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    1. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

      11 votes
    2. How has climate change affected your life / plans?

      Particularly interested if it has already impacted your life, or scrapped any plans or influenced where you decided to live. Anybody else chose their current/ next home because of lower natural...

      Particularly interested if it has already impacted your life, or scrapped any plans or influenced where you decided to live.

      Anybody else chose their current/ next home because of lower natural disasters risk or climate change resilience?

      43 votes
    3. My polish costs nothing

      Hopefully the Tilderen aren't completely sick of the topic of AI writing. To summarize my take: I think LLM agents are profoundly useful. And problematic. And I really really dislike AI writing...

      Hopefully the Tilderen aren't completely sick of the topic of AI writing.

      To summarize my take: I think LLM agents are profoundly useful. And problematic. And I really really dislike AI writing when I encounter it outside of documentation. It's not only that it usually has a poor signal to noise ratio and a lot of annoying tropes, it also breaks a contract that has existed since writing was invented. And I dislike that it displaces human writing. Human writing is beautiful, we need more of it, not less.

      By breaking a contract I mean that human writing implies an investment. The author invested time in creating it and has (sometimes) invested their reputation by publishing it. Whereas LLM prose requires minimal effort and thought. One great summary is:

      "If you didn't take the time to write it, why should I take the time to read it?"

      But it's not just about time or preference. We rely on signals of investment and competence to judge the value of information both personally and professionally. LLMs short circuit that completely. They incorporate signals of effort despite there being no effort involved. Signals that we could once rely on that someone has a deep understanding of a subject, or did extensive research, or is reasonably intelligent, or interesting, don't have any meaning when it's LLM prose.

      Recently, while investigating Fable failure modes (while working in Claude Code), it outputted a summary that I think captures the situation really well: "My polish costs nothing".

      Which is to say that LLM prose folds in signals of authority, competence, rigor and insight without any of those things needing to be present in the content. A fluent human is often worth listening to while a fluent LLM is just the default, the fluency carries no information. I think that's part of the reason for AI psychosis, I think it effectively uses, now outdated, expectations to hijack perception.

      The reason that I sometimes take the time to investigate why an agent went wrong is partly to refine the scaffolding and partly to remind myself how dumb they are. Each generation is a little bit better, confidently right a little more than it's confidently wrong, so I make a point not to let myself fall into the trap of trusting their output too much.

      I suppose I'm just posting to pass on the reminder.

      41 votes
    4. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

      If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

      11 votes
    5. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      15 votes
    6. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      9 votes
    7. Looking for a Bluetooth car stereo deck that is simple and not ugly

      I prefer physical buttons and something that does not have a large screen and looks simple enough that it could be OEM. Does anything like this exist? All options seem to be cheap and ugly with...

      I prefer physical buttons and something that does not have a large screen and looks simple enough that it could be OEM. Does anything like this exist? All options seem to be cheap and ugly with flashing lights, or a giant touch screen.

      16 votes
    8. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      5 votes