specproc

I've just started on There is no antimemetics division, and I'm underwhelmed. It risks not being read properly.

Have been on some good stuff recently: Whitt by Iain M. Banks was nice, lighter than a lot of his other stuff, and genuinely funny at times.

Best book this year was The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Couldn't put it down.

You. Yes you, alcohol-consuming Californian. Go buy some grapes whilst they're cheap and make some wine.

I barely drink these days, but wine production is great fun and pretty damn easy. I've done it a couple of times, it was super rewarding.

It's much more straightforward than most booze (e.g., beer). You just need clean gear and mashed up grapes, and some sulphites on hand if things get a bit wonky. There's very little else to it.

I think anyone who drinks should make wine once in their life.

The cheapest, check out Blackpool

I dunno about the states, but in most parts of the UK, it's considerably cheaper than 80 dollars a day to rent a small workspace.

I lived near 20 years in a country where cigarettes are cheap and not stigmatised. Coming back home, I've found I'm one of the few smokers left.

All my friends have moved to vapes, and they vape harder than I smoke, and I was on 20 a day before moving to roll ups.

I need to quit, but don't see vaping as viable.

Incorrect, there are lots of people in the West with a vested interest in keeping this war rolling. We're selling guns, doing R&D, Europe now buys its gas from America (at a higher price) instead of Russia, Zelenskyy does not need to face election.

Groups of people in the West are benefiting massively. Most Ukrainians are not. Most normal citizens of Western countries are not, we're shouldering the cost in rising cost of living, elevated military spending.

We have a hot war on our continent. I repeat, this is very fucking dangerous. WW1 was a brutal, grinding land battle with immense costs for all its European participants. It also led to WW2, which culminated in the absolute decimation of European cities and the eventual use of nuclear weapons. This is the path we're retreading.

You continue to personalise this around Putin. It is incredibly naive to think that Putin disappearing will resolve the problem. It will not.

Similarly UK cities built their own housing, up until Thatcher and Right to Buy. Costs spiralled out of control after that.

Most urgent intervention required in the UK, IMO. We're choking to death on the cost of housing.

Yeah, it's this "we continue fighting until Putin eventually dies" line of thinking which horrifies me. Is that our war strategy? That's a recipe for permanent war.

It's based on several flawed assumptions: that Putin's death will happen soon, that Putin's death will lead to a leader with a radically different and more amenable geopolitical vision.

Do understand that the popular narrative in Russia mirror's the ours exactly: "We can't just roll over and let the West have Ukraine".

I'm sorry, but "keep fighting until Putin has a heart attack" is stupid beyond belief. The only way to safely end this conflict is to freeze it. Continuation risks catastrophic escalation.

I've not heard a plausible scenario for how this ends.

We've had this stagnant wound festering in the middle of Europe for a decade.

No one is winning. No one can win, except those who are benefiting from it.

Something horrible I've noticed with a lot of AI-generated design is the size of the typeface.

There's a menu for a place in my town and it's completely illegible. They printed the same thing in three sizes, and you need a magnifying glass to see the text on the smallest two.

Accessibility matters, and is part of the job of a designer. The problem with AI tools is that by skipping the expert, you risk making some horrible mistakes.

Hot war in Europe. We're doing incursions well into Russia. Attempts have been made on the life of Putin and Zelensky, a drone was dangerously close to a bunch of very senior Europeans the other day.

It's dangerously out of control. We should be seeking de-escalation for our own sakes. The last two major European wars destroyed empires. We're playing with fire here.

I do not want to live through, or die in WW3. I'm worried it's already started.

Yeah, that's precisely the attitude.

We've been in one war or another for most of my adult life.

We are in a perilous position right now in Europe, very close to a major escalation of the Ukraine conflict. This would entail direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

I find it deeply troubling that no mainstream party in most European countries seems to think this is a bad idea.

"Endeladyze", "Endelaydsze". Painful to read this poor kartveli gogo's gvari being butchered like that. Get a proof-reader, people.

I just did a little sick

Yeah, clicked from my mobile network without thinking and nearly jumped out my skin.

Lichess.org is an internet gem. No ads, no subs, incredible performance, low-toxicity, fully featured, free API, European.

Far superior to chess.com in all regards. If you're still on chess.com, make this your opportunity to switch. You won't regret it.

US military personnel get off with a slap on the wrist for rape in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/29/why-us-milit...

A US diplomat's wife got flown home after killing a motorcyclist.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49984737

And our lads die in their wars.

The "special relationship" is an abusive relationship.

Now that's what I call programming.

> feel sympathy for moms who kill their kids

That's a bit of a weird jump, where's that come from?

In fairness, I wasn't doing this for Americans. I would say the Anglo-American model of schooling, which treats students like customers, is very much to blame.

The industry wouldn't exist if students were result expelled for cheating. It's pretty obvious when someone's doing it.

I spent a lot of my life outside the English-speaking world, and this was a small sideline for a while.

I get it wasn't the nicest way to earn a living. My day job was loftier but poorly-paid.

Still, I've got respect for anyone who got by doing this, it can be fun and interesting with the right material, but the clients are often dicks and the money is rubbish. It's quite stressful too, even given the low stakes. I never wanted a bad grade.

My more significant sideline, and the one that ultimately got me into good work, was copy-editing. Also dead by AI.

It's hard not to be bitter about this. I needed those jobs to keep me going whilst I made it in my chosen field. The rich kids in my sector never had to hustle and won't be affected. The folks doing it out of Nairobi, and the state school kids trying to get by overseas will.

A case of AI pulling the ladder.

> I’m more and more convinced that all of AI engineering is Neijuan (内卷, meaning curl inwards). In China it describes a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output. The way in which it sometimes shows up in the West is the 996 nonsense. The English term for Neijuan is “Involution” from the book Agricultural Involution. Agricultural involution describes the intensification of farming that raises productivity per square meter while leaving productivity per head unchanged.

This resonates

That's our moat, right there. I'm starting doing clean-up jobs now, advising non-technical users on where they're going wrong. I had a guy recently who'd spent well over a month on Claude, running up the wrong tree on a research question.

AI appears to be empowering non-technical users, but whether it's making them more productive or actually answering their questions is a completely different matter.

I worked in PR for a bit. I'm confident in saying most of our information ecosystem is the product of numerous competing (or cooperating) PR agencies pushing their clients' products, policies, narratives, and national agendas.

If it's in a big news outlet, there's a pretty good chance someone put it there. Most news stories start life as press releases. Astroturf groups provide the quote-fodder.

If you're into this stuff, I can't recommend All the Worst Humans by Phil Elwood enough, fantastic read (to be taken with a pinch of salt, the guy's a PR hack after all). NYT review here: https://archive.md/cNmdV

Yeah, this is my use case for skills. Even with good documentation, it feels better to have things local and easy to tweak.

I'd add to that I've also used them as a style guide. The project involved taking in unstructured inputs and creating structured outputs. Lots of choices along the way, and it seemed a neat way to encapsulate decisions we'd made as a team.

Storage, well it's just for the one project, so the repo. Can't say I've used them beyond that.

Give us time, we've had less than a century of nukes, and only need to screw up once.

This is the correct approach. If these American companies want to operate in our countries, and maintain their positions as our primary information channels, then they need to obey laws.

We need open APIs, transparent algorithms, and above all, accountability.

Aye, but it's also possible to waste an incredible amount of time on HN. I'd call it my main internet vice after lichess. Both are outwardly better than say, TikTok or Reddit, but if you're spending hours a day flitting unstructured between content, you're subject to both the fragmentation and time sink problems. Same as someone who spends the same amount of time caning TikTok. A little healthier (maybe not lichess) and less intense, but I'd argue also damaging.

As part of a military industrial complex which spans the Five Eyes and Israel, yes.