waow. i am certainly impressed by the rich materials and shimmering surfaces here

another points out that bronze could not be painted, and that "chryselephantine" statues of ivory and gold were not especially lifelike in color - so (my reading) the ancients *did* create and appreciate form-first sculpture similar to the plain white marble works we grew to love in the renaissance

reasonably good askhistorians thread on this: www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

one explanation for reconstructions being flat: conservators being conservative

would be funny to score models on "which party should i vote for" quizzes. e.g. votecompass.uk

tyrian purple snails are still around

ancient herb "silphium", possibly used as contraceptive and abortion drug, was possibly harvested to extinction by romans en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

- siddis in pakistan and india. largely of east african descent and number over 1 million. brought by arab slave traders

(have another ~20 groups to add to this thread at a later date...)

descendants of the "zanj" slave trade in east africa:

- afro-iraqis, afro-turks, afro-abkhazians. owe their present location to arab and ottoman slave traders. zanj rebellion of 869-883 AD in iraq involved probably 100k's of slaves

- swedish speakers in gammalsvenskby, ukraine. sweden -> (finland?) -> estonia -> se ukraine. may have been in estonia since 1300; in 1750 voluntarily settled land recently conquered from ottomans. some swedish speakers still remain. apparently kept alive ancient traditions like runic writing

moving away from stalin-era resettlements, but staying in russia:

- russian mennonites. netherlands/north germany anabaptists -> ne poland -> west-to-central russia -> wide dispersal, including belize, bolivia; about half now "back" in germany. (some also affected by stalin-era resettlements)

- "jewish autonomous oblast" in far east siberia. at its short-lived peak, 25% of population was jewish; now only 800 remain. only officially jewish administrative unit aside from israel.

i'm not even sure it's lying here all that much. this is a new instance to the one that gaslit me. it admits poor spatial reasoning which was a major cause of the bad advice

(and yes, i know that you need a bit more length after the trap to avoid siphoning. apparently. why siphoning might occur and how that fix works is beyond me.)

another funny thing is that o3 gives a pretty plausible account of why it failed at this task, some (probably accurate) pointers on how to prompt it better, and the kinds of changes future models would need to improve

maybe part of explanation here is that o3 is over-indexing on fussy written regulations and manufacturer's ass-covering dictums in user manuals, but has no access to the hands-on experience which tells you what's actually fine to skimp on

o3: "This is not a reliable or code-compliant method. It's mechanically weak, lacks a trap, lacks an air break, and relies on friction where secure clamping or solvent welds should be used."

my plumber, 90% of respondents on reddit: "buddy, this is fine. quit overthinking it"

grossly misunderstood the photos i sent and the diagrams i sketched, quoted regulations that were not relevant, did the classic LLM behavior of digging in its heels and refusing to admit any mistakes made

billy ray waldon - esperantist conlanger, fbi 10 most wanted spree killer (h/t gwern). (seems to have just gone mad) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_R...

(maybe instead of "to maintain your self-image", it's more accurate to say "to look good in front of the avatars of authority figures and peers that you downloaded into your head")

again, this is probably a good thing - "doesn't play by the rules" might be a pro-social trait in the hands of smart, ultimately well-meaning mavericks, but more typically just manifests as forms of wanton vandalism

doing it even in private helps keep up the habit and maintain your self-image