sparksbet's recent activity
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentI didn't hear it mentioned much at all back when I was in the US, as it wasn't widely used by linguists outside of computational linguistics, but in studying ML and NLP in Germany I can't recall...I didn't hear it mentioned much at all back when I was in the US, as it wasn't widely used by linguists outside of computational linguistics, but in studying ML and NLP in Germany I can't recall ever having heard a "the" before it. But I find it believable enough that people would do that elsewhere. I've never heard someone pronounce "LaTeX" like the English word "latex" but I believe people who say that happens too lol
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentI don't think that citing that meta-analysis in response to someone saying they struggle with handwriting notes and do better when they can type amounts to just observing trends, but is instead...I don't think that citing that meta-analysis in response to someone saying they struggle with handwriting notes and do better when they can type amounts to just observing trends, but is instead giving advice to an individual who has already expressed their lived experience about how these methods affect their note-taking. Even if the research on this were rock-solid (and I'm not convinced it is), I think it may be worth imagining how frustrating a response that is so dismissive of your own experience with notetaking and your own brain would be, even if they pay lip-service to there being individual differences. I have friends with chronic illness who have the same experience with people constantly insisting they should try yoga even after they've mentioned that yoga would actually exacerbate their particular disabilities, so perhaps exercise isn't the worst comparison. It's tone-deaf, imo.
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentHandwritten notes being shown to improve outcomes on a population level does not entail that it's an improvement in every individual circumstance. You can't wave around results like that as though...Handwritten notes being shown to improve outcomes on a population level does not entail that it's an improvement in every individual circumstance. You can't wave around results like that as though they universally apply to individuals. That's not how science works. And I say this as someone for whom handwriting notes does improve things, personally.
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Comment on AI was eroding trust in my classroom — so I got rid of typed papers and bought my students notebooks instead in ~life
sparksbet Link ParentEven as a student who does perform better when I limit myself to handwriting my notes and don't bring my laptop to class as a potential distraction, I don't think wholly banning them is...Outside of disability and English-second language individuals, what are some potentials pitfalls of this approach? Would you have liked this as a student, if you were one that used your computer to take notes?
Even as a student who does perform better when I limit myself to handwriting my notes and don't bring my laptop to class as a potential distraction, I don't think wholly banning them is acceptable. Firstly, you cannot ignore disability and ESL as these will be hugely salient in almost any class you're in. Secondly, even people without a disability may have valid reasons they prefer to take notes on a digital device -- much like how I use subtitles despite not being hard of hearing. Just because they're a disability aid doesn't mean they can't often be helpful to people who aren't disabled too.
Thirdly, frankly, in a 400-course it feels incredibly patronizing and like being treated like a child. If it's a seminar and is more discussion focused anyway, I can see a no-laptops policy making sense (although even then, that's disruptive to those who save the readings as digital pdfs rather than printing them out, which was common in my field and has similar concerns when it comes to disability), but for a lecture or similar course where you're expected to take notes, it comes across as treating students like little children who are only allowed to do what you trust them to do. I remember when I first attended a college course as part of post-secondary enrollment, I was in awe of the fact that I was allowed to pull my laptop out when needed without the teachers acting like cops about it, because that was all I knew from the strict rules in high school. Being treated like an adult who could make their own choices about how they learned made me respect my professors more, and I eventually came to my own conclusions about what note-taking methods worked best for me. If I had been forced to take "analogue" notes by my professors, I would have resented it and never learned the ways that they work better for me personally, and/or would have avoided taking notes at all out of spite. And I'm a student whose disability means I benefit from taking handwritten notes. Imagine how much worse this feeling of overbearing patronization would be when compounded by a disability that makes it harder with handwritten notes.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentI think that the episode the show ended on is actually a really solid ending tbh. That it's just a regular mid-season episode makes that all the more a happy coincidence. But I found Serenity...I think that the episode the show ended on is actually a really solid ending tbh. That it's just a regular mid-season episode makes that all the more a happy coincidence.
But I found Serenity pretty mid-at-best compared to the show and disliked it as a continuation/ending so.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentA future in which China is so influential that it's part of the lingua franca but in which there are inexplicably no Chinese people is at minimum questionable worldbuilding, though.A future in which China is so influential that it's part of the lingua franca but in which there are inexplicably no Chinese people is at minimum questionable worldbuilding, though.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparksbet Link ParentAs a youth (10+ years ago), I followed the cast of Firefly on Twitter. I promise if you had done that, you would not be wondering. Even back then, before most of the major controversies afaik, it...but I’m not familiar with Adam Baldwin being problematic. What’s that about?
As a youth (10+ years ago), I followed the cast of Firefly on Twitter. I promise if you had done that, you would not be wondering. Even back then, before most of the major controversies afaik, it was pretty loud conservative nonsense.
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Comment on ArXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year in ~science
sparksbet Link ParentFwiw, my experience is the opposite -- I don't think I've ever heard people use "the" with it. Wonder if that's regional or field-dependent.Fwiw, my experience is the opposite -- I don't think I've ever heard people use "the" with it. Wonder if that's regional or field-dependent.
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Comment on Digg has shutdown (again) in ~tech
sparksbet Link ParentThey aren't all that uncommon in published writing or writing that's intended to be formal -- you'll find them on Wikipedia, which has a section of its style guide for various kinds of dashes....They aren't all that uncommon in published writing or writing that's intended to be formal -- you'll find them on Wikipedia, which has a section of its style guide for various kinds of dashes. They're also reasonably common in fiction and thus fanfiction -- published fiction will be deliberately typeset with them, but word processors also typically automatically convert the multiple-hyphen kind that I use when I type into proper em-dashes. I used a bunch of (pseudo) em dashes in this comment without trying bc that's how I generally write, and I'm deliberately not going back to edit them into sentence breaks the way I would if I'd noticed how many I used in a comment that isn't about them lol
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentI think the most spoiler-free way is just to say that color symbolism is a big part of Blue Prince in terms of both its puzzles and its lore, and in particular the colors red and blue are very...I think the most spoiler-free way is just to say that color symbolism is a big part of Blue Prince in terms of both its puzzles and its lore, and in particular the colors red and blue are very important. Honestly this is already probably a little closer to spoilery than I'd like.
Definitely try it out tho. It's not for everyone but it is a really well-crafted game.
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Comment on Digg has shutdown (again) in ~tech
sparksbet (edited )Link ParentLLMs were trained on human writing, so all its tropes are things that can appear in human writing. I can't rule out that an LLM was used here, but you're going to get way too many false positives...LLMs were trained on human writing, so all its tropes are things that can appear in human writing. I can't rule out that an LLM was used here, but you're going to get way too many false positives by accusing anything that contains a very common English grammatical construction of being AI. Absent things that unambiguously indicate AI use like leaving prompts in and the like, you are probably worse at judging whether someone is AI-generated than you think you are, because your assessment of your own accuracy is going to be cherry-picked af and, honestly, it's genuinely hard to tell in a lot of cases. This is especially true when it comes to this type of "corporate-esque serious-but-not-overly-formal statement"-style writing, where the tone it's aiming for is naturally the closest to what LLM chatbots are trained to use for purely utilitarian reasons -- they have similar "people-pleasing"-type goals and thus use a lot of the same tactics in their language use, which is to be expected. Part of the reason LLMs often exhibit certain quirks in their writing style to begin with is because they already appeared often in certain styles of human writing that were used train the underlying model.
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Comment on “This technology disrupts [...] Democratic—voters, [and] increases the economic power of [...] male, working-class voters” in ~society
sparksbet Link ParentI'm fairly certain that use of "idiot" and "dumbfuck" in this context are principally being used as pithy, insulting ways to say "this guy consistently says very wrong things about stuff he...I'm fairly certain that use of "idiot" and "dumbfuck" in this context are principally being used as pithy, insulting ways to say "this guy consistently says very wrong things about stuff he doesn't fully understand", but setting that aside, highly educated people can also be "idiots" and "dumbfucks" depending on context, the individual in question, and what you actually mean when you use those insults. Insert self-deprecating joke here.
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Comment on “This technology disrupts [...] Democratic—voters, [and] increases the economic power of [...] male, working-class voters” in ~society
sparksbet (edited )Link ParentHaving a JD or a PhD, regardless of the subject, doesn't prevent you from saying dumb, uninformed things, especially when they're outside your area of expertise (and no, getting a PhD in social...Having a JD or a PhD, regardless of the subject, doesn't prevent you from saying dumb, uninformed things, especially when they're outside your area of expertise (and no, getting a PhD in social theory does not make you an expert in everything that involves human society). You can argue that claiming he doesn't know what he's talking about is wrong using actual evidence from things he's written, but the mere existence of his degree does not automatically serve as evidence that it's not possible that he doesn't know what he's talking about -- especially given that AI is not something he would have studied formally with that academic background. It's extremely possible for him to not know what he's talking about, so it would be better to defend him by pointing to places where he demonstrates that he knows what he's talking about in his actual writing, rather than just citing the existence of his degrees (and, in later comments, other achievements that also don't entail that his claims in this article are correct -- co-founding an AI company if anything increases the likelihood that you'll say bullshit about AI that isn't true, because of the extremely obvious source of bias you have as a result of your financial incentives. Though I suppose it usually means it's deliberate rather than due to pure idiocy, ig).
I also, for the record, don't have strong feelings about Karp. But highly educated people who say dumb bullshit are a dime a dozen and that goes double when they're "tech moguls", so defend him with his actual statements rather than his academic pedigree.
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentI think even without friends, he'd realize pretty quickly that something was up when the screen was so different from any other screen he'd seen before -- the color palette and lack of a backlight...I think even without friends, he'd realize pretty quickly that something was up when the screen was so different from any other screen he'd seen before -- the color palette and lack of a backlight would be wildly weird for a kid who grew up in a world of ubiquitous touchscreen smartphones and 4k TVs.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
sparksbet Link Parentwell Germany is already insisting it won't go along with any EU nuclear energy commitments so I wouldn't be super optimistic about EU cooperation here.well Germany is already insisting it won't go along with any EU nuclear energy commitments so I wouldn't be super optimistic about EU cooperation here.
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Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games
sparksbet Link Parentoh see I totally did the oath thing in that chat with Visken lmao. I think you're right about how they build him up through his dealings well, but I also think his dry responses to the way you...oh see I totally did the oath thing in that chat with Visken lmao. I think you're right about how they build him up through his dealings well, but I also think his dry responses to the way you interact with him, especially if you pick some dumber options, just entertained me specifically a lot lol
Snell is also great, and would be up there were it not for the stiff competition. I didn't get a chance at that sword until it was too late this run unfortunately, but I'll look forward to it whenever I replay it.
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Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentYeah, very true. The sheer amount of good you could do with such massive sums of money... I don't think I would struggle to lower my net worth a lot donating to charities for causes I care about...Yeah, very true. The sheer amount of good you could do with such massive sums of money... I don't think I would struggle to lower my net worth a lot donating to charities for causes I care about or even starting my own. There are so many people in need.
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Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games
sparksbet (edited )Link ParentIf you go to bed early (when this happened to me I'd gone to bed around 22:00 or something), you get the well-rested bonus which gives you advantage on almost every check until you gain exhaustion...Apart from the exhaustion, there's really no reason not to stay awake as long as possible before heading to the tower.
If you go to bed early (when this happened to me I'd gone to bed around 22:00 or something), you get the well-rested bonus which gives you advantage on almost every check until you gain exhaustion the next day. Which is honestly really good and I'd have done it over and over if I hadn't only accidentally discovered it was a thing on the night of day 4.
Overall my general impressions align with yours really well in both the spoiler-free and spoiler-y sections here, and you addressed some details that I didn't put in my comment bc I didn't want to bother with a spoiler box lol. It's not Disco Elysium, despite being a "disco-like" mechanically, and it's occasionally a little clumsy with its politics and philosophy, but if you enjoy it for what it is rather than constantly comparing it to Disco (which is going for a very different tone entirely anyway imo!), it's a very good game that deserves all the praise.
Also, just to call out some of my favorite characters: shoutout to Snurre, aka halfling Jung. Love that fucker even though I'm not s huge Jung fan irl. He's like my third favorite character. (#1 is Meek, #2 is Isk) I also weirdly really love Visken, even though I don't think you're supposed to lmao. Solid characters and good character writing is the bread and butter of a game like this and I think Esoteric Ebb definitely really shines there. They did a really phenomenal job filling the world with a lot of fun to interact with, likeable characters that differed a lot from each other.
spoilery bit
I think "Ebb" describes a general weakening of magic, a decrease in how easy it is to access it or how readily available it is, like how they describe higher-level spells being rare these days and spells above a certain level being very rare to cast. I actually feel like I got bits and pieces mentioning it in once or twice in descriptions of the world history much earlier in the game than the conversations in the snail prison, but I suspect how much info like that you get is influenced by your stats in addition to your choices, so that might've been the root cause there.
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Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
sparksbet Link ParentUnfortunately, she does give away a lot of money. She just gives it away to support the causes that matter to her, and unfortunately, for her that cause is eradicating trans people.Unfortunately, she does give away a lot of money. She just gives it away to support the causes that matter to her, and unfortunately, for her that cause is eradicating trans people.
I think most (but still not all) people who find specific retro game aesthetics cool are doing so from nostalgia, but I think pixel art has already started to move beyond that into an artistic choice. The limited color palette would be the most notable feature of games for the original Gameboy, I think. I'm nearly 30 and my first handheld was still the Gameboy Color, and I think modern pixel art tends to only go for that specific type of limited color palette to appeal tl nostalgia (as opposed to other limited color palletes not directly tied to real-world console limitations). I think we're in the process of transition, in terms of timeline, when it comes to how pixel art interacts with nostalgia vs being an independent artistic choice.
And when it comes to the physical device rather than an artistic feature of the games, the lack of backlight would definitely shock modern kids I think. Talking about using an attached little lamp accessory to light up the screen in the car at night? I'll start sounding like my dad when he told us about how exciting it was when his brother got an answering machine. I wonder what the equivalent will be for this generation in 30 years.