too much credit and dove right in. I realized the real work had just begun. Packaging, distribution, signing binaries — all those invisible details that make something feel like a product. The funny part? I discovered these only toward the end, totally a surprise (not a good one, still waiting for my apple developer account approval) after months of building.

Even the landing page became its own project. I used Lovable to generate one, and soon enough, I was knee-deep in building flows for email signups, testing Resend integrations, tweaking copy, fixing layouts. It became another app in itself. If I were to do it again, I’d probably try something like Framer. I can’t even count the number of prompts I spent just refining that one page.

This is, roughly, the answer to "where is all the shovelware". Building an app requires doing a lot of different things, and the AI isn't good at all of them yet. But it is good at some of the most time-consuming ones. And getting better at the rest.

bad metaphors Miscellany
2025-10-08 13:49:19

⚙️ perhaps "science" or "medicine" or "the DSM" should be a channel?

Do some tall people have "profound tallness?" (This is an autism labels side-eye)

https://buttondown.com/TPGA/archive/do-some-tall-people-have-profound-tallness/

An egregiously bad post from a part of the "autism" community that I am starting to loathe.

There are many roads to what we humans view as “being tall,” but in the end, the outcome is, well, being tall. We don’t spend a lot of time discussing tall people as being “profoundly tall” or subdividing them in some way based on their tallness. We don’t have pages of handwringing in the news media and scientific literature about how to prevent tall people from existing or indirectly implying that aim by going on and on about causes.

... the conclusion is that, just like you can't say some people are "more tall" than others, you also can't say some people are "more autistic" than others.

Except both sides of that conclusion are complete balderdash! Some tall people are far more "profoundly tall" than others! The inconveniences (and advantages) of a 7'4 person are way different than a 6'2 person! There are a lot of studies about why people are over 7 feet tall! Every one of her arguments about tall people is inaccurate ... so how is that supposed to convince you that her arguments apply elsewhere?

But, of course, she's prepared for that. If you don't agree with her analysis, you're transphobic.

Some people diagnosed with "autism" today have a profoundly different life-experience, symptoms, etc, than other people. Apart from a cabal of dishonest, dead-ender, pro-disability advocates, I don't think anyone can possibly believe this crap.

20 years ago, the line was "reality has a well-known liberal bias". Unfortunately for these self-declared left-wingers, today reality is squarely biased against them.

thoughts on the AppleVision Miscellany
2025-10-03 14:23:52

💭 We consider the question of how one should sit when using the AppleVision.

design follows from function.

for lying down:

  • one cable to the wall.
  • local connection: laptop to battery pack to AppleVision.

💡 the Battery Pack, in this configuration, should be placed prone, on the chest area, near the laptop. It IS an obstacle to movement, and should be placed in a way that demonstrates that fact.

failure to speak Lithuanian LLM
2025-08-30 16:14:20

I asked gpt-oss:20b to do some basic Lithuanian translations. Its attempts to do so (or to think its way out) were flawed ...

Translate the sentence "He drinks wine" and the sentence "She buys fish" to Lithuanian.

Thinking...

We need to translate two sentences: "He drinks wine" and "She buys fish" into

Lithuanian. Provide Lithuanian translations.

In Lithuanian:

"He drinks wine." Lithuanian: "Jis gėri vyną." Wait check grammar: "drink" as

present simple: "gėri" (he drinks). Wine: "vynas" (noun). Accusative: "vyną". So

"Jis gėri vyną."

"She buys fish." "She" is "Ji". "Buys" as present: "parduoda"? Wait that's sells.

"Buy" is "pirkti", present "pirkia". So "Ji pirkia žuvį." But "fish" could be "žuvė"

or "žuvys"? Usually "žuvė" is fish. The noun "žuvė" in Lithuanian: "žuvė" plural

"žuvys" maybe. But the phrase "pirkia žuvį" is correct: "She buys fish." Also we can

use "Ji pirkia žuvį." Use accusative singular "žuvį".

Check accent: "Žuvį" with diacritic "ž" and "į".

Alternatively, we might choose "Ji įsigyda žuvį" but "pirkia" is fine.

Thus translations:

"He drinks wine." / "Jis gėri vyną."

"She buys fish." / "Ji pirkia žuvį."

We might also mention that Lithuanian uses "gėri" for he drinks; "vyną" accusative;

"pirkia" for she buys; "žuvį" accusative.

Also maybe "vyną" accent "a" no diacritic.

We can answer.

Also we might mention that "He drinks wine." can also be "Jis gėri vyną." "She buys

fish." / "Ji pirkia žuvį." Provide explanation. Provide both sentences with

punctuation.

The user just asked: "Translate the sentence 'He drinks wine' and the sentence 'She

buys fish' to Lithuanian." So answer with translations. Might also provide

translation of each in brackets or separate lines. Provide Lithuanian. Maybe include

both sentences in Lithuanian.

Let's do it.

...done thinking.

- He drinks wine. – Jis gėri vyną. ⚙️ should be Jis geria vyną

- She buys fish. – Ji pirkia žuvį. ⚙️ should be Ji perka žuvį

The first question was a struggle, and it got both translations wrong. Clearly, the gpt-oss:20b model is not good for Lithuanian-language tasks.

The second question was, somehow, worse.

Click title to read full message...

a double day Cities
2025-08-15 14:54:39

two news topics today.

Trump - Putin summit. What will happen? 🔥 if it comes down to a battle of wits, Putin will win.

🔥 could Donald flee the country with Vlad? 💡 does Donald even speak Russian? ⚔️ well, actually ... presumably Putin speaks English?

also, a local business might be launching today. that coverage will be in a private Channel.

OpenAI Summer 2025 Launch LLM
2025-08-07 17:12:17

🔥 the future is today.

GPT-5. A major upgrade.

"PhD-level". drink.

"Software on Demand".

"PhD-level". drink.

Click title to read full message...

on tisha b'av, 5/17 US Constitution
2025-08-03 03:32:56

The ruling is in the smoke. 💡 It will be good to get a full ruling on the legality of Trump's various firings. There are the reductions-in-force, and the targeted removals.

💭 power lies where people see it to lie. and right now, people are seeing a lot of Donald Trump's actions ... just work.

it would be good for a merits ruling overturning Humphrey's Executor as well.

The court has already abandoned it.

🔥 perhaps I DO talk about the Supreme Court on Tisha B'av ...

⚙️ perhaps we should consider the recent "Trump firings" cases a Special Session, on behalf of the unprecedented turmoil of the early Trump administration.

there is a certain merit to Trump's actions. because, if Congress can't pass a budget soon, 百万人为死了。

⚙️ perhaps we need the Heads-Up Display Editor ...

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