Smoljaguar

fan of all things aerospace, also trying to learn about ai, low level software, hardware

Last Notes

2026-05-08 00:47:50 GMT

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NSAIDs like ibuprofen and paracetamol have totally different mechanisms, and scientists don't really understand how paracetamol works, paracetamol overdoses are possible but ibuprofen aren't, however paracetamol might still be net safer https://asteriskmag.com/issues/14/the-mystery-in-the-medicine-cabinet

2026-03-14 00:06:15 GMT

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unfortunately the spec rounds it to the nearest mill for every change, so not quite mathematically perfect, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKBCIMkDbw for more details

2026-02-14 14:46:55 GMT

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I don't really get why klarna is so reviled, it seems to me like it's just a credit card in a different shape

2025-08-16 12:31:33 GMT

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I thought the more or less episode about them was pretty good, mostly says the same stuff as the article, went into a bit more depth about how wealth taxes have failed in the past and how we could avoid making those mistakes, the biggest of them is exemptions e.g. for farmers which allow tax dodging by moving wealth around
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0l09td8

2025-02-08 20:47:30 GMT

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though really if you want to be statistically rigorous you should do E(Empire lifetime | lifetime > 248 years) which gives you 520 years = 270 years from now :(
although 1776 is probably a bad time for the start of the US, especially if you're trying to determine when it became an empire

2025-02-08 20:44:37 GMT

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why is the US an empire? The only territory they have control over without political representation is Guam and DC, but they still have equal rights and the people who live there are citizens of the US.
Also funnily enough I checked en Wikipedia list of empires and taking an average you get 270 years

2024-12-01 02:01:23 GMT

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surely there are *50* before and after bob if there are 101 total ships?

2024-11-09 00:52:14 GMT

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Sure, the statistic isn't made up, it's just that the definition is not very useful, see https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/27/economy/wealthy-households-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/index.html which shows that people who earn a large amount are still fairly likely to be living paycheck-to-paycheck, showing that it's mostly a self-inflicted issue which can't be resolved by economic policy

2024-11-09 00:23:52 GMT

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> Many Americans are desperate. 50% live paycheck to paycheck all the time. 25% have negative net worth: they owe more than they own
I don't deny that many americans are desparate, but the 50% living paycheck-to-paycheck is exaggerated: see https://www.slowboring.com/p/this-economic-myth-needs-to-go-away who cites https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/sheddataviz/emergency-savings.html which says that 54% of adults have 3 months emergency savings. Negative net worth is just a sign of easy credit availability more than anything else

2024-09-17 16:34:54 GMT

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one thing I would note is that this depends on your choice of reference frames, which are arbitrary, even if it makes intuitive sense in our common cosmological hierarchy to choose the earth, sun, milky way, etc.

2024-08-21 21:30:42 GMT

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Am I missing a joke or is this intentional?

2024-07-21 15:05:08 GMT

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captchas haven't been more than a mild bot deterrent for a while, even pre-AI CAPTCHA farms existed to fill them out for pay

2024-07-21 15:04:28 GMT

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AI has been able to read this for over a decade, it can even do the fancier ReCaptchas now at rates better than humans (85% vs 81%) (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12108)