Another thought is that while I'm reassured that a scientist AI won't take over the world, I'm actually more worried now that a military AI will.

Not only would it already control the weapons, the rationality of warfare is the one you're criticizing (ends justify the means, limited by thin rules).

More seriously, in addition to the AI angle, this also helped me understand how eudaimonic rationality works in a human life, thanks! I have been sympathetic to the idea, but have found it challenging to get a handle on it.

I laughed at the parallel between rogue AIs and mathematicians hopped up on amphetamines

I watched Fate in Japanese first and when I learned they translated 宝具 as "Noble Phantasm" I was like... wat?

(I eventually understood it's because the original Japanese game calls them "Noble Phantasm" in katakana like 5% of the time for flavor.)

The Trump admin finally made a staffing decision that is less wacky than most people expected

The first standalone smurfs comic featured this trope: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pur...

First attempt my idea for how to open the door was proven right immediately but then I had no mouth but I must scream

Second attempt I just couldn't get it anymore at all and I wandered around in case there was a hidden flag condition. Eventually died from recklessness and bad RNG. 10/10 no notes

Great post. All I would add is a rec to watch anime with Japanese-language subtitles from kitsunekko.net, when available.

When I recognized only a word's kanji, I learned how it's pronounced, and when I knew only the sound I learned its kanji. Also, this enabled the Yomitan one-click dictionary.

I'm using Hubitat for my smarthome controls, a system designed for power user customization, but the main way to program it is with extremely complicated GUI wizards. So LLMs hallucinate how it works and I wind up in the dark ages of googling for forum posts with screenshots

Witch Hat Atelier has gorgeous art!

For readers closer to N1, my favorite no-furigana fantasy manga is Dungeon Meshi:

Audiobooks are great for times when you can't read, like driving or walking.

And personally, I do not find them easier than reading at all. It's harder to guess the meaning of a new word from sound than kanji, and they keep going even when I'm still trying to figure out the last sentence

The Final Fantasy influence is really strong. I mean it's a better FF than any Square has made in decades, but if FF isn't your favorite RPG style in the first place...

It's some of the text that shows up on the bottom left of the screen as you walk. If you're seeing mojibake there, make sure you're running the game in the Japanese locale (for example using Locale Emulator)

The quoted text in the memos you find on the ground sometimes. For example 焦げろ and 己ならざるのぬくもりよ

It's one of the obvious ideas you probably tried, but what threw me off is it has to be typed in kana/kanji and the textbox seemed to only accept ASCII characters. Probably a bug on newer versions of windows. The trick I found is to type Japanese in another window and copy-paste it.

Kumoko: Magic... I want to use it...

Me sacrificing 25 out of my 29 max HP:

Cool, I'm glad you like it! Would be cool if I happened to help come up with the title :).

But I won't mind if you decide to go with "sandbox" after all: that's a very defensible choice as well IMO.

Another idea for your consideration is "plaything". Loses the "box" connotation, but fully captures the careless domination aspect. Works well in the line "Is this world nothing more than his plaything?". Less confident it works in the title, but "Dogma's Playthings" is one option.

As usual, there is also the option of going with a longer or strange-looking phrase, for example writing 'garden-in-a-box' or even 'hakoniwa'. Might be more justified than usual in this case, in order to draw attention to the title drop

"Garden" doesn't fully work for this line because living gardens aren't fully under human domination.

I can't do better than "Sandbox", even though it's one of those regrettable best choices that alters many secondary connotations. (Including making it hard to perceive the title drop in this case)

I can vouch for this method: learnjapanese.moe/guide/

1999 - Started teaching myself Japanese
2002 - Study abroad year in Japan
2008 - Passed JLPT 2
??? - Completely stopped using my Japanese
2021 - Realized I only remembered like 50 kanji, started derusting starting with a N3 Anki deck
2022-2024 - Went super hard again
2024 - Passed N1

KEFKA: This is sickening... you sound like chapters from a self-help booklet!

I am blessed to instead feel love and warmth for Ted Woolsey's extremely defensible localization practices

Wouldn't the password section be clearer if it was purely about uniqueness rather than "strength"?

In practice, hackers don't get enough attempts on rate-limited online logins to take advantage of weak-ish passwords. And it's NBD if it gets exfiltrated and cracked by GPU as long as it's unique.

For scams to thrive, the necessary factors aren't just poverty and the Internet, but also access to international payment rails, and a local government willing to overlook organized crime (these are rarely individual entrepreneurs).

What's gotten much worse recently is payment rail availability

One of my interests is animal welfare, and the "out of sight, out of mind" pattern dominates there. Most people are very strongly against animal cruelty to pets and at the same time easily forget about cruelty within farms. Perhaps despoiling beautiful Chinese landscapes vs ours is similar

Good post. I wonder if it also has something to do with the "invisibility" of what happens within China. In the sense that few Westerners have done tourism there, its cities and regions have unfamiliar names, and many other aspects of cultural/emotional connection cannot develop under the CCP.

I bring two 32-ounce nalgene bottles and fill them up at the drinking fountain before boarding. Gatorade powder helps too

Yeah, most of those are unhealthy but odds are the dog will just throw up and then go back to normal.

The truly dangerous stuff is xylitol and ibuprofen. Perhaps not by coincidence, both new chemicals that dogs wouldn't have been exposed to while they co-evolved with us.

From the programming community on Reddit: Tomorrow Corporation's time travelling debugger, including debugging other people's play sessions, hot asset reloading, live compilation on every keystroke an... Explore this post and more from the programming community

Not sure whether this is right, but Allan Blomquist's engine looks something along those lines? www.reddit.com/r/programmin...