I think it’s logically consistent to say “It was incorrect that I was not declared the winner of the election, and I should have served the corresponding term. But since the government did not recognize my election victory and I did not serve the term, I am still eligible to serve another term”. I think it’s inconsistent to say that Trump was elected for the purposes of the 22nd amendment, but was not elected for the purposes of serving the term.

(Please don’t mistake me though; although I think Trump’s position in this particular matter is logically self-consistent, it is not consistent with reality. He lost that election.)

I think you mean “I don’t understand density in infinity”.

Rare in this context is a question of density. There are infinitely many integers within the real numbers, for example, but there are far more non-integers than integers. So integers are more rare within the real.

They probably wouldn’t take off.

Some problems get harder to do on bigger numbers. Like breaking a number into factors; the bigger the number, the harder it is to find the factors. Contrast this with, say, telling whether the number is even, which is easy even for very very large numbers.

There is a certain measure of how quickly problems get harder with bigger numbers called Polynomial Time; this is the P in P, NP, etc. I will omit the details of what polynomial time means exactly because if you don’t know from the name, then the details aren’t particularly important. It’s just a certain measure of how quick or hard the problem is to solve.

So for the various types of problems:

• P - The list of problems that can be solved quickly. For example, telling if a number is even.
• NP - The list of problems where you can check the answer quickly. For example, factoring a number.
• NP Complete - A list of special NP problems where we know how to “translate” any NP problem into one of these NP complete problems. Solving a Peg Solitaire game is NP complete.
• NP Hard - Problems at are as hard as NP Complete or harder. The travelling salesman problem (finding the shortest route that visits a list of cities) and the halting problem (figuring out if a computer program will get stuck in an infinite loop) are NP Hard.

Election reforms. IRV, public campaign financing, nix the electoral college, proportional representation, etc.

Is that even a close call? If Trump called me a shithead I’d wear that as a badge of honor. If Mr Rogers called me a disappointment I would question my life choices.

Yeah backreferences in general are not “regular” in the mathematical sense.

“It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say ‘you’re very brave,’” she said. “I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.”

Prior to the 2016 election, I was hopeful that the freedom caucus and the rest of the far right was getting too crazy for the general public, and that its support would collapse leading to a bit of a normalization of politics.

Wishful thinking, in retrospect.

I heated up some soup that I made a while back and froze. I make some good soup!

A 0x0 px jpg (trying to get an old webcam working, unsuccessfully)

I live in the suburbs of a decently sized but not super large city in WI.

• Convenience store: 120 m
• Chain supermarket: 2.6 km
• Bus stop: 5 m
• Park: 450 m
• Big supermarket: 3.1km
• Library: 1.5 km
• Train station: 58.9 km :(

When ChatGPT first started to make waves, it was a significant step forward in the ability for AIs to sound like a person. There were new techniques being used to train language models, and it was unclear what the upper limits of these techniques were in terms of how “smart” of an AI they could produce. It may seem overly optimistic in retrospect, but at the time it was not that crazy to wonder whether the tools were on a direct path toward general AI. And so a lot of projects started up, both to leverage the tools as they actually were, and to leverage the speculated potential of what the tools might soon become.

Now we’ve gotten a better sense of what the limitations of these tools actually are. What the upper limits of where these techniques might lead are. But a lot of momentum remains. Projects that started up when the limits were unknown don’t just have the plug pulled the minute it seems like expectations aren’t matching reality. I mean, maybe some do. But most of the projects try to make the best of the tools as they are to keep the promises they made, for better or worse. And of course new ideas keep coming and new entrepreneurs want a piece of the pie.

Is this the Simpsons approach? “I’m just going to fire my chain guns like this, and if you get shot down it’s your own fault!”

Two spaces after periods.

I had a cherry chutney hamburger at a restaurant somewhere in Missouri. I ordered it because I thought it was a weird combo. IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Whoa, spoilers man, c’mon!

Kaleidoscope Heart is near the top of my list.