idk if we noticed the same. VISA dc is... somewhat inspired by some larong pinoy & pinoy gestures? i see sipa, bato-bato pick, piko, pogi gesture na pwede ring nanirador? hahahashow more

There's something I've noticed about posts from Restore Britain... supporters. There is much more positive posting about what we are going to achieve together. And far less snide, deceitful rhetoric and hatefulness directed at the opposition. That is precisely what we need. Debate, yes, but not engaging with their bitter name calling, misrepresentations, lies and hate. I feel that's how politics has been done for decades and look where it's got us. Massive voter apathy and a terrible party in power, for whom 80% of the public did not vote. I like Restore Britain 's ideas and I admire Rupert Lowe MP 's honesty, morality and work ethic. Those traits on display are building my trust and I'm far more engaged with, and uplifted by, reading about what we can achieve together if we work together and vote together in '29, than all that same old nonsense from the rest of them. 🇬🇧I hope we will all see Great Britain restored.❤️show more

กี่ครั้งก็ได้ (Countless) ​Artists: Pooh & Pavel ​ 🐱: I... didn't intend to stare at you for that long But my eyes just refuse to look anywhere else There are so many people here tonight But it’s like this whole room is just you and me, oh oh ~ no no ooh ​🐶: I don't know why, my heart beats for you every single time Every time we walk together... ​ 🐱: If you have some time tonight Please stop by and see me, I'll be waiting (Pooh: hey hey) ​(Together 🐶🐱) No matter how many times, it’s still not enough Can I ask to be with you one more time? I don’t know if you feel the same But I want you, just you, all night long ​No matter how many times, ooh I still want to go on a date with this person You are such a good, good thing As long as it's you, anything goes. ​🐶: I didn't say a word, but your smile says it all No need for any explanation I already know that something is about to start ​Life slows down, the music grooves Just a little move from you and the whole room moves too ​ 🐱: If you have some time tonight Please stop by and see me, I'll be waiting (🐶: hey hey) ​(Together 🐶🐱) No matter how many times, it’s still not enough Can I ask to be with you one more time? I don’t know if you feel the same But I want you, just you, all night long ​No matter how many times, ooh I still want to go on a date with this person You’re such a good, good thing As long as it's you, anything goes. ​(Together 🐶🐱) No matter how many times, it’s still not enough Can I ask to be with you one more time? I don’t know if you feel the same But I want you, just you, all night long ​No matter how many times, ooh I still want to go on a date with this person You are such a good, good thing As long as it's you, anything goes. #กี่ครั้งก็ได้Countless #PoohPavel #ppoohkt #pavelphoom #CHANGEMUSIC #CHANGE2561show more

Today we are leaving for North Bengal. I will... be staying there for two days to see rescue and restoration works there. My Chief Secretary is accompanying me, DG of Police has already gone there. Police and administration have been doing rescue and restoration operations in all affected areas. Community kitchens have been opened, distressed people are being given all-out support. Tourists are being safely evacuated and where hotel accommodation is to be arranged, that will be done at our cost. North Bengal State Transport Corporation and our other transport organisations are mobilizing streams of special Volvo and long-distance buses for evacuating the stranded tourists. While death cannot be compensated, we shall give Rs 5 lakh to the families of each deceased, and a Special Homeguard' s job to a kin in each such family as a special gesture. I shall visit some areas in North Bengal today and tomorrow, and our administration will reach out all humanitarian help to all those affected by the flood in each place. If the Central Government did its job of dredging of the Ganga-Hugli river at several critical points, and if DVC did its desiltation works which it is not wilfully doing, if their dams and barrages were not so used in this manner against us, and if central government money was spent for the necessary public works in Bengal rather than squandering funds away in other unrelated pursuits, our people would have been spared of the man- made flood that we are facing in large tracts of North and South Bengal in this season. Our own Irrigation works and check dams etc have been useful in arresting the damages in many areas. We are there, always, every moment. Sharing some photos showing our police, fire brigade and disaster management officers and men in rescue operations at this moment.show more

Today vs March 21 Little tangent here. Scared dogs... don’t make puppies… I’ve been farming my whole life. In 2011 I lost my dad to cancer and the family looked at me to put out the crop. My dad made decisions. He was a leader. When I became responsible to seed, fertilize, spray, etc… 3,000 acres I knew I had 1 talent from when I was a kid. I have a memory like no other. I can tell you what hybrid I plant, pop, rate, day the last 14 years because I am engaged. When everyone was telling me exactly how to do things. I was more curious of what happens when I change a variable here or there. What was the elasticity of that decision or management. In weather forecasting they have a similar system that I was somewhat inspired by called ensemble forecasts where they change variables slightly and see how weather systems behave differently as time progresses. I could lean on my memory. I was bored AF quite honestly to do the same thing over and over again. What happens to corn if you skip a row or 2 or plant it thin or thick? Beans…can you broadcast them? Can you plant wheat with a shit tank? Can you run it over? When it’s 4” tall… what about 6” what about 13” Could you rotationally graze inside a cash crop and empower edge effect elasticity and fertilize simultaneously? It would drive some people crazy as they would wonder if you should plant 160,000 or 176000 beans per acre? What’s the difference…nothing. What’s the difference between 20” corn and 2040” corn? Full season likes the latter….early yields best crowded. Fuck around and Find out isn’t just some tic tok deal. It’s how you don’t become a scared dog. It calms your nerves as most people freak out about things that don’t really matter. Because they never had the balls to try anything else than what their dad did. I always felt like I needed to learn why and how things worked if I was ever going to become a better farmer. What matters are the derivatives, the 1st principles. There is a lot more we can do in production agriculture. It’s not all about winning the yield contest. Sometimes it’s about learning what you don’t need. That creates freedom.show more

Here are five step by step ways to approach... a woman especially if you want to engage in sex with her, 1: Before you even think about approaching her, check your mindset, bro. A lot of guys put fear in themselves out by overthinking. You need to see yourself as the prize. Women love confidence, and confidence starts with how you see yourself. Picture yourself as someone she wants to meet, not just the guy trying to impress her. If you come with that energy, half the battle's already won. 2. Approaching a woman isn't just about what you say, it's how you say it without saying it. Your body language speaks volumes, bro. Keep your shoulders back, chest open, and walk in with a relaxed, easy-going body language. Let her know you're cool, calm, and confident just by how you move. Before you approach, make eye contact first. Don't approach from behind, make sure she sees you coming. It's like a signal that says, "Hey, I see you, and I'm about to make a move. 3: Forget pickup lines, bro. The best way to start a conversation is with something natural and genuine. You don't need to come up with some mind-blowing opener. Just be yourself and start with something situational, comment on something happening around you, or just introduce yourself. Example You're at a coffee shop. You could say, "Hey, I noticed we both keep coming here around the same time. I had to come over and say hi. 4. Learn to Control the Frame This is where most guys fail. Don't interview her. Don't bombard her with questions. Talk. Tease lightly. Share something about yourself. If she says she loves traveling, don't just say "Oh nice." Say: "Careful... I might start using you as my tour guide." Playful tension > boring conversation. 5. End Strong - Don't Linger Here's the secret most men ignore. Don't overstay. If the vibe is good, say: "I've got to run, but I'd like to continue this. Let's exchange contacts." Then leave. Confidence is shown in your exit as much as your entrance. Scarcity builds curiosity.show more

introducing a new, very fun, LLM benchmark- the Game-of-Life... Bench! the rules are simple: given an 8x8 grid following Conway's game of life rules, the goal is to create an initial pattern with at most 32 cells that can last the longest number of turns before dying/repeating. some results to highlight (with caveats detailed below): - gpt 5.1 lasts the longest with a 106 step run - claude models are really bad at this! they refuse to reason about this task and score < 25 points - deepseek r1 is the best open model with 102 steps. why? because i wanted to create a benchmark that has (i think) no practicality, but is still fun to look at, cheap, and still measures something interesting. i also am a big fan of the game of life. its absurdly simple rules leading to intractability is extremely cool to me. also, i saw a lot of work with LLMs trying to "predict" the next state in Conway's game of life, I think game-of-life bench is more fun because it's pretty open ended and only asks the LLM for the initial state. I also think this could be an RL env? but idk why you would ever train on this task haha i don't think this is a "serious" benchmark because it doesnt measure anything practical, but i still think it's a hard benchmark exactly because you can't predict what happens with your initial state many turns into the future; this is why i was initially expecting all LLMs to be bad at it, but turns out, some are clearly better than the others (the ordering may surprise you!) reminder: this is still a work-in-progress; (1) i am gpu-poor so could only do 10 runs for each model, even though total running cost is relatively low. maybe with some more credits i can run more seeds for each model. (2) i handpicked models which i think are at the frontier right now, plus some others that were on my mind. so, if you'd like to see a model on here, let me know. (3) i currently only do an 8x8 grid because i thought that by itself would be pretty hard for current LLMs, but of course we can increase grid sizes! (4) the coolest thing is, i dont think we can calculate the max possible number of states (yay undecidability!) you can go without repeating, so this is essentially a no-ceiling task, which is pretty cool! again, i did this mostly out of a desire to make LLMs do something fun. if this keeps me entertained for a few more days, i'd likely release a blog post on it. if it keeps me entertained for a week (and someone sponsors me), i'll put more work into it :P lastly, this is fully open sourced, so feel free to run this on your own!show more

MMTLP Next Wednsday there is House Financial Services Committee... Hearing Entitled: OVERSIGHT OF THE SEC It would be a REALLLLLL shame (for some out there) if we had another "Crapo moment", where Paul Atkins is put in the hot seat this time about the #MMTLPFiasco, under oath and not just a "brush off" on FOX Business. This is where it REALLY matters. We have effectively 4 business days to reach out to reps that either signed a letter, the open letter, both, or neither. WE HAVE EVIDENCE NOW! Why did Lisa McClain not mention MMTLP? Because it gave us a heads up to get on the PHONES! Put down the shovel for a moment, and PICK UP THE PHONE! I am sure as hell that: Notarighty would agree, Kurtis would agree, BusyBrands 🇺🇸 would agree, JunkSavvy would agree, Ann Vandersteel™️ would agree, General Mike Flynn would agree, Lara Logan would agree, John Brda would agree, George Palikaras would agree, GREG MCCABE would agree, RICHIE FOR G-D's SAKE IF HE WERE HERE... (REQUIESCAT IN PACE🙏) WOULD 100% AGREE, HELL HE'D PROBABLY BE ON THE WAY TO DC AS WE SPEAK! "I'MMMM GOING AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO OR SAY THAT WILL STOP ME! DUBS GET THE CAR READY, I'M FLYING OUT TONIGHT!" 😎 We must not let all the work we and Richie did to build the relationships with Congress go to waste and deteriorate. Let's honor Richie and all by doing the work! MMTLPARMY, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO - WHAT YOU DO BEST! BE RELENTLESS! .... but also be polite on the phones.... please...? LOL There's a way to be assertive and firm without being hostile. 👋📞😎⚖📚 -DÜKshow more

I thought a lot in these days to write... about what happened in the past days, but because i saw them already lying (looks like to be liar is their inner nature) i will talk about the bad behavior and disrespect of cpf fans aka #bjyx or #yizhan during the days of mfw. I think everyone can stay outside the shows to see their favorite celebrities but respect should be the main value to follow, you are there for Xiao Zhan, he is doing his work, why are you bringing irrelevant people into HIS JOB EVENT?! Why do you want to push your fanfictions into his face? Why have you to disturb the common order of everyone there? Even people from other fandoms were shocked by their behavior! I will divide everything into 3 chapters - - 25th G show. They found a spot and attach a dirty banner and even G brand staff came out from the event asking to the removal of their disgusting banner and brought it away. I add also video of the fact. The cpf tried also to disguise herself wearing a red jacket, but she was not happy, the moment G brand staff went away with the banner, instead to be ashamed, she brought out new banners, with the visible surname of another person and their yellow colors! She also argued for long with a poor security guy who was really done So are you there for what? To see someone you claim to be fan or just for a selfish pleasure being disrespectful towards xz?!? - 27th we organized a loch special screening in a cinema, we were us xfx + some passerby we invited, the hall was private booked and it was totally filled. But some of them came to the cinema and argued even with the cinema staff! They tried to snatch into a private event and threaten the cinema staff 😱 - 28th T brand even was the worst day. They tried to pick fights since 3 am in between the street 😱 they stole one of our stool, they started to play loud wuji AT 5AM IN THE MIDDLE OF A CITY!!! wth?! This is a disturbance for everyone, it’s not allowed! I had a small group of 4/5 behind me and they screamed to my ears every fk 10/15 min, trying to pick fights with us (we ignored them 95% of the time) and continue to push their luggage toward my friend who wasn’t even allowed to sit down for this! They were so chaotic and such a disturbance that after a while even the security guard in our zone noticed they were weird and started to monitored them closer. At certain time they exploded again and even the security guard was able to contain the she brought out new banners, with the visible surname of another person and their yellow colors! She also argued for long with a poor security guy who was really done So are you there for what? To see someone you claim to be fan or just for a selfish pleasure being disrespectful towards xz?!? - 27th we organized a loch special screening in a cinema, we were us xfx and invited some passerby, the hall was private booked by us and it was totally filled. But some of them came to the cinema and argued even with the cinema staff! They tried to snatch into a private event and threatened the cinema staff 😱 - 28th T brand even was the worst day. They tried to pick fights since 3 am in between the street 😱 they stole one of our stool, they started to play loud wuji AT 5AM IN THE MIDDLE OF A CITY!!! wth?! This is a disturbance for everyone, it’s not allowed! Some of us were on site already at 2am, they came later and tried anyway the steal the front row 😡 I had a small group of 4/5 behind me and they screamed to my ears every fk 10/15 min, trying to pick fights with us (we ignored them 95% of the time) and continue to push their luggage toward my friend who wasn’t even allowed to sit down for this! They were so chaotic and such a disturbance that after a while even the security guard in our zone noticed they were weird and started to monitored them closer. At certain time they exploded again and even the security guard was able to contain them and he exclaimed ‘i can see you don’t like him (xz) very much’ (in italian). …continueshow more

over the weekend, i built an app that i... sincerely hope you will never have a need for, but if you do happen to need a friendly, free, private mri viewer designed to make it easy for you to track tumor progression, you can try it here: here's the story: as some of you may know, last last september, my six year old daughter mira was diagnosed with an extremely rare brain tumor called an adamatinomatous craniopharyngioma, and since then our family has been doing everything we can possibly do to find a cure for her. we tortured chatgpt deep research, put together our own private research team, raised $1.4M and donated it all to Hankinson-Mitra Lab research thanks to $MIRA, explored every remotely applicable drug whether on the market or not, and even began working with md anderson to develop a personalized vaccine that we hope can lead to a more permanent cure unfortunately, we received the devastating news last march that the tumor has continued to grow since her initial surgery, and we had to start to consider more drastic options which would have seriously impacted mira’s quality of life. thankfully, with the help of dr. sabine mueller UCSF Benioff SF and the Hankinson-Mitra Lab at the university of colorado, in april, we started her on an alternative but extremely experimental treatment for this disease. to our unimaginable relief, her tumor has responded extraordinarily well to this treatment which combines tocilizumab (an arthritis drug that blocks IL6 receptors) with avastin (a colon cancer drug that inhibhits VEGF proteins). we know this, because mira gets an MRI scan of her brain every few months. and every time we get a new scan, the first thing we do is compare it against her last scan. so we have to find the matching weight of the scan, and then find the same plane, and then carefully find the slices of the scan where the tumor is visible, and then find the closest match to last month’s scan, then adjust the zoom, rotation, and brightness / contrast so they all look the same. we got pretty good at this. but it shouldn't be this hard. so i built last weekend using gemini 3 with some gpt 5.2 xhigh. you just import your DICOM MRI files (either zip, files or a folder), and you can align all of your scans across multiple dates instantly, just click and drag a rectangle around the tumor on any image, and it will use some very clever algorithms to automatically align up and find the closest matching slice from all your other scans, match the brightness / contrast, rotation, pan, zoom, and even shear to make sure the registration is as close as possible, and make it as easy to possible to compare tumor progression. it has a grid view so you can see all your scans for the same location all at once, and an overlay view so you can quickly compare two scans visually (by holding down the space bar to toggle quickly between two scans), along with tools to animate your scans both within the same sequence as well as over multiple scans to show progression. there is no server, it runs entirely locally on your browser - nothing ever gets uploaded and it's all open source: if you've found this useful, please consider a donation to the UCSF Benioff SF hospital foundation, who has given us extraordinary care over the past year or so:show more

See what I did there? Creating a second step... to view the content you desire is annoying, isn’t it? Give it a couple hours and look at the impressions of the first post versus this one. People are deterred by inconvenience. It is my opinion that users will gravitate to these platforms where the live reaction default is already in place. A two-click process to change the default settings seems quite simple, something I did myself the moment I noticed the deployment, but not everyone’s social media habits are the same and this task could very-well pose enough of an obstacle to direct a user to Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, or any other network prioritizing live content instead. Simplicity is never overrated, especially with attention span sizes in 2025. Once enough of these users leave, X is no longer the unique utility platform that it once was nor will it have the communities living here who utilized it. Niche communities won’t just suddenly leave overnight, they will move on in silence after drowning in apathy. The remaining content on here will be presented by popularity, similar to Instagram, and transmitted by algorithmic recommendations. Some people prefer it that way, and god bless you! I’m not trying to tell you what you should/shouldn’t like, more so speaking as an early-stage user who has been creating content on this platform regularly since 2009, seen CEOs/ownership groups come and go, the timeline reformat hundreds of times, worked with previous employees closely to optimize user experience, and wants to see it evolve. For that to happen: X needs to always be the live microblogging hub of the world. No matter what bullshit has happened on here or to the site, Twitter/X’s live utility was ALWAYS the business’ cornerstone. As long as it had this market cornered, it would survive its growing pains. So if you’ve made it this far, and have some sort of influence over the UX here, I am hoping you consider just one minor revert to retain the site’s influence: change the ‘Following’ tab default back to ‘Most recent’ from ‘Popular’. You don’t even need to delete the new option, but removing this additional click hurdle will go a long way in preserving what makes this place so intriguing. Until then, here is a video of my dog Skip sleeping to entice the algorithm to consider this content ‘Popular’.show more

A Tale of Two Palestinian Cities. Some were outraged... when I stated earlier that we, as Gulf Arabs, no longer wish to destroy our nations and futures for a cause that, for 70 years, has brought us nothing but terrorism, accusations, betrayal, and alliances with our enemies. The moment we say: “We want to live,” we are branded Zionists. By who? By people sitting comfortably in Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, the West - sipping lattes and tweeting from safe homes - demanding we fight and die for their version of solidarity. So let me show you two realities. The first video is from Gaza, April 2025 - 18 months into a war that never needed to happen. There was no prior Israeli provocation, no bombing campaign, no invasion leading up to October 7. Things were improving. Israel was issuing 22,000 daily work permits for Gazans, and negotiations were underway - with Saudi mediation - for improving Gaza’s conditions in exchange for moderation. Then Hamas, acting on behalf of Iran, blew it all up. October 7 wasn’t resistance. It was sabotage. A completely unnecessary massacre - not for Palestinian liberation, but to derail Saudi-Israeli normalization and regional peace. It was Tehran’s agenda, paid in Palestinian blood. The second video is from the Palestinian capital, Ramallah, also April 2025 - the ICON Mall grand opening. Music. Dancing. Luxury stores. BMWs pulling in. Palestinians celebrating as if Gaza were on another continent. No outrage. No mourning. Just luxury shopping and selfies. If they, the fellow Palestinians, aren’t standing in the rubble, why are we told we must? Let’s also get this straight: Gaza has been “free” since 2005. The siege? It started in 2007, after Hamas took power by killing 300 fellow Palestinians (PA Police) and throwing them off rooftops. Since then, Israel still gave out work permits. Egypt, on the other hand, kept the Rafah border completely sealed. Even during the war’s worst days, Egypt wouldn’t open it - barely for aid, not for refugees. Not one work permit. Nothing. If Gaza was truly a prison, why didn’t Hamas break out through Egypt? Why always toward Israel? Because Egypt would shoot - not negotiate. But you won’t see the usual online “activists” blaming Cairo. No. It’s always easier to guilt-trip the Gulf Countries. So no - we will not join your death cult. We will not die for the cause while Ramallah dances and Cairo locks the gate. And to all the comfortable, self-righteous voices screaming “solidarity”: shut the fuck up and go die in Gaza yourselves if you care that much. Don’t lecture us from safety. Don’t demand sacrifice from others while you live off hashtags. If the people of Ramallah aren’t bothered - if their own fellow Palestinians can dance on the same day others die - why the hell should we? Spare us the pious performative grief. We’ve seen through it. The cause was hijacked long ago by ye Ayatollahs of Tehran - and we are done dying for other people’s delusions.show more

I lost some of my faith in people yesterday.... Do you all remember this story of the woman we found on the road carrying a dead child? Around 3pm yesterday while I was at the hospital, I got a call from Ope Ola Grace. She sounded really confused. I asked what’s wrong then she said she saw this woman at Lafenwa begging for alms among the beggars. I told her to wait there and make sure she doesn’t leave, that I am on my way to confirm with my eyes because it can’t be possible. I got there with Seeker of Truth and it was indeed true. I couldn’t believe what I saw. How’s this possible?? We set up a business worth around N300k for her last December, gave her money, gave her husband extra money to keep. Enrolled her kids (all 3 of them) in school, supplied all needed school materials for one year. Bought at least 3 months worth of food supply for them as well. The Hon Commissioner for women affairs Hon. Motunrayo Adijat Adeleye also sent delegates to her with lots of needed items; 25kg bags of rice twice in the last 5 months, 10 crates of soft drink for the wife in January. The commissioner also made sure that her husband was among the 100 beneficiaries of the N100,000 disability grant of the RHI shared on the 17th of April by First Lady Remi Tinubu in Abeokuta. He confirmed that he received the N100k the same day. I called her at the spot to show her the woman and she was confused too. Like, “Jack, what else could we have done?” I asked people there, they said she’s been begging with them for more than a month. When I explained in details all the help we have provided for her in the last 5 months, they got angry, saying she should leave. That’s not even the worst part of this story. The worst, I fear, is she appears pregnant again. However she insisted she’s not, that she just ate eba, that’s why her stomach is big. We took her back home, the husband (visually impaired as I stated then) said he was not aware that she has been begging, and he can’t see, so no way to confirm if she’s pregnant. Everyone in her community said she goes out for 3-4hours everyday when the kids have gone to school to get ‘supplies’ for their mini-stall. They said some other troubling things about her that I won’t want to share here. I am confused on what to do next.show more

Are you safer with LIDAR, or are you safer... with vision? This is a false dichotomy. The more pertinent question today is "do you have something, or do you have nothing?" As you can see from the clips below, vision based systems avoid countless potential collisions every day. The difference between a crash and no crash isn't what sensor suite you chose — it's whether you have any AI on your car at all. Even if we concede that LIDAR may help prevent some additional crashes, we are really debating whether it is 1% of crashes or 0.00001% of crashes. Not all crashes are super complex and require lasers to detect. Most are simple, routine, and can easily be prevented by today's vision based AI. In fact, evidence is mounting that computer vision based systems can actually outperform more traditional approaches to self-driving. Why? Because the low cost of cameras enables you to create a much larger, more varied, and more diverse dataset. If you want to have expensive custom cars that's fine, but you're going to get fewer vehicles for the same budget. Seeing what's in front of you now is actually less important than predicting what's going to happen next — and the large scale datasets used to train pure vision systems are the best for predicting what's next. Counter-intuitively, the simpler and lower cost sensor actually has properties that make it better suited for training advanced AI. Computer vision based self-driving is often framed by LIDAR proponents as "cheaping out" on the sensor suite to save money. But it's not about being cheap, it's about bringing the technology to everyone. 1.2 million people die on the road every year around the world. That's around 39 million people who've died on the roads around the world since I was born — equivalent to a city the size of Tokyo or New Delhi getting wiped off the map. The status quo is simply unacceptable, and something has to be done to fix it as soon as possible. Of the 1.2 million people that will die on the roads this year, about 40,000 will be Americans. That's about 3%. So if we moved entirely to self-driving cars in America and brought crashes down to 0, 97% of the world's crash fatalities would still be taking place as usual. Deploying a $200,000+ retrofitted self-driving car may work in a few American cities, but it is not going to make sense in most places around the world where fares are much cheaper. Most often, the choice is not between LIDAR and vision. It's between vision or nothing. The best system is the system that's there running on my car when I need it to save my life. To say that all self-driving cars must have LIDAR is to sentence most of the world to death. We can't write off computer vision if we want to make a serious dent in this problem. It's going to be a key piece of the solution. Let LIDAR based players build the best self-driving car they can, and let vision based players do the same. We need to be trying everythingshow more

The first word my daughter learned to speak was... ‘book’. With wide eyes, she would point at a book and say ‘boo’ in a voice full of glee. We began taking her to a nearby Crossword bookshop (in Aundh, Pune) when she could barely walk. Our trips soon became a cherished daddy-daughter tradition, where we would visit once every month and buy three books for her. She chose two and I chose one. A friendly employee once told me, his face beaming with pride, that this was the biggest Crossword in India! Four floors full of books felt like a heaven. But then they converted one floor into a kids play area. Another surrendered to a toy shop. Then cafes. Then stationery. Then an event space. The book shelves, once brimming with finely curated collections, became crowded with cheap campus romance and badly written historical fiction. Yet, we continued our tradition. 3 books a month! Yesterday, we went there to find the doors shut. A man on a ladder was ripping out the Crossword sign. Slowly. Methodically. As he pulled out one letter after another, I felt a physical sensation of pain. My daughter had tears in her eyes. A glowing light somewhere was snuffed out, and the world became slightly darker. And some of my faith in humanity died forever! A society that does not read is a society that does not know itself. We used to turn pages and paint stories with our imagination. Now we endlessly stab screens till our thumbs hurt, our minds numbed by the dopamine drip of likes and reels. We have become slaves to our devices, consuming whatever they decide for us, our thoughts hijacked by algorithms, our souls starved for meaning. If you want your children to read, don’t tell them. Show them. Children hate listening to adults, but they love imitating them. Pick up a book yourself, and they will do the same! P.S.: I verified the claim. The largest store of India’s most beloved chain of bookshops has indeed shut down.show more

Brooks Koepka leaving LIV Golf is an obvious blow... to the league. But, it would be a considerably bigger blow if Bryson DeChambeau were to do the same. Bryson is contracted through the end of 2026, but he’s currently in discussions to extend early. Speaking exclusively to Tom Hobbs from Flushing It Golf, he spoke about the current situation: “I mean, look, it's confidential. I’m not going to share too much, but the conversations are in process. We have to get to a place where both parties have a good understanding of one another. It is getting to a place that makes sense for both sides. “And, I think that can happen, but you never know. Life throws curve balls and, obviously, we saw what happened today (Brooks Koepka leaving LIV Golf) and that was quite a shock to a lot of people and something that, you know, it is what it is. “People make decisions for whatever their needs and wants are and, ultimately, you have to respect it and move on and it feels like it was a mutual understanding and that's great. “I think that as a league now we have more opportunity to make some movements and I think that team has an opportunity to do some things differently than the past few seasons. So, we'll see where it all goes and where it all leads. Ultimately, it's quite interesting.” It certainly is interesting. Throughout the season, LIV Golf officials were trying desperately to convince media members that Brooks was happy and committed to the league and his franchise, when perhaps they were actually just trying to convince themselves. So, were the players aware he felt this way and did they expect the news to come so soon, before the end of his current contract? “There was always rumblings, but ultimately, it was a shock when I saw it today. I was like, whoa, all right, well, didn't know it was going to happen today. I didn't have that on my bingo card for the 23rd of December. “There's also, people can look at it as an opportunity. I always look at it as when one door closes another opens, right? And, I'm not going to speak for LIV, but I think that's what we're thinking of, at least from my perspective. If I was running the league, I'd look at it as an opportunity, not in a negative or positive way. It's just, it is what it is, right?” Bryson makes an interesting point. Brooks was never really committed to his captaincy of Smash GC or building a franchise, so perhaps a change of leadership and the opportunity that offers is actually a positive. There’s no point in having a big name player on the league if he’s not even prepared to wear his own team branding. So, now that Brooks has officially left, does Bryson think Brooks should be allowed back onto the PGA Tour? “I don't know, man. I don't know what they should allow or not… If they're going to be doing it by the book, they should do it by the book and not give any special exemption. But if there's a special exemption, it definitely opens the doors for others to do the same, which, you know, it's a slippery slope for sure.” Currently, no official pathway back to the PGA Tour for Brooks Koepka has been announced. So, any decision that is made will definitely be something all players on the LIV Golf League will be paying very close attention to. Follows on in a quote of this post. Bryson DeChambeau Crushers GC LIV Golfshow more

What happens when Europeans find out how poor they... are? The Europoor? Nothing. That’s what happens. Americans ring the White House every morning to ask what the GDP is today, the way the rest of us check the weather. The trouble is that GDP is what you get when you stick Jeff Bezos and a man sleeping in a Walmart car park into a spreadsheet and take the average. It tells you the country is rich. It does not tell you that a hundred million people inside it are quietly not. GDP measures how much money sloshes around. It does not measure whether any of it ever reaches you, or what sort of life you get to live once it does. It also, rather conveniently, doesn’t mention the bill. Because the whole American miracle is being run on a credit card that has been on fire since the Reagan administration. The federal government owes nearly forty trillion dollars. The households owe another eighteen. Car loans, student loans, medical debt, a mortgage the size of a small principality, and a Visa bill that arrives in an envelope you have to open with tongs. This is the country lecturing the rest of us about prosperity. This is a man pulling up to valet parking in a leased Lamborghini and calling himself rich because nobody at the table has yet asked to see his bank statement. Run any household like that and the bailiffs would be through the door by Thursday. Run a country like that and apparently you get to be on the cover of The Economist. And this is where the whole sermon falls apart. Because on every single thing that actually makes a life worth getting out of bed for, Europe wins. Not by a bit. By a humiliating distance. The food. The streets. The holidays. The pavements you can walk on without being flattened by a Dodge the size of a small barn. The cities built before the invention of the strip mall. The Tuesday afternoon that contains an actual lunch, rather than a protein bar eaten standing up over a keyboard. The summer that contains an actual summer. Pick any parameter that matters to a human being who is alive and would like to remain so in reasonable spirits, and Europe is ahead. Often by a mile. Sometimes by an ocean. So no. Europeans are not about to find out how poor they are. We found out years ago, had a long hard look at the alternative, the debt, the diabetes, the drive-thru funerals, and decided we’d really rather not.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: Gandalvshow more

Welp... I did not want to talk about this,... because really, it is quite embarrassing. 90 miles in, the very first service ticket was created. This was last week. Rivian Service in SSF has graciously facilitated everything for us, loaner and expedited service because come on... 90 miles! That and of course, the series of service issues we've had in the truck we traded in. They know us, and that's not a nice feeling. I am not a "Karen" customer; I hate being the one asking for help, asking the questions, asking for updates. I work in customer service, I know how that is, and it's awful. I love this company, I love these cars but it's truly a disservice to a) not perform a quality control inspection before releasing / selling vehicles and b) have the service centers completely overflown and completely booked for months! I know that if I didn't have that direct contact for the service manager I would have been just bitching and crying for service for probably weeks. Rivian has got to add at least two service centers in the Bay Area, these vehicles are everywhere, and as a shareholder it hurts to see them bleeding money in rentals, over time, etc. I am being taken care of, yes. And the issue is quite simple: passenger side daytime running lights would flicker, headlamp beam would work (so not concerned about safety) but still, a brand new vehicle should not have a faulty headlamp. And again, I did not want to post about it because I know some poeple will just spread their negativity and respond their comments full of hate, but at the same time I am a consumer and I take pride in my transparent ways to conduct myself in business and life. Zero lies, zero omissions. So yeah, a little late, but this is the truth. In the meantime, I shall continue advocating for this amazing company that caters for customer service in such an amazing way, it truly makes us feel special. Huge shout-out to SSF service, truly covering a massive, busy geographical area. They need help! Let's get more service centers, come on! Hopefully my car is ready tomorrow, and I pray to all the gods that I don't need service ever again. Hahaha. I want to drive my car!show more

[Discrete Fourier Transform] by Hand ✍️ In signal processing,... the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is no doubt the most important method. But the math involved is extremely complex, literally, involving a summation over a complex number term e^(-iwt). I developed this exercise to demonstrate that underneath such complexity, DFT is just a series of matrix multiplications you can calculate by hand. ✍️ Once you see that, it should not surprise you that a deep neural network, which is also a series of matrix multiplications, with activation functions in-between, can learn to perform DFT to process and analyze signals so effectively. How does DFT work? [1] Given ↳ Signals A, B, and C in the 🟧 frequency domain: ◦ A = cos(w) + 2cos(2w) ◦ B = cos(w) + cos(3w) + cos(4w) ◦ C = -cos(2w) + cos(3w) ◦ Each signal is a weighed sum of four cosine waves at frequencies 1w, 2w, 3w, and 4w. ◦ We will apply Inverse DFT to convert the signals to time domain representations, and then demonstrate DFT can convert back to their original frequency domain representations. ↳ Signal X in the 🟩 time domain. X is sampled at 10 time points 1t, 2t, …, 10t: ◦ X = [-2.5, -1.8, 3, -0.7, -1.0, -0.7, 3, -1.8, -2.5, 5] ◦ Suppose X is also a weighted sum of the same four cosine waves, but we don’t already know their weights. We will apply DFT to discover them. [2] 🟧 Frequency Matrix (F) ↳ Write the coefficients of A, B, C as a matrix F. Each signal is a row. Each frequency is a column. ↳ A → [1, 2, 0, 0] ↳ B → [1, 0, 1, 1] ↳ C → [0, 1-, 1, 0] [3] Cosine → Discrete ↳ Sample from the continuous cosine waves at discrete time points 1t, 2t, 3t, to 10t. [4] Cosine Matrix (W) ↳ Write the samples as a matrix, Each frequency is a row. Each time point is a column. [5] Inverse DFT: 🟧 Frequency → 🟩 Time ↳ Multiply the frequency matrix F and the cosine matrix W. ↳ The meaning of this multiplication is to linearly combine the four cosine waves (rows in W) into time-domain signals (rows in T) using the weights specified in F. ↳ The result is matrix T, which are signals A, B, C converted to the time domain. Each signal is a row. Each time point is a column. [6] Transpose ↳ Transpose T, converting each signal’s time domain representation from a row to a column. [7] DFT: 🟩 Time → 🟧 Frequency ↳ Multiply the cosine matrix W with the transpose of matrix T. ↳ The purpose of this multiplication is to take a dot-product between each time-domain signal (columns in the transpose of T) and each cosine wave (rows in W), which has the effect of projecting the signal onto a cosine wave to determine how much they are correlated. Zero means not correlated at all. ↳ The result is an intermediate version of the “recovered” frequency matrix where each column corresponds to a signal and each row corresponds to a frequency. ↳ Compared to the original frequency matrix F, this intermediate matrix has non-zero weights in the correct places, but scaled up by a factor of 5 (n/2, n=10). For example, signal A, originally [1,2,0,0], is recovered at [5,10,0,0]. [8] Scale ↳ Multiply each value by 2/n = 1/5 to scale down the intermediate matrix to match the magnitude of the original frequency matrix F. [9] Transpose ↳ Transpose the recovered frequency matrix back to the same orientation of the original frequency matrix F. ↳ Like magic 🪄, the result is identical to the original F, which means DFT successfully recovered the frequency components of signals A, B, C. [10] Apply DFT to X: 🟩 Time → 🟧 Frequency ↳ Now that we have some confidence in DFT’s ability to recover frequency components, we apply DFT to X’s time-domain representation by multiplying W with X. ↳ The result is the an intermediate matrix. [11] Scale ↳ Similarly, we scale down by a factor of 5 to obtain the recovered frequency components of X (a column). [12] Transpose ↳ Similarly, we transpose the recovered column to row to match the orientation of the frequency matrix. ↳ Using the coefficients [0,0,3,2], we can write the equation of X as 3cos(3w) + 2cos(4w). Notes: I hope this by hand exercise helps you understand the essence of DFT. But there is more technical details, such as: • Sine: The complete DFT math also includes sine waves that follow a similar calculation process. • Phase: Here, we assume all the cosine waves are aligned at the origin, namely, phase is 0. If a phase p is added, for example, cos(w+p), we will need to calculate the sine component and use their ratio to figure out what p is. • Magnitude: If phase is not zero, the magnitude will need to be calculated by combining both cosine and sine terms.show more