Tracer bouncing boobs trying to make realistic physics again... 😎 I'm surprised I had problems with the rig 🫥 (Anatomy errors can be seen) Tracer model by Dreamrider N*de version available on Patreon! #Overwatch #tracer #overwatchrule34 #rule34 #bigboobs #nsfw #sizetwittershow more

A viral paper "Language Model Represents Space and Time"... recently claims that LLMs learn "world models". As much as I like Max Tegmark's works, I disagree with their definition of world model. World model is a core concept in AI agent and decision making. It is our mental simulation of how the world works given interventions (or lack thereof). A world model captures causality and intuitive physics, telling the agent what is likely and what is impossible. It can and should be used for counterfactual reasoning, i.e. "what ifs": what would happen if I knock over a cup of water? Where would I have been if I had not taken that bus? Yann LeCun Yann LeCun says it well in his position paper ( I quote: "Using such world models, animals can learn new skills with very few trials. They can predict the consequences of their actions, they can reason, plan, explore, and imagine new solutions to problems. Importantly, they can also avoid making dangerous mistakes when facing an unknown situation." The first use of the term World Model in deep policy learning is attributed to hardmaru & Jürgen Schmidhuber: In their seminal paper, an agent masters shooting skills in the popular game Doom (demo below) by learning in imagination, using an internal world model as a "physics simulator". To put in a simple Python math formula, world model learns a function F(s[0:t-1], a) -> s[t:], which takes as input the observed past and current action, and outputs plausible future states. Now the definition of World Model in Tegmark's paper seems to be about predicting GPS coordinates and time eras. I see this as just a classification task with no causal learning and simulation going on. You cannot make meaningful interventions against that model, nor can you optimize any decision making in a closed feedback loop. As for the "space & time neurons", I think they are most similar to the "sentiment neuron" that OpenAI published in 2017: Predicting GPS is conceptually no different from predicting sentiment in my opinion. I don't think their experimental results are wrong - just that their conclusion is on shaky grounds. I welcome any debate! Paper link:show more

I believe that StoryDiffusion has the potential to be... Animatediff's complex motion sister-model! While AD is amazing for granular control, micro-motion and all kinds of abstract motion, it fails at complex realistic motion - walking, human movements, cars, etc. StoryDiffusion seems very promising for this + also has characteristics that will likely make the community very receptive to it and likely to extend its capabilities: 2) Appealing base-model results - likely to get the community excited - feels like significantly better realistic motion than AD 2) Modular - their approach is built with a number of components that can be combined and taken apart - it works by generating consistent images, then animating them together - each of these stages can likely be upgraded, used and influenced in different ways. 3) Flexible - they demonstrate a bunch of different conditioning options 4) Likely easy on RAM - it's based on SD 1.5 + authors mention precautions to reduce RAM consumption 5) Built to plug into the existing ecosystem - e.g. the fact that it works with the SD1.5 ecosystem will give it a huge advantage! While it's very early to say - e.g. the video model hasn't even been released yet! - it does seem very promising. With 9 months of SD1.5/Animatediff-esque progress improving every element of it, I can see an an extremely extended version of this beating Sora + running for a fraction of the compute resources on a consumer GPU. Together with Animatediff to drive the micro-motions and abstract stuff, it could produce be extraordinary/otherworldly/insane/beautiful stuff. This is the first open video model I've been excited about since Animatediff - though cautiously optimistic! Link here:show more

There's something about design that truly makes me happy.... Before I was diagnosed with a complete SCI, I loved building thing with my hands and trying to make them unique and beautiful. The accident didn't just take my mobility, it robbed me of my creative drive. I didn't I would ever get that back that was up until Neuralink came into the picture. I was very serious about applying but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Then Noland Arbaugh comes into the picture and I see his video and I saw how passionate he was toward the whole ide and that was like a switch. I want to thank Noland because if I hadn't seen that video I wouldn't be typing this message with my thoughts. So the day I gained control of the device I had the guys install Autodesk Fusion and the first night I had my first part designed by BCI. I have been designing things non-stop since. Now lets talk tools and the first one is the ArcDroid it is a CNC robot that holds a plasma torch and can cut profiles in sheet metal. I have made numerous signs, letters and parts with this and i love it. I have also had the chance to help the local high school install and setup their CNC plasma table. I love being able to share my knowledge with others and show new technology to kids that want to learn. The next one everybody is more familiar with is the Bambu Lab X1C. It is my first 3D printer and I had no idea how dang handy these things were! I can go from thought, Neuralink, Fusion, X1C and poof! You have your part all in a matter of like a hour. I make everything from parts for my wheelchair or RC ✈ to toys for my nephew. These devices have completely changed my life. I now have my creative outlet back and I'm not done looking for new things to try. I'm thinking a laser next!!!😎 Thank you Elon Musk for the opportunity to showcase my skills, I'm extremely grateful🙏show more

🧑‍🚀 Day 5 of the Cursor #vibejam Proudly sponsored... by Cursor + bolt.new + GLIF Today a little bit about Cursor 3, it's a completely rebuilt interface designed around agents, you can run multiple AI agents in parallel, hand off between local and cloud, and go from commit to merged PR. It's powered by Composer 2, their own frontier coding model that tops benchmarks at $0.50/M input tokens — and the Fast variant runs at 200 tokens/sec, more than 2x faster than other frontier models. Perfect for vibe coding your game jam entry. And edwin from Cursor is here to help you if you get stuck! Lots of activity again today again on here, the best games (or well previews) I saw today: 🍣 Sushi Belt by steeno 🌊 Surfing Simulator by Erik (this one is a basic demo but very promising as it has realistic water physics) 🦆 Grand Quack Auto by kyzo (or as I like to call it Bali Simulator) 🏛️ Roman Combat Sim by terry trusner (continued from yesterday because it's had a lot of progress I think) YOU HAVE 24 DAYS LEFT! Reply in this thread with updates on your current games to share your progress, and add tag #vibejam so I see and can include you in the daily tweet There's $35,000 in prizes for you to win, see threads below for more info. The Gold prize is $20,000, bronze is $10,000 and silver is $5,000! Wanna to participate? You can still start today and submit your game any time before May 1!show more

It pains me to know that the belief is... that a therapist role is to "validate". I do not validate. If you are with me in a clinical setting and what you're saying doesn't make any damn sense, I'm going to have you walk me through it. What I've discovered is that a lot of the dysfunction people have is that they've never articulated their beliefs and so have no idea how absurd they are. Simply going through the exercise of having to explain yourself can be deeply rewarding. It's something we call "accountability". You literally account for yourself. Sure, I've had some female clients chimp out and flee never to be seen again at their first contact with a mirror. I've had many others weep openly that actually being held psychologically. One I will never get out of my mind was a wonderful 30-something year old woman who cried and said, "I have been in therapy for 7 years. Why has nobody ever challenged me and help me see that I'm the one causing all this shit?" That's an important question. And it's crucial that if you see a therapist, you don't see a charlatan. You can tell the good ones by their headgear.show more

Mzansi National Importance Please Help. 📍🇿🇦💔 Can someone please... send help? I've been employed on and off, trying to make a way for my son and me. I live in a toxic household, where you're the best when you can give money but you're nothing when you don't have anything. I have a deadbeat baby daddy who doesn't support me. I've endured so much for the entirety of my life, but I can't anymore. I wanna get away from this house where people bully me, where I'm isolated, gossiped about. I wanna flee. I feel like ending things. My family has been the root of my pain, towards myself but also my child. tonight we had the biggest fight and they tried to make me seem like I'm a bad mother because I at times keep my son in my bedroom with me, but it's because of how they treat him. The colorist comments, the way they break down his self-esteem calling him "blou ding", "k#ffer", and more. When I told my mother I'll take legal action against them, she told me that the police will see that I'm crazy. She also threatened me by saying she'll take me to court and say I abuse my child!!!! I don't abuse my child I sometimes yell at him out of frustration cause I'll tell him to stay with me but he'll go to them. He's 5 so he obviously doesn't understand why I don't want him around them. I feel embarrassed for having to come to the internet with my problems, especiially since I've always beem taught to hide the ugly but I can't anymore. 😭😭😭 Someone send help. Whether it's a ngo that can help, a job application, a learnership, anything. I just need to get me and my child out of this household. I'm tired. Ek is moeg! 😭😭😭😭😭💔💔💔💔💔💔💔🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 #help #toxichouseholds #deadbeatdadprob #southafricashow more

I think I've stumbled onto the future of building... startups. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. It's 2 AM. I'm editing a podcast, questioning every life decision that led me here. I've already burned through hundreds of thousands on this thing since 2021. Zero monetization. Just burning cash. My business partner's probably thinking I've lost it. We're juggling 6 businesses, and here I am, playing wannabe Joe Rogan. Then it hit me. Not during the podcast. In the darn comments section. I start sorting comments by "contains question" using this AI creator tool called VidIQ. "How do you validate ideas?" "What tools do you use?" "Can you dive deeper on XYZ topic?" These questions keep popping up. Over and over. That's when the lightbulb went off. What if I could turn this into a lead magnet machine? Find questions. Answer them with free stuff. Rinse. Repeat. I team up with Design Scientist to crank out 2 lead magnets a month. (Tried doing it myself first. But it was hard lol) We start pumping out things like "6 Tools I Use to Find Startup Ideas." Suddenly, I'm drowning in subscribers. 10,000 to 20,000 a month. On autopilot. Now, you're probably thinking, "Cool story, bro. But how's this a big idea?" Clarity of what to build is probably one of the most valuable ways to build products people want. You have to understand a niche's problem better than they even know them. Problem: what's the roadblock keeping founders stuck? Segment: group these founders by their specific obstacles. Product: build the bridge that gets them over their hurdle. I use ConvertKit like a scalpel, dissecting these segments. Not by age or location. By the problems they're desperate to solve. Suddenly, I'm staring at a treasure map of founder pain points. And that's when you can build startups to solve their problems. Instead of being a lead factory, you become a startup factory. You use tools like v0/replit/cursor to prototype like a madman. And it makes your life less stressful as a founder. Because you know people are lined up to buy the products. I'm so convinced this is the future of startup building, I've bet $1M+ of my own cash on it. Building startups to solve people's problems. And cool part is this blueprint can be replicated in any niche. The best SaaS ideas aren't in some Silicon Valley incubator. They're hiding in your "free" content. Think of it like this (Isenberg's formula?): (Engaged Audience) x (Targeted Lead Magnets) x (Problem-Centric Segmentation) = Product-Market Fit on Demand Here's the step-by-step: 1. Use AI/software to categorize every single audience interaction by problem type. Build a heat map of pain points. 2. Create ultra-specific lead magnets for each major problem cluster. Think "5-Step Framework for Validating SaaS Ideas" not "Generic Startup Guide". I also use free communities as lead magnets. 3. Forget demographics. Segment by the problem they're trying to solve. Use ConvertKit to build dynamic segments that would make Zuck jealous. 4. Use AI to build rapid prototypes for top problem clusters. Test with your segmented lists for instant feedback. Your next cash-flowing business is probably stuck in a comment somewhere, just waiting for you to notice it. I accidentally built a startup factory at 2am. Happy I did. Sharing in case this is useful to anyone out there. The future of startups: 1. Be a content factory 2. Be a lead factory 3. Be a startup factoryshow more

oh this will sting so much im not ready... 😮‍💨 #เสน่หาวาโย *SPOILERS* :') . . . "wayo" "blew" "karel told me you wanted to see me" "yes. i wanted to see you once more. not as princess catherine... just as blew. i'm leaving for thailand" "i know. karel told me about the change in your plans. don't worry—he'll handle everything" "so... this is really how our story ends, like a fairytale with no happy ending?" catherine looked into the eyes of the woman who spoke to her in such quiet, broken voice—full of so much unspoken emotion. and in those eyes, she saw the reflection of her own shaken soul. "i'm sorry, wayo" her voice, heavy with guilt and sorrow, fell softly. she lowered her gaze—unable to look at the pain, the disappointment, the heartbreak in wayo's eyes. and part of her was afraid—afraid that her own sorrow, equally deep, would be seen. that the one who loved her most might refuse to let their story end. but they couldn't go on. there was never a path for the two of them to walk together. even if it was brief, catherine would never forget the memories, the feelings that she had never experienced with anyone else before. even if the love couldn't be. even if they couldn't be. she would carry her love for wayo quietly, within the depths of her own heart... "from now on, i want you to live your life well—even without me. and i'll do the same. i'll live and fulfill my duties the best i can" "so you can really forget everything we had?" "no matter how long, i promise i'll never forget the story and memories of phatpha and wind" "is there any way... we can go back to being wind and phatpha?" "i can't be selfish and pursue my own happiness—not when so many lives have been sacrificed. in madelin, i have so many duties i can't turn my back on. at the very least... think of it this way—when helena, the fake princess, left this world... i died in your heart, too. because phatpha is gone from wind's world... and will never return" at last, the truth wayo had dreaded came to pass. all the time she spent waiting, trying to delay the inevitable, had been in vain. she couldn't hold on to the heart she loved or the hand she once held. "you know... it feels like you just broke up with me, blew" "wayo..." "and this love... it hurts more than anything i've ever known. because i got my heart broken... without even being yours" catherine watched tears spill from wayo's reddened eyes, the pain too much to contain. her heart felt crushed—shattered into fragments just as wayo's heart. if the pieces of their hearts were scattered by the wind across this garden, no one would ever know whose heartbreak hurt more. "i love you. this will be the last time i ever say it—even if you never loved me back. goodbye forever, princess catherine" wayo bowed her head in respect to the noble princess catherine, her farewell words cutting deeper into the wounds of her heart—so deep - it was almost unbearable. but life had to go on. just like now, as she forced her weakened legs to move forward, while the princess walked away, back to her rightful place. the distance between them stretched farther with each step until it was far beyond reach. just like their hearts—never meant to walk side by side...show more

This one was made with Seedance 2.0 Fast via... Dreamina. This is pure Omni-Reference. The only character sheet I used was for these girls, Sari and Ploy. The dude with sarung here and the location were 100% prompted. I didn’t use a character sheet or reference for either of them. Even in Fast mode, Seedance 2.0 is bloody good and it still nails the hyper-vernacular vibe that I always aim for in my work. Seedance 2.0 is both exciting and scary for me 😆 It’s exciting because it is undoubtedly the best model currently available on the market. Trust me, you’ve seen the videos I’ve made so far right? The performance of the model It’s simply the best, period. It has helped me tremendously in creating a shit ton of stories about the region where I live, Southeast Asia. It has been the most exciting thing ever. The scary part is whenever a platform or company comes to me saying, “Hey, we have this new video model. Blah blah blah. We’ll let you know more soon.” It scares the shit out of me because the big question is whether it will be better than Seedance 2.0??? 😆😆 If not, I don’t even want to bother using it. I’ve come this far and achieved this level of quality with Seedance 2.0. That’s why I skipped Happy Horse, which I already tested. It’s also why I’m not bothering with Wan or anything else for now. Their current models are still far inferior to what we already get with Seedance 2.0. I don’t want to downgrade the visual quality. This is also why I need to be really honest. There are certain platforms that host their own in-house models and i'm still part of their CPP. However, because those models are still far behind the quality of Seedance 2.0, I haven’t used them that much. Seedance 2.0 has simply become the benchmark for me. The type of output I’m looking for is also extremely specific, so I can immediately feel it when a model cannot deliver what I need. Seedance 2.0 is definitely not cheap, but it gives me so much creative satisfaction and allows me to make whatever I want. I even have a team that low-key makes softcore erotic videos in the style of Vivamax 😆 I think I’ve trimmed down so many things in my AI workflow because my main goal is to focus on the content itself. If Seedance 2.0 Mini is released soon, I’m dead curious to test it. I think I want to create more stories that revolve around drama rather than highly technical cinematic shots. Seedance 2.0 Fast has been incredibly helpful, but I’m definitely curious to check out the Mini version. But the truth is that I’m completely tool-agnostic. I don’t care which company makes the model. I only care about the quality. You might remember when I praised Grok Imagine Video so damn hard because it was genuinely amazing back then. Then the quality kept getting worse and worse, so I stopped using it. But if it gets better again, I’ll definitely want to use it again. At the end of the day, quality is the only thing that matters.show more

VTubing is for everyone! I don't like to bring... this up, but recent events in the VTuber community made some people really vile. I had my M&G at HolMat last week and had people come up and just yell at me for being a girl in the "womans world", that is VTubing, no idea about who I was, or why I was there. I had the same group return to my handler multiple times, I felt really worried about the person carrying me around having to deal with this repeatedly and tried to steer them away from the group. It seems they found my YT and left me a handful of the same comments, luckily all caught by moderation tools. While I will refrain from M&G's for a little until this calms down I want to say this; I have been managing for over 1.5 years now, I deliberately take on male VTubers to show them that they can still do it. I take on people that have babiniku accounts, those that are changing from one gender presentation to another and want help, and those that have no gender presentation in their avatar. A lot of male VTubers struggle to find a manager because the stereotype is that all male VTubers are evil and it perpetuates a stereotype that extends beyond entertainment industry subcultures like streaming. VTubing has always been a medium, while character and marketing matters, it's about what makes you happy, YOU are the person that makes the content. Use whatever you want as an avatar, use a voice changer if that's what you want to do. Every month I have a male client bring up they can't do it the same way, that it's easier if jiggle physics or a cute voice is the answer to fast growth. And I tell them yeah, I can also do ASMR, I can do drama content, collab with a larger person, and get to x amount of viewers. There are shortcuts in every entertainment profession and subculture. Does it last? Do quick fixes for anything ever last? Yes, great physics and an expensive model can get people in, but if your value, your way of interacting with people, your content plan and marketing is ass, you can pack up. Most of us start on a small budget, premade or resold models, and it's the same in the big league entertainment industry too. Can I take out a loan and put myself on a billboard tomorrow, can I pay the most expensive model artist and rigger and get in along corporate VTubers tomorrow? Sure. Will it last, will it be genuine, will people trust me? Hell no. Genuine communities and growth build trust. I think streaming, creative industries, entertainment, are full of people, regardless of gender, that will see success and call it "easy", because of what they see as the end product. They don't see most VTubers working a second job, they don't see the managers, they don't see 100+ hours a month going into content production, years invested in singing and voice lessons, model redebut after redebut. I think a lot of male VTubers get a bad rep, because so many boys are raised without putting emphasis on empathy and creativity, watching my brothers be told they should not pursue art, that theatre class is a waste of time, and that they needed to go study x or y to make money for their families in the future was heartbreaking. Nobody should have to look at others and feel so much hatred for society they turn against a whole group of people. If you want to pursue entertainment, please do. If you want to grow and try and make a name for yourself, you should start there, not with yelling about how you already failed. "Oh but I can't", "Oh but the odds are stacked against me", look at the big streamers, look at Ironmouse who overcame everything with hard work, look at Kiara who rose from the ashes, look at everyone that fights against their odds every day and give it your all. If you already think you lost, then you have nothing to lose. Don't give up on your dreams because others tell you to.show more

A lot going on. So first let me make... the announcement that despite the DOJ and FBI deliberately stonewalling me for 5 years, I have retrieved (most of) my property that was wrongfully seized after January 6. It's mostly in disrepair, but I'll address that later. Today I had business to take care of in Congress. Framed as a domestic terrorist and insurrectionist after January 6, when I was only a comedian who peacefully picketed, I returned today to Congress in the wrinkled and torn suit the feds kept from me - ever the satirist. They should have just left me the fuck alone. Now with only a fraction of the property I had no access to before my trial, I can prove that FBI agents and vindictive prosecutors maliciously misrepresented my character and my motivations, wrongfully robbing me of years of freedom for questioning their regime, but again I'll address that later. I remember the names and faces of every person that worked to destroy me. Every single one. They're burned into my memory. I am not like most people. The more you fuck with me the longer I am willing to wait for justice to come to you. I have superhuman patience. I endured years of torment through nothing but faith and sheer tyranny of will. Judges, prosecutors, jailhouse snitches, backstabbers, reporters - I have survived all of their attempts to smear me, break me, and silence me. But I will be the one to write the history of January 6 and its aftermath, and their names will only be footnotes. If you were entrapped by the feds too on that fateful day, keep your chin up, because the torment we've endured must be documented for posterity and the people who did this to us need to be brought to justice. That can only happen if you stay in the fight. Every dirtbag that smeared you in the press needs to be confronted for publishing lies. Every informant, agent, prosecutor and judge who betrayed, entrapped, incarcerated, and dehumanized you needs to be named and removed from any influence they have in public life. The system will try to move on from January 6 and the humanitarian disaster it caused to thousands of Americans. If we all keep pushing back, the system will still keep trying to ignore us, sure. But if you don't push back it is a 100% certainty that your surrender will be gratefully accepted and nothing will change. I know we are all different. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I will never stop demanding justice while I walk this earth. I don't care what party controls Congress or the White House. Until J6ers are made whole again, and government weaponization ends, the fight goes on. Real Cynthia Hughes Radix Verum ☦︎ James Rogers - Cinematographer; Truth@24fps Jeff Clark Geri Perna Shawn Farash 🇺🇸 Douglass Mackey Rob Manessshow more

🚨👀 A few months ago, JAY-Z did an interview... with The New York Times where he spoke about older artists trying to make younger music, saying: 🗣️“If you’re tryna make young music and you’re not young, it’s gonna be inauthentic, and people can feel that.” Well today, JAY-Z hopped on the re-released, remixed version of Beyoncé’s “Morning Dew / Donk,” and from the lyrics, it appears he may be taking shots at people on Twitter/X and podcast personalities. While continuing his often used braggadocious rap style. 🚨👀 This is what 56-year-old JAY-Z had to say in his verse: 👀 “Bihh so bad I had to give her my last name.” 👀 “If you ain’t riding for the gang, shut the fk up.”** 👀 “You niggas tweet a lot, all you do is twit. Pop it on the pods, but you ain’t doing shit. We just making love. We just getting rich. Y’all keep doing that, we keep doing this.” He also appears to continue flexing his wealth and success with bars like: 👀 “I caught a fk nigga hating on my wrist. I caught a ho nigga hating on my bitch.”** 🧐 So the question is: Is JAY-Z being hypocritical after saying older artists shouldn’t make music that sounds inauthentic when trying to appeal to younger audiences? Or do you think this record still sounds authentic for a 56-year-old artist? 🤔 Lastly. Some interesting lines and production choices in this track makes me wonder could they be subtle responses to Drake’s recent lyrics on ICEMAN. Drake previously rapped: “You boys got big off my name, that’s big enough… We know how you OGs rockin’ already, my nigga, the jig is up.” Now,hearing certain jabs in the song and random sample and production choices makes me wonder. JAY-Z may have responded by flipping familiar samples, including what sounds like a Biggie “Big Poppa”/ Isley brothers interpolation. And a Sheck Wes “Mo Bamba” sample we know Sheck Wes being braggadocios in the Mo Bamba track about being really rich. That sample choice feels strategically used to maybe respond to Drake’s Iceman Line Where He Says “ I got real numbers on niggas claiming to have billions.” 🤔show more

Day 18 of my 30 Day Water Fast. LONG... but IMPORTANT read. 💕💦 Last night at 4 AM, I made a decision—I wiped everything from my Instagram and TikTok that was posted before this fast started. Every video, every picture, every piece of content—gone. Why? Because I felt like everything I had posted before was created with greed, lust, anger, resentment, and bitterness. And just keeping those memories up was holding me back from the person I’m trying to become. If you truly want to change, you have to let go of the old version of yourself. You can’t cling to things that no longer serve you. I get it. You’ve seen this before. You’ve heard me say it a million times. And that’s why when someone in my chat said, “How many days do you guys give him until he crashes out again?” That sh*t hurt. Because I know my past behavior has given the world every reason to doubt me. But instead of waiting for me to fail, I think the better thing to say is: “I know you’ve fallen so many times, but I pray this time you truly stay consistent.” Because I truly do want to change. I hated who I was. And if I could erase every clip, every post, every trace of the old me from the internet, I would. But I can’t. That version of me will live online forever. The biggest thing I’m realizing during this 30-day fast? I don’t like selling my soul. I don’t like being on camera 24/7. I don’t like giving people the space to say whatever they want about me, in my own home, in my car, in my personal life. I used to feed off the hate, the anger, the negativity. I let it drive me. But now that I’m trying to live in light, that same energy is holding me back. Every step forward, I get dragged two steps back just by being in this space. And yeah, I know the irony of me saying all this while still streaming 24/7. But until I find another way to make a living, I have to do what I have to do. I said I was gonna complete 30 days live to prove I didn’t eat—so I’m gonna finish it, no matter how much I hate doing it. And yeah, I’m pissed off today. Doing this during Ramadan was the worst decision I could’ve made. Dry fasting all day and then breaking my fast with only water, black coffee, electrolytes, and green tea is insane. If I could do this again, I’d do it outside of Ramadan so I could at least drink water during the day. Sorry for the long read. Just had to get this off my chest.show more

Avdiivka basement & a stranger wearing my face, carrying... my name. I hear it again—the distinct, ominous roar of an enemy Su. Every time that jet screams across the sky, it's like a knife twisting in my gut. I'm here, in this shattered husk of a home, not by choice but by necessity. It's not my house, but the remnants around me—a child's discarded toy, a photo half-burned—whisper stories of a life that once was. Did the kid make it out? The thought haunts me, gnawing at the edges of my already frayed sanity. The sound of a missile launch is a trigger. Not just the physical flinch, but something deeper, a primal fear that freezes my blood. When that KAB comes howling down, reality fractures. It's not just the explosion, the devastation it brings; it's the anticipation, the waiting, that shreds my nerves. The fear is palpable, a thick presence in my throat that makes it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. When the KAB (guided bomb) lands, the devastation it brings is unimaginable. Entire blocks, homes like mine, are reduced to rubble. I avoid looking my brothers in the eye. There's guilt, shame... I've seen too much, done too much. But in the moment the bomb hits, our eyes lock. There's something there—fear, yes, but also a defiance, a refusal to be broken. It's what keeps us going, this shared flame of resistance, flickering but never extinguished. The ground shakes, and dust chokes the air. Somewhere, distant yet terrifyingly close, screams pierce through the aftermath. The radio crackles to life—300! Help!—a statistic that's become all too familiar. Each code 300 announced, is a blade twisting in an already festering wound. This war has blurred the lines between what's real and what's conjured by my frayed mind. At night, when the gunfire fades, the battle rages on in my dreams. I'm trapped in a cycle of reliving the horrors by day and battling them in my sleep. It's a relentless assault on the psyche, a war on two fronts where peace seems like a concept from another lifetime. Yet, I endure, driven by a flicker of hope or perhaps the stubbornness to not give in. But at what cost? With each passing day, the line between the soldier I am and the person I was fades, leaving behind a stranger wearing my face, carrying my name. Reflections on pain, fear, and struggle have become my constant companions. What I've seen, the choices I've had to make—there's no escaping the memories. They're etched into my soul, a permanent reminder of the darkness that war breeds. And in the quiet moments, when the dust settles and the adrenaline fades, I'm left with the haunting question: Who have I become? I find myself lost, struggling to cling to the fragments of who I used to be, even as I brace for the next wave of terror that the skies promise to unleash. The line between reality and imagination blurs, creating a world where fear, pain, and the struggle to endure define my existence. We are but a flicker of light in the darkness, a beacon of hope in a world consumed by shadow. And we will continue to fight, to stand, to endure, for as long as we draw breath. Slava 🔱 Follow Bandera Fella *-^ || Support my workshow more

I learned this the hard way: do NOT use... SwiftUI if you want your app to look and feel amazing. At least when coding with AI. (sorry, Apple colleagues reading this 😅) I'm sharing my process vibe coding this calorie tracker. I get a lot of questions about the fluid transition in the video. Here's the whole story. Initially, Claude built the grid with SwiftUI. It was quick and easy, and looked good! But the transition to the day view was a boring navigation push/pop. No fun. I wanted something custom. I asked Claude to make it a fluid transition that remaps the food tiles from their source to destination positions. All hell broke loose. Claude tried a bunch of horrible things. Initially it used matched geometry effects, which worked OK but didn't lend themselves well to gesture-driven animations. So it resorted to SwiftUI preference keys + geometry readers to figure out the source and destination positions and calculate the interpolated position based on gesture progress, coordinating across grid and day views. But this meant it had to write a custom layout because it couldn't reposition tiles inside the native SwiftUI grid. And it had to do an awkward handoff between views, which always created ugly pops or jumps. And don't get me started on trying to put it on a bouncy spring, that only made the math 10x buggier. Fortunately, Claude Fable was smart enough to see that this was becoming a disaster (and discover most of the issues itself, in the simulator), so it pivoted away from SwiftUI. Opus might not be so wise, so you'll have to pay attention and intervene. Ultimately, it rewrote it in plain UIKit and everything turned out great. After that, we moved from 2D images to 3D assets, which introduced a new set of performance challenges and yet another rewrite to a single Metal layer, which is what you see below. I can write more about the 2D-to-3D saga if anyone's interested. If I were to do it again, I'd just say "Don't use SwiftUI" from the very first prompt, and save a few hours of headaches. SwiftUI can be amazing for a human iterating directly in code. But agents don't benefit from any of its advantages. Plus, agents have seen decades of UIKit training data, so they're great at writing it, and it's far more flexible. Here's hoping we see more agent-friendly iterations of SwiftUI in the future. Till then, I'm probably going to avoid it.show more

Russia is striking Kharkiv more often and with increasing... intensity. Reasons for that: ◾️ Russia has not solved its problems on the frontlines. Our soldiers are in dire conditions, but they hold the defense in Kharkiv region and inflict colossal losses to the enemy; ◾️ The Kremlin wants to achieve humanitarian crisis and panic in Kharkiv; ◾️ Ukraine cannot drive away Russian aviation and reach the rocket launchers on the ground because they are on the territory of the Russian Federation. 🔹 How the situation may change: ◾️ Until now, the main direction for the Russian army has been the Donetsk region; ◾️ Kharkiv and (potentially) Sumy direction was seen as a way to distract and disperse the AFU forces; ◾️ but it is in Kharkiv that the enemy has a colossal advantage. And it is as follows: ‼️ Ukraine is not allowed to strike Russian territory with Western weapons. This is a huge dilemma for Ukraine: ⚡️ The more Western long-range means the Ukrainian army gets, the more reasons the Russians have to shift their focus to Kharkiv. This is how they can quietly amass troops and attack from the air without us being able to strike back. ◾️In Donbas, any enemy unit and its rear and logistics can be reached at a depth of up to 160 km, and even further in Crimea. But to the north of Kharkiv, it is only 20-25 km. ◾️ Over the border, the Russian army can be attacked with a very limited arsenal of means. ◾️ Our troops can use all means against the Russians only in a 25 km stretch, and all logistics of the Russians are de facto protected by the political decisions of the Western partners. In Kharkiv now, Shahed drones and missiles are hitting everywhere. About 400 thousand people live in the most dangerous zone. These are residential areas. 🔹 What is happening now: ◾️ Russians are trying to spread panic among these hundreds of thousands of people; ◾️ Kharkiv residents are not panicking and Kharkiv stands tall. This allows less resources from other areas to be brought in for defense than would otherwise be necessary; ◾️ The more stable Kharkiv is, the more Ukrainian forces can be directed to Donbas and Zaporizhzhia. The opposite is true as well; ◾️ Russians will not be able to seize Kharkiv. But they will be able to make people's lives there unbearable and gradually destroy the city. ‼️ So, there needs to be a change in political attitudes in the West. It's about two things: 1️⃣ Perrmission to strike Russian territory, at least at a distance of 100 km. 2️⃣ Air defense and Western aviation as part of air defense. If Russian aviation is driven away from Kharkiv, then even in conditions of missile fire, the city will be a pillar of defense. And the Russians will achieve nothing. Now, the AFU resembles a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. Ukraine's hands must be untied for us to be able to defend ourselves!show more

‼️🎙️ Great interview from Carlos Alcaraz today at the... Princesa de Girona CongresFest in Murcia, where he spoke a lot about consistency, discipline, and the daily work that goes into the trophies: ❔ “Today we’ve been hearing people talk about research, innovation, exploration… You revolutionized tennis at a very young age. What do you think is behind that ability to keep improving constantly?” 🗣️ Carlos: “Well, I think it’s the desire to learn. When you realize there’s still so much for you to improve, so much for you to learn, in my case, in the world of tennis… in the end you’re competing against players who also want to improve in order to beat you, who want to put themselves in the best possible position. And that’s what motivates you, or at least what motivates me, to keep improving, to keep up with the level of tennis and also keep up with the rate at which my rivals are improving.” ❔ “In elite sport, just like in science and entrepreneurship, a very important part is knowing how to push beyond your own limits. So my question is: what values have been most important in helping you develop that throughout your journey?” 🗣️ “I think consistency. Day-to-day consistency, trying to give your best every single day. “In the end, people probably see the matches, the tournaments, the victories and defeats, but you also have to place a lot of value on what happens behind the scenes: the work you put in every day. “I think that’s the most important thing: going every day, in my case, to the tennis court or the gym with tremendous excitement about trying to give the best of myself, trying to improve so that later it shows on the court. “That consistency of taking things day by day, of trying to control everything necessary to be in the best possible condition when it’s time to compete - that’s what motivates me. And it’s what I value most now in the position I’m in. I’m grateful to the version of myself from six or seven years ago for having done everything possible every single day.” ❔ “People see the trophies and the victories, but they don’t see the work behind them because it’s invisible. What advice would you give to young people, and to all of us, about discipline and consistency, so we can understand how someone like you keeps going?” 🗣️ “Above all, patience. “When I was 14 years old, I had zero patience. I wanted things overnight. I wanted results immediately. Personally, I hate losing at anything, even back there. So I always wanted to win, I wanted everything to work out perfectly, I wanted things to go exactly right. But I think what I’d tell young people is to have patience. “The beautiful thing is the process. It’s the journey. It’s going to a competition or doing something that truly fills you with pride and then seeing that it doesn’t work out. “You fail but what matters is how you get back up, how you come back the next day and try again. “That’s the beautiful part, and that’s the advice I’d give to young people: be patient, enjoy the journey, enjoy what you’re doing, because one day you’ll look back, value it, and feel proud of it.”show more

Today, aside a Christian brother giving me free food,... something genuinely beautiful happened to me again, and it left me thinking, if only we were this religiously tolerant, Nigeria would be a far better place. I live in a block of four flats. I am the only Muslim, the other three residents are Christians. Two of which are married, one is a bachelor like me, hustling and figuring life out. One of my closest neighbors is Isaac. We live on the same floor. He is married with two kids, in his late 30s, while I am in my 20s. We talk a lot and we banter endlessly about politics and football despite our age gaps. I am a die-hard Barca fan, he is a Madrid fan. I am Pro-El-Rufai, he was a Peter Obi supporter, who is now tilting towards Tinubu in the next election. So you can imagine, there is always something to argue about between us, and we enjoy it, but what we both agree on is Tinubu didn't treat Mallam fairly (Although he believes Mallam should have handled it better, I always told him it’s because he didn’t know the background that’s why he think so). So, Yesterday we were discussing Christmas plans. During Eid, I hosted a barbecue in my apartment, so we were talking about how Christmas would be done in his place. He told me he would like to invite me over to eat Christmas food with his family. I gladly accepted because I am somebody that loves to party, and every christmas since in the Uni we go out and have. A few moments later, since he mentioned that he bought a ram, I hesitantly explained to him that while I could eat the food, I could not eat the ram (I hesistated because I didn't think he will get me). He paused for a moment and asked why. I explained to him that in Islam, certain prayers must be recited before an animal is slaughtered for the meat to be permissible. Eating meat from an animal slaughtered without those prayers is not allowed in Islam. He then asked out of curiosity, why I would eat the chicken but not the ram. I explained that the chicken is carton chicken with a halal tag, and I even showed him what the tag looks like. He was surprised. He said he had always seen the halal label but never knew what it meant. We both laughed about it. From his reaction, I could tell that the explanation about prayers before slaughtering an animal did not really make sense to him, but what mattered was that he respected my beliefs and did not try to push or argue. We simply changed the topic and moved on. Early in the morning today before, Isaac called me and asked me to come downstairs. When I did, he asked me to slaughter the ram and perform the prayers so that I could comfortably join them for the evening barbecue, since his religion doesn't have limitations over that. I was honestly shocked and deeply impressed. In that moment, I thought to myself, if only more people were this respectful and tolerant of other people’s faith, Nigeria would be a much better place. (It was later in the day that I saw Bashir Ahmad, OON’s post of Albani, that you can actually eat the meat even if it wasn’t slaughtered by a Muslim) The point I am trying to make here is, an average Nigerian Christian would have taken offense the moment I said I could not eat his meat, all he will hear is AVERSION, without respect for my faith and beliefs but not Isaac, he chose to respect my faith, and choices without taking offense. Surprisingly, Isaac is from Plateau State. He was born and raised in Delta, lived briefly in the UK, and then returned to Nigeria. I am writing after dancing “Oble.....Obleee.....Obleeeee” in my compoud with my christian neighbors. Nigeria will be a good place to live if we learn to tolerate one another and genuinely respect our differences.show more

🚨🚨 Read this if you care about Gaza and... haven’t forgotten it—and for anyone who wants to understand the true value of a “human life” in Gaza! First of all, hello to everyone after more than 5 days of internet blackout! Secondly, during these days, I gathered my courage and went to wait for aid. With the internet down, I couldn’t withdraw any money to buy even a single kilo of flour. I was forced to risk my life in hopes of getting a bag of flour to feed my children. But I returned home injured , without I can get a bag of flour. Five days of sleeping on the ground among tens of thousands of other civilians who, like me, were also waiting for that one bag. Five days sleeping without a blanket—just the sky above us. No mattress—the ground was our bed. No lullabies to soothe us to sleep—the sound of shells and gunfire above our heads was enough to commit dozens of massacres at once, in one place. Let me tell you something: they treat us like animals. They allow in a bit of food and flour, and then make people fight each other over it. Imagine throwing food to chickens—how they would pounce on it. That’s exactly how we were. I saw things I’ve never seen before. I saw a father crying because a thief took the food meant for his children. I saw a pregnant woman pushing through the crowd of men to get food for her kids who had lost their father. I saw an elderly man pushed from behind by younger men, knocked to the ground and run over by the truck’s wheels. Conflicting emotions overwhelmed me: confusion, fear, helplessness, and betrayal. How can the world not see what’s happening? How can it not see us at all? For the first time, I felt like my life meant nothing. How could I be worth less than a bag of flour? Even now, every time I close my eyes, I see crowds of people swarming the flour trucks like beasts. Every time I sleep, I have nightmares about chasing that bag—and I wake up terrified. I won’t go back to that trap again. I don’t want to leave my family alone, at night, in a tent, unprotected, unsafe—just to chase after a bag of flour that might cost me my life. Nothing is more precious than life and family. Yesterday, I might not have returned to them. My wife and children didn’t sleep after hearing about the horrific massacre at the location I had been in. They heard I had run toward the trucks, right into the evacuation zones and areas of fighting. This madness must stop. I will try to buy the flour—it’s not worth more than me. Please, don’t stop supporting us!show more